Mr. Fortune Read Online Free PDF Page B

girls” had sounded in his ears quite pleasantly, suggesting something soft as “a covey of partridges” but lighter in colour. Now it sounded like a cross between “a pack of wolves,” “a swarm of mosquitoes,” and “a horde of Tartars.”
    The girls of Fanua always went about in bevies, and ever since his arrival they had pestered him with their attentions. He had but to put his nose into the village for a score of brown minxes to gather round him, entangling him in garlands and snatching at his hat. If he walked on the beach at sunset repeating to himself that sonnet of Wordsworth’s:
    It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
    The holy time is quiet as a Nun
    Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
    Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
    The gentleness of heaven is on the sea:
    long before he had got to:
    Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here,
    he was sure to be interrupted by sounds of laughter and splashing, and to find himself encompassed by yet another bevy, naked from the sea, and begging and cajoling him to go bathing with them.
    If he fled to the woods they followed him, creeping softly in his tracks. When he thought himself safe and sat down to rest, a head and shoulders would be thrust through the greenery; soon there would be half a dozen of them watching him, commenting and surmising on his person, and egging each other on to approach nearer. If he got up to walk away they burst out after him and taking hands entrapped him in the centre of a dance wanton enough to inflame a maypole.
    Once these nymphs surprised him bathing. Fortunately the pool he was in was only large enough to hold one at a time, so while it continued to hold him he was tolerably safe. But it was tiresome to have them sitting all round gazing at him as though he might shortly turn into a satyr. He told them to go away, he even begged them to do so, for the water was cold and as modesty compelled him to sit with as much of his person in the water as possible he was growing cramped. But all was in vain; they sat there as expectant as a congregation, and for once sat in silence. His zeal told him that, tiresome as it all was, this opportunity for proselytising should not be missed. Accordingly he began to preach to them with chattering teeth, only his shoulders appearing above the surface of the water, draped in a sort of ruff or boa of water-weed. He preached for an hour and twenty minutes, and then, seeing that they would neither be converted nor go, he reared up out of the pool, strode over the shoulder of the nearest girl and proceeded (the word is more dignified than walked), blue and indignant, toward his clothes. Thank Heaven the young whores had not noticed them!
    The best thing that could be said for the girls of Fanua (unless judged as trials of temper, mortifications, and potential stumbling-blocks, in which case they would have received very high marks) was that they afforded an admirable foil to Lueli’s maidenly demeanour. Day by day he unrolled such a display of the Christian virtues, was so gentle, so biddable, so deft to oblige, so willing to learn, and just sufficiently stupid to be no trouble, that Mr. Fortune felt that he could have endured even twice as many girls as the price of being soothed by one such boy. He had never beheld, he had never dreamed of such a conversion. Indeed, if it had been his own work he would have been uneasy, wondering if it were not too good to be true. But he acknowledged it to be the Lord’s doing and so he was prepared for anything.
    But he was not prepared for his paragon to disappear without a word of warning and stay away for three days and four nights.
    For the first twenty-four hours he thought little or nothing of it: Lueli was gone birding or gone fishing: he was playing with his friends in the village, or he might be on a visit to his mother. Mr. Fortune had no objection. On the contrary, he was rather pleased that the convert