Madame was not ungenerous to an apology. She believed in Eleanor too, and was quite disposed to think that Eleanor might be in the right in a dispute with anybody but herself. Perhaps she hoped to hear her triumph in a discussion with Mr. Henley, or perhaps it was only as a punishment for her presumptuous remarks that Madame started the subject on the following day to the drawing-master himself.

"Miss Arkwright says your trees are all one, Mr. Henley," she began. (Madame's English was not perfect.) "Except that the half are yellow and the other half blue. She knows not the kind even."

The poor little drawing-master, who was at that moment "touching up" a yellow tree in one of the younger girls' copies, trying by skilfully distributed dabs to make it look less like a faded cabbage-leaf, blushed, and laid down his brush. Eleanor, who was just beginning to colour a copy of a mountain scene, turned scarlet, and let her first wash dry into unmanageable shapes as she darted indignant glances at Madame, who appeared to enjoy her bit of malice.

"Miss Arkwright will observe that these are sketches indicating the general effect of a scene; not tree studies."

"I know, Mr. Henley," said poor Eleanor, in much confusion; "at least, I mean I don't know anything about water-colour sketching, so I ought not to have said anything; and I never thought that Madame would repeat it. I was thinking of pencil-drawings and etchings; and I do like to know one tree from another," she added honestly.

"You draw in pencil yourself?" asked Mr. Henley.

"Oh no!" said Eleanor; "at least only a little. It was my mother's drawings I was thinking of; and how she used to show us the different ways of doing the foliage of different trees, and the marking on the bark of the trunks."

Mr. Henley drew a sheet of paper from his portfolio, and took a pencil from his case.

"Let us see, my dear young lady, what you remember of these lessons. The pencil is well cut. There are flat sides for shading, and sharp ends for outlines."

Madame's thin lips pursed with the ghost of a smile, as Eleanor, with hot cheeks and hands, came across "the room" to put her theories in practice.

"I can't do it, I know," she said, as she sat down, and gave herself one of those nervous twitches common to girls of the hobble-de-hoy age.

But Eleanor's nervous' spasms were always mitigated by getting something into her fingers. Pencil and paper were her favourite implements; and after a moment's pause, and a good deal of frowning, she said: "We've a good many oaks about us;" and forthwith began upon a bit of oak foliage.

"It's only a spray," she said.

"It's very good," said the drawing-master, who was now looking over her shoulder.

"Oak branches are all elbows," she murmured, warming to her work, and apparently talking to herself. "So different from willows and beeches."

"Ve-ry good," said Mr. Henley, as Eleanor fitted the branches dexterously into the clusters of leaves; "now for a little bit of the oak bark, if you please."

"This is only one tree, though," said Madame, who was also looking on. "Let us see others, mademoiselle."

"Willows are nice to do," said Eleanor, intent upon her paper; "and the bark is prettier than oak, I think, and easier with these long points. My mother says branches of trees should be done from the tips inwards; and they do fit in better, I think. Only willow branches seem as if they ought to be done outwards, they taper so. Beech trunks are very pretty, but the leaves are difficult, I think. Scotch pines are easy." And Eleanor left the beech and began upon the pine, fitting in the horizontal branches under the foliage groups with admirable effect.

"That will do, Miss Arkwright," said the little drawing-master. "Your mother has been a good guide to you; and Mother Nature will complete what she has begun. Now we will look at the copy, if you please."

Eleanor's countenance fell again. Her pink mountain had run into her blue mountain, and the interrupted wash had dried with hard and unmanageable outlines. Sponging was the only remedy.

Next drawing-lesson day Mr. Henley arrived a few minutes earlier than was his wont, staggering under a huge basket containing a large clump of flags and waterside herbage, which he had dug up "bodily," as he said. These he arranged on a tray, and then from the bottom of the basket produced the broken fragments of a red earthenware jug.

"It was such a favourite of mine, Miss Arkwright," said he; "but what is sacred to a maid-of-all-work? My only consolation, when she smashed it this morning, was the thought that it would serve in the foreground of your sketch."

Saying which, the kind-hearted little man laid the red crocks among the weeds, and after much pulling up and down of blinds to coax a good light on to the subject, he called Eleanor to set to work.

"It is very good of you," said Eleanor emphatically. "When I have been so rude, too!"

"It is a pleasure," said the old man; "and will be doubly so if you do it well. I should like to try it myself," he added, making a few hasty dashes with the pencil. "Ah, my dear young lady, be thankful that you will sketch for pleasure, and not for bread! It is pleasanter to learn than to teach."

Out of gratitude to Mr. Henley alone, Eleanor would have done her best at the new "study"; but apart from this the change of subject was delightful to her. She had an accurate eye, and her outlines had hitherto contrasted favourably with her colouring in copies of the sketches she could not like. The old drawing-master was delighted with her pencil sketch of his "crockery among the reeds," and Eleanor confessed to getting help from him in the choice and use of her colours.

"Studies" became the fashion among the more intelligent pupils at Bush House; though I have heard that experience justified the old man's prophecy that they would not be so popular with the parents as the former style had been. "They like lakes, and boats, and mountains, and ruins, and a brighter style of colouring," he had said, and, as it proved, with truth.

Eleanor was his favourite pupil. Indeed, she was in favour with all the teachers.

A certain quaint little German was our arithmetic-master; a very good one, whose patience was often sorely tried by our stupidity or frivolity. On such occasions he rained epithets on us, which, from his imperfect knowledge of English, were often comical, and roused more amusement than shame. But for Eleanor he never had a harsh word. She was thoroughly fond of arithmetic, and "gave her mind to it," to use a good old phrase.

"Ah!" the little man would yell at us. "You are so light-headed! Sometimes you do do a sum, and sometimes not; but you do never think. There is not one young lady of this establishment who thinks, but Miss Arkwright alone."

I remember an incident connected with the arithmetic-master which occurred just after we came, and which roused Eleanor's intense indignation. It was characteristic, too, of Madame's ideas of propriety.

The weather was warm, and we were in the habit of dressing for tea. Our toilettes were of the simplest kind. Muslin garibaldis, for coolness, and our "second-best" skirts.

Eleanor, Matilda, and I shared one room. On the first Wednesday evening after our arrival at Bush House we were dressing as usual, when Emma ran in.

"I'm so sorry I forgot to tell you," said she; "you mustn't put on your muslin bodies to-night. The arithmetic-master is coming after tea."

"I don't understand," said Eleanor, who was standing on one leg as usual, and who paused in a struggle with a refractory elastic sandal to look up with a puckered brow, and general bewilderment. "What has the arithmetic to do with our dresses?"

Emma's saucy mouth and snub nose twitched with amusement, as she replied in exact mimicry of Madame's broken English: "Have you so little of delicacy as to ask, mademoiselle? Should the young ladies of this establishment expose their shoulders in the transparency of muslin to a professor?"

Matilda and I burst out laughing at Emma's excellent imitation of Madame; but Eleanor dropped her foot to the floor with a stamp that broke the sandal, and burst forth into an indignant torrent of words, which was only stayed by the necessity for resuming our morning dresses, and hastening down-stairs. There Eleanor swallowed her wrath with her weak tea; and I remember puzzling myself, to the neglect of mine, as to the probable connection between arithmetic-masters and transparent bodices.



CHAPTER XVI.

ELEANOR'S REPUTATION—THE MAD GENTLEMAN—FANCIES AND FOLLIES—MATILDA'S HEALTH—THE NEW DOCTOR.

We were not jealous of Eleanor's popularity. She was popular with the girls as well as with the teachers. If she was apt to be opinionated, she was candid, generous, and modest. She was always willing to help any one, and (the firmest seal of friendship!) she was utterly sincere.

She worked harder than any of us, so it was but just that she should be most commended. But of all who lagged behind her, and who felt Madame's severity, and created despair in the mind of the little arithmetic-master, the most unlucky was poor Matilda.

Matilda and I were now on the best of terms, and the credit of this happy condition of matters is more hers than mine.

It was not so much that I had learned more tact and sympathy (though I hope these qualities do ripen with years and better knowledge!) as because Matilda did most faithfully try to fulfil the good resolutions Major Buller's kindness had led her to make.

So far as Matilda's ailments were mental, I think that school-life may have been of some benefit.

Since the torments which have taught me caution in a household haunted by boys, I am less confidential with my diary than I used to be. And if I do not confide all my own follies to it, I am certainly not justified in recording other people's.

Not that Matilda makes any secret of the hero-worship she wasted on the man with the chiselled face and weird eyes, whom we used to see on the Riflebury Esplanade. She never spoke to him; but neither for that matter did his dog, a Scotch deerhound with eyes very like his master's, and a long nose which (uncomfortable as the position must have been) he kept always resting in his master's hand as the two paced up and down, hour after hour, by the sea.

What folly Miss Perry talked on the subject it boots not at this date to record. I never indulged a more fanciful feeling towards him than wonder, just dashed with a little fear—but I would myself have liked to know the meaning of that long gaze he and the dog sometimes turned on us!

We shall never know now, however, for the poor gentleman died in a lunatic asylum.

I hope, when they shut him up, that they found the deerhound guilty also of some unhydrophobiac madness, and imprisoned the two friends together!

Of course we laugh now about Matilda's fancy for the insane gentleman, though she declares that at the time she could never keep him out of her head—that if she had met him thirty-four successive times on the Esplanade, she would have borne no small amount of torture to earn the privilege of one more turn to meet him for the thirty-fifth—and that her rest was broken by waking dreams of the possible misfortunes which might account for his (and the dog's) obvious melancholy, and of impossible circumstances in which she should act as their good angel and deliverer.

At the time she kept her own counsel, and it was not because she had ever heard of the weird-eyed gentleman and his deerhound that Mrs. Minchin concluded her advice to Aunt Theresa on one occasion by a shower of nods which nearly shook the poppies out of her bonnet, and the oracular utterance—"She's got some nonsense or other into her head, depend upon it. Send her to school!"

One thing has often struck me in reading the biographies of great people. They must have to be written in quite a different way to the biographies of common people like ourselves.

For instance, when a practised writer is speaking of the early days of celebrated poets, he says quite gravely—"Like Byron, Scott, and other illustrious men, Hogg (the Ettrick shepherd) fell in love in his very early childhood." And of course it sounds better than if one said, "Like Smith, and Brown, and Jones, and nine out of every ten children, he did not wait for years of discretion to make a fool of himself."

Not being illustrious, Matilda blushes to remember this early folly; and not being a poet's biographer, Aunt Theresa said in a severe voice, for the general behoof of the school-room, that "Little girls were sometimes very silly, and got a great deal of nonsense into their heads." I do not think it ever dawned upon her mind that girls' heads not being jam-pots—which if you do not fill them will remain empty—the best way to keep folly out was to put something less foolish in.

She would have taken a great deal of trouble that her daughters might not be a flounce behind the fashions, and was so far-seeing in her motherly anxieties, that she junketed herself and Major Buller to many an entertainment, where they were bored for their pains, that an extensive acquaintance might ensure to the girls partners, both for balls and for life when they came to require them. But after what fashion their fancies should be shaped, or whether they had wholesome food and tender training for that high faculty of imagination by virtue of which, after all, we so largely love and hate, choose right or wrong, bear and forbear, adapt ourselves to the ups and downs of this world, and spur our dull souls to the high hopes of a better—anxiety on these matters Mrs. Buller had none.

As to Mrs. Minchin, she would not have known what it meant if it had been put in print for her to read.

Matilda's irritability was certainly repressed in public by school discipline, and from Eleanor's companionship our interests were varied and enlarged. But in spite of these advantages her health rapidly declined. And this without its seeming to attract Miss Mulberry's notice.

Indeed, she meddled very little in the matter of our health. She kept a stock of "family pills," which she distributed from time to time amongst us. They cured her headaches, she said; and she seemed rather aggrieved that they did not cure Matilda's.

But poor Matilda's headaches brought more than their own pain to her. They seemed to stupefy her, and make her quite incapable of work. Her complexion took a deadly, pasty hue, one eye was almost entirely closed, and to a superficial observer she perhaps did look—what Madame always pronounced her—sulky. Then, no matter how fully any lesson was at her fingers' ends, she stumbled through a series of childish blunders to utter downfall; and Madame's wrath was only equalled by her irony. To do Matilda justice, she often used almost incredible courage in her efforts to learn a task in spite of herself. Now and then she was successful in defying pain; but by some odd revenge of nature, what she learned in such circumstances was afterwards wiped as completely from her memory as an old sum is sponged from a slate.

To headache and backache, to vain cravings for more fresh air, and to an inequality of spirits and temper to which Eleanor and I patiently submitted, Matilda still added a cough, which seemed to exasperate Madame as much as her stupidity.

Not that our French governess was cruelly disposed. When she took Matilda's health in hand and gave her a tumbler of warm water every morning before breakfast, she did so in all good faith. It was a remedy that she used herself.

Poor Matilda was furious both with Madame's warm-water cure and Miss Mulberry's pill-box. She had a morbid hatred of being "doctored," which is often characteristic of chest complaints. She struggled harder than ever to work, in spite of her headaches; she ceased to complain of them, and concealed her cough to a great extent, by a process known amongst us as "smothering." The one remedy she pined for—fresh air—was the last that either Miss Mulberry or Madame considered appropriate to any form of a "cold."

This craving for fresh air helped Matilda in her struggle with illness. Our daily "promenade" was dull enough, but it was in the open air; and to be kept indoors, either as a punishment for ill-said lessons, or as a cure for her cough, was Matilda's great dread.

Night after night, when Madame had paid her final visit to our rooms, and we were safe, did Eleanor creep out of bed and noiselessly lower the upper sash of our window to please Matilda; whilst I sat (sometimes for an hour or more) upon the bolster of the bed in which Matilda and I slept together, and "nursed her head."

What quaint, pale, grave little maids we were! As full of aches and pains, and small anxieties, and self-repression, and tender sympathy, as any other daughters of Mother Eve.

Eleanor and I have often since said that we believe we should make excellent nurses for the insane, looking back upon our treatment of poor Matilda. We knew exactly when to be authoritative, and when to sympathize almost abjectly. I became skilful in what we called "nursing her head," which meant much more than that I supported it on my knees. Softly, but firmly, I stroked her brow and temples with both hands, and passed my fingers through her hair to the back of her head. I rarely failed to put her to sleep, and as she never woke when I laid her down, I have since suspected myself of unconscious mesmerism.

One night, when I had long been asleep, I was awakened by Matilda's hysterical sobs. She "couldn't get into a comfortable position;" her "back ached so." Our bed was very narrow, and I commonly lay so poised upon the outer edge to give Matilda room that more than once I have rolled on to the floor.

We spoke in undertones, but Eleanor was awake.

"Come and see if you can sleep with me, Margery," she said. "I lie very straight."

I scrambled out, and willingly crept in behind Eleanor, into her still narrower bed; and after tearful thanks and protestations, poor Matilda doubled herself at a restful angle, and fell asleep.

Happily for me, I was very well. Eleanor suffered from the utter change of mode of life a good deal; but she had great powers of endurance.

Fatigue, and "muddle on the brain," often hindered her at night from learning the lessons for next day. But she worked at them nevertheless; and tasks, that by her own account she "drove into her head" in bed, though she was quite unable to say them that evening, seemed to arrange themselves properly in her memory before the morning.

Matilda's ill-health came to a crisis at last. To smother a cough successfully, you must be able to escape at intervals. On one occasion the smothering was tried too long, and after the aggravated outburst which ensued, the doctor was called in. The Bush House family practitioner being absent, a new man came for him, who, after a few glances at Matilda, postponed the examination of her lungs, and begged to see Miss Mulberry.

Matilda had learned her last lesson in Bush House.

From the long interview with the doctor, Miss Mulberry emerged with a troubled face.

Lessons went irregularly that day. Our quarter of an hour's recreation was as much extended as it was commonly cut short, and Madame herself was subdued. She became a very kind nurse to Matilda, and crept many times from her bed during the night to see if "la pauvre petite" were sleeping, or had a wish that she could satisfy.

Indeed, an air of remorse seemed to tinge the kindness of the heads of Bush House to poor Matilda, which connected itself in Eleanor's mind with a brief dialogue that she overheard between Miss Mulberry and the doctor at the front door:

"I feel there has been culpable neglect," said Miss Mulberry mournfully. "But——"

"No, no. At least, not wilful," said the doctor; "and springing from the best motives. But I should not be doing my duty, madam, towards a lady in your responsible position, if I did not say that I have known too many cases in which the ill-results have been life-long, and some in which they have been rapidly fatal."



CHAPTER XVII.

ELEANOR'S HEALTH—HOLY LIVING—THE PRAYER OF THE SON OF SIRACH.

Matilda went home, and Eleanor and I remained at Bush House.

I fancy that when we no longer had to repress ourselves for poor Matilda's sake, Eleanor was more sensible of her own aches and pains. She also became rather irritable, and had more than one squabble with Madame about this time.

Eleanor had brought several religious books with her—books of prayers and other devotional works. They were all new to Matilda and me, and we began to use them, and to imitate Eleanor in various little devout customs.

On Sunday Eleanor used to read Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying; but as we never were allowed to be alone, she was obliged to bring it down-stairs. Unfortunately, the result of this was that Miss Mulberry, having taken it away to "look it over," pronounced it "not at all proper reading for young ladies," and it was confiscated. After this Eleanor reserved her devotional reading for bed-time, when, if she had got fairly through her lessons for next day, I was wont to read the Bible and other "good books" to her in a tone modulated so as not to reach Madame's watchful ear.

Once she caught us.

The books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus from the Apocrypha were favourite reading with Eleanor, who seemed in the grandly poetical praises of wisdom to find some encouragement under the difficulties through which we struggled towards a very moderate degree of learning. I warmly sympathized with her; partly because much of what I read was beautiful to read, even when I did not quite understand it; and partly because Eleanor had inspired me also with some of her own fervour against "the great war of ignorance."

But, as I said, Madame caught us at last.

Eleanor was lying, yet dressed, upon her bed, the window was open, and I, sitting cross-legged on the floor, was giving forth the prayer of the Son of Sirach, with (as I flattered myself) no little impressiveness. As the chapter went on my voice indiscreetly rose:

"When I was yet young, or ever I went astray, I desired wisdom openly in my prayer.

"I prayed for her before the temple, and will seek her out even to the end.

"Even from the flower till the grape was ripe hath my heart delighted in her: my foot went the right way, from my youth up I sought after her.

"I bowed down mine ear a little, and received her, and gat much learning.

* * * * *

"Draw near unto me, ye unlearned, and dwell in the house of learning.

* * * * *

"Put your neck under the yoke, and let your soul receive instruction: she is hard at hand to find.

"Behold with your eyes, how that I have had but little labour, and have gotten unto me much rest.

"Get learning——"

"Eh, mesdemoiselles! This is going to bed, is it? Ah! Give me that book, then."

I handed over in much confusion the thin S.P.C.K. copy of the Apocrypha, bound in mottled calf, from which I had been reading; and ordering us to go to bed at once, Madame took her departure.

Madame could read English well, though she spoke it imperfectly. The next day she did not speak of the volume, and we supposed her to be examining it. Then Eleanor became anxious to get it back, and tried both argument and entreaty, for some time, in vain. At last Madame said:

"What is it, mademoiselle, that you so much wish to read in this volume of the holy writings?"

"Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus are what I like best," said Eleanor.

"Eh bien!" said Madame, nodding her head like a porcelain Chinaman, and with a very knowing glance. "I will restore the volume, mademoiselle."

She did restore it accordingly, with the historical narratives cut out, and many nods and grimaces expressive of her good wishes that we might be satisfied with it now.

In private, Eleanor stamped with indignation (whether or no her thick boots had fostered this habit I can't say, but Eleanor was apt to stamp on occasion). We had our dear chapters again, however, and I promised Eleanor a new and fine copy of the mutilated favourite as a birthday present.

Eleanor was very good to me. She helped me with my lessons, and encouraged me to work. For herself, she laboured harder and harder.

I used to think that she was only anxious to get all the good she could out of the school, as she did not seem to have many so-called "advantages" at home, by her own account. But I afterwards found that she did just the same everywhere, strained her dark eyes over books, and absorbed information whenever and wherever she had a chance.

"I can't say you're fond of reading," said Emma one day, watching Eleanor as she sat buried in a book, "for I'm fond of reading myself, and we're not at all alike. I call you greedy!"

And Eleanor laughed, and quoted a verse from one of our favourite chapters: "They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty."



CHAPTER XVIII.

ELEANOR AND I ARE LATE FOR BREAKFAST—THE SCHOOL BREAKS UP—MADAME AND BRIDGET.

Eleanor and I overslept ourselves one morning. We had been tired, and when we did get up we hurried through our dressing, looking forward to fines and a scolding to boot.

But as we crept down-stairs we saw both the Misses Mulberry and Madame conversing together on the second landing. We felt that we were "caught," but to our surprise they took no notice of us; and as we went down the next flight we heard Miss Mulberry say, with a sigh, "Misfortunes never come alone."

We soon learnt what the new misfortune was. Poor Lucy had been taken ill. The doctor had been to see her early that morning, and had pronounced it fever—"Probably scarlet fever; and he recommends the school being broken up at once, as the holidays would soon be here anyway." So one of the girls told us.

Presently Miss Mulberry made her appearance; and we sat down to breakfast. She ate hers hurriedly, and then made a little speech, in which she begged us, as a personal favour, to be good; and if it was decided that we should go, to do our best to get our things carefully together, and to help to pack them.

I am sure we responded to the appeal. I wonder if it struck Madame, at this time, that it might be well to trust us a little more, as a rule? I remember Peony's saying, "Madame told me to help myself to tea. I might have taken two lumps of sugar, but I did not think it would be right."

We were all equally scrupulous; we even made a point of speaking in French, though Madame's long absences from the school-room, and the possibility of an early break-up for the holidays, gave both opportunity and temptation to chat in English.

On Monday evening at tea, Miss Mulberry made another little speech. The doctor had pronounced poor Lucy's illness to be scarlet fever, and we were all to be sent home the next day. There were to be no more lessons, and we were to spend the evening in packing and other preparations.

We were very sorry for poor Lucy, but we were young; and I do not think we could help enjoying the delights of fuss, the excitement of responsibility and packing, and the fact that the holidays had begun.

We were going in various directions, but it so happened that we all contrived to go by the same train to London. Some were to be dropped before we reached town; one lived in London; and Eleanor and I had to wait for half-an-hour before catching a train for the north.

For I was going to Yorkshire. The Arkwrights had asked me to spend the holidays with Eleanor. There was now nothing to be done but for us to go up together, all unexpected as we were.

How we packed and talked, and ran in and out of each other's rooms! It was late when we all got to bed that night.

Next morning the railway omnibus came for us, and with a curious sense of regret we saw our luggage piled up, and the little gate of Bush House close upon us.

As we moved off, Bridget, the nosegay-woman, drew near. Madame (who had shed tears as she bade us adieu) opened the gate again, ran out, cried shrilly to the driver to stop, and buying up half Bridget's basketful at one sweep, with more tears and much excitement, flung the flowers in amongst us. As she went backwards off the step, on to which she had climbed, she fell upon Bridget, who, with even more excitement and I think also with ready tears, clung to the already moving omnibus, and turned her basket upside down over our laps.

I have a dim remembrance of seeing her and Madame seem to fall over each other, or into each other's arms; and then, amid a shrill torrent of farewells and blessings in French and Irish, the omnibus rolled on, and Bush House was hid from our eyes.



CHAPTER XIX.

NORTHWARDS—THE BLACK COUNTRY—THE STONE COUNTRY.

We had a very noisy, happy journey to London. We chattered, and laughed, and hopped about like a lot of birds turned out of a cage. Emma sat by the window, and made a running commentary upon everybody and everything we passed in a strain of what seemed to us irresistible wit and humour. I fear that our conduct was not very decorous, but in the circumstances we were to be excused. The reaction was overwhelming.

Eleanor and I sobered down after we parted from the other girls, and thus became sensible of some fatigue and faintness. We had been too much excited to eat any of the bread-and-butter prepared for our early breakfast at Bush House. We had run up and down and stood on our feet about three times as much as need was; we had talked and laughed and shaken ourselves incessantly; we had put out our heads in the wind and sun as the train flew on; we had tried to waltz between the seats, and had eaten two ounces of "mixed sweets" given us by the housemaid, and deluged each other with some very heavy-scented perfume belonging to one of us.

After all this, Eleanor and I felt tired before our journey had begun. We felt faint, sick, anything but hungry, and should probably have travelled north in rather a pitiful plight, had not a motherly-looking lady, who sat in the waiting-room reading a very dirty book of tracts—and who had witnessed both our noisy parting from our companions and the subsequent collapse—advised us to go to the refreshment-room and get some breakfast. We yielded at last, out of complaisance towards her, and were rewarded by feeling wonderfully refreshed by a solid meal.

We laid in a stock of buns and chocolate lozenges for future consumption, and—thanks to Eleanor's presence of mind and experience—we got our luggage together, and started in the north train in a carriage by ourselves.

We talked very little now. Eleanor gazed out of her window, and I out of mine, in silence. As we got farther north, Eleanor's eyes dilated with a curious glow of pride and satisfaction. I had then no special attachment to one part of England more than another, but I had never seen so much of the country before, and it was a treat which did not lose by comparison with the limited range of our view at Bush House.

As we ran on, the bright, pretty, sociable-looking suburbs of London gave way to real country—beautiful, cared-for, garden-like, with grand timber, big houses, and grey churches, supported by the obvious parsonage and school; and deep shady lanes, with some little cart trotting quaintly towards the railway bridge over which we rushed, or boys in smock-frocks sitting on a gate, and shouting friendly salutations (as it seemed) to Eleanor and myself. Then came broad, fair pastures of fairy green, and slow winding rivers that we overtook almost before we had seen them, with ghostly grey pollard willows in formal mystical borders, contrasting with such tints of pale yellow and gay greens, which in their turn shone against low distances of soft blue and purple, that the sense of colour which my great-grandfather had roused in me made me almost tremble with a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure. From this flat but most fair country, the grey towers of Peterborough Cathedral stood up in ancient dignity; and then we ran on again. After a while the country became less rich in colour, and grander in form. No longer stretching flatly to low-lying distances of ethereal hue, it was broken into wooded hills, which folded one over the other with ever-increasing boldness of outline. Now and then the line ran through woods of young oak, with male ferns and bracken at their feet, where the wild hyacinths, which lie there like a blue mist in May, must for some weeks past have made way for the present carpet of pink campion.

And now the distance was no longer azure. Over the horizon and the lower part of the sky a thin grey veil had come—a veil of smoke. We were approaching the manufacturing districts. Grander and grander grew the country, less and less pure the colouring. The vegetation was rich almost to rankness; the well-wooded distances were heavily grey. Then tall chimneys poured smoke over the landscape and eclipsed the sun; and through strangely shaped furnaces and chimneys of many forms, which here poured fire from their throats like dragons, and there might have been the huge retorts and chemical apparatus of some giant alchemist, we ran into the station of a manufacturing town.

I gazed at the high blackened warehouses, chimneys, and furnaces, which loomed out of the stifling smoke and clanging noises, with horror and wonder.

"What a dreadful place!" I exclaimed. "Look at those dreadful things with flames coming out; and oh, Eleanor! there's fire coming out of the ground there. And look at that man opening that great oven door! Oh, what a fire! And what's he poking in it for? And do look! all the men are black. And what a frightful noise everything makes!"

Eleanor was looking all the time, but with a complacent expression. She only said, "It is a very busy place. I hear trade's good just now, too." And, "You should see the furnaces at night, Margery, lighting up all the hills. It's grand!"

As she sniffed up the smoke with, I might almost say, relish, I felt that she did not sympathize with my disgust. But any discussion on the subject was stopped by our having to change carriages, and we had just settled ourselves comfortably once more, when I got a bit of iron "filings" into my eye. It gave me a good deal of pain and inconvenience, and by the time that I could look out of the window again, we had left the black town far behind. The hills were almost mountains now, and sloped away on all sides of us in bleak and awful grandeur. The woodlands were fewer; we were on the moors. Only a few hours back we had been amongst deep hedges and shady lanes, and now for hedges we had stone walls, and for deep embowered lanes we could trace the unsheltered roads, gleaming as they wound over miles of distant hills. Deep below us brawled a river, with here and there a gaunt mill or stone-built hamlet on its banks.

I had never seen any country like this; and if I had been horrified by the black town, my delight with the noble scenery beyond it was in proportion. I stood at the open window, with the moor breeze blowing my hair into the wildest elf-locks, rapturously excited as the great hills unfolded themselves and the shifting clouds sent shifting purple shadows over them. Very dark and stern they looked in shade, and then, in a moment more, the cloud was past, and a broad smile of sunshine ran over their face, and showed where cultivation was creeping up the hillside and turning the heather into fields.

Eleanor leaned out of the window also. Excitement, which set me chattering, always made her silent. But her parted lips, distended nostrils, and the light in her eyes bore witness to that strange power which hill country sways over hill-born people. To me it was beautiful, but to her it was home. I better understood now, too, her old complaints of the sheltered (she called it stuffy) lane in which we walked two and two when we "went into the country" at school. She used to rave against the park palings that hedged us in on either side, and declare her longing to tear them up and let a little air in, or at least to be herself somewhere where "one could see a few miles about one, and breathe some wind."

As we stood now, drinking in the breeze, I think the same thought struck us both, and we exclaimed with one voice: "Poor Matilda! How she would have enjoyed this!"

We next stopped at a rather dreary-looking station, where we got out, and Eleanor got our luggage together, aided by a porter who seemed to know her, and whom she seemed to understand, though his dialect was unintelligible to me.

"I suppose we must have a cab," said Eleanor, at last. "They don't expect us."

"Tommusisinttarn," said the porter suggestively; which, being interpreted, meant, "Thomas is in the town."

"To be sure, for the meat," said Eleanor. "The dog-cart, I suppose?"

"And t'owd mare," added the porter.

"Well, the boxes must come by the carrier. Come along, Margery, if you don't mind a little bit of walking. We must find Thomas. We have to send down to the town for meat," she added.

We found Thomas in the yard of a small inn. He was just about to start homewards.

By Eleanor's order, Thomas lifted me into the dog-cart, and then, to my astonishment, asked "Miss Eleanor" if she would drive. Eleanor nodded, and, climbing on to the driver's seat, took the reins with reassuring calmness. Thomas balanced the meat-basket behind, and "t'owd mare" started at a good pace up a hill which would have reduced most south-country horses to crawl.

"Father and Mother are away still," said Eleanor, after a pause. "So Thomas says. But they'll be back in a day or two."

We were driving up a sandy road such as we had seen winding over the hills. To our left there was a precipitous descent to the vale of the river. To our right, flowers, and ferns, and heather climbed the steep hill, broken at every few yards by tiny torrents of mountain streams. The sun was setting over the distant Deadmanstone moors; little dropping wells tinkled by the roadside, where dozens of fat black snails were out for an evening stroll, and here and there a brimming stone trough reflected the rosy tints of the sky.

It was grey and chilly when we drove into the village. A stone pack-horse track, which now served as footpath, had run by the road and lasted into the village. The cottages were of stone, the walls and outhouses were of stone, and the vista was closed by an old stone church, like a miniature cathedral. There was more stone than grass in the churchyard, and there were more loose stones than were pleasant on the steep hill, up which we scrambled before taking a sharp turn into the Vicarage grounds.



CHAPTER XX.

THE VICARAGE—KEZIAH—THE DEAR BOYS—THE COOK—A YORKSHIRE TEA—BED-FELLOWS.

It was Midsummer. The heavy foliage brushed our faces as "the old mare," with slack reins upon her back, drew us soberly up the steep drive, and stood still, of her own accord, before a substantial-looking house, built—"like everything else," I thought—of stone. Huge rose-bushes—literal bushes, not "dwarfs" or "standards"—the growth of many years, bent under their load of blossoms. The old "maiden's blush," too rare now in our bedding plant gardens, the velvety "damask," the wee Scotch roses, the prolific white, and the curious "York and Lancaster," with monster moss-rose trees, hung over the carriage-road. The place seemed almost overgrown with vegetation, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty.

As we turned the corner towards the house, Eleanor put out her left hand and dragged off a great branch of "maiden's blush." She forgot the recoil, which came against my face. All the full-blown flowers shed their petals over me, and I made my first appearance at the Vicarage covered with rose-leaves.

It was Keziah who welcomed us, and I have always had an affection for her in consequence. She was housemaid then, and took to the kitchen afterwards. After she had been about five years at the Vicarage, she announced one day that she wished to go. She had no reason to give but that she "thought she'd try a change." She tried one—for a month—and didn't like it. Mrs. Arkwright took her back again, and in kitchen and back premises she reigns supreme to this day.

From her we learned that Mr. and Mrs. Arkwright, who had gone away for a parson's fortnight, were still from home. We had no lack of welcome, however.

It seems strange enough to speak of a fire as comfortable in July. And yet I well remember that the heavy dew and evening breeze was almost chilly after sunset, and a sort of vault-like feeling about the rooms, which had been for a week or more unused, made us offer no resistance when Keziah began to light a fire. While she was doing so Eleanor exclaimed, "Let's go and warm ourselves in the kitchen."

Any idea of comfort connected with a kitchen was quite new to me, but I followed Eleanor, and made my first acquaintance with the old room where we have spent so many happy hours.

We found the door shut; much, it seemed, to Eleanor's astonishment. But the reason was soon evident. As our footsteps sounded on the stone passage there arose from behind the kitchen door an utterly indescribable din of howling, yowling, squealing, scratching, and barking.

"It's the dear boys!" said Eleanor, and she ran to open the door. For a moment I thought of her brothers (who must, obviously, be maniacs!), but I soon discovered that the "dear boys" were the dogs of the establishment, who were at once let loose upon us en masse. I have a faint remembrance of Eleanor and a brown retriever falling into each other's arms with cries of delight; but I was a good deal absorbed by the care of my own small person, under the heavy onslaught of dogs big and little. I was licked copiously from chin to forehead by the more impetuous, and smelt threateningly at the calves of my legs by the more cautious of the pack.

They were subsiding a little, when Eleanor said, "Oh, cook, why did you shut them up? Why didn't you let them come and meet us?"

"And how was I to know who it was at the door, Miss Eleanor?" replied an elderly, stern-looking female, who, in her time, ruled us all with a rod of iron, the dogs included. "Dear knows it's not that I want them in the kitchen. The way them dogs behaves, Miss Eleanor, is scandilus."

"Dear boys!" murmured Eleanor; on which all the dogs, who were settling down to sleep on the hearth, wagged their tails, and threatened to move.

"Much good it is me cleaning," cook continued, "when that great big brown beast of yours goes roaming about every night in the shrubberies, and comes in with his feet all over my clean floor."

"It makes rather pretty marks, I think," said Eleanor; "like pot-moulding, only not white. But never mind, you've me at home now to wipe their paws."

"They've missed you sorely," said the cook, who seemed to be softening. "I almost think they knew it was you, they were so mad to get out."

"Dear boys!" cried Eleanor, once more; and the dogs, who were asleep now, wagged their tails in their dreams.

"And there's more's missed you than them," cook continued. "But, bless us, Miss Eleanor, you don't look much better for being in strange parts. That young lady, too, looks as if she enjoyed poor health. Well, give me native air, there's nothing like it; and you've not got back to yours too soon."

Eleanor threw her arms round the cook, and danced her up and down the kitchen.

"Oh, dear cookey!" she cried; "I am so glad to be back again. And do be kind to us, and give us tea-cakes, and brown bread toast, and let the dogs come in to tea."

Cook pushed her away, but with a relenting face.

"There, there, Miss Eleanor. Take that jug of hot water with you, and take the young lady up-stairs; and when you've cleaned yourselves, I'll have something for you to eat; and you may suit yourselves about the dogs,—I'm sure I don't want them. You've not got so much more sensible with all your schooling," she added.

We went off to do her bidding, and left her muttering, "And what folks as can edicate their own children sends 'em all out of the house for, passes me; to come back looking like a damp handkerchief, with dear knows what cheap living and unwholesome ways, and want of native air."

Cook's bark was worse than her bite.

"She gives the dear boys plenty to eat," said Eleanor; and she provided for us that evening in the same liberal spirit.

What a feast we had! Strong tea, and abundance of sugar and rich cream. We laid the delicious butter on our bread in such thick clumps, that sallow-faced Madame would have thought us in peril of our lives. There was brown bread toast, too; and fried ham and eggs, and moor honey, and Yorkshire tea-cakes. In the middle of the table Keziah had placed a large punch-bowl, filled with roses.

And all the dogs were on the hearth, and they all had tea with us.

After tea we tried to talk, but were so sleepy that the words died away on our heavy lips. So we took Keziah's advice and went to bed.

"Keziah has put the chair-bed into my room, Margery dear," said Eleanor.

"I am so glad," said I. "I would rather be with you."

"Would you like a dog to sleep with you?" Eleanor politely inquired. "I shall have Growler inside, and my big boy outside. Pincher is a nice little fellow; you'd better have Pincher."

I took Pincher accordingly, and Pincher took the middle of the bed.

We were just dropping off to sleep when Eleanor said, "If Pincher snores, darling, hit him on the nose."

"All right," said I. "Good-night." I had begun a confused dream, woven from my late experiences, when Eleanor's voice roused me once more.

"Margery dear, if Growler should get out of my bed and come on to yours, mind you kick him off, or he and Pincher will fight through the bed-clothes."

But whether Pincher did snore, or Growler invade our bed, I slept much too soundly to be able to tell.



CHAPTER XXI.

GARDENING—DRINKINGS—THE MOORS—WADING—BATRACHOSPERMA—THE CHURCH—LITTLE MARGARET.

Both Eleanor and I were visited that night by dreams of terrible complications with the authorities at Bush House. It was a curious relief to us to wake to clear consciences and the absolute control of our own conduct for the day.

It took me several minutes fairly to wake up and realize my new position. The window being in the opposite direction (as regarded my bed) from that of our room at Miss Mulberry's, the light puzzled me, and I lay blinking stupidly at a spray of ivy that had poked itself through the window as if for shelter from the sun, which was already blazing outside. Pincher brought me to my senses by washing my face with his tongue; which I took all the kindlier of him that he had been, of all the dear boys, the most doubtful about the calves of my legs the evening before.

As we dressed, I adopted Eleanor's fashion of doing so on foot, that I might examine her room. As is the case with the "bowers" of most English country girls of her class, it was rich in those treasures which, like the advertised contents of lost pocket-books, are "of no value to any one but the owner." Prints of sacred subjects in home-made frames, knick-knacks of motley variety, daguerreotypes and second-rate photographs of "the boys"—i. e. Clement and Jack—at different ages, and of "the dear boys" also. "All sorts of things!" as I exclaimed admiringly. But Eleanor threatened at last to fine me if I did not get dressed instead of staring about me, so we went down-stairs, and had breakfast with the dogs.

"The boys will be home soon," said Eleanor, as we devoured certain plates of oatmeal porridge, which Keziah had provided, and which I tasted then for the first time. "I must get their gardens tidied up before they come. Shall you mind helping me, Margery?"

The idea delighted me, and after breakfast we tied on our hats, rummaged out some small tools from the porch, and made our way to the children's gardens. They were at some little distance from the big flower-garden, and the path that led to them was heavily shaded by shrubbery on one side, and on the other by a hedge which, though "quickset" as a foundation, was now a mass of honeysuckle and everlasting peas. The scent was delicious.

From this we came out on an open space at the top of the kitchen garden, where, under a wall overgrown with ivy, lay the children's gardens.

"What a wilderness!" was Eleanor's first exclamation, in a tone of dismay, and then she added with increased vehemence, "He's taken away the rhubarb-pot. What will Clement say?"

"What is it, dear?" I asked.

"It's the rhubarb-pot," Eleanor repeated. "You know Clement is always having new fads every holidays, and he can't bear his things being disturbed whilst he's at school. But how can I help it if I'm at school too?"

"Of course you can't," said I, gladly seizing upon the only point in her story that I could understand, to express my sympathy.

"And he got one of the rhubarb-pots last holidays," Eleanor continued. "It was rather broken, and Thomas gave in to his having it then, so it's very mean of him to have moved it now, and I shall tell him so. And Clement painted church windows on it, and stuck it over a plant of ivy at the top of the garden. He thought it would force the ivy, and he expected it would grow big by the time he came home. He wanted it to hang over the top, and look like a ruin. Oh, he will be so vexed!"

The ivy plant was alive, though the "ruin" had been removed by the sacrilegious hands of Thomas. I suggested that we should build a ruin of stones, and train the ivy over that, which idea was well received by Eleanor; the more so that a broken wall at the top of the croft supplied materials, and Stonehenge suggested itself as an easy, and certainly respectable, model.

Meanwhile we decided to "do the weeding first," as being the least agreeable business, and so set to work; I in a leisurely manner, befitting the heat of the day, and Eleanor with her usual energy. She toiled without a pause, and accomplished about treble the result of my labours. After we had worked for a long time, she sat up, pressing her hand to her forehead.

"My head quite aches, Margery, and I'm so giddy. It's very odd; gardening never made me so before I went away."

"You work so at it," said I, "you may well be tired. What makes you work so at things?"

"I don't know," said Eleanor, laughing. "Cook says I do foy at things so. But when one once begins, you know——"

"What's foy?" I interrupted. "Cook says you foy—what does she mean?"

"Oh, to foy at anything is to slave—to work hard at it. At least, not merely hard-working, but to go at it very hotly, almost foolishly; in fact, to foy at it, you know. Clement foys at things too. And then he gets tired and cross; and so do I, often. What o'clock is it, Margery?"

I pulled out my souvenir watch and answered, "Just eleven."

"We ought to have some 'drinkings,' we've worked so hard," said Eleanor, laughing again. "Haymakers, and people like that, always have drinkings at eleven, you know, and dinner at one, and tea at four or five, and supper at eight. Ah! there goes Thomas. Thomas!"

Thomas came up, and Eleanor (discreetly postponing the subject of the rhubarb-pot for the present) sent a pleading message to cook, which resulted in her sending us two bottles of ginger-beer and several slices of thick bread-and-butter. The dear boys, who had been very sensibly snoozing in the shade, divined by some instinct the arrival of our lunch-basket, and were kind enough to share the bread-and-butter with us.

"Drinkings" over, we set to work again.

I was surprised to observe that there were four box-edged beds, but as Eleanor said nothing about it, I made no remark. Perhaps it belonged to some dead brother or sister.

As the weeds were cleared away, one plant after another became apparent. I called Eleanor's attention to all that I found, and she seemed to welcome them as old friends.

"Oh, that's the grey primrose; I'm so glad! And there are Jack's hepaticas; they look like old rubbish. Don't dig deep into Jack's garden, please, for he's always getting plants and bulbs given him by people in the village, and he sticks everything in, so his garden really is crammed full; and you're sure to dig into tulips, or crocuses, or lilies, or something valuable."

"Doesn't Clement get things given him?" said I.

"Oh, he has plenty of plants," said Eleanor, "but then he's always making great plans about his garden; and the first step towards his improvements is always to clear out all the old things, and make what he calls 'a clean sweep of the rubbish.'"

By the time that the "twelve o'clock bell" rang from the church-tower below, the heat was so great that we gathered up our tools and went home.

In the afternoon Eleanor said, "Were you ever on the moors? Did you ever wade? Do you care about water-weeds? Did you ever eat bilberries, or carberries?—but they're not ripe yet. Shall we go and get some Batrachosperma, and paddle a bit, and give the dear boys a bathe?"

"Delightful!" said I; "but do you go out alone?"

"What should we take anybody with us for?" said Eleanor, opening her eyes.

I could not say. But as we dressed I said, "I'm so glad you don't wear veils. Matilda and I used to have to wear veils to take care of our complexion."

Eschewing veils and every unnecessary encumbrance, we set forth, followed by the dogs. I had taken off my crinoline, because Eleanor said we might have to climb some walls, and I had borrowed a pair of her boots, because my own were so uncomfortable from being high-heeled and narrow-soled. They were too thin for stony roads also, and, though they were prettily ornamented, they pinched my feet.

We went upwards from the Vicarage along hot roads bordered by stone walls. At last we turned and began to go downwards, and as we stood on the top of the steep hill we were about to descend, Eleanor, with some pride in her tone, asked me what I thought of the view.

It was very beautiful. The slopes of the purple hills were grand. I saw "moors" now.

"The best part of it is the air, though," she said.

The air was, in fact, wind; but of a dry, soft, exhilarating kind. It seemed to get into our heads, and we joined hands and ran wildly down the steep hill together.

"What fun!" Eleanor cried, as we paused to gain breath at the bottom. "Now you've come there'll be four of us to run downhill. We shall nearly stretch across the road."

At last we came to a stone bridge which spanned the river. It was not a very wide stream, and it was so broken with grey boulders, and clumps of rushes and overhanging ferns, that one only caught sight of the water here and there, in tiny torrents and lakes among the weeds.

My delight was boundless. I can neither forget nor describe those first experiences of real country life, when Eleanor and I rambled about together. I think she was at least as happy as I, and from time to time we both wished with all our hearts that "the other girls" could be there too. The least wisely managed of respectable schools has this good point, that it enlarges one's sympathies and friendships!

We wandered some little way up the Ewden, as Eleanor called the river, and then, coming to a clear, running bit of stream, with a big grey boulder on the bank hard by to leave our shoes and stockings on, we took these off, and also our hats, and, kilting up our petticoats, plunged bravely into the stream.

"Wet your head!" shouted Eleanor; and following her example, as well as I could for laughing, and for the needful efforts to keep my feet, I dabbled my head liberally with water scooped up in the palms of my hands.

"Oh!" I cried, "how strong the water is, and how deliciously cold it is! And oh, look at the little fishes! They're all round my feet. And oh, Eleanor, call the dogs, they're knocking me down! How hard the stones are, and oh, how slippery!"

I fell against a convenient boulder, and Eleanor turned back, the dogs raging and splashing around her.

"I hope you're not treading on the Batrachosperma?" she said, anxiously.

"What is it?" I cried.

"It's what I've chiefly come in for," said she. "I want some to lay out. It's a water-weed; a fresh-water alga, you know, like seaweed, only a fresh-water plant. I'm looking for the stone it grew near. Oh, that's it you're on! Climb up on to it out of the way, Margery dear. It's rather a rare kind of weed, and I don't want it to be spoiled. Call the dogs, please. Oh, look at all the bits they've broken off!"

Eleanor dodged and darted to catch certain fragments of dark-looking stuff that were being whirled away. With much difficulty she caught two or three, and laid one of them in my hand. But I was not prepared for the fact that it felt like a bit of jelly, and it slipped through my fingers before I had time to examine the beauty of the jointed branches pointed out by Eleanor, and in a moment more it was hopelessly lost. We put what we had got into some dock-leaves for safety, and having waded back to our stockings, we put on our hats and walked barefoot for a few yards through the heather, to dry our feet, after which we resumed our boots and stockings and set off homewards.

"We'll go by the lower road," said Eleanor, "and look at the church."

For some time after Eleanor had passed in through the rickety gates of the south porch, I lingered amongst the gravestones, reading their quaint inscriptions. Quaint both in matter and in the manner of rhyme and spelling. As I also drew towards the porch, I looked up to see if I could tell the time by the dial above it. I could not, nor (in spite of my brief learning in Dr. Russell's grammar) could I interpret the Latin motto, "Fugit Hora. Ora"—"The hour flies. Pray."

As I came slowly and softly up the aisle, I fancied Eleanor was kneeling, but a strange British shame of prayer made her start to her feet and kept me from kneeling also; though the peculiar peace and devout solemnity which seemed to be the very breath of that ancient House of God made me long to do something more expressive of my feelings than stand and stare.

There was no handsome church at Riflebury; the one the Bullers "attended" when we were at the seaside was new, and not beautiful. The one Miss Mulberry took us to was older, but uglier. I had never seen one of these old parish churches. This cathedral among the moors, with its massive masonry, its dark oak carving, its fragments of gorgeous glass, its ghostly hatchments and banners, and its aisles paved with the tombstones of the dead, was a new revelation.

I was silent awhile in very awe. I think it was a bird beginning to chirp in the roof which made me dare to speak, and then I whispered, "How quiet it is in here, and how cool!"

I had hardly uttered the words when a flash of lightning made me start and cry out. A heavy peal of thunder followed very quickly.

"Don't be frightened, Margery dear," said Eleanor; "we have very heavy storms here, and we had better go home. But I am so glad you admire our dear old church. There was one very hot Sunday last summer, when a thunderstorm came on during Evening Prayer. I was sitting in the choir, where I could see the storm through the south transept door, and the great stones in the transept arches. It was so cool in here, and all along I kept thinking of 'a refuge from the storm, a shadow in the heat,' and 'a great rock in a weary land.'"

As we sat together at tea that evening, Eleanor went back to the subject of the church. I made some remark about the gravestones in the aisles, and she said, "Next time we go in, I want to show you one of them in the chancel."

"Who is buried there?" I asked.

"My grandfather, he was vicar, you know, and my aunt, who was sixteen. (My father has got the white gloves and wreath that were hung in the church for her. They always used to do that for unmarried girls.) And my sister; my only sister—little Margaret."

I could not say anything to poor Eleanor. I stroked her head softly and kissed it.

"One thing that made me take to you," she went on, "was your name being Margaret. I used to think she might have been like you. I have so wished I had a sister. The boys are very dear, you know; but still boys think about themselves, of course, and their own affairs. One has more to run after them, you know. Not that any boys could be better than ours, but—anyway, Margery darling, I wish you weren't here just on a visit, but were going to stop here always, and be my sister!"

"So do I!" I cried. "Oh! so very much, Eleanor!"



CHAPTER XXII.

A NEW HOME—THE ARKWRIGHTS' RETURN—THE BEASTS—GOING TO MEET THE BOYS—JACK'S HATBOX—WE COME HOME A RATTLER.

It is not often (out of a fairy tale) that wishes to change the whole current of one's life are granted so promptly as that wish of mine was.

The next morning's post brought a letter from Mrs. Arkwright. They were staying in the south of England, and had seen the Bullers, and heard all their news. It was an important budget. They were going abroad once more, and it had been arranged between my two guardians that I was to remain in England for my education, and that my home was to be—with Eleanor. Matilda was to go with her parents; to the benefit, it was hoped, of her health. Aunt Theresa sent me the kindest messages, and promised to write to me. Matilda sent her love to us both.

"And the day after to-morrow they come home!" Eleanor announced.

When the day came we spent most of it in small preparations and useless restlessness. We filled all the flower vases in the drawing-room, put some of the choicest roses in Mrs. Arkwright's bedroom, and made ourselves very hot in hanging a small union-jack which belonged to the boys out of our own window, which looked towards the high-road. Eleanor even went so far as to provoke a severe snub from the cook, by offering suggestions as to the food to be prepared for the travellers.

The dogs fully understood that something was impending, and wandered from room to room at our heels, sitting down to pant whenever we gave them a chance, and emptying the water jug in Mr. Arkwright's dressing-room so often that we were obliged to shut the door when Keziah had once more filled the ewer.

About half-an-hour after the curfew bell had rung the cab came. The dogs were not shut up this time, and they, and we, and the Arkwrights met in a very confused and noisy greeting.

"GOD bless you, my dear!" I heard Mr. Arkwright say very affectionately, and he added almost in the same breath, "Do call off the dogs, my dear, or else take your mother's beasts."

I suppose Eleanor chose the latter alternative, for she did not call off the dogs, but she took away two or three tin cans with which Mr. Arkwright was laden, and which had made him look like a particularly respectable milkman.

"What are they?" she asked.

"Crassys," said Mrs. Arkwright, with apparent triumph in her tone, "and Serpulae, and two Chitons, and several other things."

I thought of Uncle Buller's "collection," and was about to ask if the new "beasts" were insects, when Eleanor, after a doubtful glance into the cans, said, "Have you brought any fresh water?"

Mrs. Arkwright pointed triumphantly to a big stone-bottle cased in wickerwork, under which the cabman was staggering towards the door. It looked like spirits or vinegar, but was, as I discovered, seawater for the aquarium. With this I had already made acquaintance, having helped Eleanor to wipe the mouths of certain spotted sea anemones with a camel's-hair brush every day since my arrival.

"The Crassys are much more beautiful," she assured me, as we helped Mrs. Arkwright to find places for the new-comers. "We call them Crassys because their name is Crassicornis. I don't believe they'll live, though, they are so delicate."

"I rather think it may be because being so big they get hurt in being taken off the rocks," said Mrs. Arkwright, "and we were very careful with these."

"I'm afraid the Serpulae won't live!" said Eleanor, gazing anxiously with puckered brows into the glass tank.

Mrs. Arkwright was about to reply, when the dogs burst into the room, and, after nearly upsetting both us and the aquarium, bounded out again.

"Dear boys!" cried Eleanor. And "Dear boys!" murmured Mrs. Arkwright from behind the magnifying glass, through which she was examining the "beasts."

"I wonder what they're running in and out for?" said I.

The reason proved to be that supper was ready, and the dogs wanted us to come into the dining-room. Mr. Arkwright announced it in more sedate fashion, and took me with him, leaving Eleanor and her mother to follow us.

"In three days more," said Eleanor, as we sat down, "the boys will be here, and then we shall be quite happy."

Eleanor and I were as much absorbed by the prospect of the boys' arrival as we had been by the coming of her parents.

We made a "ruin" at the top of the little gardens, which did not quite fulfil our ideal when all was done, but we hoped that it would look better when the ivy was more luxuriant. We made all the beds look very tidy. The fourth bed was given to me.

"Now you are our sister!" Eleanor cried. "It seems to make it so real now you have got her bed."

We thoroughly put in order the old nursery, which was now "the boys' room," a proceeding in which Growler and Pincher took great interest, jumping on and off the beds, and smelling everything as we set it out. Growler was Clement's dog, I found, and Pincher belonged to Jack.

"They'll come in a cab, because of the luggage," said Eleanor, "and because we are never quite sure when they will come; so it's no use sending to meet them. They often miss trains on purpose to stay somewhere on the road for fun. But I think they'll come all right this time—I begged them to—and we'll go and meet them in the donkey-carriage."

The donkey-carriage was a pretty little thing on four wheels, with a seat in front and a seat behind, each capable of holding one small person. Eleanor had almost outgrown the front seat, but she managed to squeeze into it, and I climbed in behind. We had dressed Neddy's head and our own hats liberally with roses, so that our festive appearance drew the notice of the villagers, more than one of whom, from their cottage-doors, asked if we were going to meet "the young gentlemen," and added, "They'll be rare and glad to get home, I reckon!"

Impatience had made us early, and we drove some little distance before espying the cab, which toiled uphill at much the same pace as the black snails crawled by the roadside. Eleanor drew up by the ditch, and we stood up and waved our handkerchiefs. In a moment two handkerchiefs were waving from the cab-windows. We shouted, and faint hoorays came back upon the breeze. Neddy pricked his ears, the dogs barked, and only the cabman remained unmoved, though we could see sticks and umbrellas poked at him from within, in the vain effort to induce him to hasten on.

At last we met. The boys tumbled out, one on each side, and a good deal of fragmentary luggage tumbled out after them. Clement seemed to be rather older than Eleanor, and Jack, I thought, a little younger than me.

"How d'ye do, Margery?" said Jack, shaking me warmly by the hand. "I'm awfully glad to hear the news about you; we shall be all square now, two and two, like a quadrille."

"How do you do, Miss Vandaleur?" said Clement.

"Look here, Eleanor," Jack broke in again; "I'll drive Margery home in the donkey-carriage, and you can go with Clem in the cab. I wish you'd give me the wreath off your hat, too."

Eleanor willingly agreed, the wreath was adjusted on Jack's hat, and we were just taking our places, when he caught sight of the luggage that had fallen out on Clement's side of the cab—some fishing-rods, a squirrel in a fish-basket, and a hat-box.

"Oh!" he screamed, "there's my hat-box! Take the reins, Margery!" and he flew over the wheel, and returned, hat-box in hand.

"Is it a new hat?" I asked sympathizingly.

"A hat!" he scornfully exclaimed. "My hat's loose in the cab somewhere, if it came at all; but all my beetles are in here, pinned to the sides. Would you mind taking it on your knee, to be safe?"

And having placed it there, he scrambled once more into the front seat, and we were about to start (the cab was waiting for us, the cabman looking on with a grim smile at Jack, whilst energetic Eleanor rearranged the luggage inside), when there came a second check.

"Have you got a pin?" Jack asked me.

"I'll see," said I; "what for?"

"To touch up Neddy with. We're going home a rattler."

But on my earnestly remonstrating against the pin, Jack contented himself with pointing a stick, which he assured me would "hurt much more."

"Now, cabby!" he cried, "keep your crawler back till we're well away. You'd better let us go first, or we might pass you on the road, and hurt the feelings of that spirited beast of yours. Do you like going fast, Margery?"

"As fast as you like," said I.

I knew nothing whatever of horses and donkeys, or of what their poor legs could bear; but I very much liked passing swiftly through the air. I do not think Neddy suffered, however, though we went back at a pace marvellously different from that at which we came. We were very light weights, and Master Neddy was an overfed, underworked gentleman, with the acutest discrimination as to his drivers. Jack's voice was quite enough; the stick was superfluous. When we came to the top of the steep hill leading down to the village, Jack asked me, "Shall we go down a rattler?"

"Oh, do!" said I.

"Hold on to the hat-box, then, and don't tumble out."

Down we went. The carriage swayed from side to side; I sat with my arms tightly clasped round the hat-box, and felt as if I were flying straight down on to the church-tower. It was delightful, but I noticed that Jack did not speak till we reached the foot of the hill. Then he said, "Well, that's a blessing! I never thought we should get safe to the bottom."

"Then why did you drive so fast?" I inquired.

"My dear Margery, there's no drag on this carriage; and when I'd once given Neddy his head he couldn't stop himself, no more could I. But he's a plucky, sure-footed little beast; and I shall walk up this hill out of respect for him."

I resolved to do the same, and clambered out, leaving the hat-box on the seat. I went up to Jack, who was patting Neddy's neck, on which he stuck out his right arm, and said, "Link!"

"What?" said I.

"Link," said Jack; and as he stuck out his elbow again in an unmistakable fashion, I took his arm.

"We call that linking, in these parts," said Jack. "Good-evening, Mrs. Loxley. Good-evening, Peter. Thank you, thank you. I'm very glad to get home too—I should think not!" These sentences were replies to the warm greetings Jack received from the cottage-doors; the last to the remark, "You don't find a many places to beat t'ould one, sir, I expect!"

"I'm very popular in the village," said my eccentric companion, with a sigh, as we turned into the drive. "Though I say it that shouldn't, you think? Well! Ita vita. Such is life's half circle. Do you know Leadbetter? That's the way he construed it."

"I know you all talk in riddles," said I.

"Well, never mind; you'll know Leadbetter, and all the old books in the house by and by. Plenty of 'em, aren't there? The governor had a curate once, when his throat was bad. He said it was an Entertaining Library of Useless Knowledge. I've brought home one more volume to add to it. Second prize for chemistry. Only three fellows went in for it; which you needn't allude to at head-quarters;" and he sighed again.

As we passed slowly under the shadow of the heavy foliage, Jack, like Eleanor, put up his left arm to drag down a bunch of roses. They were further advanced now, and the shower of rose-leaves fell thickly like snowflakes over us—over Jack and me, and Neddy and the carriage, with the hat-box on the driving seat. We must have looked very queer, I think, as we came up out of the overshadowed road, like dwarfs out of a fairy tale, covered with flowers, and leading our carriage with its odd occupant inside.

Keziah, who had been counting the days to the holidays, ran down first to meet us, beaming with pleasure; though when Jack, in the futile attempt to play leap-frog with her against her will, damaged her cap, and clung to her neck till I thought she would have been throttled, she indignantly declared that, "Now the young gentlemen was home there was an end of peace for everybody, choose who they might be."



CHAPTER XXIII.

I CORRESPOND WITH THE MAJOR—MY COLLECTION—OCCUPATIONS—MADAME AGAIN—FETE DE VILLAGE—THE BRITISH HOORAY.

I wrote to my old friends and relatives, with a full account of my new home. Rather a comically-expressed account too, I fancy, from the bits Uncle Buller used to quote in after years. I got charming letters from him, piquant with his dry humour, and full of affection. Matilda generally added a note also; and Aunt Theresa always sent love and kisses in abundance, to atone for being too busy to write by that post.

The fonder I grew of the Arkwrights, the better I seemed to love and understand Uncle Buller. Apart as we were, we had now a dozen interests in common—threads of those intellectual ties over which the changes and chances of this mortal life have so little power.

My sympathy was real, as well as ready, when the Major discovered a new insect, almost invisible by the naked eye, which thenceforward bore the terrible specific name of Bulleriana, suggesting a creature certainly not less than a rhinoceros, and surrounding the Major's name with something of the halo of immortality. He was equally glad to hear of Jack's beetles and of my fresh-water shells. I had taken to the latter as being "the only things not yet collected by somebody or other in the house;" and I became so infatuated in the pursuit that I used to get up at four o'clock in the morning to search the damp places and water-herbage by the river, it being emphatically "the early bird who catches" snails. After his great discovery, the Major constantly asked if I had found a specimen of Helix Vandaleuriana yet. It was a joke between us—that new shell that I was to discover!

I have an old letter open by me now, in which, writing of the Arkwrights, he says, "Your dear father's daughter could have no better home." And, as I read, my father's last hours come back before me, and I hear the poor faint voice whispering, "You've got the papers, Buller? Arkwright will be kind about it, I'm sure." And, "It's all dark now." And with tears I wonder if he—with whom it is all light now—knows how well his true friends have dealt by me, and how happy I am.

To be busy is certainly half-way to being happy. And yet it is not so with every kind of labour. Some occupations, however, do seem of themselves to be peace-bringing; I mean, to be so independent of the great good of being occupied at all. Gardening, sketching, and natural history pursuits, for instance. Is it partly because one follows them in the open air, in great measure?—fresh air, that mysteriously mighty power for good! Anodyne, as well as tonic; dispeller of fever when other remedies are powerless; and the best accredited recipe for long life. Only partly, I think.

One secret of the happiness of some occupations is, perhaps, that they lift one away from petty cares and petty spites, without trying the brain or strength unduly, as some other kinds of mental labour must do. And how delightful is fellowship in such interests! What rivalries without bitterness; what gossip without scandal; what gifts and exchanges; what common interests and mutual sympathy!

In such happy business the holidays went by. Then the question arose, Were we to go back to school? Very earnestly we hoped not; and I think the Arkwrights soon resolved not to send Eleanor away again. As to me, the case was different. Mr. Arkwright felt that he must do what was best for my education: and he wrote to consult with Major Buller.

Fortunately for Eleanor and me, the Major was now as much prejudiced against girls' schools as he had been against governesses; and as masters were to be had at the nearest town, a home education was decided upon. It met with the approval of such of my relatives as were consulted—my great-grandmother especially—and it certainly met with mine.

Eleanor and I were very anxious to show that idleness was not our object in avoiding Bush House. The one of my diaries that escaped burning has, on the fly-leaf, one of the many "lesson plans" we made for ourselves.

We used to get up at six o'clock, and work before breakfast. Certain morning headaches, to which at this time I became subject, led to a serious difference of opinion between me and Mrs. Arkwright; she forbidding me to get up, and I holding myself to be much aggrieved, and imputing the headaches to anything rather than what Keziah briefly termed "book-larning upon an empty stomach." The matter was compromised, thanks to Keziah, by that good creature's offering to bring me new milk and bread-and-butter every morning before I began to work. She really brought it before I dressed, and my headaches vanished.

Though we did not wish to go back to Bush House, we were not quite unmindful of our friends there. Eleanor wrote to thank Madame for the flowers, and received a long and enthusiastic letter in reply—in French, of course, and pointing out one or two blunders in Eleanor's letter, which was in French also. She begged Eleanor to continue to correspond with her, for the improvement of her "composition."

Poor Madame! She was indeed an indefatigable teacher, and had a real ambition for the success of her pupils, which, in the drudgery of her life, was almost grand.

Strange to say, she once came to the Vicarage. It was during the summer succeeding that in which I came to live with the Arkwrights. She had been in the habit of spending the holidays with a family in the country, where, I believe, she gave some instruction in French and music in return for her expenses. That summer she was out of health, and thinking herself unable to fulfil her part of the bargain, she would not go. After severe struggles with her sensitive scruples, she was persuaded to come to us instead, on the distinct condition that she was to do nothing in the way of "lessons," but talk French with us.

To persuade her to accept any payment for her services was the subject of another long struggle. The thriftiest of women in her personal expenditure, and needing money sorely, Madame was not grasping. Indeed, her scruples on this subject were troublesome. She was for ever pursuing us, book in hand, and with a sun-veil and umbrella to shield her complexion, into the garden or the hayfield, imploring us to come in out of the wind and sun, and do "a little of dictation—of composition," or even to permit her to hear us play that duet from the 'Semiramide,' of which the time had seemed to her on the last occasion far from perfect.

Her despair when Mrs. Arkwright supported our refusals was comical, and she was only pacified at last by having the "scrap-bag" of odds and ends of net, muslin, lace, and embroidery handed over to her, from which she made us set after set of dainty collars and sleeves in various "modes," sitting well under the shade of the trees, on a camp-stool, with a camphor-bag to keep away insects, and in bodily fear of the dogs.

Poor Madame! I thought she would have had a fit on the first night of her arrival, when the customary civility was paid of offering her a dog to sleep on her bed. She never got really accustomed to them, and they never seemed quite to understand her. To the end of her stay they snuffed at her black skirts suspiciously, as if she were still more or less of an enigma to them. Madame was markedly civil to them, and even addressed them from time to time as "bons enfants," in imitation of our phrase "dear boys"; but more frequently, in watching the terms on which they lived with the family, she would throw up her little brown hands and exclaim, "Menage extraordinaire!"

I am sure she thought us a strange household in more ways than one, but I think she grew fond of us. For Eleanor she had always had a liking; about Eleanor's mother she became rhapsodical.

"How good!" so she cried to me, "and how truthful—how altogether truthful! What talents also, my faith! Miss Arkwright has had great advantages. A mother extraordinary!"

Mrs. Arkwright had many discussions with Madame on political subjects, and also on the education of girls. On the latter their views were so essentially different, that the discussion was apt to wax hot. Madame came at last to allow that for English girls Madame Arkwright's views might be just, but pour les filles francaises—she held to her own opinions.

With the boys she got on very well. At first they laughed at her; then Clement became polite, and even learned to speak French with her after a fashion. Jack was not only ignorant of French, but his English was so mixed with school-boy idioms, that Madame and he seldom got through a conversation without wonderful complications, from which, however, Jack's expressive countenance and ready wit generally delivered them in the long run. I do not know whether, on the whole, Madame did not like Mr. Arkwright best of all. Le bon pasteur, as she styled him.

"The Furrin Lady," as she was called in the village, was very fond of looking into the cottages, and studying the ways of the country generally.

I never shall forget the occurrence of the yearly village fair or feast during her visit: her anxiety to be present—her remarkable costume on the occasion—and the strong conviction borne in upon Eleanor and me that the Fat Lady in the centre booth was quite a secondary attraction to the Furrin Lady between us, with the raw lads and stolid farmers who had come down from the hills, with their wise sheep-dogs at their heels. If they stared at her, however, Madame was not unobservant of them, and the critical power was on her side.

"These men and their dogs seem to me alike," said she. "Both of them—they stare so much and say so little. But the looks of the dogs are altogether the more spirituels," she added.

I should not like to record all that she said on the subject of our village feast. It was not complimentary, and to some extent the bitter general observations on our national amusements into which her disappointment betrayed her were justified by facts. But it was not our fault that, in translating village feast into fete de village, she had allowed her imagination to mislead her with false hopes. She had expected a maypole, a dance of peasants, gay dresses, smiling faces, songs, fruit, coffee, flowers, and tasteful but cheap wares of small kinds in picturesque booths. She had adorned herself, and Eleanor and me, with collars and cuffs of elaborate make and exquisite "get-up" by her own hands. She wore a pale pink and a dead scarlet geranium, together with a spray of wistaria leaf, in admirable taste, on her dark dress. Her hat was marvellous; her gloves were perfect. She had a few shillings in her pocket to purchase souvenirs for the household; her face beamed in anticipation of a day of simple, sociable, uncostly pleasure, such as we English are so lamentably ignorant of. But I think the only English thing she had prepared herself to expect was what she called "The Briteesh hooray."