The Clever Woman of the Family

“I say, mamma,” reiterated Conrade, “we can’t do lessons without books.”

“Attend to what your Aunt Rachel says, my dear; she wants to find out what books you should have.”

“Yes, let me examine you.”

Conrade came most inconveniently close to her; she pushed her chair back; he came after her. His mother uttered a remonstrating, “My dear!”

“I thought she wanted to examine me,” quoth Conrade. “When Dr. M’Vicar examines a thing, he puts it under a microscope.”

It was said gravely, and whether it were malice or simplicity, Rachel was perfectly unable to divine, but she thought anyway that Fanny had no business to laugh, and explaining the species of examination that she intended, she went to work. In her younger days she had worked much at schools, and was really an able and spirited teacher, liking the occupation; and laying hold of the first book in her way, she requested Conrade to read. He obeyed, but in such a detestable gabble that she looked up appealingly to Fanny, who suggested, “My dear, you can read better than that.” He read four lines, not badly, but then broke off, “Mamma, are not we to have ponies? Coombe heard of a pony this morning; it is to be seen at the ‘Jolly Mariner,’ and he will take us to look at it.”

“The ‘Jolly Mariner!’ It is a dreadful place, Fanny, you never will let them go there?”

“My dear, the Major will see about your ponies when he comes.”

“We will send the coachman down to inquire,” added Rachel.

“He is only a civilian, and the Major always chooses our horses,” said Conrade.

“And I am to have one too, mamma,” added Francis. “You know I have been out four times with the staff, and the Major said I could ride as well as Con!”

“Reading is what is wanted now, my dear, go on.”

Five lines more; but Francis and his mother were whispering together, and of course Conrade stopped to listen. Rachel saw there was no hope but in getting him alone, and at his mother’s reluctant desire, he followed her to the dining-room; but there he turned dogged and indifferent, made a sort of feint of doing what he was told, but whether she tried him in arithmetic, Latin, or dictation, he made such ludicrous blunders as to leave her in perplexity whether they arose from ignorance or impertinence. His spelling was phonetic to the highest degree, and though he owned to having done sums, he would not, or did not answer the simplest question in mental arithmetic. “Five apples and eight apples, come, Conrade, what will they make?”

“A pie.”

That was the hopeful way in which the examination proceeded, and when Rachel attempted to say that his mother would be much displeased, he proceeded to tumble head over heels all round the room, as if he knew better; which performance broke up the seance, with a resolve on her part that when she had the books she would not be so beaten. She tried Francis, but he really did know next to nothing, and whenever he came to a word above five letters long stopped short, and when told to spell it, said, “Mamma never made him spell;” also muttering something depreciating about civilians.

Rachel was a woman of perseverance. She went to the bookseller’s, and obtained a fair amount of books, which she ordered to be sent to Lady Temple’s. But when she came down the next morning, the parcel was nowhere to be found. There was a grand interrogation, and at last it turned out to have been safely deposited in an empty dog-kennel in the back yard. It was very hard on Rachel that Fanny giggled like a school-girl, and even though ashamed of herself and her sons, could not find voice to scold them respectably. No wonder, after such encouragement, that Rachel found her mission no sinecure, and felt at the end of her morning’s work much as if she had been driving pigs to market, though the repetition was imposing on the boys a sort of sense of fate and obedience, and there was less active resistance, though learning it was not, only letting teaching be thrown at them. All the rest of the day, except those two hours, they ran wild about the house, garden, and beach—the latter place under the inspection of Coombe, whom, since the “Jolly Mariner” proposal, Rachel did not in the least trust; all the less when she heard that Major Keith, whose soldier-servant he had originally been, thought very highly of him. A call at Myrtlewood was formidable from the bear-garden sounds, and delicate as Lady Temple was considered to be, unable to walk or bear fatigue, she never appeared to be incommoded by the uproar in which she lived, and had even been seen careering about the nursery, or running about the garden, in a way that Grace and Rachel thought would tire a strong woman. As to a tete-a-tete with her, it was never secured by anything short of Rachel’s strong will, for the children were always with her, and she went to bed, or at any rate to her own room, when they did, and she was so perfectly able to play and laugh with them that her cousins scarcely thought her sufficiently depressed, and comparing her with what their own mother had been after ten months’ widowhood, agreed that after all “she had been very young, and Sir Stephen very old, and perhaps too much must not be expected of her.”

“The grand passion of her life is yet to come,” said Rachel.

“I hope not,” said Grace.

“You may be certain of that,” said Rachel. “Feminine women always have it one time or other in their lives; only superior ones are exempt. But I hope I may have influence enough to carry her past it, and prevent her taking any step that might be injurious to the children.”

CHAPTER II. RACHEL’S DISCIPLINE

An old friend lived in the neighbourhood who remembered Fanny’s father, and was very anxious to see her again, though not able to leave the house. So the first day that it was fine enough for Mrs. Curtis to venture out, she undertook to convey Fanny to call upon her, and was off with a wonderfully moderate allowance of children, only the two youngest boys outside with their maid. This drive brought more to light about Fanny’s past way of life and feelings than had ever yet appeared. Rachel had never elicited nearly so much as seemed to have come forth spontaneously to the aunt, who had never in old times been Fanny’s confidante.

Fanny’s life had been almost a prolonged childhood. From the moment of her marriage with the kind old General, he and her mother had conspired to make much of her; all the more that she was almost constantly disabled by her state of health, and was kept additionally languid and helpless by the effects of climate. Her mother had managed her household, and she had absolutely had no care, no duty at all but to be affectionate and grateful, and to be pretty and gracious at the dinner parties. Even in her mother’s short and sudden illness, the one thought of both the patient and the General had been to spare Fanny, and she had been scarcely made aware of the danger, and not allowed to witness the suffering. The chivalrous old man who had taken on himself the charge of her, still regarded the young mother of his children as almost as much of a baby herself, and devoted himself all the more to sparing her trouble, and preventing her from feeling more thrown upon her by her mother’s death. The notion of training her to act alone never even occurred to him, and when he was thrown from his horse, and carried into a wayside-hut to die, his first orders were that no hurried message might be sent to her, lest she might be startled and injured by the attempt to come to him. All he could do for her was to leave her in the charge of his military secretary, who had long been as a son to him. Fanny told her aunt with loving detail all that she had heard from Major Keith of the brave old man’s calm and resigned end—too full of trust even to be distressed with alarms for the helpless young wife and children, but committing them in full reliance to the care of their Father in heaven, and to the present kindness of the friend who stood by his pillow.

The will, which not only Rachel but her mother thought strangely unguarded, had been drawn up in haste, because Sir Stephen’s family had outgrown the provisions of a former one, which had besides designated her mother, and a friend since dead, as guardians. Haste, and the conscious want of legal knowledge, had led to its being made as simple as possible, and as it was, Sir Stephen had scarcely had the power to sign it.

It was Major Keith who had borne the tidings to the poor little widow, and had taken the sole care of the boys during the sad weeks of care utter prostration and illness. Female friends were with her, and tended her affectionately, but if exertion or thought were required of her, the Major had to be called to her sofa to awaken her faculties, and she always awoke to attend to his wishes, as though he were the channel of her husband’s. This state of things ended with the birth of the little girl, the daughter that Sir Stephen had so much wished for, coming too late to be welcomed by him, but awakening her mother to tearful joy and renewed powers of life. The nine months of little Stephana’s life had been a tone of continual change and variety, of new interests and occupations, and of the resumption of a feeling of health which had scarcely been tasted since the first plunge into warm climates. Perhaps it was unreasonable to expect to find Fanny broken down; and she talked in her own simple way with abundant overflowing affection of her husband; but even Mrs. Curtis thought it was to her more like the loss of her own father than of the father of her children; and though not in the least afraid of anything unbecoming in her gentle, retiring Fanny, still felt that it was more the charge of a girl than of a widow, dreaded the boys, dreaded their fate, and dreaded the Major more.

During this drive, Grace and Rachel had the care of the elder boys, whom Rachel thought safer in her keeping than in Coombe’s. A walk along the cliffs was one resource for their amusement, but it resulted in Conrade’s climbing into the most break-neck places, by preference selecting those that Rachel called him out of, and as all the others thought it necessary to go after him, the jeopardy of Leoline and Hubert became greater than it was possible to permit; so Grace took them by the hands, and lured them home with promises of an introduction to certain white rabbits at the lodge. After their departure, their brothers became infinitely more obstreperous. Whether it were that Conrade had some slight amount of consideration for the limbs of his lesser followers, or whether the fact were—what Rachel did not remotely imagine—that he was less utterly unmanageable with her sister than with herself, certain it is that the brothers went into still more intolerable places, and treated their guardian as ducklings treat an old hen. At last they quite disappeared from the view round a projecting point of rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail of stones, water-smoothed brick-bats, cockle-shells, fishes’ backbones, and other unsavoury missiles. Abstractedly, Rachel had her theory that young gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours, and become used to all ranks; but when it came to witnessing an actual skirmish when she was responsible for Fanny’s sons, it was needful to interfere, and in equal dismay and indignation she came round the point. The light artillery fled at her aspect, and she had to catch Francis’s arm in the act of discharging after them a cuttlefish’s white spine, with a sharp “For shame, they are running away! Conrade, Zack, have done!” Zack was one of her own scholars, and held her in respect.

He desisted at once, and with a touch of his rough forelock, looked sheepish, and said, “Please ma’am, he was meddling with our lobster-pot.”

“I wasn’t doing any harm,” said Conrade. “I was just looking in, and they all came and shied stones at us.”

“I don’t care how the quarrel began,” said Rachel. “You would not have run into it if you had been behaving properly. Zack was quite right to protect his father’s property, but he might have been more civil. Now shake hands, and have done with it.”

“Not shake hands with a low boy,” growled Francis. But happily Conrade was of a freer spirit, and in spite of Rachel’s interference, had sense enough to know himself in the wrong. He held out his hand, and when the ceremony had been gone through, put his hands in his pockets, produced a shilling, and said, “There, that’s in case I did the thing any harm.” Rachel would have preferred Zachary’s being above its acceptance, but he was not, and she was thankful that a wood path offend itself, leading through the Homestead plantations away from the temptations and perils of the shore.

That the two boys, instead of listening to her remonstrance, took to punching and kicking one another, was a mitigated form of evil for which she willingly compounded, having gone through so much useless interference already, that she felt as if she had no spirit left to keep the peace, and that they must settle their little affairs between themselves. It was the most innocent diversion in which she could hope to see them indulge. She only desired that it might last them past a thrush’s nest, in the hedge between the park and plantation, a somewhat treasured discovery of Grace’s. No such good luck. Either the thrush’s imprudence or Grace’s visits had made the nest dangerously visible, and it was proclaimed with a shout. Rachel, in hot haste, warned them against taking birds’-nests in general, and that in particular.

“Nests are made to be taken,” said Francis.

“I’ve got an egg of all the Australian birds the Major could get me,” said Conrade, “and I mean to have all the English ones.”

“Oh, one egg; there’s no harm in taking that; but this nest has young birds.”

The young birds must of course be seen, and Rachel stood by with despairing frowns, commands, and assurances of their mother’s displeasure, while they peeped in, tantalized the gaping yellow throats, by holding up their fingers, and laid hands on the side of the nest, peeping at her with laughing, mischievous eyes, enjoying her distress. She was glad at last to find them coming away without the nest, and after crossing the park, arrived at the house, tired out, but with two hours of the boys still on her hands. They, however, were a little tired, too; and, further, Grace had hunted out the old bowls, much to the delight of the younger ones. This sport lasted a good while, but at last the sisters, who had relaxed their attention a little, perceived that Conrade and Hubert were both missing, and on Rachel’s inquiry where they were, she received from Francis that elegant stock answer, “in their skins.” However, they came to light in process of time, the two mothers returned home, and Mrs. Curtis and Grace had the conversation almost in their own hands. Rachel was too much tired to do anything but read the new number of her favourite “Traveller’s Magazine,” listening to her mother with one ear, and gathering additional impressions of Sir Stephen Temple’s imprudence, and the need of their own vigilance. To make Fanny feel that she could lean upon some one besides the military secretary, seemed to be the great object, and she was so confiding and affectionate with her own kin, that there were great hopes. Those boys were an infliction, no doubt, but, thought Rachel, “there is always an ordeal at the beginning of one’s mission. I am mastering them by degrees, and should do so sooner if I had them in my own hands, and no more worthy task can be done than training human beings for their work in this world, so I must be willing to go through a little while I bring them into order, and fit their mother for managing them.”

She spent the time before breakfast the next morning in a search among the back numbers of the “Traveller’s Magazine” for a paper upon “Educational Laws,” which she thought would be very good reading for Fanny. Her search had been just completed when Grace returned home from church, looking a good deal distressed. “My poor thrushes have not escaped, Rachel,” she said; “I came home that way to see how they were going on, and the nest is torn out, one poor little fellow lying dead below it.”

“Well, that is much worse than I expected!” burst out Rachel. “I did think that boy Conrade would at least keep his promises.” And she detailed the adventure of the previous day, whence the conclusion was but too evident. Grace, however, said in her own sweet manner that she believed boys could not resist a nest, and thought it mere womanhood to intercede for such lawful game. She thought it would be best to take no notice, it would only distress Fanny and make “the mother” more afraid of the boys than she was already, and she doubted the possibility of bringing it home to the puerile conscience.

“That is weak!” said Rachel. “I received the boy’s word, and it is my business to deal with the breach of promise.”

So down went Rachel, and finding the boys rushing about the garden, according to their practice, before her arrival, she summoned Conrade, and addressed him with, “Well, Conrade, I knew that you were violent and disobedient, but I never expected you to fail in your honour as a gentleman.”

“I’ll thrash any one who says I have,” hotly exclaimed Conrade.

“Then you must thrash me. You gave your word to me not to take your Aunt Grace’s thrush’s nest.”

“And I didn’t,” said Conrade, boldly.

But Rachel, used to flat denials at the village-school, was not to be thus set aside. “I am shocked at you, Conrade,” she said. “I know your mamma will be exceedingly grieved. You must have fallen into very sad ways to be able to utter such a bold untruth. You had better confess at once, and then I shall have something to tell her that will comfort he.”

Conrade’s dark face looked set as iron.

“Come; tell me you are sorry you took the nest, and have broken your word, and told a falsehood.”

Red colour flushed into the brown cheek, and the hands were clenched.

“There is not the smallest use in denying it. I know you took it when you and Hubert went away together. Your Aunt Grace found it gone this morning, and one of the poor little birds dead below. What have you done with the others?”

Not a word.

“Then I grieve to say I must tell all to your mother.”

There was a sort of smile of defiance, and he followed her. For a moment she thought of preventing this, and preparing Fanny in private, but recollecting that this would give him the opportunity of preparing Hubert to support his falsehood, she let him enter with her, and sought Lady Temple in the nursery.

“Dear Fanny, I am very sorry to bring you so much vexation. I am afraid it will be a bitter grief to you, but it is only for Conrade’s own sake that I do it. It was a cruel thing to take a bird’s-nest at all, but worse when he knew that his Aunt Grace was particularly fond of it; and, besides, he had promised not to touch it, and now, saddest of all, he denies having done so.”

“Oh, Conrade, Conrade!” cried Fanny, quite confounded, “You can’t have done like this!”

“So, I have not,” said Conrade, coming up to her, as she held out her hand, positively encouraging him, as Rachel thought, to persist in the untruth.

“Listen, Fanny,” said Rachel. “I do not wonder that you are unwilling to believe anything so shocking, but I do not come without being only too certain.” And she gave the facts, to which Fanny listened with pale cheeks and tearful eyes, then turned to the boy, whose hand she had held all the time, and said, “Dear Con, do pray tell me if you did it.”

“I did not,” said Conrade, wrenching his hand away, and putting it behind his back.

“Where’s Hubert?” asked Rachel, looking round, and much vexed when she perceived that Hubert had been within hearing all the time, though to be sure there was some little hope to be founded upon the simplicity of five years old.

“Come here, Hubert dear,” said his mother; “don’t be frightened, only come and tell me where you and Con went yesterday, when the others were playing at bowls.” Hubert hung his head, and looked at his brother.

“Tell,” quoth Conrade. “Never mind her, she’s only a civilian.”

“Where did you go, Hubert?”

“Con showed me the little birds in their nest.”

“That is right, Hubert, good little boy. Did you or he touch the nest?”

“Yes.” Then, as Conrade started, and looked fiercely at him, “Yes you did, Con, you touched the inside to see what it was made of.”

“But what did you do with it?” asked Rachel.

“Left it there, up in the tree,” said the little boy.

“There, Rachel!” said the mother, triumphantly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Rachel, angrily, “only that Conrade is a worse boy than I had thought him, end has been teaching his little brother falsehood.”

The angry voice set Hubert crying, and little Cyril, who was very soft-hearted, joined in chorus, followed by the baby, who was conscious of something very disagreeable going on in her nursery. Thereupon, after the apparently most important business of comforting Miss Temple had been gone through, the court of justice adjourned, Rachel opening the door of Conrade’s little room, and recommending solitary imprisonment there till he should be brought to confession. She did not at all reckon on his mother going in with him, and shutting the door after her. It was not the popular notion of solitary confinement, and Rachel was obliged to retire, and wait in the drawing-room for a quarter of an hour before Fanny came down, and then it was to say—

“Do you know, Rachel dear, I am convinced that it must be a mistake. Conrade assures me he never touched the nest.”

“So he persists in it?”

“And indeed, Rachel dear, I cannot help believing him. If it had been Francie, now; but I never knew Conrade tell an untruth in his life.”

“You never knew, because you always believe him.”

“And it is not only me, but I have often heard the Major say he could always depend on Conrade’s word.”

Rachel’s next endeavour was at gentle argument. “It must be dreadful to make such a discovery, but it was far worse to let deceit go on undetected; and if only they were firm—” At that moment she beheld two knickerbocker boys prancing on the lawn.

“Didn’t you lock the door? Has he broken out? How audacious!”

“I let him come out,” said Fanny; “there was nothing to shut him up for. I beg your pardon, dear Rachel; I am very sony for the poor little birds and for Grace, but I am sure Conrade did not take it.”

“How can you be so unreasonable, Fanny—the evidence,” and Rachel went over it all again.

“Don’t you think,” said Fanny, “that some boy may have got into the park?”

“My dear Fanny, I am sorry for you, it is quite out of the question to think so; the place is not a stone’s-throw from Randall’s lodge. It will be the most fatal thing in the world to let your weakness be imposed on in this way. Now that the case is clear, the boy must be forced to confession, and severely punished.”

Fanny burst into tears.

“I am very sorry for you, Fanny. I know it is very painful; I assure you it is so to me. Perhaps it would be best if I were to lock him up, and go from time to time to see if he is come to a better mind.”

She rose up.

“No, no, Rachel!” absolutely screamed Fanny, starting up, “my boy hasn’t done anything wrong, and I won’t have him locked up! Go away! If anything is to be done to my boys, I’ll do it myself: they haven’t got any one but me. Oh, I wish the Major would come!”

“Fanny, how can you be so foolish?—as if I would hurt your boys!”

“But you won’t believe Conrade—my Conrade, that never told a falsehood in his life!” cried the mother, with a flush in her cheeks and a bright glance in her soft eyes. “You want me to punish him for what he hasn’t done.”

“How much alike mothers are in all classes of life,” thought Rachel, and much in the way in which she would have brought Zack’s mother to reason by threats of expulsion from the shoe-club, she observed, “Well Fanny, one thing is clear, while you are so weak as to let that boy go on in his deceit, unrepentant and unpunished, I can have no more to do with his education.”

“Indeed,” softly said Fanny, “I am afraid so, Rachel. You have taken a great deal of trouble, but Conrade declares he will never say a lesson to you again, and I don’t quite see how to make him after this.”

“Oh, very well; then there’s an end of it. I am sorry for you, Fanny.”

And away walked Rachel, and as she went towards the gate two artificial jets d’eau, making a considerable curve in the air, alighted, the one just before her, the other, better aimed, in the back of her neck. She had too much dignity to charge back upon the offenders, but she went home full of the story of Fanny’s lamentable weakness, and prognostications of the misery she was entailing on herself. Her mother and sister were both much concerned, and thought Fanny extremely foolish; Mrs. Curtis consoling herself with the hope that the boys would be cured and tamed at school, and begging that they might never be let loose in the park again. Rachel could not dwell much longer on the matter, for she had to ride to Upper Avon Park to hold council on the books to be ordered for the book-club; for if she did got go herself, whatever she wanted especially was always set aside as too something or other for the rest of the subscribers.

Mrs. Curtis was tired, and stayed at home; and Grace spent the afternoon in investigations about the harrying of the thrushes, but, alas! without coming a bit nearer the truth. Nothing was seen or heard of Lady Temple till, at half-past nine, one of the midges, or diminutive flies used at Avonmonth, came to the door, and Fanny came into the drawing-room—wan, tearful, agitated.

“Dear Rachel, I am so afraid I was hasty, I could not sleep without coming to tell you how sorry I am.”

“Then you are convinced? I knew you would be.”

“Oh, yes, I have just been sitting by him after he was gone to bed. He never goes to sleep till I have done that, and he always tells me if anything is on his mind. I could not ask him again, it would have been insulting him; but he went over it all of himself, and owned he ought not to have put a finger on the edge of the nest, but he wanted so to see what it was lined with; otherwise he never touched it. He says, poor boy, that it was only your being a civilian that made you not able to believe him, I am sure you must believe him now.”

Mrs. Curtis began, in her gentle way, about the difficulty of believing one’s children in fault, but Lady Temple was entirely past accepting the possibility of Conrade’s being to blame in this particular instance. It made her bristle up again, so that even Rachel saw the impossibility of pressing it, and trusted to some signal confutation to cure her of her infatuation. But she was as affectionate as ever, only wanting to be forgiven for the morning’s warmth, and to assure dear Aunt Curtis, dear Grace, and dearest Rachel in particular, that there was no doing without them, and it was the greatest blessing to be near them.

“Oh! and the squirting, dear Rachel! I was so sorry when I found it out, it was only Francie and Leo. I was very angry with them for it, and I should like to make them ask pardon, only I don’t think Francie would. I’m afraid they are very rude boys. I must write to the Major to find me a governess that won’t be very strict with them, and if she could be an officer’s daughter, the boys would respect her so much more.”

CHAPTER III. MACKAREL LANE

“Well, Grace, all things considered, perhaps I had better walk down with you to Mackarel Lane, and then I can form a judgment on these Williamses without committing Fanny.”

“Then you do not intend to go on teaching?”

“Not while Conrade continues to brave me, and is backed up by poor Fanny.”

“I might speak to Miss Williams after church, and bring her in to Myrtlewood for Fanny to see.”

“Yes, that might do in time; but I shall make up my mind first. Poor Fanny is so easily led that we must take care what influences fall in her way.”

“I always wished you would call.”

“Yes, and I would not by way of patronage to please Mr. Touchett, but this is for a purpose; and I hope we shall find both sisters at home.”

Mackarel Lane was at right angles to the shore, running up the valley of the Avon; but it soon ceased to be fishy, and became agricultural, owning a few cottages of very humble gentility, which were wont to hang out boards to attract lodgers of small means. At one of these Grace rang, and obtained admittance to a parlour with crazy French windows opening on a little strip of garden. In a large wheeled chair, between the fire and the window, surrounded by numerous little appliances for comfort and occupation, sat the invalid Miss Williams, holding out her hand in welcome to the guests.

“A fine countenance! what one calls a fine countenance!” thought Rachel. “Is it a delusion of insipidity as usual? The brow is good, massive, too much for the features, but perhaps they were fuller once; eyes bright and vigorous, hazel, the colour for thought; complexion meant to be brilliant brunette, a pleasant glow still; hair with threads of grey. I hope she does not affect youth; she can’t be less than one or two and thirty! Many people set up for beauties with far less claim. What is the matter with her? It is not the countenance of deformity—accident, I should say. Yes, it is all favourable except the dress. What a material; what a pattern! Did she get it second-hand from a lady’s-maid? Will there be an incongruity in her conversation to match? Let us see. Grace making inquiries—Quite at my best—Ah! she is not one of the morbid sort, never thinking themselves better.”

“I was afraid, I had not seen you out for some time.”

“No; going out is a troublesome business, and sitting in the garden answers the same purpose.”

“Of air, perhaps, but hardly of change or of view.”

“Oh! I assure you there is a wonderful variety,” she answered, with an eager and brilliant smile.

“Clouds and sunsets?” asked Rachel, beginning to be interested.

“Yes, differing every day. Then I have the tamarisk and its inhabitants. There has been a tom-tit’s nest every year since we came, and that provides us with infinite amusement. Besides the sea-gulls are often so good as to float high enough for me to see them. There is a wonderful charm in a circumcribed view, because one is obliged to look well into it all.”

“Yes; eyes and no eyes apply there,” said Rachel.

“We found a great prize, too, the other day. Rosie!”

At the call a brown-haired, brown-eyed child of seven, looking like a little fawn, sprang to the window from the outside.

“My dear, will you show the sphynx to Miss Curtis?”

The little girl daintily brought a box covered with net, in which a huge apple-green caterpillar, with dashes of bright colour on his sides, and a horny spike on his tail, was feasting upon tamarisk leaves. Grace asked if she was going to keep it. “Yes, till it buries itself,” said the child. “Aunt Ermine thinks it is the elephant sphynx.”

“I cannot be sure,” said the aunt, “my sister tried to find a figure of it at Villars’, but he had no book that gave the caterpillars. Do you care for those creatures?”

“I like to watch them,” said Grace, “but I know nothing about them scientifically; Rachel does that.”

“Then can you help us to the history of our sphynx?” asked Miss Williams, with her pleasant look.

“I will see if I have his portrait,” said Rachel, “but I doubt it. I prefer general principles to details.”

“Don’t you find working out details the best way of entering into general principles?”

It was new to Rachel to find the mention of a general principle received neither with a stare nor a laugh; and she gathered herself up to answer, “Naming and collecting is not science.”

“And masonry is not architecture, but you can’t have architecture without it.”

“One can have broad ideas without all the petty work of flower botanists and butterfly naturalists.”

“Don’t you think the broad ideas would be rather of the hearsay order, at least to most people, unless their application were worked out in the trifle that came first to hand?”

“Experimental philosophy,” said Rachel, in rather a considering tone, as if the notion, when presented to her in plain English, required translation into the language of her thoughts.

“If you like to call it so,” said Miss Williams, with a look of arch fun. “For instance, the great art of mud pie taught us the porous nature of clay, the expansive power of steam, etc. etc.”

“You had some one to improve it to you?”

“Oh dear no. Only afterwards, when we read of such things we remembered how our clay manufactures always burst in the baking unless they were well dried first.”

“Then you had the rare power of elucidating a principle?”

“No, not I. My brother had; but I could only perceive the confirmation.”

“This reminds me of an interesting article on the Edgeworth system of education in the ‘Traveller’s Review.’ I will send it down to you.”

“Thank you, but I have it here.”

“Indeed; and do you not think it excellent, and quite agree with it?”

“Yes, I quite agree with it,” and there was an odd look in her bright transparent eyes that made Grace speculate whether she could have heard that agreement with the Invalid in the “Traveller’s Review” was one of the primary articles of faith acquired by Rachel.

But Grace, though rather proud of Rachel’s falling under the spell of Miss Williams’ conversation, deemed an examination rather hard on her, and took the opportunity of asking for her sister.

“She is generally at home by this time; but this is her last day at Cliff Cottages, and she was to stay late to help in the packing up.”

“Will she be at home for the present?” asked Grace.

“Yes, Rose and I are looking forward to a festival of her.”

Grace was not at all surprised to hear Rachel at once commit herself with “My cousin, Lady Temple,” and rush into the matter in hand as if secure that the other Miss Williams would educate on the principles of the Invalid; but full in the midst there was a sound of wheels and a ring at the bell. Miss Williams quietly signed to her little attendant to put a chair in an accessible place, and in walked Lady Temple, Mrs. Curtis, and the middle brace of boys.

“The room will be too full,” was Grace’s aside to her sister, chiefly thinking of her mother, but also of their hostess; but Rachel returned for answer, “I must see about it;” and Grace could only remove herself into the verandah, and try to attract Leoline and Hubert after her, but failing in this, she talked to the far more conversible Rose about the bullfinch that hung at the window, which loved no one but Aunt Ermine, and scolded and pecked at every one else; and Augustus, the beloved tame toad, that lived in a hole under a tree in the garden. Mrs. Curtis, considerate and tender-hearted, startled to find her daughter in the field, and wishing her niece to begin about her own affairs, talked common-place by way of filling up the time, and Rachel had her eyes free for a range of the apartment. The foundation was the dull, third-rate lodging-house, the superstructure told of other scenes. One end of the room was almost filled by the frameless portrait of a dignified clergyman, who would have had far more justice done to him by greater distance; a beautifully-painted miniature of a lady with short waist and small crisp curls, was the centre of a system of photographs over the mantel-piece; a large crayon sketch showed three sisters between the ages of six and sixteen, sentimentalizing over a flower-basket; a pair of water-colour drawings represented a handsome church and comfortable parsonage; and the domestic gallery was completed by two prints—one of a middle-aged county-member, the other one of Chalon’s ladylike matrons in watered-silk aprons. With some difficulty Rachel read on the one the autograph, J. T. Beauchamp, and on the other the inscription, the Lady Alison Beauchamp. The table-cover was of tasteful silk patchwork, the vase in the centre was of red earthenware, but was encircled with real ivy leaves gummed on in their freshness, and was filled with wild flowers; books filled every corner; and Rachel felt herself out of the much-loathed region of common-place, but she could not recover from her surprise at the audacity of such an independent measure on the part of her cousin; and under cover of her mother’s civil talk, said to Fanny, “I never expected to see you here.”

“My aunt thought of it,” said Fanny, “and as she seems to find the children too much—”

She broke off, for Mrs. Curtis had paused to let her introduce the subject, but poor Fanny had never taken the initiative, and Rachel did it for her by explaining that all had come on the same errand, to ask if Miss Williams would undertake the lessons of her nephews; Lady Temple softly murmured under her veil something about hopes and too much trouble; an appointment was made for the following morning, and Mrs. Curtis, with a general sensation of an oppressive multitude in a small room, took her leave, and the company departed, Fanny, all the way home, hoping that the other Miss Williams would be like her sister, pitying the cripple, wishing that the sisters were in the remotest degree military, so as to obtain the respect of the hoys, and wondering what would be the Major’s opinion.

“So many ladies!” exclaimed little Rose. “Aunt Ermine, have they made your head ache?”

“No, my dear, thank you, I am only tired. If you will pull out the rest for my feet, I will be quiet a little, and be ready for tea when Aunt Ailie comes.”

The child handily converted the chair into a couch, arranging the dress and coverings with the familiarity of long use, and by no means shocked by the contraction and helplessness of the lower limbs, to which she had been so much accustomed all her life that it never even occurred to her to pity Aunt Ermine, who never treated herself as an object of compassion. She was thanked by a tender pressure on her hair, and then saying—

“Now I shall wish Augustus good night; bring Violetta home from her play in the garden, and let her drink tea, and go to bed.”

Ah, Violetta, purchased with a silver groat, what was not your value in Mackarel Lane? Were you not one of its most considered inhabitants, scarcely less a child of Aunt Ermine and Aunt Alison than their Rosebud herself?

Murmur, murmur, rippled the child’s happy low-toned monologue directed to her silent but sufficient playmate, and so far from disturbing the aunt, that more than one smile played on her lips at the quaint fancies, and at the well of gladness in the young spirit, which made day after day of the society of a cripple and an old doll, one constant song of bliss, one dream of bright imaginings. Surely it was an equalization of blessings that rendered little lonely Rose, motherless and well nigh fatherless, poor, with no companion but a crippled aunt, a bird and a toad, with scarcely a toy, and never a party of pleasure, one of the most joyous beings under the sun, free from occasions of childish troubles, without collisions of temper, with few contradictions, and with lessons rather pleasure than toil. Perhaps Ermine did not take into account the sunshiny content and cheerfulness that made herself a delightful companion and playfellow, able to accept the child as her solace, not her burthen.

Presently Rose looked up, and meeting the bright pleasant eyes, observed—“Violetta has been very good, and said all her lessons quite perfect, and she would like to sit up till her Aunt Ailie comes home. Do you think she may?”

“Will she not be tired to-morrow?”

“Oh, then she will be lazy, and not get up when she is called, till I pull all the clothes off, and that will be fun.”

“Or she may be fretful now?”

A series of little squeaks ensued, followed by “Now, my love; that is taking a very unfair advantage of my promise. You will make your poor Aunt Ermine’s head ache, and I shall have to send you to bed.”

“Would not a story pass away the time?”

“You tell it, Aunt Ermine; your stories are always the best. And let there be a fairy in it!”

The fairy had nearly performed her part, when the arrival took place, and Rose darted forward to receive Aunt Ailie’s greeting kiss.

“Yes, Rosie—yes, Violetta; what do you think I have got for you?”

And out came a doll’s chair with a broken leg, condemned by the departing pupils, and granted with a laugh to the governess’s request to take it to her little niece; but never in its best days had the chair been so prized. It was introduced to Violetta as the reward of virtue for having controlled her fretfulness, and the repair of its infirmity was the first consideration that occupied all the three. After all, Violetta’s sitting posture was, as Alison observed, an example of the inclined plane, but that was nothing to Rose, and the seance would have been indefinitely prolonged, but for considerations for Violetta’s health.

The sisters were alike, and Alison had, like her elder, what is emphatically called countenance, but her features were less chiselled, and her dark straight brows so nearly met that, as Rose had once remarked, they made a bridge of one arch instead of two. Six years younger, in full health, and daily battling with the world, Alison had a remarkable look of concentration and vigour, her upright bearing, clear decided speech, and glance of kindness won instant respect and reliance, but her face missed the radiant beamy brightness of her sister’s; her face was sweet and winning, but it was not habitual with her, and there was about her a look as if some terrible wave of grief or suffering had swept over her ere yet the features were fully fixed, and had thus moulded her expression for life. But playfulness was the tone that reigned around Ermine’s couch at ordinary moments, and beside her the grave Alison was lively, not with effort, but by infection.

“There,” she said, holding up a cheque; “now we’ll have a jubilee, and take you down under the East cliff, and we’ll invest a shilling in ‘Ivanhoe,’ and Rose and Violetta shall open their ears!”

“And you shall have a respectable Sunday mantle.”

“Oh, I dare say Julia will send us a box.”

“Then you will have to put a label on your back, ‘Second-hand!’ or her velvet will be a scandal. I can’t wear out that at home like this flagrant, flowery thing, that I saw Miss Curtis looking at as rather a disreputable article. There’s preferment for you, Ailie! What do you think of a general’s widow with six boys? She is come after you. We had a great invasion—three Curtises and this pretty little widow, and various sons!”

“Will she stay?”

“Most likely, for she is a relation of Mrs. Curtis, and comes to be near her. You are to call for inspection at eleven o’clock tomorrow, so I fear your holiday will be short.”

“Well, the less play the less anxiety. How many drives will the six young gentlemen be worth to you?”

“I am afraid it will be at the cost of tough work to you; she looked to me too sweet a creature to have broken her sons in, but I should think she would be pleasant to deal with.”

“If she be like Miss Curtis, I am sure she will.”

“Miss Curtis? My old friend you mean. She was rather suppressed today, and I began to comprehend the reason of the shudder with which Mr. Touchett speaks of the dogmatical young lady.”

“I hope she did not overwhelm you!”

“Oh, no! I rather liked her; she was so earnest and spirited, I could fancy enjoying a good passage at arms with her if these were old times. But I hope she will not take the direction of your school-room, though she is an admirer of the educational papers in the ‘Traveller.’”

And here the discussion was ended by the entrance of little Rose with the preliminaries of the evening meal, after which she went to bed, and the aunts took out books, work, and writing materials.

Alison’s report the next day was—“Well, she is a very sweet creature. There is something indescribably touching in her voice and eyes, so soft and wistful, especially when she implores one not to be hard on those great scrambling boys of hers.”

“So she is your fate?”

“Oh, yes, if there had been ten more engagements offered, I could not have helped accepting hers, even if it had not been on the best terms I have ever had.”

“What?”

“Seventy—for the hours between nine and five. Pretty well for a journeyman hack, is it not? Indeed, the pretty thing’s only fear seemed to be that she was requiring too much, and offering too little. No, not her only fear, for there is some major in the distance to whose approval everything must be subject—uncle or guardian, I suppose, but he seemed to be rather an object of jealousy to the younger Miss Curtis, for every hint of wishing to wait for the Major made her press on the negotiations.”

“Seventy! I hope you will make it do, Ailie. It would be a great relief.”

“And spare your brains not a little. Yes, I do trust to keeping it, for Lady Temple is delightful; and as to the boys, I fancy it is only taming they want. The danger is, as Miss Rachel told me, whether she can bear the sight of the process. I imagine Miss Rachel herself has tried it, and failed.”

“Part amateur work,” said Ermine, smiling. “It really is lucky you had to turn governess, Ailie, or there would have been a talent thrown away.”

“Stay till I have tried,” said Alison, who had, however, had experience enough not to be much alarmed at the prospect. Order was wont to come with her presence, and she hardly knew the aspect of tumultuous idleness or insubordination to unenforced authority; for her eye and voice in themselves brought cheerful discipline without constraint, and upheld by few punishments, for the strong influence took away the spirit of rebellion.

After her first morning’s work she came home full of good auguries; the boys had been very pleasant with her after the first ten minutes, and Conrade had gained her heart by his attention to his mother. He had, however, examined her minutely whether she had any connexion with the army, and looked grave on her disavowal of any relationship with soldiers; Hubert adding, “You see, Aunt Rachel is only a civilian, and she hasn’t any sense at all.” And when Francis had been reduced to the much disliked process of spelling unknown words, he had muttered under his breath, “She was only a civilian.” To which she had rejoined that “At least she knew thus much, that the first military duty was obedience,” and Francis’s instant submission proved that she had made a good shot. Of the Major she had heard much more. Everything was referred to him, both by mother and children, and Alison was the more puzzled as to his exact connexion with them. “I sometimes suspect,” she said, “that he may have felt the influence of those winsome brown eyes and caressing manner, as I know I should if I were a man. I wonder how long the old general has been dead? No, Ermine, you need not shake your head at me. I don’t mean even to let Miss Curtis tell me if she would. I know confidences from partisan relations are the most mischief-making things in the world.”

In pursuance of this principle Alison, or Miss Williams, as she was called in her vocation, was always reserved and discreet, and though ready to talk in due measure, Rachel always felt that it was the upper, not the under current that was proffered. The brow and eyes, the whole spirit of the face, betokened reflection and acuteness, and Rachel wanted to attain to her opinions; but beyond a certain depth there was no reaching. Her ways of thinking, her views of the children’s characters, her estimate of Mr. Touchett—nay, even her tastes as to the Invalid’s letters in the “Traveller’s Review,” remained only partially revealed, in spite of Rachel’s best efforts at fishing, and attempting to set the example.

“It really seemed,” as she observed to Grace, “as if the more I talk, the less she says.” At which Grace gave way to a small short laugh, though she owned the force of Rachel’s maxim, that to bestow confidence was the way to provoke it; and forbore to refer to a certain delightful afternoon that Rachel, in her childhood, had spent alone with a little girl whom she had never discovered to be deaf and dumb. Still Rachel had never been able to make out why Grace, with no theories at all, got so many more confidences than she did. She was fully aware of her sister’s superior attractiveness to common-place people, and made her welcome to stand first with the chief of their kindred, and most of the clergy and young ladies around. But it was hard that where Rachel really liked and met half-way, the intimate confidence should always be bestowed upon Grace, or even the mother. She had yet to learn that the way to draw out a snail is not to, grasp its horns, and that halfway meeting is not to launch one’s self to the opposite starting point. Either her inquiries were too point blank to invite detailed replies, or her own communications absorbed her too much to leave room for a return. Thus she told Miss Williams the whole story of the thrush’s nest, and all her own reflections upon the characteristics it betokened; and only afterwards, on thinking over the conversation, perceived that she had elicited nothing but that it was very difficult to judge in such cases, not even any decided assent to her own demonstrations. It was true that riots and breaches of the peace ceased while Miss Williams was in the house, and learning and good manners were being fast acquired; but until Conrade’s duplicity should be detected, or the whole disposition of the family discussed with herself, Rachel doubted the powers of the instructress. It was true that Fanny was very happy with her, and only regretted that the uncertainty of the Major’s whereabouts precluded his being informed of the newly-found treasure; but Fanny was sure to be satisfied as long as her boys were happy and not very naughty, and she cared very little about people’s minds.

If any one did “get on” with the governess it was Grace, who had been the first acquaintance in the family, and met her often in the service of the parish, as well as in her official character at the Homestead. It so chanced that one Sunday afternoon they found themselves simultaneously at the door of the school-house, whence issued not the customary hum, but loud sounds of singing.

“Ah!” said Grace, “Mr. Touchett was talking of getting the choir master from Avoncester, and giving up an afternoon to practice for Easter, but he never told me it was to be to-day.”

On inquiry, it appeared that notice had been given in the morning, but not till after Miss Williams had gone home to fetch her little niece, and while Rachel was teaching her boys in the class-room out of hearing. It was one of the little bits of bad management that were sure to happen wherever poor Mr. Touchett was concerned; and both ladies feeling it easy to overlook for themselves, were thankful that it had not befallen Rachel. Alison Williams, thinking it far to walk either to the Homestead or Myrtlewood before church, proposed to Grace to come home with her, an offer that was thankfully accepted, with merely the scruple whether she should disturb the invalid.

“Oh, no, it would be a great pleasure; I always wish we could get more change and variety for her on Sunday.”

“She is very self-denying to spare you to the school.”

“I have often wished to give it up, but she never will let me. She says it is one of the few things we can do, and I see besides that it brings her fresh interests. She knows about all my class, and works for them, and has them to see her; and I am sure it is better for her, though it leaves her more hours alone with Rose.”

“And the Sunday services are too long for her?”

“Not so much that, as that she cannot sit on those narrow benches unless two are put close together so that she can almost lie, and there is not room for her chair in the aisle on a Sunday. It is the greatest deprivation of all.”

“It is so sad, and she is so patient and so energetic,” said Grace, using her favourite monosyllable in peace, out of Rachel’s hearing.

“You would say so, indeed, if you really knew her, or how she has found strength and courage for me through all the terrible sutfering.”

“Then does she suffer so much?”

“Oh, no, not now! That was in the first years.”

“It was not always so.”

“No, indeed! You thought it deformity! Oh, no, no! she was so beautiful.”

“That she is still. I never saw my sister so much struck with any one. There is something so striking in her bright glance out of those clear eyes.”

“Ah! if you had only seen her bloom before—”

“The accident?”

“I burnt her,” said Alison, almost inaudibly.

“You! you, poor dear! How dreadful for you.”

“Yes, I burnt her,” said Alison, more steadily. “You ought not to be kind to me without knowing about it. It was an accident of course, but it was a fit of petulance. I threw a match without looking where it was going.”

“It must have been when you were very young.”

“Fourteen. I was in a naughty fit at her refusing to go to the great musical meeting with us. We always used to go to stay at one of the canon’s houses for it, a house where one was dull and shy; and I could not bear going without her, nor understand the reason.”

“And was there a reason?”

“Yes, poor dear Ermine. She knew he meant to come there to meet her, and she thought it would not be right; because his father had objected so strongly, and made him exchange into a regiment on foreign service.”

“And you did not know this?”

“No, I was away all the time it was going on, with my eldest sister, having masters in London. I did not come home till it was all over, and then I could not understand what was the matter with the house, or why Ermine was unlike herself, and papa restless and anxious about her. They thought me too young to be told, and the atmosphere made me cross and fretful, and papa was displeased with me, and Ermine tried in vain to make me good; poor patient Ermine, even then the chief sufferer!”

“I can quite imagine the discomfort and fret of being in ignorance all the time.”

“Dear Ermine says she longed to tell me, but she had been forbidden, and she went on blaming herself and trying to make me enjoy my holidays as usual, till this dreadful day, when I had worried her intolerably about going to this music meeting, and she found reasoning only made me worse. She still wrote her note of refusal, and asked me to light the taper; I dashed down the match in a frenzy of temper and—”

She paused for breath, and Grace squeezed her hand.

“We did not see it at first, and then she threw herself down and ordered me not to come near. Every one was there directly, I believe, but it burst out again and again, and was not put out till they all thought she had not an hour to live. There was no pain, and there she lay, all calmness, comforting us all, and making papa and Edward promise to forgive me—me, who only wished they would kill me! And the next day he came; he was just going to sail, and they thought nothing would hurt her then. I saw him while he was waiting, and never did I see such a fixed deathly face. But they said she found words to cheer and soothe him.”

“And what became of him?”

“We do not know. As long as Lady Alison lived (his aunt) she let us hear about him, and we knew he was recovering from his wound. Then came her death, and then my father’s, and all the rest, and we lost sight of the Beauchamps. We saw the name in the Gazette as killed at Lucknow, but not the right Christian name nor the same rank; but then, though the regiment is come home, we have heard nothing of him, and though she has never spoken of him to me, I am sure Ermine believes he is dead, and thinks of him as part of the sunshine of the old Beauchamp days—the sunshine whose reflection lasts one’s life.”

“He ought to be dead,” said Grace.

“Yes, it would be better for her than to hear anything else of him! He had nothing of his own, so there would have been a long waiting, but his father and brother would not hear of it, and accused us of entrapping him, and that angered my father. For our family is quite good, and we were very well off then. My father had a good private fortune besides the Rectory at Beauchamp; and Lady Alison, who had been like a mother to us ever since our own died, quite thought that the prospect was good enough, and I believe got into a great scrape with her family for having promoted the affair.”

“Your squire’s wife?”

“Yes, and Julia and Ermine had come every day to learn lessons with her daughters. I was too young; but as long as she lived we were all like one family. How kind she was! How she helped us through those frightful weeks!”

“Of your sister’s illness? It must have lasted long?”

“Long? Oh longer than long! No one thought of her living. The doctors said the injury was too extensive to leave any power of rallying; but she was young and strong, and did not die in the torture, though people said that such an existence as remained to her was not worth the anguish of struggling back to it. I think my father only prayed that she might suffer less, and Julia stayed on and on, thinking each day would be the last, till Dr. Long could not spare her any longer; and then Lady Alison nursed her night after night and day after day, till she had worn herself into an illness, and when the doctors spoke of improvement, we only perceived worse agony. It was eight months before she was even lifted up in bed, and it was years before the burns ceased to be painful or the constitution at all recovered the shock; and even now weather tells on her, though since we have lived here she has been far better than I ever dared to hope.”

“Then you consider her still recovering?”

“In general health she is certainly greatly restored, and has strength to attempt more, but the actual injury, the contraction, can never be better than now. When we lived at Richmond she had constantly the best advice, and we were told that nothing more could be hoped for.”

“I wonder more and more at her high spirits. I suppose that was what chiefly helped to carry her through?”

“I have seen a good many people,” said Alison, pausing, “but I never did see any one so happy! Others are always wanting something; she never is. Every enjoyment seems to be tenfold to her what it is to other people; she sees the hopeful side of every sorrow. No burthen is a burthen when one has carried it to her.”

As Alison spoke, she pushed open the narrow green door of the little lodging-house, and there issued a weak, sweet sound of voices: “The strain upraise of joy and praise.” It was the same that had met their ears at the school-door, but the want of body in the voices was fully compensated by the heartfelt ring, as if here indeed was praise, not practice.

“Aunt Ailie! O Aunt Ailie!” cried the child, as the room-door opened and showed the little choir, consisting of herself, her aunt, and the small maid of the house, “you should not have come, you were not to hear us till Trinity Sunday.”

Explanations were given, and Miss Curtis was welcomed, but Alison, still too much moved for ordinary conversation, slipped into the bedroom adjoining, followed by her sister’s quick and anxious eye, and half-uttered inquiry.

“I am afraid it is my fault,” said Grace; “she has been telling me about your accident.”

“Poor Ailie,” said Ermine, “she never will receive kindness without having that unlucky story out! It is just one of the things that get so cruelly exaggerated by consequences. It was one moment’s petulance that might have caused a fright and been forgotten ever after, but for those chemicals. Ah! I see, she said nothing about them, because they were Edward’s. They were some parcels for his experiments, gun cotton and the like, which were lying in the window till he had time to take them upstairs. We had all been so long threatened with being blown up by his experiments that we had grown callous and careless, and it served us right!” she added, stroking the child’s face as it looked at her, earnest to glean fresh fragments of the terrible half-known tale of the past. “Yes, Rosie, when you go and keep house for papa on the top of the Oural Mountains, or wherever it may be, you are to remember that if Aunt Ermine had not been in a foolish, inattentive mood, and had taken his dangerous goods out of the way, she might have been trotting to church now like other people. But poor Ailie has always helped herself to the whole blame, and if every childish fit of temper were the root of such qualities, what a world we should have here!”

“Ah! no wonder she is devoted to you.”

“The child was not fifteen, had never known cross or care, but from that moment she never was out of my room if it was possible to be in; and when nurse after nurse was fairly worn out, because I could not help being so distressing, there was always that poor child, always handy and helpful, growing to be the chief dependence, and looking so piteously imploring whatever was tried, that it really helped me to go through with it. Poor Ailie,” she added with an odd turn of playfulness, “I always fancied those frowns of anxiety made her eyebrows grow together. And ever since we came here, we know how she has worked away for her old cinder and her small Rosebud, don’t we?” she added, playfully squeezing the child’s cheeks up into a more budding look, hiding deeper and more overcoming feelings by the sportive action. And as her sister came back, she looked up and shook her head at her, saying,—

“You gossiping Ailie, to go ripping up old grievances. I am going to ask Miss Curtis not to let the story go any farther, now you have relieved your mind of it.”

“I did tell Lady Temple,” said Alison; “I never think it right not to let people know what sort of person they have to teach their children.”