MITE
Little Michael Morton was in the meantime installed in his aunt's house.
For him to be anywhere else was not to be thought of, and Mrs. Morton was
soft-hearted enough to be very fond of such a bright little boy, so much
in her own hands, and very amusing with the old-fashioned formal ways
derived from chiefly consorting with older people.
Besides, the pretty little fellow was an object of great interest to all
her acquaintances, especially as it was understood at Westhaven that it
was only too possible that he might any day become Lord Northmoor; and
never had Mrs. Morton's drawing-room been so much resorted to by visitors
anxious for bulletins, or perhaps more truly for excitement. Mite was a
young gentleman of some dignity. He sat elevated on a hassock upon a
chair to dine at luncheon-time, comporting himself most correctly; but
his aunt was sorely chafed at Eden's standing behind his chair, like
Sancho's physician, to regulate his diet, and placing her veto upon
lobsters, cucumbers, pastry, and glasses of wine with lumps of sugar in
them.
It amounted to a trial of strength between aunt and nurse. Michael
submitted once or twice, when told that his mamma would not approve, but
the lobster struck him with extreme amazement and admiration, and he
could not believe but that the red, long-whiskered monster was not as
good as he was beautiful.
'He has got a glove like what Peter wears to cut the holly hedge,'
exclaimed the boy, to the general amusement. 'Where's his hand?'
'My Mite shall have a bit of his funny hand,' said Mrs. Morton, and Ida
was dealing with the claw, when Eden interposed and said she did not
think her ladyship would wish Master Michael to have any.
'Just a taste, nurse, with some of the cream,' said Mrs. Morton. 'Here,
Mitey dear.'
'No, Master Michael, mamma would say no,' said Eden.
'Really, Eden, you might let Mrs. Morton judge in her own house,' said
Ida.
'Master Morton is under my charge, ma'am, and I am responsible for him,'
said Eden, respectfully but firmly. But Ida held out the claw, and
Michael made a dart at it.
Eden again said 'No,' but he looked up at her with an exulting roguish
grin, and clasped it, whereupon she laid hold of him by the waist, and
bore him off, kicking and roaring, amid the pitiful and indignant
exclamations of his aunt and cousin.
It may be that the faithful Eden was somewhat wanting in tact, by her
determined attention to the routine that chafed her hosts; but she had
been forced to come away without directions, and could only hold fast to
the discipline of her well-ordered nursery under all obstacles.
Master Michael was to have his cup of milk and run on the beach with the
nursery-maid long before the usual awakening of the easy-going household,
which regarded late hours as belonging to gentility; then, after the
general breakfast, his small lessons, over which there often was a
battle, first, because he felt injured by not doing them with his mother,
and next, because his hostesses regarded them as a hardship, and taught
him to cry over 'Reading without tears,' besides detaining him as late as
they could over the breakfast, or proposing to take him out at once,
without waiting for that quarter of an hour's work. Or when
out-of-doors, they would not bring him home for the siesta, on which his
nurse insisted, though it was often only lying down in the dark; nor had
Mrs. Morton any scruple in breaking it, if she wanted to exhibit him to
her friends, though if it were interrupted or omitted, the child's temper
was the worse all the afternoon.
'That nurse is a thorough tyrant over the poor little darling, and a very
impertinent woman besides,' said Mrs. Morton.
'A regular little spoiled brat,' Ida declared him.
While certainly the worse his father was said to be, the more his aunt
tried to spoil and indulge him, as a relief to her pity and grief.
He had missed his home and parents a good deal at first, had cried at his
lessons, and cried more at not having father to carry him to the nursery,
nor mother to hear him say his prayers and kiss him at night; but time
wore off the association, and he was full of delight at the sea, the
ships, the little crabs, and all the other charms of the shore.
Above all, he was excited about the little boys. His own kind had never
come in his way before, his chief playfellow being Amice, who was so much
older as to play with him condescendingly and always give way to him.
There was a large family in a neighbouring lodging containing what he
respectfully called 'big knicker-bocker boys,' who excited his intense
admiration, and drew him like a magnet.
For once Mrs. Morton and Eden were agreed as to the propriety of the
companionship, since Rollstone had pronounced them of 'high family,' and
the governess who was in charge of them was quite ready to be interested
in the solitary little stranger, even if he had not been the Honourable
Michael. So was the elder girl of the party, but, unluckily, Michael was
just of the age to be a great nuisance to children who played combined
and imaginative games which he could not yet understand.
When they were making elaborate approaches to a sand fortification,
erected with great care and pains, he would dash on it with a _coup de
main_, break it down at once with his spade, and stand proudly laughing
and mixing up the ruins together, heedless of the howls of anger of the
besiegers, and believing that he had done the right thing.
And once, when a wrathful boy of eight had shaken the troublesome urchin
as he would have done his own junior, had this last presumed to stir up
his clear pool of curiosities, most of the female portion of the family
had taken the part of the intruder, and cried shame on any one who could
hurt or molest a poor dear little boy away from a father who was so ill!
Thus the Lincoln family, for the sake of peace and self-defence, used
sedulously to flee at the approach of Mite, and seek for secluded coves
to which he was not likely to penetrate.
Mr. Rollstone was Eden's great solace. They discovered that they had
once been staying in the same country-house, and had a great number of
common acquaintances in the upper-servant world, and they entirely agreed
in their estimate of Mrs. Morton and Ida, whom Mr. Rollstone pronounced
to be neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, though as for Miss Constance, she
was a lady all over, and always had been, and there might have been hopes
for Mr. Herbert, if only he could have got into the army.
To sit with Mr. Rollstone, whom the last winter's rheumatics had left
very infirm, was Eden's chief afternoon employment, as she could not
follow her charge's wanderings on the beach, but had to leave him to the
nursery-maid, Ellen. The old butler wanted much to show 'Miss Eden' his
daughter, who took advantage of Whit-Sunday and the Bank-holiday to run
down and see her parents, though at the next quarter she was coming home
for good, extremely sorry to leave her advantages in London, and the
friends she had made there, but feeling that her parents needed her so
much that she must pursue her employment at home.
They were all very anxious on that Whit-Sunday, and Rose carried with her
something of Constance's feeling, as with tears in her eyes she looked at
the little fellow at the children's service, standing by his nurse, with
wide open, inquiring eyes, chiefly fixed upon Willie Lincoln in
satisfaction whenever an answer proceeded from that object of his
unrequited attachment. With the young maiden's love of revelling in
supposed grief, Rose already pitied the fair-faced, unconscious child as
fatherless, and weighted with heavy responsibilities.
Another pair of eyes looked at the boy, not with pity, but indignant
impatience.
Perhaps even already that little pretender was the only obstacle between
Herbert and the coronet that was his by right, between Ida herself and--
Ida had walked from the school to the church with Mr. Deyncourt, and he
had talked so gently and pitifully of the family distress, and assumed so
much grief on her part, that his sympathy made her heart throb; above
all, when he told her that his two sisters were coming to stay with him,
Mrs. Rollstone had contrived to make room for them, and they would show
her, better than he could, some of the plans he wished to have carried
out with the little children.
So he wished to introduce her to his sisters! What did that mean? If
the Deyncourts were ever so high they could not sneer at Lord Northmoor's
sisters.
Then she thought of many a novel, and in real life, of what she believed
respecting that lost lover of Miss Morton's. And later in the day Tom
Brady lounged up to Northmoor Cottage, and leaning with one elbow on the
window-sill, while the other arm held away the pipe he had just taken
from his lips, he asked if they would give him a cup of tea, the whole
harbour was so full of such beastly, staring cads that there was no peace
there. One ought to give such places a wide berth at Whitsuntide.
'I wonder you did not,' said Ida, as she hastened to compound the tea.
'Forgot it,' he lazily droned, 'forgot it. Attractions, you know,' and,
as she brought the cup to the window, with a lump of sugar in the tongs,
'when sugar fingers are--' and the speech ended in a demonstration at the
fingers that made Ida laugh, blush, and say, 'Oh, for shame, Mr. Brady!'
'You had better come in, Mr. Brady,' called Mrs. Morton. 'You can't
drink it comfortably there, and you'll be upsetting it. We are down in
the dining-room to-day, because--'
The cause, necessary to her gentility, was lost, as Ida proceeded to let
him in at the front door, and he presently deposited himself on the sofa,
grumbling complacently at the bore of holidays, especially bank holidays.
His crew would have been ready to strike, he declared, if he had taken
them out of harbour, or he would have asked the ladies to come on a
cruise out of the way of it all.
'Why, thank you very much, Mr. Brady, but, really in my poor brother,
Lord Northmoor's state, I don't know that it would be etiquette.'
'Ah, yes. By the bye, how's the governor?'
'Very sad, strength failing. I hardly expect to hear he is alive
to-morrow,' and Mrs. Morton's handkerchief was raised.
'Oh ay, sad enough, you know! I say, will it make any difference to
you?'
'My poor, dear brother! Well, it ought, you know. Indeed it would if it
had not been for that dear little boy. My poor Herbert!'
'It must have been an awful sell for him.'
'Yes,' said Ida, 'and some people think there was something very odd
about it all--the child being born out in the Dolomites, with nobody
there!'
'Don't, Ida, I can't have you talk so,' protested her mother.
'Supposititious, by all that's lucky! I should strangle him!' and Mr.
Brady put back his head and laughed a loud and hearty laugh, by no means
elegant, but without much sound of truculent intentions.