Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: PAULINA THREW HERSELF ON HER KNEES BESIDE ME.]
AUNT PATTY'S
PAYING GUESTS
BY
EGLANTON THORNE
Author of "Her Own Way," "The Blessedness of Irene Farquhar,"
"My Brother's Friend," etc.
WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. RAINEY, R.I.
LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
4 Bouverie Street and 65 St. Paul's Churchyard E.C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. AN UNWELCOME DECREE
II. MY EQUIPMENT
III. "GAY BOWERS"
IV. LAYING OUR PLANS
V. A RESPONSE TO THE ADVERTISEMENT
VI. THE FIRST ARRIVAL
VII. THE AMERICANS
VIII. A PRINCELY GIFT
IX. MISS COTTRELL'S ALIAS
X. COUSIN AGNETA'S LOVE STORY
XI. THE UNFORESEEN BEFALLS
XII. AT HOBBES'S COTTAGE
XIII. OLIVE'S HAPPINESS
XIV. A PICNIC
XV. AN ACT OF INDISCRETION
XVI. MISJUDGED
XVII. A GALA DAY AT GREENTREE
XVIII. AN ELOPEMENT
XIX. MISS COTTRELL'S ELATION
XX. A PROPOSAL
XXI. THE RETURN OF THE AMERICANS
XXII. CALAMITY
XXIII. TWILIGHT TALKS
XXIV. WEDDING BELLS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAULINA THREW HERSELF ON HER KNEES BESIDE ME. Frontispiece
"YOU SHOULD SEND HER INTO THE COUNTRY AND GIVE HER A BICYCLE."
AUNT MET PROFESSOR FAULKNER IN THE HALL.
"OH, I WRENCHED MY SHOULDER A BIT," HE SAID.
JOSIAH DICKS AND MISS COTTRELL PACING ARM IN ARM.
AUNT PATTY'S PAYING GUESTS
CHAPTER I
AN UNWELCOME DECREE
"NO books for twelve months at least," said Dr. Algar, our family
physician. "This overworked little brain needs repose. So remember,
Nan—no books."
"No books?" I repeated in utter dismay. "But that is impossible—quite
impossible, Dr. Algar!"
"Oh, I do not mean that you may not read a storybook now and then, or
amuse yourself with the magazines," he said calmly, "but anything like
study I absolutely forbid."
His words fell on my ears like a sentence of doom. How could I give up
my studies? My intellectual work was more to me than anything else,
though of late it had become a burden, and I could not bear to renounce
the hopes and ambitions on which my heart was set. For months I had
been working my hardest in preparation for Matriculation. I wanted to
take honours, for I thought that distinction would help me to obtain
a good post as teacher in a school. I worked under disadvantages,
for I had a daily engagement as governess which occupied the best
part of each day. My pupils were very young, and their instruction
did not involve for me any mental strain; but they were tiresome,
spoiled children, and I often returned home from teaching them feeling
irritated. Tea generally revived me, and I devoted the evening to study.
As the time fixed for the examination drew nearer, I sometimes rose at
six, and did an hour's work before breakfast. It was not easy to leave
my bed in the raw cold of the early morning and dress by gaslight. In
spite of the little oil-stove which I used to kindle in my room, the
cold seemed to benumb all my faculties. After a while I decided that
it was better to work late at night, and I would sit up wrestling with
some mathematical problem long after the other members of the household
were wrapped in slumber. Soon I began to be conscious of a sick, dizzy
sensation when I rose; severe headaches often interrupted my studies;
it became increasingly difficult for me to concentrate my thoughts.
"How cross Nan is!" I used to hear my younger sisters whisper to
each other, and my conscience told me that the words were true, and
reproached me also for the way in which I lost patience with my little
pupils.
At last there came an hour when everything faded from me as I sat at
my desk. My spirit seemed to go away to the very bounds of existence.
As from a great distance I came back to consciousness, with a singing
in my ears and a feeling of deadly sickness, and beheld the faces of
mother, Olive, and our maid-of-all-work looking down on me.
"What is the matter? What is it all about?" I asked vaguely.
"You fainted, darling—just an ordinary fainting-fit, nothing more,"
mother said.
It was such an unusual thing for mother to use terms of endearment
that I knew when she called me "darling" that I must have alarmed her
very much, and I almost fainted again from the shock of finding myself
such a centre of anxious interest. Mother gave me a strong dose of
sal-volatile, which soon brought me round. I was put to bed, but for
the rest of the evening, some one kept watch beside me. My swoon had
lasted a long time, and, since even ordinary fainting fits do not occur
without a cause, Dr. Algar was on the morrow called in to examine me,
with the result recorded above.
"I hate story-books," I said crossly. "Cannot you give me a tonic that
will pick me up?"
He shook his head as he smiled on me with a very kindly look in his
eyes.
"The tonic you need, my dear, is rest and play, or at least the change
of work which is said to be as good as play. She wants to go out to
grass, and kick up her heels like a young pony, Mrs. Darracott. You
should send her into the country, and give her a bicycle, or let her go
where there are golf links, and learn to play. In fact, she needs to
live an open-air life as far as that is possible in our climate."
I looked at mother and tried to smile, but merely succeeded, I believe,
in making a dismal grimace. How unreasonable the old doctor was! He
might as well have ordered champagne and oysters for a dweller in the
slums. How could my parents afford to send me into the country for an
indefinite period? Mother's face wore a troubled expression as she said
gently:
"I understand, doctor. I will talk it over with her father, and we will
see what we can do. I blame myself for not seeing that Annie was doing
too much; but she takes such delight in her studies that I fancied they
would not overtax her strength. You will not, then, give her medicine?"
"Yes," he said, "I will write a prescription for her that will steady
her nerves and help her to sleep. You have not been sleeping well of
late, my dear."
I looked at him, wondering how he knew this, for it was true. I had
not been actually wakeful, but my work had followed me into the
land of dreams, and I had been adding up never-ending columns of
figures or struggling with incomprehensible problems in a state of
semi-consciousness. Tears sprang to my eyes as I admitted that he was
right.
"Never mind, my dear," said the old doctor as he patted me on the
shoulder, and looked down on me with eyes full of sympathy. "You feel
badly now, I know, but you'll soon be better. Do as I tell you, and in
twelve or fifteen months' time you will be able to take up your work
again."
Twelve or fifteen months! Had he the least idea how long a period that
seems to a girl of nineteen? And I had so counted on the result of my
examination. The aerial edifice I had reared on this foundation tumbled
in ruins about me and I was in despair.
He must have discerned my state of mind, for he said quickly, "Now
mind, you must not brood over your troubles, or you will retard your
recovery. Find some light employment that will occupy your thoughts. Do
you care for gardening?"
"I hate it," I said pettishly, as I recalled certain tiresome
half-hours I had spent in pottering round his garden with Uncle George
and undertaking irksome tasks at his request.
"Well, well," said the doctor soothingly, "you can't know much about it
here in London. Are you fond of needlework?"
I shook my head with a sense of disgust, and mother laughed a low,
mirthless laugh. She knew how I detested needlework.
Dr. Algar refrained from further suggestions, and presently took
his departure. When he had gone mother and I looked at each other
for a moment, and then I fell to sobbing. All my strength seemed to
have departed from me when I fainted, and I felt in a state of utter
collapse. Dr. Algar spoke of it as "nervous prostration."
"Come, come, Nan, this won't do," said my mother severely; "you must be
brave and face your trouble like a woman. It's a great disappointment,
I know, but crying won't help matters, and it might be so much worse."
"I can't see how it could be worse," I cried perversely.
"Can't you?" said mother, with a quaver in her voice. "I can very
clearly."
Then, as I continued to sob, she fetched me a glass of hot milk and a
biscuit, for the doctor had advised my taking as much light nourishment
as possible. Certainly I felt better when I had taken it, though the
prospect of the future did not brighten.
"Mother," I said, "what nonsense Dr. Algar talks! How could you send me
away into the country? And I am sure I do not want to go. I should be
miserable away from you all."
"That would depend on where you went," said my mother. "I wish I could
ask your Aunt Patty to take you; but with her husband so sadly she will
not want another invalid on her hands."
"Oh, mother, don't call me an invalid!" I exclaimed impatiently.
She smiled and went on as if I had not spoken.
"No, if your uncle were well, it would be different; but as things are,
I cannot send you. I do not see what is to be done; but I must talk it
over with your father."
Then she went away to attend to her domestic duties, and I lay back on
my pillows, feeling utterly limp and wretched. Mother had bidden me be
brave, but I was far from brave at that hour. My mood was one of flat
rebellion against the doctor's decree. A whole year without study! How
could I bear it? It was preposterous. He need not think I was going to
obey him. It would mean that I should be earning nothing all that time,
a burden on my parents' straitened means, an additional care to my
mother, whose anxieties were so numerous.
I was the second in a family of five girls and one small pickle of a
boy. We lived in a long, uninteresting road, which, being treeless, was
called an avenue, running between Wandsworth Road and Clapham Common.
Ours was a refined but by no means a luxurious home. My father was a
man of science and the curator of a learned society. His position was
an honourable one, and brought him into connection with many eminent
and interesting persons, but, unfortunately for his wife and children,
the salary attached to the office was small. So it was that in our home
there was a never-ending struggle to make ends meet. Sometimes the ends
gaped hopelessly wide apart, and strain as we would, it was impossible
to bring them together. Then it became a question of what we could do
without.
It is wonderful how many things with which we cumber our lives are
really unnecessary and can be dispensed with if we choose. I remember
that once we did without a servant for twelve months. It was a question
of doing so, or of taking me from school a year sooner than my parents
had intended, and there was no doubt in my mother's mind as to which
was the more important, the progress of my education or the smoother
running of the domestic machinery. She and Olive did the work of the
house with the help of a rough girl who came in for a few hours every
morning. Olive had been attending a cookery class, and she hailed this
opportunity of showing her skill. So dainty were the dishes she set
before us that we children rather liked the change of administration.
It was a happy circumstance that we were all fairly gifted with a sense
of humour. As charity covereth a multitude of sins, so this gift, said
to be rare in womankind, enables one to combat successfully with a host
of petty annoyances. We laughed together over the pinchings of our
poverty, and we took pride in the contrivances by which we presented
a brave front to the world. Thus it was that our pecuniary straits
made us neither sordid nor sour. There are many worse experiences
than that of being poor. As I look back on those old days, I am often
moved to thank God that we had not an easy, luxurious upbringing. The
difficulties that marked our home life were unheroic, but they drew
us closely together and taught us many useful lessons we might not
otherwise have learned.
Olive, the eldest of the family, was mother's right hand. She was not
only, as I have said, a clever cook; her skill in needlework surpassed
her culinary accomplishments. I have rarely seen finer sewing and
stitching than Olive could put into her daintiest work. Moreover, she
could boast a valuable attainment in a household of girls, the art
of dressmaking. It was wonderful how cleverly she would remodel old
garments and make them look like new ones. What we owed to this gift of
hers I cannot tell. Between us all we kept her needle busy.
Happily Olive had an engagement to act as reader and amanuensis for an
old lady, which took her from home every afternoon and thus prevented
her becoming a slave of the needle. Mrs. Smythe, who lived in a large
house overlooking the Common, was a cultured woman, with a fine
literary taste, so Olive learned much in her society, and was saved
from the narrowness and barrenness of mind which is too often the fate
of the domestic drudge.
Not that Olive was exactly one's idea of a drudge. She was a tall,
well-set-up girl, with fine, dark eyes, and an abundance of brown hair
which was always beautifully dressed. The last statement might be made
of Olive herself. Her clothes were never costly, unless the cost had
been defrayed by some one else, but they were always smart. She knew
how to wear them, as people say. Sewing or cooking, whatever Olive was
about, her appearance was sure to be neat and trim, her dress adapted
to the occasion and eminently becoming.
Dear old Olive! What a blessing she was to us all! Old she was not
at this time, though, for she had not yet passed her twenty-first
birthday. She and I were great chums. I think she understood even
better than mother what this disappointment was to me. I read it in
her eyes when presently she brought her work—a frock she was finishing
for Ethel, the youngest of the five—and seated herself beside my bed,
for the doctor had advised my lying still all that day. But Olive did
not say much by way of sympathy. Like mother she bade me be brave.
Mother herself was the bravest of women, and we had all been trained to
despise cowardice, physical or moral.
"After all, Nan, you won't need pity if you go into the country early
in the year," she said. "It's not very nice in London just now. You
will escape the dreadful March we get in town, and be able to watch
the gradual on-coming of the spring in the woods and lanes. I wish you
could go to 'Gay Bowers.'"
"Yes," I said drearily; "it would be more endurable if I were with Aunt
Patty."
She was our father's only sister, and our favourite aunt. We were less
fond of her husband, some twenty years her senior, and now getting old
and infirm. He was a great sufferer from gout, an affliction that is
not conducive to serenity and amiability of mind. I had always admired
the patience with which my aunt bore with his outbursts of temper.
"Poor Aunt Patty!" said Olive. "I guess she is having a rough time
of it now. She said in her last letter, which came the day before
yesterday, that uncle was worse than she had ever seen him."
"Then she certainly does not want me there as I am now," I sighed. "Oh,
Olive, I feel like a washed-out handkerchief! It is awful to be utterly
useless, only a burden on father and mother, when I had hoped soon to
be earning a good salary and able to support myself entirely."
"It seems hard, no doubt," said Olive; "but what you've got to do now,
Nan, is just to trust. This must be one of the 'all things' that are
going to work for your good. Now is the time to show that your faith in
God is real and not a mere profession."
I looked at Olive in surprise. Such words had never fallen from her
lips before. Frank and free of speech as she appeared, she was not one
to say much of the things she held most sacred. But I did not need
words to assure me of the reality of my sister's religion.
Just then mother's voice was heard from below calling urgently for
Olive. She ran off to obey the summons, and I lay still with closed
eyes, wondering whether I had any true faith in God. I had long
believed, as I thought, in the love of God, but to what extent had that
faith been a living influence in my life? Was it now weighed in the
balance and found wanting? The opening of the door made me look up.
There stood Olive wearing her hat and coat, and an expression which
told me something had happened.
"What is the matter, Olive?" I asked hastily.
"Where are you going?"
"To the museum to take father this telegram, which has just come from
'Gay Bowers,'" she said. "It brings sad news, Nan. Uncle George is
dead."
"Oh!" I exclaimed, inexpressibly shocked, "and we were just talking of
him. How dreadful for Aunt Patty!"
"Yes; we think the end must have come suddenly," Olive said. "But I
cannot stay to talk now."
And she was gone.
[Illustration: "YOU SHOULD SEND HER INTO THE COUNTRY,
AND GIVE HER A BICYCLE."]
I saw nothing more of mother or Olive for some hours. Father came home
early, and they were busy speeding his departure to catch a train at
Liverpool Street, for he wanted to go to his sister in her trouble
without delay. The children, Dora, Ethel, and Fred, came to visit me
when they returned from their walk, and lingered in the room longer
than I desired their company. It seemed to gratify them to see me lying
in bed at that unusual hour. I do not think they believed much in my
illness.
They were disposed to discuss Uncle George's death from every point
of view. Fred particularly wanted to know whether uncle had made a
will, and if I knew who would have his horses and cattle and the dogs,
of which my young brother was particularly fond. He leaned his whole
weight on the footboard of my bed, and swung to and fro as he asked
those questions, thus inflicting the utmost torture on my shattered
nerves. I was summoning what little firmness I yet retained in order to
insist on their leaving me at once, when, to my relief, father appeared
and sent them away.
It was like father that in the bustle of departure, he found leisure
to come and sit beside me for a few minutes and express his tender
sympathy.
"I am very sorry for you, Nan," he said, "but you must not fret. It
is a comfort to me to know that the doctor says you have no organic
disease. It is just a question of taking it easy for a while, and, at
your age, you can spare the time."
"Oh, can I?" was my reply. "I don't think so, father."
"Perhaps not," he said, with a melancholy smile, "but when you are my
age you will know what a blessed thing it is to be young. All things
are possible to the young in the present age, it seems to me. Think of
your poor Aunt Patty now. What a sorrow to lose the one who has shared
her life for thirty years!"
"I am very sorry for her, father. Will you give her my love and tell
her so?"
He nodded gravely.
"She has been a good wife to George Lucas, and he was good to her,
though a bit grumpy at times," he said. "Poor fellow! I believe he
suffered more than we knew. And he had a good deal to worry him. I
don't know what your aunt will do. I am afraid she will be poorly off,
for farming has been so bad of late, and your uncle, owing to his
ill-health and growing infirmities, has let his affairs get into a sad
muddle. I should not wonder if she has to leave 'Gay Bowers.'"
"Oh, I hope not, father," I said. "Could she not stay on there and take
'paying guests,' as Mary Dakin's mother does?"
"'Paying guests,'" repeated my father impatiently. "What an absurd
expression that is! If a man pays for his board and lodging, how can he
be a guest? When will people learn to use words with some respect for
their meaning? The word boarder is good enough for me. I like to call a
spade a spade."
"But it is much more elegant to call it an 'implement of husbandry,'" I
returned, with a smile.
Father laughed, kissed me, bade me be careful to follow the doctor's
instructions and was gone. It never entered my head that the suggestion
I had so carelessly made could be of the least value, and I was far
from dreaming how it would affect my own life.