A Reputed Changeling | Page 2

screamed, "see if you don't get a sound flogging!" and she clenched her
little fist as the provoking "Ho! ho! ho!" rang farther and farther off.
"Don't cry, Anne dear; the Dean and Chapter shall take order with him,
and he shall be soundly beaten. Are you hurt? O nurse, her mouth is all
blood."
"I hope she has not broken a tooth," said nurse, who had been attending
to the sobbing child. "Come in, my lamb, we will wash your face, and
make you well."
Anne, blinded with tears, jarred, bruised, bleeding, and bewildered,
submitted to be led by kind nurse the more willingly because she knew
that her mother, together with all the quality, were at Sir Thomas
Charnock's. They had dined at the fashionable hour of two, and were to
stay till supper-time, the elders playing at Ombre, the juniors dancing.
As a rule the ordinary clergy did not associate with the county families,
but Dr. Woodford was of good birth and a royal chaplain, and his
deceased brother had been a favourite officer of the Duke of York, and
had been so severely wounded by his side in the battle of Southwold as
to be permanently disabled. Indeed Anne Jacobina was godchild to the
Duke and his first Duchess, whose favoured attendant her mother had
been. Thus Mrs. Woodford was in great request, and though she had
not hitherto gone into company since her widowhood, she had yielded
to Lady Charnock's entreaty that she would come and show her how to
deal with that strange new Chinese infusion, a costly packet of which
had been brought to her from town by Sir Thomas, as the Queen's
favourite beverage, wherewith the ladies of the place were to be regaled
and astonished.
It had been already arranged that the two little girls should spend the
evening together, and as they entered the garden before the house a
rude voice exclaimed, "Holloa! London Nan whimpering. Has my fine
lady met a spider or a cow?" and a big rough lad of twelve, in a college

gown, spread out his arms, and danced up and down in the doorway to
bar the entrance.
"Don't, Sedley," said a sturdy but more gentlemanlike lad of the same
age, thrusting him aside. "Is she hurt? What is it?"
"That spiteful imp, Peregrine Oakshott," said Lucy passionately. "He
had a cord across the Slype to trip us up. I heard him laughing like a
hobgoblin, and saw him too, grinning over a tombstone like the
malicious elf he is."
The college boy uttered a horse laugh, which made Lucy cry, "Cousin
Sedley, you are as bad!" but the other boy was saying, "Don't cry, Anne
None-so-pretty. I'll give it him well! Though I'm younger, I'm bigger,
and I'll show him reason for not meddling with my little sweetheart."
"Have with you then!" shouted Sedley, ready for a fray on whatever
pretext, and off they rushed, as nurse led little Anne up the broad
shallow steps of the dark oak staircase, but Lucy stood laughing with
exultation in the intended vengeance, as her brother took down her
father's hunting-whip.
"He must be wellnigh a fiend to play such wicked pranks under the
very Minster!" she said.
"And a rascal of a Whig, and that's worse," added Charles; "but I'll
have it out of him!"
"Take care, Charley; if you offend him, and he does really belong to
those--those creatures"--Lucy lowered her voice--"who knows what
they might do to you?"
Charles laughed long and loud. "I'll take care of that," he said, swinging
out at the door. "Elf or no elf, he shall learn what it is to play off his
tricks on my sister and my little sweetheart."
Lucy betook herself to the nursery, where Anne was being comforted,
her bleeding lip washed with essence, and repaired with a pinch of

beaver from a hat, and her other bruises healed with lily leaves steeped
in strong waters.
"Charley is gone to serve him out!" announced Lucy as the sovereign
remedy.
"Oh, but perhaps he did not mean it," Anne tried to say.
"Mean it? Small question of that, the cankered young slip! Nurse, do
you think those he belongs to can do Charley any harm if he angers
them?"
"I cannot say, missie. Only 'tis well we be not at home, or there might
be elf knots in the horses' manes to-night. I doubt me whether that sort
can do much hurt here, seeing as 'tis holy ground."
"But is he really a changeling? I thought there were no such things as--"
"Hist, hist, Missie Anne!" cried the dame; "'tis not good to name them."
"Oh, but we are on the Minster ground, nurse," said Lucy, trembling a
little however, looking over her shoulder, and coming closer