Читать книгу Johnny Ludlow, Third Series - Henry Wood - Страница 8

I

It was a summer’s evening, some two years or so previous to the events told of in the last chapter, and the sun was setting in clouds of crimson and gold. On the green lawn at the back of Rose Villa—a pretty detached house, about twenty minutes’ walk from the town of Lefford—sat a lady in a gay dress. She was dark and plain, with crinkled black hair, and a rough voice. A girl of twelve, fair, pretty, and not in the least like her, sat on the same bench. Three younger girls were scampering about at some noisy play; and a boy, the youngest of all, lay on the grass, whistling, and knotting a whip-cord. The sun’s slanting rays tinted all with a warm hue.

“Get up, Dicky,” said the lady to the boy.

Dicky, aged five, whistled on, without taking any notice.

“Did you hear mamma tell you to get up, Dicky?” spoke the fair girl by her mother’s side. “Get up, sir.”

“Shan’t,” said Dicky.

“You go in for me, Mina,” said Mrs. Knox. “I want to know the time. Arnold took my watch into town this morning to have the spring mended.”

Mina seemed in no more hurry to obey than Dicky was. Just then a low pony-chaise, driven by a boy-groom, rattled out from the stable-yard at the side of the house. Mina looked across at it.

“It must be about a quarter-past eight,” she said. “You told James not to be later than that in going to the station.”

“You might go and see,” spoke Mrs. Knox: “James is not sure to be to time. How glad I shall be when that governess is here to take the trouble of you children off me!” she added, fretfully. Mina did not take the hint about going in: she made off to her sisters instead.

This house had once been a doctor’s residence. Soon after Thomas Knox, surgeon and apothecary, set up in practice at Lefford, now five-and-twenty years ago, he married Mary Arnold. Rose Villa was hers, and some money besides, and they came to live at it, Mr. Knox keeping on his surgery in Lefford. They had one son, who was named Arnold. When Arnold was ten years old, his mother died. A year later his father married a second wife, Miss Amelia Carey: after which these five other young ones came to town. Arnold was to be a doctor like his father. His studies were in progress, when one morning a letter came to him in London—where he was walking Bartholomew’s Hospital under that clever man, William Lawrence—saying that his father was alarmingly ill. Arnold reached Lefford just in time to see him die. The little one, Dicky, was a baby then in long-clothes. Arnold was only nineteen. No chance that he could set up in, and keep together the practice, which fell through. So he went back to London to study on, and pass, and what not; and by-and-by he came down again Dr. Knox: for he had followed the fashion just then getting common, of taking the M.D. degree. Arnold Knox had his share of good plain sense, and of earnestness too; but example is catching, and he only followed that of his fellow-students in going in thus early for the degree. He arrived at Lefford “Dr. Knox.” Mr. Tamlyn laughed at him, before his face and behind his back, asking him what experience he had had that he should hasten to tack on M.D. to his name: why, not more experience than a country apothecary’s apprentice. Arnold, feeling half ashamed of himself, for he was very modest, pleaded the new custom. Custom! returned old Tamlyn; in his