第6章 In which Sir Jeoffry encounters his offspring(2)

When she desired a thing,she yelled and roared with such a vigour as left no peace for any creature about her until she was humoured,and this being the case,rather than have their conversation and love-making put a stop to,the servants gave her her way.In this they but followed the example of their betters,of whom we know that it is not to the most virtuous they submit or to the most learned,but to those who,being crossed,can conduct themselves in a manner so disagreeable,shrewish or violent,that life is a burden until they have their will.This the child Clorinda had the infant wit to discover early,and having once discovered it,she never ceased to take advantage of her knowledge.Having found in the days when her one desire was pap,that she had but to roar lustily enough to find it beside her in her porringer,she tried the game upon all other occasions.When she had reached but a twelvemonth,she stood stoutly upon her little feet,and beat her sisters to gain their playthings,and her nurse for wanting to change her smock.She was so easily thrown into furies,and so raged and stamped in her baby way that she was a sight to behold,and the men-servants found amusement in badgering her.To set Mistress Clorinda in their midst on a winter's night when they were dull,and to torment her until her little face grew scarlet with the blood which flew up into it,and she ran from one to the other beating them and screaming like a young spitfire,was among them a favourite entertainment.

"Ifackens!"said the butler one night,"but she is as like Sir Jeoffry in her temper as one pea is like another.Ay,but she grows blood red just as he does,and curses in her little way as he does in man's words among his hounds in their kennel.""And she will be of his build,too,"said the housekeeper."What mishap changed her to a maid instead of a boy,I know not.She would have made a strapping heir.She has the thigh and shoulders of a handsome man-child at this hour,and she is not three years old.""Sir Jeoffry missed his mark when he called her an ugly brat,"said the woman who had nursed her."She will be a handsome woman--though large in build,it may be.She will be a brown beauty,but she will have a colour in her cheeks and lips like the red of Christmas holly,and her owl's eyes are as black as sloes,and have fringes on them like the curtains of a window.See how her hair grows thick on her little head,and how it curls in great rings.My lady,her poor mother,was once a beauty,but she was no such beauty as this one will be,for she has her father's long limbs and fine shoulders,and the will to make every man look her way.""Yes,"said the housekeeper,who was an elderly woman,"there will be doings--there will be doings when she is a ripe young maid.She will take her way,and God grant she mayn't be TOO like her father and follow his."It was true that she had no resemblance to her plain sisters,and bore no likeness to them in character.The two elder children,Anne and Barbara,were too meek-spirited to be troublesome;but during Clorinda's infancy Mistress Margery Wimpole watched her rapid growth with fear and qualms.She dare not reprove the servants who were ruining her by their treatment,and whose manners were forming her own.Sir Jeoffry's servants were no more moral than their master,and being brought up as she was among them,their young mistress became strangely familiar with many sights and sounds it is not the fortune of most young misses of breeding to see and hear.The cooks and kitchen-wenches were flighty with the grooms and men-servants,and little Mistress Clorinda,having a passion for horses and dogs,spent many an hour in the stables with the women who,for reasons of their own,were pleased enough to take her there as an excuse for seeking amusement for themselves.She played in the kennels and among the horses'heels,and learned to use oaths as roundly as any Giles or Tom whose work was to wield the curry comb.It was indeed a curious thing to hear her red baby mouth pour forth curses and unseemly words as she would at any one who crossed her.Her temper and hot-headedness carried all before them,and the grooms and stable-boys found great sport in the language my young lady used in her innocent furies.But balk her in a whim,and she would pour forth the eloquence of a fish-wife or a lady of easy virtue in a pot-house quarrel.There was no human creature near her who had mind or heart enough to see the awfulness of her condition,or to strive to teach her to check her passions;and in the midst of these perilous surroundings the little virago grew handsomer and of finer carriage every hour,as if on the rank diet that fed her she throve and flourished.

There came a day at last when she had reached six years old,when by a trick of chance a turn was given to the wheel of her fate.

She had not reached three when a groom first set her on a horse's back and led her about the stable-yard,and she had so delighted in her exalted position,and had so shouted for pleasure and clutched her steed's rein and clucked at him,that her audience had looked on with roars of laughter.From that time she would be put up every day,and as time went on showed such unchildish courage and spirit that she furnished to her servant companions a new pastime.Soon she would not be held on,but riding astride like a boy,would sit up as straight as a man and swear at her horse,beating him with her heels and little fists if his pace did not suit her.She knew no fear,and would have used a whip so readily that the men did not dare to trust her with one,and knew they must not mount her on a steed too mettlesome.By the time she passed her sixth birthday she could ride as well as a grown man,and was as familiar with her father's horses as he himself,though he knew nothing of the matter,it being always contrived that she should be out of sight when he visited his hunters.