Chapter IV: Who Shall Be King? (3)

Of course my monopoly of the hero soon ended, and as I had no acquaintances there, and the young ones had been absorbed into games, or had fraternised with some one, I betook myself to explorations in company with Jane, who had likewise been left out. After we had wandered along a dazzling stand of calceolarias, she said, "Aunt Charlotte, papa says I ought to tell you something; I mean, why Avice could not come to-day, and why she has nothing to wear but her round hat. It is because she and Pica spent all they had in paying for that Maude Harris at the Convalescent Home. They had some kind of flimsy gauzy bonnets that were faded and utterly done for after Commemoration week; and as Uncle Martyn is always growling about ladies' luggage, they thought it would be a capital plan to go without all the time they are down here, till another quarter is due. Avice never thought of its not being right to go to Church such a figure, and now she finds that papa thinks the command to "have power on her head" really may apply to that sort of fashion, we are going to contrive something for Sunday, but it could not be done in time for to-day. Besides, she had no dress but a serge."

"She preferred dressing her sister to dressing herself," I answered; and Jane began assuring me that no one knew how unselfish that dear old Bird is. The little money she had, she added to Pica's small remnant, and thus enough had been provided to fit the elder sister out.

"I suppose," I said, "that Isa manages better, for she does not seem to be reduced to the same extremities, though I suppose she has less allowance than her cousins."

"She has exactly the same. I know it." And Jane caught herself up, evidently checking something I might have thought ill-natured, which made me respond something intended to be moralising, but which was perhaps foolish, about good habits of economy, and how this disappointment, taken so good-humouredly, would be a lesson to Avice. "A lesson? I should think so," said Jane bluntly. "A lesson not to lend her money to Isa"; and then, when I asked what she meant, she blurted out that all Isa's so-called share of the subscription for Maude Harris had been advanced by Avice--Pica had told her so, with comments on her sister's folly in lending what she well knew would never be repaid; and Alice could not deny it, only defending herself by saying, she could not sacrifice the girl. It was a very uncomfortable revelation, considering that Isa might have given her cousin my sovereign, but no doubt she did not think that proper, as I had meant it to be spent for this outing.

I will at least give her the benefit of the doubt, and I would not encourage Jane to say any more about her. Indeed, the girl herself did not seem so desirous of dwelling on Isa as of doing justice to Avice, whom, she told me very truly, I did not know. "She is always the one to give way and be put aside for Pie and Isa," said Jane. And now I think over the time we have had together, I believe it has often been so. "You are very fond of her," I said; and Jane answered, "I should _THINK_ so! Why, she spent eight months with us once at Bourne Parva, just after the great row with Miss Hurlstone. Oh, didn't you know? They had a bad governess, who used to meet a lover--a German musician, I think he was--when they were out walking, and bullied Avice because she was honest. When it all came to light, Pica came out and Isa was sent to school, but Avice had got into a low state of health, and they said Oxford was not good for her, so she came to us. And papa prepared her for Confirmation, and she did everything with us, and she really is just like one of ourselves," said Jane, as the highest praise imaginable, though any one who contrasted poor Jane's stiff PIQUE (Miss Dadsworth's turn- out) with the grace even of the gray serge, might not think it a compliment. Jane was just beginning to tell me that Avice always wrote to her to lay before her father the difficulties about right and wrong faith and practice that their way of life and habits of society bring before the poor child, when Isa descended upon us with "Oh! Aunt Charlotte, I could not think what had become of you, when I saw the great man without you."

I begin to wonder whether she is really so very fond of me, or whether she does not like to see me with one of the others.

However, I shall be able to take Jane's hint, and cultivate Avice, for, as my mother did not come yesterday, Lady Hollybridge has most kindly insisted on her going over to-day. The carriage is taking some one to the station, and is to call for her and me to bring us to luncheon, the kind people promising likewise to send us back. So I asked whether I might bring a niece who had not been able to come yesterday, and as the young people had, as usual, become enamoured of Metelill, they begged for her likewise. Avice looks very well in the dress she made up for Pica, and being sisters and in mourning, the identity will only be natural. She is very much pleased and very grateful, and declares that she shall see everything she cares about much more pleasantly than in the larger party, and perhaps 'really hear the hero talk.' And Uncle Horace says, "True, you Bird, you are not like some young folk, who had rather hear themselves talk than Socrates and S. Ambrose both at once." "Oh!" said saucy Pica, "now we know what Uncle Horace thinks of his own conversations with father!" By the bye, Martyn and Mary come home to-morrow, and I am very glad of it, for those evening diversions on the beach go on in full force, and though there is nothing tangible, except Charley's smoke, to object to, and it is the present way of young people, there is something unsatisfactory in it. Edith does not seem to mind what her daughters do. Margaret has no occasion to be uneasy about Jane, who always stays with the little ones while the maids are at supper, and generally takes with her the devoted Avice, who has some delicacy of throat forbidding these evening excursions. Meg gets more boisterous and noisy every day, Uchtred being her chief companion; but as she is merely a tomboy, I believe her parents think it inexpedient to give her hints that might only put fancies in her head. So they have only prohibited learning to smoke, staying out later than nine o'clock, and shrieking louder than a steam whistle!

17.--Yesterday was a great success. Avice was silent at first, but Metelill drew her out, and she had become quite at her ease before we arrived. You would have been enchanted to see how much was made of our dear mother. Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall. The good old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice's eyes shone all the time. After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that dear mother should have half an hour's perfect rest, in a charming little room fitted like a tent, and then had a low chair with two little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its way. Avice, who has seen scores of FETES in college grounds, much preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of strangers. The young people took possession of the two girls, and when we all met for the five o'clock tea, before going home, Lady Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the subject of 'that picture.' It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite, of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers--irises, anemones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy. A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an expert. Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante's PURGATORIO, with the mystic griffin car in the distance. Our hosts were very much delighted; we all repaired to the picture, where she very quietly and modestly pointed out the details. A Dante was hunted up, but Lady Hollybridge and I were the only elders who knew any Italian, and when the catalogue was brought, Avice knew all the names of the translators, but as none were to be found, Lord Hollybridge asked if she would make him understand the passage, which she did, blushing a little, but rendering it in very good fluent English, so that he thanked her, and complimented her so much that she was obliged to answer that she had got it up when they were hearing some lectures on Dante; and besides it was mentioned by Ruskin; whereupon she was also made to find the reference, and mark both it and Dante.

"I like that girl," said the old Governor-General, "she is intelligent and modest both. There is something fine about the shape of her head."

When we went home, Metelill was as proud and delighted as possible at what she called the Bird's triumph; but Avice did not seem at all elated, but to take her knowledge as a mere outcome of her ordinary Oxford life, where allusions, especially Ruskinese and Dantesque, came naturally. And then, as grandmamma went to sleep in her corner, the two girls and I fell into a conversation on that whole question of Action and Contemplation. At least Metelill asked the explanation, but I doubt whether she listened much while Avice and I talked out the matter, and I felt myself a girl again, holding the old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made her my sister for those two happy years, and--Well, it is no use paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of companionship before you came on the scene. And to think what a jewel I have missed all this time!

18.--I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have to tell you. I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice--

"I tell you it was no joke. It's no use saying so," and I beheld Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel. "I've looked on at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my sister I will speak out."

By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley's very improper tone, and asking what was the matter. Isa sprang to me, declaring that it was all Charley's absurd suspicion and misconstruction. At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.

Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until she could return it. Charley broke out. "As if I did not know better than that! Didn't you make him give you that parasol and promise him your photo? Ay, and give it him in return? You thought he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun over him. And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts. I'm not strait-laced. I wouldn't mind having the photos of a hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is--is--well--a regular old maid about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on purpose to upset Metelill's chances."

Isa clung to me in floods of tears, desiring me not to believe anything so cruel and false. Every one always was so hard upon her, she said, and she had only put the thing inadvertently there, to get it out of sight, into the first book she saw, but unfortunately she did not know I had heard her trying to pass it off to Charley as a jest. However, as there was no proof there, I asked about the parasol. While the shopping was going on, she and young Horne had been in another street, and this was the consequence! I was perfectly confounded. Receive presents from young men! It seemed to me quite impossible. "Oh, Isa thinks nothing of that!" said Charley. "Ask her where she got those bangles, and that bouquet which she told you was half Metelill's. You think me awful, I know, Aunt Charlotte, but I do draw a line, though I would never have said one word about it if she had not played this nasty trick on Metelill." Isa would have begun some imploring excuse, but our two gentlemen were seen coming up towards the window, and she fled, gasping out an entreaty that I would not tell Uncle Martyn.

Nor did I then and there, for I needed to understand the matter and look into it, so I told Martyn and Horace not to wait for me, and heard Charley's story more coolly. I had thought that Mr. Horne was Metelill's friend. "So he was at first," Charley said, "but he is an uncommon goose, and Isa is no end of a hand at doing the pathetic poverty-stricken orphan! That's the way she gets so many presents!" Then she explained, in her select slang, that young Horne's love affairs were the great amusement of his fellow-pupils, and that she, being sure that the parasol was no present from me, as Isa had given the cousins to understand, had set Bertie Elwood to extract the truth by teasing his friend. "But I never meant to have told," said Charley, "if you had not come in upon us, when I was in the midst of such a wax that I did not know what I was saying"; and on my demanding what she meant by the elegant expression she had used about Isa and me, she explained that it was the schoolboy's word for currying favour. Every one but we stupid elders perceived the game, nay, even the Druces, living in full confidence with their children, knew what was going on. I have never spoken, but somehow people must read through one's brains, for there was a general conviction that I was going to choose a niece to accompany us. I wonder if you, my wise brother, let out anything to Edith. It is what men always do, they bind women to silence and then disclose the secret themselves, and say, "Nothing is safe with these women."

Any way, these girls have been generous, or else true to their ESPRIT DE CORPS, I do not know which to call it; for though they looked on at Isa's manoeuvres and my blindness with indignant contempt, they never attempted to interfere. Jane Druce was seized with a fit of passionate wrath and pity for me, but her father withheld her from disclosures, assuring her that I should probably find out the girl's true disposition, and that it would be wrong to deprive Isa of a chance of coming under a fresh influence.

Poor girl, she must be very clever, for she kept up her constant wooing of me while she also coquetted with Mr. Horne, being really, as her contemporaries declare, a much worse flirt than Metelill, but the temptation of the parasol threw her off her guard, and she was very jealous of my taking out Metelill and Avice. I see now that it has been her effort to keep the others away from me. This spiteful trick, if it be true that she meant it, seems to have been done on Metelill, as being supposed to be her only real rival. Avice always yields to her, and besides, is too inoffensive to afford her any such opportunity.

When I talked to Mary, she said, "Oh yes, I always knew she was a horrid little treacherous puss. Nature began it, and that governess worked on a ready soil. We sent her to school, and hoped she was cured, but I have long seen that it has only shown her how to be more plausible. But what can one do? One could not turn out an orphan, and I did not see that she was doing our own girls any harm. I'm sure I gave her every chance of marrying, for there was nothing I wished for so much, and I never told Martyn of her little manoeuvres, knowing he would not stand them; and now what he will do, I can't think, unless you and Edward will take her off our hands. I believe you might do her good. She is an unfathomable mixture of sham and earnest, and she really likes you, and thinks much of you, as having a certain prestige, and being a woman of the world" (fancy that). "Besides, she is really religious in a sort of a way; much good you'll say it does her, but, as you know, there's a certain sort of devotion which makes no difference to people's conduct."

It seems to be the general desire of the family that we should take this unfortunate Isabel off their hands. Shall we? Cruelly as I have been disappointed in the girl, I can't help liking her; she is obliging, pleasant, ladylike in manners, very affectionate, and I can't help thinking that with the respect and fear for you she would feel she might be restrained, and that we could be the saving of her, though at the same time I know that my having been so egregiously deceived may be a sign that I am not fit to deal with her. I leave it to your decision altogether, and will say no more till I hear. Metelill is a charming girl, and I fancy you prefer her, and that her mother knows it, and would send her for at least a winter; but she gets so entirely off her balance whenever a young man of any sort comes near, that I should not like to take charge of her. It might be good for the worthy Jane, but as she would take a great deal of toning down and licking into shape, and as she would despise it all, refer everything to the Bourne Parva standard, and pine for home and village school, I don't think she need be considered, especially as I am sure she would not go, and could not be spared. Pica would absorb herself in languages and antiquities, and maintain the rights of women by insisting on having full time to study her protoplasms, snubbing and deriding all the officers who did not talk like Oxford dons. Probably the E. E. would be the only people she would think fit to speak to. Avice is the one to whom I feel the most drawn. She is thoroughly thoughtful, and her religion is not of the uninfluential kind Mary describes. Those distresses and perplexities which poor Isa affected were chiefly borrowed from her genuine ones; but she has obtained the high cultivation and intelligence that her Oxford life can give in full measure, and without conceit or pretension, and it is her unselfish, yielding spirit that has prevented me from knowing her sooner, though when not suppressed she can be thoroughly agreeable, and take her part in society with something of her mother's brilliancy. I think, too, that she would be spared, as Oxford does not agree with her, and a southern winter or two would be very good for her. Besides, the others might come and see her in vacation time. Could we not take both her and Isabel at least for the first winter?

19.--A stormy wet day, the first we have had. Poor Isa has made an attempt at explanation and apology, but lost herself in a mist of words and tears. I suppose I was severe, for she shrinks from me, and clings to Avice, who has stood her friend in many a storm before, and, as Jane indignantly tells me, persists in believing that she is really sorry and wishes to be good. She is very attentive and obliging, and my dear mother, who is in happy ignorance of all this uproar, really likes her the best of all the girls.

21.--We have had a great alarm. Last evening we went to the parish church; Horace Druce had been asked to preach, and the rain, which had fallen all the morning, cleared off just in time for the walk. Emily, Margaret, two of her children, and I sat in the gallery, and Avice and Isa in the free seats below. Avice had been kept at home by the rain in the morning, but had begged leave to go later. Darkness came on just as the first hymn was given out, and the verger went round with his long wand lighting the gas. In the gallery we saw plainly how, at the east end, something went wrong with his match, one which he thought had failed, and threw aside. It fell on a strip of straw matting in the aisle, which, being very dry, caught fire and blazed up for a few seconds before it was trampled out. Some foolish person, however, set the cry of 'Fire!' going, and you know what that is in a crowded church. The vicar, in his high old-fashioned desk with a back to it, could not see. Horace in a chair, in the narrow, shallow sanctuary, did see that it was nothing, but between the cries of 'Fire!' and the dying peal of the organ, could not make his voice heard. All he could do was to get to the rear of the crowd, together with the other few who had seen the real state of things, and turn back all those whom they could, getting them out through the vestry. But the main body were quite out of their reach, and everybody tried to rush scrambling into the narrow centre aisle, choking up the door, which was a complicated trap meant to keep out draughts. We in the gallery tried vainly to assure them that the only danger was in the crowd, and the clergyman in his desk, sure that was the chief peril, at any rate, went on waving and calling to them to wait; but the cries and shrieks drowned everything, and there was a most terrible time, as some 600 people jammed themselves in that narrow space, fighting, struggling, fainting.

You may suppose how we watched our girls. They had let themselves be thrust up to the end of the seat by later comers: Avice the innermost. We saw them look up to us, with white faces. To our joy, Avice seemed to understand our signs and to try to withhold Isa, but she was too wild with fright not to try to push on to the end of the pew. Avice held her dress, and kept her back. Then, as the crowd swayed, the two girls stood on the seat, and presently I saw Avice bend down, and take from some one's arms a little child, which she seated on the edge of the pew, holding it in her arms, and soothing it. I don't know how long it all lasted, Horace says it was not ten minutes before he had got men and tools to break down the obstruction at the door, and pull out the crowded, crushed people, but to us it seemed hours. They were getting calmer too in the rear, for many had followed the lead through the vestry door, and others had found out that there was no fire at all.

Wonderful to tell, no one was killed. There were some broken arms, three I think, and some bad bruises. Many people were fainting, and much hurt by the horrible heat and crush, but when at last the way was free, we saw Horace come into the church, looking about in great anxiety for the two girls, whom he had failed to find in the trampled multitude. Then Avice came up to him, with the child in her arms, and Isa followed, quite safe! How thankful we all were! Avice says she remembered at once that she had been told of the American fireman's orders to his little girl always to keep still in such an alarm, for the crowd was a worse peril than the fire. By the time we had come down the stairs and joined them, the child's father had come for it in great anxiety, for its sister had been trampled down fainting, and had just only revived enough to miss it! I shall never forget what it was to see people sucked down in that surging mass, and the thankful thrill of seeing our girls standing there quietly with the child between them, its little fair head on Avice's breast. We went home quietly and thankfully. Horace took Avice to the hotel that he might explain all to her parents, and let them know how well she had behaved; Isabel was shaken and tearful, and her voice sounded weak and nervous as she bade her cousin good- night and embraced her with much agitation. So I went to her room to see whether she needed any doctoring, but I found Metelill soothing her nicely, so I only kissed her (as I had not done these two nights). "Ah, dear aunt, you forgive me!" she said. The tone threw me back, as if she were making capital of her adventure, and I said, "You have not offended _ME_." "Ah! you are still angry, and yet you _DO_ love me still a little," she said, not letting me go. "The more love, the more grief for your having done wrong," I said; and she returned, "Ah! if I always had you." That chilled me, and I went away. She does not know the difference between pardon and remission of consequences. One must have something of the spirit of the fifty-first Psalm before that perception comes. Poor dear child, how one longs for power to breathe into her some such penitence!

Avice is quite knocked up to-day, and her mother has kept her in bed, where she is very happy with her Jane. I have been to see her, and she has been thanking me for having suggested the making way for fresh comers in a pew. Otherwise, she says, she could not have withstood the rush.

SIR EDWARD FULFORD TO MISS FULFORD 22D JULY.

My Dear Charlotte,--I decidedly object to the company of a young lady with such a genius for intrigue as Isabel Fulford seems to possess. If we had only ourselves to consider, no doubt it would be well for you to take her in hand, but in the sort of house ours will be, there must be no one we cannot depend upon in our own family.

I suppose I am guilty of having betrayed my thoughts to Edith. I had certainly wished for Metelill. She is an engaging creature, and I am sorry you take so adverse a view of her demeanour; but I promised to abide by your judgment and I will not question it. We will ask Arthur and Edith to bring her to visit us, and then perhaps you may be better satisfied with her.

The learned young lady is out of the question, and as Avice is my dear wife's godchild as well as mine, I am very glad she has deserved that your choice should fall upon her. It seems as if you would find in her just the companionship you wish, and if her health needs the southern climate, it is well to give her the opportunity. You had better propose the scheme at once, and provide what she will need for an outfit. The last touches might be given at Paris. I hope to get time to run down to New Cove next week, and if you and the niece can be ready to start by the middle of August, we will take Switzerland by the way, and arrive at Malta by the end of September.

I shall be curious to hear the result of your throwing the handkerchief.--Your affectionate brother,

E. F.

MISS FULFORD TO SIR EDWARD FULFORD

JULY 24.--I threw the handkerchief by asking Martyn and Mary to spare their daughter. Tears came into Mary's eyes, the first I ever saw there, and she tried in vain to say something ridiculous. Martyn walked to the window and said huskily, "Dr. A--- said it would confirm her health to spend a few winters in the South. Thank you, Charlotte!" They did not doubt a moment, but Martyn feels the parting more than I ever thought he would, and Pica and Uchtred go about howling and bewailing, and declaring that they never shall know where to find anything again.

Avice herself is much more sorrowful than glad, though she is too courteous and grateful not to show herself gracious to me. She did entreat me to take Isa instead, so earnestly that I was obliged to read her your decided objections. It was a blow to her at first, but she is rapidly consoling herself over the wonderful commissions she accepts. She is to observe Mediterranean zoophytes, and send them home on glass slides for the family benefit. She is to send her father photographs and drawings to illustrate his lectures, and Jane has begged for a pebble or rock from S. Paul's Bay, to show to her class at school. Indeed, I believe Avice is to write a special journal, to be published in the BOURNE PARVA PARISH MAGAZINE; Charley begs for a sea-horse, and Freddy has been instructed by one of the pupils to bargain for nothing less than the Colossus of Rhodes; Metelill is quite as cordial in her rejoicing, and Edith owns that, now it has come to the point, she is very glad to keep her daughter.

And Isa? Well, she is mortified, poor child. I think she must have cried bitterly over the disappointment, for she looked very wretched when we met at dinner.

Meanwhile, Martyn had a walk with Emily, who found that he was very sorry not to be relieved from Isabel, though he knew you were quite right not to take her. He thought Oxford not a good place for such a girl, and the absence of the trustworthy Avice would make things worse. Then Emily proposed to take Isabel back to the Birchwood with her. Grandmamma really likes the girl, who is kind and attentive. There are no young people to whom she could do harm, Emily can look after her, and will be glad of help and companionship. The whole family council agreed that it will be a really charitable work, and that if any one can do her good, it will be the mother and Aunt Emily.

Isa has acquiesced with an overflow of gratitude and affection to them for taking pity on her. It sounds a little fulsome, but I believe some of it is genuine. She is really glad that some one wishes for her, and I can quite believe that she will lose in Avice all that made life congenial to her under Mary's brisk uncompromising rule. If she can only learn to be true--true to herself and to others--she will yet be a woman to love and esteem, and at Birchwood they will do their best to show that religious sentiment must be connected with Truth.

And so ends my study of the manners of my nieces, convincing me the more that as the manners are, so is the man or woman. The heart, or rather the soul, forms the manners, and they _ARE_ the man.

C. F.

COME TO HER KINGDOM

'Take care! Oh, take care!'

Whisk, swish, click, click, through the little crowd at Stokesley on a fine April afternoon, of jocund children just let loose from school, and mothers emerging from their meeting, collecting their progeny after the fashion of old ewes with their lambs; Susan Merrifield in a huge, carefully preserved brown mushroom hat, with a big basket under one arm, and a roll of calico under the other; her sister Elizabeth with a book in one hand, and a packet of ambulance illustrations; the Vicar, Mr. Doyle, and his sister likewise loaded, talking to them about the farmer's wedding of the morning, for which the bells had been ringing fitfully all day, and had just burst out again. Such was the scene, through which, like a flash, spun a tricycle, from which a tiny curly-haired being in knickerbockers was barely saved by his mother's seizing him by one arm.

'A tricycle!' exclaimed the Vicar.

'A woman! Oh!' cried Susan in horror, 'and she's stopping--at the Gap. Oh!'

'My dear Susie, you must have seen ladies on tricycles before,' whispered her sister.

'No, indeed, I am thankful to say I have not! If it should be Miss Arthuret!' said Susan, with inexpressible tones in her voice.

'She was bowing right and left,' said the Vicar, a little maliciously; 'depend upon it, she thought this was a welcome from the rural population.'

'Hark! here's something coming.'

The Bonchamp fly came rattling up, loaded with luggage, and with a quiet lady in black seated in it, which stopped at the same gate.

'The obedient mother, no doubt,' said Elizabeth. 'She looks like a lady.'

There had been a good deal of excitement at Stokesley about the property known by the pleasing name of the Gap. An old gentleman had lived there for many years, always in a secluded state, and latterly imbecile, and on his death in the previous year no one had for some time appeared as heir; but it became known that the inheritrix was a young lady, a great-niece, living with a widowed mother in one of the large manufacturing towns in the north of England. Her father had been a clergyman and had died when she was an infant. That was all that was known, and as the house had become almost uninhabitable, the necessary repairs had prevented the heiress from taking possession all this time. It was not a very large inheritance, only comprising a small farm, the substantial village shop, four or five cottages, and a moderate-sized house and grounds, where the neglected trees had grown to strange irregular proportions, equally with the income, which, owing to the outgoings being small, had increased to about 800 or 900 pounds a year, and of course it was a subject of much anxiety with Admiral Merrifield's family to know what sort of people the newcomers would prove.

Of the large family only the two eldest daughters were at home; Susan, now nearly forty, had never left it, but had been the daughter-of-all-work at home and lady-of-all-work to the parish ever since she had emerged from the schoolroom; her apricot complexion showing hardly any change, and such as there was never perceived by her parents. The Admiral, still a light, wiry, hale man, as active as ever, with his hands full of county, parish, and farming business; an invalid for many years, but getting into that health which is LA JEUNESSE DE LA VIEILLESSE.

Elizabeth had, from twenty-five to thirty-two, been spared from home by her father to take care of his stepmother in London, where she had beguiled her time with a certain amount of authorship under a NOM DE PLUME, and had been introduced to some choice society both through her literary abilities and her family connections.

Four years previous the old lady had died, leaving her a legacy, which, together with her gains, would have enabled her to keep such a home in town as to remain in touch with the world to which she had been introduced; but she had never lost her Stokesley heart enough for the temptation to outweigh the disappointment she would have caused at home, and the satisfaction and rest of being among her own people. So she only went up for an occasional visit, and had become the brightness of the house, and Susan's beloved partner in all her works.

Her father, who understood better than did her mother and sister what she had given up, had insisted on her having a sitting-room to herself, which she embellished with the personal possessions she had accumulated, and where she pursued her own avocations in the forenoon, often indeed interrupted, but never showing, and not often feeling, that it was to her hindrance, and indeed the family looked on her work sufficiently as a profession, not only to acquiesce, but to have a certain complacency in it, though it was a kind of transparent fiction that MESA was an anagram of her initials and that of Stokesley. Her mother at any rate believed that none of the neighbours guessed at any such thing.

Stokesley was a good deal out of the world, five miles from the station at Bonchamp, over hilly, stony roads, so that the cyclist movement had barely reached it; the neighbourhood was sparse, and Mrs. Merrifield's health had not been conducive to visiting, any more than was her inclination, so that there was a little agitation about first calls.

The newcomers appeared at church on Sunday at all the services. A bright-faced girl of one-and-twenty, with little black eyes like coals of fire, a tight ulster, like a riding habit, and a small billycock hat, rather dismayed those who still held that bonnets ought to be the Sunday gear of all beyond childhood; but the mother, in rich black silk, was unexceptionable.

Refusing to be marshalled up the aisle to the seat which persistent tradition assigned to the Gap in the aristocratic quarter, daughter and mother (it was impossible not thus to call them) sat themselves down on the first vacant place, close to a surviving white smock- frock, and blind to the bewildered glances of his much-bent friend in velveteen, who, hobbling in next after, found himself displaced and separated alike from his well-thumbed prayer and hymn book and the companion who found the places for him.

'It ain't fitty like,' said the old man confidentially to Susan, 'nor the ladies wouldn't like it when we comes in with our old coats all of a muck with wet.'

'The principle is right,' said Bessie, when this was repeated to her; 'but practice ought to wait till native manners and customs are learnt.'

The two sisters offered to save their mother the first visit--leave her card, or make her excuses; but Mrs. Merrifield held that a card thus left savoured of deceit, and that the deed must be womanfully done in person. But she would not wait till the horses could be spared, saying that for near village neighbours it was more friendly to go down in her donkey-chair; and so she did, Bessie driving her, and the Admiral walking with them.

The Gap had, ever since Bessie could remember, been absolutely shrouded in trees, its encircling wall hidden in ivy bushes, over which laburnums, lilacs, pink thorns, and horse chestnuts towered; and the drive from the seldom-opened gate was almost obstructed by the sweeping arms of laurels and larches.

It was obstructed now, but by these same limbs lying amputated; and 'chop, chop!' was heard in the distance.

'Oh, the Arbutus!' sighed Bessie.

'Clearing was much needed,' said her father, with a man's propensity for the axe.

The donkey, however, thought it uncanny, 'upon the pivot of his skull, turned round his long left ear,' and planted his feet firmly. Mrs. Merrifield, deprecating the struggle by which her husband would on such occasions enforce discipline, begged to get out; and while this was going on, the ulstered young lady, with a small axe in hand, came, as it were, to the rescue, and, while the donkey was committed to a small boy, explained hastily, 'So overgrown, there is nothing to be done but to let in light and air. My mother is at home,' she added; 'she will be happy to see you,' and, conducting them in with complete self-possession--rather, as it occurred to Bessie, as the Queen might have led the way to the Duchess of Kent, though there was a perfect simplicity and evident enjoyment about her that was very prepossessing, and took off the edge of the sense of conceit. Besides, the palace was, to London eyes at least, so little to boast of, with the narrow little box of a wooden porch, the odd, one-sided vestibule, and the tiny anteroom with the worn carpet; but the drawing-room, in spite of George IV furniture, was really pretty, with French windows opening on a well-mown lawn, and fresh importations of knick-knacks, and vases of wild flowers, which made it look inhabited and pleasant. There was no one there, and the young lady proceeded to fetch her mother; and the unguarded voice was caught by Bessie's quick ears from the window.

'Here are Admiral and Mrs. Merrifield, and one daughter. Come along, little mammy! Worthy, homely old folks--just in your line.'

To Bessie's relief, she perceived that this was wholly unheard by her father and mother. And there was no withstanding the eager, happy, shy looks of the mother, whose whole face betrayed that after many storms she had come into a haven of peace, and that she was proud to owe it to her daughter.

A few words showed that mother and daughter were absolutely enchanted with Stokesley, their own situation, and one another--the young lady evidently all the more because she perceived so much to be done.

'Everything wants improving. It is so choked up,' she said, 'one wants to let in the light.'

'There are a good many trees,' said the Admiral, while Bessie suspected that she meant figuratively as well as literally; and as the damsel was evidently burning to be out at her clearing operations again, and had never parted with her axe, the Admiral offered to go with her and tell her about the trees, for, as he observed, she could hardly judge of those not yet out in leaf.

She accepted him, though Bessie shrewdly suspected that the advice would be little heeded, and, not fancying the wet grass and branches, nor the demolition of old friends, she did not follow the pair, but effaced herself, and listened with much interest to the two mothers, who sat on the sofa with their heads together. Either Mrs. Merrifield was wonderful in inspiring confidence, or it was only too delightful to Mrs. Arthuret to find a listener of her own standing to whom to pour forth her full heart of thankfulness and delight in her daughter. 'Oh, it is too much!' occurred so often in her talk that, if it had not been said with liquid eyes, choking voice, and hands clasped in devout gratitude, it would have been tedious; but Mrs. Merrifield thoroughly went along with it, and was deeply touched.

The whole story, as it became known, partly in these confidences, partly afterwards, was this. The good lady, who had struck the family at first as a somewhat elderly mother for so young a daughter, had been for many years a governess, engaged all the time to a curate, who only obtained a small district incumbency in a town, after wear and tear, waiting and anxiety, had so exhausted him that the second winter brought on bronchitis, and he scarcely lived to see his little daughter, Arthurine. The mother had struggled on upon a pittance eked out with such music teaching as she could procure, with her little girl for her sole care, joy, and pride--a child who, as she declared, had never given her one moment's pang or uneasiness.

'Poor mamma, could she say that of any one of her nine?' thought Bessie; and Mrs. Merrifield made no such attempt.

Arthurine had brought home all prizes, all distinctions at the High School, but--here was the only disappointment of her life--a low fever had prevented her trying for a scholarship at Girton. In consideration, however, of her great abilities and high qualities, as well as out of the great kindness of the committee, she had been made an assistant to one of the class mistresses, and had worked on with her own studies, till the wonderful tidings came of the inheritance that had fallen to her quite unexpectedly; for since her husband's death Mrs. Arthuret had known nothing of his family, and while he was alive there were too many between him and the succession for the chance to occur to him as possible. The relief and blessing were more than the good lady could utter. All things are comparative, and to one whose assured income had been 70 pounds a year, 800 pounds was unbounded wealth; to one who had spent her life in schoolrooms and lodgings, the Gap was a lordly demesne.

'And what do you think was the first thing my sweet child said?' added Mrs. Arthuret, with her eyes glittering through tears. 'Mammy, you shall never hear the scales again, and you shall have the best Mocha coffee every day of your life.'

Bessie felt that after this she must like the sweet child, though sweetness did not seem to her the predominant feature in Arthurine.

After the pathos to which she had listened there was somewhat of a comedy to come, for the ladies had spent the autumn abroad, and had seen and enjoyed much. 'It was a perfect feast to see how Arthurine entered into it all,' said the mother. 'She was never at a loss, and explained it all to me. Besides, perhaps you have seen her article?'

'I beg your pardon.'

'Her article in the KENSINGTON. It attracted a great deal of attention, and she has had many compliments.'

'Oh! the KENSINGTON MAGAZINE,' said Mrs. Merrifield, rather uneasily, for she was as anxious that Bessie should not be suspected of writing in the said periodical as the other mother was that Arthurine should have the fame of her contributions.

'Do you take it?' asked Mrs. Arthuret, 'for we should be very glad to lend it to you.'

A whole pile was on the table, and Mrs. Merrifield looked at them with feeble thanks and an odd sort of conscious dread, though she could with perfect truth have denied either 'taking it' or reading it.

Bessie came to her relief. 'Thank you,' she said; 'we do; some of us have it. Is your daughter's article signed A. A., and doesn't it describe a boarding-house on the Italian lakes? I thought it very clever and amusing.'

Mrs. Arthuret's face lighted up. 'Oh yes, my dear,' slipped out in her delight. 'And do you know, it all came of her letter to one of the High School ladies, who is sister to the sub-editor, such a clever, superior girl! She read it to the headmistress and all, and they agreed that it was too good to be lost, and Arthurine copied it out and added to it, and he--Mr. Jarrett--said it was just what he wanted--so full of information and liveliness--and she is writing some more for him.'

Mrs. Merrifield was rather shocked, but she felt that she herself was in a glass house, was, in fact, keeping a literary daughter, so she only committed herself to, 'She is very young.'

'Only one-and-twenty,' returned Mrs. Arthuret triumphantly; 'but then she has had such advantages, and made such use of them. Everything seems to come at once, though, perhaps, it is unthankful to say so. Of course, it is no object now, but I could not help thinking what it would have been to us to have discovered this talent of hers at the time when we could hardly make both ends meet.'

'She will find plenty of use for it,' said Mrs. Merrifield, who, as the wife of a country squire and the mother of nine children, did not find it too easy to make her ends meet upon a larger income.

'Oh yes! indeed she will, the generous child. She is full of plans for the regeneration of the village.'

Poor Mrs. Merrifield! this was quite too much for her. She thought it irreverent to apply the word in any save an ecclesiastical sense; nor did she at all desire to have the parish, which was considered to be admirably worked by the constituted authorities, 'regenerated,' whatever that might mean, by a young lady of one-and- twenty. She rose up and observed to her daughter that she saw papa out upon the lawn, and she thought it was time to go home.

Mrs. Arthuret came out with them, and found what Bessie could only regard as a scene of desolation. Though gentlemen, as a rule, have no mercy on trees, and ladies are equally inclined to cry, 'Woodman, spare that tree,' the rule was reversed, for Miss Arthuret was cutting, and ordering cutting all round her ruthlessly with something of the pleasure of a child in breaking a new toy to prove that it is his own, scarcely listening when the Admiral told her what the trees were, and how beautiful in their season; while even as to the evergreens, she did not know a yew from a cedar, and declared that she must get rid of this horrid old laurustinus, while she lopped away at a Portugal laurel. Her one idea seemed to be that it was very unwholesome to live in a house surrounded with trees; and the united influence of the Merrifields, working on her mother by representing what would be the absence of shade in a few months' time, barely availed to save the life of the big cedar; while the great rhododendron, wont to present a mountain of shining leaves and pale purple blossoms every summer, was hewn down without remorse as an awful old laurel, and left a desolate brown patch in its stead.

'Is it an emblem,' thought Bessie, 'of what she would like to do to all of us poor old obstructions?'

After all, Mrs. Merrifield could not help liking the gentle mother, by force of sympathy; and the Admiral was somewhat fascinated by the freshness and impetuosity of the damsel, as elderly men are wont to be with young girls who amuse them with what they are apt to view as an original form of the silliness common to the whole female world except their own wives, and perhaps their daughters; and Bessie was extremely amused, and held her peace, as she had been used to do in London. Susan was perhaps the most annoyed and indignant. She was presiding over seams and button-holes the next afternoon at school, when the mother and daughter walked in; and the whole troop started to their feet and curtsied.

'Don't make them stand! I hate adulation. Sit down, please. Where's the master?'

'In the boys' school, ma'am,' said the mistress, uncomfortably indicating the presence of Miss Merrifield, who felt herself obliged to come forward and shake hands.

'Oh! so you have separate schools. Is not that a needless expense?'

'It has always been so,' returned Susan quietly.

'Board? No? Well, no doubt you are right; but I suppose it is at a sacrifice of efficiency. Have you cookery classes?'

'We have not apparatus, and the girls go out too early for it to be of much use.'

'Ah, that's a mistake. Drawing?'

'The boys draw.'

'I shall go and see them. Not the girls? They look orderly enough; but are they intelligent? Well, I shall look in and examine them on their special subjects, if they have any. I suppose not.'

'Only class. Grammar and needlework.'

'I see, the old routine. Quite the village school.'

'It is very nice work,' put in Mrs. Arthuret, who had been looking at it.

'Oh yes, it always is when everything is sacrificed to it. Good- morning, I shall see more of you, Mrs.--ahem.'

'Please, ma'am, should I tell her that she is not a school manager?' inquired the mistress, somewhat indignantly, when the two ladies had departed.

'You had better ask the Vicar what to do,' responded Susan.