Gladys, the Reaper. Anne Beale
a frind in the worrld, yer honour.'
'Her mother and father, sisthers and brothers, all dead of the faver and the famine.'
'Nobody left but her relations in Carrmarrthinshire, and, maybe, they're all dead and buried, yer honour's glory.'
'And what'll we do wid her, poor sowl?'
Mrs. Prothero was looking compassionately on the poor girl, whilst sentence upon sentence was poured into her ear; and as the death of her relation was mentioned, she fancied she perceived a movement in her seemingly impassive features. She opened her eyes, and looked at Mrs. Prothero, who went to her, and seeing her lips move, knelt down by her side.
'Let them go, and send me to the workhouse, if you please, my lady,' she murmured.
Mrs. Prothero once more left the barn, promising to return shortly, and, with trembling steps, again sought the apartment where her lord and master was reposing. A very decided snore met her ear. She stood by the bedside, and looked at the tassel, which was the only portion visible of her better half. She sat down on a chair; she got up again; she fussed about the room; she even opened the drawers and took out the Sunday attire of that Somnus before her. But nothing she could do would arouse him.
At last she gently touched the face. A louder snore was the only reply. She gave a nervous push to the shoulder, and whispered into the bed-clothes, 'My dear.'
'Well, what now?' growled the justly irritated sleeper.
'My dear, I am very sorry, but the poor girl is too ill to move, and I really don't know what is to be done.'
'Upon my very deed, if you are not enough to provoke a saint!' broke out Mr. Prothero, now fairly sitting up in bed. 'If you will encourage vagrants, get rid of 'em, and don't bother me. I'll tell you what it is, Mrs. Prothero, if all of 'em are not off the farm before I'm up, I'll give 'em such a bit of my mind as 'll keep 'em away for the future; see if I don't.'
Mrs. Prothero saw that her husband was redder in the face than usual, and she had a very great dread of putting him in a passion; still she ventured one word more very meekly.
'But the girl, David?'
'What's the girl to you or me! we've a girl of our own, and half-a-dozen servant girls. We don't want any more. Send her to the Union.'
'How can we send her?'
'Let the rascally Irish manage that, 'tis no affair of mine; but if you bother me any more, I vow I'll take a whip and drive 'em, girl and all, off the premises.'
'Very well, David,' said Mrs. Prothero, submissively, and with a heavy sigh: 'but if the girl should die?'
She walked across to the door, paused on the threshold, and glanced back; but there was no change in the rubicund face. She went into the passage, and slowly closed the door, holding the handle in her hand for a few seconds as she did so. She walked deliberately down the passage, pausing at each step. Before she was at the end of it, a loud voice reached her ear. She joyfully turned back and re-entered the bedroom.
'Yes, David?' she said quietly.
'If the girl is really bad, send her in the cart, or let her have a horse, if you like,' growled Mr. Prothero. 'Only I do wish, mother, you would have nothing to do with them Irishers.'
'Thank you, my dear,' said the quiet little woman. 'Then if the rest go away, I may manage about the girl?'
'Do what you like, only get rid of 'em somehow.'
'Thank you.'
'Oh, you needn't thank me! I'd as soon send every one of 'em to jail as not; but I can't stand your puffing and sighing just as if they were all your own flesh and blood.'
'We're all the same flesh and blood, my dear.'
'I'd be uncommon sorry to think so. I've nothing but Welsh flesh and blood about me, and should be loath to have any other, Irish, Scotch, or English either.'
Mrs. Prothero disappeared.
'That 'ooman 'ould wheedle the stone out of a mill,' continued the farmer, rubbing his eyes, and deliberately taking off his night-cap, 'and yet she don't ever seem to have her own way, and is as meek as Moses. She has wheedled me out of my Sunday nap, so I suppose I may as well get up. Hang the Irish! There is no getting rid of 'em. She's given 'em a night's lodging, and a supper for so many years, that they come and ask as if it was their due. But I'll put a stop to it, yet, in spite of her, or my name isn't David Prothero.'
When Mr. Prothero came forth from his dormitory, he was in his very best Sunday attire. As he walked across the farm-yard in search of his wife, there was an air about him that seemed to say, 'I am monarch of all I survey.' Indeed, few monarchs are as independent, and proud of their independence, as David Prothero of Glanyravon.
He was a tall, muscular man, of some fifty years of age. He was well made, and of that easy, swinging gait, that is rather the teaching of Dame Nature, than of the dancing mistress or posture master. His face was full and ruddy, betokening health, spirits, and that choleric disposition to which his countrymen are said to incline, whether justly or unjustly is not for me to determine. His hair had a reddish tinge, and his whiskers were decidedly roseate, bearing still further testimony to a slight irrascibility of temperament. But he was a good-looking man, in spite of his hair and whiskers, which, as his wife admired them, are not to be despised.
'Where's your mistress, Sam?' roared Mr. Prothero across the farm-yard.
'In the barn, master,' answered a man, who was eating bread and cheese on the gate, and swinging his legs pleasantly about.
'Tell her I want her,'
In answer to the summons, immediately appeared his worthy helpmate. She carried a very beautiful half-blown rose in her hand, which, as soon as she approached her husband, she placed carefully in his button-hole, standing on tiptoe to perform this graceful Sunday morning service.
'Thank you, mother,' said Mr. Prothero, smiling, and looking down complacently on his little wife.
What went with all his lecture upon the profligacy of Irish beggars? I suppose it was silently delivered from his breast to the rose, for none of it came to his lips, though it was quite ready to be heard when the rose made her appearance.
All the Irish are gone except the girl, Davy, bach' said quiet Mrs. Prothero, 'and they are gone to the Overseer to tell him about her, and I will see that she is sent to the workhouse to-night, that is to say if I can.'
'I suppose you fed and clothed the ragged rascals?'
'I just gave them some scraps for breakfast, and indeed their blessings did me good,'
'I should think they must. People that left a dying girl behind 'em.'
'They promised to come back and see after her when the hay-harvest is over. They are going into Herefordshire to get work, and she, poor thing, is looking for her relations in this county, and meant to get work here.'
'Well, I want my breakfast. I promised brother Jonathan to go to church to-day. He is going to preach a charity sermon for the Church Building Society, and wants my shilling. He and Mrs. Jonathan are to come to-morrow, you know, my dear. I hope in my heart everything is as fine as fippence, or my lady 'll turn up her nose.'
'I can't make things neater, Davy.'
This was said by Mrs. Prothero, in a desponding tone, quite different from her former quiet cheerfulness, and she accompanied the words by rubbing her hands nervously one over the other.
'There now, don't look as if you were going to be smothered. Mrs. Jonathan isn't so bad as all that. I wish to goodness Jonathan hadn't married a fine lady. But then she brought him a good fortune, and it's all the better for our children.'
'I don't want her money.'
'But if it wasn't for her, my dear, Rowland would never have had an Oxford edication.'
'I'd