And this promise had stirred my heart with such a flutter of happy expectation as I had not felt since I persuaded my father to promise that I should dine with him, all alone, like a grown-up lady, on that sad birthday on which he died.

It is perhaps useless to try and find reasons for the fancy I took to the "Duchess"—as Aunt Theresa called her—since it was allowed that she fascinated every one who came near her. With the bright qualities which made her admirable in herself, she combined the gracious art of putting other people at ease with themselves; and, remembering how sore the wounds of a child's self-love are, I think that her kindness must have been very skilful to make me forgive myself for that folly of the looking-glass enough to forget myself in admiration of her.

Like most children, I was given to hero and heroine worship. I admired more than one lady of Aunt Theresa's acquaintance, and had been fascinated by some others whom I did not know, but had only seen in church, and had longed for the time when I also should no longer trip about in short and simple skirts, and tie up my curls with a ribbon, but should sweep grandly and languidly in to the parade service, bury half a pew under the festoons and furbelows of my silk dress and velvet trimmings, sink into a nest of matchless millinery for the Litany, scent the air with patchouli as I rose for the hymn, examine the other ladies' bonnets through one of those eyeglasses which are supposed to make it no longer rude to stare, and fan myself from the fatigues of the service during the sermon.

But even the dignity of grown-updom embellished by pretty faces and splendid costumes did not stir my imagination as it was stirred by the sight of my great-grandmother and by the history of her life. It was like seeing the princess of a fairy tale with one's very own eyes. The faces of the fine ladies I had envied were a little apt to be insipid in expression, and to pass from the memory; but my great-grandmother's quick, bright, earnest face was not easily to be forgotten. I made up my mind that when I grew up I would not wear a large chignon after all, nor a bonnet full of flowers, nor a dress full of flounces, but a rather short skirt and buckled shoes and grey curls, and a big hat with many bows, and a green satin driving-cloak lined with fur.

How any one, blessed with grown-up freedom of choice, could submit to be driven about by a coach-man in a big carriage, as highly stuffed and uninteresting as a first-class railway carriage, when it was possible to drive one's self in a sort of toy-cart with a dear white pony as shaggy as a dog, I could not understand. I well knew which I should choose, and I thought so much of it that I remember dreaming that my great-grandmother had presented me with a pony and chaise the counterpart of her own. The dream-joy of this acquisition, and the pride of driving up to the Bullers' door and offering to take Matilda for an expedition, was only marred by one of those freaks which spoil the pleasure of so many dreams. Just as Matilda appeared, full of gratitude, and with a picnic luncheon in a basket, I became conscious that I was in my night-gown, and had forgotten to dress. Again and again I tried to go back in my dream and put on suitable clothes. I never accomplished it, and only woke in the effort.

In sober daylight I indulged no hope that Mrs. Vandaleur would give me a carriage and pony for my very own, but I did hope that I should go out in hers if ever I went to stay with her. Perhaps sometimes alone, driving myself, with only the rosy-cheeked Adolphe to open the gates and deliver me from any unexpected difficulties with the reins. But I dreamed many a day-dream of the possible delights in store for me with my new-found relatives, and almost counted the hours on the Duchess's watch till she should send for me.

As it happened, however, circumstances combined for some little time to hinder me from visiting my great-grandmother.

The little Bullers and I had the measles; and when we were all convalescent, Major Buller got two months' leave, and we went away for change of air. Then small-pox prevailed in Riflebury, and we were kept away, even after Major Buller returned to his duties. When we did return, before a visit to the Vandaleurs could be arranged, Adolphe fell ill of scarlet fever, and the fear of contagion postponed my visit for some time.

I was eight years old when I went to stay at The Vine. This was the name of the little cottage where my great-grandparents lived—so called because of an old vine which covered the south wall on one side of the porch, and crept over a framework upon the roof. I do not now remember how many pounds of grapes it had been known to produce in one season, and yet I ought not to have forgotten, for it was a subject on which my great-grandfather, my great-grandmother, Adolphe, and Elspeth constantly boasted.

"And if they don't just ripen as the master says they do in France, it's all for the best," said Elspeth; "for ripe grapes would be picked all along, and the house not a penny the better for them. But green-grape tarts and cream are just eating for a king."

Elspeth was "general servant" at my great-grandmother's. Her aunt Mary had come from Scotland to serve "Miss Victoire" when she first married. As Mary's health failed, and she grew old, her young niece was sent for to work under her. Old Mary died with her hands in my great-grandmother's, and Elspeth reigned in her stead.

Elspeth was an elderly woman when I first made her acquaintance. She had a broad, bright, sensible face, and a kindly smile that won me to her. She wore frilled caps, tied under her chin; and as to exchanging them for "the fly-away bits of things servants stick on their heads at the present time," Elspeth would as soon have thought of abandoning the faith of her fathers. She was a strict but not bitter Presbyterian. She was not tall, and she was very broad; her apparent width being increased by the very broad linen collars which spread, almost like a cape, over her ample shoulders.

My great-grandmother had an anecdote of me connected with this, which she was fond of relating.

"And what do you think of Elspeth, little one?" she had said to me on the first evening of my visit.

"I think she's very big," was my reply.

"Certainly, our good Elspeth is as wide as she is tall," said my great-grandfather, laughing.

I wondered if this were so; and when my great-grandmother gave me a little yard-measure in a wooden castle, which had taken my fancy among the treasures of her work-box, the idea seized me of measuring Elspeth for my own satisfaction on the point. But the silken measure slipped, and caught on the battlements of the castle, and I lost my place in counting the figures, and at last was fain to ask Elspeth herself.

"How tall are you, Elspeth, please? As much as a yard?"

"Ou aye, my dear," said Elspeth, who was deeply engaged in darning a very large hole in one of my great-grandfather's socks.

"As much as two yards?" I inquired.

"Eh, no, my dearie," said Elspeth. "That wad be six feet; and I'm not just that tall, though my father was six feet and six inches."

"How broad are you, Elspeth, please?" I persisted. "As much as a yard?"

"I'm thinking I will be, my dear," said Elspeth, "for it takes the full width of a coloured cotton to cut me a dress-front, and then it's not over-big."

"Are you as broad as two yards, do you think?" I said, drawing my ribbon to its full length from the castle, and considering the question.

Elspeth shook her head. She was biting the end off a piece of darning-cotton; but I rightly concluded that she would not confess to being two yards wide.

"Please, I have measured Elspeth," I announced over the tea-table, "and grandpapa is quite right."

"Eh?" said Mr. Vandaleur, who had a trick of requiring observations to be repeated to him by his wife.

"She says that she has measured Elspeth, and that you are right," said my great-grandmother. "But about what is grandpapa right, my little one?"

"Grandpapa said that Elspeth is as wide as she is tall," I explained. "And so she is, for I measured her—at least, the ribbon would slip when I measured her, so I asked her; and she's a yard tall, but not as much as two yards; and a yard wide, but not as much as two yards. And so grandpapa is right."

Some of the happiest hours I spent at The Vine were spent in Elspeth's company. I made tiny cakes, and tarts of curious shapes, when she was busy pastry-making, and did some clear-starching on my doll's account when Elspeth was "getting-up" my great-grandfather's cravats.

Elspeth had strong old-fashioned notions of paying respect where it was due. She gave Adolphe a sharp lecture one day for some lack of respect in his manner to "Miss Margery"; and, on the other hand, she taught me to curtsy at the door where I breakfasted with Mr. and Mrs. Vandaleur.

Some dancing lessons that I had had in Riflebury helped me here, and Elspeth was well satisfied with my performance. I felt very shy and awkward the first time that I made my morning curtsy, my knees shaking under me, and Elspeth watching from the passage; but my great-grandfather and mother seemed to take it as a matter of course, and I soon became quite used to it. If Mr. Vandaleur happened to be standing in the room, he always returned my curtsy by a low bow.

I became very fond of my great-grandfather. He was a tall, handsome old man, with high shoulders, slightly bent by age and also by habit. He wore a blue coat with brass buttons, that had been very well made a very long time ago; white trousers, a light waistcoat, a frilled shirt, and a very stiff cravat. On the wall of the drawing-room there hung a water-colour portrait of a very young and very handsome man, with longish wavy hair, features refined to weakness, dreamy, languid eyes, and a coat the very image of my great-grandfather's. The picture hung near the door; and as Mr. Bertrand Vandaleur passed in or out, I well remember that he almost always glanced at the sketch, as people glance at themselves in passing a mirror.

I was too young then to notice this as being a proof that the drawing was a portrait of himself; but I remember being much struck by the likeness between the coat in the picture and that my great-grandfather wore, and also by the way that the hair was thrown back from the high, narrow forehead, just as my great-grandfather's grey hairs were combed away from his brow. Children are great admirers of beauty too, especially, I think, of an effeminate style of good looks, and are very susceptible to the power of expression in faces. I had a romantic admiration for "the handsome man by the door," and his eyes haunted me about the room.

I was kneeling on a chair and examining the sketch one morning, when my great-grandfather came up to me, "Who is it, little one?" said he.

I looked at the picture. I looked at my great-grandfather's coat. As his eyes gazed steadily into mine, there was a likeness there also; but it was the coat that decided me. I said, "It is you, grandpapa."

I think this little incident just sealed our friendship. I always remained in high favour with my great-grandfather.

He spent a great deal of his time in painting. He never had, I believe, had any profession. The very small income on which he and his wife had lived was their own private fortune. I often think it must have been a great trial to a woman of my great-grandmother's energy, that her husband should have made no effort to add to their resources by work of some kind. But then I cannot think of any profession that would have suited him. He was sadly wanting in general capacity, though accomplished much above the average, and with a fine knack in the budding of roses.

I thought him the grandest gentleman that ever lived, and the pleasantest of companions. His weak but lovable nature had strong sympathy with children, I think. I ought to say, with a child; for he would share the fancies and humours of one child companion for hours, but was quite incapable of managing a larger number—as, indeed, he was of any kind of domestic administration or control. Mrs. Vandaleur was emphatically Elspeth's mistress, if she was also her friend; but in the absence of "the mistress" Elspeth ruled "the master" with a rod of iron.

I quickly gained a degree of power over him myself. I discovered that if I maintained certain outward forms of respect and courtesy, so as not to shock my grandpapa's standard of good manners, I might make almost any demands on his patience and good-nature. Children and pet animals make such discoveries very quickly, and are apt to use their power somewhat tyrannically. I fear I was no exception to the rule.



CHAPTER X.

THOMAS THE CAT—MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER'S SKETCHES—ADOLPHE IS MY FRIEND—MY GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDFATHER DISTURBS MY REST—I LEAVE THE VINE.

My great-grandfather had, as I said, some skill in painting. He was gifted with an intense sense of, and love for, colour. I am sure he saw colours where other people did not. What to common eyes was a mass of grey, or green, was to him a pleasant combination of many gay and delicate hues. He distinguished severally the innumerable bright threads in Nature's coat of many colours, and in simple truth I think that each was a separate joy to him.

He had a white Persian cat of an artistic temperament, which followed him in his walks, dozed on the back of his arm-chair, and condescended to share his tea when it reached a certain moderate temperature. It never was betrayed into excitement, except when there was fish for dinner. My great-grandfather's fasts were feasts for Thomas the cat.

I can very clearly remember the sight of my great-grandfather pacing slowly up and down the tiny garden at The Vine, his hands behind him, and followed sedately by Thomas. Now and then he would stop to gaze, with infinite contentment in his eyes, at the delicate blue-grey mist behind the leafless trees (which in that spring sunshine were, no doubt, of much more complex and beautiful colour to him than mere brown), or drinking in the blue of the scillas in the border with a sigh of satisfaction. When he paused, Thomas would pause; as he feasted his eyes, Thomas would rub his head against his master's legs, and stretch his own. When Elspeth had cooked the fish, and my great-grandmother had made the tea and arranged the flowers on the table, they would come in together and condescend to their breakfasts, with the same air about them both of having no responsibility in life but to find out sunny spots and to enjoy themselves.

My great-grandfather's most charming paintings were sketches of flowers. Ordinary stiff flower-paintings are of all paintings the most uninteresting, I think; but his were of a very different kind. Each sketch was a sort of idyll. Indeed, he would tell me stories of each as he showed them.

Long as my great-grandfather had lived, he was never a robust man, and Elspeth's chief ideas on the subject of his sketches bore reference to the colds he had caught, and the illnesses he had induced, by sitting in the east winds or lying on damp grass to do this or that sketch.

"That'll be the one the master did before he was laid by with the rheumatics," Elspeth said, when I described one of my favourites to her. It was a spring sketch. My great-grandfather had lain face downwards on the lawn to do it. This was to bring his eyes on a level with the subject of his painting, which was this: a crocus of the exquisite shades of lilac to be seen in some varieties, just full-blown, standing up in its first beauty and freshness from its fringe of narrow silver-striped leaves. The portrait was not an opaque and polished-looking painting on smooth cardboard, but a sketch—indefinite at the outer edges of the whole subject—on water-colour paper of moderate roughness. The throat and part of the cup of the flower stood out from some shadow at the roots of a plant beyond; a shadow of infinite gradation, and quite without the blackness common to patches of shade as seen by untrained eyes. From the level of my great-grandfather's view, as he lay in the grass, the border looked a mere strip; close behind it was a hedge dividing the garden from a field. Just by the crocus there was a gap in the hedge, which in the sketch was indicated rather than drawn. And round the corner of the bare thorn branches from the hedge-bank in the field there peeped a celandine and a daisy. They were not nearly such finished portraits as that of the crocus. A few telling strokes of colour made them, and gave them a life and pertness that were clever enough. Beneath the sketch was written, "La Demoiselle. Des enfants du village la regardent."

My great-grandfather translated this for me, and used to show me how the "little peasants," Marguerite and Celandine, were peeping in at the pretty young lady in her mauve dress striped with violet.

But every sketch had its story, and often its moral; not, as a rule, a very original one. In one, a lovely study of ivy crept over a rotten branch upon the ground. A crimson toadstool relieved the heavy green, and suggested that the year was drawing to a close. Beneath it was written, "Charity." "Thus," said my great-grandfather, "one covers up and hides the defects of one he loves."

A study of gaudy summer tulips stood—as may be guessed—for Pride.

"Pride," said my great-grandfather, "is a sin; a mortal sin, dear child. Moreover, it is foolish, and also vulgar—the pride of fine clothes, money, equipages, and the like. What is called pride of birth—the dignity of an ancient name—this, indeed, is another thing. It is not petty, not personal; it seems to me more like patriotism—the pride of country."

I did my best to describe to Elspeth both the sketch and my great-grandfather's commentary.

"A' pride's sinful," said Elspeth decidedly. "Pride o' wealth, and pride o' birth. Not that I'm for objecting to a decent satisfaction in a body's ain gude conduct and respectability. Pride o' character, that's anither thing a'thegither, and to be respectit."

My great-grandfather gave me a few paints, and under his directions I daubed away, much to my own content. When I was struggling hopelessly with the perspective of some pansies of various colours (for in imitation of him I painted flowers), he would say, "Never mind the shape, dear Marguerite, get the colour—the colour, my child!" And he trained me to a quickness in the perception of colour certainly not common at my age.

I spent many pleasant hours, too, in the less intellectual society of Adolphe. He dug a bed for me in a bit of spare ground, and shaped it like a heart. He laboured constantly at this heart, making it plump by piling up the earth, and cramming it with plants of various kinds—perennials much in want of subdivision, and often in full bloom—which he brought from cottage gardens of "folk he knew," and watered copiously to "sattle 'em."

His real name was not Adolphe, but Thomas. As this, however, had created some confusion between him and the cat, my great-grandmother had named him afresh, after a retainer of the de Vandaleurs in days gone by, whose faithful service was a tradition in the family.

I was very happy at The Vine—by day. I feel ashamed now to recall how miserable I was at night, and yet I know I could not help it. In old times I had always been accustomed to be watched to sleep by Ayah. After I came to Aunt Theresa, I slept in the same room with one or more of the other children. At The Vine, for the first time, I slept alone.

This was not all. It was not merely the being alone in the dark which frightened me. Indeed, a curious little wick floating on a cup of oil was lighted at night for my benefit, but it only illumined the great source of the terror which made night hideous to me.

Some French refugee artist, who had been indebted to my great-grandparents for kindness, had shown his gratitude by painting a picture of the execution of that Duc de Vandaleur who perished in the Revolution, my great-grandfather having been the model. It was a wretched daub, but the subject was none the less horrible for that, and the caricatured likeness to my great-grandfather did not make it seem less real or more pleasant.

That execution which was never over, this ghastly head which never found rest in the grave, that awful-looking man who was, and yet was not, Grandpapa—haunted me. They were the cause of certain horrible dreams, which I can remember quite as clearly at this day as if I dreamed them last night, and which I know I shall never forget. The dreams again associated themselves with the picture, and my fears grew instead of lessening as the time went by.

Very late one night Elspeth came in and found me awake, and probably looking far from happy. I had nothing to say for myself, but I burst into tears. Elspeth was tenderness itself, but she got hold of a wrong idea. I was "just homesick," she thought, and needed to be "away home again," with "bairns like myself."

I do not know why I never explained the real reason of my distress—children are apt to be reticent on such occasions. I think a panic seized upon the members of the household, that they were too old to make a child happy. I was constantly assured that "it was very natural," and I "had been very good." But I was sent back to Riflebury. No one knew how loth I was to leave, still less that it was to a much older relative than those at The Vine that I owed my expulsion—to my great-great-great-grandfather—Monsieur le Duc de Vandaleur.

Thomas, the cat, purred so loudly as I withdrew, that I think he was glad to be rid of me.

Adolphe alone was against the verdict of the household, and I think believed that I would have preferred to remain.

"I'm sure I thought you was quite sattled, miss," he said, as he saw me off; and he blubbered like a baby. His transplanted perennials were "sattled" by copious floods of water. Perhaps he hoped that tears would settle me!



CHAPTER XI.

MATILDA'S NEWS—OUR GOVERNESS—MAJOR BULLER TURNED TUTOR—ELEANOR ARKWRIGHT.

The grief I felt at leaving The Vine was greatly forgotten in the warm welcome which awaited me on my return to Riflebury.

In a household where gossip is a principal amusement, the return of any member from a visit is a matter for general congratulation till the new budget is exhausted. Indeed, I plead guilty to a liking to be the first to skim the news when Eleanor or one of the boys comes back from a visit, at the present time.

Matilda withdrew me from Aunt Theresa as soon as she could.

"I am so glad to get you back, Margery dear," said she. "And now you must tell me all your news, and I'll tell you all mine. And to begin with—what do you think?—we've got a governess, and you and I are to have the little room at the head of the stairs all to ourselves."

Matilda's news was lengthy enough and interesting enough to make us late for tea, and mine kept us awake for a couple of hours after we were fairly in our two little iron bedsteads in the room that was now our very own. That is to say, I told what I had to tell after we came to bed, but my news was so tame compared with Matilda's that we soon returned to the discussion of hers. I tried to describe my great-grandfather's sketches, but neither Aunt Theresa in the drawing-room, nor Matilda when we retired for the night, seemed to feel any interest in the subject; and when Mrs. Buller asked what sort of people called at The Vine, I felt that my reply was, like the rest of my news, but dull.

Matilda's, on the contrary, was very entertaining. She spoke enthusiastically of Miss Perry, the governess.

"She is so good-natured, Margery, you can't think. When lessons are over she takes me walks on the Esplanade, and she calls me her dear Matilda, and I take her arm, and she tells me all about herself. She says she knows she's very romantic. And she's got lots of secrets, and she's told me several already; for she says she has a feeling that I can keep a secret, and so I can. But telling you's not telling, you know, because she's sure to tell you herself; only you'd better wait till she does before you say anything, for fear she should be vexed."

Of course I promised to do so, and craned my neck out of bed to catch Matilda's interesting but whispered revelations.

Matilda herself was only partially in Miss Perry's confidence, and I looked anxiously forward to the time when she would admit me also to her secrets, though I feared she might consider me too young. My fears were groundless, as I found Miss Perry was fond of talking about herself, and a suitable audience was quite a secondary consideration with her.

She was a protegee of Mrs. Minchin's, who had persuaded Aunt Theresa to take her for our governess. She was quite unfit for the position, and did no little harm to us in her brief reign. But I do not think that our interests had entered in the least into Mrs. Minchin's calculations in the matter. She had "taken Miss Perry up," and to get Miss Perry a comfortable home was her sole object.

To do our new governess justice, she did her best to impart her own superficial acquirements to us. We plodded regularly through French exercises, which she corrected by a key, and she kept us at work for a given number of hours during the day; tatting by our sides as we practised our scales, or roasting her petticoats over the fire, whilst Matilda and I read Mrs. Markham's England or Mrs. Trimmer's Bible Lessons aloud by turns to full-stops. But when lessons were over Miss Perry was quite as glad as we were, and the subjects of our studies had as little to do with our holiday hours as a Sunday sermon with the rest of the week.

She was a great novel-reader, and I think a good many of the things she told us of, as having happened to herself, had their real origin in the Riflebury circulating library. For she was one of those strange characters who indulge in egotism and exaggeration, till they seem positively to lose the sense of what is fact and what is fiction.

She filled our poor empty little heads with a great deal of folly, and it was well for us that her reign was not a long one.

She was much attached to the school-room fireside. She could not sit too close to it, or roast herself too thoroughly for her own satisfaction. I sometimes wondered if the bony woman who kept the library ever complained of the curled condition of the backs of the books Miss Perry held between her eyes and the hot coals for so many hours.

In this highly heated state our governess was, of course, sensitive to the smallest inlet of cooler air, and "draughts" were accordingly her abhorrence. How we contrived to distinguish a verb from a noun, or committed anything whatever to memory in the fever-heat and "stuffy" atmosphere of the little room which was sacred to our studies, I do not know. At a certain degree of the thermometer Miss Perry's face rises before me and makes my brain spin even now.

This was, no doubt, one cause of the very severe headaches to which Matilda became subject about this time, though, now I look back, I do not think she had been quite strong since we all had the measles. They were apt to end in a fainting condition, from which she recovered by lying on the floor. Then, if Miss Perry happened to be in good humour, she would excuse Matilda from further lessons, invariably adding, in her "mystery" voice—"But not a word to your mamma!"

It was the most unjustifiable use she made of influence she gained over us (especially over poor Matilda, who was very fond of her, and believed in her) that she magnified her own favours at the expense of Major Buller and my aunt. For some time they had no doubts as to the wisdom of Mrs. Minchin's choice.

Miss Perry was clever enough not to display her romantic side to Mrs. Buller. She amused her, too, with Riflebury gossip, in which she was an adept. She knew equally well how far she might venture with the Major; and the sleight-of-hand with which she threw needlework over a novel when Aunt Theresa came into the school-room was not more skilful than the way in which she turned the tail of a bit of scandal into a remark upon the weather as Uncle Buller opened the drawing-room door.

But Miss Perry was not skilful enough to win the Major's lasting favour. He was always slow to interfere in domestic matters, but he was not unobservant.

"I'm sure you see a great deal more than one would think, Edward," Aunt Theresa would say; "although you are so wrapt up in insects and things."

"The insects don't get into my eyes, my dear," said Major Buller.

"And hear too," Mrs. Buller continued. "Mrs. O'Connor was saying only the other day that you often seem to hear of things before other people, though you do talk so little."

"It is, perhaps, because I am not always talking that I do hear. But Mrs. O'Connor is not likely to think of that," said the Major, rather severely.

He was neither blind nor deaf in reference to Miss Perry, and she was dismissed. Aunt Theresa rather dreaded Mrs. Minchin's indignation in the matter, I believe; but needlessly, for Miss Perry and Mrs. Minchin quarrelled about this time, and Mrs. Minchin had then so much information to Miss Perry's disadvantage at her fingers' ends, that it seemed wonderful that she should ever have recommended her.

For some little time our education progressed in a very desultory fashion. Major Buller became perversely prejudiced against governesses, and for a short time undertook to carry on our English lessons himself. He made sums amusing, and geography lessons "as good as stories," though the latter so often led (by very interesting channels) to his dearly beloved insects, that Mrs. Buller accused him of making our lessons an excuse for getting out his "collection."

With "grammar" we were less successful. Major Buller was so good a teacher that he brought out what intelligence we possessed, and led us constantly to ask questions about anything we failed to understand. In arithmetic this led to his helping us over our difficulties; in geography it led, sooner or later, to the "collection"; but in English grammar it led to stumbling-blocks and confusion, and, finally, to the Major's throwing the book across the room, and refusing to pursue that part of our education any further.

"I never learnt English grammar," said the Major, "and it's quite evident that I can't teach it."

"If you don't know grammar, Papa, then we needn't," said Matilda promptly, and being neat of disposition, she picked up the book and proceeded to put it away.

"I never said that I didn't know grammar," said the Major; "I fancy I can speak and write grammatically, but what I know I got from the Latin grammar. And, upon my soul," added Uncle Buller, pulling at his heavy moustache, "I don't know why you shouldn't do the same."

The idea of learning Latin pleased us greatly, and Major Buller (who had been at Charterhouse in his boyhood) bought a copy of Dr. Russell's Grammar, and we set to work. And either because the rules of the Latin grammar bore explanation better than the English ones, or because Major Buller was better able to explain them, we had no further difficulties.

We were very proud of doing lessons in these circumstances, and boasted of our Latin, I remember, to the little St. Quentins, when we met them at the dancing-class. The St. Quentins were slender, ladylike girls, much alike, and rendered more so by an exact similarity of costume. Their governess was a very charming and talented woman, and when Mrs. St. Quentin proposed that Matilda and I should share her daughters' French lessons under Miss Airlie, Major Buller and Aunt Theresa thankfully accepted the offer. I think that our short association with this excellent lady went far to cure us of the silly fancies and tricks of vulgar gossip which we had gleaned from Miss Perry.

So matters went on for some months, much to Matilda's and my satisfaction, when a letter from my other guardian changed our plans once more.

Mr. Arkwright's only daughter was going to school. He wrote to ask the Bullers to let her break the journey by spending a night at their house. It was a long journey, for she was coming from the north.

"They live in Yorkshire," said Major Buller, much as one might speak of living in Central Africa.

Matilda and I looked forward with great interest to Miss Arkwright's arrival. Her name, we learnt, was Eleanor, and she was nearly a year older than Maria.

"She'll be your friend, I suppose," I said, a little enviously, in reference to her age.

"Of course," said Matilda, with dignity. "But you can be with us a good deal," she was kind enough to add.

I remember quite well how disappointed I felt that I should have so little title to share the newcomer's friendship.

"If she had only been ten years old, and so come between us," I thought, "she would have been as much mine as Matilda's."

I little thought then what manner of friends we were to be in spite of the five years' difference in age. Indeed, both Matilda and I were destined to see more of her than we expected. Aunt Theresa and Major Buller came to a sudden resolution to send us also to the school where she was going, though we did not hear of this at first.

Long afterwards, when we were together, Eleanor asked me if I could remember my first impression of her. For our affection's sake I wish it had been a picturesque one; but truth obliges me to confess that, when our visitor did at last arrive, Matilda and I were chiefly struck by the fact that she wore thick boots, and did not wear crinoline.

And yet, looking back, I have a very clear picture of her in my mind, standing in the passage by her box (a very rough one, very strongly corded, and addressed in the clearest of handwriting), purse in hand, and paying the cabman with perfect self-possession. An upright, quite ladylike, but rather old-fashioned little figure, somewhat quaint from the simplicity of her dress. She had a rather quaint face, too, with a nose slightly turned up, a prominent forehead, a charming mouth, and most beautiful dark eyes. Her hair was rolled under and tied at the top of her head, and it had an odd tendency to go astray about the parting.

This was, perhaps, partly from a trick she seemed to have of doing her hair away from the looking-glass. She stood to do it, and also (on one leg) to put on her shoes and stockings, which amused us. But she was always on her feet, and seemed unhappy if she sat idle. We took her for a walk the morning after her arrival, and walked faster than we had ever walked before to keep pace with our new friend, who strode along in her thick boots and undistended skirts with a step like that of a kilted Highlander.

When we came into the town, however, she was quite willing to pause before the shop-windows, which gave her much entertainment.

"I'm afraid I should always be looking in at the windows if I lived in a town," she said, "there are such pretty things."

Eleanor laughs when I remind her of that walk, and how we stood still by every chemist's door because she liked the smell. When anything interested her, she stopped, but at other times she walked as if she were on the road to some given place, and determined to be there in good time; or perhaps it would be more just to say that she walked as if walking were a pleasure to her. It was walking—not strolling. When she was out alone, I know that she constantly ran when other people would have walked. It is a north-country habit, I think. I have seen middle-aged Scotch and Yorkshire ladies run as lightly as children.

It was not the fashionable time of day, so that we could not, during that walk, show Eleanor the chief characters of Riflebury. But just as we were leaving High Street she stopped and asked, "Who is that lady?"

"The one in the mauve silk?" said Matilda. "That is one of the cavalry ladies. All the cavalry ladies dress grandly."

It was a Mrs. Perowne. She was sailing languidly down the other side of the street, in a very large crinoline, and a very long dress of pale silk, which floated after her along the dirty pavement, much, I remember, to my admiration. Above this was some tight-fitting thing with a good deal of lace about it, which was crowned by a fragile and flowery bonnet, and such a tuft of white lace at the end of a white stick as just sheltered her nose, which was aquiline, from the sunshine. She was prettily dressed for an open carriage, a flower-show, or a wedding breakfast; for walking through the streets of a small, dirty town, to change her own books at the library, her costume was ludicrously out of place, though at the time I thought it enviably grand. The way in which a rich skirt that would not wash, and would undoubtedly be worn again, trailed through dust and orange-peel, and greengrocers' refuse, and general shop-sweepings, was offensive to cleanliness alone.

"Is she ill?" Eleanor asked.

"No," said Matilda; "I don't think so. Why?"

"She walks so slowly," said Eleanor, gazing anxiously at Mrs. Perowne out of her dark eyes, "and she is so white in the face."

"Oh, my dear!" said Matilda, laughing, "that's puff—puff, and a white veil. It's to make her look young. I heard Mrs. Minchin tell Mamma that she knew she was thirty-seven at least. But she dresses splendidly. If you stay over Sunday, you'll see her close, for she sits in front of us in church. And she has such a splendid big scent-bottle, with gold tops, and such a lovely, tiny little prayer-book, bound in blue velvet, and a watch no bigger than a shilling, with a monogram on the back. She took it out several times in the sermon last Sunday, so I saw it. But isn't her hair funny?"

"It's a beautiful colour," said Eleanor, "only it looks different in front. But I suppose that's the veil."

"No, it isn't," said Matilda; "that's the new colour for hair, you know. It's done by stuff you put on; but Miss Perry said the worst was, it didn't always come out the same all over. Lots of ladies use it."

"How horrid!" said Eleanor. "But what makes her walk so slow?"

"Well, I don't know," said Matilda. "Why should she walk quick?"

Eleanor seemed struck by this reply, and after a few minutes' pause, said very gently, with a slight blush on her cheeks, "I'm afraid I have been walking too fast for you. I'm used to walking with boys."

We earnestly assured her that this was not the case, and that it was much better fun to walk with her than with Miss Perry, who used to dawdle so that we were often thoroughly chilled.

In the afternoon we took her to the Esplanade, when Matilda, from her knowledge of the people, took the lead in the conversation. I was proud to walk on the other side of our new friend, with my best doll in my arms. Aunt Theresa came with us, but she soon sat down to chat to a friend, and we three strolled up and down together. I remember a pretty bit of trimming on Eleanor's hat being blown by the wind against her face, on which she quietly seized it, and stuffed it securely into the band.

"Oh, my dear!" said Matilda, in the emphatic tone in which Aunt Theresa's lady visitors were wont to exclaim about nothing in particular—"don't do that. It looks so pretty; and you're crushing it dreadfully."

"It got in my eyes," said Eleanor briefly. "I hate tags."

We went home before Aunt Theresa, but as we stood near the door, Eleanor lingered and looked wistfully up the road, which ran over a slight hill towards the open country.

"Would you like to stay out a little longer?" we politely asked.

"I should rather like to go to the top of the hill," said Eleanor. "Don't you think flat ground tires one? Shall we race up?" she added.

We willingly agreed. I had a few yards start of Eleanor, and Matilda rather less, and away we went. But we were little used to running, and hoops and thin boots were not in our favour. Eleanor beat us, of course. She seemed in no way struck by the view from the top. Indeed it was not particularly pretty.

"It's very flat about here," she said. "There are no big hills you can get to the top of, I suppose?"

We confessed that there were not, and, there being nothing more to do, we ran down again, and went indoors.

Eleanor dressed for the evening in her usual peripatetic way, and, armed with a homely-looking piece of grey knitting, followed us down-stairs.

Her superabundant energy did not seem to find vent in conversation. We were confidential enough now to tell each other of our homes, and she had sat so long demurely silent, that Matilda ventured upon the inquiry—

"Don't you talk much at your home?"

"Oh yes," said Eleanor—"at least, when we've anything to say;" and I am sure no irony was intended in the reply.

"What are you knitting, my dear?" said Aunt Theresa.

"A pair of socks for my brother Jack," was the answer.

"I'm sure you're dreadfully industrious," said Mrs. Buller.

A little later she begged Eleanor to put it away.

"You'll tire your eyes, my dear, I'm sure; pray rest a little and chat to us."

"I don't look at my knitting," said Eleanor; but she put it away, and then sat looking rather red in the face, and somewhat encumbered with her empty hands, which were red too.

I think Uncle Buller noticed this; for he told us to get the big scrap-book and show it to Miss Arkwright.

Eleanor got cool again over the book; but she said little till, pausing before a small, black-looking print in a sheet full of rather coarse coloured caricatures, cuttings from illustrated papers and old-fashioned books, second-rate lithographs, and third-rate original sketches, fitted into a close patchwork, she gave a sort of half-repressed cry.

"My dear! What is it?" cried Matilda effusively.

"I think," said Eleanor, looking for information to Aunt Theresa, "I think it's a real Rembrandt, isn't it?"

"A real what, my dear?" said Mrs. Buller.

"One of Rembrandt's etchings," said Eleanor; "and of course I don't know, but I think it must be an original; it's so beautifully done, and my mother has a copy of this one. We know ours is a copy, and I think this must be an original, because all the things are turned the other way; and it's very old, and it's beautifully done," Eleanor repeated, with her face over the little black print.

Major Buller came across the room, and sat down by her.

"You are fond of drawing?" he said.

"Very," said Eleanor, and she threw a good deal of eloquence into the one word.

The Major and she forthwith plunged into a discussion of drawing, etching, line-engraving, &c., &c. It appeared that Mrs. Arkwright etched on copper, and had a good collection of old etchings, with which Eleanor was familiar. It also transpired that she was a naturalist, which led by easy stages to a promise from the Major to show Eleanor his insects.

They talked till bedtime, and when Aunt Theresa bade us good-night, she said:

"I'm glad you've found your voice, my dear;" and she added, laughing, "But whenever Papa talks to anybody, it always ends in the collection."



CHAPTER XII.

POOR MATILDA—THE AWKWARD AGE—MRS. BULLER TAKES COUNSEL WITH HER FRIENDS—THE "MILLINER AND MANTUAMAKER"—MEDICAL ADVICE—THE MAJOR DECIDES.

It was not because Major Buller's high opinion of Miss Airlie was in any way lowered that he decided to send us to school. In fact it was only under long and heavy pressure, from circumstances as well as from Aunt Theresa, that he gave his consent to a plan which never quite met with his approval.

Several things at this time seemed to conspire to effect it. The St. Quentins were going on long leave, and Miss Airlie would go with them. This was a heavy blow. Then we heard of this school after Miss Airlie had left Riflebury, a fact so opportune as to be (so Aunt Theresa said) "quite providential." If we were to go to school, sending us to this one would save the trouble of making personal inquiries, and perhaps a less wise selection, for Major Buller had confidence in Mr. Arkwright's good judgment. The ladies to whose care his daughter was confided were probably fit to teach us.

"It would save a great deal of trouble," my guardian confessed, and it must also be confessed that Major Buller was glad to avoid trouble when he could conscientiously do so.

I think it was his warm approval of Eleanor which finally clinched the question. He thought that she would be a good companion for poor Matilda.

Why I speak of her as "poor Matilda" demands some explanation.

Before I attempt to give it I must say that there is one respect in which our biographies must always be less satisfactory than a story that one might invent. When you are putting down true things about yourself and your friends, you cannot divide people neatly into the good and the bad, the injurers and the injured, as you can if you are writing a tale out of your head. The story seems more complete when you are able either to lay the blame of the melancholy events on the shoulders of some unworthy character, or to show that they were the natural punishment of the sufferer's own misconduct. But in thinking of Matilda and Aunt Theresa and Major Buller, or even of the Doctor and Mrs. Buller's lady friends, this is not possible.

The morbid condition—of body and mind—into which Matilda fell for some time was no light misfortune either as regards her sufferings or the discomfort it produced in the household, and I am afraid she was both mismanaged and in fault herself.

It is safe, at any rate, to take the blame for one's own share, and I have often thought, with bitterness of spirit, that, child as I was, I might have been both forbearing and helpful to Matilda at a time when her temper was very much tried by ill-health and untoward circumstances. We had a good many squabbles about this period. I piqued myself upon generally being in the right, and I did not think then, as I do now, that it is possible to be most in the right in a quarrel, and at the same time not least to blame for it.

Matilda certainly did by degrees become very irritable, moody, and perverse, and her perversity developed itself in ways which puzzled poor Aunt Theresa.

She became silent and unsociable. She displayed a particular dislike to the privileges of being in the drawing-room with grown-up "company," and of accompanying Aunt Theresa when she paid her afternoon calls. She looked very ill, and stoutly denied that she was so. She highly resented solicitude on the subject of her health, fought obstinately over every bottle of medicine, and was positively rude to the doctors.

For her unsociability, I think, Miss Perry's evil influence was partly to blame. Poor Matilda clung to her belief in our late governess when she was no more to us than a text upon which Aunt Theresa and her friends preached to each other against governesses in general, and the governesses each had suffered from in particular. Our lessons with Major Buller, and the influence of Miss Airlie's good breeding and straightforward kindness, gave a healthier turn to our tastes; but when Miss Airlie went away and Major Buller proclaimed a three weeks' holiday from the Latin grammar, and we were left to ourselves, Matilda felt the want of the flattery, the patronage, and the small excitements and mysteries about nothing, to which Miss Perry had accustomed her. I blush to think that my companionship was less comfort to her than it ought to have been. As to Aunt Theresa, she was always too busy to give full attention to anything; and this does not invite confidence.

Another reason, I am sure, for Matilda's dislike to appearing in company was a painful sense of her personal appearance; and as she had heard Aunt Theresa and her friends discuss, approve, and condemn their friends by the standard of appearances alone, ever since she was old enough to overhear company conversation, I hardly think she was much to blame on this point.

Matilda was emphatically at what is called "an awkward age"; an age more awkward with some girls than with others. I wish grown-up ladies, who mean to be kind to their friends' daughters, would try to remember the awkwardness of it, and not increase a naturally uncomfortable self-consciousness by personal remarks which might disturb the composure of older, prettier, and better-dressed people. It is bad enough to be quite well aware that the size of one's hands and feet prematurely foreshadow the future growth of one's figure; that these are the more prominent because the simple dresses of the unintroduced young lady seem to be perpetually receding from one's bony-wrists above, and shrinking towards the calves of one's legs below, from those thin ankles on which one is impelled to stand by turns (like a sleeping stork) through some mysterious instinct of relieving the weak and overgrown spine.

This, I say, is mortifying enough, and if modesty and good breeding carry us cheerfully through a not unfelt contrast with the assured manners and flowing draperies of Mamma's lady friends in the drawing-room, they might spare us the announcement of what it hardly needs gold eyeglasses to discover—that we really grow every day. Blushes come heavily enough to hands and cheeks when to the shyness of youth are added the glows and chills of imperfect circulation: it does not need the stare of strangers, nor the apologies of Mamma, to stain our doubtful complexions with a deeper red.

All girls are not awkward at the awkward age. I speak most disinterestedly on Matilda's behalf, for I never went through this phase myself. It is perhaps because I am small that I can never remember my hands, or any other part of me, feeling in my way; and my clothes—of whatever length, breadth, or fashion—always had a happy knack of becoming one with me in such wise that I could comfortably forget them.

The St. Quentin girls were nearer to Matilda's age than I, but they too were very happy and looked very nice in the hobble-de-hoy stage of girlhood. I am sure that they much preferred the company of their young brothers to the company of the drawing-room; but they did what they were told to do, and seemed happy in doing it. They had, however, several advantages over Matilda. By judicious care (for they were not naturally robust) they were kept in good health. They kept a great many pets, and they always seemed to have plenty to do, which perhaps kept them from worrying about themselves. Adelaide, for instance, did all the flowers for the drawing-room and dinner-table. Mrs. St. Quentin said she could not do them so well herself. They had a very small garden to pick from, but Adelaide used lots of wild-flowers and grass and ferns. She often let me help her to fill the china jars, and she was the only person who ever seemed to like hearing about Grandpapa's paintings. They all did something in the house. But I believe that their greatest advantage over poor Matilda was that they had not been accustomed to hear dress and appearance talked about as matters of the first importance, so that whatever defects they felt conscious of in either did not weigh too heavily on their minds.

On poor Matilda's they weighed heavily indeed. And she was not only troubled by that consciousness of being plain, by which I think quite as many girls are affected as by the vanity of being pretty (and which has received far less attention from moralists); she was also tormented by certain purely nervous fancies of her face being swollen, her eyes squinting, and her throat choking, when people looked at her, which were due to ill-health.

Unhappily, the ill-health which was a good excuse for Matilda's unwillingness to "play pretty" in the drawing-room was the subject on which she was more perverse than any other. It was a great pity that she was not frank and confiding with her mother. The detestable trick of small concealments which Miss Perry had taught us was partly answerable for this; but the fault was not entirely Matilda's.

Aunt Theresa had not time to attend to her. What attention she did give, however, made her so anxious on the subject that she took counsel with every lady of her acquaintance, and the more she talked about poor Matilda's condition the less leisure she had to think about it.

"It may be more mind than body, I'm afraid," said Aunt Theresa one afternoon, on our return from some visiting in which Matilda had refused to share. "Mrs. Minchin says she knew a girl who went out of her senses when she was only two years older than Matilda, and it began with her refusing to go anywhere or see any one."

Major Buller turned round on his chair with an anxious face, and a beetle transfixed by a needle in his hand.

"It was a very shocking thing," continued Aunt Theresa, taking off her bonnet; "for she had a great-uncle in Hanwell, and her grandfather cut his throat. I suppose it was in the family."

Major Buller turned back again, and pinned the beetle by its proper label.

"I suppose it was," said he dryly; "but as there is no insanity in my family or in yours that I'm aware of, Mrs. Minchin's case is not much to the point."

"Mrs. O'Connor won't believe she's ill," sighed Aunt Theresa; "she thinks it's all temper. She says her own temper was unbearable till she had it knocked out of her at school."

"Matilda's temper was good enough till lately," growled the Major.

"She says Dr. O'Connor's brother, who is the medical officer of a lunatic asylum somewhere in Tipperary," continued Aunt Theresa, "declares all mad women go out of their minds through ill-temper. He's written a book about it."

"Heaven defend me, mind and body, from the theories of that astute practitioner!" said Uncle Buller piously.

"It's all very well making fun of it, but everybody tells one that girls are more trouble than any number of boys. I'm sure I don't remember giving my mother any particular trouble when I was Matilda's age, but the stories I've heard to-day are enough to make one's hair stand on end. Mrs. Minchin knew another girl, who lost all her appetite just like Matilda, and she had a very sulky temper too, and at last they found out she used to eat black-beetles. She was a Creole, or something of that sort, I believe, but they couldn't stop her. The Minchins knew her when they were in the West Indies, when he was in the 209th; or, at least, it was there they heard about her. The houses swarmed with black-beetles."

"A most useful young lady," said Uncle Buller. "Does Matilda dine on our native beetles, my dear? She hasn't touched my humble collection."

"Oh, if you make fun of everything——" Aunt Theresa began; but at this moment Mrs. St. John was announced.

After the customary civilities, Aunt Theresa soon began to talk of poor Matilda, and Mrs. St. John entered warmly into the subject.

To do the ladies of the regiment justice, they sympathized freely with each other's domestic troubles; and indeed it was not for lack of taking counsel that any of them had any domestic troubles at all.

"Girls are a good deal more difficult to manage than boys, I'm afraid," sighed Aunt Theresa, repeating Mrs. O'Connor's dictum.

"Women are dreadful creatures at any age," said Mrs. St. John to the Major, opening her brown eyes in the way she always does when she is talking to a gentleman. "I always longed to have been a man."

[Eleanor says she hates to hear girls say they wish they were boys. If they do wish it, I do not myself see why they should not say so. But one thing has always struck me as very odd. If you meet a woman who is incomparably silly, who does not know an art or a trade by which she could keep herself from starvation, who could not manage the account-books of a village shop, who is unpunctual, unreasoning, and in every respect uneducated—a woman, in short, who has, one would think, daily reason to be thankful that her necessities are supplied by other people, she is pretty sure to be always regretting that she is not a man.

Another, trick that some silly ladies have riles me (as we say in Yorkshire) far more than this odd ambition for responsibilities one is quite incompetent to assume. Mrs. St. John had it, and as it was generally displayed for the benefit of gentlemen, who seem as a rule to be very susceptible to flattery, I suppose it is more a kind of drawing-room "pretty talk" than the expression of deliberate opinions. It consists of contrasting girls with boys and women with men, to the disparagement of the former, especially in matters over which circumstances and natural disposition are commonly supposed to give them some advantage.

I remember hearing a fat, good-natured girl at one of Aunt Theresa's garden-parties say, with all the impressiveness of full conviction, "Girls are far more cruel than boys, really. You know, women are much more cruel than men—oh, I'm sure they are!" and the idea filled me not less with amazement than with horror. This very young lady had been most good-natured to us. She had the reputation of being an unselfish and much-beloved elder sister. I do not think she would have hurt a fly. Why she said this I cannot imagine, unless it was to please the young gentleman she was talking to. I think he did look rather gratified. For my own part, the idea worried my little head for a long time—children give much more heed to general propositions of this kind than is commonly supposed.]

There was one disadvantage in the very fulness of the sympathy the ladies gave each other over their little affairs. The main point was apt to be neglected for branches of the subject. If Mrs. Minchin consulted Mrs. Buller about a cook, that particular cook might be discussed for five minutes, but the rest of a two hours' visit would probably be devoted to recollections of Aunt Theresa's cooks past and present, Mrs. Minchin's "coloured cooks" in Jamaica, and the cooks engaged by the mothers and grandmothers of both ladies.

Thus when Aunt Theresa took counsel with her friends about poor Matilda, they hardly kept to Matilda's case long enough even to master the facts, and on this particular occasion Mrs. St. John plunged at once into a series of illustrative anecdotes of the most terrible kind, for she always talked, as she dressed, in extremes. The moral of every story was that Matilda should be sent to school.

"And I'll send you over last year's numbers of the Milliner and Mantua-maker, dear Mrs. Buller. There are always lots of interesting letters about people's husbands and children, and education, and that sort of thing, in the column next to the pastry and cooling drinks receipts. There was a wonderfully clever letter from a 'M.R.C.S.' about the difficulty of managing young girls, and recommending a strict school where he had sent his daughter. And next month there were long letters from five 'British Mothers' and 'A Countess' who had not been able to manage their daughters, and had sent them to this school, and were in every way satisfied. Mr. St. John declared that all the letters were written by one person to advertise the school, but he always does say those sort of things about anything I'm interested in."

"You're very kind," said Mrs. Buller.

"There was a most extraordinary correspondence, too, after that shoemaker's daughter in Lambeth was tried for poisoning her little brother," continued Mrs. St. John. "The Saturday Review had an article on it, I believe, only Mr. St. John can't bring papers home from the mess, so I didn't see it. The letters were all about all the dreadful things done by girls in their teens. There were letters from twelve 'Materfamiliases,' I know, because the editor had to put numbers to them, and four 'Paterfamiliases,' and 'An Anxious Widower,' and 'A Minister,' and three 'M.D.'s.' But the most awful letter was from 'A Student of Human Nature,' and it ended up that every girl of fifteen was a murderess at heart. If I can only lay my hand on that number—— but I've lent it to so many people, and there was a capital paper pattern in it too, of the jupon a l'Imperatrice, ready pricked."

At this point Uncle Buller literally exploded from the room. Aunt Theresa said something about draughts, but I think even Mrs. St. John must have been aware that it was the Major who banged the door.

I was sitting on the footstool by the fire-place making a night-dress for my doll. My work had been suspended by horror at Mrs. St. John's revelations, and Major Buller's exit gave an additional shock in which I lost my favourite needle, a dear little stumpy one, with a very fine point and a very big eye, easy to thread, and delightful to use.

When Mrs. St. John went away Major Buller came back.

"I am sorry I banged the door, my dear," said he kindly, "but whatever the tempers of girls may be made of at fifteen, mine is by no means perfect, I regret to say, at fifty; and I cannot stand that woman. My dear Theresa, let me implore you to put all this trash out of your head and get proper medical advice for the child at once. And—I don't like to seem unreasonable, my dear, but—if you must read those delectable articles to which Mrs. St. John refers, I wish you'd read them at her house, and not bring them into ours. I'd rather the coarsest novel that ever was written were picked up by the children, if the broad lines of good and evil were clearly marked in it, than this morbid muddle of disease and crime, and unprincipled parents and practitioners."

Uncle Buller seldom interfered so warmly; indeed, he seldom interfered at all. I think Aunt Theresa would have been glad if he would have advised her oftener.

"Indeed, Edward," said she, "I'll do anything you think right. And I'm sure I wouldn't read anything improper myself, much less let the children. And as to the Milliner and Mantuamaker you need not be afraid of that coming into the house unless I send for it. Mrs. St. John is always promising to lend me the fashion-book, but she never remembers it."

"And you'll have proper advice for Matilda at once?"

"Certainly, my dear."

Mrs. Buller was in the habit of asking the regimental Surgeon's advice in small matters, and of employing a civilian doctor (whose fees made him feel better worth having) in serious illness. She estimated the seriousness of a case by danger rather than delicacy. So the Surgeon came to see Matilda, and having heard her cough, promised to send a "little something," and she was ordered to keep indoors and out of draughts, and take a tablespoonful three times a day.

Matilda had not gone graciously through the ordeal of facing the principal Surgeon in his uniform, and putting out her tongue for his inspection; and his prescriptions did not tend to reconcile her to being "doctored." Fresh air was the only thing that hitherto had seemed to have any effect on her aches and pains, or to soothe her hysterical irritability, and of this she was now deprived. When Aunt Theresa called in an elderly civilian practitioner, she was so sulky and uncommunicative, and so resolutely refused to acknowledge to any ailments, that (his other prescriptions having failed to cure her lassitude, and his pompous manner and professional visits rather provoking her feverish perversity) the old doctor also recommended that she should be sent to school.

Medical advice is very authoritative, and yet Uncle Buller hesitated.

"It's like packing a troublesome son off to the Colonies, my dear," said he. "And though Dr. Brown may be justified in transferring his responsibilities elsewhere, I don't think that parents should get rid of theirs in this easy fashion."

But when Eleanor came, the Major's views underwent a change. If I went with Matilda, and we had Eleanor Arkwright for a friend, he allowed that he would consent.

"That is if the girl is willing to go. I will send no child of mine out of my house against her will."

Major Buller asked her himself. Asked with so much kindness, and expressed such cheery hopes that change of air, regular occupation, and the society of other young people would make her feel "stronger and happier" than she had seemed to be of late, that to say that Matilda would have gone anywhere and done anything her father wished is to give a feeble idea of the gush of gratitude which his sensible and sympathetic words awoke in her. Unfortunately she could not keep herself from crying just when she most wanted to speak, and Uncle Buller, having a horror of "scenes," cut short the one interview in which Matilda felt disposed to confide in her parents.

But she confided to me, when she came to bed that night (I didn't mind her crying between the sentences), that she was very, very sorry to have been "so cross and stupid," and that if we were not going to school she meant to try and be very different. I begged her to let me ask Uncle Buller to keep us at home a little longer, but Matilda would not hear of it.

"No, no," she sobbed, "not now. I should like to do something he and Mamma want, and they want us to go to school."

For my own part I was quite willing to go, especially after I had seen Eleanor Arkwright. So we were sent—to Bush House.



CHAPTER XIII.

AT SCHOOL—THE LILAC-BUSH—BRIDGET'S POSIES—SUMMER—HEALTH.

We knew when it was summer at Bush House, because there was a lilac-tree by the gate, which had one large bunch of flowers on it in the summer when Eleanor and I and Matilda were at school there. As we left the house in double file to take our daily exercise on the high-road, the girls would bob their heads to catch a whiff of the scent as they passed, or to let the cool fragrant flowers brush their foreheads. On this point Madame, our French governess, remonstrated in vain. We took turns for the side next to the lilac, and sniffed away as long as there was anything to smell. Even when the delicate colour began to turn brown, and the fragrance vanished, we were loth to believe that the blossoms were fading.

"I think I have got a cold in my head," said Matilda, who had plunged her nose into the cluster one day in vain.

"You have a cough, ma foi! Mademoiselle Buller," replied Madame, who seemed to labour under the idea that Matilda rather enjoyed this privilege. But I had tried the lilac-bush myself with no better success.

"I think," I whispered to Eleanor, in English, "that we have smelt it all up."

"Parlez-vous francais, mesdemoiselles!" cried Madame, and we filed out into the dusty street, at the corner of which sat another of our visible tokens of the coming of the season of flowers; a dirty, shrivelled old Irishwoman, full of benedictions and beggary, who, all through the summer, sold "posies" to the passers-by. We school-girls were good customers to her. We were all more or less sentimental, more or less homesick, and had more or less of that susceptibility to the influence of scents which may, some day, be the basis of a new school of medicine. One girl had cultivated pinks and Roses de Meaux in her own garden "at home," and Bridget was soon wise enough to discover that a nosegay composed of these materials was an irresistible temptation to that particular customer. Another had a craving for the sight and smell of southernwood (or "old man," as Eleanor called it), and preferred it in combination with bachelor's buttons.

"There was an old woman 'at home' whom we used to go to tea with when we were children—my brother and I," she said; "there were such big bunches of southernwood by her cottage. And bachelor's buttons all round the garden."

The brother was dead, I knew, and there were two flattened "buttons" and a bit of withered "old man" gummed into her Bible. "Picked the last day we were out together. Before he was taken ill with scarlet fever," she told me. She had the boy's portrait in a standing frame, and, little space as we had in our bedrooms, the other girls piled their brushes and ribbon-boxes on one side of the looking-glass as best they could, and left the rest of the dressing-table sacred to his picture, and to the Bible, and the jar of Bridget's flowers, which stood before the likeness as if it had been that of a patron saint.

For my own part I was very ignorant of the names and properties of English flowers. I knew some by sight, from Adelaide St. Quentin's bouquets, and from my great-grandfather's sketches; and I knew the names of others of which Adolphe had given me plants, and of which I was glad to see the flower. As I had plenty of pocket-money I was a liberal customer, and I made old Bridget tell me the names of the flowers in her bunches. I have since found out that whenever she was at fault she composed a name upon the spot, with the ready wit and desire to please characteristic of her nation. These names were chiefly connected with the Blessed Virgin and the saints.

"The Lord blesh ye, my dear," she would say; "that's 'Mary's flower';" or, "Sure it's the 'Blessed Virgin's spinning-wheel,' and a pretty name too!"

A bitter-smelling herb which she commended to me as "Saints' Savory," I afterwards learned to be tansy.

The youngest of us, a small, silent little orphan, had bought no posy till one day she quietly observed, "If you could get me a peony, I would buy it."

The peony was procured; so large, so round, and so red, that some one unfeelingly suggested that it should be cut up for pickled cabbage. The little miss walked home with it in her hand, looking at it as sentimentally as if it had been a forget-me-not. As we had been hard-hearted enough to laugh at it, we never learned the history which made it dear.

Madame would certainly never have allowed us to break our ranks, and chaffer with Bridget, but that some one had been lucky enough to think of giving her bouquets.

Madame liked flowers—as ornaments—and was sentimental herself, after a fashion, a sentimentality of appearances. She liked a bright spot of colour on her sombre dresses too, and she was economical; for every day that she had a bright bouquet a day's wear and tear was saved to her neck-ribbons. She pinned the bright flowers by her very clean collar, and not very clean throat, and permitted us to supply ourselves also from Bridget's basket.

A less pleasant sign of summer than the lilac-blossom or Bridget's flower-basket was the heat. It was hot in the dusty, draughty streets of the little town. The empty bedrooms at Bush House were like ovens, and the well-filled school-room was much worse. Madame would never hear any complaints of the heat from me or from Matilda. Summer at Bush House, in the nature of things, could be nothing to summer in India, to which we were accustomed. It was useless to point out that in India the rooms in which we lived were large, well shaded, and ventilated by constant currents of fresh air. Also that there, our heaviest meal, our longest walk, and our hardest work were not all crowded into the hottest hours of the day.

"England is at no time so warm as India," said Madame.

"I suppose we are not as hot as the cook," suggested little "Peony" as we now called her, one very hot day, when we sat languidly struggling through our work in the stifling atmosphere of the school-room. "I thought of her to-day when I looked at that great fat leg of roast mutton. We're better off than she is."

"And she's better off than if she were in the Black Hole of Calcutta; but that doesn't make either her or us cool," said Emma Lascelles, an elder girl. "Don't preach, Peony; lessons are bad enough in this heat."

"I shan't eat any dinner to-morrow, I think," said Eleanor; "I cannot keep awake after it this weather, so it's no use."

"I wish I were back at Miss Martin's for the summer," said another girl.

We knew to what this referred, and Madame being by a rare chance absent, we pressed for an account, in English, of Miss Martin's arrangements in the hot weather. "Miss Martin's" was a school at which this girl had been before she came to Bush House.

"I can't think why on earth you left her," said Eleanor.

"Well, this is nearer home for one thing, and the masters are better here, certainly. But she did take such care of us. It wasn't everlasting backaches, and headaches, and coughs, and pains in your side all along. And when the weather got hot (and it was a very warm summer when I was there), and she found we got sleepy at work after dinner, and had headaches in the afternoon, she said she thought we had better have a scrap meal in the middle of the day, and dine in the cool of the evening; and so we used to have cold rice-pudding or thick bread-and-butter, such as we should have had for tea, or anything there was, and tumblers of water, at one, and at half-past five we used to wash and dress; and then at six, just when we were getting done up with the heat and work, and yet cool enough to eat, we had dinner. I can tell you a good fat roast leg of mutton looked all right then! It cured all our headaches, and we worked twice as well, both at midday work and at getting lessons ready for next day after dinner. I know——"

"Tais-toi, Lucy!" hissed Peony through her teeth. "Madame!"

"Donnez-moi cette grammaire, Marguerite, s'il vous plait," said Lucy, as Madame entered.

And I gave her the grammar, and we set to work again, full of envy for the domestic arrangements of Miss Martin's establishment during the dog days.

If there is a point on which Eleanor and I are quite agreed, among the many points we discuss and do not always agree upon, it is that of the need for a higher education for women. But ill as I think our sex provided for in this respect, and highly as I value good teaching, I would rather send a growing girl to a Miss Martin, even for fewer "educational advantages," and let her start in life with a sound, healthy constitution and a reasonable set of nerves, than have her head crammed and her health neglected under "the first masters," and so good an overseer as "Madame" to boot. For Madame certainly made us work, and was herself indefatigable.

The reckless imprudence of most girls in matters of health is proverbial, the wisdom of young matrons in this respect is not beyond reproach, and the lore which long and painful experience has given to older women is apt, like other lessons from that stern teacher, to come too late. It should at least avail to benefit their daughters, were it not that custom prescribes that they also should be kept in the dark till instructed in turn by the lamentable results of their ignorance, too often only when these are past repair.

Whether, though there are many things that women have no knowledge of, and many more of which their knowledge is superficial, their lack of learning on these points being erudition compared with their crass ignorance of the laws of health, the matter is again one of education; or whether it is an unfortunate development of a confusion between ignorance and innocence, and of mistaken notions of delicacy, who shall say? Unhappily, a studied ignorance of the ills that flesh is heir to is apt to bring them in double force about one's ears, and this kind of delicate-mindedness to bring delicacy of body in its train. Where it guides the counsels of those in charge of numbers of young people (as in Miss Mulberry's case), it is apt to result in the delicacy (more or less permanent) of several bodies.

But I am forgetting that I am not "preaching" to Eleanor by the kitchen fire, but writing my autobiography. I am forgetting, also, that I have not yet said who Miss Mulberry was.



CHAPTER XIV.

MISS MULBERRY—DISCIPLINE AND RECREATION—MADAME—CONVERSATION—ELEANOR'S OPINION OF THE DRAWING-MASTER—MISS ELLEN'S—ELEANOR'S APOLOGY.

Miss Mulberry was our school-mistress, and the head of the Bush House establishment. "Madame" was only a French mistress employed by Miss Mulberry, though she had more to do with the pupils than Miss Mulberry herself.

Miss Mulberry was stout, and I think by nature disposed to indolence, especially in warm weather. It was all the more creditable to her that she had worked hard for many years to support a paralytic mother and a delicate sister. The mother was dead now. Miss Ellen Mulberry, though an invalid, gave some help in teaching the younger ones; and Bush House had for so long been a highly-reputed establishment that Miss Mulberry was more or less prosperous, and could afford to keep a French governess to do the hard work.

Miss Mulberry was very conscientious, very kind-hearted, and the pink of propriety. Her appearance, at once bland and solid, produced a favourable impression upon parents and guardians. Being stout, and between fifty and sixty years old, she was often described as "motherly," though in the timidity, fidgetiness, and primness of her dealing with girls she was essentially a spinster.

Her good conscience and her timidity both helped to make her feel school-keeping a heavy responsibility, which should perhaps excuse the fact that we suffered at Bush House from an excess of the meddlesome discipline which seems to be de rigueur in girls' schools. I think Miss Mulberry would have felt that she had neglected her duty if we had ever been left to our own devices for an hour.

To growing girls, not too robust, leading sedentary lives, working very hard with our heads, and having (wholesome and sufficient meals, but) not as much animal food as most of us were accustomed to at home, the nag of never being free from supervision was both irritating and depressing. Much worse off were we than boys at school. No playing-fields had we; no leave could be obtained for country rambles by ourselves. Our dismal exercise was a promenade in double file under the eye and ear of Madame herself.

True, we were allowed fifteen minutes' "recreation" together, and by ourselves, in the school-room, just after dinner; but this inestimable privilege was always marred by the fact that Madame invariably came for us before the quarter of an hour had expired. No other part of school discipline annoyed us as this did. It had that element of injustice against which children always rebel. Why she did so remains to this day a puzzle to me. She worked very hard for her living—a fact which did not occur to us in those days to modify our view of her as our natural tormentor. In breaking faith with us daily by curtailing our allotted fifteen minutes of recreation, she deprived herself of rest to the exact amount by which she defrauded us.

She cannot have pined to begin to teach as soon as she had swallowed her food! I may do her an injustice, but the only reason I can think of as a likely one is that, by taking us unawares, she (I won't say hoped, but) expected to find us "in mischief."

It was a weak point of the arrangements of Bush House that Miss Mulberry left us so much to the care of Madame. Madame was twice as energetic as Miss Mulberry. Madame never spared herself if she never spared us. Madame was indefatigable, and in her own way as conscientious as Miss Mulberry herself. But Madame was not just, and she was not truthful. She had—either no sense at all, or—a quite different sense from ours of honour and uprightness. Perhaps the latter, for she seemed to break promises, tell lies, open letters, pry into drawers and boxes, and listen at keyholes from the highest sense of duty. And, which was even worse for us, she had no belief whatever in the trustworthiness of her pupils.

Miss Mulberry felt it to be her duty towards our parents and guardians to keep us under constant supervision; but Madame watched and worried us, I am convinced, in the persuasion that we were certain to get into mischief if we had the chance, and equally certain to do so deceitfully. She gave us full credit (I never could trace that she saw any discredit in deceit) for slyness in evading her authority, but flattered herself that her own superior slyness would maintain it in spite of us.

It vexed us all, but there were times when it irritated Eleanor almost to frenzy. She would have been in disgrace oftener and more seriously on the subject, but that Madame was a little afraid of her, and was, I think, not a little fond of her.

Madame was a clever woman, and a good teacher. She was sharp-witted, ready of tongue, and indefatigably industrious herself; and slow, stupid, or lazy girls found no mercy at her hands.

Eleanor's unusual abilities, the extent of her knowledge and reading on general subjects, the rapidity with which she picked up conversational French and wielded it in discussions with Madame, and finally her industry and perseverance, won Madame's admiration and good-will. I think she almost believed that Mademoiselle Arkwright's word was to be relied upon.

Eleanor never toadied her, which I fear we others (we were so utterly at her mercy!) did sometimes; assuming an interest we did not feel in her dissertations on the greatness of France and the character of her especial idol, the first Napoleon.

If Madame respected Eleanor, we school-girls almost revered her. "She talks so splendidly," Lucy said one day.

Not that the rest of us were by any means dumb. The fact that English was forbidden did not silence us, and on Sunday when (to Madame's undisguised chagrin) Miss Mulberry allowed us to speak English, we chattered like sparrows during an anthem. But Eleanor introduced a kind of talk which was new to most of us.

We could all chatter of people and places, and what was said on this occasion or what happened on another. We had one good mimic (Emma), and two or three of us were smart in description. We were observant of details and appearances, and we could one and all "natter" over our small grievances without wearying of the subject, and without ever speculating on their causes, or devising remedies for them.

But, with Eleanor, facts served more as points to talk from, than as talk in themselves. Through her influence the Why and How of things began to steal into our conversation. We had more discussion and less gossip, and found it better fun.

"One never tells you anything without your beginning to argue about it," said one of the girls to her one day.

"I'm very sorry," said poor Eleanor.

"You're very clever, you mean," said Emma. "What a lawyer you'd have made, Eleanor! While we growl at the Toad's tyranny, you make a case out of it."

(I regret to have to confess that, owing to a peculiarity of complexion, Madame was familiarly known to us, behind her back, as the Toad.)

"Well, I don't know," said Eleanor, puckering her brows and nursing her knees, as we all sat or lounged on the school-room floor, during the after-dinner recreation minutes, in various awkward but restful attitudes; "I can growl as well as anybody, but I never feel satisfied with bewailing over and over again that black's black. One wants to find out why it's black, and if anything would make it white. Besides, I think perhaps when one looks into one's grievances, one sees excuses for people—there are two sides to every question."

"There'll be one, two, three," said Emma, looking slowly round and counting the party with a comical imitation of Eleanor's thoughtful air—"there'll be fifteen sides to every question by the time we've all learnt to talk like you, my dear."

Eleanor burst out laughing, and we most of us joined her to such good purpose, that Madame overheard us, and thought it prudent to break up our sitting, though we had only had a short twelve minutes' rest.

Eleanor not only set the fashion of a more reasonable style of chat in our brief holiday hours, but she was apt to make lessons the subject of discussions which were at first resented by the other girls.

"I can't think," she began one day (it was a favourite way with her of opening a discussion)—"I can't think what makes Mr. Henley always make us put the shadows in in cobalt. Some shadows are light blue certainly, I think, especially on these white roads, but I don't think they are always; not in Yorkshire, at any rate. However, as far as that goes, he paints his things all in the same colours, whatever they're meant for; the Bay of Naples or the coast of Northumberland. By the bye, I know that I've heard that the shadows on the snow in Canada are really blue—bright blue."

"You're blue, deep blue," said Emma. "How you can talk shop out of lesson hours, Eleanor, I can't conceive. You began on grammar the other day, by way of enlivening our ten minutes' rest."

"I'm very sorry," said Eleanor: "I'm fond of drawing, you know."

"Oh, do let her talk, Emma!" cried Peony. "I do so like to hear her. Why are the shadows on the snow blue, Eleanor?"

"I can't think," said Eleanor, "unless it has something to do with reflection from the sky."

Eleanor was not always discreet enough to keep her opinion of Mr. Henley's style to herself and us. She was a very clever girl, and, like other very young people, her cleverness was apt to be aggressive; scorned compromises, and was not always sufficiently respectful towards the powers that be.

Her taste for drawing was known, and Madame taunted her one day with having a reputation for talent in this line, when her water-colour copies were not so effective as Lucy's; simply, I believe, with the wish to stimulate her to excel. I am sure Madame much preferred Eleanor to Lucy, as a matter of liking.

"Behold, Mademoiselle!" said she, holding up one of Lucy's latest copies, just glorified with a wide aureole of white cardboard "mounting"; "what do you think of this?"

"It is very like Mr. Henley's," said Eleanor warmly. "Lucy has taken great pains, I'm sure. It's quite as good as the copy, I think."

"But what do you think of it?" said Madame impatiently; she was too quick-witted to be easily "put off." "Is it not beautiful?"

"It is very smart, very gay," said Eleanor, who began to lose her temper. "All Mr. Henley's sketches are gay. The thatch on the house reminds me of the 'ends' of Berlin wool that are kept, after a big piece of work, for kettle-holders. The yellow tree and the blue tree are very pretty: there always is a yellow tree and a blue tree in Mr. Henley's sketches. I don't know what kind of trees they are. I never do. The trunks are pink, but that doesn't help one, for the markings on them are always the same."

Eleanor's French was quite good enough to give this speech its full weight, as Madame's kindling eyes testified. She flung the drawing from her, and was bursting forth into reply, when, by good luck, Miss Mulberry called for her so impatiently that she was obliged to leave the room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Eleanor's confessions are only to be matched by her favourite Jeremy Taylor's," said Jack one day.

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XV.

ELEANOR'S THEORIES REDUCED TO PRACTICE—STUDIES—THE ARITHMETIC-MASTER.