Miss Starke was one of those ladies who pass their lives in the direst of
all civil strife--war with their servants. She looked upon the members of
that class as the unrelenting and sleepless enemies of the unfortunate
householders condemned to employ them. She thought they ate and drank to
their villanous utmost, in order to ruin their benefactors--that they lived
in one constant conspiracy with one another and the tradesmen, the object
of which was to cheat and pilfer. Miss Starke was a miserable woman. As she
had no relations or friends who cared enough for her to share her solitary
struggle against her domestic foes; and her income, though easy, was an
annuity that died with herself, thereby reducing various nephews, nieces,
or cousins, to the strict bounds of a natural affection--that did not
exist; and as she felt the want of some friendly face amidst this world of
distrust and hate, so she had tried the resource of venal companions. But
the venal companions had never staid long--either they disliked Miss
Starke, or Miss Starke disliked them. Therefore the poor woman had resolved
upon bringing up some little girl whose heart, as she said to herself;
would be fresh and uncorrupted, and from whom she might expect gratitude.
She had been contented, on the whole, with Helen, and had meant to keep
that child in her house as long as she (Miss Starke) remained upon the
earth--perhaps some thirty years longer; and then, having carefully
secluded her from marriage, and other friendship, to leave her nothing but
the regret of having lost so kind a benefactress. Agreeably with this
notion, and in order to secure the affections of the child, Miss Starke had
relaxed the frigid austerity natural to her manner and mode of thought, and
been kind to Helen in an iron way. She had neither slapped nor pinched her,
neither had she starved. She had allowed her to see Leonard, according to
the agreement made with Dr. Morgan, and had laid out tenpence on cakes,
besides contributing fruit from her garden for the first interview--a
hospitality she did not think it fit to renew on subsequent occasions. In
return for this, she conceived she had purchased the right to Helen bodily
and spiritually, and nothing could exceed her indignation when she rose one
morning and found the child had gone. As it never had occurred to her to
ask Leonard's address, though she suspected Helen had gone to him, she was
at a loss what to do, and remained for twenty-four hours in a state of
inane depression. But then she began to miss the child so much that her
energies woke, and she persuaded herself that she was actuated by the
purest benevolence in trying to reclaim this poor creature from the world,
into which Helen had thus rashly plunged.
Accordingly, she put an advertisement into the _Times_, to the following
effect, liberally imitated from one by which, in former years, she had
recovered a favorite Blenheim:
TWO GUINEAS REWARD.
Strayed, from Ivy Cottage, Highgate, a Little Girl, answers
to the name of Helen; with blue eyes and brown hair; white
muslin frock, and straw hat with blue ribbons. Whoever will
bring the same to Ivy Cottage, shall receive the above
Reward.
_N. B._--Nothing more will be offered.
Now, it so happened that Mrs. Smedley had put an advertisement in the
_Times_ on her own account, relative to a niece of hers who was coming from
the country, and for whom she desired to find a situation. So, contrary to
her usual habit, she sent for the newspaper, and, close by her own
advertisement she saw Miss Starke's.
It was impossible that she could mistake the description of Helen; and, as
this advertisement caught her eye the very day after the whole house had
been disturbed and scandalized by Burley's noisy visit, and on which she
had resolved to get rid of a lodger who received such visitors, the
good-hearted woman was delighted to think that she could restore Helen to
some safe home. While thus thinking, Helen herself entered the kitchen
where Mrs. Smedley sat, and the landlady had the imprudence to point out
the advertisement, and talk, as she called it, "seriously" to the little
girl.
Helen in vain and with tears entreated her to take no step in reply to the
advertisement. Mrs. Smedley felt it was an affair of duty, and was
obdurate, and shortly afterwards put on her bonnet and left the house.
Helen conjectured that she was on her way to Miss Starke's, and her whole
soul was bent on flight. Leonard had gone to the office of the _Beehive_
with his MSS.; but she packed up all their joint effects, and, just as she
had done so, he returned. She communicated the news of the advertisement,
and said she should be so miserable if compelled to go back to Miss
Starke's, and implored him so pathetically to save her from such sorrow
that he at once assented to her proposal of flight. Luckily, little was
owing to the landlady--that little was left with the maid-servant; and,
profiting by Mrs. Smedley's absence, they escaped without scene or
conflict. Their effects were taken by Leonard to a stand of hackney
vehicles, and then left at a coach-office, while they went in search of
lodgings. It was wise to choose an entirely new and remote district; and
before night they were settled in an attic in Lambeth.