Here they all are at last, and the house is as full as it will hold.
The Bracewells came first in their great family coach and four--
Charlotte and Amelia and a young friend whom they had with them. Her
name is Cecilia Osborne, and she is such a genteel-looking girl! She
moves about, not languidly like Amelia, but in such a graceful, airy way
as I never saw. She has dark hair, nearly black, and brown eyes with a
sort of tawny light in them,--large eyes which gleam out on you just
when you are not expecting it, for she generally looks down. Amelia
appears more listless and affected than ever by the side of her, and
Charlotte's hoydenish romping seems worse and more vulgar.
The Drummonds did not come for nearly a week afterwards. I was rather
afraid what Cecilia would think of them for I expected they would talk
Scotch--I know Angus used to do--and Cecilia is from the South, and I
thought she would be quite shocked. But I find they talk just as we do,
only with a little Scots accent, as if they were walking over sandhills
in their throats--as least that is how it sounds to me. Flora has
rather more of it than Angus, but then her voice is so clear and soft
that it sounds almost pretty. A young gentleman came with them, named
Duncan Keith, who was going with Angus about that business he has to do.
They only stayed one night, didn't [Note 4.] Mr Keith and Angus, and
then went on about their business; but Father was so pleased with Mr
Keith, that he invited him to come back when Angus does, which will be
in about three weeks or a month. So here we are, eight girls instead of
four, with never a young man among us. Father says, when Angus and Mr
Keith come back, we will have Ephraim Hebblethwaite and Ambrose
Catterall to spend the evening, and perhaps Esther Langridge too. I
don't feel quite sure that I should like Esther to come. She is not
only as bad as Sophy with her "buts" and her "comes" but she does not
behave quite genteelly in some other ways: and I don't want Cecilia
Osborne to fancy that we are a set of vulgar creatures who do not know
how to behave. I don't care half so much what Flora thinks.
Cecilia has not been here a fortnight, and yet I keep catching myself
wondering what she will think about everything. It is not that I have
made a friend of her: in fact, I am not sure that I quite like her. She
seems to throw a sort of spell over me, does Cecilia, as if I were
afraid of her and must obey her. I don't half like it.
My Aunt Kezia has put us into rooms in pairs, while they are here. In
Sophy's chamber, where I generally sleep, are Sophy and Charlotte. In
Fanny's, which she and Hatty have when we are by ourselves, are Fanny
and Amelia. In the green spare chamber are Hatty and Cecilia; and in
the blue one, Flora and me. My Aunt Kezia said she thought we should
find that the pleasantest arrangement; but I do wish she had given Flora
to Hatty, and put Cecilia with me. I am sure I should have understood
Cecilia much better than Hatty, who will persist in calling her Cicely,
which she says she does not like because it is such a vulgar name--and
so common, too. Cecilia says she wishes she had not been called by a
name which had a vulgar short one to it: she would like to have been
either Camilla or Henrietta. She thinks my name sweetly pretty; but she
wonders why we call Hester, Hatty, which she says is quite low and ugly,
and hardly, is the proper short for Hester. She says Hatty and Gatty
are properly short for Harriet, and Hester should be Essie, which is
much prettier. But then we call Esther Langridge, Essie, and we could
not do with two Essies. I know Father used to call Mamma, Gatty, but
Grandmamma said she always thought it so vulgar.
Grandmamma was always talking about things being vulgar, and so is
Cecilia. I notice that some people--for instance, my Aunt Kezia and
Flora--never seem to think whether things are vulgar or not. Cecilia
says that is because they are so vulgar they don't know it. I wonder if
it be. But Cecilia says--she said I was not to repeat it, though--that
my Aunt Kezia and Sophy are below vulgarity. When we were dressing one
morning, I asked Flora what she thought. She is as genteel in her
manners as Cecilia herself, only in quite a different way. Cecilia
behaves as if she wanted you to notice how genteel she is. Flora is
just herself: it seems to come natural to her, as if she never thought
about it. So I asked Flora what she thought "vulgarity" meant, and if
people could be below vulgarity.
"I should not think they could get below it," said she. "It is easy to
get above it, if you only go the right way. How can you get below a
thing which is down at the bottom?"
"But how would you do, Flora, not to be vulgar?"
"Learn good manners and then never think about them."
"But you must keep, up your company manners," said I.
"Why have any?" said she.
"What, always have one's company manners on!" cried I, "and be
courtesying and bowing to one's sisters as if they were people one had
never seen before?"
"Nay, those are ceremonies, not manners," said Flora. "By manners, I do
not understand ceremonies, but just the way you behave to anybody at any
time. It is not a ceremony to set a chair for a lame man, nor to shut a
door lest the draught blow on a sick woman. It is not a ceremony to eat
with a knife and fork, or to see that somebody else is comfortable
before you make yourself so."
"Why, but that is just kindness!" cried I.
"What are manners but kindness?" said Flora. "Let a maiden only try to
be as kind as she can to every creature of God, and she will not find
much said in reproof of her manners."
"Are you always trying to be kind to everybody, Flora?"
"I hope so, Cary," she said, gravely.
"Flora, have you any friend?" said I. "I mean a particular friend--a
girl friend like yourself."
"Yes," she said. "My chief friend is Annas Keith."
"Mr Duncan Keith's sister?"
"Yes," said Flora.
"Do tell me what she is like," said I.
"I am not sure that I could," said Flora. "And if I did, it would only
be like looking at a map. Suppose somebody showed you a map of the
British Isles, and put his finger on a little pink spot, and told you
that was Selkirk. How much wiser would you be? You could not see the
Yarrow and Ettrick, and breathe the caller air and gather the purple
heather. And I don't think describing people is much better than to
show places on a map. Such different things strike different people."
"How?" said I. "I don't see how they could, in the same face."
"As we were coming from Carlisle with Uncle Courtenay," said Flora,
smiling, "I asked him to tell me what you were like, Cary."
"Well, what did Father say?" I said, and I felt very much amused.
"He said, `Oh, a girl with a pale face and a lot of light thatch on it,
with fine ways that she picked up in Carlisle.' But when I came to see
you, I thought that if I had had to describe you, those were just the
things I should not have mentioned."
"Come, then, describe me, Flora," said I, laughing. "What do you see?"
"I see two large, earnest-looking blue eyes," she said, "under a broad
white forehead; eyes that look right at you; clear, honest eyes,--not--
at least, the sort of eyes I like to look at me. Then I see a small
nose--"
"Let my nose alone, please," said I: "I know it turns up, and I don't
want to hear you say so."
Flora laughed. "Very well; I will leave your nose alone. Underneath
it, I see two small red lips, and a little forward chin; a rather
self-willed little chin, if you please, Cary--and a good figure, which
has learned to hold itself up and to walk gracefully. Will that do for
a description?"
"Yes," I said, looking in the glass; "I suppose that is me."
"Is it, Cary? That may be all I see; but is it you? Why, it is only
the morocco case that holds you. You are the jewel inside, and what
that is, really and fully, I cannot see. God can see it; and you can
see some of it. But I can see only what you choose to show me, or, now
and then, what you cannot help showing me."
"Do you know that you are a very queer girl, Flora? Girls don't talk in
that way. Cecilia Osborne told me yesterday she thought you a very
curious girl indeed."
"I think my match might be found," said Flora, rather drily. "For one
thing, Cary, you must remember I have had nothing to do with other girls
except Annas Keith. Father and Angus have been my only companions; and
a girl who has neither mother nor sisters perhaps gets out of girls'
ways in some respects."
"But you are not the only `womankind,' as Father calls it, in the
house?" said I.
"Oh, no, there is Helen Raeburn," answered Flora: "but she is an old
woman, and she is not in my station. She would not teach me girls'
ways."
"Then who taught you manners, Flora?"
"Oh, Father saw to all that Helen could not," she said. "Helen could
teach me common decencies, of course; such as not to eat with my
fingers, and to shake hands, and so forth: but the little niceties of
ladylike behaviour that were beyond her--Father saw to those."
"Well, I think you have very pleasant manners, Flora. I only wish you
were not quite so grave."
"Thank you for the compliment, Miss Caroline Courtenay," said Flora,
dropping me a courtesy. "I would rather be too grave than too giddy."
That very afternoon, Cecilia Osborne asked me to walk up the Scar with
her. Somehow, when she asks you to do a thing, you feel as if you must
do it. I do not like that sort of enchanted feeling at all. However, I
fetched my hood and scarf, and away we went. We climbed up the Scar
without much talk--in fact, it is rather too steep for that: but when we
got to the top, Cecilia proposed to sit down on the bank. It was a
beautiful day, and quite warm for the time of the year. So down we sat,
and Cecilia pulled her sacque carefully on one side, that it should not
get spoiled--she was very charmingly dressed in a sacque of purple
lutestring, with such a pretty bonnet, of red velvet with a gold pompoon
in front--and then she began to talk, as if she had come for that, and I
believe she had. It was not long before I felt pretty sure that she had
brought me there to pump me.
"How long have you known Miss Drummond?" she began.
"Well, all my life, in a fashion," I said; "but it is nearly ten years
since we met."
"Ten years is a good deal of your life, is it not?" said Cecilia,
darting at me one of those side-glances from her tawny eyes.
I tried to do it last night, and made my eyes feel so queer that I was
not sure they would get right by morning.
"Well, I suppose it is," said I; "I am not quite seventeen yet."
"You dear little thing!" said Cecilia, imprisoning my hand. "What is
Miss Drummond's father?"
"A minister," said I.
"A Scotch Presbyterian, I suppose?" she said, turning up her nose. I
did not think she looked any prettier for it.
"Well," said I, "I suppose he is."
"And Mr Angus--what do they mean to make of him, do you know?"
"Flora hopes he will be a minister too. His father wishes it; but she
is not sure that Angus likes the notion himself."
"Dear me! I should think not," said Cecilia, "He is fit for something
far better."
"What can be better?" I answered.
"You have such charming ideas!" replied Cecilia. She put in another
word, which I never heard before, and I don't know what it means. She
brought it with her from the South, I suppose. Unso--unsophy--no,
unsophisticated--I think that was it. It sounded uncommon long and
fine, I know.
"I suppose Scotch ministers have not much money?" continued Cecilia.
"I don't know--I think not," I answered. "But I rather fancy my Uncle
Drummond has a little of his own."
Cecilia darted another look at me, and then dropped her eyes as if she
were studying the grass.
"And Mr Keith?" she said presently, "is he a relation?"
"I don't know much about him," said I, "only what I have heard Flora
say. He is no relation of theirs, I believe. I think he is the
squire's son."
"The squire's son!" cried Cecilia, in a more interested tone. "And who
is the squire?--is he rich?--where is the place?"
"As to who he is," said I, "he is Mr Keith, I suppose. I don't know a
bit whether he is rich or poor. I forget the name of the place--I think
it is Abbotsmuir, or something like that. Either an abbot or a monk has
something to do with it."
"And you don't know if Mr Keith is a rich man?" said Cecilia, I thought
in rather a disappointed tone.
"No, I don't," said I. "I can ask Flora, if you want to know."
"Not for the world!" cried Cecilia, laying her hand again on mine.
"Don't on any account let Miss Drummond know that I asked you such a
question. If you like to ask from yourself, you know--well, that is
another matter; but not from me, on any consideration."
"I don't understand you, Miss Osborne," said I.
"No, you dear little thing, I believe you don't understand me," said
Cecilia, kissing me. "What pretty hair you have, and how nice you keep
it, to be sure!--so smooth and glossy! Come, had we not better be going
down, do you think?"
So down we came, and found dinner ready; and I do not think I ever
thought of it again till I was going to bed. Then I said to Flora,--"Do
you like Cecilia Osborne?"
"I--think we had better not talk about people, Cary, if you please."
But there was such a pause where I have drawn that long stroke, that I
am sure that was not what she intended to say at first.
"Then you don't," said I, making a hit at the truth, and, I think,
hitting it in the bull's eye. "Well, no more do I."
Flora looked at me, but did not speak. Oh, how different her look is
from Cecilia's sudden flashes!
"She has been trying to pump me, I am sure, about you and Angus, and Mr
Keith," said I; "and I think it is quite as well I knew so little."
"What about?" said Flora.
"Oh, about money, mostly," said I. "Whether Uncle had much money, and
if Mr Keith was a rich man, and all on like that. I can't bear girls
who are always thinking about money."
Flora drew a long breath. "That is it, is it?" she said, in a low
voice, as she tied her nightcap, but it was rather as if she were
speaking to herself than to me. "Cary, perhaps I had better answer you.
I am afraid Miss Osborne is a very dangerous girl; and she would be
more so than she is if she were a shade more clever, so as to hide her
cards a little better. Don't tell her anything you can help."
"But what shall I say if she asks me again? because she wanted me not to
tell you that she had asked, but to get to know as if I wanted it
myself."
"Tell her to ask me," said Flora, with more spirit than I had expected
from her.
When Cecilia began again (as she did) asking me the same sort of things,
I said to her, "Why don't you ask Cousin Flora instead of me? She knows
so much more about it than I do."
Cecilia put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me.
"Because I like to ask you," said she, "and I should not like to ask
her."
My Aunt Kezia was just coming into the room.
"Miss Cecilia, my dear," said she, "do you always think what you like?"
"Of course, Mrs Kezia," said Cecilia, smiling at her.
"Then you will be a very useless woman," said my aunt, "and not a very
happy one neither."
"Happy--ah!" said Cecilia, with a long sigh. "This world is not the
place to find happiness."
"No, it isn't," said my Aunt Kezia, "for people who spend all their time
hunting for it. It is a deal better to let happiness hunt for you. You
don't go the right way to get it, child."
"I do not, indeed!" answered Cecilia, with a very sorrowful look. "Ah,
Mrs Kezia, `the heart knoweth his own bitterness.' That is Scripture,
I believe."
"Yes, it does," said my aunt, "and it makes a deal of it, too."
"Oh dear, Mrs Kezia!" cried Cecilia. "How could anybody make
unhappiness?"
"If you don't, you are the first girl I have met of your sort," saith my
Aunt Kezia, turning down the hem of a kerchief. Then, when she came to
the end of the hem, she looked up at Cecilia. "My dear, there is a
lesson we all have to learn, and the sooner you learn it, the better and
happier woman you will be. The end of selfishness is not pleasure, but
pain. You don't think so, do you? Ah, but you will find as you go
through life, that always you are not only better, but happier, with
God's blessing on the thing you don't like, than without it on the thing
you do. Ay, it always turns to ashes in your mouth when you will have
the quails instead of the manna. I've noted many a time--for when I was
a girl, and later than that, I was as self-willed as any of you--that
sometimes when I have set my heart upon a thing, and would have it,
then, if I may speak it with reverence, God has given way to me. Like a
father with an obstinate child, He has said to me, as it were, `Poor
foolish child! You will have this glittering piece of mischief. Well,
have your way: and when you have cut yourself badly with it, and are
bleeding and smarting as I did not wish to see you, come back to your
Father and tell Him all about it, and be healed and comforted.' Ah dear
me, the dullest of us is quite as clever as she need be in making rods
for her own back. And then, if our Father keep us from hurting
ourselves, and won't let us have the bright knife to cut our fingers
with, how we do mewl and whine, to be sure! We are just a set of silly
babes, my dear--the best of us."
"My Aunt Dorothea once told me," said I, "that the Papists have what
they call `exercises of detachment.' Perhaps you would think them good
things, Aunt Kezia. For instance, if an abbess sees a nun who seems to
have a fancy for any little thing particularly, she will take it from
her and give it to somebody else."
"Eh, poor foolish things!" said Aunt Kezia. "Bits of children playing
with the Father's tools! They are more like to hurt themselves a deal
than to get His work done. Ay, God has His exercises of detachment, and
they are far harder than man's. He knows how to do it. He can lay a
finger right on the core of your heart, the very spot where it hurts
worst. Men can seldom do that. They would sometimes if they could, I
believe; but they cannot, except God guides them to it. Many's the time
I've been asked, with a deal of hesitation and apology, to do a thing
that did not cost me a farthing's worth of grief or labour; and as
lightly as could be, to do another which would have gone far to break
either my back or my heart. Different folks see things in such
different ways. I'll be bound, now, if each of us were asked to pick
out for one another the thing in this house that each cared most about,
we should well-nigh all of us guess wrong. We know so little of each
other's inmost hearts. That little kingdom, your own heart, is a thing
that you must keep to yourself; you can't let another into it. You can
bring him to the gate, and let him peep in, and show him a few of your
treasures; but you cannot give him the freedom of the city. Depend upon
it, you would think very differently of me from what you do, and I
should think differently of each of you, if we could see each other's
inmost hearts."
"Better or worse, Mrs Kezia?" said Cecilia.
"May be the one, and may be the other, my dear. It would hang a little
on the heart you looked at, and a great deal on the one who looked at
it. I dare say we should all get one lesson we need badly--we might
learn to bear with each other. 'Tis so easy to think, `Oh, she cannot
understand me! she never had this pain or that sorrow.' Whereas, if you
could see her as she really is, you would find she knew more about it
than you did, and understood some other things beside, which were dark
riddles to you. That is often a mountain to one which is only a
molehill to another. And trouble is as it is taken. If there were no
more troubles in this world than what we give each other in pure
kindness or in simple ignorance, girls, there would be plenty left."
"Then you think there were troubles in Eden?" said Cecilia,
mischievously.
"I was not there," said my Aunt Kezia. "After the old serpent came
there were troubles enough, I'll warrant you. If Adam came off
scot-free for saying, `The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me,' Eve
must have been vastly unlike her daughters."
I was quite unable to keep from laughing, but Cecilia did not seem to
see anything to laugh at. She never does, when people say funny things;
and she never says funny things herself. I cannot understand her. She
only laughs when she does something; and, nine times out of ten, it is
something in which I cannot see anything to laugh at--something which--
well, if it were not Cecilia, I should say was rather silly and babyish.
I never did see any fun in playing foolish tricks on people, and
worrying them in all sorts of ways. Hatty just enjoys it; but I don't.
However, before anything else was said, Father came in, and a young
gentleman with him, whom he introduced as Mr Anthony Parmenter, the
Vicar's nephew (He turned out to be the Vicar's grand-nephew, which, I
suppose, is the same thing.) I am sure he must have come from the
South. He did not shake hands, nor profess to do it. He just touched
the hand you gave him with the tips of his fingers, and then with his
lips, as if you were a china tea-dish that he was terribly frightened of
breaking. Cecilia seemed quite used to this sort of thing, but I did
not know what he was going to do; and, as for my Aunt Kezia, she just
seized his hand, and gave it a good old-fashioned shake, at which he
looked very much put out. Then she asked him how the Vicar was, and he
did not seem to know; and how long he was going to stay, and he did not
know that; and when he came, to which he said Thursday, in a very
hesitating way, as if he were not at all sure that it was not Wednesday
or Friday. One thing he knew--that it was hawidly cold--there, that is
just how he said it. I suppose he meant horribly. My Aunt Kezia gave
him up after a while, and went on sewing in silence. Then Cecilia took
him up, and they seemed to understand each other exactly. They talked
about all sorts of things and people that I never heard of before; and I
sat and listened, and so did my Aunt Kezia, only that she put in a word
now and then, and I did not.
Before they had been long at it, Fanny and Amelia came in from a walk,
in their bonnets and scarves, and Mr Parmenter bowed over their hands
in the same curious way that he did before. Amelia took it as she does
everything--that is, in a languid, limp sort of way, as if she did not
care about anything; but Fanny looked as if she did not know what he was
going to do to her, and I saw she was puzzled whether she ought to shake
hands or not. Then Fanny went away to take her things off, but Amelia
sat down, and pulled off her scarf, and laid it beside her on the sofa,
not neatly folded, but all huddled up in a heap, and there it might have
stayed till next week if my Aunt Kezia (who hates Amelia's untidy ways)
had not said to her,--
"My dear, had you not better take your things up-stairs?"
Amelia rose with the air of a martyr, threw the scarf on her arm, and
carrying her bonnet by one string, went slowly up-stairs. When they
came down together, my Aunt Kezia said to Fanny,--
"My dear, you had better take a shorter walk another time."
"We have not had a long one, Aunt," said Fanny, looking surprised. "We
only went up by the Scar, and back by Ellen Water."
"I thought you had been much farther than that," says my Aunt Kezia, in
her dry way. "Poor Emily [Note 1.] seemed so tired she could not get
up-stairs."
Fanny stared, and Amelia gave a faint laugh. My Aunt Kezia said no
more, but went on running tucks: and Amelia joined in the conversation
between Cecilia and Mr Parmenter. I hardly listened, for I was trying
the new knitting stitch which Flora taught me, and it is rather a
difficult one, so that it took all my mind: but all at once I heard
Amelia say,--
"The beauty of self-sacrifice!"
My Aunt Kezia lapped up the petticoat in which she was running the
tucks, laid it on her knee, folded her hands on it, and looked full at
Amelia.
"Will you please, Miss Emily Bracewell, to tell me what you mean?"
"Mean, Aunt?"
"Yes, my dear, mean."
"How can the spirit of that sweet poetical creature," murmured Fanny,
behind me, "be made plain to such a mere thing of fact as my Aunt
Kezia?"
"Well," said Amelia, in a rather puzzled tone, "I mean--I mean--the
beauty of self-sacrifice. I do not see how else to put it."
"And what makes it beautiful, think you?" said my Aunt Kezia.
"It is beautiful in itself," said Amelia. "It is the fairest thing in
the moral world. We see it in all the analogies of creation."
"My dear Emily," said my Aunt Kezia, "you may have learned Latin and
Greek, but I have not. I will trouble you to speak plain, if you
please. I am a plain English woman, who knows more about making shirts
and salting butter than about moral worlds and the analogies of
creation. Please to explain yourself--if you understand what you are
talking about. If you don't, of course I wouldn't wish it."
"Well, a comparison, then," answered Amelia, in a slightly peevish tone.
"That will do," said my Aunt Kezia. "I know what a comparison is.
Well, let us hear it."
"Do we not see," continued Amelia, with kindling eyes, "the beauty of
self-sacrifice in all things? In the patriot daring death for his
country, in the mother careless of herself, that she may save her child,
in the physician braving all risks at the bedside of his patient? Nay,
even in the lower world, when we mark how the insect dies in laying her
eggs, and see the fresh flowers of the spring arise from the ashes of
the withered blossoms of autumn, can we doubt the loveliness of
self-sacrifice?"
"How beautiful!" murmured Fanny. "Do listen, Cary."
"I am listening," I said.
"Charming, Madam!" said Mr Parmenter, stroking his mustachio.
"Undoubtedly, all these are lessons to those who have eyes to see."
I did not quite like the glance which was shot at him just then out of
Cecilia's eyes, nor the look in his which replied. It appeared to me as
if those two were only making game of Amelia, and that they understood
each other. But almost before I had well seen it, Cecilia's eyes were
dropped, and she looked as demure as possible.
"Some folk's eyes don't see things that are there," saith my Aunt Kezia,
"and some folk's eyes are apt to see things that aren't. My Bible tells
me that God hath made everything beautiful in its season. Not out of
its season, you see. Your beautiful self-sacrifice is a means to an
end, not the end itself. And if you make the means into the end, you
waste your strength and turn your action into nonsense. Take the
comparisons Amelia has given us. Your patriot risks death in order to
obtain some good for his country; the mother, that she may save the
child; the physician, that he may cure his patient. What would be the
good of all these sacrifices if nothing were to be got by them? My
dears, do let me beg of you not to be caught by claptrap. There's a
deal of it in the world just now. And silly stuff it is, I assure you.
Self-sacrifice is as beautiful as you please when it is a man's duty,
and as a means of good; but self-sacrifice for its own sake, and without
an object, is not beautiful, but just ridiculous nonsense."
"Then would you say, Aunt Kezia," asked Amelia, "that all those grand
acts of mortification of the early Christians, or of the old monks, were
worthless and ridiculous? They were not designed to attain any object,
but just for discipline and obedience."
"As for the early Christians, poor souls! they had mortifications enough
from the heathen around them, without giving themselves trouble to make
troubles," said my Aunt Kezia. "And the old monks, poor misguided dirty
things! I hope you don't admire them. But what do you mean by saying
they were not means to an end, but only discipline? If that were so,
discipline was the end of them. But, my dear, discipline is a
sharp-edged tool which men do well to let alone, except for children.
We are prone to make sad blunders when we discipline ourselves. That
tool is safer in God's hands than in ours."
"But there is so much poetry in mortification!" sighed Amelia.
"I am glad if you can see it," said my Aunt Kezia. "I can't. Poetry in
cabbage-stalks, eaten with all the mud on, and ditch water scooped up in
a dirty pannikin! There would be a deal more poetry in needles and
thread, and soap and water. Making verses is all very well in its
place; but you try to make a pudding of poetry, and you'll come badly
off for dinner."
"Dinner!" said Amelia, contemptuously.
"Yes, my dear, dinner. You dine once a day, I believe."
"Dear, I never care what I eat," cried Amelia. "The care of the body is
entirely beneath those who have learned to prize the superlative value
of the mind."
My Aunt Kezia laughed. "My dear," said she, "if you were a little older
I might reason with you. But you are just at that age when girls take
up with every silly notion they come across, and carry it ever so much
farther, and just make regular geese of themselves. 'Tis a comfort to
hope you will grow out of it. Ten years hence, if we are both alive, I
shall find you making pies and cutting out bodices like other sensible
women. At least I hope so."
"Never!" cried Amelia. "I never could demean myself to be just an
every-day creature like that!"
"I am sorry for your husband," said my Aunt Kezia, bluntly, "and still
more for yourself. If you set up to be an uncommon woman, the chances
are that instead of rising above the common, you will just sink below
it, into one of those silly things that spend their time sipping tea and
flirting fans, and making men think all women foolish and unstable. And
if you do that--well, all I have to say is, may God forgive you!--Cary,
I want some jumballs for tea. Just go and see to them."
So away I went to the kitchen, and heard no more of the talk. But what
was I to do? I knew how to eat jumballs very well indeed, but how to
make them I knew no more than Mr Parmenter's eyeglass. She forgets,
does my Aunt Kezia, that I have lived all my life in Carlisle, where
Grandmamma would as soon have thought of my building a house as making
jumballs.
"Maria," said I, "my Aunt Kezia has sent me to make jumballs, and I
don't know how, not one bit!"
"Don't you, Miss Cary?" said Maria, laughing: "well, I reckon I do.
Half a pound of butter--will you weigh it yourself, Miss?--and the same
of white sugar, and a pound of flour, and three ounces of almonds, and
three eggs, and a little lemon peel--that's what you'll want." [Note
2.]
We were going about the buttery, as she spoke, gathering up and weighing
these things, and putting them together on the kitchen table. Then
Maria tied a big apron on me, which she said was Fanny's, and gave me a
little pan in which she bade me melt the butter. Then I had to beat the
sugar into it, and then came the hard part--breaking the eggs, for only
the yolks were wanted. I spoiled two, and then I said,--
"Maria, do break them for me! I shall never manage this business."
"Oh yes, you will, Miss Cary, in time," says she, cheerily. "It comes
hard at first, till you're used to it. Most things does. See now, you
pound them almonds--I have blanched 'em--and I'll put the eggs in."
So we put in the yolks of eggs, and the almonds, and the flour, and the
lemon peel, till it began to smell uncommon good, and then Maria showed
me how to make coiled-up snakes of it on the baking-tin, as jumballs
always are: and I washed my hands, and took off Fanny's apron, and went
back into the parlour.
I found there all whom I had left, and Hatty and Flora as well. When
tea came, and my jumballs with it, my Aunt Kezia says very calmly,--
"Pass me those jumballs, my dear, will you? Amelia won't want any; she
is an uncommon woman, and does not care what she eats. You may give me
some, because I am no better than other folks."
"O Aunt Kezia, but I like jumballs!" said Amelia.
"You do?" says my Aunt Kezia. "Well, but, my dear, they don't grow on
trees. Somebody has to make them, if they are to be eaten; and 'tis
quite as well we are not all uncommon women, or I fear there would be
none to eat.--Cary, you deserve a compliment, if you made these all by
yourself."
I hastened to explain that I deserved none at all, for Maria had helped
me all through; but my Aunt Kezia did not seem at all vexed to hear it;
she only laughed, and said, "Good girl!"
"Isn't it horrid work?" said Cecilia, who sat next me, in a whisper.
"Oh no!" said I; "I rather like it."
She shrugged her shoulders in what Hatty calls a Frenchified way.
"Catch me at it!" she said.
"You can come to the kitchen and catch me at it, if you like," said I,
laughing. "But it is all as new to me as to you. Till a few months
ago, I lived with my grandmother in Carlisle, and she never let me do
anything of that sort."
"What was her name?" said Cecilia.
"Desborough," said I; "Mrs General Desborough."
"Oh, is Mrs Desborough your grandmother?" cried she. "I know Mrs
Charles Desborough so well."
"That is my Aunt Dorothea," said I. "Grandmamma is gone to live with my
Uncle Charles."
"How pleasant!" said Cecilia. "You are such a sweet little darling!"
and she squeezed my hand under the table.