A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

They were all back at the Abbey House again early in June, and Vixen breathed more freely in her sweet native air. How dear, how doubly beautiful, everything seemed to her after even so brief an exile. But it was a grief to have missed the apple-bloom and the bluebells. The woods were putting on their ripe summer beauty; the beeches had lost the first freshness of their tender green, the amber glory of the young oak-leaves was over, the last of the primroses had paled and faded among the spreading bracken; masses of snowy hawthorn bloom gleamed white amidst the woodland shadows; bean-fields in full bloom filled the air with delicate odours; the summer winds swept across the long lush grass in the meadows, beautiful with ever-varying lights and shadows; families of sturdy black piglings were grubbing on the waste turf beside every road, and the forest-fly was getting strong upon the wing. The depths of Mark Ash were dark at noontide under their roof of foliage.
Vixen revelled in the summer weather. She was out from morning till evening, on foot or on horseback, sketching or reading a novel, in some solitary corner of the woods, with Argus for her companion and guardian. It was an idle purposeless existence for a young woman to lead, no doubt; but Violet Tempest knew of no better thing that life offered her to do.
Neither her mother nor Captain Winstanley interfered with her liberty. The Captain had his own occupations and amusements, and his wife was given up to frivolities which left no room in her mind for anxiety about her only daughter. So long as Violet looked fresh and pretty at the breakfast-table, and was nicely dressed in the evening, Mrs. Winstanley thought that all was well; or at least as well as it ever could be with a girl who had been so besotted as to refuse a wealthy young nobleman. So Vixen went her own way, and nobody cared. She seemed to have a passion for solitude, and avoided even her old friends, the Scobels, who had made themselves odious by their championship of Lord Mallow.
The London season was at its height when the Winstanleys went back to Hampshire. The Dovedales were to be at Kensington till the beginning of July, with Mr. Vawdrey in attendance upon them. He had rooms in Ebury Street, and had assumed an urban air which in Vixen’s opinion made him execrable.
“I can’t tell you how hateful you look in lavender gloves and a high hat,” she said to him one day in Clarges Street.
“I daresay I look more natural dressed like a gamekeeper,” he answered lightly; “I was born so. As for the high hat, you can’t hate it more than I do; and I have always considered gloves a foolishness on a level with pigtails and hair-powder.”
Vixen had been wandering in her old haunts for something less than a fortnight, when, on one especially fine morning, she mounted Arion directly after breakfast and started on one of her rambles, with the faithful Bates in attendance, to open gates or to pull her out of bogs if needful. Upon this point Mrs. Winstanley was strict. Violet might ride when and where she pleased — since these meanderings in the Forest were so great a pleasure to her — but she must never ride without a groom.
Old Bates liked the duty. He adored his mistress, and had spent the greater part of his life in the saddle. There was no more enjoyable kind of idleness possible for him than to jog along in the sunshine on one of the Captain’s old hunters; called upon for no greater exertion than to flick an occasional fly off his horse’s haunch, or to bend down and hook open the gate of a plantation with his stout hunting-crop. Bates had many a brief snatch of slumber in those warm enclosures, where the air was heavy with the scent of the pines, and the buzzing of summer flies made a perpetual lullaby. There was a delicious sense of repose in such a sleep, but it was not quite so pleasant to be jerked suddenly into the waking world by a savage plunge of the aggravated hunter’s hindlegs, goaded to madness by a lively specimen of the forest-fly.
On this particular morning Vixen was in a thoughtful mood, and Arion was lazy. She let him walk at a leisurely pace under the beeches of Gretnam Wood, and through the quiet paths of the New Park plantations. He came slowly out into Queen’s Bower, tossing his delicate head and sniffing the summer air. The streamlets were rippling gaily in the noontide sun; far off on the yellow common a solitary angler was whipping the stream — quite an unusual figure in the lonely landscape. A delicious slumberous quiet reigned over all the scene. Vixen was lost in thought, Bates was dreaming, when a horse’s hoofs came up stealthily beside Arion, and a manly voice startled the sultry stillness.
“I’ve got rid of the high hat for this year, and I’m my own man again,” said the voice; and then a strong brown hand was laid upon Vixen’s glove, and swallowed up her slender fingers in its warm grasp.
“When did you come back?” she asked, as soon as their friendly greetings were over, and Arion had reconciled himself to the companionship of Mr. Vawdrey’s hack.
“Late last night.”
“And have the Duchess and her people come back to Ashbourne?”
“Pas si bête. The Duchess and her people — meaning Mabel — have engagements six deep for the next month — breakfasts, lawn-parties, music, art, science, horticulture, dancing, archery, every form of labourious amusement that the genius of man has invented. One of our modern sages has said that life would be tolerable but for its amusements. I am of that wise man’s opinion. Fashionable festivities are my aversion. So I told Mabel frankly that I found my good spirits being crushed out of me by the weight of too much pleasure, and that I must come home to look after my farm. The dear old Duke recognised that duty immediately, and gave me all sorts of messages and admonitions for his bailiff.”
“And you are really free to do what you like for a month?” exclaimed Vixen na?vely. “Poor Rorie! How glad you must be!”
“My liberty is of even greater extent. I am free till the middle of August, when I am to join the Dovedales in Scotland. Later, I suppose, the Duke will go to Baden, or to some newly-discovered fountain in the Black Forest. He could not exist for a twelvemonth without German waters.”
“And after that there will be a wedding, I suppose?” said Violet.
She felt as if called upon to say something of this kind. She wanted Rorie to know that she recognised his position as an engaged man. She hated talking about the business, but she felt somehow that this was incumbent upon her.
“I suppose so,” answered Rorie; “a man must be married once in his life. The sooner he gets the ceremony over the better. My engagement has hung fire rather. There is always a kind of flatness about the thing between cousins, I daresay. Neither of us is in a hurry. Mabel has so many ideas and occupations, from orchids to Greek choruses.”
“She is very clever,” said Vixen.
“She is clever and good, and I am very proud of her,” answered Rorie loyally.
He felt as if he were walking on the brink of a precipice, and that it needed all his care to steer clear of the edge.
After this there was no more said about Lady Mabel. Vixen and Rorie rode on happily side by side, as wholly absorbed in each other as Launcelot and Guinevere — when the knight brought the lady home through the smiling land, in the glad boyhood of the year, by tinkling rivulet and shadowy covert, and twisted ivy and spreading chestnut fans — and with no more thought of Lady Mabel than those two had of King Arthur.
It was the first of many such rides in the fair June weather. Vixen and Rorie were always meeting in that sweet pathless entanglement of oak and beech and holly, where the cattle-line of the spreading branches were just high enough to clear Vixen’s coquettish little hat, or in the long straight fir plantations, where the light was darkened even at noonday, and where the slumberous stillness was broken only by the hum of summer flies. It was hardly possible, it seemed to Violet, for two people to be always riding in the Forest without meeting each other very often. Various as the paths are they all cross somewhere: and what more natural than to see Rorie’s brown horse trotting calmly along the grass by the wayside, at the first bend of the road? They made no appointments, or were not conscious of making any; but they always met. There was a fatality about it: yet neither Rorie nor Violet ever seemed surprised at this persistence of fate. They were always glad to see each other; they had always a world to tell each other. If the earth had been newly made every day, with a new set of beings to people it, those two could hardly have had more to say.
“Darned if I can tell what our young Miss and Muster Vawdrey can find to talk about,” said honest old Bates, over his dish of tea in the servants’ hall; “but their tongues ha’ never done wagging.”
Sometimes Miss Tempest and Mr. Vawdrey went to the kennels together, and idled away an hour with the hounds; while their horses stood at ease with their bridles looped round the five-barred gate, their heads hanging lazily over the topmost bar, and their big soft eyes dreamily contemplating the opposite pine wood, with that large capacity for perfect idleness common to their species. Bates was chewing a straw and swinging his hunting-crop somewhere in attendance. He went with his young mistress everywhere, and played the part of the “dragon of prudery placed within call;” but he was a very amiable dragon, and nobody minded him. Had it come into the minds of Rorie and Vixen to elope, Bates would not have barred their way. Indeed he would have been very glad to elope with them himself. The restricted license of the Abbey House had no charm for him.
Whither were those two drifting in the happy summer weather, lulled by the whisper of forest leaves faintly stirred by the soft south wind, or by the low murmur of the forest river, stealing on its stealthy course under overarching boughs, mysterious as that wondrous river in Kubla Khan’s dream, and anon breaking suddenly out into a clamour loud enough to startle Arion as the waters came leaping and brawling over the shining moss-green boulders? Where were these happy comrades going as they rode side by side under the glancing lights and wavering shadows? Everybody knows what became of Launcelot and Guinevere after that famous ride of theirs. What of these two, who rode together day after day in sun and shower, who loitered and lingered in every loveliest nook in the Forest, who had the same tastes, the same ideas, the same loves, the same dislikes? Neither dared ask that question. They took the happiness fate gave them, and sought not to lift the veil of the future. Each was utterly and unreasonably happy, and each knew very well that this deep and entire happiness was to last no longer than the long summer days and the dangling balls of blossom on the beechen boughs. Before the new tufts on the fir-branches had lost their early green, this midsummer dream would be over. It was to be brief as a schoolboy’s holiday.
What was the good of being so happy, only to be so much more miserable afterwards? A sensible young woman might have asked herself that question, but Violet Tempest did not. Her intentions were pure as the innocent light shining out of her hazel eyes — a gaze frank, direct, and fearless as a child’s. She had no idea of tempting Roderick to be false to his vows. Had Lady Mabel, with her orchids and Greek plays, been alone in question, Violet might have thought of the matter more lightly: but filial duty was involved in Rorie’s fidelity to his betrothed. He had promised his mother on her death-bed. That was a promise not to be broken.
One day — a day for ever to be remembered by Vixen and Rorie — a day that stood out in the foreground of memory’s picture awfully distinct from the dreamy happiness that went before it, these two old friends prolonged their ride even later than usual. The weather was the loveliest that had ever blessed their journeyings — the sky Italian, the west wind just fresh enough to fan their cheeks, and faintly stir the green feathers of the ferns that grew breast-high on each side of the narrow track. The earth gave forth her subtlest perfumes under the fire of the midsummer sun. From Boldrewood the distant heights and valleys had an Alpine look in the clear bright air, the woods rising line above line in the far distance, in every shade of colour, from deepest umber to emerald green, from the darkest purple to translucent azure, yonder, where the farthest line of verdure met the sunlit sky. From Stony Cross the vast stretch of wood and moor lay basking in the warm vivid light, the yellow of the dwarf furze flashing in golden patches amidst the first bloom of the crimson heather. This southern corner of Hampshire was a glorious world to live in on such a day as this. Violet and her cavalier thought so, as their horses cantered up and down the smooth stretch of turf in front of The Forester’s Inn.
“I don’t know what has come to Arion,” said Vixen, as she checked her eager horse in his endeavour to break into a mad gallop. “I think he must be what Scotch people call ‘fey.’”
“And pray what may that mean?” asked Rorie, who was like the young lady made famous by Sydney Smith: what he did not know would have made a big book.
“Why, I believe it means that in certain moments of life, just before the coming of a great sorrow, people are wildly gay. Sometimes a man who is doomed to die breaks out into uproarious mirth, till his friends wonder at him. Haven’t you noticed that sometimes in the accounts of suicides, the suicide’s friends declare that he was in excellent spirits the night before he blew out his brains?”
“Then I hope I’m not ‘fey,’” said Rorie, “for I feel uncommonly jolly.”
“It’s only the earth and sky that make us feel happy,” sighed Violet, with a sudden touch of seriousness. “It is but an outside happiness after all.”
“Perhaps not; but it’s very good of its kind.”
They went far afield that day; as far as the yews of Sloden; and the sun was low in the west when Vixen wished her knight good-bye, and walked her horse down the last long glade that led to the Abbey House. She was very serious now, and felt that she had transgressed a little by the length of her ride. Poor Bates had gone without his dinner, and that dismal yawn of his just now doubtless indicated a painful vacuity of the inner man. Rorie and she were able to live upon air and sunshine, the scent of the clover, and the freshness of the earth; but Bates was of the lower type of humanity, which requires to be sustained by beef and beer; and for Bates this day of sylvan bliss had been perhaps a period of deprivation and suffering.
Violet had been accustomed to be at home, and freshly dressed, in time for Mrs. Winstanley’s afternoon tea. She had to listen to the accumulated gossip of the day — complaints about the servants, praises of Conrad, speculations upon impending changes of fashion, which threatened to convulse the world over which Theodore presided; for the world of fashion seems ever on the verge of a crisis awful as that which periodically disrupts the French Chamber.
To have been absent from afternoon tea was a breach of filial duty which the mild Pamela would assuredly resent. Violet felt herself doomed to one of those gentle lectures, which were worrying as the perpetual dropping of rain. She was very late — dreadfully late — the dressing-bell rang as she rode into the stable-yard. Not caring to show herself at the porch, lest her mother and the Captain should be sitting in the hall, ready to pronounce judgment upon her misconduct, she ran quickly up to her dressing-room, plunged her face into cold water, shook out her bright hair, brushed and plaited the long tresses with deft swift fingers, put on her pretty dinner-dress of pale blue muslin, fluttering all over with pale blue bows, and went smiling down to the drawing-room like a new Hebe, dressed in an azure cloud.
Mrs. Winstanley was sitting by an open window, while the Captain stood outside and talked to her in a low confidential voice. His face had a dark look which Vixen knew and hated, and his wife was listening with trouble in her air and countenance. Vixen, who meant to have marched straight up to her mother and made her apologies, drew back involuntarily at the sight of those two faces.
Just at this moment the dinner-bell rang. The Captain gave his wife his arm, and the two passed Vixen without a word. She followed them to the dining-room, wondering what was coming.
The dinner began in silence, and then Mrs. Winstanley began to falter forth small remarks, feeble as the twitterings of birds before the coming storm. How very warm it had been all day, almost oppressive: and yet it had been a remarkably fine day. There was a fair at Emery Down — at least not exactly a fair, but a barrow of nuts and some horrid pistols, and a swing. Violet answered, as in duty bound; but the Captain maintained his ominous silence. Not a word was said about Violet’s long ride. It seemed hardly necessary to apologise for her absence, since her mother made no complaint. Yet she felt that there was a storm coming.
“Perhaps he is going to sell Arion,” she thought, “and that’s why the dear thing was ‘fey.’”
And then that rebellious spirit of hers arose within her, ready for war.
“No, I would not endure that. I would not part with my father’s last gift. I shall be rich seven years hence, if I live so long. I’ll do what the young spendthrifts do. I’ll go to the Jews. I will not be Captain Winstanley’s helot. One slave is enough for him, I should think. He has enslaved poor mamma. Look at her now, poor soul; she sits in bodily fear of him, crumbling her bread with her pretty fingers, shining and sparkling with rings. Poor mamma! it is a bad day for her when fine dresses and handsome jewels cannot make her happy.”
It was a miserable dinner. Those three were not wont to be gay when they sat at meat together; but the dinner of to-day was of a gloomier pattern than usual. The strawberries and cherries were carried round solemnly, the Captain filled his glass with claret, Mrs. Winstanley dipped the ends of her fingers into the turquois-coloured glass, and disseminated a faint odour of roses.
“I think I’ll go and sit in the garden, Conrad,” she said, when she had dried those tapering fingers on her fringed doiley. “It’s so warm in the house.”
“Do, dear. I’ll come and smoke my cigar on the lawn presently,” answered the Captain.
“Can’t you come at once, love?”
“I’ve a little bit of business to settle first. I won’t be long!”
Mrs. Winstanley kissed her hand to her husband, and left the room, followed by Vixen.
“Violet,” she said, when they were outside, “how could you stay out so long? Conrad is dreadfully angry.”
“Your husband angry because I rode a few miles farther to-day than usual? Dear mother, that is too absurd. I was sorry not to be at home in time to give you your afternoon tea, and I apologise to you with all my heart; but what can it matter to Captain Winstanley?”
“My dearest Violet, when will you understand that Conrad stands in the place of your dear father?”
“Never, mamma, for that is not true. God gave me one father, and I loved and honoured him with all my heart. There is no sacrifice he could have asked of me that I would not have made; no command of his, however difficult, that I would not have obeyed. But I will obey no spurious father. I recognise no duty that I owe to Captain Winstanley.”
“You are a very cruel girl,” wailed Pamela, “and your obstinacy is making my life miserable.”
“Dear mother, how do I interfere with your happiness? You live your life, and I mine. You and Captain Winstanley take your own way, I mine. Is it a crime to be out riding a little longer than usual, that you should look so pale and the Captain so black when I come home?”
“It is worse than a crime, Violet; it is an impropriety.”
Vixen blushed crimson, and turned upon her mother with an expression that was half startled, half indignant.
“What do you mean, mamma?”
“Had you been riding about the Forest all those hours alone, it would have been eccentric — unladylike — masculine even. You know that your habit of passing half your existence on horseback has always been a grief to me. But you were not alone.”
“No, mamma, I was not alone. I had my oldest friend with me; one of the few people in this big world who care for me.”
“You were riding about with Roderick Vawdrey, Lady Mabel Ashbourne’s future husband.”
“Why do you remind me of his engagement, mamma? Do you think that Roderick and I have even forgotten it? Can he not be my friend as well as Lady Mabel’s husband? Am I to forget that he and I played together as children, that we have always thought of each other and cared for each other as brother and sister, only because he is engaged to Lady Mabel Ashbourne?”
“Violet, you must know that all talk about brother and sister is sheer nonsense. Suppose I had set up brother and sister with Captain Winstanley! What would you — what would the world have thought?”
“That would have been different,” said Vixen. “You did not know each other as babies. In fact you couldn’t have done so, for you had left off being a baby before he was born,” added Vixen na?vely.
“You will have to put a stop to these rides with Roderick. Everybody in the neighbourhood is talking about you.”
“Which everybody?”
“Colonel Carteret to begin with.”
“Colonel Carteret slanders everybody. It is his only intellectual resource. Dearest mother, be your own sweet easy-tempered self, not a speaking-tube for Captain Winstanley. Pray leave me my liberty. I am not particularly happy. You might at least let me be free.”
Violet left her mother with these words. They had reached the lawn before the drawing-room windows. Mrs. Winstanley sank into a low basket-chair, like a hall-porter’s, which a friend had sent her from the sands of Trouville; and Vixen ran off to the stables to see if Arion was in any way the worse for his long round.
The horses had been littered down for the night, and the stable-yard was empty. The faithful Bates, who was usually to be found at this hour smoking his evening pipe on a stone bench beside the stable pump, was nowhere in sight. Vixen went into Arion’s loose-box, where that animal was nibbling clover lazily, standing knee-deep in freshly-spread straw, his fine legs carefully bandaged. He gave his mistress the usual grunt of friendly greeting, allowed her to feed him with the choicest bits of clover, and licked her hands in token of gratitude.
“I don’t think you’re any the worse for our canter over the grass, old pet,” she cried cheerily, as she caressed his sleek head, “and Captain Winstanley’s black looks can’t hurt you.”
As she left the stable she saw Bates, who was walking slowly across the court-yard, wiping his honest old eyes with the cuff of her drab coat, and hanging his grizzled head dejectedly.
Vixen ran to him with her cheeks aflame, divining mischief. The Captain had been wreaking his spite upon this lowly head.
“What’s the matter, Bates?”
“I’ve lived in this house, Miss Voylet, man and boy, forty year come Michaelmas, and I’ve never wronged my master by so much as the worth of a handful o’ wuts or a carriage candle. I was stable-boy in your grandfeyther’s time, miss, as is well-beknown to you; and I remember your feyther when he was the finest and handsomest young squire within fifty mile. I’ve loved you and yours better than I ever loved my own flesh and blood: and to go and pluck me up by the roots and chuck me out amongst strangers in my old age, is crueller than it would be to tear up the old cedar on the lawn, which I’ve heard Joe the gardener say be as old as the days when such-like trees was fust beknown in England. It’s crueller, Miss Voylet, for the cedar ain’t got no feelings — but I feel it down to the deepest fibres in me. The lawn ‘ud look ugly and empty without the cedar, and mayhap nobody’ll miss me — but I’ve got the heart of a man, miss, and it bleeds.”
Poor Bates relieved his wounded feelings with this burst of eloquence. He was a man who, although silent in his normal condition, had a great deal to say when he felt aggrieved. In his present state of mind his only solace was in many words.
“I don’t know what you mean, Bates,” cried Vixen, very pale now, divining the truth in part, if not wholly. “Don’t cry, dear old fellow, it’s too dreadful to see you. You don’t mean — you can’t mean — that — my mother has sent you away?”
“Not your ma, miss, bless her heart. She wouldn’t sack the servant that saddled her husband’s horse, fair weather and foul, for twenty years. No, Miss Voylet, it’s Captain Winstanley that’s given me the sack. He’s master here, now, you know, miss.”
“But for what reason? What have you done to offend him?”
“Ah, miss, there’s the hardship of it! He’s turned me off at a minute’s notice, and without a character too. That’s hard, ain’t it, miss? Forty years in one service, and to leave without a character at last! That do cut a old feller to the quick.”
“Why don’t you tell me the reason, Bates? Captain Winstanley must have given you his reason for such a cruel act.”
“He did, miss; but I ain’t going to tell you.”
“Why not, in goodness’ name?”
“Because it’s an insult to you, Miss Voylet; and I’m not going to insult my old master’s granddaughter. If I didn’t love you for your own sake — and I do dearly love you, miss, if you’ll excuse the liberty — I’m bound to love you for the sake of your grandfeyther. He was my first master, and a kind one. He gave me my first pair o’ tops. Lor, miss, I can call to mind the day as well as if it was yesterday. Didn’t I fancy myself a buck in ’em.”
Bates grinned and sparkled at the thought of those first top-boots. His poor old eyes, dim with years of long service, twinkled with the memory of those departed vanities.
“Bates,” cried Vixen, looking at him resolutely, “I insist upon knowing what reason Captain Winstanley alleged for sending you away.”
“He didn’t allege nothing, miss: and I ain’t agoing to tell you what he said.”
“But you must. I order you to tell me. You are still my servant, remember. You have always been a faithful servant, and I am sure you won’t disobey me at the last. I insist upon knowing what Captain Winstanley said; however insulting his words may have been to me, they will not surprise or wound me much. There is no love lost between him and me. I think everybody knows that. Don’t be afraid of giving me pain, Bates. Nothing the Captain could say would do that. I despise him too much.”
“I’m right down glad ‘o that, miss. Go on a-despising of him. You can’t give it him as thick as he deserves.”
“Now, Bates, what did he say?”
“He said I was a old fool, miss, or a old rogue, he weren’t quite clear in his mind which. I’d been actin’ as go-between with you and Mr. Vawdrey, encouragin’ of you to meet the young gentleman in your rides, and never givin’ the Cap’en warnin’, as your stepfeather, of what was goin’ on behind his back. He said it was shameful, and you were makin’ yourself the talk of the county, and I was no better than I should be for aidin’ and abettin’ of you in disgracin’ yourself. And then I blazed up a bit, miss, and maybe I cheeked him: and then he turned upon me sharp and short and told me to get out of the house this night, bag and baggage, and never to apply to him for a character; and then he counted out my wages on the table, miss, up to this evening, exact to a halfpenny, by way of showing me that he meant business, perhaps. But I came away and left his brass upon the table, staring at him in the face. I ain’t no pauper, praise be to God! I’ve had a good place and I’ve saved money: and I needn’t lower myself by taking his dirty half-pence.”
“And you’re going away, Bates, to-night?” exclaimed Vixen, hardly able to realise this calamity.
That Captain Winstanley should have spoken insultingly of her and of Rorie touched her but lightly. She had spoken truly just now when she said that she scorned him too much to be easily wounded by his insolence. But that he should dismiss her father’s old servant as he had sold her father’s old horse; that this good old man, who had grown from boyhood to age under her ancestral roof, who remembered her father in the bloom and glory of early youth; that this faithful servant should be thrust out at the bidding of an interloper — a paltry schemer, who, in Vixen’s estimation, had been actuated by the basest and most mercenary motives when he married her mother; — that these things should be, moved Violet Tempest with an overwhelming anger.
She kept her passion under, so far as to speak very calmly to Bates. Her face was white with suppressed rage, her great brown eyes shone with angry fire, her lips quivered as she spoke, and the rings on one clinched hand were ground into the flesh of the slender fingers.
“Never mind, Bates,” she said very gently; “I’ll get you a good place before ten o’clock to-night. Pack up your clothes, and be ready to go where I tell you two hours hence. But first saddle Arion.”
“Bless yer heart, Miss Voylet, you’re not going out riding this evening? Arion’s done a long day’s work.”
“I know that; but he’s fresh enough to do as much more — I’ve just been looking at him. Saddle him at once, and keep him ready in his stable till I come for him. Don’t argue, Bates. If I knew that I were going to ride him to death I should ride him to-night all the same. You are dismissed without a character, are you?” cried Vixen, laughing bitterly. “Never mind, Bates, I’ll give you a character; and I’ll get you a place.”
She ran lightly off and was gone, while Bates stood stock still wondering at her. There never was such............