Wych Hazel. Warner Susan
throwing back her sleeve, and laying the frail work across her arm, above the tiny hair chain, the broad band of gems and the string of acorns, which banded it; in short, disporting herself generally. But not the "lullaby, baby, and all," of the old rhyme, ever had a more sudden and complete downfall. The first line of
"O wha wad buy a silken goun
Wi' a puir broken heart?"
was left as a mere abstract proposition; and Wych Hazel would assuredly have 'slipped from her moorings,' but for the certain fear of tearing her dress, or spraining her ankle, or doing some other bad thing which should call for immediate assistance. So she sat still and gazed at the prospect.
Her discoverer presently dropped down by her side and stood there uncovered, as usual, but this time he did not withdraw his eyes from her face. And when he spoke it was in a new tone, very pleasant, though laying aside a certain distance and form with which he had hitherto addressed her.
'Do you know,' he said, 'I begin to think I have known you in a former state of existence?'
'What sort of a person were you in a former state, Mr. Rollo?'
'I see the knowledge was not mutual. I am sorry.—This is a pleasant place!'
'This identical grey rock?'
'Don't you think so?'—in a tone which assumed the proposition.
'Very,' said Wych Hazel with a demure face;—'I do not know which abound most—the pleasures of Hope, Memory, or Imagination. But I thought perhaps you meant the mountain.'
'The pleasures of the Present, then, you do not perceive?' said Mr. Rollo, peering about very busily among the trees and rocks in his vicinity.
'Poor Hope and Imagination!' said Miss Hazel—'must they be banished to the "former state?" Memory does hold a sort of middle ground.'
'There isn't much of that sort of ground here,' said Mr. Rollo; 'we are on a pretty steep pitch of the hill. Don't you like this wilderness? You want a gun though—or a pencil—to give you the sense that you have something to do in the wilderness.'
'Yes!' said Miss Hazel—'so Englishmen say: "What a nice day it is!—let's go out and kill something." '
There was a good deal of amusement and keenness in his sideway glance, as he demurely asked her 'if she didn't know how to shoot?' But Wych Hazel, with a slight gesture of her silky curls, merely remarked that she had pencils in her pocket—if he wanted one.
'Thank you—have you paper too?'
'Plenty.'
'That I may not seem intolerably rude,' said he, extending his hand for the paper—'will you make one sketch while I make another? We will limit the time, as they did at the London Sketch Club.'
'O, I shall not think it even tolerably rude. But all my paper is in this book.'
'To secure the conditions, I must tear a leaf out.—How will that do?'
'Very well,' she said with a wee flitting of colour—'if you will secure my conditions too.'
'What are they?' As he spoke he tore the leaf out and proceeded to accommodate himself with a pamphlet for a drawing board.
'You had no right to the leaf till you heard them!' she cried jumping up. 'I shall take care how I bargain with you again, Mr. Rollo.'
'Not safe?' said he smiling. 'But you are, this time, for I accepted the conditions, you know. And besides—you have the pencils yet.' There was a certain gay simplicity about his manner that was disarming.
'Did you?' said Hazel looking down at him. 'Then you are injudicious to accept them unheard. One of them is very hard. The first is easy—you are to restore the leaf when the sketch is done.'
'It is the decree of the strongest! And the other?'
'You are to confess my sketch to be the best. Now what is the subject to be?'
'Stop a bit!' said he, turning over the book which Wych Hazel had given him wrong side first—'I should like to see what I am to swear to, before we begin.' And the bits of her drawing which were found there received a short but keen consideration. 'The subject?—is this grey rock where we are—with what is on and around it.'
'You are lawless. And your subject is—unmanageable!'
'Do you think so?'
'You want what is "around" this grey rock,' she said with a light twirl on the tips of her toes. 'If your views on most subjects are as comprehensive!'—
'They can be met, nevertheless,' said he, laughing, 'if you take one part of the subject and I the other—and if you'll give me a pencil! We must be done in a quarter of an hour.'
'There it is,' said Wych Hazel—'then you can take half of the rock'—and she walked away to a position as far behind Mr. Rollo as sweetbriars and sumach would permit. That gentleman turned about and faced her gravely; also withdrew a step, looked at his match, and throwing on his hat which had lain till now on the moss, went to work. It was work in earnest, for minutes were limited.
'Mr. Rollo?' said Wych Hazel, 'I cannot draw a thing if you sit there watching me. Just take your first position, please.'
'I should lose my point of view—you would not ask me to do that? Besides, you are safe—I am wholly occupied with myself.'
'No doubt! But if you presume to put me in your sketch I'll turn you into a red squirrel'—with which fierce threat Miss Hazel drooped her head till her 'point of view' must have been at least merged in the brim of her flat hat, and went at her drawing. That she had merged herself as well in the interest of the game, was soon plain—shyness and everything else went to the winds: only when (according to habit) some scrap of a song broke from her lips, then did she rebuke herself with an impatient gesture or exclamation, while the hat drooped lower than ever. It was pretty to see and to hear her—those very outbreaks were so free and girlish and wayward, and at the same time so sweet. Several minutes of the prescribed time slipped away.
'How soon do you go to Chickaree?' said the gentleman, in a pre-engaged tone, very busy with his pencil.
'How soon?' repeated the lady, surveying her own sketch—'why—not too soon for anybody that wants me away, I suppose. Ask Mr. Falkirk.'
'Is it long since you have seen the place?'
'I can hardly be said to have "seen" it at all. I think my landscape eyes were not open at that remote period of which you speak.'
'I was a red squirrel then, in the "former state" to which I referred a while ago. So you see your late threat has no terrors for me. Is it in process of execution?'
'O were you?' said Miss Hazel, absorbed in her drawing. 'Yes—but the expression is very difficult!—Did you think you knew me as a field mouse?'
He laughed a little.
'Then, I suppose you have not the pleasure of knowing your neighbours, the Marylands?—except the specimen lately on hand?'
'No, I have heard an account of them,' said Miss Kennedy. 'For shame, Mr. Rollo, Dr. Maryland isn't a "specimen." He's good. I like him.'
The gentleman made no remark upon this, but confined his attention to his work for a few minutes; then looked at his watch.
'Is that sketch ready to show?—Time's up.'
'And the squirrel is down. But not much else.'
Not much!—the squirrel sat contemplatively gazing into Mr. Rollo's hat, which lay on the rock before him, quite undisturbed by a remarkable looking witch who rose up at the other end. The gentleman surveyed them attentively.
'Do you consider these true portraits?'
'I do not think the hat would be a tight fit,' said she, smothering a laugh.
'Well!' said he comically, 'it