Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like
tinkers at this time of night? Is there no respect of
place, persons, nor time in you?--Twelfth-Night.
The summer holidays not only brought home Allen Brownlow from Eton, but
renewed his mother’s intercourse with several of her friends, who so
contrived their summer outing as to “see how poor little Mrs. Brownlow
was getting on,” and she hailed them as fragments of her dear old former
life.
Mr. and Mrs. Acton came to a farmhouse at Redford, about a mile and a
half off, where Mr. Acton was to lay up a store of woodland and home
sketches, and there were daily meetings for walks, and often out-of-door
meals. Mr. Ogilvie declared that he was thus much more rested than by a
long expedition in foreign scenery, and he and his sister stayed on,
and usually joined in the excursion, whether it were premeditated or
improvised, on foot, into copse or glade, or by train or waggonette, to
ruined abbey or cathedral town.
Then came two sisters, whom old Mrs. Brownlow had befriended when
the elder was struggling, as a daily governess, to provide home and
education for the younger. Now, the one was a worthy, hard-working
law-copier, the other an artist in a small way, who had transmogrified
her name of Jane into Juanita or Nita, wore a crop, short petticoats,
and was odd. She treated Janet on terms of equal friendship, and was
thus a much more charming companion than Jessie. They always came into
cheap sea-side lodgings in the vacation, but this year had settled
themselves within ten minutes walk of the Folly, a title which became
more and more applicable, in Kenminster eyes, to the Pagoda, and above
all in those of its proper owner. Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in the calm
dignity of the heiress, in a small way, of a good family, had a bare
toleration for professional people, had regretted the vocation of her
brother-in-law, and classed governesses and artists as “that kind of
people,” so that Caroline’s association with them seemed to her
absolute love of low company. She would have stirred up her husband
to remonstrate, but he had seen more of the world than she had, and
declared that there was no harm in Caroline’s friends. “He had met Mr.
Acton in the reading-room, smoked pipes with him in the garden, and
thought him a very nice fellow; his wife was the daughter of poor
Cartwright of the Artillery, and a sensible ladylike woman as ever he
saw.”
With a resigned sigh at the folly of mankind, his wife asked, “How about
the others? That woman with the hair? and that man with the velvet coat?
Jessie says Jock told her that he was a mere play-actor!”
“Jock told Jessie! Nonsense, my dear! The man is going out to China
in the tea trade, and is come to take leave. I believe he did sing in
public at one time; but Joe attended him in an illness which damaged
his voice, and then he put him in the way of other work. You need not be
afraid. Joe was one of the most particular men in the world in his own
way.”
Mrs. Brownlow could do no more. She had found that her little
sister-in-law could be saucy, and personal squabbles, as she justly
thought, had better be avoided. She could only keep Jessie from the
contamination by taking her out in the carriage and to garden parties,
which the young lady infinitely preferred to long walks that tired
her and spoilt her dress; to talk and laughter that she could not
understand, and games that seemed to her stupid, though everybody else
seemed to find them full of fun. True, Allen and Bobus were always ready
to push and pull her through, and to snub Janet for quizzing her; but
Jessie was pretty enough to have plenty of such homage at her command,
and not specially to prefer that of her cousins, so that it cost her
little to turn a deaf ear to all their invitations.
Her brothers were not of the same mind, for Rob was never happy out of
sight of Jock. Johnny worshipped his aunt, and Joe was gregarious,
so there was generally an accompanying rabble of six or seven boys,
undistinguishable by outsiders, though very individual indeed in
themselves and adding a considerable element of noise, high spirits, and
mischievous enterprise. The man in the velvet coat, whose proper name
was Orlando Hughes, was as much of a boy as any of them, and so could
Mr. Acton be on occasion, thus giving a certain Bohemian air to their
doings.
Things came to a crisis on one of the dog-days. Young Dr. Drake had
brought his bride to show to his old friend, and they were staying at
the Folly, while a college friend of Mr. Ogilvie’s, a London curate, had
come to see him in the course of a cathedral tour, and had stayed on,
under the attraction of the place, taking the duty for a few Sundays.
The weather was very sultry, forbidding exertion on the part of all save
cricketers; but there was a match at Redford, and Kenminster was eager
about it, so that all the boys, grown up or otherwise, walked over to
see it, accompanied by Nita Ray with her inseparable Janet, meaning to
study village groups and rustic sports. The other ladies walked in the
cool to meet them at the Acton’s farmhouse, chiefly, it was alleged, in
deference to the feelings of the bride, who could not brave the heat,
but had never yet been so long separated from her bridegroom.
The little boys, however, were alone to be found at the farm, reporting
that their elders had joined the cricket supper. So Mrs. Acton made them
welcome, and spread her cloth in the greensward, whence could be seen
the evening glow on the harvest fields. Then there was a feast of
cherries, and delicious farmhouse bread and butter, and inexhaustible
tea, which was renewed when the cricketers joined them, and called for
their share.
Thus they did not set out on their homeward walk, over fragrant
heath and dewy lanes, till just as the stars were coming out, and a
magnificent red moon, scarcely past the full, was rising in the east,
and the long rest, and fresh dewiness after the day’s heat, gave a
delightful feeling of exhilaration.
Babie went skipping about in the silvery flood of light, quite wild with
delight as they came out on the heath, and, darting up to Mr. Ogilvie,
asked if now he did not think they might really see a fairy.
“Perhaps I do,” he said.
“Oh where, where, show me?”
“Ah! you’re the one that can’t see her.”
“What, not if I did my eyes with that Euphrasia and Verbena
officinalis?” catching tight hold of his hand, as a bright red light
went rapidly moving in a straight line in the valley beneath their feet.
“Robin Goodfellow,” said Mr. Hughes, overhearing her, and immediately
began to sing--
“I know a bank”--
Then the curate, as he finished, began to sing some other appropriate
song, and Nita Ray and others joined in. It was very pretty, very
charming in the moonlight, very like “Midsummer Night’s Dream;” but Mary
Ogilvie, who was a good way behind, felt a start of dismay as the clear
notes pealed back to her. She longed to suggest a little expediency;
but she was impeded; for poor Miss Ray, entirely unused to long country
walks and nocturnal expeditions, and further tormented by tight boots,
was panting up the hill far in the rear, half-frightened, and a good
deal distressed, and could not, for very humanity’s sake, be left
behind.
“And after all,” thought Mary, as peals of the boys’ merry laughter came
to her, and then again echoes of “spotted snakes with double tongue”
awoke the night echoes; “this is such a solitary place that it cannot
signify, if they will only have the sense to stop when we get into the
roads.”
But they hadn’t. Mary heard a chorus from “Der Freischutz,” beginning
just as she was dragging her companion over a stile, which had been
formidable enough by day, but was ten times worse in the confusing
shadows. That brought them into a lane darkened by its high hedges,
where there was nothing for it but to let Miss Ray tightly grapple her
arm, while the songs came further and further on the wind, and Mary
felt the conviction that middle-aged spinsters must reckon on being
forgotten, and left behind alike by brothers, sisters, and friends.
Nor did they come up with the party till they found them waiting in the
road, close to the Rays’ lodgings, having evidently just missed them,
for Mr. Ogilvie and the clergyman were turning back to look for them
when they were gladly hailed, half apologised to, half laughed at by
a babel of voices, among which Nita’s was the loudest, informing her
sister that she had lost the best bit of all, for just at the turn of
the lane there had come on them Babie’s fiery-eyed monster, which had
“burst on the path,” when they were in mid song, flashing over them,
and revealing, first a horse, and then a brougham, wherein there sat
the august forms of Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow, going home from a state
dinner, the lady’s very marabouts quivering with horror.
Mary stepped up to Nita, and gave her a sharp, severe grasp.
“Hush! remember their boys are here,” she whispered; and, with an
exaggerated gesture, Nita looked about her in affected alarm, and,
seeing that none were near, added--
“Thank you; I was just going to say it would be a study for Punch”
“O do send it up, they’ll never know it,” cried Janet; but there
Caroline interfered--
“Hush, Janet, we ought to be at home. Don’t stand here, Armine is tired
to death! 11.5 at the station to-morrow. Good-night.”
They parted, and Mary and her brother turned away to their own home. If
it had not been for the presence of the curate, Mary would have said a
good deal on the way home. As it was, she was so silent as to inspire
her brother with enough compunction for having deserted her, to make him
follow her, when she went to her own room. “Mary, I am sorry we missed
you,” he said; “I ought to have looked about for you more, but I
thought--”
“Nonsense, David; of course I do not mind that, if only I could have
stopped all that singing.”
“That singing; why it was very pretty, wasn’t it?”
“Pretty indeed! Did it never occur to you what a scrape you may be
getting that poor little thing into with her relations, and yourself,
too?”
David looked more than half-amused, and she proceeded more resolutely--
“Well! what do you think must be Mrs. Brownlow’s opinion of what she saw
and heard to-night? I blame myself exceedingly for not having urged the
setting off sooner; but you must remember that what is all very well
for holiday people, only here for a time, may do infinite mischief to
residents.”
David only observed, “I didn’t want all those men, if that’s what you
mean. They made the noise, not I.”
“No, nor I; but we swelled the party, and I am much disposed to believe
that the best thing we can do is to take ourselves off, or do anything
to break up this set.”
He looked for a moment much disconcerted; but then with a little
masculine superiority, answered--
“Well, well, we’ll think over it, Mary. See how it appears to you
to-morrow when you aren’t tired,” and then, with a smile and a kiss,
bade her good-night.
“So that’s what we get,” said Mary, to herself, half amused, half
annoyed; “those men think it is all because one is left behind in the
dark! David is the best boy in the world, but there’s not a man of them
all who has a notion of what gets a woman into trouble! I believe he was
rather gratified than otherwise to be found out on a lark. Well, I’ll
talk to Clara; she will have some sense!”
They were all to meet at the station the next morning, to go to an old
castle, about an hour from Kenminster by railway; and they filled the
platform, armed with sketching tools, sandwich baskets, botanical tins,
and all other appliances; but when Mr. Ogilvie accosted Mrs. Joseph
Brownlow, saying, “You have only half your boys,” she looked up, with
a drolly guilty air, saying, “No, there’s an embargo on the other poor
fellows.”
They had just taken their seats, and the train was in motion, when a
heated headlong boy came dashing over the platform, and clung to the
door of the carriage, standing on the step. It was Johnny. Orlando
Hughes, who was next the window, grasped his hands, and, in answer to
the cries of dismay and blame that greeted him, he called out, “Yes,
here I am; Rob and Joe couldn’t run so fast.”
“Then you’ve got leave?” asked his aunt.
Johnny’s grin said “No.”
She looked up at Mr. Ogilvie in much vexation and anxiety.
“Don’t say any more to him now. It might put him in great danger. Wait
till the next station,” he said.
It was a stopping train, and ten minutes brought a halt, when the guard
came up in a fury, and Johnny found no sympathy for his bold attempt.
Carey had no notion of fostering flat disobedience, and she told Johnny
that unless he would promise to go home by himself and beg his father’s
pardon, she should stay behind and go back with him, for she could
have no pleasure in an expedition with him when he was behaving so
outrageously.
The boy looked both surprised and abashed. His affection for his aunt
was very great, as for one who had opened to him the gates of a new
world, both within himself and beyond himself. He would not hear of her
giving up the expedition, and promised her with all his heart to walk
home, and confess, “Though ‘twasn’t papa, but mamma!” were his last
words, as they left him on the platform, crestfallen, but with a twinkle
in his eye, and with the station-master keeping watch over him as a
dangerous subject.
Mr. Ogilvie said it would do the boy good for life; Caroline mourned
over him a little, and wondered how his mother would treat him; and Mary
sat and thought till the arrival at their destination, when they had
to walk to the castle, dragging their appurtenances, and then to rouse
their energies to spread out the luncheon.
Then, when there had been the usual amount of mirth, mischief, and
mishap, and the party had dispersed, some to sketch, some to scramble,
some to botanize, the “Duck and Drake to spoon,”--as said the boys, Mary
Ogilvie found a turfy nook where she could hold council with Mrs. Acton
about their poor little friend, for whose welfare she was seriously
uneasy.
But Clara did not sympathise as much as she expected, having been much
galled by Mrs. Robert Brownlow’s supercilious manner, and thinking the
attempt to conciliate her both unworthy and useless.
“Of course I do not mean that poor Carey should truckle to her,” said
Mary, rather nettled at the implication; “but I don’t think these
irregular hours, and all this roaming about the country at all times,
can be well in themselves for her or the children.”
“My dear Mary, did you never take a party of children into the country
in the spring for the first time? If not, you never saw the prettiest
and most innocent of intoxications. I had once to take the little
Pyrtons to their place in the country one April and May, months that
they had always spent in London; and I assure you they were perfectly
mad, only with the air, the sight of the hawthorns, and all the smells.
I was obliged to be content with what they could do, not what ought to
be done, of lessons. There was no sitting still on a fine morning. I was
as bad myself; the blood seemed to dance in one’s veins, and a room to
be a prison.”
“This is not spring,” said Mary.
“No, but she began in spring, and habits were formed.”
“No doubt, but they cannot be good. They keep up flightiness and
excitability.”
“Oh, that’s grief, poor dear!”
“We bain’t carousing, we be dissembling grief, as the farmer told the
clergyman who objected to merry-making after a funeral,” said Mary,
rather severely. Then she added, seeing Clara looked annoyed, “You think
me hard on poor dear Carey, but indeed I am not doubting her affection
or her grief.”
“Remember, a woman with children cannot give herself entirely up to
sorrow without doing them harm.”
“Poor Carey, I am sure I do not want to see her given up to sorrow, only
to have her a little more moderate, and perhaps select--so as not to do
herself harm with her relations--who after all must be more important to
her than any outsiders.”
The artist’s wife could not but see things a little differently from the
schoolmaster’s sister, who moreover knew nothing of Carey’s former life;
and Clara made answer--
“Sending her down to these people was the greatest error of dear good
Dr. Brownlow’s life.”
“I am not sure of that. Blood is thicker than water.”
“But between sisters-in-law it is apt to be only ill-blood, and very
turbid.”
“For shame, Clara.”
“Well, Mary, you must allow something for human nature’s reluctance to
be treated as something not quite worthy of a handshake from a little
country town Serene Highness! I may be allowed to doubt whether Dr.
Brownlow would not have done better to leave her unbound to those who
can never be congenial.”
“Granting that (not that I do grant it, for the Colonel is worthy),
should not she be persuaded to conform herself.”
“To purr and lay eggs? My dear, that did not succeed with the ugly
duckling, even in early life.”
“Not after it had been among the swans? You vain Clara!”
“I only lay claim to having seen the swans--not to having brought many
specimens down here.”
“Such as _that_ Nita, or Mr. Hughes?”
“More like the other bird, certainly,” said Clara, smiling; “but Mary,
if you had but seen what that house was. Joe Brownlow was one of those
men who make themselves esteemed and noted above their actual position.
He was much thought of as a lecturer, and would have had a much larger
practice but for his appointment at the hospital. It was in the course
of the work he had taken for a friend gone out of town that he caught
the illness that killed him. His lectures brought men of science about
him, and his practice had made him acquainted with us poor Bohemians, as
you seem to think us. Old Mrs. Brownlow had means of her own, and theirs
was quite a wealthy house among our set. Any of us were welcome to drop
into five o’clock tea, or at nine at night, and the pleasantness and
good influence were wonderful. The motherliness and yet the enthusiasm
of Mrs. Brownlow made her the most delightful old lady I ever saw. I
can’t describe how good she was about my marriage, and many more would
say they owed all that was brightest and best in them to that house. And
there was Carey, like a little sunshiny fairy, the darling of everyone.
No, not spoilt--I see what you are going to say.”
“Only as we all spoilt her at school. Nobody but her Serene Highness
ever could help making a pet of her.”
“That’s more reasonable, Mary,” said Mrs. Acton, in a more placable
voice; “she did plenty of hard work, and did not spare herself, or have
what would seem indulgences to most women; but nobody could see the
light of her eyes and smile without trying to make it sparkle up; and
she was just the first thought in life to her husband and his mother.
I am sure in my governess days I used to think that house paradise, and
her the undoubted queen of it. And now, that you should turn against
her, Mary, when she is uncrowned, and unappreciated, and brow-beaten.”
She had worked herself up, and had tears in her eyes.
Mary laughed a little.
“It is hard, when I only want to keep her from making herself be
unappreciated.”
“And I say it is in vain!” cried Clara, “for it is not in the nature
of the people to appreciate her, and nothing will make them get on
together.”
Poor Mary! she had expected her friend to be more reasonable and less
defensive; but she remembered that even at school Clara had always
protected Caroline whenever she had attempted to lecture her. All she
further tried to say was--
“Then you won’t help me to advise her to be more guarded, and not shock
them?”
“I will not tease the poor little thing, when she has enough to torment
her already. If you had known her husband, and watched her last winter,
you would be only too thankful to see her a little more like herself.”
Mary was silent, finding that she should only argue round and round if
they went on, and feeling that Clara thought her old-maidish, and could
not enter into her sense that, the balance-weight being gone, gusts of
wind ought to be avoided. She sat wondering whether she herself was
prim and old-maidish, or whether she was right in feeling it a duty to
expostulate and deliver her testimony.
There was no doing it on this day. Carey was always surrounded by
children and guests, and in an eager state of activity; but though again
they all went home in the cool of the evening, an attempt to sing in
the second-class carriage, which they filled entirely, was quashed
immediately--no one knew how, and nothing worse happened than that a
very dusty set, carrying odd botanical, entomological, and artistic
wares, trailed through the streets of Kenminster, just as Mrs.
Coffinkey, escorted by her maid, was walking primly home from drinking
tea at the vicarage.
Still Mary’s reflections only strengthened her resolution. On the next
day, which was Sunday, she ascended to the Folly, at about four o’clock
in the afternoon, and found the family, including the parrot, spread out
upon the lawn under the shade of the acacia, the mother reading to them.
“Oh, please don’t stop, mother,” cried Babie; while the more courteous
Armine exclaimed--
“Miss Ogilvie, don’t you like to hear about Bevis and Jocelin Joliffe?”
“You don’t mind waiting while we finish the chapter,” added their
mother; “then we break up our sitting.”
“Pray go on with the chapter,” said Mary, rather coolly, for she was a
good deal taken aback at finding them reading “Woodstock” on a Sunday;
“but afterwards, I do want to speak to you.”
“Oh! don’t want to speak to me. The Colonel has been speaking to me,”
she said, with a cowering, shuddering sort of action, irresistibly
comic.
“And he ate up half our day,” bemoaned more than one of the boys.
Miss Ogilvie sat down a little way off, not wishing to listen
to “Woodstock” on a Sunday, and trying to work out the difficult
Sabbatarian question in her mind.
“There!” said Caroline, closing the book, amid exclamations of “I know
who Lewis Kerneguy was.” “Wasn’t Roger Wildrake jolly?” “O, mother,
didn’t he cut off Trusty Tomkins’ head?” “Do let us have a wee bit more,
mother; Miss Ogilvie won’t mind.”
But Carey saw that she did mind, and answered--
“Not now; there won’t be time to feed all the creatures, or to get
nurse’s Sunday nosegays, if you don’t begin.” Then, coming up to her
guest, she said, “Now is your time, Mary; we shall have the Rays and Mr.
Hughes in presently; but you see we are too worldly and profane for the
Kencroft boys on Sunday; and so they make experiments in smoking, with
company less desirable, I must say, than Sir Harry Lee’s. Am I very bad
to read what keeps mine round me?”
“Is it an old fashion with you?”
“Well, no; but then we had what was better than a thousand stories! And
this is only a feeble attempt to keep up a little watery reflection of
the old sunshine.”
It was a watery reflection indeed!
“And could it not be with something that would be--”
“Dull and goody?” put in Carey. “No, no, my dear, that would be utterly
futile. You can’t catch my birds without salt. Can we, Polly?”
To which the popinjay responded, “We are all Mother Carey’s chickens.”
“I did mean salt--very real salt,” said Mary, rather sadly.
“I have not got the recipe;” said Carey. “Indeed I do try to do
what must be done. My boys can hold their own in Bible and Catechism
questions! Ask your brother if they can’t. And Army is a dear little
fellow, with a bit of the angel, or of his father, in him; but when
we’ve done our church, I see no good in decorous boredom; and if I did,
what would become of the boys?”
“I don’t agree to the necessity of boredom,” said Mary; “but let that
pass. There are things I wanted to say.”
“I knew it was coming. The Colonel has been at me already, levelling his
thunders at my devoted head. Won’t that do?”
“Not if you heed him so little.”
“My dear, if I heeded, I should be annihilated. When he says ‘My good
little sister,’ I know he means ‘You little idiot;’ so if I did not
think of something else, what might not be the consequence? Why, he said
I was not behaving decently!”
“No more you are.”
“And that I had no proper feeling,” continued she, laughing almost
hysterically.
“No one can wonder at his being pained. It ought never to have
happened.”
“Are you gone over to Mrs. Grundy? However, there’s this comfort, you’ll
not mention Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law.”
“I’m sure the Colonel didn’t!”
“Ellen does though, with tragic effect.”
“You are not like yourself, Carey.”
“No, indeed I’m not! I was a happy creature a little while ago; or was
it a very long, long time ago? Then I had everybody to help me and
make much of me! And now I’ve got into a great dull mist, and am always
knocking my head against something or somebody; and when I try to keep
up the old friendships and kindnesses--poor little fragments as they
are--everybody falls upon me, even you, Mary.”
“Pardon me, dearest. Some friendships and kindnesses that were once
admirable, may be less suitable to your present circumstances.”
“As if I didn’t know that!” said Carey, with an angry, hurt little
laugh; “and so I waited to be chaperoned up to the eyes between Clara
Acton and the Duck in the very house with me. Now, Mary, I put it to
you. Has one word passed that could do harm? Isn’t it much more
innocent than all the Coffinkey gossip? I have no doubt Mrs. Coffinkey’s
sister-in-law looks up from her black-bordered pocket-handkerchief to
hear how Mrs. Brownlow’s sister-in-law went to the cricket-match. Do you
know, Robert really thought I had been there? I only wonder how many I
scored. I dare say Mrs. Coffinkey’s sister-in-law knows.”
“It just shows how careful you should be.”
“And I wonder what would become of the children if I shut myself up with
a pile of pocket-handkerchiefs bordered an inch deep. What right have
they to meddle with my ways, and my friends, and my boys?”
“Not the Coffinkeys, certainly,” said Mary; “but indeed, Carey, I myself
was uncomfortable at that singing in the lanes at eleven at night.”
“It wasn’t eleven,” said Carey, perversely.
“Only 10.50--eh?”
“But what was the possible harm in it?”
“None at all in itself, only remember the harm it may do to the children
for you to be heedless of people’s opinion, and to get a reputation for
flightiness and doing odd things.”
“I couldn’t be like the Coffinkey pattern any more than I could be tied
down to a rope walk.”
“But you need not do things that your better sense must tell you may
be misconstrued. Surely there was a wish that you should live near the
Colonel and be guided by him.”
“Little knowing that his guidance would consist in being set at me by
Ellen and the Coffinkeys!”
“Nonsense,” said Mary, vexed enough to resume their old school-girl
manners. “You know I am not set on by anybody, and I tell you that
if you do not pull up in time, and give no foundation for ill-natured
comments, your children will never get over it in people’s estimation.
And as for themselves, a little steadiness and regularity would be much
better for their whole dispositions.”
“It is holiday time,” said Carey, in a tone of apology.
“If it is only in holiday time--”
“The country has always seemed like holiday. You see we used to go--all
of us--to some seaside place, and be quite free there, keeping no
particular hours, and being so intensely happy. I haven’t yet got over
the feeling that it is only for a time, and we shall go back into the
dear old home and its regular ways.” Then clasping her hands over her
side as though to squeeze something back, she broke out, “O Mary, Mary,
you mustn’t scold me! You mustn’t bid me tie myself to regular hours
till this summer is over. If you knew the intolerable stab when I
recollect that he is gone--gone--gone for ever, you would understand
that there’s nothing for it but jumping up and doing the first thing
that comes to hand. Walking it down is best. Oh! what will become of
me when the mornings get dark, and I can’t get up and rush into those
woods? Yes”--as Mary made some affectionate gesture--“I know I have gone
on in a wild way, but who would not be wild who had lost _him_? And then
they goad me, and think me incapable of proper feeling,” and she laughed
that horrid little laugh. “So I am, I suppose; but feeling won’t go
as other people think _proper_. Let me alone, Mary, I won’t damage the
children. They are Joe’s children, and I know what he wanted and wished
for them better than Robert or anybody else. But I must go my own way,
and do what I can bear, and as I can, or--or I think my heart would
break quite, and that would be worse for them than anything.”
Mary had tears in her eyes, drawn forth by the vehement passion of grief
apparent in the whole tone of her poor little friend. She had no doubts
of Carey’s love, sorrow, or ability, but she did seriously doubt of her
wisdom and judgment, and thought her undisciplined. However, she could
say no more, for Nita Ray and Janet were advancing on them.
The next day Caroline was in bed with one of her worst headaches. Mary
felt that she had been a cruel and prim old duenna, and meekly bore
Clara’s reproachful glances.