"Une petite fille comme Mademoiselle?" replied the man smiling, but not taking in the sense of the question. "No, he had not." How could there be two little demoiselles, "tout-à-fait pareilles?" He shook his head, good-natured but mystified, and Sylvia, getting frightened again, thanked him and sped off anew.
The next doorway—by this time she had unconsciously in her panic and confusion begun actually to retrace her steps round the main court of the palace—brought her again into a room filled with statuary and antiquities. She was getting so tired, so out of breath, that the excitement now deserted her. She sat down on the ledge of one of the great marble vases, in a corner where her little figure was almost hidden from sight, and began to think, as quietly and composedly as she could, what she should do. The tears were slowly creeping up into her eyes again; she let two or three fall, and then resolutely drove the others back.
"What shall I do?" she thought, and joined to her own terrors there was now the certainty of the anxiety and misery the others must, by this time, be suffering on her account. "Oh, poor little Molly," she said to herself. "How dreadfully she will be crying! What shall I do?"
Two or three ideas struck her. Should she go down one of the staircases which every now and then she came upon, and find her way out of the palace, and down in the street try to call a cab to take her back to the hotel? But she had no money with her, and no idea what a cab would cost. And she was frightened of strange cabmen, and by no means sure that she could intelligibly explain the address. Besides this, she could not bear to go home without them all, feeling certain that they would not desert the palace till they had searched every corner for her.
"If I could but be sure of any place they must pass," she said to herself, with her good sense reviving; "it would be the best way to wait there till they come."
She jumped up again. "The door out!" she exclaimed. "They must pass it. Only perhaps," her hopes falling, "there are several doors. The best one to wait at would be the one we came in by, if I could but tell which it was. Let me see—yes, I remember, as we came upstairs, aunty said, 'This is the Grand Escalier.' If I ask for the 'Grand Escalier.'"
Her courage returned. The very next cocked hat she came upon, she asked to direct her to the "Grand Escalier." He sent her straight back through a vestibule she had just left, at the other entrance to which she found herself at the head of the great staircase.
"I am sure this is the one we came up," she thought, as she ran down, and her certainty was confirmed, when, having made her way out through the entrance hall at the foot of the staircase, she caught sight, a few yards off, of an old apple woman's stall in the courtyard.
"I remember that stall quite well," thought Sylvia, and in her delight she felt half inclined to run up to the apple-woman and kiss her. "She looks nice," she said to herself, "and they must pass that way to get to the street we came along. I'll go and stand beside her."
Half timidly the little girl advanced towards the stall. She had stood there a minute or two before its owner noticed her, and turned to ask if mademoiselle wanted an apple.
Sylvia shook her head. She had no money and did not want any apples, but might she stand there to watch for her friends, whom she had lost in the crowd. The old woman, with bright black eyes and shrivelled-up, yellow-red cheeks, not unlike one of her own apples that had been thrown aside as spoilt, turned and looked with kindly curiosity at the little girl.
"Might Mademoiselle wait there? Certainly. But she must not stand," and as she spoke she drew out a little stool, on which Sylvia was only too glad to seat herself, and feeling a little less anxious, she mustered courage to ask the old woman if every one came out at this door.
"To go where?" inquired the old woman, and when Sylvia mentioned the name of the hotel and the street where they were staying, "Ah, yes!" said her informant; "Mademoiselle might be quite satisfied. It was quite sure Madame, her mother, would come out by that entrance."
"Not my mother," said Sylvia. "I have no mother. It is my grandmother."
"The grandmother of Mademoiselle," repeated the old woman with increased interest. "Ah, yes I too had once a grand-daughter."
"Did she die?" said Sylvia.
"Poor angel, yes," replied the apple-seller; "she went to the good God, and no doubt it is better. She was orphan, Mademoiselle, and I was obliged to be out all day, and she would come too. And it is so cold in Paris, the winter. She got a bad bronchitis and she died, and her old grandmother is now alone."
"I am so sorry," said Sylvia. And her thoughts went off to her own grandmother, and Molly, and all of them, with fresh sympathy for the anxiety they must be suffering. She leant back on the wall against which the old woman had placed the stool, feeling very depressed and weary—so weary that she did not feel able to do anything but sit still, which no doubt from every point of view was the best thing she could do, though but for her weariedness she would have felt much inclined to rush off again to look for them, thus decidedly decreasing her chance of finding them.
"Mademoiselle is tired," said the old woman, kindly. "She need not be afraid. The ladies are sure to come out here. I will watch well those who pass. A little demoiselle dressed like Mademoiselle? One could not mistake. Mademoiselle may feel satisfied."
Somehow the commonplace, kindly words did make Sylvia feel less anxious. And she was very tired. Not so much with running about the Louvre; that, in reality, had not occupied more than three quarters of an hour, but with the fright and excitement, and the excitement of a different kind too, that she had had the last few days, poor little Sylvia was really quite tired out.
She laid her head down on the edge of the table on which the apples were spread out, hardly taking in the sense of what the old woman was saying—that in half-an-hour at most Mademoiselle would find her friends, for then the doors would be closed, and every one would be obliged to leave the palace. She felt satisfied that the old woman would be on the look-out for the little party she had described to her, and she thought vaguely that she would ask grandmother to give her a sixpence or a shilling—no, not a sixpence or a shilling,—she was in France, not in England—what should she say? A franc—half a franc—how much was equal to a sixpence or a shilling? She thought it over mistily for a moment or two, and then thought no more about it—she had fallen fast asleep!
But how was this? She had fallen asleep with her head on the apple-woman's stall; when she looked round her again where was she? For a minute or two she did not in the least recognise the room—then it suddenly flashed upon her she was in the Salle Henri II., the room where poor Henry the Fourth was killed! But how changed it was—the pictures were all gone, the walls were hung with the tapestry she had wished she could see there, and the room was but dimly lighted by a lamp hanging from the centre of the roof. Sylvia did not feel in any way surprised at the transformation—but she looked about her with great interest and curiosity. Suddenly a slight feeling of fear came over her, when in one corner she saw the hangings move, and from behind the tapestry a hand, a very long white hand, appear. Whose could it be? Sylvia's fear increased to terror when it suddenly struck her that this must be the night of the 14th of May, the night on which Henry of Navarre was to be killed. She gave a scream of terror, or what she fancied a scream; in reality it was the faintest of muffled sounds, like the tiny squeal of a distressed mouse, which seemed to startle the owner of the hand into quicker measures. He threw back the hangings and came towards Sylvia, addressing her distinctly. The voice was so kind that her courage returned, and she looked up at the new comer. His face was pale and somewhat worn-looking, the eyes were bright and sparkling, and benevolent in expression; his tall figure was curiously dressed in a fashion which yet did not seem quite unfamiliar to the little girl—a sort of doublet or jacket of rich crimson velvet, with lace at the collar and cuffs, short trousers fastened in at the knees, "very like Ralph's knickerbockers," said Sylvia to herself, long pointed-toed shoes, like canoes, and on the head a little cap edged with gold, half coronet, half smoking cap, it seemed to her. Where had she ever seen this old-world figure before? She gazed at him in perplexity.
"Why are you so frightened, Mademoiselle?" said the stranger, and curiously enough his voice sounded very like that of the most amiable of her cocked-hat friends.
Sylvia hesitated.
"I don't think I am frightened," she said, and though she spoke English and the stranger had addressed her in French, he seemed quite to understand her. "I am only tired, and there was something the matter. I can't remember what it was."
"I know," replied her visitor. "You can't find Molly and the others. Never mind. If you come with me I'll take you to them. I know all the ins and outs of the palace. I have lived here so long, you see."
He held out his hand, but Sylvia hesitated. "Who are you?" she said.
A curious smile flickered over the face before her.
"Don't you know?" he said. "I am surprised at that. I thought you knew me quite well."
"Are you?" said Sylvia—"yes, I am sure you must be one of the pictures in the long gallery. I remember looking at you this afternoon. How did you get down?"
"No," said the stranger, "Mademoiselle is not quite right. How could there be two 'tout à fait pareils'?" and again his voice sounded exactly like that of the cocked-hat who would not understand when she had asked him if he had seen Molly. Yet she still felt sure he was mistaken, he must be the picture she remembered.
"It is very queer," she said. "If you are not the picture, who are you then?"
"I pass my time," said the figure, somewhat irrelevantly, "between this room, where I was killed and the 'Salle des Caryatides,' where I was married. On the whole I prefer this room."
"Are you—can you be—Henry the Fourth?" exclaimed Sylvia. "Oh! poor Henry the Fourth, I am so afraid of them coming to kill you again. Come, let us run quick to the old apple-woman, she will take care of you till we find grandmother."
She in turn held out her hand. The king took it and held it a moment in his, and a sad, very sad smile overspread his face.
"Alas!" he said, "I cannot leave the palace. I have no little grand-daughter like Mademoiselle. I am alone, always alone. Farewell, my little demoiselle. Les voilà qui viennent."
The last words he seemed to speak right into her ears, so clear and loud they sounded. Sylvia started—opened her eyes—no, there was no king to be seen, only the apple-woman, who had been gently shaking her awake, and who now stood pointing out to her a little group of four people hurrying towards them, of whom the foremost, hurrying the fastest of all, was a fair-haired little girl with a cream-coloured felt hat and feathers, who, sobbing, threw herself into Sylvia's arms, and hugged and hugged as if she never would let go.
"Oh, Sylvia, oh, my darling!" she cried. "I thought you were lost for always. Oh, I have been so frightened—oh, we have all been so frightened. I thought perhaps they had taken you away to one of the places where the tops of the beds come down, or to that other place on the river, the Morgue, where they drown people, only I didn't say so, not to frighten poor grandmother worse. Oh, grandmother dear, aren't you glad she's found?"
Sylvia was crying too by this time, and the old apple-woman was wiping her eyes with a corner of her apron. You may be sure grandmother gave her a present, I rather think it was of a five-franc piece, which was very extravagant of grandmother, wasn't it?
They had been of course hunting for Sylvia, as people always do for anything that is lost, from a little girl to a button-hook, before they find it, in every place but the right one. I think it was grandmother's bright idea at last to make their way to the entrance and wait there. There had been quite a commotion among the cocked-hats who had not seen Sylvia, only unfortunately they had not managed to communicate with the cocked-hats who had seen her, and they had shown the greatest zeal in trying to "match" the little girl in the cream-coloured hat, held out to them as a pattern by the brisk old lady in black, who spoke such beautiful French, that they "demanded themselves" seriously if the somewhat eccentric behaviour of the party could be explained, as all eccentricities should of course always be explained, by the fact of their being English! Aunty's distress had been great, and she had not "kept her head" as well as grandmother, whose energies had a happy knack of always rising to the occasion.
"What will Walter think of us," said aunty piteously, referring to the children's father, "if we begin by losing one of them?" And she unmercifully snubbed Ralph's not unreasonable suggestion of "detectives;" he had always heard the French police system was so excellent.
Ralph had been as unhappy as any of them, especially as grandmother had strenuously forbidden his attempting to mend matters by "threading his way in and out," and getting lost himself in the process. And yet when they were all comfortably at the hotel again, their troubles forgotten, and Sylvia had time to relate her remarkable dream, he teased her unmercifully the whole evening about her description of the personal appearance of Henry the Fourth. He was, according to Ralph, neither tall nor pale, and he certainly could not have had long thin hands, nor did people—kings, that is to say, at that date—wear lace ruffles or pointed shoes. Had Molly not known, for a fact, that all their lesson books were unget-at-ably packed up, she would certainly have suspected Ralph of a sly peep at Mrs. Markham, just on purpose "to set Sylvia down." But failing this weapon, her defence of Sylvia was, it must be confessed, somewhat illogical.
She didn't care, she declared, whether Henry the Fourth was big or little, or how he was dressed. It was very clever of Sylvia to dream such a nice dream about real history things, and Ralph couldn't dream such a dream if he tried ever so hard.
Boys are aggravating creatures, are they not?
Not many days after this thrilling adventure of Sylvia's, the little party of travellers reached their destination, grandmother's pretty house at Châlet. They were of course delighted to be there, everything was so bright, and fresh, and comfortable, and grandmother herself was glad to be again settled down at what to her now represented home. But yet, at the bottom of their hearts, the children were a little sorry that the travelling was over. True, Molly declared that, though their passage across the Channel had really been a very good one as these dreadful experiences go, nothing would ever induce her to repeat the experiment; whatever came of it, there was no help for it, live and die in France, at least on this side of the water, she must.
"I am never going to marry, you know," she observed to Sylvia, "so for that it doesn't matter, as of course I couldn't marry a Frenchman. But you will come over to see me sometimes and bring your children, and when I get very old, as I shall have no one to be kind to me you see, I daresay I shall get some one to let me be their concierge like the old woman in our lodge. I shall be very poor of course, but anything is better than crossing the sea again."
It sounded very melancholy. Sylvia's mind misgave her that perhaps she should offer to stay with Molly "for always" on this side of the channel, but she did not feel quite sure about it. And the odd thing was that of them all Molly had most relished the travelling, and was most eager to set off again. She liked the fuss and bustle of it, she said; she liked the feeling of not being obliged to do any special thing at any special hour, for regularity and method were sore crosses to Molly.
"It is so nice," she said, "to feel when we get up in the morning that we shall be out of one bustle into another all day, and nobody to say 'You will be late for your music,' or, 'Have you finished your geography, Molly?'"
"Well," said Sylvia, "I am sure you haven't much of that kind of thing just now, Molly. We have far less lessons than we had at home. It is almost like holidays."
This was quite true. It had been settled between grandmother and their father that for the first two or three months the children should not have many lessons. They had been working pretty hard for a year or two with a very good, but rather strict, governess, and Sylvia, at no time exceedingly strong, had begun to look a little fagged.
"They will have plenty to use their brains upon at first," said their father. "The novelty of everything, the different manners and customs, and the complete change of life, all that will be enough to occupy and interest them, and I don't want to overwork them. Let them run wild for a little."
It sounded very reasonable, but grandmother had her doubts about it all the same. "Running wild" in her experience had never tended to making little people happier or more contented.
"They are always better and more able to enjoy play-time when they feel that they have done some work well and thoroughly," she said to aunty. "However, we must wait a little. If I am not much mistaken, the children themselves will be the first to tire of being too much at their own disposal."
For a few weeks it seemed as if Mr. Heriott had been right. The children were so interested and amused by all they saw that it really seemed as if there would not be room in their minds for anything else. Every time they went out a walk they returned, Molly especially, in raptures with some new marvel. The bullocks who drew the carts, soft-eyed, clumsy creatures, looking, she declared, so "sweet and patient;" the endless varieties of "sisters," with the wonderful diversity of caps; the chatter, and bustle, and clatter on the market-days; the queer, quaint figures that passed their gates on horse and pony back, jogging along with their butter and cheese and eggs from the mountain farms—all and everything was interesting and marvellous and entertaining to the last degree.
"I don't know how other children find time to do lessons here," she said to Sylvia one day. "It is quite difficult to remember just practising and French, and think what lots of other lessons we did at home, and we seemed to have much more time."
"Yes," said Sylvia, "and do you know, Molly, I think I liked it better. Just now at the end of the day I never feel as if I had done anything nicely and settledly, and I think Ralph feels so too. He is going to school regularly next month, every day. I wish we were too."
"I don't," said Molly, "and it will be very horrid of you, Sylvia, if you go putting anything like that into grandmother's head. There now, she is calling us, and I am not nearly ready. Where are my gloves? Oh, I cannot find them."
"What did you do with them yesterday when you came in?" said Sylvia. "You ran down to the lodge to see the soldiers passing; don't you remember, just when you had half taken off your things?"
"Oh yes, and I believe I left them in my other jacket pocket. Yes, here they are. There is grandmother calling again. Do run, Sylvia, and tell her I'm just coming."
Molly was going out alone with grandmother to-day, and having known all the morning at what time she was to be ready, there was no excuse for her tardiness.
"My dear child," said grandmother, who, tired of waiting, just then made her appearance in their room, "what have you been doing? And you don't look half dressed now. See, your collar is tumbling off. I must really tell Marcelline never to let you go out without looking you all over."
"It wasn't Marcelline's fault, grandmother dear," said Molly. "I'm so sorry. I dressed in such a hurry."
"And why in such a hurry?" asked grandmother. "This is not a day on which you have any lessons."
"No-o," began Molly; but a new thought struck grandmother. "Oh, by the by, children, where are your letters for your father? I told you I should take them to the post myself, you remember, as I wasn't sure how many stamps to put on for Cairo."
Sylvia looked at Molly, Molly looked at Sylvia. Neither dared look at grandmother. Both grew very red. At last,
"I am so sorry, grandmother dear."
"I am so sorry, dear grandmother."
"We are both so sorry; we quite forgot we were to write them this morning."
Grandmother looked at them both with a somewhat curious expression.
"You both forgot?" she said. "Have you so much to do, my dear little girls, that you haven't room in your minds to remember even this one thing?"
"No, grandmother, it isn't that. I should have remembered," said Sylvia in a low voice.
"I don't know, grandmother dear," replied Molly, briskly. "My mind does seem very full. I don't know how it is, I'm sure."
Grandmother quietly opened a drawer in a chest of drawers near to which she was standing. It was very neat. The different articles it contained were arranged in little heaps; there were a good many things in it—gloves, scarfs, handkerchiefs, ribbons, collars, but there seemed plenty of room for all.
"Whose drawer is this?" she asked.
"Mine," said Sylvia.
"Sylvia's," answered Molly in the same breath, but growing very red as she saw grandmother's hand and eyes turning in the direction of the neighbour drawer to the one she had opened.
"I am so sorry, grandmother dear," she exclaimed; "I wish you wouldn't look at mine to-day. I was going to put it tidy, but I hadn't time."
It was too late. Grandmother had already opened the drawer. Ah, dear! what a revelation! Gloves, handkerchiefs, scarfs, ribbons, collars; collars ribbons, scarfs, handkerchiefs, gloves, in a sort of pot-pourri all together, or as if waiting to be beaten up into some wonderful new kind of pudding! Molly grew redder and redder.
"Dear me!" said grandmother. "This is your drawer, I suppose, Molly. How is it it is so much smaller than Sylvia's?"
"It isn't, grandmother dear," said Molly, rather surprised at the turn of the conversation. "It is just the same size exactly."
"Then how is it you have so many more things to keep in it than Sylvia?"
"I haven't, grandmother dear," said Molly. "We have just exactly the same of everything."
"And yet yours looks crowded to the last degree—far too full—and in hers there seems plenty of room for everything."
"Because, grandmother dear," said Molly, opening wide her eyes, "hers is neat and mine isn't."
"Ah," said grandmother. "See what comes of order. Suppose you try a little of it with that mind of yours, Molly, which you say seems always too full. Do you know I strongly suspect that if everything in it were very neatly arranged, you would find a very great deal of room in it; you would be surprised to find how little, not how much, it contains."
"Would I, grandmother dear?" said Molly, looking rather mystified. "I don't quite understand."
"Think about it a little, and then I fancy you will understand," said grandmother. "But we really must go now, or I shall be too late for what I wanted to do. There is that collar of yours loose again, Molly. A little brooch would be the proper thing to fasten it with. You have several."
Poor Molly—her unlucky star was in the ascendant this afternoon surely! She grew very red again, as she answered confusedly,
"Yes, grandmother dear."
"Well then, quick, my dear. Put on the brooch with the bit of coral in the middle, like the one that Sylvia has on now."
"Please, grandmother dear, that one's pin's broken."
"The pin's broken! Ah, well, we'll take it to have it mended then. Where is it, my dear? Give it to me."
Molly opened the unlucky drawer, and after a minute or two's fumbling extracted from its depths a little brooch which she handed to grandmother. Grandmother looked at it.
"This is not the one, Molly. This is the one Aunty sent you on your last birthday, with the little turquoises round it."
Molly turned quickly.
"Oh yes. It isn't the coral one. It must be in the drawer."
Another rummage brought forth the coral one.
"But the turquoise one has no pin either!"
"No, grandmother dear. It broke last week."
"Then it too must go to be mended," said grandmother with decision. "See, here is another one that will do for to-day."
She, in turn, drew forth another brooch. A little silver one this time, in the shape of a bird flying. But as she was handing it to Molly, "Why, this one also has no pin!" she exclaimed.
"No, grandmother dear. I broke it the day before yesterday."
Grandmother laid the three brooches down in a row.
"How many brooches in all have you, Molly?" she said.
"Six, grandmother dear. They are just the same as Sylvia has. We have each six."
"And where are the three others?"
Molly opened a little box that stood on the top of the chest of drawers.
"They're here," she said, and so they were, poor things. A little mosaic brooch set in silver, a mother-of-pearl with steel border, and a tortoise-shell one in the shape of a crescent; these made up her possessions.
"I meant," she added naïvely, "I meant to have put them all in this box as I broke them, but I left the coral one, and the turquoise one, and the bird in the drawer by mistake."
"As you broke them?" repeated grandmother. "How many are broken then?"
"All," said Molly. "I mean the pins are."
It was quite true. There lay the six brooches—brooches indeed no longer—for not a pin was there to boast of among them!
"Six pinless brooches!" said grandmother drily, taking them up one after another. "Six pinless brooches—the property of one careless little girl. Little girls are changed from the days when I was young! I shall take these six brooches to be mended at once, Molly, but what I shall do with them when they are mended I cannot as yet say."
She put them all in the little box from which three of them had been taken, and with it in her hand went quietly out of the room. Molly, by this time almost in tears, remained behind for a moment to whisper to Sylvia,
"Is grandmother dreadfully angry, do you think, Sylvia? I am so frightened, I wish I wasn't going out with her."
"Then you should not have been so horribly careless. I never knew any one so careless," said Sylvia, in rather a Job's comforter tone of voice. "Of course you must tell grandmother how sorry you are, and how ashamed of yourself, and ask her to forgive you."
"Grandmother dear," said Molly, her irrepressible spirits rising again when she found herself out in the pleasant fresh air, sitting opposite grandmother in the carriage, bowling along so smoothly—grandmother having made no further allusion to the unfortunate brooches—"Grandmother dear, I am so sorry and so ashamed of myself. Will you please forgive me?"
"And what then, my dear?" said grandmother.
"I will try to be careful; indeed I will. I will tell you how it is I break them so, grandmother dear. I am always in such a hurry, and brooches are so provoking sometimes. They won't go in, and I give them a push, and then they just squock across in a moment."
"They just what?" said grandmother.
"Squock across, grandmother dear," said Molly serenely. "It's a word of my own. I have a good many words of my own like that. But I won't say them if you'd rather not. I've got a plan in my head—it's just come there—of teaching myself to be more careful with brooches, so please, grandmother dear, do try me again when the brooches are mended. Of course I'll pay them out of my own money."
"Well, we'll see," said grandmother, as the carriage stopped at the jeweller's shop where the poor brooches were to be doctored.
During the next two days there was a decided improvement in Molly. She spent a great part of them in putting her drawers and other possessions in order, and was actually discovered in a quiet corner mending a pair of gloves. She was not once late for breakfast or dinner, and, notwithstanding the want of the brooches, her collars retained their position with unusual docility. All these symptoms were not lost on grandmother, and to Molly's great satisfaction, on the evening of the third day she slipped into her hand a little box which had just been left at the door.
"The brooches, Molly," said grandmother. "They have cost just three francs. I think I may trust you with them, may I not?"
"Oh yes, grandmother dear. I'm sure you may," said Molly, radiant. "And do you know my drawers are just beautiful. I wish you could see them."
"Never fear, my dear. I shall be sure to take a look at them some day soon. Shall I pay them an unexpected visit—eh, Molly?"
"If you like," replied the little girl complacently. "I've quite left off being careless and untidy; it's so much nicer to be careful and neat. Good-night, grandmother dear, and thank you so much for teaching me so nicely."
"Good-night, grand-daughter dear. But remember, my little Molly, that Rome was not built in a day."
"Of course not—how could a big town be built in a day? Grandmother dear, what funny things you do say," said Molly, opening wide her eyes.
"The better to make you think, my dear," said grandmother, in a gruff voice that made Molly jump.
"Oh dear! how you do frighten me when you speak like that, grandmother dear," she said in such a piteous tone that they all burst out laughing at her.
"My poor little girl, it is a shame to tease you," said grandmother, drawing her towards her. "To speak plainly, my dear, what I want you to remember is this: Faults are not cured, any more than big towns are built, in a day."
"No, I know they are not. I'm not forgetting that. I've been making a lot of plans for making myself remember about being careful," said Molly, nodding her head sagaciously. "You'll see, grandmother dear."
And off to bed she went.
The children went out early the next morning for a long walk in the country. It was nearly luncheon time when they returned, and they were met in the hall by aunty, who told them to run upstairs and take off their things quickly, as a friend of their grandmother's had come to spend the day with her.
"And make yourselves neat, my dears," she said. "Miss Wren is a particular old lady."
Sylvia was down in the drawing-room in five minutes, hair brushed, hands washed, collar straight. She went up to Miss Wren to be introduced to her, and then sat down in a corner by the window with a book. Miss Wren was very deaf, and her deafness had the effect, as she could not in the least hear her own voice, of making her shout out her observations in a very loud tone, sometimes rather embarrassing for those to whom they were addressed, or, still worse, for those concerning whom they were made.
"Nice little girl," she remarked to grandmother, "very nice, pretty-behaved little girl. Rather like poor Mary, is she not? Not so pretty! Dear me, what a pretty girl Mary was the first winter you were here, twelve, no, let me see, fourteen years ago! Never could think what made her take a fancy to that solemn-looking husband of hers."
Grandmother laid her hand warningly on Miss Wren's arm, and glanced in Sylvia's direction, and greatly to her relief just then, there came a diversion in the shape of Molly. Grandmother happened to be asked a question at this moment by a servant who just came into the room, and had therefore turned aside for an instant as Molly came up to speak to Miss Wren. Her attention was quickly caught again, however, by the old lady's remarks, delivered as usual in a very loud voice.
"How do you do, my dear? And what is your name? Dear me, is this a new fashion? Laura," to aunty, who was writing a note at the side-table and had not noticed Molly's entrance, "Laura, my dear, I wonder your mother allows the child to wear so much jewellery. In my young days such a thing was never heard of."
Aunty got up from her writing at this, and grandmother turned round quickly. What could Miss Wren be talking about? Was her sight, as well as her hearing, failing her? Was grandmother's own sight, hitherto quite to be depended upon, playing her some queer trick? There stood Molly, serene as usual, with—it took grandmother quite a little while to count them—one, two, three, yes, six brooches fastened on to the front of her dress! All the six invalid brooches, just restored to health, that is to say pins, were there in their glory. The turquoise one in the middle, the coral and the tortoise-shell ones at each side of it, the three others, the silver bird, the mosaic and the mother-of-pearl arranged in a half-moon below them, in the front of the child's dress. They were placed with the greatest neatness and precision; it must have cost Molly both time and trouble to put each in the right spot.
Grandmother stared, aunty stared, Miss Wren looked at Molly curiously.
"Odd little girl," she remarked, in what she honestly believed to be a perfectly inaudible whisper, to grandmother. "She is not so nice as the other, not so like poor Mary. But I wonder, my dear, I really do wonder at your allowing her to wear so much jewellery. In our young days——"
For once in her life grandmother was almost rude to Miss Wren. She interrupted her reminiscences of "our young days" by turning sharply to Molly.
"Molly," she said, "go up to your room at once and take off that nonsense. What is the meaning of it? Do you intend to make a joke of what you should be so ashamed of, your own carelessness?"
Molly stared up in blank surprise and distress.
"Grandmother dear," she said confusedly. "It was my plan. It was to make me careful."
Grandmother felt much annoyed, and Molly's self-defence vexed her more.
"Go up to your room," she repeated. "You have vexed me very much. Either you intend to make a joke of what I hoped would have been a lesson to you for all your life, or else, Molly, it is as if you had not all your wits. Go up to your room at once."
Molly said no more. Never before had grandmother and aunty looked at her "like that." She turned and ran out of the room and up to her own, and throwing herself down on the bed burst into tears.
"I thought it was such a good plan," she sobbed. "I wanted to please grandmother. And I do believe she thinks I meant to mock her. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!"
Downstairs the luncheon bell rang, and they all seated themselves at table, but no Molly appeared.
"Shall I run up and tell her to come down?" suggested Sylvia, but "no," said grandmother, "it is better not."
But grandmother's heart was sore.
"I shall be so sorry if there is anything of sulkiness or resentfulness in Molly," she said to herself. "What could the child have had in her head?"
Soon after luncheon Miss Wren took her departure. Nothing more was said about Molly before her, but on leaving she patted Sylvia approvingly on the back.
"Nice little girl," she said. "Your grandmother must bring you to see me some day. And your sister may come, too, if she leaves her brooches at home. Young people in my young days——"
Aunty saw that Sylvia was growing very red, and looking as if she were on the point of saying something; Molly's queer behaviour had made her nervous: it would never do for Sylvia, too, to shock Miss Wren's notion of the proprieties by bursting out with some speech in Molly's defence. So aunty interrupted the old lady by some remark about her shawl not being thick enough for the drive, which quite distracted her attention.
As soon as she had gone, grandmother sent Sylvia upstairs to look for Molly. Sylvia came back looking rather alarmed. No Molly was there. Where could she be? Grandmother began to feel a little uneasy.
"She is nowhere in the house," said Sylvia. "Marcelline says she saw her go out about half-an-hour ago. She is very fond of the little wood up the road, grandmother: shall I go and look for her there?"
Grandmother glanced round. "Ralph," she said. "Oh, I forgot, he will not be home till four;" for Ralph had begun going to school every day. "Laura," she went on, to aunty, "put on your hat and go with Sylvia to find the poor child."
Sylvia's face brightened at this. "Then you are not so vexed with Molly now, grandmother," she said. "I know it seemed like mocking you, but I am sure she didn't mean it that way."
"What did she mean, then, do you think?" said grandmother.
"I don't quite know," said Sylvia. "It was a plan of her own, but it wasn't anything naughty or rude, I am sure."
Aunty and Sylvia went off to the little wood, as the children called it—in reality a very small plantation of young trees, where any one could be easily perceived, especially now when the leaves were few and far between. No, there was no Molly there. Hurriedly, aunty and Sylvia retraced their steps.
"Let us go round by the lodge," said aunty—they had left the house by the back gate—"and see if old Marie knows anything of where she is."
As they came near to the lodge they saw old Marie coming to meet them.
"Is Mademoiselle looking for the little demoiselle?" she said with a smile. "Yes, she is in my kitchen—she has been there for half-an-hour. Poor little lady, she was in trouble, and I tried to console her. But the dear ladies have not been anxious about her? Ah yes! But how sorry I am! I knew it not, or I would have run up to tell Marcelline where she was."
"Never mind, Marie," said aunty. "If we had known she was with you, we should have been quite satisfied. Run in, Sylvia, and tell Molly to come back to the house to speak to your grandmother."
Sylvia was starting forward, but Marie touched her arm.
"A moment, Mademoiselle Sylvie," she said,—Sylvia liked to be called "Mademoiselle Sylvie," it sounded so pretty—"a moment. The little sister has fallen asleep. She was sitting by the fire, and she had been crying so hard, poor darling. Better not wake her all at once."
She led the way into the cottage, and they followed her. There, as she had said, was Molly, fast asleep, half lying, half sitting, by the rough open fireplace, her head on a little wooden stool on which Marie had placed a cushion, her long fair hair falling over her face and shoulders—little sobs from time to time interrupting her soft, regular breathing.
Sylvia's eyes filled with tears.
"Poor Molly," she whispered to aunty, "she must have been crying so. And do you know, aunty, when Molly does cry and gets really unhappy, it is dreadful. She seems so careless, you know, but once she does care, she cares more than any one I know. And look, aunty." She pointed to a little parcel on the floor at Molly's side. A parcel very much done up with string, and an unnecessary amount of sealing-wax, and fastened to the parcel a little note addressed to "dear grandmother."
"Shall I run with it to grandmother?" said Sylvia: and aunty nodding permission, off she set. She had not far to go. Coming down the garden-path she met grandmother, anxiously looking for news of Molly.
"She's in old Marie's kitchen," said Sylvia, breathlessly, "and she's fallen fast asleep. She'd been crying so, old Marie said. And she had been writing this note for you, grandmother, and doing up this parcel."
Without speaking, grandmother broke the very splotchy-looking red seal and read the note.
"My dear, dear grandmother," it began, "Please do forgive me. I send you all my brooches. I don't deserve to keep them for vexing you so. Only I didn't, oh, indeed, I didn't mean to mock you, dear grandmother. It is that that I can't bear, that you should think so. It was a plan I had made to teach me to be careful, only I know it was silly—I am always thinking of silly things, but oh, believe me, I would not make a joke of your teaching me to be good.—Your own dearest
"Molly."
"Poor little soul," said grandmother. "I wish I had not been so hasty with her. It will be a lesson to me;" and noticing that at this Sylvia looked up in surprise, she added, "Does it seem strange to you my little Sylvia, that an old woman like me should talk of having lessons? It is true all the same—and I hope, do you know, dear?—I hope that up to the very last of my life I shall have lessons to learn. Or rather I should say that I shall be able to learn them. That the lessons are there to be learnt, always and everywhere, we can never doubt."
"But," said Sylvia, and then she hesitated.
"But what, dear?"
"I can't quite say what I mean," said Sylvia. "But it is something like this—I thought the difference between big people and children was that the big people had learnt their lessons, and that was why they could help us with ours. I know what kind of lessons you mean—not book ones—but being kind and good and all things like that."
"Yes," said grandmother, "but to these lessons there is no limit. The better we have learnt the early ones, the more clearly we see those still before us, like climbing up mountains and seeing the peaks still rising in front. And knowing and remembering the difficulties we had long ago when we first began climbing, we can help and advise the little ones who in their turn are at the outset of the journey. Only sometimes, as I did with poor Molly this morning, we forget, we old people who have come such a long way, how hard the first climbing is, and how easily tired and discouraged the little tender feet get."
Grandmother gave a little sigh.
"Dear grandmother," said Sylvia, "I am sure you don't forget. But those people who haven't learnt when they were little, they can't teach others, grandmother, when they don't know themselves?"
"Ah, no," said grandmother. "And it is not many who have the power or the determination to learn to-day the lessons they neglected yesterday. We all feel that, Sylvia, all of us. Only in another way we may get good out of that too, by warning those who have still plenty of time for all. But let us see if Molly is awake yet."
No, she was still fast asleep. But when grandmother stooped over her and gently raised her head, which had slipped half off the stool, Molly opened her eyes, and gazed up at grandmother in bewilderment. For a moment or two she could not remember where she was; then it gradually came back to her.
"Grandmother, will you forgive me?" she said. "I wrote a note, where is it?"—she looked about for it on the floor.
"I have got it, Molly," said grandmother. "Forgive you, dear? of course I will if there is anything to forgive. But tell me now what was in your mind, Molly? What was the 'plan'?"
"I thought," said Molly, sitting up and shaking her hair out of her eyes, "I thought, grandmother dear, that it would teach me to be careful and neat and not hurried in dressing if I wore all my brooches every day for a good while—a month perhaps. For you know it is very difficult to put brooches in quite straight and neat, not to break the pins. It has always been such a trouble to me not to stick them in, in a hurry, any how, and that was how I broke so many. But I'll do just as you like about them. I'll leave off wearing them at all if you would rather."
She looked up in grandmother's face, her own looking so white, now that the flush of sleep had faded from it, and her poor eyelids so swollen, that grandmother's heart was quite touched.
"My poor little Molly," she said. "I don't think that will be necessary. I am sure you will try to be careful. But the next time you make a plan for teaching yourself any good habit, talk it over with me first, will you, dear?"
Molly threw her arms round grandmother's neck and hugged her, and old Marie looked quite pleased to see that all was sunshine again.
Just as they were leaving the cottage she came forward with a basketful of lovely apples.
"They came only this morning, Madame," she said to grandmother. "Might she send them up to the house? The little young ladies would find them good."
Grandmother smiled.
"Thank you, Marie," she said. "Are they the apples? oh, yes, of course. I see they are. Is there a good crop this year?"
"Ah, yes, they seem always good now. The storms are past, it seems to me, Madame, both for me and my tree. But a few years now and they will be indeed all over for me. 'Tis to-morrow my fête day, Madame; that was why they sent the apples. They are very good to remember the old woman—my grand-nephews—I shall to-morrow be seventy-five, Madame."
"Seventy-five!" repeated grandmother. "Ah, well, Marie, I am not so very far behind you, though it seems as if I were growing younger lately—does it not?—with my little girls and my boy beside me. You must come up to see us to-morrow that we may give you our good wishes. Thank you for the beautiful apples. Some day you must tell the children the history of your apple-tree, Marie."
Marie's old face got quite red with pleasure. "Ah, but Madame is too kind," she said. "A stupid old woman like me to be asked to tell her little stories—but we shall see—some day, perhaps. So that the apples taste good, old Marie will be pleased indeed."
"What is the story of Marie's apple-tree, grandmother?" said Sylvia, as they walked back to the house.
"She must tell you herself," said grandmother. "She will be coming up to-morrow morning to see us, as it is her birthday, and you must ask her about it. Poor old Marie."
"Has she been a long time with you, grandmother dear?" said Molly.
"Twelve or thirteen years, soon after we first came here. She was in great trouble then, poor thing; but she will tell you all about it. She is getting old, you see, and old people are always fond of talking, they say—like your poor old grandmother—eh, Molly?"
"Grandmother," said Molly, flying at her and hugging her, for by this time they were in the drawing-room again, and Molly's spirits had quite revived.
The apples turned out very good indeed. Even Ralph, who, since he had been in France, had grown so exceedingly "John Bull," that he could hardly be persuaded to praise anything not English, condescended to commend them.
"No wonder they're good," said Molly, as she handed him his second one, "they're fairy apples I'm sure," and she nodded her head mysteriously.
"Fairy rubbish," said Ralph, taking a good bite of the apple's rosy cheek.
"Well, they're something like that, any way," persisted Molly. "Grandmother said so."
"I said so! My dear! I think your ears have deceived you."
"Well, grandmother dear, I know you didn't exactly say so, but what you said made me think so," explained Molly.
"Not quite the same thing," said grandmother. "You shall hear to-morrow all there is to tell—a very simple little story. How did you get on at school, to-day, Ralph?"
"Oh, right enough," said Ralph. "Some of the fellows are nice enough. But some of them are awful cads. There's one—he's about thirteen, a year or so younger than I—his name's Prosper something or other—I actually met him out of school in the street, carrying a bundle of wood! A boy that sits next me in the class!" he added, with considerable disgust.
"Is he a poor boy?" asked Sylvia.
"No—at least not what you'd call a poor boy. None of them are that. But he got precious red, I can tell you, when he saw me—just like a cad."
"Is he a naughty boy? Does he not do his lessons well?" asked grandmother.
"Oh I daresay he does; he is not an ill-natured fellow. It was only so like a cad to go carrying wood about like that," said Ralph.
"Ralph," said grandmother suddenly. "You never saw your uncle Jack, of course; has your father ever told you about him?"
Ralph's face lighted up. "Uncle Jack who was killed in the Crimea?" he said, lowering his voice a little. "Yes, papa has told me how brave he was."
"Brave, and gentle, and good," said grandmother, softly. "Some day, Ralph, I will read you a little adventure of his. He wrote it out to please me not long before his death. I meant to have sent it to one of the magazines for boys, but somehow I have never done so."
"What is it about, grandmother? What is it called?" asked the children all together, Molly adding, ecstatically clasping her hands. "If you tell us stories, grandmother, it'll be perfect."
"What is the little story about?" repeated grandmother. "I can hardly tell you what it is about, without telling the whole. The name of it—the name your uncle gave to it, was 'That Cad Sawyer.'"
Ralph said nothing, but somehow he had a consciousness that grandmother did not agree with him that carrying a bundle of wood through the streets proved that "a fellow" must certainly be a cad.