MOLLY'S PLAN.
"... Such a plague every morning with buckling shoes,
gartering, and combing."
THE TWIN RIVALS.
Soon after luncheon Miss Wren took her departure. Nothing more was said
about Molly before her, but on leaving she patted Sylvia approvingly on
the back.
"Nice little girl," she said. "Your grandmother must bring you to see me
some day. And your sister may come, too, if she leaves her brooches at
home. Young people in _my_ young days----"
Aunty saw that Sylvia was growing very red, and looking as if she were
on the point of saying something; Molly's queer behaviour had made her
nervous: it would never do for Sylvia, too, to shock Miss Wren's notion
of the proprieties by bursting out with some speech in Molly's defence.
So aunty interrupted the old lady by some remark about her shawl not
being thick enough for the drive, which quite distracted her attention.
As soon as she had gone, grandmother sent Sylvia upstairs to look for
Molly. Sylvia came back looking rather alarmed. No Molly was there. Where
could she be? Grandmother began to feel a little uneasy.
"She is nowhere in the house," said Sylvia. "Marcelline says she saw her
go out about half-an-hour ago. She is very fond of the little wood up the
road, grandmother: shall I go and look for her there?"
Grandmother glanced round. "Ralph," she said. "Oh, I forgot, he will
not be home till four;" for Ralph had begun going to school every day.
"Laura," she went on, to aunty, "put on your hat and go with Sylvia to
find the poor child."
Sylvia's face brightened at this. "Then you are not so vexed with Molly
now, grandmother," she said. "I know it seemed like mocking you, but I
am sure she didn't mean it that way."
"What did she mean, then, do you think?" said grandmother.
"I don't quite know," said Sylvia. "It was a plan of her own, but it
wasn't anything naughty or rude, I am sure."
Aunty and Sylvia went off to the little wood, as the children called
it--in reality a very small plantation of young trees, where any one
could be easily perceived, especially now when the leaves were few and
far between. No, there was no Molly there. Hurriedly, aunty and Sylvia
retraced their steps.
"Let us go round by the lodge," said aunty--they had left the house by
the back gate--"and see if old Marie knows anything of where she is."
As they came near to the lodge they saw old Marie coming to meet them.
"Is Mademoiselle looking for the little demoiselle?" she said with a
smile. "Yes, she is in my kitchen--she has been there for half-an-hour.
Poor little lady, she was in trouble, and I tried to console her. But the
dear ladies have not been anxious about her? Ah yes! But how sorry I am!
I knew it not, or I would have run up to tell Marcelline where she was."
"Never mind, Marie," said aunty. "If we had known she was with you, we
should have been quite satisfied. Run in, Sylvia, and tell Molly to come
back to the house to speak to your grandmother."
Sylvia was starting forward, but Marie touched her arm.
"A moment, Mademoiselle Sylvie," she said,--Sylvia liked to be called
"Mademoiselle Sylvie," it sounded so pretty--"a moment. The little sister
has fallen asleep. She was sitting by the fire, and she had been crying
so hard, poor darling. Better not wake her all at once."
She led the way into the cottage, and they followed her. There, as
she had said, was Molly, fast asleep, half lying, half sitting, by the
rough open fireplace, her head on a little wooden stool on which Marie
had placed a cushion, her long fair hair falling over her face and
shoulders--little sobs from time to time interrupting her soft, regular
breathing.
Sylvia's eyes filled with tears.
"Poor Molly," she whispered to aunty, "she must have been crying so. And
do you know, aunty, when Molly does cry and gets really unhappy, it is
dreadful. She seems so careless, you know, but once she does care, she
cares more than any one I know. And look, aunty." She pointed to a little
parcel on the floor at Molly's side. A parcel very much done up with
string, and an unnecessary amount of sealing-wax, and fastened to the
parcel a little note addressed to "dear grandmother."
"Shall I run with it to grandmother?" said Sylvia: and aunty nodding
permission, off she set. She had not far to go. Coming down the
garden-path she met grandmother, anxiously looking for news of Molly.
"She's in old Marie's kitchen," said Sylvia, breathlessly, "and she's
fallen fast asleep. She'd been crying so, old Marie said. And she had
been writing this note for you, grandmother, and doing up this parcel."
Without speaking, grandmother broke the very splotchy-looking red seal
and read the note.
"My dear, dear grandmother," it began, "Please do forgive me. I send
you all my brooches. I don't _deserve_ to keep them for vexing you
so. Only I didn't, oh, indeed, I didn't mean to _mock_ you, dear
grandmother. It is that that I can't bear, that you should think
so. It was a plan I had made to teach me to be careful, only I know
it was silly--I am always thinking of silly things, but oh,
_believe_ me, I would not make a joke of your teaching me to be
good.--Your own dearest
"MOLLY."
"Poor little soul," said grandmother. "I wish I had not been so hasty
with her. It will be a lesson to me;" and noticing that at this Sylvia
looked up in surprise, she added, "Does it seem strange to you my little
Sylvia, that an old woman like me should talk of having lessons? It is
true all the same--and I hope, do you know, dear?--I hope that up to the
very last of my life I shall have lessons to learn. Or rather I should
say that I shall be able to learn them. That the lessons are there to be
learnt, always and everywhere, we can never doubt."
"But," said Sylvia, and then she hesitated.
"But what, dear?"
"I can't quite say what I mean," said Sylvia. "But it is something like
this--I thought the difference between big people and children was that
the big people _had_ learnt their lessons, and that was why they could
help us with ours. I know what kind of lessons you mean--not _book_
ones--but being kind and good and all things like that."
"Yes," said grandmother, "but to these lessons there is no limit. The
better we have learnt the early ones, the more clearly we see those still
before us, like climbing up mountains and seeing the peaks still rising
in front. And knowing and remembering the difficulties we had long ago
when _we_ first began climbing, we can help and advise the little ones
who in their turn are at the outset of the journey. Only sometimes, as I
did with poor Molly this morning, we forget, we old people who have come
such a long way, how hard the first climbing is, and how easily tired and
discouraged the little tender feet get."
Grandmother gave a little sigh.
"Dear grandmother," said Sylvia, "I am sure _you_ don't forget. But those
people who haven't learnt when they were little, they can't teach others,
grandmother, when they don't know themselves?"
"Ah, no," said grandmother. "And it is not many who have the power or the
determination to learn to-day the lessons they neglected yesterday. We
all feel that, Sylvia, all of us. Only in another way we may get good out
of that too, by warning those who have still plenty of time for all. But
let us see if Molly is awake yet."
No, she was still fast asleep. But when grandmother stooped over her and
gently raised her head, which had slipped half off the stool, Molly
opened her eyes, and gazed up at grandmother in bewilderment. For a
moment or two she could not remember where she was; then it gradually
came back to her.
"Grandmother, will you forgive me?" she said. "I wrote a note, where is
it?"--she looked about for it on the floor.
"I have got it, Molly," said grandmother. "Forgive you, dear? of course
I will if there is anything to forgive. But tell me now what was in your
mind, Molly? What was the 'plan'?"
"I thought," said Molly, sitting up and shaking her hair out of her eyes,
"I thought, grandmother dear, that it would teach me to be careful and
neat and not hurried in dressing if I wore _all_ my brooches every day
for a good while--a month perhaps. For you know it is very difficult to
put brooches in quite straight and neat, not to break the pins. It has
always been such a trouble to me not to stick them in, in a hurry, any
how, and that was how I broke so many. But I'll do just as you like about
them. I'll leave off wearing them at all if you would rather."
She looked up in grandmother's face, her own looking so white, now that
the flush of sleep had faded from it, and her poor eyelids so swollen,
that grandmother's heart was quite touched.
"My poor little Molly," she said. "I don't think that will be necessary.
I am sure you will try to be careful. But the next time you make a plan
for teaching yourself any good habit, talk it over with me first, will
you, dear?"
Molly threw her arms round grandmother's neck and hugged her, and old
Marie looked quite pleased to see that all was sunshine again.
Just as they were leaving the cottage she came forward with a basketful
of lovely apples.
"They came only this morning, Madame," she said to grandmother. "Might
she send them up to the house? The little young ladies would find them
good."
Grandmother smiled.
"Thank you, Marie," she said. "Are they _the_ apples? oh, yes, of course.
I see they are. Is there a good crop this year?"
"Ah, yes, they seem always good now. The storms are past, it seems to me,
Madame, both for me and my tree. But a few years now and they will be
indeed all over for me. 'Tis to-morrow my fête day, Madame; that was why
they sent the apples. They are very good to remember the old woman--my
grand-nephews--I shall to-morrow be seventy-five, Madame."
"Seventy-five!" repeated grandmother. "Ah, well, Marie, I am not so very
far behind you, though it seems as if I were growing younger lately--does
it not?--with my little girls and my boy beside me. You must come up to
see us to-morrow that we may give you our good wishes. Thank you for the
beautiful apples. Some day you must tell the children the history of your
apple-tree, Marie."
Marie's old face got quite red with pleasure. "Ah, but Madame is too
kind," she said. "A stupid old woman like me to be asked to tell her
little stories--but we shall see--some day, perhaps. So that the
apples taste good, old Marie will be pleased indeed."
"What is the story of Marie's apple-tree, grandmother?" said Sylvia, as
they walked back to the house.
"She must tell you herself," said grandmother. "She will be coming up
to-morrow morning to see us, as it is her birthday, and you must ask her
about it. Poor old Marie."
"Has she been a long time with you, grandmother dear?" said Molly.
"Twelve or thirteen years, soon after we first came here. She was in
great trouble then, poor thing; but she will tell you all about it. She
is getting old, you see, and old people are always fond of talking, they
say--like your poor old grandmother--eh, Molly?"
"_Grandmother_," said Molly, flying at her and hugging her, for by this
time they were in the drawing-room again, and Molly's spirits had quite
revived.
The apples turned out very good indeed. Even Ralph, who, since he had
been in France, had grown so exceedingly "John Bull," that he could
hardly be persuaded to praise anything not English, condescended to
commend them.
"No wonder they're good," said Molly, as she handed him his second one,
"they're _fairy_ apples I'm sure," and she nodded her head mysteriously.
"Fairy rubbish," said Ralph, taking a good bite of the apple's rosy
cheek.
"Well, they're something like that, any way," persisted Molly.
"Grandmother said so."
"_I_ said so! My dear! I think your ears have deceived you."
"Well, grandmother dear, I know you didn't exactly say so, but what you
said made me think so," explained Molly.
"Not quite the same thing," said grandmother. "You shall hear to-morrow
all there is to tell--a very simple little story. How did you get on at
school, to-day, Ralph?"
"Oh, right enough," said Ralph. "Some of the fellows are nice enough. But
some of them are awful cads. There's one--he's about thirteen, a year or
so younger than I--his name's Prosper something or other--I actually met
him out of school in the street, carrying a bundle of wood! A boy that
sits next me in the class!" he added, with considerable disgust.
"Is he a poor boy?" asked Sylvia.
"No--at least not what you'd call a poor boy. None of them are that. But
he got precious red, I can tell you, when he saw me--just like a cad."
"Is he a naughty boy? Does he not do his lessons well?" asked
grandmother.
"Oh I daresay he does; he is not an ill-natured fellow. It was only so
like a cad to go carrying wood about like that," said Ralph.
"Ralph," said grandmother suddenly. "You never saw your uncle Jack, of
course; has your father ever told you about him?"
Ralph's face lighted up. "Uncle Jack who was killed in the Crimea?" he
said, lowering his voice a little. "Yes, papa has told me how brave he
was."
"Brave, and gentle, and good," said grandmother, softly. "Some day,
Ralph, I will read you a little adventure of his. He wrote it out to
please me not long before his death. I meant to have sent it to one of
the magazines for boys, but somehow I have never done so."
"What is it about, grandmother? What is it called?" asked the children
all together, Molly adding, ecstatically clasping her hands. "If you tell
us stories, grandmother, it'll be _perfect_."
"What is the little story about?" repeated grandmother. "I can hardly
tell you what it is about, without telling the whole. The _name_ of
it--the name your uncle gave to it, was 'That Cad Sawyer.'"
Ralph said nothing, but somehow he had a consciousness that grandmother
did not agree with him that carrying a bundle of wood through the streets
proved that "a fellow" must certainly be a cad.