HER NEW HOME
At last Mr. Gray's affairs were all cleared up, and Sarah was about to
leave dingy old Bridgehampton behind for ever to take up her new life in
London, the great city of the world.
There were some very sad farewells to be made still; and Mrs. Stubbs was
a woman of very good feeling, and encouraged the child to go and say
good-bye to everybody who had been kind to her in the past.
"There is Mrs. Tracy," said Sarah on the last day. "She brought me all
that fruit and jam and the other things, Auntie."
"Oh, you must go and say good-bye to 'er, of course," returned Mrs.
Stubbs; "and we must go and see your pore pa's grave, for 'eaven knows
when you'll see it again."
"I should like to do that, please," said Sarah in a very low voice.
"Well, _I_ can't drag out all that way," remarked Mrs. Stubbs, who,
being stout, was not good at walking exercise. "We'll have an open
carriage if nurse can get one; and nurse shall go too."
So Sarah went and said "good-bye" to her father's grave; and the wise
old nurse, after a minute spent beside it, drew Mrs. Stubbs away to the
other side of the pretty churchyard to show her a curious tombstone
about which she had been telling her as they drove along. So Sarah, for
a few minutes, was left alone--free to kneel down and bid her farewell
in peace.
It was a relief to the child to be alone, for Mrs. Stubbs, though
meaning to be kindness itself, was not a woman in whose presence it was
possible to grieve in comfort. Her remarks about "your pore pa"
invariably had the effect of stifling any feeling of emotion which was
aroused in her childish heart.
She was very good. Sarah knew that she meant to be so.
"I'll try not to mind the difference, dear Father," she whispered to the
brown sods above his dear head. "It's all so different to you, so
different to when there was just you and I together. Nobody will ever
understand me like you, dear Daddy; but Auntie means to be very kind,
and I'll try my hardest to grow up so that you'll love me better when we
meet again."
As she rose up, Mrs. Stubbs and the nurse were coming across the grass
between the graves to fetch her. Mrs. Stubbs noticed the tears on her
cheeks and still flooding her eyes.
"Nay, now, you mustn't fret, Sarah," she said kindly; "'e's better off,
pore thing, than when he was 'ere, so you mustn't fret for 'im, there's
a good girl."
Sarah wiped her eyes, and turned to go away. She said nothing, for she
knew it was no use trying to make her aunt understand that her tears had
not been so much for him as for herself. And Mrs. Stubbs stood for a
moment looking down upon the mould, with its covering of brown,
disjointed sods and its faded wreaths.
"Pore thing!" she murmured; "it's a sad end to 'ave. And he must 'ave
felt leaving the little one badly 'fore he brought himself to write that
letter! Pore thing! Well, I'm not one to bear ill-will for what's past
and gone, and so beyond 'elp now; and I'll be as much a mother to Sarah
as if 'im and me had always been the best of friends. 'E once said I
was vulgar--and perhaps I am--it's vulgar to 'ave 'earts and such like,
and he knows better now, pore thing! For I have a 'eart. Yes, and the
Queen upon 'er throne, she has a 'eart, too, bless her."
There were tears on the good soul's cheeks as she turned to follow
Sarah, whom she found at the gate waiting for her. By the time she had
reached the child she had wiped them, but Sarah saw that they had been
there.
"Dear Auntie," she said. "He wasn't friends with you, but he knows how
good you are now,"--and then she flung her arms round her, and her
victory over her uncle's wife was complete.
"Sarah," she said, when they were nearly at the end of their journey,
"you have never 'ad any playfellows, have you, dear?"
"Never, Auntie--not _real_ playfellows," Sarah answered, and flushing up
with joy at the anticipation of those who were in store for her.
"Well, I'd better warn you, Sarah--it may not be all sugar and honey
till you get used to them," said Mrs. Stubbs solemnly. "There's a good
deal of give and take about children's ways; that is, if you want to get
on peaceable. If you get a knock, you must just bear it without
telling, or else you get called a 'tell-pie,' and treated according.
It's what I've never encouraged, and I must do my children the justice
to say if they gets a knock they gives it back again, and there's no
more about it."
Thus Sarah was somewhat prepared for the darker side of her new life,
though she gathered no true idea of the nest of young ruffians to whom
she was made known an hour later.
They came out with a rush to the door when the carriage stopped, and
welcomed their mother home again with a fluent and boisterous torrent of
joy truly appalling to the little quiet and retiring Sarah, who was not
accustomed to the domestic manners of children of the Stubbs class.
"Ma, what have you brought me?"
"Is that Sarah, Ma? My, ain't she a littl'un!"
"Ma, Mary was late this morning. Yes, and our kao-kao was burnt--I told
her I should tell you."
"Pa slapped Johnnie last night, because he wouldn't be washed to come
down to dessert."
"And Flossie has torn her best frock."
"And May----"
"Hush! Be quiet, children!" exclaimed Mrs. Stubbs, holding her hands to
her ears. "'Pon my word, you're like a lot of young savages. Miss
Clark can't have taken much care of you whilst I've bin away. Really,
you're enough to frighten Sarah out of her senses. This is your cousin
Sarah. She's going to live 'ere in future, so come and say ''Ow d'ye
do?' to her nicely."
Thus bidden, the young Stubbses all turned their attention on their new
cousin, and said their greeting and shook hands with various kinds of
manner.
There was May, aged fourteen, a very consequential young person, with an
inclination to be short and stout, like her mother, and had her nice
fair hair plaited into a tail behind and tied with a bunch of mauve
ribbon, worn with a white frock in memory of the uncle by marriage whom
she had never seen.
"How d'you do, Cousin Sarah?" she said, with a fine-lady air which
petrified poor Sarah, who thought that and her cousin's earrings and
watch-chain the finest things she had ever beheld about any human being
before. Then there came the redoubtable Flossie, who had torn her best
frock, and was twelve and a half. Flossie, who was nearly as big as
May, came forward with a giggle, and said "How----" and went off into
fits of laughter at some private joke of her own.
"I'm ashamed of you, Flossie," cried Mrs. Stubbs sharply; "shake 'ands
with your cousin Sarah at once. Ah! this is Lily--Lily's five and a
'alf, Sarah--she's the baby."
Then there was Tom, the eldest boy, who gripped hold of Sarah's hand and
wrung it until she could have shrieked with the pain, but, taking it as
an expression of kindness and welcome, she bore it bravely and looked at
him with a smiling face; she knew better afterwards.
After Tom came the twins, Minnie and the Johnnie who had been slapped
the day before; and last of all, Janey, the prettiest, and Sarah fancied
the sweetest, of them all. Janey was seven, or, as she said herself,
nearly eight.
"I suppose," said Mrs. Stubbs, addressing herself to Flossie, "that your
pa 'asn't got 'ome yet?"
"No, Ma, not yet," returned Flossie.
But, presently, when Mrs. Stubbs had changed her dress for a garment
such as Sarah had never beheld before, and which May told her was a
tea-gown, and was enjoying a cup of sweet-smelling tea in the large and
shady drawing-room--to Sarah a perfect dream of beauty--he came! Came
with a bustle and noise like a tempest, and caught his stout wife round
the waist, with a "Hulloa, old woman, it's a sight for sore eyes to see
you 'ome again!"
Sarah had determined to be surprised at nothing, but her Uncle Stubbs
was altogether too much for her resolution. In apologising to herself
afterwards, she said she was obliged to stare.
"And where's the little lass?" Mr. Stubbs asked when he had kissed his
wife. "Oh, there! Well, aren't you going to speak to your uncle, eh?"
"Yes, Uncle," said Sarah shyly.
He drew her nearer to him, and turned her face to the light.
"Like her dear ma," put in Mrs. Stubbs.
"Yes," said Mr. Stubbs shortly.
"Not like her pa at all," Mrs. Stubbs persisted.
"No!" more shortly still; then, after a pause, "I 'ope you'll be a good
gal, Sarah, and remember, though your father and me wasn't friends, yet,
as long as I've a 'ome to call my own, you're welcome to a shelter in
it. Your mother was my favourite sister, and though she turned 'er back
on me, I'll never do that on you, never."
"Father knows better now, Uncle," said the child, with an effort; "he
knows how good you and Auntie are to me. You'd be friends now, wouldn't
you?" earnestly.
"I don't know--I don't know at all," replied Mr. Stubbs shortly; then,
struck by the pleading look on the child's wistful face, added gruffly,
"I suppose we should; any way, I hope so."
At this point Mrs. Stubbs broke in,--
"Any way, it's no fault of Sarah's that we wasn't all the very best of
friends, Stubbs; and Sarah and me's real fond of one another already,
aren't we, Sarah? So say no more about it; what's past and gone is
beyond 'elp. Flossie, you can take Sarah upstairs now. It's just
six--time for your tea. Be sure she gets a good tea."