Under the Greenwood Tree

Geoffrey stood his ground, unmoved and firm as a rock. Fancy was the first to return, followed by Enoch picking up the lantern. Mr. Shiner still remained invisible.

"Have the craters stung ye?" said Enoch to Geoffrey.

"No, not much--on'y a little here and there," he said with leisurely solemnity, shaking one bee out of his shirt sleeve, pulling another from among his hair, and two or three more from his neck. The rest looked on during this proceeding with a complacent sense of being out of it,--much as a European nation in a state of internal commotion is watched by its neighbours.

"Are those all of them, father?" said Fancy, when Geoffrey had pulled away five.

"Almost all,--though I feel one or two more sticking into my shoulder and side. Ah!

there's another just begun again upon my backbone. You lively young mortals, how did you get inside there? However, they can't sting me many times more, poor things, for they must be getting weak. They mid as well stay in me till bedtime now, I suppose."

As he himself was the only person affected by this arrangement, it seemed satisfactory enough; and after a noise of feet kicking against cabbages in a blundering progress among them, the voice of Mr. Shiner was heard from the darkness in that direction.

"Is all quite safe again?"

No answer being returned to this query, he apparently assumed that he might venture forth, and gradually drew near the lantern again. The hives were now removed from their position over the holes, one being handed to Enoch to carry indoors, and one being taken by Geoffrey himself.

"Bring hither the lantern, Fancy: the spade can bide."

Geoffrey and Enoch then went towards the house, leaving Shiner and Fancy standing side by side on the garden-plot.

"Allow me," said Shiner, stooping for the lantern and seizing it at the same time with Fancy.

"I can carry it," said Fancy, religiously repressing all inclination to trifle. She had thoroughly considered that subject after the tearful explanation of the bird-catching adventure to Dick, and had decided that it would be dishonest in her, as an engaged young woman, to trifle with men's eyes and hands any more. Finding that Shiner still retained his hold of the lantern, she relinquished it, and he, having found her retaining it, also let go. The lantern fell, and was extinguished. Fancy moved on.

"Where is the path?" said Mr. Shiner.

"Here," said Fancy. "Your eyes will get used to the dark in a minute or two."

"Till that time will ye lend me your hand?" Fancy gave him the extreme tips of her fingers, and they stepped from the plot into the path.

"You don't accept attentions very freely."

"It depends upon who offers them."

"A fellow like me, for instance." A dead silence.

"Well, what do you say, Missie?"

"It then depends upon how they are offered."

"Not wildly, and yet not careless-like; not purposely, and yet not by chance; not too quick nor yet too slow."

"How then?" said Fancy.

"Coolly and practically," he said. "How would that kind of love be taken?"

"Not anxiously, and yet not indifferently; neither blushing nor pale; nor religiously nor yet quite wickedly."

"Not at all."

Geoffrey Day's storehouse at the back of his dwelling was hung with bunches of dried horehound, mint, and sage; brown-paper bags of thyme and lavender; and long ropes of clean onions. On shelves were spread large red and yellow apples, and choice selections of early potatoes for seed next year;--vulgar crowds of commoner kind lying beneath in heaps. A few empty beehives were clustered around a nail in one corner, under which stood two or three barrels of new cider of the first crop, each bubbling and squirting forth from the yet open bunghole.

Fancy was now kneeling beside the two inverted hives, one of which rested against her lap, for convenience in operating upon the contents. She thrust her sleeves above her elbows, and inserted her small pink hand edgewise between each white lobe of honeycomb, performing the act so adroitly and gently as not to unseal a single cell. Then cracking the piece off at the crown of the hive by a slight backward and forward movement, she lifted each portion as it was loosened into a large blue platter, placed on a bench at her side.

"Bother these little mortals!" said Geoffrey, who was holding the light to her, and giving his back an uneasy twist. "I really think I may as well go indoors and take 'em out, poor things! for they won't let me alone. There's two a stinging wi' all their might now. I'm sure I wonder their strength can last so long."

"All right, friend; I'll hold the candle whilst you are gone," said Mr. Shiner, leisurely taking the light, and allowing Geoffrey to depart, which he did with his usual long paces.

He could hardly have gone round to the house-door when other footsteps were heard approaching the outbuilding; the tip of a finger appeared in the hole through which the wood latch was lifted, and Dick Dewy came in, having been all this time walking up and down the wood, vainly waiting for Shiner's departure.