



Produced by James Rusk






LOVE ME LITTLE, LOVE ME LONG

By Charles Reade




PREFACE

SHOULD these characters, imbedded in carpet incidents, interest the
public at all, they will probably reappear in more potent scenes. This
design, which I may never live to execute, is, I fear, the only excuse
I can at present offer for some pages, forming the twelfth chapter of
this volume.



CHAPTER I.

NEARLY a quarter of a century ago, Lucy Fountain, a young lady of
beauty and distinction, was, by the death of her mother, her sole
surviving parent, left in the hands of her two trustees, Edward
Fountain, Esq., of Font Abbey, and Mr. Bazalgette, a merchant whose
wife was Mrs. Fountain's half-sister.

They agreed to lighten the burden by dividing it. She should spend
half the year with each trustee in turn, until marriage should take
her off their hands.

Our mild tale begins in Mr. Bazalgette's own house, two years after
the date of that arrangement.

The chit-chat must be your main clue to the characters. In life it is
the same. Men and women won't come to you ticketed, or explanation in
hand.

"Lucy, you are a great comfort in a house; it is so nice to have some
one to pour out one's heart to; my husband is no use at all."

"Aunt Bazalgette!"

"In that way. You listen to my faded illusions, to the aspirations of
a nature too finely organized, ah! to find its happiness in this
rough, selfish world. When I open my bosom to him, what does he do?
Guess now--whistles."

"Then I call that rude."

"So do I; and then he whistles more and more."

"Yes; but, aunt, if any serious trouble or grief fell upon you, you
would find Mr. Bazalgette a much greater comfort and a better stay
than poor spiritless me."

"Oh, if the house took fire and fell about our ears, he would come out
of his shell, no doubt; or if the children all died one after another,
poor dear little souls; but those great troubles only come in stories.
Give me a friend that can sympathize with the real hourly
mortifications of a too susceptible nature; sit on this ottoman, and
let me go on. Where was I when Jones came and interrupted us? They
always do just at the interesting point."

Miss Fountain's face promptly wreathed itself into an expectant smile.
She abandoned her hand and her ear, and leaned her graceful person
toward her aunt, while that lady murmured to her in low and thrilling
tones--his eyes, his long hair, his imaginative expressions, his
romantic projects of frugal love; how her harsh papa had warned Adonis
off the premises; how Adonis went without a word (as pale as death,
love), and soon after, in his despair, flung himself--to an ugly
heiress; and how this disappointment had darkened her whole life, and
so on.

Perhaps, if Adonis had stood before her now, rolling his eyes, and his
phrases hot from the annuals, the flourishing matron might have sent
him to the servants' hall with a wave of her white and jeweled hand.
But the melody disarms this sort of brutal criticism--a woman's voice
relating love's young dream; and then the picture--a matron still
handsome pouring into a lovely virgin's ear the last thing she ought;
the young beauty's eyes mimicking sympathy; the ripe beauty's soft,
delicious accents--purr! purr! purr!

Crash overhead! a window smashed aie! aie! clatter! clatter! screams
of infantine rage and feminine remonstrance, feet pattering, and a
general hullabaloo, cut the soft recital in two. The ladies clasped
hands, like guilty things surprised.

Lucy sprang to her feet; the oppressed one sank slowly and gracefully
back, inch by inch, on the ottoman, with a sigh of ostentatious
resignation, and gazed, martyr-like, on the chandelier.

"Will you not go up to the nursery?" cried Lucy, in a flutter.

"No, dear," replied the other, faintly, but as cool as a marble slab;
"you go; cast some of your oil upon those ever-troubled waters and
then come back and let us try once more."

Miss Fountain heard but half this sentence; she was already gliding up
the stairs. She opened the nursery door, and there stood in the middle
of the room "Original Sin." Its name after the flesh was Master
Reginald. It was half-past six, had been baptized in church, after
which every child becomes, according to polemic divines of the day, "a
little soul of Christian fire" until it goes to a public school. And
there it straddled, two scarlet cheeks puffed out with rage, soft
flaxen hair streaming, cerulean eyes glowing, the poker grasped in two
chubby fists. It had poked a window in vague ire, and now threatened
two females with extinction if they riled it any more.

The two grown-up women were discovered, erect, but flat, in distant
corners, avoiding the bayonet and trusting to their artillery.

     "Wicked boy!"
     "Naughty boy!" (grape.)
     "Little ruffian!" etc.

And hints as to the ultimate destination of so sanguinary a soul
(round shot).

"Ah! here's miss. Oh, miss, we are so glad you are come up; don't go
anigh him, miss; he is a tiger."

Miss Fountain smiled, and went gracefully on one knee beside him. This
brought her angelic face level with the fallen cherub's. "What is the
matter, dear?" asked she, in a tone of soft pity.

The tiger was not prepared for this: he dropped his poker and flung
his little arm round his cousin's neck.

"I love YOU. Oh! oh! oh!"

"Yes, dear; then tell me, now--what is the matter? What have you been
doing?"

"Noth--noth--nothing--it's th--them been na--a--agging me!"

"Nagging you?" and she smiled at the word and a tiger's horror of it.

"Who has been nagging you, love?"

"Th--those--bit--bit--it." The word was unfortunately lost in a sob.
It was followed by red faces and two simultaneous yells of
remonstrance and objurgation.

"I must ask you to be silent a minute," said Miss Fountain, quietly.
"Reginald, what do you mean by--by--nagging?"

Reginald explained. "By nagging he meant--why--nagging."

"Well, then, what had they been doing to him?"

No; poor Reginald was not analytical, dialectical and critical, like
certain pedanticules who figure in story as children. He was a
terrible infant, not a horrible one.

"They won't fight and they won't make it up, and they keep nagging,"
was all could be got out of him.

"Come with me, dear," said Lucy, gravely.

"Yes," assented the tiger, softly, and went out awestruck, holding her
hand, and paddling three steps to each of her serpentine glides.

Seated in her own room, tiger at knee, she tried topics of admonition.
During these his eyes wandered about the room in search of matter more
amusing, so she was obliged to bring up her reserve.

"And no young lady will ever marry you."

"I don't want them to, cousin; I wouldn't let them; you will marry me,
because you promised."

"Did I?"

"Why, you know you did--upon your honor; and no lady or gentleman ever
breaks their word when they say that; you told me so yourself," added
he of the inconvenient memory.

"Ah! but there is another rule that I forgot to tell you."

"What is that?"

"That no lady ever marries a gentleman who has a violent temper."

"Oh, don't they?"

"No; they would be afraid. If you had a wife, and took up the poker,
she would faint away, and die--perhaps!"

"Oh, dear!"

"I should."

"But, cousin, you would not _want_ the poker taken to you; you
never nag."

"Perhaps that is because we are not married yet."

"What, then, when we are, shall you turn like the others?"

"Impossible to say."

"Well, then" (after a moment's hesitation), "I'll marry you all the
same."

"No! you forget; I shall be afraid until your temper mends."

"I'll mend it. It is mended now. See how good I am now," added he,
with self-admiration and a shade of surprise.

"I don't call this mending it, for I am not the one that offended you;
mending it is promising me never, never to call naughty names again.
How would you like to be called a dog?"

"I'd kill 'em."

"There, you see--then how can you expect poor nurse to like it?"

"You don't understand, cousin--Tom said to George the groom that Mrs.
Jones was an--old--stingy--b--"

"I don't want to hear anything about Tom."

"He is such a clever fellow, cousin. So I think, if Jones is an old
one, those two that keep nagging me must be young ones. What do you
think yourself?" asked Reginald, appealing suddenly to her candor.

"And no doubt it was Tom that taught you this other vulgar word
'nagging,'" was the evasive reply.

"No, that was mamma."

Lucy, wheeled quickly, and demanded severely of the terrible
infant: "Who is this Tom?"

"What! don't you know Tom?" Reginald began to lose a grain of his
respect for her. "Why, he helps in the stables; oh, cousin, he is such
a nice fellow!"

"Reginald, I shall never marry you if you keep company with grooms,
and speak their language."

"Well!" sighed the victim, "I'll give up Tom sooner than you."

"Thank you, dear; now I _am_ flattered. One struggle more; we
must go together and ask the nurses' pardon."

"Must we? ugh!"

"Yes--and kiss them--and make it up."

Reginald made a wry face; but, after a pause of solemn reflection, he
consented, on condition that Lucy would keep near him, and kiss him
directly afterward.

"I shall be sure to do that, because you will be a good boy then."

Outside the door Reginald paused: "I have a favor to ask you,
cousin--a great favor. You see I am so very little, and you are so
big; now the husband ought to be the biggest."

"Quite my own opinion, Reggy."

"Well, dear, now if you would be so kind as not to grow any older till
I catch you up, I shall be so very, very, very much obliged to you,
dear."

"I will try, Reggy. Nineteen is a very good age. I will stay there as
long as my friends will let me."

"Thank you, cousin."

"But that is not