Milord Gardener

 one of those plot bunnies that got to half a chapter.  I am going well with Dance of Fledglings though and will probably begin posting tomorrow.

A lot of writers complain of the difficulty of getting plot bunnies. My problem is that they breed like ... bunnies ... but that getting them written is the hard work. I've got over 200 plot bunnies written down, Some I've combined in side plots or internal plot arcs in other thing. But I need to write faster ...

Chapter 1

 

 

“Your problem, Felix, is that you would have spurned a mere silver spoon in your mouth when you were born, and have had it easy ever since,” said the Honourable Peregrine Leger.

Felix Halenhurst, Earl Holmshaw, smiled his ridiculously sweet smile.

“Honestly, Perry, you make me sound like some totally mercenary fellow.”

“You are generous, Felix, but it don’t mean anything to you,” said Andrew, Viscount Glenduve.   “You are wealthy, so good looking you are almost pretty, a born horseman, solid cricketer, can stand up to box against any prize fighter, and you are even-tempered and a pleasant companion.  If the pair of us didn’t love you like a brother, we’d be forced to hate you for being such a revolting paragon.”

“I love you too, Drew, but I am taken aback at being called a paragon.”

“It’s a fault,” said Drew.  “And one all the women love; you are the most eligible bachelor in London.”

“And don’t I know it!” groaned Felix.  “I would retire to my estates save that I owe it to my family to marry and produce an heir.”

The three young men had been through Eton and Oxford together, and were firm cronies. Felix had been teased by them since they had first met up at the age of eleven about his curly blond hair and outrageously long eyelashes.  And yet, he managed not to look at all like a girl, for his chin was square and determined, and his shoulders broad.

“Your problem is,” said Perry, “That you’ve never turned an honest day’s toil in your life.”

“I resent that,” said Felix.  “I run my own estate, and I do a lot of my own gardening, it being an avocation of mine.”

“Yes, but when you have a problem, you throw money at it,” said Andrew.  “And it won’t fadge, for you cannot hire someone to choose a wife for you.”

“I know that,” said Felix.

“You know it in your head, but not in your heart,” said Perry.  “You ain’t spoilt but it’s only by the best of good luck. And I wager that if you took an honest job as Mr. Blank of Nowhere, and had to live on your income, you’d learn a lot more about what really matters in life.”

“You’re on,” said Felix.  “I accept the wager.”

“So, you’ll take on doing an honest job of toil as a gardener, for, what, three months?” demanded Perry.

“Yes,” said Felix.  “It will serve as a repairing lease during the season to disappear from society and get away from the rapacious clutches of those who fall in love with my title, and find my looks not intolerable as well.”

“I think most of them fall in love with a pretty doll and are pleased he is well-blunted and a nobleman into the bargain,” said Drew.

“Whichever it is, they are superficial,” said Felix, “Though I would prefer it was that way round than the other.”

“We’ll arrange you a job then,” said Perry.

 

Felix reflected on the words of his friends.  He had been an earl for as long as he could remember, his parents having died in a coach accident before he was breeched, and he had had a series of governesses, tutors and instructors in etiquette, deportment, dancing and the sword, who treated him like a little prince.  Felix was glad that he had been sent to Eton, even if not as young as some boys were, in time to knock his corners off.  He could have become quite insufferable, growing up in an atmosphere of deference.  No, Mr. Hume would not have permitted it.  Felix had retained the services of one of his tutors, who were engaged by his trustees to keep up his lessons in the holidays, as his secretary.  Mr. Hume had bear-led him on the Grand Tour, and had made sure that Felix saw important cultural sites, as well as enjoying foreign cuisine and the sort of culture most young men enjoyed, This was to say ballet in France, concerts in Germany, and the one bordello he managed to visit in Italy before foreswearing women of easy virtue when Mr. Hume took him to see those in the final stages of syphilis in a mad house.  It had been an excellent lesson in fastidiousness, but had left him rather diffident around women. 

Of course, it would not matter how shy Felix might feel with women, he was still lionised by parents of daughters for his wealth and title, and would probably continue to be so, he thought cynically, if he had been a hunchback with a squint.  That he was also good looking meant that the girls he was introduced to were not trying to escape him, though none of them ever seemed able to find anything to say.  He thought them all insipid and boring.  In this, Felix did most of the young ladies to whom he had been introduced an injustice; having been adjured by their anxious mothers to make a good impression on the earl, most of them were afraid to say anything which would give him a bad impression, even if they were not struck dumb by his physical beauty.  Felix was cynical about his physical beauty. It was true that his hair was long, golden and curly, when allowed out of its strict and powdered queue; and his eyes were large and smoky blue with outrageously long eyelashes.  However, his jaw was, in his own words, as square as a peasant farmer’s, and his nose wandered past the aristocratic into a hint of the aquiline.  His lips were too large, and Felix thought them coarse.  He had no idea how singularly sweet his smile was when he was genuinely happy, and how his mouth echoed his every mood; or how many women wished they had such well-developed lips as he.  He was blissfully unaware of how many of his ‘insipid’ dance partners became quite hot and bothered in the privacy of their own beds at imagining being kissed by those mobile lips.

 

 

“I have it all fixed up for you, Felix,” said Peregrine Leger.  “I wrote to my godmother, Lady Staines.  She’s a widow, reclusive and has never heard of you, I am certain.  I told her I had a gardener to find work for, a head gardener, mind, so you’re being spoilt in having the ordering of other men.  I didn’t think you would last the course being told what to do by someone you would doubtless disagree with.”

“I appreciate that, Perry,” said Felix, who had been thinking much the same thing.

“Yes, well, my Aunt Emily, as she likes me to call her, has a need for a chief gardener, so she can pension off the current one, who has let the place go to seed.  She says you will have a fair budget to improve it, so long as you steer clear of wholesale landscaping.  She likes her geometric parterres and topiary in front of the house the way they are, and a knot garden of roses behind it, and no follies, ruins, Chinese pagodas, rock gardens, wildernesses or distant aspects, thank you very much.”

“She sounds very set in her ways.”

“She is, but I wager you will enjoy both the kitchen garden and the apothecary garden, which are walled gardens either side of the knot garden. It’s more by way of being a maze than a knot garden;  she designed it herself when she was first married.  There’s a central circular meeting of the ways, with a pond, and a bench to watch it, and curved benches under arches between each of the four paths out. The paths have  trellises periodically for climbing roses, and traveller’s joy, clematis she calls it, and woodbine, and lilac as well, and the scent is incredible.  She will tell you she built it herself, and believe what she says, but of course the trellises were constructed by her gardeners, and the slabs in the pathways as well, and I doubt she dug the pond or installed the fountain.”

“It is unusual for one of our estate to take on such things personally,” said Felix, who had dug an ornamental pond alongside his gardeners.  “It sounds delightful, if not entirely in the modern style.”

“Oh, it’s a splendid place to take a lady for a quick bit of dalliance, or it would be if Aunt Emily entertained as much as she ought to,” said Perry.  “Her ambition is to have a fragrant scent at all times of year, which is a bit insane if you ask me, because if you dallied in a garden sniffing the scents in midwinter, you’d end up with a headcold and unable to smell any scents.”

“Perhaps she hopes to have such plants brought inside to brighten up the worst weather,” said Felix.  “It sounds an interesting challenge; I will try to rise to it.”

“You know what makes my heart sink?” said Drew. “It’s the thought that you probably will enjoy rising to the challenge and then people will accuse me of being a Jacobite for having a Scots name and title.  I will be accused of having done away with you because you can’t be bothered to come home after the three months is up, because you will be having a torrid affair with some shrub.”

Felix laughed.

“Somehow I doubt that I will find a nymph named Daphne amidst the laurels,” he said.

 

 

 

Felix takes a job as gardener to a dowager widow who has a pretty great niece to stay, to try to teach the girl not to be gauche, awkward and a bluestocking.  She’s something of a botanist and of course they fall in love in the garden.

Lady Emily Staines

 

Chauvelin in England 1

 another taster, one I started ...

 Chapter 1

 

“Oh  I am glad to be coming home here at last,” said Peter, as ‘Chalky’ White drove their carriage up the drive to the property in Essex. George, their adopted son, was driving the phaeton, and much awed to be permitted to do so. White would take both carriages round, and would bring their luggage to the door to be brought in by Paulson, who was, with his wife, caretaker of the property. Old Petronilla Holt, after whom Peter was officially named, had specified that her old butler and housekeeper were to have been taken care of.

“I’m not sure many of the repairs you sent money for have been undertaken, ma mie,” said Armand Chauvelin, Peter’s husband, looking over the brick-built Tudor manor  which had scaffolding up with a jaundiced eye.

“No, and I will be having words with Paulson about that,” said Peter, taking the steps as lithely as a pregnant woman, who had started to bloom rather, might do.

The bell jangled in the depths of the house.

“Loud enough to awaken the dead in case Paulson and Mrs. Paulson are revenants,” giggled Peter.

The door opened.

“There ain’t nobody in residence,” said the man answering the door and started to shut it.

Peter moved fast enough to be in the doorway.

“Oh yes there is, Paulson,” she said.

“There ain’t, there ain’t, how did you know my name?” cried the man, who was in late middle age and looked harried.

“Paulson, I am in residence, and I employ you. Have you been drinking?” demanded Peter. “My husband and my stepchildren will be living here from now on.”

“Oh it ain’t fit for you, you’ll have to go away,” gabbled Paulson.

“Have you been stealing the money I sent to put the place right? Or are you accusing my lawyer of so doing?” demanded Peter.

There was a startled yelp in Chalky’s voice and a scream in the voice of Peter’s maid, Lucille, from the back of the house and Peter pushed passed Paulson and exploded through the door to the servants’ domain.

“Oh gawd, missus, you’ve done it now,” wailed Paulson as Armand, George, Georgine and Amelie followed, along with Rateau, their large, hairy dog.

The scene which met Peter’s eye was of several rough looking men, several of whom had seized Chalky and Lucille. On the kitchen table a young man with an obvious bullet wound in his shoulder who was having the wound washed with vinegar by a middle aged woman.

“The devil!” said Peter.”Don’t we have any brandy in the house to do that, Mrs. Paulson? There’s no point being cheapskate about bullet wounds you know.  Did you get the ball out? I have tweezers.”

There was the sound of hysterical laughter from a young woman in a maid’s dress.

“Oh, yes, misssus, we got plenty o’ brandy,” she said. She was crying.

“Well don’t just stand there, go and get a bottle,” said Peter.  “Here, lad, I’ll have that ball out in a trice; two of you men hold him still, it’s going to hurt.”

There was a sudden laugh.

“Eh bien  I know zat voice, Madame la Vicomte.”

“Parbleu!” said George. “It is our friend, the captain of the ‘Sirène’, or is it ‘Naiad’ in English waters?”

“‘Naiad’ she is, m’sieur. We can trust zese people,”  he said to his fellows. “The vicomte is either ze red ... bah, I do not know ze English ... or his friend.”

“Scarlet Pimpernel is what you are looking for, and I am his friend,” said Armand. “I collect you are smugglers and one of your number is wounded.”

“He’s my son, Andrew, sir,” said Mrs. Paulson, wringing her hands. “And the preventatives will be here any time now.”

“Peste!” said Peter. “Well let our man and my maid go. Most of you men, you are sailors, you can turn your hand to anything. You will be the repairmen I employed, and young Paulson was unfortunate enough to have been hit by a falling slate. Unless there is a blood trail?”

“No, Madame, we packed it well,” said the captain of the French vessel, whom Peter thought was named Louis.

“The ship, have you unloaded it?” asked Armand.

“Yes, M. Le Vicomte,” said Louis.

“Let’s not worry about my title while we work this out,” said Armand. “I ... I bought the ship as a tender for my friend’s ship.  You were delivering it for me. You know no English.  You might as well stay here, in that case, looking uncomfortable and in the way.”

“Yes, sir,” said Louis.

“The rest of you, up the scaffolding I saw, and get to work,” said Armand. “Andrew Paulson will do very well with my wife’s care. Paulson, when the brandy has done its job on your son, I will take a glass in whichever salon you think appropriate.”

“Of course, my lord,” said Paulson, much calmer now someone was taking charge. “I knows smuggling is a pernicious trade, but the lads round here have no work and no money.”

“We can discuss the merits of smuggling later; I never heard of any smuggling. I am an innocent landowner,” said Armand, firmly.

Peter poured brandy proffered to her by the maid into the wound and then into the young man’s mouth. He was about her age. She passed the brandy back to the maid.

“Are you his sweetheart?” she asked. The maid bobbed a curtsey.

“If you please, madam,  only if you doesn’t permit followers, I doesn’t know what to do.”

“I believe in love,” said Peter. “What is your name?”

“Mollie, madam,” said the girl.

“Well we shall have your man right in a brace of shakes,” said Peter, deftly extracting the ball, and going back into the hole for the wadding. She ignored the screams.  She laid out the paper wadding and checked it was an intact piece.

“Burn that and the bullet; it will melt in the stove,” said Peter. “And give me a sharp knife ... damn, we need more brandy.”

“I brought two,” said Mollie.

“Good girl! Soak the sharpest meat knife in brandy for me and hand it here, Louis, prends-toi une ardoise de toit, s’il vous plait.”

“Cuh, madam you don’t half gabble their lingo,” said Mollie, admiringly. “What did you say?”

“I sent him to get a slate from the roof,” said Peter. “We will break it artistically outside, and I will bloody it well from Andrew’s wound.  And now,” she said, “I am sorry to hurt you more, my lad, but a timely cut on your shoulder may stop you being put to bed with a hempen collar.” She slashed the knife into the boy’s shoulder, from the wound to the top of the shoulder.  “Mrs. Paulson, wash that immediately.” She gave the woman the knife.

“Yes’m,” said Mrs. Paulson. “Cuh, that du look loike ut might be from a falling slate!”

“Yes, and no surprise if his collar bone is broken, which I think it is,” said Peter. “Basilicum powder if you please, and then we’ll get him all bandaged up.”

“Yes’m,” said Mrs. Paulson. “I ain’t never had to deal with bullet wounds before.”

“Well I’ve patched up a few of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel in my time,” said Peter.  “I’m fairly good at it. Certainly better than a lot of doctors,” she added.  “Clean linen, if you please.”

 

 

 

Armand sipped brandy, reflecting that the room might be shabby, but it was well cleaned. He heard a thunderous knocking and ringing at the door.

“Paulson, does he suspect you?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” said Paulson, ringing his hands.

“Well, no matter, you will have to answer the door,” said Armand.

“What should we do, Papa?” asked Georgine, in French.

“What you would expect to do in a nice, peaceful house when bad men barge in, as I suspect they will,” said Armand.

There were sounds of altercation, and Paulson shouting

“Here, you can’t go pushing in like this!” and Armand strolled into the vestibule. It was more of a medieval great hall than a vestibule, with black and white tiled floor, oak panelling and a gallery about it at the first floor.

“Egad!” said Armand. “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

“Your house, eh? Nobody lives here – seize him, men!” said the young officer.

A martial light flared briefly in Armand’s eye. He had intended to be kindly to the preventative officer, and fob him off gently. A man who would act so peremptorily was not, however, to be treated gently.

“Papa!” Amelie wailed, running out to attach herself to her adoptive father’s leg. Georgine followed, hanging on to Armand’s arm.

“What are they doing? Are they brigands?” cried George. Rateau, at his heels, growled. One of the men put up his musket to aim at the dog.

“By God, sirrah, if you shoot my dog, you will have to shoot me first,” said George, standing in front of Rateau. Armand was so proud of him for having finally got the precise intonation and accent of an English gentleman.  Peter came into the vestibule, and gave an artistic shriek, throwing herself into Armand’s arms and clutching her belly.

“If you cause my wife to miscarry, I’ll have you for murder, you scoundrel!” cried Armand. “You will not get away with bursting into my house like this, and pretending to be some kind of soldiers! Not that anyone would take such a motley crew as you as real soldiers, you would be a disgrace to any uniform! Now get out!”

“Sir ... have you then bought this house?” asked the officer.

“No! My wife inherited it and we have finally moved here,” said Armand.  “Her maiden name is Holt; not that it’s any of your business, you thieving scoundrel.”

“Sir, I am a preventative officer. I have my warrant ...”

“He is lying and is going for a pistol!” shrieked Peter, artistically. “Oh tell them not to point those horrid things at us; I am going to have a spasm!”

“Now see what you have done!” cried Armand. “If you are as you claim, you will send those men outside, and slowly show me your warrant.”

“Out!” snapped the preventative. The men lowered their muskets and left, and very slowly the preventative pulled out his warrant.  Armand read it. It named the officer as Lieutenant Dawlish.

“So! And what are you doing breaking into my house like this?”

“Sir, I have reason to believe the Paulsons’ son is engaged in smuggling, and has been shot by one of my men,” said Lieutenant Dawlish.

“Preposterous,” said Armand.

There was a crash and a shriek from the rear.

“Dear God, they are attacking our servants!” Cried Peter, abandoning Armand and running through.

“Sir! Sir, we have the miscreant, and he is wounded!” cried one.

He said no more as Lucille hit him over the head with a rolling pin.

Enlivened by this, Mollie kicked another in the shins, and Mrs. Paulson hit the third with a broom.

“I told you ruffians to get out of my house! Chalky, tie them up and we shall have them before the magistrate for assault!” Declared Peter.

“But they have caught a smuggler red-handed!” cried Dawlish, pointing at Andrew.

“He’s drunk,” said Mrs. Paulson.

“Plainly,” said Armand. “Here, Paulson, take a letter to the local magistrate, and tell him to take these villains into custody, attacking innocent people in their own homes.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Paulson.

“L ... lord?” Dawlish paled.

Armand shrugged.

“An old and probably obsolete emigré title,” he said. “Mind, my wife’s brother is an English viscount and I doubt he’s going to be happy.  Seizing on the unfortunate young Paulson just because he has had an accident!”

“But ... but we shot him,” said Dawlish.  “Down at the creek!”

“He is drunk,” said Peter.  “I see it all, they were drinking, and they decided that as your little tender for Sir Percy’s ‘Daydream’ had arrived, that plainly it must be used by smugglers, and shot into the reeds and convinced themselves they hit someone.”

“You cannot deny that young Paulson is wounded!” cried Dawlish.

“Of course not!” snapped Peter. “And I’ve been patching him up, poor boy, getting all the broken bits of slate out of the wound so it won’t fester.  And piecing them together until you disturbed me, to make sure they are all there.”

“I finished checking, madam, and I think there are none left,” said Mollie.  “Oooh there is a puddle of blood in the yard where it hit him.”

“It will scrub off,” said Peter. “And be careful not to cut yourself on shards of slate when you clean it up.”

“No, madam,” said Mollie, who was almost enjoying herself.

Andrew Paulson was sat in a chair, his wound on display and a bloody hand mark on his chest,  as the initial dressing had been torn off by the marine who had left the hand print. Fortunately the wound looked more like a wound from the corner of the bloody slate piece on the table than a bullet wound, thanks to Peter’s artistry.

Dawlish paled.

He knew about the ‘Daydream’; he had strict orders not to stop or hinder her. He knew that he did not need to know why.  Sir Percy was a friend of the Prince of Wales and that damned French smuggler was a tender to the ‘Daydream’?  his world was falling apart.

“I ... I apologise,” he said.

“Well that’s all very well, but how are you going to make amends to my wife, my children, and Paulson on whom your men have laid violent hands?” said Armand. “You villain, look at my infant daughter! You have terrified her beyond belief!” He picked up a sobbing Amelie, who was reliving her time in captivity in France, and had wet herself.  “If you were a man, sirrah, I would call you out!” said Armand, furiously. “As you are not, I will merely throw you out, and will consider whether it is worth my while to sue you to penury!” He passed Amelie to Peter.

Dawlish opened his mouth, but found himself taken by the collar by a wiry, but strong hand, and heaved up to walk on his toes to the door, where Armand undertook to kick him down the steps with all the high-handedness his late and unlamented brother might have employed.  Armand might be a good republican, but the fellow had scared Amelie all over again, just as the nightmares had mostly stopped.

Dawlish sprawled on the ground, and reflected that his career had just fallen apart.

He had been so sure they had winged the Paulson boy! What had gone wrong?

Armand went back to Amelie, who was clinging to Peter, sobbing.

“The bad man is gone, ma mie,” he said. “An Englishman’s home is his castle, and we are at home. I will not let anyone hurt you ever again.”

And he would do it all over again, regardless of his views on smuggling, and on hypocritical English aristos who accepted ‘run’ brandy, just to teach a high-handed and officious young fool a lesson about not assuming guilt, and about trying to terrorise innocents.

And who knows how much he had terrorised innocent children in the nearby village if he suspected members of their family of smuggling!

“Merci beaucoup, M. Le Vicomte,” said Louis.

“Just don’t get caught smuggling in what is supposed to be my vessel,” said Armand.  “I’ll give you a letter to carry, sealed with a certain flower, to say that you are acting according to the wishes of the League – but do not abuse it, and do not get careless.”

“I won’t,” promised Louis. “I am never careless. It was the English lads who were careless, and easier to flee with them to this house they use than to try to get past the revenue cutter. Parbleu! It is your house!”

“Yes, and I am hoping to find the English boys better employment.  Be circumspect if you use my outbuildings.”

“Certainly milord!”

 

a couple more family trees.

 These  have been up in their basic form, but I've expanded.  Now one thing I'm not sure about is the married and unmarried named for females of the Zaklika family. I have them down here as Zaklikówna and Zaklikowa, but I have, scribbled in the margins of my notes 'Zakliczanka' and 'Zakliczna' so Irene! please help me out here.

A bit of satire ...

 So, I've been reading Jane Austen And Food, and then Jane Austen and Crime, which highlights her fascination with crimes like suicide in her juvenalia.  The popular trope of bad Gothic novel was the suicide of those blighted in love, still a crime in England, and a disgrace on the whole family. And I was moved to start my own satire. It will likely be a short, and unlike Castle Ravencrag, I'm playing it straight, no revenants or sparkly vampires, but I hope it will amuse. I'll leave the notes for continuation in. 

Meantime, I've been doing 3-4 chapters a day of 'fledglings' and I will feel myself able to publish that soon. And go on to Falconburg and Bess. 

Richardson was Austen's favourite author, but she still parodied him on occasion. And Goethe's 'the young Werther' was reckoned the cause of so much suicide across Europe that it was banned in places.

Laurana – a satire

 

Chapter 1

 

Our heroine may be found at first at the robust, if not entirely unladylike, sport of fishing. A charming vision in dimity with a villager bonnet mostly covering her effulgent locks, the fair Laurana concentrated on attracting trout to her line.  Her mother, a romantic, who had named her daughter out of ‘The History of Sir Charles Grandison’ by Samuel Richardson,  had recently expired of a wasting disease brought on by disappointment that the cheerful Laurana possessed none of the qualities of her namesake and showed no disposition at all for melancholy or suicide.  This distressing lack of sensibility was a plain fault in a girl who also had hair far too red to be romantically named ‘auburn’.  Laurana mourned her mother with due obsequy but was of far too buoyant a disposition to permit it to blight her life.

Indeed, Laurana could not but feel a mild contempt for her neighbour and admirer, Matthew Thomson, who dressed most romantically in yellow inexpressibles with top-boots, a blue jacket, yellow waistcoat, and wore his shirt open, in every way like Goethe’s ‘Young Werther,’ and made what Laurana described as ‘sheep’s eyes’ at her. She was pondering her problem of how to deal with the unfortunate youth’s infatuation. He had found her where she was fishing and was pacing up and down.

“I shall kill myself if you can give me no hope,” told her.

“Mattie, you are pulling such faces, I fear you must be constipated,” said Laurana. “Also, you are scaring the fish.”

“Fish? What care I of fish when the girl I adore spurns me?” he declared.

“You’d care if there was nothing to eat,” Laurana retorted. “As for killing yourself, I never heard such nonsense; you’d do better to take a liver pill.”

“You are callous and care nothing for my suffering,” said Matthew, mournfully.

“Of course I care for your suffering,” said Laurana. “But what you are suffering at the moment is mostly a figment of your imagination. You should exercise more.”

“You have no compassion!”

“None at all, if you will behave like an idiot,” said Laurana. “I worry about you, though; you are not acting rationally.”

“Rationally! How can I act rationally when the most beautiful girl in the world will not listen to my pleas for mercy, to be allowed to worship at your feet ...”

“Now that’s downright blasphemous,” said Laurana. “If you want to worship at anyone’s feet, you should go to the church to pray for a better frame of mind.”

“I will drown myself!” cried Matthew. He promptly jumped into the river.

His head appeared, followed by his torso as he stood on the bottom, spitting out a mouthful of water. His artistic dark curls were plastered over his face, and he dripped with slime and weed.  A small frog leaped from his shoulder and back into its watery domains.

Laurana managed not to laugh. She put aside her rod; there would be no more fishing today. She reached out a hand.

“Here, let me help you up, Mattie,” she said. “Dear me, I fear your nether garments will never be the same again,” she added, as his yellow inexpressibles, ineradicably soiled by mud, came on display as she heaved him out onto the bank.

“I didn’t know it was so shallow!” Matthew gasped.

“Just as well it is; you’re not much of a swimmer,” said Laurana.

“Maybe I should shoot myself,” said Matthew.

“Don’t do that,” said Laurana. “Doubtless you would fail to kill yourself properly, and then your father would be put to the trouble and expense of getting a doctor.”

“I should shoot myself in the head.”

“Really? You make such a fuss about the mess you call a hairstyle, wouldn’t it disrupt it?” said Laurana, who perceived that her childhood friend needed to be ridiculed out of his foolishness.

“My hair is always ... usually ... perfect!” cried Matthew.

“Well if you must shoot yourself, then now is the time to do it when you are already bedraggled, and can’t look a lot worse as a corpse,” said Laurana.

“I hate you!” cried Matthew. “I foreswear women!”

“Well, I wish you will do so without dripping on me,” said Laurana.

Matthew stalked off damply, dripping slime as he went.

“Well, with luck he is cured of that nonsense,” said Laurana to the fish she had already caught.

The fish were remarkably reticent with regards to this eventuality.

 

oOoOo

 

 Notes:

Laurana will meet a young man who is ebullient and can’t stand squeamish women, and proceeds to talk about boxing and his war experiences.  Laurana finds him too insensitive.

Matthew meets a girl who is so romantic she considers her mortality and finds her irritating.

 

They both get back together having learned more realistic outlook.