When I had written so far, I turned back to look at my Aunt Kezia's
rules. And then I saw how foolish I am. Why, instead of putting the
Lord first, I had been leaving Him out of the whole thing. Could He not
carry all these cares for me? Did He not know what ailed Hatty, and how
to deliver Angus, and all about it? I knelt down there and then (I
always write in my own chamber), and asked Him to send Hatty to me, and
better still, to bring her to Him; and to show me whether I had better
speak to my Uncle Charles, or try to get things out of Amelia. As to
Charlotte, I would not ask her about anything which I did not care to
tell the town crier.
The next morning--(there, my dates are getting all wrong again! It is
no use trying to keep them straight)--as my Uncle Charles was putting on
his gloves to go out, he said,--
"Well, Cary, shall I bring you a fairing of any sort?"
"Uncle Charles," I said, leaping to a decision at once, "do bring me
Hatty! I am sure she is not happy. Do get Grandmamma to let her come
now."
"Not happy!" cried my Uncle Charles, lifting his eyebrows. "Why, what
is the matter with the girl? Can't she get married? Time enough,
surely."
Oh dear, how can men be so silly! But I let it pass, for I wanted Hatty
to come, much more than to make my Uncle Charles sensible. In fact, I
am afraid the last would take too much time and labour. There, now, I
should not have said that.
"Won't you try, Uncle Charles? I do want her so much."
"Child, I cannot interfere with my mother. Ask Hatty to spend the day.
Then you can have a talk with her."
"Uncle, please, will you ask Grandmamma?"
"If you like," said he, with a laugh.
I heard no more about it till supper-time, when my Uncle Charles said,
as if it had just occurred to him (which I dare say it had),--"Madam, I
think this little puss is disappointed that Hatty cannot come at once.
Might she not spend the day here? It would be a treat for both girls."
Grandmamma's snuff-box came out as usual. I sat on thorns, while she
rapped her box, opened it, took a pinch, shut the box with a snap, and
consigned it to her pocket.
"Yes," she said, at last. "Dorothea, you can send Caesar with a note."
"Oh, thank you, Grandmamma!" cried I.
Grandmamma looked at me, and gave an odd little laugh.
"These fresh girls!" she said, "how they do care about things, to be
sure!"
"Grandmamma, is it pleasanter not to care about things?" said I.
"It is better, my dear. To be at all warm or enthusiastic betrays
under-breeding."
"But--please, Grandmamma--do not well-bred people get very warm over
politics?"
"Sometimes well-bred people forget themselves," said Grandmamma, "But it
is more allowable to be warm over some matters than others. Politics
are to some degree an exception. We do not make exhibitions of our
personal affections, Caroline, and above all things we avoid showing
warmth on religious questions. We do not talk of such things at all in
good society."
Now--I say this to my book, of course, not to Grandmamma--is not that
very strange? We are not to be warm over the most important things,
matters of life and death, things we really care about in our inmost
hearts: but over all the little affairs that we do not care about, we
may lose our tempers a little (in an elegant and reasonable way) if we
choose to do so. Would it not be better the other way about?
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Note 1. The use of the subjunctive with _when_ and _until_, now
obsolete, was correct English until the present century was some thirty
years old.