Chapter XIII: The Young Teacher

ONE day, about four months after the visit which Robert and I had paid to “The Gables,” I was astonished to see a fly drive up to our door, and Aunt Briscoe descend from it.

She came slowly up the steps and into the house, panting a little, as she was given to doing. She had on a black silk dress, and a very handsome mantle, and a queer old-fashioned bonnet. Cherry had run to open the door, and I went quickly into the hall after Cherry.

“How do you do, niece Marion?” Aunt Briscoe said, in a short way.

“How do you do, Aunt Briscoe?” I said, hiding my surprise. “We are very glad to see you here.” And this was true, yet I could have wished for previous warning. An uneasy recollection of our larder came over me.

“I hope you are,” she said grimly. “Where’s Robert?”

“He will not be home for another hour. We have tea soon after six.”

“That will do for me,” Aunt Briscoe said. “I have ordered the fly to come again at seven. I don’t approve of late hours.”

“You will take off your bonnet,” I said.

“No, thanks. I’ve got no cap here. Where are all the children?” She was standing in the passage still, looking about her with sharp eyes.

“Jack is at his office.”

“Not turned off yet?”

“No; he has done much better lately, given satisfaction.”

“I always said he could if he chose,” said Aunt Briscoe.

I felt angry. Yet was it not quite true? But some people have a way of uttering truths which makes them distasteful.

“And the others?”

“Cress and Owen and Fred are at school.”

“Time Cress should be at work too!”

“Yes,” I said; “we are looking out for something that he can do. Poor Cress!”

“Poor!” she said sharply.

“He wanted so much to go to college.”

“Fudge! You have brought up your boys with ideas much too grand for their station in life, niece Marion.”

Now was this fair? Cress had ideas, certainly, which could not be carried out for lack of money; but none of the others had. I resented the words silently. Aunt Briscoe looked at me and laughed.

“You are like an old hen, my dear,” she said. “Always ready to cackle in defence of your chickens. Where are the little ones?”

“In the basement-room. Maimie is teaching them there; but lessons must be nearly over,” I said.

“Mary Browne, do you mean? Playing at lessons, I suppose.”

“O no; she makes them work hard. It is a great relief to me to have them off my hands; and Maimie is so clever at teaching. The boys get on capitally.”

“How old is the child? Fifteen! A chit of a girl! Why, she ought to be at school herself.”

“She does study regularly,” I said. “School for her is out of our power. She is making Jack study too.”

“Humph! Well, it’s a good thing she isn’t a few years older. I’ll take a look at the children in the basement-room, the first thing.”

I yielded, of course. We never opposed Aunt Briscoe. Otherwise I should have preferred first to put things tidy.

However, I needed not to have feared. Maimie never could work or teach in an untidy room.

She was at the table in the basement, with several books strewn over it, and a little boy on either side of her,—Bob reciting something in clear tones, while Teddie’s brown head was pressed lovingly against her flaxen waves of hair. Our entrance made her look round, and she stood up, flushing faintly, and looking her prettiest.

“So that is Mary Browne,” said Aunt Briscoe.

She drew nearer, and shook hands, giving each boy a nod, and then bringing back her attention to the young teacher.

“So this isn’t only play?” she said.

“O no; it is work, not play,” Maimie answered, smiling.

“What was the boy saying to you?”

“Some poetry.”

Aunt Briscoe despised poetry, and she gave a little sniff.

“What good will that do him, I should like to know?”

Maimie looked surprised at the question.

“Mother used to say no one was educated who had not a knowledge of the best poets,” she said. “And anything that exercises his memory, and makes him think, is good for him.”

“Makes him think!”

“We go into the meaning, line by line.”

“Humph!” Aunt Briscoe said again,—“I suppose you don’t attempt Latin?”

The boys exchanged looks, and blushed. Maimie said,—“A little,” half smiling.

“O Maimie, you didn’t mean to tell mother till we could say our declensions,” cried the children.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Maimie gently.

Aunt Briscoe looked hard at her again. “Who taught you all this?”

“My mother, partly,” said Maimie. “And I have been to a good school.”

“It’s you that have been so ill lately,” was Aunt Briscoe’s next remark. “Well again now, I suppose?”

“O yes, quite.”

“She is very far from strong,” I said. “The doctor wants her to get away for change; but just at present we can’t manage it.”

“Change wasn’t so much the fashion in my young days,” said Aunt Briscoe. “People are always wanting now to rush away somewhere. It’s a perfect mania.”

“I don’t want to go away,” said Maimie. But now that the little excitement of our coming in was over, she lost all her colour, and looked very tired and pale.

“You may as well leave the lessons, and come upstairs with us,” Aunt Briscoe said decisively. “I wish to see more of the girl, niece Marion.” Maimie looked at me, and I nodded assent, so she came, not without protests from the boys. She had such a curious power of making them love their books, unlike too many teachers.

We sat talking for nearly an hour, before Robert came in, and Aunt Briscoe paid more attention to Maimie than to any of us. Even her favourite Cherry was neglected; but unselfish Cherry never minded being in the background.

Maimie was put through quite a course of questions, as to her past life, her mother and her stepfather, how the marriage had come about, where they had lived, why Churton Hazel had sent her back, and much besides. Maimie bore the questioning patiently, though tears now and then came to her eyes.

“I always said Churton was a worthless fellow,” the old lady declared at length.

I could have contradicted this “always said,” but of course I did not.

A wave of colour rushed over poor Maimie’s face. She too was mute, however.

“We shan’t hear any more of him till he wants money himself. He had better not come to me then, that’s all.”

“Oh, I don’t think—” faltered Maimie.

“You don’t know him, child. Of course you don’t. How should you? He always had a smooth side to show when it pleased him. But see how he treats us now.”

“He will write some day,” murmured Maimie.

“I don’t say he won’t; but that isn’t the question. Why hasn’t he written already?”

Maimie could make no answer. She seemed a good deal upset, and I saw Cherry pass by, giving her a loving little squeeze of the hand.

“Worthless people are not worth crying over, child. It’s Churton all over, that’s all one can say.”

She then dropped the subject, and the two girls went away to prepare tea. Robert came in, followed by Jack, and Aunt Briscoe said—

“That girl looks frightfully delicate.”

“She has been ill lately,” I said.

“She will be ill again soon, if you don’t take care—fall into a decline, or something of that sort. You had better let me take her home for a week.”

Somehow I did not feel inclined to spring at the idea. There had been a time when I thought Aunt Briscoe ought to take in Maimie altogether. Now she was one of us, and I did not want to lose her. But my husband thanked Aunt Briscoe, and said it was the very thing Maimie needed, and I woke up suddenly to my own selfishness. Had I not been longing to give Maimie change? Well, here was change provided.

“She can come back with me this evening,” pursued Aunt Briscoe. “You had better tell her to put up a second dress.”

I went as directed, and said to Maimie that she was going home with Aunt Briscoe for a week. Maimie gave such a start, that the little toast-rack fell from her hand.

“But I don’t want to go,” she said, trembling. “O Aunt Marion, please, must I? There are the boys’ lessons—and Jack.”

“You will teach twice as well after a week’s rest,” I said. “‘The Gables’ is a very pretty house, Maimie. We shall all miss you; still, I am sure you will enjoy yourself.”

“I would much rather not,” she said mournfully. “I am so happy here. It is like being cast adrift again.”

And she clung to me, and I found difficulty in comforting her. But neither Robert nor Aunt Briscoe would listen to any objections. So, at seven o’clock, Mamie drove off in the fly with aunt Briscoe. It seemed as if a shadow fell over the house with her absence.