Kitobni o'qish: «The Young Step-Mother; Or, A Chronicle of Mistakes», sahifa 5

Mr. Kendal returned to the subject as they walked home.

‘I hope you will talk seriously to Lucy about her intolerable gossiping,’ he said. ‘There is no safety in mentioning any subject before her; and Maria Meadows makes her worse. Some stop must be put to it.’

‘I should like to wait till next time,’ said Albinia.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Because this is too personal to myself.’

‘Nay, your own candour is an example to which Lucy can hardly be insensible. Besides, it is a nuisance which must be abated.’

Albinia could not help thinking that he suffered from it as little as most people, and wondering whether it were this which had taught him silence.

They met Miss Meadows at their own gate, and she told them that dear Lucy was very sorry, and she hoped they would take no more notice of a little nonsense that could do no one any harm; she would be more on her guard next time.

Mr. Kendal made no answer. Albinia ventured to ask him whether it would not be better to leave it, since her aunt had talked to her.

‘No,’ he said; ‘Maria has no influence whatever with the children. She frets them by using too many words about everything. One quiet remonstrance from you would have far more effect.’

Albinia called the culprit and tried to reason with her. Lucy tried at first to battle it off by saying that she had made a mistake, and Aunt Maria had said that she should hear no more about it. ‘But, my dear, I am afraid you must hear more. It is not that I am hurt, but your papa has desired me to talk to you. You would be frightened to hear what he says.’

Lucy chose to hear, and seemed somewhat struck, but she was sure that she meant no harm; and she had a great deal to say for herself, so voluble and so inconsequent, that argument was breath spent in vain; and Albinia was obliged to wind up, as an ultimatum, with warning her, that till she should prove herself trustworthy, nothing interesting would be talked of before her.

The atmosphere of gossip certainly had done its part in cultivating Mr. Kendal’s talent for silence. When Albinia had him all to herself, he was like another person, and the long drives to return visits in the country were thoroughly enjoyable. So, too, were the walks home from the dinner parties in the town, when the husband and wife lingered in the starlight or moonlight, and felt that the weary gaiety of the constrained evening was made up for.

Great was the offence they gave by not taking out the carriage!

It was disrespect to Bayford, and one of the airs of which Mrs. Kendal was accused. As granddaughter of a Baron, daughter of one General Officer and sister of another, and presented at Court, the Bayford ladies were prepared to consider her a fine lady, and when they found her peculiarly simple, were the more aggrieved, as if her contempt were ironically veiled. Her walks, her dress, her intercourse with the clergy, were all airs, and Lucy spared her none of the remarks. Albinia might say, ‘Don’t tell me all Aunt Maria says,’ but it was impossible not to listen; and whether in mirth or vexation, she was sure to be harmed by what she heard.

And yet, except for the tale-bearing, Lucy was really giving less trouble than her sister, she was quick, observant, and obliging, and under Albinia’s example, the more salient vulgarities of speech and manner were falling off. There had seldom been any collision, since it had become evident that Mrs. Kendal could and would hold her own; and that her address and air, even while criticised, were regarded as something superior, so that it was a distinction to belong to her. How many of poor Albinia’a so-called airs should justly have been laid to Lucy’s account?

On the other hand, Sophy would attend to a word from her father, where she had obstinately opposed her step-mother’s wishes, making her obedience marked, as if for the very purpose of enforcing the contrast. It was a character that Albinia could not as yet fathom. In all occupations and amusements, Sophy followed the lead of her elder sister, and in her lessons, her sole object seemed to be to get things done with as little trouble as possible, and especially without setting her mind to work, and yet in the very effort to escape diligence or exertion, she sometimes showed signs of so much ability as to excite a longing desire to know of what she would be capable when once aroused and interested; but the surly, ungracious temper rendered this apparently impossible, and whatever Albinia attempted, was sure, as if for the very reason that it came from her, to be answered with a redoubling of the growl of that odd hoarse voice.

On Lucy’s birthday, there was an afternoon party of her young friends, including Miss Durant. Albinia, who, among the girlhood of Fairmead and its neighbourhood, had been so acceptable a playmate, that her marriage had caused the outcry that ‘there would never be any fun again without Miss Ferrars,’ came out on the lawn with the girls, in hopes of setting them to enjoy themselves. But they looked at her almost suspiciously, retained their cold, stiff, company manners, and drew apart into giggling knots. She relieved them of her presence, and sitting by the window, watched Genevieve walking up and down alone, as if no one cared to join her. Presently Lucy and Lizzie Osborn spoke to her, and she went in. Albinia went to meet her in the hall; she coloured and said, ‘She was only come to fetch Miss Osborn’s cloak.’

Albinia saw her disposing it over Lizzie’s shoulders, and then running in again. This time it was for Miss Louisa’s cloak, and a third time for Miss Drury’s shawl, which Albinia chose to take out herself, and encountering Sophia, said, ‘Next time, you had better run on errands yourself instead of sending your guests.’

Sophy gave a black look, and she retreated, but presently the groups coalesced, and Maria Drury and Sophy ran out to call Genevieve into the midst. Albinia hoped they were going to play, but soon she beheld Genevieve trying to draw back, but evidently imprisoned, there was an echo of a laugh that she did not like; the younger girls were skipping up in the victim’s face in a rude way; she hastily turned round as in indignation, one hand raised to her eyes, but it was instantly snatched down by Maria Drury, and the pitiless ring closed in. Albinia sprang to her feet, exclaiming aloud, ‘They are teasing her!’ and rushed into the garden, hearing on her way, ‘No, we wont let you go!—you shall tell us—you shall promise to show us—my papa is a magistrate, you know—he’ll come and search—Jenny, you shall tell!’

Come with me, Genevieve,’ said Albinia, standing in the midst of the tormentors, and launching a look of wrath around her, as she saw tears in the young girl’s eyes, and taking her hand, found it trembling with agitation. Fondling it with both her own, she led Genevieve away, turning her back upon Lucy and her, ‘We were only—’

The poor girl shook more and more, and when they reached the shelter of the house, gave way to a tightened, oppressed sob, and at the first kind words a shower of tears followed, and she took Albinia’s hand, and clasped it to her breast in a manner embarrassing to English feelings, though perfectly natural and sincere in her. ‘Ah! si bonne! si bonne! pardonnes-moi, Madame!’ she exclaimed, sobbing, and probably not knowing that she was speaking French; ‘but, oh, Madame, you will tell me! Is it true—can he?’

‘Can who? What do you mean, my dear?’

‘The Admiral,’ said Genevieve, looking about frightened, and sinking her voice to a whisper. ‘Miss Louisa said so, that he could send and search—’

‘Search for what, my dear?’

‘For my poor little secret. Ah, Madame, assuredly I may tell you. It is but a French Bible, it belonged to my martyred ancestor, Francois Durant, who perished at the St. Barthelemi—it is stained with his blood—it has been handed on, from one to the other—it was all that Jacques Durant rescued when he fled from the Dragonnades—it was given to me by my own dear father on his death-bed, with a charge to keep it from my grandmother, and not to speak of it—but to guard it as my greatest treasure. And now—Oh, I am not disobeying him,’ cried Genevieve, with a fresh burst of tears. ‘You can feel for me, Madame, you can counsel me. Can the magistrates come and search, unless I confess to those young ladies?’

‘Most decidedly not,’ said Albinia. ‘Set your mind at rest, my poor child; whoever threatened you played you a most base, cruel trick.’

‘Ah, do not be angry with them, Madame; no doubt they were in sport. They could not know how precious that treasure was to me, and they will say much in their gaiety of heart.’

‘I do not like such gaiety,’ said Albinia. ‘What, they wished to make you confess your secret?’

‘Yes. They had learnt by some means that I keep one of my drawers locked, and they had figured to themselves that in it was some relic of my Huguenot ancestors. They thought it was some instrument of death, and they said that unless I would tell them the whole, the Admiral had the right of search, and, oh! it was foolish of me to believe them for a moment, but I only thought that the fright would, kill my grandmother. Oh, you were so good, Madame, I shall never forget; no, not to the end of my life, how you rescued me!’

‘We did not bring you here to be teased,’ said Albinia, caressing her. ‘I should like to ask your pardon for what they have made you undergo.’

‘Ah, Madame!’ said Genevieve, smiling, ‘it is nothing. I am well used to the like, and I heed it little, except when it falls on such subjects as these.’

She was easily drawn into telling the full history of her treasure, as she had learnt from her father’s lips, the Huguenot shot down by the persecutors, and the son who had fled into the mountains and returned to bury the corpse, and take the prized, blood-stained Bible from the breast; the escapes and dangers of the two next generations; the few succeeding days of peace; and, finally, the Dragonnade, when the children had been snatched from the Durant family, and the father and mother had been driven at length to fly in utter destitution, and had made their way to England in a wretched, unprovisioned open boat. The child for whose sake they fled, was the only one rescued from the hands of these enemies, and the tradition of their sufferings had been handed on with the faithfully preserved relic, down to the slender girl, their sole descendant, and who in early childhood had drunk in the tale from the lips of her father. The child of the persecutors and of the persecuted, Genevieve Durant did indeed represent strangely the history of her ancestral country; and as Albinia said to her, surely it might be hoped that the faith in which she had been bred up, united what was true and sound in the religion of both Reformed and Romanist.

The words made the brown cheek glow. ‘Ah, Madame, did I not say I could talk with you? You, who do not think me a heretic, as my dear grandmother’s friends do, and who yet can respect my grandmother’s Church.’

Assuredly little Genevieve was one of the most interesting and engaging persons that Albinia had ever met, and she listened earnestly to her artless history, and pretty enthusiasms, and the story which she could not tell without tears, of her father’s care, when the reward of her good behaviour had been the reading one verse in the quaint black letter of the old French Bible.

The conversation lasted till Gilbert made his appearance, and Albinia was glad to find that his greeting to Genevieve was cordial and affectionate, and free from all that was unpleasant in his sisters’ manner, and he joined himself to their company when Albinia proposed a walk along the broad causeway through the meadows. It was one of the pleasantest walks that she had taken at Bayford, with both her companions so bright and merry, and the scene around in all the beauty of spring. Gilbert, with the courtesy that Albinia’s very presence had infused into him, gathered a pretty wild bouquet for each, and Albinia talked of cowslip-balls, and found that neither Gilbert nor Genevieve had ever seen one; then she pitied them, and owned that she did not know how to get through a spring without one; and Gilbert having of course a pocketful of string, a delicious ball was constructed, over which Genevieve went into an inexpressible ecstasy.

All the evening, Gilbert devoted himself to Genevieve, though more than one of the others tried to attract him, playing off the follies of more advanced girlhood, to the vexation of Albinia, who could not bear to see him the centre of attention to silly girls, when he ought to have been finding his level among boys.

‘Gilbert makes himself so ridiculous about Jenny Durant,’ said his sisters, when he insisted on escorting her home, and thus they brought on themselves Albinia’s pent-up indignation at their usage of their guest. Lucy argued in unsatisfactory self-defence, but Sophy, when shown how ungenerous her conduct had been, crimsoned deeply, and though uttering no word of apology, wore a look that gave her step-mother for the first time a hope that her sullenness might not be so much from want of compunction, as from want of power to express it.

Oh! for a consultation with her brother. But he and his wife were taking a holiday among their kindred in Ireland, and for once Albinia could have echoed the aunts’ lamentation that Winifred had so many relations!

CHAPTER V

Albinia needed patience to keep alive hope and energy, for a sore disappointment awaited her. Whatever had been her annoyances with the girls, she had always been on happy and comfortable terms with Gilbert, he had responded to her advances, accommodated himself to her wishes, adopted her tastes, and returned her affection. She had early perceived that his father and sisters looked on him as the naughty one of the family, but when she saw Lucy’s fretting interference, and, Sophia’s wrangling contempt, she did not wonder that an unjust degree of blame had often fallen to his share; and under her management, he scarcely ever gave cause for complaint. That he was evidently happier and better for her presence, was compensation for many a vexation; she loved him with all her heart, made fun with him, told legends of the freaks of her brother Maurice and cousin Fred, and grudged no trouble for his pleasure.

As long as The Three Musqueteers lasted, he had come constantly to her dressing-room, and afterwards she promised to find other pleasant reading; but after such excitement, it was not easy to find anything that did not appear dry. As the daughter of a Peninsular man, she thought nothing so charming as the Subaltern, and Gilbert seemed to enjoy it; but by the time he had heard all her oral traditions of the war by way of notes, his attendance began to slacken; he stayed out later, and always brought excuses—Mr. Salsted had kept him, he had been with a fellow, or his pony had lost a shoe. Albinia did not care to question, the evenings were light and warm, and the one thing she desired for him was manly exercise: she thought it much better for him to be at play with his fellow-pupils, and she could not regret the gain of another hour to her hurried day.

One morning, however, Mr. Kendal called her, and his look was so grave and perturbed, that she hardly waited till the door was shut to ask in terror, what could be the matter.

‘Nothing to alarm you,’ he said. ‘It is only that I am vexed about Gilbert. I have reason to fear that he is deceiving us again; and I want you to help us to recollect on which days he should have been at Tremblam. My dear, do not look so pale!’

For Albinia had turned quite white at hearing that the boy, on whom she had fixed her warm affection, had been carrying on a course of falsehood; but a moment’s hope restored her. ‘I did keep him at home on Tuesday,’ she said, ‘it was so very hot, and he had a headache. I thought I might. You told me not to send him on doubtful days.’

‘I hope you may be able to make out that it is right,’ said Mr. Kendal, ‘but I am afraid that Mr. Salsted has too much cause of complaint. It is the old story!’

And so indeed it proved, when Albinia heard what the tutor had come to say. The boy was seldom in time, often altogether missing, excusing himself by saying he was kept at home by fears of the weather; but Mr. Salsted was certain that his father could not know how he disposed of his time, namely, in a low style of sporting with young Tritton, the son of a rich farmer or half-gentleman, who was the pest of Mr. Salsted’s parish. Ill-learnt, slurred-over lessons, with lame excuses, were nothing as compared with this, and the amount of petty deceit, subterfuge, and falsehood, was frightful, especially when Albinia recollected the tone of thought which the boy had seemed to be catching from her. Unused to duplicity, except from mere ignorant, unmanageable school-children, she was excessively shocked, and felt as if he must be utterly lost to all good, and had been acting a lie from first to last. After the conviction had broken on her, she hardly spoke, while Mr. Kendal was promising to talk to his son, threaten him with severe punishment, and keep a strict account of his comings and goings, to be compared weekly with Mr. Salsted’s notes of his arrival. This settled, the tutor departed, and no sooner was he gone, than Albinia, hiding her face in her hands, shed tears of bitter grief and disappointment. ‘My dearest,’ said her husband, fondly, ‘you must not let my boy’s doings grieve you in this manner. You have been doing your utmost for him, if any one could do him good, it would be you.’

‘O no, surely I must have made some dreadful mistake, to have promoted such faults.’

‘No, I have long known him not to be trustworthy. It is an evil of long standing.’

‘Was it always so?’

‘I cannot tell,’ said he, sitting down beside her, and shading his brow with one hand; ‘I have only been aware of it since he has been left alone. When the twins were together, they were led by one soul of truth and generosity. What this poor fellow was separately no one could know, while he had his brother to guide and shield him. The first time I noticed the evil was when we were recovering. Gilbert and Sophia were left together, and in one of their quarrels injured some papers of mine. I was very weak, and had little power of self-control; I believe I terrified him too much. There was absolute falsehood, and the truth was only known by Sophia’s coming forward and confessing the whole. It was ill managed. I was not equal to dealing with him, and whether the mischief began then or earlier, it has gone on ever since, breaking out every now and then. I had hoped that with your care—But oh! how different it would have been with his brother! Albinia, what would I not give that you had but seen him! Not a fault was there; not a moment’s grief did he give us, till—O what an overthrow of hope!’ And he gave way to an excess of grief that quite appalled her, and made her feel herself powerless to comfort. She only ventured a few words of peace and hope; but the contrast between the brothers, was just then keen agony, and he could not help exclaiming how strange it was, that Edmund should be the one to be taken.

‘Nay,’ he said, ‘was not he ripe for better things? May not poor Gilbert have been spared that longer life may train him to be like his brother?’

‘He never will be like him,’ cried Mr. Kendal. ‘No! no! The difference is evident in the very countenance and features.’

‘Was he like you?’

‘They said so, but you could not gather an idea of him from me,’ said Mr. Kendal, smiling mournfully, as he met her gaze. ‘It was the most beautiful countenance I ever saw, full of life and joy; and there were wonderful expressions in the eyes when he was thinking or listening. He used to read the Greek Testament with me every morning, and his questions and remarks rise up before me again. That text—You have seen it in church.’

‘Because I live, ye shall live also,’ Albinia repeated.

‘Yes. A little before his illness we came to that. He rested on it, as he used to do on anything that struck him, and asked me, “whether it meant the life hereafter, or the life that is hidden here?” We went over it with such comments as I could find, but his mind was not satisfied; and it must have gone on working on it, for one night, when I had been thinking him delirious, he called me, and the light shone out of those bright dark eyes of his as he said, joyfully, “It is both, papa! It is hidden here, but it will shine out there,” and as I did not catch his meaning, he repeated the Greek words.’

‘Dear boy! Some day we shall be glad that the full life and glory came so soon.’

He shook his head, the parting was still too recent, and it was the first time he had been able to speak of his son. It was a great satisfaction to her that the reserve had once been broken; it seemed like compensation for the present trouble, though that was acutely felt, and not softened by the curious eyes and leading questions of the sisters, when she returned to give what attention she could to their interrupted lessons.

Gilbert returned, unsuspicious of the storm, till his father’s stern gravity, and her depressed, pre-occupied manner, excited his attention, and he asked her anxiously whether anything were the matter. A sad gesture replied, and perhaps revealed the state of the case, for he became absolutely silent. Albinia left them together. She watched anxiously, and hurried after Mr. Kendal into the study, where his manner showed her not to be unwelcome as the sharer of his trouble. ‘I do not know what to do,’ he said, dejectedly. ‘I can make nothing of him. It is all prevarication and sulkiness! I do not think he felt one word that I said.’

‘People often feel more than they show.’

He groaned.

‘Will you go to him?’ he presently added. ‘Perhaps I grew too angry at last, and I believe he loves you. At least, if he does not, he must be more unfeeling than I can think him. You do not dislike it, dearest.’

‘O no, no! If I only knew what would be best for him!’

‘He may be more unreserved with you,’ said Mr. Kendal; and as he was anxious for her to make the attempt, she moved away, though in perplexity, and in the revulsion of feeling, with a sort of disgust towards the boy who had deceived her so long.

She found him seated on a wheelbarrow by the pond, chucking pebbles into the still black water, and disturbing the duckweed on the surface. His colour was gone, and his face was dark and moody, and strove not to relax, as she said, ‘O Gilbert, how could you?’

He turned sharply away, muttering, ‘She is coming to bother, now!’

It cut her to the heart. ‘Gilbert!’ was all she could exclaim, but the tone of pain made him look at her, as if in spite of himself, and as he saw the tears he exclaimed in an impatient voice of rude consolation, ‘There’s nothing to take so much to heart. No one thinks anything of it!’

‘What would Edmund have thought?’ said Albinia; but the appeal came too soon, he made an angry gesture and said, ‘He was nearly three years younger than I am now! He would not have been kept in these abominable leading-strings.’

She was too much shocked to find an answer, and Gilbert went on, ‘Watched and examined wherever I go—not a minute to myself—nothing but lessons at Tremblam, and bother at home; driven about hither and thither, and not allowed a friend of my own, nor to do one single thing! There’s no standing it, and I won’t!’

‘I am very sorry,’ said Albinia, struggling with choking tears. ‘It has been my great wish to make things pleasant to you. I hope I have not teased or driven you to—’

‘Nonsense!’ exclaimed Gilbert, disrespectfully indeed, but from the bottom of his heart, and breaking at once into a flood of tears. ‘You are the only creature that has been kind to me since I lost my mother and Ned, and now they have been and turned you against me too;’ and he sobbed violently.

‘I don’t know what you mean, Gilbert. If I stand in your mother’s place, I can’t be turned against you, any more than she could,’ and she stroked his brow, which she found so throbbing as to account for his paleness. ‘You can grieve and hurt me, but you can’t prevent me from feeling for you, nor for your dear father’s grief.’

He declared that people at home knew nothing about boys, and made an uproar about nothing.

‘Do you call falsehood nothing?’

‘Falsehood! A mere trifle now and then, when I am driven to it by being kept so strictly.’

‘I don’t know how to talk to you, Gilbert,’ said Albinia, rising; ‘your conscience knows better than your tongue.’

‘Don’t go;’ and he went off into another paroxysm of crying, as he caught hold of her dress; and when he spoke again his mood was changed; he was very miserable, nobody cared for him, he did not know what to do; he wanted to do right, and to please her, but Archie Tritton would not let him alone; he wished he had never seen Archie Tritton. At last, walking up and down with him, she drew from him a full confidence, and began to understand how, when health and strength had come back to him in greater measure than he had ever before enjoyed, the craving for boyish sports had awakened, just after he had been deprived of his brother, and was debarred from almost every wholesome manner of gratifying it. To fall in with young Tritton was as great a misfortune as could well have befallen a boy, with a dreary home, melancholy, reserved father, and wearisome aunt. Tritton was a youth of seventeen, who had newly finished his education at an inferior commercial school, and lived on his father’s farm, giving himself the airs of a sporting character, and fast hurrying into dissipation.

He was really good-natured, and Gilbert dwelt on his kindness with warmth and gratitude, and on his prowess in all sporting accomplishments with a perfect effervescence of admiration. He evidently patronized Gilbert, partly from good-natured pity, and partly as flattered by the adherence of a boy of a grade above him; and Gilbert was proud of the notice of one who seemed to him a man, and an adept in all athletic games. It was a dangerous intimacy, and her heart sank as she found that the pleasures to which he had been introducing Gilbert, were not merely the free exercise, the rabbit-shooting and rat-hunting of the farm, nor even the village cricket-match, all of which, in other company, would have had her full sympathy. But there had been such low and cruel sports that she turned her head away sickened at the notion of any one dear to her having been engaged in such amusements, and when Gilbert in excuse said that every one did it, she answered indignantly, ‘My brothers never!’

‘It is no use talking about what swells do that hunt and shoot and go to school,’ answered Gilbert.

‘Do you wish you went to school?’ asked Albinia.

‘I wish I was out of it all!’

He was in a very different frame. He owned that he knew how wrong it had been to deceive, but he seemed to look upon it as a sort of fate; he wished he could help it, but could not, he was so much afraid of his father that he did not know what he said; Archie Tritton said no one could get on without.—There was an utter bewilderment in his notions, here and there showing a better tone, but obscured by the fancies imbibed from his companion, that the knowledge and practice of evil were manly. At one moment he cried bitterly, and declared that he was wretched; at another he defended each particular case with all his might, changing and slipping away so that she did not know where to take him. However, the conclusion was far more in pity than anger, and after receiving many promises that if she would shield him from his father and bear with him, he would abstain from all she disapproved, she caressed and soothed the aching head, and returned to his father hopeful and encouraged, certain that the evil had been chiefly caused by weakness and neglect and believing that here was a beginning of repentance. Since there was sorrow and confession, there surely must be reformation.

For a week Gilbert went on steadily, but at the end of that time his arrivals at home became irregular, and one day there was another great aberration. On a doubtful day, when it had been decided that he might go safely between the showers, he never came to Tremblam at all, and Mr. Salsted sent a note to Mr. Kendal to let him know that his son had been at the races—village races, managed by the sporting farmers of the neighbourhood. There was a sense of despair, and again a talk, bringing at once those ever-ready tears and protestations, sorrow genuine, but fruitless. ‘It was all Archie’s fault, he had overtaken him, persuaded him that Mr. Salsted would not expect him, promised him that he should see the celebrated ‘Blunderbuss,’ Sam Shepherd’s horse, that won the race last year. Gilbert had gone ‘because he could not help it.’

‘Not help it!’ cried Albinia, looking at him with her clear indignant eyes. ‘How can you be such a poor creature, Gilbert?’

‘It is very hard!’ exclaimed Gilbert; ‘I must go past Robble’s Leigh twice every day of my life, and Archie will come out and be at me.’

‘That is the very temptation you have to resist,’ said Albinia. ‘Fight against it, pray against it, resolve against it; ride fast, and don’t linger and look after him.’

He looked desponding and miserable. If she could only have put a spirit into him!

‘Shall I walk and meet you sometimes before you get to Robbie’s Leigh!’

His face cleared up, but the cloud returned in a moment.

‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Only tell me. You know I wish for nothing so much as to help you.’

He did confess that there was nothing he should like better, if Archie would not be all the worse another time, whenever he should catch him alone.

‘But surely, Gilbert, he is not always lying in ambush for you, like a cat for a mouse. You can’t be his sole game.’

‘No, but he is coming or going, or out with his gun, and he will often come part of the way with me, and he is such a droll fellow!’