Chapter IV: Her New Home

At last Mr. Gray's affairs were all cleared up, and Sarah was about to leave dingy old Bridgehampton behind for ever to take up her new life in London, the great city of the world.

There were some very sad farewells to be made still; and Mrs. Stubbs was a woman of very good feeling, and encouraged the child to go and say good-bye to everybody who had been kind to her in the past.

"There is Mrs. Tracy," said Sarah on the last day. "She brought me all that fruit and jam and the other things, Auntie."

"Oh, you must go and say good-bye to 'er, of course," returned Mrs. Stubbs; "and we must go and see your pore pa's grave, for 'eaven knows when you'll see it again."

"I should like to do that, please," said Sarah in a very low voice.

"Well, _I_ can't drag out all that way," remarked Mrs. Stubbs, who, being stout, was not good at walking exercise. "We'll have an open carriage if nurse can get one; and nurse shall go too."

So Sarah went and said "good-bye" to her father's grave; and the wise old nurse, after a minute spent beside it, drew Mrs. Stubbs away to the other side of the pretty churchyard to show her a curious tombstone about which she had been telling her as they drove along. So Sarah, for a few minutes, was left alone--free to kneel down and bid her farewell in peace.

It was a relief to the child to be alone, for Mrs. Stubbs, though meaning to be kindness itself, was not a woman in whose presence it was possible to grieve in comfort. Her remarks about "your pore pa" invariably had the effect of stifling any feeling of emotion which was aroused in her childish heart.

She was very good. Sarah knew that she meant to be so.

"I'll try not to mind the difference, dear Father," she whispered to the brown sods above his dear head. "It's all so different to you, so different to when there was just you and I together. Nobody will ever understand me like you, dear Daddy; but Auntie means to be very kind, and I'll try my hardest to grow up so that you'll love me better when we meet again."

As she rose up, Mrs. Stubbs and the nurse were coming across the grass between the graves to fetch her. Mrs. Stubbs noticed the tears on her cheeks and still flooding her eyes.

"Nay, now, you mustn't fret, Sarah," she said kindly; "'e's better off, pore thing, than when he was 'ere, so you mustn't fret for 'im, there's a good girl."

Sarah wiped her eyes, and turned to go away. She said nothing, for she knew it was no use trying to make her aunt understand that her tears had not been so much for him as for herself. And Mrs. Stubbs stood for a moment looking down upon the mould, with its covering of brown, disjointed sods and its faded wreaths.

"Pore thing!" she murmured; "it's a sad end to 'ave. And he must 'ave felt leaving the little one badly 'fore he brought himself to write that letter! Pore thing! Well, I'm not one to bear ill-will for what's past and gone, and so beyond 'elp now; and I'll be as much a mother to Sarah as if 'im and me had always been the best of friends. 'E once said I was vulgar--and perhaps I am--it's vulgar to 'ave 'earts and such like, and he knows better now, pore thing! For I have a 'eart. Yes, and the Queen upon 'er throne, she has a 'eart, too, bless her."

There were tears on the good soul's cheeks as she turned to follow Sarah, whom she found at the gate waiting for her. By the time she had reached the child she had wiped them, but Sarah saw that they had been there.

"Dear Auntie," she said. "He wasn't friends with you, but he knows how good you are now,"--and then she flung her arms round her, and her victory over her uncle's wife was complete.

"Sarah," she said, when they were nearly at the end of their journey, "you have never 'ad any playfellows, have you, dear?"

"Never, Auntie--not _real_ playfellows," Sarah answered, and flushing up with joy at the anticipation of those who were in store for her.

"Well, I'd better warn you, Sarah--it may not be all sugar and honey till you get used to them," said Mrs. Stubbs solemnly. "There's a good deal of give and take about children's ways; that is, if you want to get on peaceable. If you get a knock, you must just bear it without telling, or else you get called a 'tell-pie,' and treated according. It's what I've never encouraged, and I must do my children the justice to say if they gets a knock they gives it back again, and there's no more about it."

Thus Sarah was somewhat prepared for the darker side of her new life, though she gathered no true idea of the nest of young ruffians to whom she was made known an hour later.

They came out with a rush to the door when the carriage stopped, and welcomed their mother home again with a fluent and boisterous torrent of joy truly appalling to the little quiet and retiring Sarah, who was not accustomed to the domestic manners of children of the Stubbs class.

"Ma, what have you brought me?"

"Is that Sarah, Ma? My, ain't she a littl'un!"

"Ma, Mary was late this morning. Yes, and our kao-kao was burnt--I told her I should tell you."

"Pa slapped Johnnie last night, because he wouldn't be washed to come down to dessert."

"And Flossie has torn her best frock."

"And May----"

"Hush! Be quiet, children!" exclaimed Mrs. Stubbs, holding her hands to her ears. "'Pon my word, you're like a lot of young savages. Miss Clark can't have taken much care of you whilst I've bin away. Really, you're enough to frighten Sarah out of her senses. This is your cousin Sarah. She's going to live 'ere in future, so come and say ''Ow d'ye do?' to her nicely."

Thus bidden, the young Stubbses all turned their attention on their new cousin, and said their greeting and shook hands with various kinds of manner.

There was May, aged fourteen, a very consequential young person, with an inclination to be short and stout, like her mother, and had her nice fair hair plaited into a tail behind and tied with a bunch of mauve ribbon, worn with a white frock in memory of the uncle by marriage whom she had never seen.

"How d'you do, Cousin Sarah?" she said, with a fine-lady air which petrified poor Sarah, who thought that and her cousin's earrings and watch-chain the finest things she had ever beheld about any human being before. Then there came the redoubtable Flossie, who had torn her best frock, and was twelve and a half. Flossie, who was nearly as big as May, came forward with a giggle, and said "How----" and went off into fits of laughter at some private joke of her own.

"I'm ashamed of you, Flossie," cried Mrs. Stubbs sharply; "shake 'ands with your cousin Sarah at once. Ah! this is Lily--Lily's five and a 'alf, Sarah--she's the baby."

Then there was Tom, the eldest boy, who gripped hold of Sarah's hand and wrung it until she could have shrieked with the pain, but, taking it as an expression of kindness and welcome, she bore it bravely and looked at him with a smiling face; she knew better afterwards.

After Tom came the twins, Minnie and the Johnnie who had been slapped the day before; and last of all, Janey, the prettiest, and Sarah fancied the sweetest, of them all. Janey was seven, or, as she said herself, nearly eight.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Stubbs, addressing herself to Flossie, "that your pa 'asn't got 'ome yet?"

"No, Ma, not yet," returned Flossie.

But, presently, when Mrs. Stubbs had changed her dress for a garment such as Sarah had never beheld before, and which May told her was a tea-gown, and was enjoying a cup of sweet-smelling tea in the large and shady drawing-room--to Sarah a perfect dream of beauty--he came! Came with a bustle and noise like a tempest, and caught his stout wife round the waist, with a "Hulloa, old woman, it's a sight for sore eyes to see you 'ome again!"

Sarah had determined to be surprised at nothing, but her Uncle Stubbs was altogether too much for her resolution. In apologising to herself afterwards, she said she was obliged to stare.

"And where's the little lass?" Mr. Stubbs asked when he had kissed his wife. "Oh, there! Well, aren't you going to speak to your uncle, eh?"

"Yes, Uncle," said Sarah shyly.

He drew her nearer to him, and turned her face to the light.

"Like her dear ma," put in Mrs. Stubbs.

"Yes," said Mr. Stubbs shortly.

"Not like her pa at all," Mrs. Stubbs persisted.

"No!" more shortly still; then, after a pause, "I 'ope you'll be a good gal, Sarah, and remember, though your father and me wasn't friends, yet, as long as I've a 'ome to call my own, you're welcome to a shelter in it. Your mother was my favourite sister, and though she turned 'er back on me, I'll never do that on you, never."

"Father knows better now, Uncle," said the child, with an effort; "he knows how good you and Auntie are to me. You'd be friends now, wouldn't you?" earnestly.

"I don't know--I don't know at all," replied Mr. Stubbs shortly; then, struck by the pleading look on the child's wistful face, added gruffly, "I suppose we should; any way, I hope so."

At this point Mrs. Stubbs broke in,--

"Any way, it's no fault of Sarah's that we wasn't all the very best of friends, Stubbs; and Sarah and me's real fond of one another already, aren't we, Sarah? So say no more about it; what's past and gone is beyond 'elp. Flossie, you can take Sarah upstairs now. It's just six--time for your tea. Be sure she gets a good tea."