I had been repeating a lesson to Miss Ellen Mulberry, who lay on a couch near the window, but we had both paused involuntarily to listen to Eleanor and Madame.

Miss Ellen was very good. She was also very gentle, and timid to nervousness. But from her couch she saw a good deal of the daily life of the school, and often understood matters better than those who were in the thick of it, I think.

When Madame had left the room, she called Eleanor to her, and in an almost trembling voice said:

“My dear, do you think you are quite right to speak so to Madame about that drawing?”

“I am very sorry, Miss Ellen,” said Eleanor; “but it’s what I think, and she asked me what I thought.”

“You are very clever, my dear,” said Miss Ellen, “and no one knows better than yourself that there are more ways than one of expressing one’s opinion.”

“Indeed,” Eleanor broke in, “I don’t want to be rude. I’m sorry I did speak so pertly. But oh, Miss Ellen, I wish you could see the trees my mother draws! How can I say I like those things of Mr. Henley’s? Like green seaweeds on the end of a pink hay-fork! And we’ve lots of old etchings at home, with such trees in them! Like—well, like nothing but real trees and photographs.”

Miss Ellen took Eleanor’s hand and drew her towards her.

“My dear,” said she, “you have plenty of sense; and have evidently used it to appreciate what your dear mother has shown and taught to you. Use it now, my dear, to ask yourself if it is reasonable to expect that men who could draw like the old masters would teach in ordinary girls’ schools, or, if they would, that school-mistresses could afford to pay them properly without a much greater charge to the parents of pupils than they would be willing to bear. You have had great advantages at home, and have learnt enough to make you able to say very smart things; but fault-finding is an easy trade, my dear, and it would be wiser as well as kinder to see what good you can get from poor Mr. Henley’s lessons, as to the use of the brush and colours, instead of neglecting your drawing because you don’t like his style, which, after all, you needn’t copy when you sketch from nature yourself. I will tell you, dear child, that my sister and I have talked this matter over before. Clever young people are apt to think that their stupid elders have never perceived what their brilliant young wits can put straight with half-a-dozen words. But I used to draw a little myself,” continued Miss Ellen very modestly, “and I have never liked Mr. Henley’s style. But he is such a very good old man, and so poor, that my sister has shrunk from changing. Still, of course our pupils are the first consideration, and we should have had another master if a much better one could have been got. But Mr. Markham, who is the only other one within reach, is not so painstaking and patient with his pupils as Mr. Henley; and though his style is rather better, it is not so very superior as to lead us, on the whole, to turn poor Mr. Henley away for him. As to Madame,” said Miss Ellen, in conclusion, “she was quite right, my dear, to contrast your negligence with Lucy’s industry, and your smart speech was not in good taste towards her, because you know that she knows nothing of drawing, and could not dispute the point with you. There she comes,” added Miss Ellen rather nervously. She was afraid of Madame.

“I’ll go and beg her pardon, dear Miss Ellen,” said Eleanor penitently, and rushing out of the room, she met Madame in the passage, and we heard her pouring forth a torrent of apology and self-accusation in a style peculiar to herself. If in her youth and cleverness she was at times a little sharp-tongued and self-opinionated, the vehemence of her self-reproaches when she saw herself in fault was always a joke with those who knew her.

“Eleanor’s confessions are only to be matched by her favourite Jeremy Taylor’s,” said Jack one day.

“She’s just as bumptious next time, all the same,” said Clement. He had been disputing with Eleanor, and the generous grace of meeting an apology half-way was no part of his character.

He had an arbitrary disposition, in which Eleanor to some extent shared. He controlled it to fairness in discussions with men, but with men only. With Eleanor, who persisted in thinking for herself, and was not slow to express her thoughts, he had many hot disputes, in which he often seemed unable to be fair, and did not always trouble himself to be reasonable.

By his own account he “detested girls with opinions.” Abroad he was politely contemptuous of feminine ideas; at home he was apt to be rudely so.

But this was only one, and a later development of many-sided Clement.

And the subject is a digression, and has no business here.

CHAPTER XV.

“Miss Arkwright will observe that these are sketches indicating the general effect of a scene; not tree studies.”

“I know, Mr. Henley,” said poor Eleanor, in much confusion; “at least, I mean I don’t know anything about water-colour sketching, so I ought not to have said anything; and I never thought that Madame would repeat it. I was thinking of pencil-drawings and etchings; and I do like to know one tree from another,” she added honestly.

“You draw in pencil yourself?” asked Mr. Henley.

“Oh no!” said Eleanor; “at least only a little. It was my mother’s drawings I was thinking of; and how she used to show us the different ways of doing the foliage of different trees, and the marking on the bark of the trunks.”

Mr. Henley drew a sheet of paper from his portfolio, and took a pencil from his case.

“Let us see, my dear young lady, what you remember of these lessons. The pencil is well cut. There are flat sides for shading, and sharp ends for outlines.”

Madame’s thin lips pursed with the ghost of a smile, as Eleanor, with hot cheeks and hands, came across “the room” to put her theories in practice.

“I can’t do it, I know,” she said, as she sat down, and gave herself one of those nervous twitches common to girls of the hobble-de-hoy age.

But Eleanor’s nervous’ spasms were always mitigated by getting something into her fingers. Pencil and paper were her favourite implements; and after a moment’s pause, and a good deal of frowning, she said: “We’ve a good many oaks about us;” and forthwith began upon a bit of oak foliage.

“It’s only a spray,” she said.

“It’s very good,” said the drawing-master, who was now looking over her shoulder.

“Oak branches are all elbows,” she murmured, warming to her work, and apparently talking to herself. “So different from willows and beeches.”

“Ve-ry good,” said Mr. Henley, as Eleanor fitted the branches dexterously into the clusters of leaves; “now for a little bit of the oak bark, if you please.”

“This is only one tree, though,” said Madame, who was also looking on. “Let us see others, mademoiselle.”

“Willows are nice to do,” said Eleanor, intent upon her paper; “and the bark is prettier than oak, I think, and easier with these long points. My mother says branches of trees should be done from the tips inwards; and they do fit in better, I think. Only willow branches seem as if they ought to be done outwards, they taper so. Beech trunks are very pretty, but the leaves are difficult, I think. Scotch pines are easy.” And Eleanor left the beech and began upon the pine, fitting in the horizontal branches under the foliage groups with admirable effect.

“That will do, Miss Arkwright,” said the little drawing-master. “Your mother has been a good guide to you; and Mother Nature will complete what she has begun. Now we will look at the copy, if you please.”

Eleanor’s countenance fell again. Her pink mountain had run into her blue mountain, and the interrupted wash had dried with hard and unmanageable outlines. Sponging was the only remedy.

Next drawing-lesson day Mr. Henley arrived a few minutes earlier than was his wont, staggering under a huge basket containing a large clump of flags and waterside herbage, which he had dug up “bodily,” as he said. These he arranged on a tray, and then from the bottom of the basket produced the broken fragments of a red earthenware jug.

“It was such a favourite of mine, Miss Arkwright,” said he; “but what is sacred to a maid-of-all-work? My only consolation, when she smashed it this morning, was the thought that it would serve in the foreground of your sketch.”

Saying which, the kind-hearted little man laid the red crocks among the weeds, and after much pulling up and down of blinds to coax a good light on to the subject, he called Eleanor to set to work.

“It is very good of you,” said Eleanor emphatically. “When I have been so rude, too!”

“It is a pleasure,” said the old man; “and will be doubly so if you do it well. I should like to try it myself,” he added, making a few hasty dashes with the pencil. “Ah, my dear young lady, be thankful that you will sketch for pleasure, and not for bread! It is pleasanter to learn than to teach.”

Out of gratitude to Mr. Henley alone, Eleanor would have done her best at the new “study”; but apart from this the change of subject was delightful to her. She had an accurate eye, and her outlines had hitherto contrasted favourably with her colouring in copies of the sketches she could not like. The old drawing-master was delighted with her pencil sketch of his “crockery among the reeds,” and Eleanor confessed to getting help from him in the choice and use of her colours.

“Studies” became the fashion among the more intelligent pupils at Bush House; though I have heard that experience justified the old man’s prophecy that they would not be so popular with the parents as the former style had been. “They like lakes, and boats, and mountains, and ruins, and a brighter style of colouring,” he had said, and, as it proved, with truth.

Eleanor was his favourite pupil. Indeed, she was in favour with all the teachers.

A certain quaint little German was our arithmetic-master; a very good one, whose patience was often sorely tried by our stupidity or frivolity. On such occasions he rained epithets on us, which, from his imperfect knowledge of English, were often comical, and roused more amusement than shame. But for Eleanor he never had a harsh word. She was thoroughly fond of arithmetic, and “gave her mind to it,” to use a good old phrase.

“Ah!” the little man would yell at us. “You are so light-headed! Sometimes you do do a sum, and sometimes not; but you do never think. There is not one young lady of this establishment who thinks, but Miss Arkwright alone.”

I remember an incident connected with the arithmetic-master which occurred just after we came, and which roused Eleanor’s intense indignation. It was characteristic, too, of Madame’s ideas of propriety.

The weather was warm, and we were in the habit of dressing for tea. Our toilettes were of the simplest kind. Muslin garibaldis, for coolness, and our “second-best” skirts.

Eleanor, Matilda, and I shared one room. On the first Wednesday evening after our arrival at Bush House we were dressing as usual, when Emma ran in.

“I’m so sorry I forgot to tell you,” said she; “you mustn’t put on your muslin bodies to-night. The arithmetic-master is coming after tea.”

“I don’t understand,” said Eleanor, who was standing on one leg as usual, and who paused in a struggle with a refractory elastic sandal to look up with a puckered brow, and general bewilderment. “What has the arithmetic to do with our dresses?”

Emma’s saucy mouth and snub nose twitched with amusement, as she replied in exact mimicry of Madame’s broken English: “Have you so little of delicacy as to ask, mademoiselle? Should the young ladies of this establishment expose their shoulders in the transparency of muslin to a professor?”

Matilda and I burst out laughing at Emma’s excellent imitation of Madame; but Eleanor dropped her foot to the floor with a stamp that broke the sandal, and burst forth into an indignant torrent of words, which was only stayed by the necessity for resuming our morning dresses, and hastening down-stairs. There Eleanor swallowed her wrath with her weak tea; and I remember puzzling myself, to the neglect of mine, as to the probable connection between arithmetic-masters and transparent bodices.

CHAPTER XVI.

So far as Matilda’s ailments were mental, I think that school-life may have been of some benefit.

Since the torments which have taught me caution in a household haunted by boys, I am less confidential with my diary than I used to be. And if I do not confide all my own follies to it, I am certainly not justified in recording other people’s.

Not that Matilda makes any secret of the hero-worship she wasted on the man with the chiselled face and weird eyes, whom we used to see on the Riflebury Esplanade. She never spoke to him; but neither for that matter did his dog, a Scotch deerhound with eyes very like his master’s, and a long nose which (uncomfortable as the position must have been) he kept always resting in his master’s hand as the two paced up and down, hour after hour, by the sea.

What folly Miss Perry talked on the subject it boots not at this date to record. I never indulged a more fanciful feeling towards him than wonder, just dashed with a little fear—but I would myself have liked to know the meaning of that long gaze he and the dog sometimes turned on us!

We shall never know now, however, for the poor gentleman died in a lunatic asylum.

I hope, when they shut him up, that they found the deerhound guilty also of some unhydrophobiac madness, and imprisoned the two friends together!

Of course we laugh now about Matilda’s fancy for the insane gentleman, though she declares that at the time she could never keep him out of her head—that if she had met him thirty-four successive times on the Esplanade, she would have borne no small amount of torture to earn the privilege of one more turn to meet him for the thirty-fifth—and that her rest was broken by waking dreams of the possible misfortunes which might account for his (and the dog’s) obvious melancholy, and of impossible circumstances in which she should act as their good angel and deliverer.

At the time she kept her own counsel, and it was not because she had ever heard of the weird-eyed gentleman and his deerhound that Mrs. Minchin concluded her advice to Aunt Theresa on one occasion by a shower of nods which nearly shook the poppies out of her bonnet, and the oracular utterance—“She’s got some nonsense or other into her head, depend upon it. Send her to school!”

One thing has often struck me in reading the biographies of great people. They must have to be written in quite a different way to the biographies of common people like ourselves.

For instance, when a practised writer is speaking of the early days of celebrated poets, he says quite gravely—“Like Byron, Scott, and other illustrious men, Hogg (the Ettrick shepherd) fell in love in his very early childhood.” And of course it sounds better than if one said, “Like Smith, and Brown, and Jones, and nine out of every ten children, he did not wait for years of discretion to make a fool of himself.”

Not being illustrious, Matilda blushes to remember this early folly; and not being a poet’s biographer, Aunt Theresa said in a severe voice, for the general behoof of the school-room, that “Little girls were sometimes very silly, and got a great deal of nonsense into their heads.” I do not think it ever dawned upon her mind that girls’ heads not being jam-pots—which if you do not fill them will remain empty—the best way to keep folly out was to put something less foolish in.

She would have taken a great deal of trouble that her daughters might not be a flounce behind the fashions, and was so far-seeing in her motherly anxieties, that she junketed herself and Major Buller to many an entertainment, where they were bored for their pains, that an extensive acquaintance might ensure to the girls partners, both for balls and for life when they came to require them. But after what fashion their fancies should be shaped, or whether they had wholesome food and tender training for that high faculty of imagination by virtue of which, after all, we so largely love and hate, choose right or wrong, bear and forbear, adapt ourselves to the ups and downs of this world, and spur our dull souls to the high hopes of a better—anxiety on these matters Mrs. Buller had none.

As to Mrs. Minchin, she would not have known what it meant if it had been put in print for her to read.

Matilda’s irritability was certainly repressed in public by school discipline, and from Eleanor’s companionship our interests were varied and enlarged. But in spite of these advantages her health rapidly declined. And this without its seeming to attract Miss Mulberry’s notice.

Indeed, she meddled very little in the matter of our health. She kept a stock of “family pills,” which she distributed from time to time amongst us. They cured her headaches, she said; and she seemed rather aggrieved that they did not cure Matilda’s.

But poor Matilda’s headaches brought more than their own pain to her. They seemed to stupefy her, and make her quite incapable of work. Her complexion took a deadly, pasty hue, one eye was almost entirely closed, and to a superficial observer she perhaps did look—what Madame always pronounced her—sulky. Then, no matter how fully any lesson was at her fingers’ ends, she stumbled through a series of childish blunders to utter downfall; and Madame’s wrath was only equalled by her irony. To do Matilda justice, she often used almost incredible courage in her efforts to learn a task in spite of herself. Now and then she was successful in defying pain; but by some odd revenge of nature, what she learned in such circumstances was afterwards wiped as completely from her memory as an old sum is sponged from a slate.

To headache and backache, to vain cravings for more fresh air, and to an inequality of spirits and temper to which Eleanor and I patiently submitted, Matilda still added a cough, which seemed to exasperate Madame as much as her stupidity.

Not that our French governess was cruelly disposed. When she took Matilda’s health in hand and gave her a tumbler of warm water every morning before breakfast, she did so in all good faith. It was a remedy that she used herself.

Poor Matilda was furious both with Madame’s warm-water cure and Miss Mulberry’s pill-box. She had a morbid hatred of being “doctored,” which is often characteristic of chest complaints. She struggled harder than ever to work, in spite of her headaches; she ceased to complain of them, and concealed her cough to a great extent, by a process known amongst us as “smothering.” The one remedy she pined for—fresh air—was the last that either Miss Mulberry or Madame considered appropriate to any form of a “cold.”

This craving for fresh air helped Matilda in her struggle with illness. Our daily “promenade” was dull enough, but it was in the open air; and to be kept indoors, either as a punishment for ill-said lessons, or as a cure for her cough, was Matilda’s great dread.

Night after night, when Madame had paid her final visit to our rooms, and we were safe, did Eleanor creep out of bed and noiselessly lower the upper sash of our window to please Matilda; whilst I sat (sometimes for an hour or more) upon the bolster of the bed in which Matilda and I slept together, and “nursed her head.”

What quaint, pale, grave little maids we were! As full of aches and pains, and small anxieties, and self-repression, and tender sympathy, as any other daughters of Mother Eve.

Eleanor and I have often since said that we believe we should make excellent nurses for the insane, looking back upon our treatment of poor Matilda. We knew exactly when to be authoritative, and when to sympathize almost abjectly. I became skilful in what we called “nursing her head,” which meant much more than that I supported it on my knees. Softly, but firmly, I stroked her brow and temples with both hands, and passed my fingers through her hair to the back of her head. I rarely failed to put her to sleep, and as she never woke when I laid her down, I have since suspected myself of unconscious mesmerism.

One night, when I had long been asleep, I was awakened by Matilda’s hysterical sobs. She “couldn’t get into a comfortable position;” her “back ached so.” Our bed was very narrow, and I commonly lay so poised upon the outer edge to give Matilda room that more than once I have rolled on to the floor.

We spoke in undertones, but Eleanor was awake.

“Come and see if you can sleep with me, Margery,” she said. “I lie very straight.”

I scrambled out, and willingly crept in behind Eleanor, into her still narrower bed; and after tearful thanks and protestations, poor Matilda doubled herself at a restful angle, and fell asleep.

Happily for me, I was very well. Eleanor suffered from the utter change of mode of life a good deal; but she had great powers of endurance.

Fatigue, and “muddle on the brain,” often hindered her at night from learning the lessons for next day. But she worked at them nevertheless; and tasks, that by her own account she “drove into her head” in bed, though she was quite unable to say them that evening, seemed to arrange themselves properly in her memory before the morning.

Matilda’s ill-health came to a crisis at last. To smother a cough successfully, you must be able to escape at intervals. On one occasion the smothering was tried too long, and after the aggravated outburst which ensued, the doctor was called in. The Bush House family practitioner being absent, a new man came for him, who, after a few glances at Matilda, postponed the examination of her lungs, and begged to see Miss Mulberry.

Matilda had learned her last lesson in Bush House.

From the long interview with the doctor, Miss Mulberry emerged with a troubled face.

Lessons went irregularly that day. Our quarter of an hour’s recreation was as much extended as it was commonly cut short, and Madame herself was subdued. She became a very kind nurse to Matilda, and crept many times from her bed during the night to see if “la pauvre petite” were sleeping, or had a wish that she could satisfy.

Indeed, an air of remorse seemed to tinge the kindness of the heads of Bush House to poor Matilda, which connected itself in Eleanor’s mind with a brief dialogue that she overheard between Miss Mulberry and the doctor at the front door:

“I feel there has been culpable neglect,” said Miss Mulberry mournfully. “But——”

“No, no. At least, not wilful,” said the doctor; “and springing from the best motives. But I should not be doing my duty, madam, towards a lady in your responsible position, if I did not say that I have known too many cases in which the ill-results have been life-long, and some in which they have been rapidly fatal.”

CHAPTER XVII.

Eleanor had brought several religious books with her—books of prayers and other devotional works. They were all new to Matilda and me, and we began to use them, and to imitate Eleanor in various little devout customs.

On Sunday Eleanor used to read Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying; but as we never were allowed to be alone, she was obliged to bring it down-stairs. Unfortunately, the result of this was that Miss Mulberry, having taken it away to “look it over,” pronounced it “not at all proper reading for young ladies,” and it was confiscated. After this Eleanor reserved her devotional reading for bed-time, when, if she had got fairly through her lessons for next day, I was wont to read the Bible and other “good books” to her in a tone modulated so as not to reach Madame’s watchful ear.

Once she caught us.

The books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha were favourite reading with Eleanor, who seemed in the grandly poetical praises of wisdom to find some encouragement under the difficulties through which we struggled towards a very moderate degree of learning. I warmly sympathized with her; partly because much of what I read was beautiful to read, even when I did not quite understand it; and partly because Eleanor had inspired me also with some of her own fervour against “the great war of ignorance.”

But, as I said, Madame caught us at last.

Eleanor was lying, yet dressed, upon her bed, the window was open, and I, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was giving forth the prayer of the Son of Sirach, with (as I flattered myself) no little impressiveness. As the chapter went on my voice indiscreetly rose:

“When I was yet young, or ever I went astray, I desired wisdom openly in my prayer.

“I prayed for her before the temple, and will seek her out even to the end.

“Even from the flower till the grape was ripe hath my heart delighted in her: my foot went the right way, from my youth up I sought after her.

“I bowed down mine ear a little, and received her, and gat much learning.

* * * * * *

“Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in the house of learning.

* * * * * *

“Put your neck under the yoke, and let your soul receive instruction: she is hard at hand to find.

“Behold with your eyes, how that I have had but little labour, and have gotten unto me much rest.

“Get learning——”

“Eh, mesdemoiselles! This is going to bed, is it? Ah! Give me that book, then.”

I handed over in much confusion the thin S.P.C.K. copy of the Apocrypha, bound in mottled calf, from which I had been reading; and ordering us to go to bed at once, Madame took her departure.

Madame could read English well, though she spoke it imperfectly. The next day she did not speak of the volume, and we supposed her to be examining it. Then Eleanor became anxious to get it back, and tried both argument and entreaty, for some time, in vain. At last Madame said:

“What is it, mademoiselle, that you so much wish to read in this volume of the holy writings?”

“Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus are what I like best,” said Eleanor.

“Eh bien!” said Madame, nodding her head like a porcelain Chinaman, and with a very knowing glance. “I will restore the volume, mademoiselle.”

She did restore it accordingly, with the historical narratives cut out, and many nods and grimaces expressive of her good wishes that we might be satisfied with it now.

In private, Eleanor stamped with indignation (whether or no her thick boots had fostered this habit I can’t say, but Eleanor was apt to stamp on occasion). We had our dear chapters again, however, and I promised Eleanor a new and fine copy of the mutilated favourite as a birthday present.

Eleanor was very good to me. She helped me with my lessons, and encouraged me to work. For herself, she laboured harder and harder.

I used to think that she was only anxious to get all the good she could out of the school, as she did not seem to have many so-called “advantages” at home, by her own account. But I afterwards found that she did just the same everywhere, strained her dark eyes over books, and absorbed information whenever and wherever she had a chance.

“I can’t say you’re fond of reading,” said Emma one day, watching Eleanor as she sat buried in a book, “for I’m fond of reading myself, and we’re not at all alike. I call you greedy!”

And Eleanor laughed, and quoted a verse from one of our favourite chapters: “They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

Eleanor and I overslept ourselves one morning. We had been tired, and when we did get up we hurried through our dressing, looking forward to fines and a scolding to boot.

But as we crept down-stairs we saw both the Misses Mulberry and Madame conversing together on the second landing. We felt that we were “caught,” but to our surprise they took no notice of us; and as we went down the next flight we heard Miss Mulberry say, with a sigh, “Misfortunes never come alone.”

We soon learnt what the new misfortune was. Poor Lucy had been taken ill. The doctor had been to see her early that morning, and had pronounced it fever—“Probably scarlet fever; and he recommends the school being broken up at once, as the holidays would soon be here anyway.” So one of the girls told us.

Presently Miss Mulberry made her appearance; and we sat down to breakfast. She ate hers hurriedly, and then made a little speech, in which she begged us, as a personal favour, to be good; and if it was decided that we should go, to do our best to get our things carefully together, and to help to pack them.

I am sure we responded to the appeal. I wonder if it struck Madame, at this time, that it might be well to trust us a little more, as a rule? I remember Peony’s saying, “Madame told me to help myself to tea. I might have taken two lumps of sugar, but I did not think it would be right.”

We were all equally scrupulous; we even made a point of speaking in French, though Madame’s long absences from the school-room, and the possibility of an early break-up for the holidays, gave both opportunity and temptation to chat in English.

On Monday evening at tea, Miss Mulberry made another little speech. The doctor had pronounced poor Lucy’s illness to be scarlet fever, and we were all to be sent home the next day. There were to be no more lessons, and we were to spend the evening in packing and other preparations.

We were very sorry for poor Lucy, but we were young; and I do not think we could help enjoying the delights of fuss, the excitement of responsibility and packing, and the fact that the holidays had begun.

We were going in various directions, but it so happened that we all contrived to go by the same train to London. Some were to be dropped before we reached town; one lived in London; and Eleanor and I had to wait for half-an-hour before catching a train for the north.

For I was going to Yorkshire. The Arkwrights had asked me to spend the holidays with Eleanor. There was now nothing to be done but for us to go up together, all unexpected as we were.

How we packed and talked, and ran in and out of each other’s rooms! It was late when we all got to bed that night.

Next morning the railway omnibus came for us, and with a curious sense of regret we saw our luggage piled up, and the little gate of Bush House close upon us.

As we moved off, Bridget, the nosegay-woman, drew near. Madame (who had shed tears as she bade us adieu) opened the gate again, ran out, cried shrilly to the driver to stop, and buying up half Bridget’s basketful at one sweep, with more tears and much excitement, flung the flowers in amongst us. As she went backwards off the step, on to which she had climbed, she fell upon Bridget, who, with even more excitement and I think also with ready tears, clung to the already moving omnibus, and turned her basket upside down over our laps.

I have a dim remembrance of seeing her and Madame seem to fall over each other, or into each other’s arms; and then, amid a shrill torrent of farewells and blessings in French and Irish, the omnibus rolled on, and Bush House was hid from our eyes.

CHAPTER XIX.

Eleanor and I sobered down after we parted from the other girls, and thus became sensible of some fatigue and faintness. We had been too much excited to eat any of the bread-and-butter prepared for our early breakfast at Bush House. We had run up and down and stood on our feet about three times as much as need was; we had talked and laughed and shaken ourselves incessantly; we had put out our heads in the wind and sun as the train flew on; we had tried to waltz between the seats, and had eaten two ounces of “mixed sweets” given us by the housemaid, and deluged each other with some very heavy-scented perfume belonging to one of us.

After all this, Eleanor and I felt tired before our journey had begun. We felt faint, sick, anything but hungry, and should probably have travelled north in rather a pitiful plight, had not a motherly-looking lady, who sat in the waiting-room reading a very dirty book of tracts—and who had witnessed both our noisy parting from our companions and the subsequent collapse—advised us to go to the refreshment-room and get some breakfast. We yielded at last, out of complaisance towards her, and were rewarded by feeling wonderfully refreshed by a solid meal.

We laid in a stock of buns and chocolate lozenges for future consumption, and—thanks to Eleanor’s presence of mind and experience—we got our luggage together, and started in the north train in a carriage by ourselves.

We talked very little now. Eleanor gazed out of her window, and I out of mine, in silence. As we got farther north, Eleanor’s eyes dilated with a curious glow of pride and satisfaction. I had then no special attachment to one part of England more than another, but I had never seen so much of the country before, and it was a treat which did not lose by comparison with the limited range of our view at Bush House.

As we ran on, the bright, pretty, sociable-looking suburbs of London gave way to real country—beautiful, cared-for, garden-like, with grand timber, big houses, and grey churches, supported by the obvious parsonage and school; and deep shady lanes, with some little cart trotting quaintly towards the railway bridge over which we rushed, or boys in smock-frocks sitting on a gate, and shouting friendly salutations (as it seemed) to Eleanor and myself. Then came broad, fair pastures of fairy green, and slow winding rivers that we overtook almost before we had seen them, with ghostly grey pollard willows in formal mystical borders, contrasting with such tints of pale yellow and gay greens, which in their turn shone against low distances of soft blue and purple, that the sense of colour which my great-grandfather had roused in me made me almost tremble with a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. From this flat but most fair country, the grey towers of Peterborough Cathedral stood up in ancient dignity; and then we ran on again. After a while the country became less rich in colour, and grander in form. No longer stretching flatly to low-lying distances of ethereal hue, it was broken into wooded hills, which folded one over the other with ever-increasing boldness of outline. Now and then the line ran through woods of young oak, with male ferns and bracken at their feet, where the wild hyacinths, which lie there like a blue mist in May, must for some weeks past have made way for the present carpet of pink campion.

And now the distance was no longer azure. Over the horizon and the lower part of the sky a thin grey veil had come—a veil of smoke. We were approaching the manufacturing districts. Grander and grander grew the country, less and less pure the colouring. The vegetation was rich almost to rankness; the well-wooded distances were heavily grey. Then tall chimneys poured smoke over the landscape and eclipsed the sun; and through strangely shaped furnaces and chimneys of many forms, which here poured fire from their throats like dragons, and there might have been the huge retorts and chemical apparatus of some giant alchemist, we ran into the station of a manufacturing town.

I gazed at the high blackened warehouses, chimneys, and furnaces, which loomed out of the stifling smoke and clanging noises, with horror and wonder.

“What a dreadful place!” I exclaimed. “Look at those dreadful things with flames coming out; and oh, Eleanor! there’s fire coming out of the ground there. And look at that man opening that great oven door! Oh, what a fire! And what’s he poking in it for? And do look! all the men are black. And what a frightful noise everything makes!”

Eleanor was looking all the time, but with a complacent expression. She only said, “It is a very busy place. I hear trade’s good just now, too.” And, “You should see the furnaces at night, Margery, lighting up all the hills. It’s grand!”

As she sniffed up the smoke with, I might almost say, relish, I felt that she did not sympathize with my disgust. But any discussion on the subject was stopped by our having to change carriages, and we had just settled ourselves comfortably once more, when I got a bit of iron “filings” into my eye. It gave me a good deal of pain and inconvenience, and by the time that I could look out of the window again, we had left the black town far behind. The hills were almost mountains now, and sloped away on all sides of us in bleak and awful grandeur. The woodlands were fewer; we were on the moors. Only a few hours back we had been amongst deep hedges and shady lanes, and now for hedges we had stone walls, and for deep embowered lanes we could trace the unsheltered roads, gleaming as they wound over miles of distant hills. Deep below us brawled a river, with here and there a gaunt mill or stone-built hamlet on its banks.

I had never seen any country like this; and if I had been horrified by the black town, my delight with the noble scenery beyond it was in proportion. I stood at the open window, with the moor breeze blowing my hair into the wildest elf-locks, rapturously excited as the great hills unfolded themselves and the shifting clouds sent shifting purple shadows over them. Very dark and stern they looked in shade, and then, in a moment more, the cloud was past, and a broad smile of sunshine ran over their face, and showed where cultivation was creeping up the hillside and turning the heather into fields.

Eleanor leaned out of the window also. Excitement, which set me chattering, always made her silent. But her parted lips, distended nostrils, and the light in her eyes bore witness to that strange power which hill country sways over hill-born people. To me it was beautiful, but to her it was home. I better understood now, too, her old complaints of the sheltered (she called it stuffy) lane in which we walked two and two when we “went into the country” at school. She used to rave against the park palings that hedged us in on either side, and declare her longing to tear them up and let a little air in, or at least to be herself somewhere where “one could see a few miles about one, and breathe some wind.”

As we stood now, drinking in the breeze, I think the same thought struck us both, and we exclaimed with one voice: “Poor Matilda! How she would have enjoyed this!”

We next stopped at a rather dreary-looking station, where we got out, and Eleanor got our luggage together, aided by a porter who seemed to know her, and whom she seemed to understand, though his dialect was unintelligible to me.

“I suppose we must have a cab,” said Eleanor, at last. “They don’t expect us.”

“Tommusisinttarn,” said the porter suggestively; which, being interpreted, meant, “Thomas is in the town.”

“To be sure, for the meat,” said Eleanor. “The dog-cart, I suppose?”

“And t’owd mare,” added the porter.

“Well, the boxes must come by the carrier. Come along, Margery, if you don’t mind a little bit of walking. We must find Thomas. We have to send down to the town for meat,” she added.

We found Thomas in the yard of a small inn. He was just about to start homewards.

By Eleanor’s order, Thomas lifted me into the dog-cart, and then, to my astonishment, asked “Miss Eleanor” if she would drive. Eleanor nodded, and, climbing on to the driver’s seat, took the reins with reassuring calmness. Thomas balanced the meat-basket behind, and “t’owd mare” started at a good pace up a hill which would have reduced most south-country horses to crawl.

“Father and Mother are away still,” said Eleanor, after a pause. “So Thomas says. But they’ll be back in a day or two.”

We were driving up a sandy road such as we had seen winding over the hills. To our left there was a precipitous descent to the vale of the river. To our right, flowers, and ferns, and heather climbed the steep hill, broken at every few yards by tiny torrents of mountain streams. The sun was setting over the distant Deadmanstone moors; little dropping wells tinkled by the roadside, where dozens of fat black snails were out for an evening stroll, and here and there a brimming stone trough reflected the rosy tints of the sky.

It was grey and chilly when we drove into the village. A stone pack-horse track, which now served as footpath, had run by the road and lasted into the village. The cottages were of stone, the walls and outhouses were of stone, and the vista was closed by an old stone church, like a miniature cathedral. There was more stone than grass in the churchyard, and there were more loose stones than were pleasant on the steep hill, up which we scrambled before taking a sharp turn into the Vicarage grounds.

CHAPTER XX.

It was Keziah who welcomed us, and I have always had an affection for her in consequence. She was housemaid then, and took to the kitchen afterwards. After she had been about five years at the Vicarage, she announced one day that she wished to go. She had no reason to give but that she “thought she’d try a change.” She tried one—for a month—and didn’t like it. Mrs. Arkwright took her back again, and in kitchen and back premises she reigns supreme to this day.

From her we learned that Mr. and Mrs. Arkwright, who had gone away for a parson’s fortnight, were still from home. We had no lack of welcome, however.

It seems strange enough to speak of a fire as comfortable in July. And yet I well remember that the heavy dew and evening breeze was almost chilly after sunset, and a sort of vault-like feeling about the rooms, which had been for a week or more unused, made us offer no resistance when Keziah began to light a fire. While she was doing so Eleanor exclaimed, “Let’s go and warm ourselves in the kitchen.”

Any idea of comfort connected with a kitchen was quite new to me, but I followed Eleanor, and made my first acquaintance with the old room where we have spent so many happy hours.

We found the door shut; much, it seemed, to Eleanor’s astonishment. But the reason was soon evident. As our footsteps sounded on the stone passage there arose from behind the kitchen door an utterly indescribable din of howling, yowling, squealing, scratching, and barking.

“It’s the dear boys!” said Eleanor, and she ran to open the door. For a moment I thought of her brothers (who must, obviously, be maniacs!), but I soon discovered that the “dear boys” were the dogs of the establishment, who were at once let loose upon us en masse. I have a faint remembrance of Eleanor and a brown retriever falling into each other’s arms with cries of delight; but I was a good deal absorbed by the care of my own small person, under the heavy onslaught of dogs big and little. I was licked copiously from chin to forehead by the more impetuous, and smelt threateningly at the calves of my legs by the more cautious of the pack.

They were subsiding a little, when Eleanor said, “Oh, cook, why did you shut them up? Why didn’t you let them come and meet us?”

“And how was I to know who it was at the door, Miss Eleanor?” replied an elderly, stern-looking female, who, in her time, ruled us all with a rod of iron, the dogs included. “Dear knows it’s not that I want them in the kitchen. The way them dogs behaves, Miss Eleanor, is scandilus.”

“Dear boys!” murmured Eleanor; on which all the dogs, who were settling down to sleep on the hearth, wagged their tails, and threatened to move.

“Much good it is me cleaning,” cook continued, “when that great big brown beast of yours goes roaming about every night in the shrubberies, and comes in with his feet all over my clean floor.”

“It makes rather pretty marks, I think,” said Eleanor; “like pot-moulding, only not white. But never mind, you’ve me at home now to wipe their paws.”

“They’ve missed you sorely,” said the cook, who seemed to be softening. “I almost think they knew it was you, they were so mad to get out.”

“Dear boys!” cried Eleanor, once more; and the dogs, who were asleep now, wagged their tails in their dreams.

“And there’s more’s missed you than them,” cook continued. “But, bless us, Miss Eleanor, you don’t look much better for being in strange parts. That young lady, too, looks as if she enjoyed poor health. Well, give me native air, there’s nothing like it; and you’ve not got back to yours too soon.”

Eleanor threw her arms round the cook, and danced her up and down the kitchen.

“Oh, dear cookey!” she cried; “I am so glad to be back again. And do be kind to us, and give us tea-cakes, and brown bread toast, and let the dogs come in to tea.”

Cook pushed her away, but with a relenting face.

“There, there, Miss Eleanor. Take that jug of hot water with you, and take the young lady up-stairs; and when you’ve cleaned yourselves, I’ll have something for you to eat; and you may suit yourselves about the dogs,—I’m sure I don’t want them. You’ve not got so much more sensible with all your schooling,” she added.

We went off to do her bidding, and left her muttering, “And what folks as can edicate their own children sends ’em all out of the house for, passes me; to come back looking like a damp handkerchief, with dear knows what cheap living and unwholesome ways, and want of native air.”

Cook’s bark was worse than her bite.

“She gives the dear boys plenty to eat,” said Eleanor; and she provided for us that evening in the same liberal spirit.

What a feast we had! Strong tea, and abundance of sugar and rich cream. We laid the delicious butter on our bread in such thick clumps, that sallow-faced Madame would have thought us in peril of our lives. There was brown bread toast, too; and fried ham and eggs, and moor honey, and Yorkshire tea-cakes. In the middle of the table Keziah had placed a large punch-bowl, filled with roses.

And all the dogs were on the hearth, and they all had tea with us.

After tea we tried to talk, but were so sleepy that the words died away on our heavy lips. So we took Keziah’s advice and went to bed.

“Keziah has put the chair-bed into my room, Margery dear,” said Eleanor.

“I am so glad,” said I. “I would rather be with you.”

“Would you like a dog to sleep with you?” Eleanor politely inquired. “I shall have Growler inside, and my big boy outside. Pincher is a nice little fellow; you’d better have Pincher.”

I took Pincher accordingly, and Pincher took the middle of the bed.

We were just dropping off to sleep when Eleanor said, “If Pincher snores, darling, hit him on the nose.”

“All right,” said I. “Good-night.” I had begun a confused dream, woven from my late experiences, when Eleanor’s voice roused me once more.

“Margery dear, if Growler should get out of my bed and come on to yours, mind you kick him off, or he and Pincher will fight through the bed-clothes.”

But whether Pincher did snore, or Growler invade our bed, I slept much too soundly to be able to tell.

CHAPTER XXI.

As we dressed, I adopted Eleanor’s fashion of doing so on foot, that I might examine her room. As is the case with the “bowers” of most English country girls of her class, it was rich in those treasures which, like the advertised contents of lost pocket-books, are “of no value to any one but the owner.” Prints of sacred subjects in home-made frames, knick-knacks of motley variety, daguerreotypes and second-rate photographs of “the boys”—i. e. Clement and Jack—at different ages, and of “the dear boys” also. “All sorts of things!” as I exclaimed admiringly. But Eleanor threatened at last to fine me if I did not get dressed instead of staring about me, so we went down-stairs, and had breakfast with the dogs.

“The boys will be home soon,” said Eleanor, as we devoured certain plates of oatmeal porridge, which Keziah had provided, and which I tasted then for the first time. “I must get their gardens tidied up before they come. Shall you mind helping me, Margery?”

The idea delighted me, and after breakfast we tied on our hats, rummaged out some small tools from the porch, and made our way to the children’s gardens. They were at some little distance from the big flower-garden, and the path that led to them was heavily shaded by shrubbery on one side, and on the other by a hedge which, though “quickset” as a foundation, was now a mass of honeysuckle and everlasting peas. The scent was delicious.

From this we came out on an open space at the top of the kitchen garden, where, under a wall overgrown with ivy, lay the children’s gardens.

“What a wilderness!” was Eleanor’s first exclamation, in a tone of dismay, and then she added with increased vehemence, “He’s taken away the rhubarb-pot. What will Clement say?”

“What is it, dear?” I asked.

“It’s the rhubarb-pot,” Eleanor repeated. “You know Clement is always having new fads every holidays, and he can’t bear his things being disturbed whilst he’s at school. But how can I help it if I’m at school too?”

“Of course you can’t,” said I, gladly seizing upon the only point in her story that I could understand, to express my sympathy.

“And he got one of the rhubarb-pots last holidays,” Eleanor continued. “It was rather broken, and Thomas gave in to his having it then, so it’s very mean of him to have moved it now, and I shall tell him so. And Clement painted church windows on it, and stuck it over a plant of ivy at the top of the garden. He thought it would force the ivy, and he expected it would grow big by the time he came home. He wanted it to hang over the top, and look like a ruin. Oh, he will be so vexed!”

The ivy plant was alive, though the “ruin” had been removed by the sacrilegious hands of Thomas. I suggested that we should build a ruin of stones, and train the ivy over that, which idea was well received by Eleanor; the more so that a broken wall at the top of the croft supplied materials, and Stonehenge suggested itself as an easy, and certainly respectable, model.

Meanwhile we decided to “do the weeding first,” as being the least agreeable business, and so set to work; I in a leisurely manner, befitting the heat of the day, and Eleanor with her usual energy. She toiled without a pause, and accomplished about treble the result of my labours. After we had worked for a long time, she sat up, pressing her hand to her forehead.

“My head quite aches, Margery, and I’m so giddy. It’s very odd; gardening never made me so before I went away.”

“You work so at it,” said I, “you may well be tired. What makes you work so at things?”

“I don’t know,” said Eleanor, laughing. “Cook says I do foy at things so. But when one once begins, you know——”

“What’s foy?” I interrupted. “Cook says you foy—what does she mean?”

“Oh, to foy at anything is to slave—to work hard at it. At least, not merely hard-working, but to go at it very hotly, almost foolishly; in fact, to foy at it, you know. Clement foys at things too. And then he gets tired and cross; and so do I, often. What o’clock is it, Margery?”

I pulled out my souvenir watch and answered, “Just eleven.”

“We ought to have some ‘drinkings,’ we’ve worked so hard,” said Eleanor, laughing again. “Haymakers, and people like that, always have drinkings at eleven, you know, and dinner at one, and tea at four or five, and supper at eight. Ah! there goes Thomas. Thomas!”

Thomas came up, and Eleanor (discreetly postponing the subject of the rhubarb-pot for the present) sent a pleading message to cook, which resulted in her sending us two bottles of ginger-beer and several slices of thick bread-and-butter. The dear boys, who had been very sensibly snoozing in the shade, divined by some instinct the arrival of our lunch-basket, and were kind enough to share the bread-and-butter with us.

“Drinkings” over, we set to work again.

I was surprised to observe that there were four box-edged beds, but as Eleanor said nothing about it, I made no remark. Perhaps it belonged to some dead brother or sister.

As the weeds were cleared away, one plant after another became apparent. I called Eleanor’s attention to all that I found, and she seemed to welcome them as old friends.

“Oh, that’s the grey primrose; I’m so glad! And there are Jack’s hepaticas; they look like old rubbish. Don’t dig deep into Jack’s garden, please, for he’s always getting plants and bulbs given him by people in the village, and he sticks everything in, so his garden really is crammed full; and you’re sure to dig into tulips, or crocuses, or lilies, or something valuable.”

“Doesn’t Clement get things given him?” said I.

“Oh, he has plenty of plants,” said Eleanor, “but then he’s always making great plans about his garden; and the first step towards his improvements is always to clear out all the old things, and make what he calls ‘a clean sweep of the rubbish.’”

By the time that the “twelve o’clock bell” rang from the church-tower below, the heat was so great that we gathered up our tools and went home.

In the afternoon Eleanor said, “Were you ever on the moors? Did you ever wade? Do you care about water-weeds? Did you ever eat bilberries, or carberries?—but they’re not ripe yet. Shall we go and get some Batrachosperma, and paddle a bit, and give the dear boys a bathe?”

“Delightful!” said I; “but do you go out alone?”

“What should we take anybody with us for?” said Eleanor, opening her eyes.

I could not say. But as we dressed I said, “I’m so glad you don’t wear veils. Matilda and I used to have to wear veils to take care of our complexion.”

Eschewing veils and every unnecessary encumbrance, we set forth, followed by the dogs. I had taken off my crinoline, because Eleanor said we might have to climb some walls, and I had borrowed a pair of her boots, because my own were so uncomfortable from being high-heeled and narrow-soled. They were too thin for stony roads also, and, though they were prettily ornamented, they pinched my feet.

We went upwards from the Vicarage along hot roads bordered by stone walls. At last we turned and began to go downwards, and as we stood on the top of the steep hill we were about to descend, Eleanor, with some pride in her tone, asked me what I thought of the view.

It was very beautiful. The slopes of the purple hills were grand. I saw “moors” now.

“The best part of it is the air, though,” she said.

The air was, in fact, wind; but of a dry, soft, exhilarating kind. It seemed to get into our heads, and we joined hands and ran wildly down the steep hill together.

“What fun!” Eleanor cried, as we paused to gain breath at the bottom. “Now you’ve come there’ll be four of us to run downhill. We shall nearly stretch across the road.”

At last we came to a stone bridge which spanned the river. It was not a very wide stream, and it was so broken with grey boulders, and clumps of rushes and overhanging ferns, that one only caught sight of the water here and there, in tiny torrents and lakes among the weeds.

My delight was boundless. I can neither forget nor describe those first experiences of real country life, when Eleanor and I rambled about together. I think she was at least as happy as I, and from time to time we both wished with all our hearts that “the other girls” could be there too. The least wisely managed of respectable schools has this good point, that it enlarges one’s sympathies and friendships!

We wandered some little way up the Ewden, as Eleanor called the river, and then, coming to a clear, running bit of stream, with a big grey boulder on the bank hard by to leave our shoes and stockings on, we took these off, and also our hats, and, kilting up our petticoats, plunged bravely into the stream.

“Wet your head!” shouted Eleanor; and following her example, as well as I could for laughing, and for the needful efforts to keep my feet, I dabbled my head liberally with water scooped up in the palms of my hands.

“Oh!” I cried, “how strong the water is, and how deliciously cold it is! And oh, look at the little fishes! They’re all round my feet. And oh, Eleanor, call the dogs, they’re knocking me down! How hard the stones are, and oh, how slippery!”

I fell against a convenient boulder, and Eleanor turned back, the dogs raging and splashing around her.

“I hope you’re not treading on the Batrachosperma?” she said, anxiously.

“What is it?” I cried.

“It’s what I’ve chiefly come in for,” said she. “I want some to lay out. It’s a water-weed; a fresh-water alga, you know, like seaweed, only a fresh-water plant. I’m looking for the stone it grew near. Oh, that’s it you’re on! Climb up on to it out of the way, Margery dear. It’s rather a rare kind of weed, and I don’t want it to be spoiled. Call the dogs, please. Oh, look at all the bits they’ve broken off!”

Eleanor dodged and darted to catch certain fragments of dark-looking stuff that were being whirled away. With much difficulty she caught two or three, and laid one of them in my hand. But I was not prepared for the fact that it felt like a bit of jelly, and it slipped through my fingers before I had time to examine the beauty of the jointed branches pointed out by Eleanor, and in a moment more it was hopelessly lost. We put what we had got into some dock-leaves for safety, and having waded back to our stockings, we put on our hats and walked barefoot for a few yards through the heather, to dry our feet, after which we resumed our boots and stockings and set off homewards.

“We’ll go by the lower road,” said Eleanor, “and look at the church.”

For some time after Eleanor had passed in through the rickety gates of the south porch, I lingered amongst the gravestones, reading their quaint inscriptions. Quaint both in matter and in the manner of rhyme and spelling. As I also drew towards the porch, I looked up to see if I could tell the time by the dial above it. I could not, nor (in spite of my brief learning in Dr. Russell’s grammar) could I interpret the Latin motto, “Fugit Hora. Ora”—“The hour flies. Pray.”