You smile, their eager ways to see,
But mark their choice when they
To choose their sportive garb are free,
The moral of their play.
Keble.
One curious part of the reticence of youth is that which relates to
its comprehension of grown-up affairs. There is a smile with which
the elders greet any question on the subject, half of wonder, half
of amusement, which is perfectly intolerable to the young, who remain
thinking that they are regarded as presumptuous and absurd, and thus
will do anything rather than expose themselves to it again.
Thus it was that Mrs. Brownlow flattered herself that her children never
put two and two together when she let them know of the discovery of
their relationship. Partly she judged by herself. She was never in
the habit of forecasting, and for so clever and spirited a woman, she
thought wonderfully little. She had plenty of intuitive sense, decided
rapidly and clearly, and could easily throw herself in other people’s
thoughts, but she seldom reflected, analysed or moralised, save on the
spur of the moment. She lived chiefly in the present, and the chief
events of her life had all come so suddenly and unexpectedly upon her,
that she was all the less inclined to guess at the future, having always
hitherto been taken by surprise.
So, when Jock observed in public--“Mother, they say at Kencroft that the
old miser ought to leave you half his money. Do you think he will?” it
was with perfect truth that she answered, “I don’t think at all about
it.”
It was taken in the family as an intimation that she would not talk
about it, and while she supposed that the children drew no conclusions,
they thought the more.
Allen was gone to Eton, but Janet and Bobus had many discussions over
their chemical experiments, about possibilities and probabilities, odd
compounds of cleverness and ignorance.
“Mother must be heir-at-law, for her grandmother was eldest,” said
Janet.
“A woman can’t be heir-at-law,” said Bobus.
“The Salique law doesn’t come into England.”
“Yes it does, for Sir John Gray got Graysnest only last year, instead of
the old man’s daughter.
“Then how comes the Queen to be Queen?”
“Besides,”--Bobus shifted his ground to another possibility--“when
there’s nobody but a lot of women, the thing goes into abeyance among
them.”
“Who gets it, then?”
“Chancery, I suppose, or some of the lawyers. They are all
blood-suckers.”
“I’m sure,” said Janet, superior by three years of wisdom, “that
abeyance only happens about Scotch peerages; and if he has not made a
will, mother will be heiress.”
“Only halves with that black Undine of Allen’s,” sturdily persisted
Bobus. “Is she coming here, Janet?”
“Yes, to-morrow. I did not think we wanted another child about the
house; Essie and Ellie are quite enough.”
“If mother gets rich she won’t have all that teaching to bother her,”
said Bobus.
“And I can go on with my education,” said Janet.
“Girl’s education does not signify,” said Bobus. “Now I shall be able to
get the very best instruction in physical science, and make some great
discovery. If I could only go and study at Halle, instead of going on
droning here.”
“Oh! boys can always get educated if they choose. You are going to Eton
or Winchester after this term.”
“Not if I can get any sense into mother. I don’t want to waste my time
on those stupid classics and athletics. I say, Janet, it’s time to see
whether the precipitation has taken place.”
The two used to try experiments together, in Bobus’s end of the attic,
to an extent that might make the presence of a strange child in the
house dangerous to herself as well as to everyone else.
Mrs. Gould herself brought the little girl, trying to impress on
Mrs. Brownlow that if she was indocile it was not her fault, but her
grandfather could not bear to have her crossed.
The elders did not wonder at his weakness, for the creature was
wonderfully lovely and winning, with a fearless imperiousness that
subdued everyone to her service. So brilliant was she, that Essie and
Ellie, though very pretty little girls, looked faded and effaced beside
this small empress, whose air seemed to give her a right to bestow her
favours.
“I am glad to be here!” she observed, graciously, to her hostess, “for
you are my cousin and a lady.”
“And pray what are you?” asked Janet.
“I am la Senora Dona Elvira Maria de Guadalupe de Menella,” replied the
damsel, with a liquid sonorousness so annihilating, that Janet made a
mocking courtesy; and her mother said it was like asking the head of the
house of Hapsburg if she were a lady!
With some disappointment at Allen’s absence, the little Donna motioned
Bobus to sit by her side at dinner-time, and when her grandfather looked
in somewhat later to wish her good-bye, in mingled hope and fear of
her insisting on going home with him, she cared for nothing but his
admiration of her playing at kings and queens with Armine and Barbara,
in the cotton velvet train of the dressing up wardrobe.
“No, she did not want to go home. She never wanted to go back to River
Hollow.”
Nor would she even kiss him till she had extorted the assurance that he
had been shaved that morning.
The old man went away blessing Mrs. Brownlow’s kindness to his child,
and Janet was universally scouted for muttering that it was a heartless
little being. She alone remained unenthralled by Elvira’s chains. The
first time she went to Kencroft, she made Colonel Brownlow hold her up
in his arms to gather a bough off his own favourite double cherry; and
when Mother Carey demurred, she beguiled Aunt Ellen into taking her on
her own responsibility to the dancing lessons at the assembly rooms.
There she electrified the dancing-master, and all beholders, seeming
to catch inspiration from the music, and floating along with a
wondrous swimming grace, as her dainty feet twinkled, her arms wreathed
themselves, and her eyes shone with enjoyment.
If she could only have always danced, or acted in the garden! Armine’s
and Babie’s perpetual romantic dramas were all turned by her into homage
to one and the same princess. She never knew or cared whether she were
goddess or fairy, Greek or Briton, provided she had the crown and
train; but as Babie much preferred action to magnificence, they got on
wonderfully well without disputes. There was a continual performance,
endless as a Chinese tragedy, of Spenser’s Faery Queene, in which Elfie
was always Gloriana, and Armine and Babie were everybody else in turn,
except the wicked characters, who were represented by the cabbages and a
dummy.
“Reading was horrid,” Elvira said, and certainly hers deserved the
epithet. Her attainments fell far behind those of Essie and Ellie, and
she did not mean to improve them. Her hostess let her alone till she
had twice shaken her rich mane at her grandfather, and refused to return
with him; and he had shown himself deeply grateful to Mrs. Brownlow for
keeping her there, and had said he hoped she was good at her lessons.
The first trial resulted in Elvira’s going to sleep over her book, the
next in her playing all sorts of ridiculous tricks, and sulking when
stopped, and when she was forbidden to speak or go out till she had
repeated three answers in the multiplication table, she was the next
moment singing and dancing in defiance in the garden. Caroline did not
choose to endure this, and went to fetch her in, thus producing such
a screaming, kicking, rolling fury that Mrs. Coffinkey might have some
colour for the statement that Mrs. Folly Brownlow was murdering all her
children. The cook, as the strongest person in the house, was called,
carried her in and put her to bed, where she fell sound asleep, and
woke, hungry, in high spirits, and without an atom of compunction.
When called to lessons she replied--“No, I’m going back to grandpapa.”
“Very well,” was all Caroline answered, thinking wholesome neglect the
best treatment.
In an hour’s time Mr. Gould made his appearance with his grandchild. She
had sought him out among the pigs in the market-place, pulled him by the
coat, and insisted on being taken home.
His politeness was great, but he was plainly delighted, and determined
to believe that her demand sprang from affection, and not naughtiness.
Elvira stood caressing him, barely vouchsafing to look at her hostess,
and declaring that she never meant to come back.
Not a fortnight had passed, however, before she burst upon them again,
kissing them all round, and reiterating that she hated her aunt, and
would live with Mother Carey. Mr. Gould had waited to be properly
ushered in. He was distressed and apologetic, but he had been forced
to do his tyrant’s behest. There had been more disturbances than ever
between her and her aunt, and Mrs. Gould had declared that she would
not manage the child any longer, while Elvira was still more vehement
to return to Mother Carey. Would Mrs. Brownlow recommend some school or
family where the child would be well cared for? Mrs. Brownlow did more,
offering herself to undertake the charge.
Spite of all the naughtiness, she loved the beautiful wild creature, and
could not bear to think of intrusting her to strangers; she knew, too,
that her brother and sister-in-law had no objection, and it was the
obvious plan. Mr. Gould would make some small payment, and the child was
to be made to understand that she must be obedient, learn her lessons,
and cease to expect to find a refuge with her grandfather when she was
offended.
She drew herself up with childish pride and grace saying, “I will attend
to Mrs. Brownlow, for she is my cousin and my equal.”
To a certain degree the little maiden kept her word. She was the
favourite plaything of the boys, and got on well with Babie, who was too
bright and yielding to quarrel with any one.
But Janet’s elder-sisterly authority was never accepted by the newcomer.
“I couldn’t mind her, she looked so ugly,” said she in excuse; and
probably the heavy, brown, dull complexion and large features were
repulsive in themselves to the sensitive fancy of the creature of life
and beauty. At any rate, they were jarring elephants, as said Eleanor,
who was growing ambitious, and sometimes electrified the public with
curious versions of the long words more successfully used by Armine and
Babie.
Caroline succeeded in modelling a very lovely profile in bas-relief of
the exquisite little head, and then had it photographed. Mary Ogilvie,
coming to Kenminster as usual when her holidays began in June, found the
photograph in the place of honour on her brother’s chimney-piece, and a
little one beside it of the artist herself.
So far as Carey herself was concerned, Mary was much better satisfied.
She did not look so worn or so flighty, and had a quieter and more
really cheerful tone and manner, as of one who had settled into her home
and occupations. She had made friends, too--few, but worth having;
and there were those who pronounced the Folly the pleasantest house in
Kenminster, and regarded the five o’clock tea, after the weekly physical
science lecture at the school, as a delightful institution.
Of course, the schoolmaster was one of these; and when Mary found
how all his paths tended to the Pagoda, she hated herself for being a
suspicious old duenna. Nevertheless, she could not but be alarmed by
finding that her project of a walking tour through Brittany was not,
indeed, refused, but deferred, with excuses about having work to finish,
being in no hurry, and the like.
“I think you ought to go,” said Mary at last.
“I see no ought in the case. Last year the work dragged, and was
oppressive; but you see how different it has become.”
“That is the very reason,” said Mary, the colour flying to her checks.
“It will not do to stay lingering here as we did last summer, and not
only on your own account.”
“You need not be afraid,” was the muttered answer, as David bent down
his head over the exercise he was correcting. She made no answer, and
ere long he began again, “I don’t mean that her equal exists, but I am
not such a fool as to delude myself with a spark of hope.”
“She is too nice for that,” said Mary.
“Just so,” he said, glad to relieve himself when the ice had been
broken. “There’s something about her that makes one feel her to be
altogether that doctor’s, as much as if he were present in the flesh.”
“Are you hoping to wear that out? For I don’t think you will.”
“I told you I had no hope,” he answered, rather petulantly. “Even were
it otherwise, there is another thing that must withhold me. It has got
abroad that she may turn out heiress to the old man at Belforest.”
“In such a hopeless case, would it not be wiser to leave this place
altogether?”
“I cannot,” he exclaimed; then remembering that vehemence told against
him, he added, “Don’t be uneasy; I am a reasonable man, and she is a
woman to keep one so; but I think I am useful to her, and I am sure she
is useful to me.”
“That I allow she has been,” said Mary, looking at her brother’s much
improved appearance; “but--”
“Moths and candles to wit,” he returned; “but don’t be afraid, I attract
no notice, and I think she trusts me about her boys.”
“But what is it to come to?”
“I have thought of that. Understand that it is enough for me to live
near her, and be now and then of some little service to her.”
They were interrupted by a note, which Mr. Ogilvie read, and handed to
his sister with a smile:--
“DEAR MR. OGILVIE,--Could you and Mary make it convenient to look in
this evening? Bobus has horrified his uncle by declining to go up for a
scholarship at Eton or Winchester, and I should be very glad to talk it
over with you. Also, I shall have to ask you to take little Armine into
school after the holidays.
“Yours sincerely,
“C. O. BROWNLOW.”
“What does the boy mean?” asked Mary. “I thought he was the pride of
your heart.”
“So he is; but he is ahead of his fellows, and ought to be elsewhere.
All measures have been taken for sending him up to stand at one of the
public schools, but I thought him very passive about it. He is an
odd boy--reserved and self-concentrated--quite beyond his uncle’s
comprehension, and likely to become headstrong at a blind exercise of
authority.”
“I used to like Allen best,” said Mary.
“He is the pleasantest, but there’s more solid stuff in Bobus.
That boy’s school character is perfect, except for a certain cool
opinionativeness, which seldom comes out with me, but greatly annoys the
undermasters.”
“Is he a prig?”
“Well, yes, I’m afraid he is. He’s unpopular, for he does not care for
games; but his brother is popular enough for both.”
“Jock?--the monkey!”
“His brains run to mischief. I’ve had to set him more impositions than
any boy in the school, and actually to take his form myself, for simply
the undermasters can’t keep up discipline or their own tempers. As to
poor M. le Blanc, I find him dancing and shrieking with fury in the
midst of a circle of snorting, giggling boys; and when he points out ce
petit monstre, Jock coolly owns to having translated ‘Croquons les,’ let
us croquet them; or ‘Je suis blesse,’ I am blest.”
“So the infusion of brains produces too much effervescence.”
“Yes, but the whole school has profited, and none more so than No. 2 of
the other family, who has quite passed his elder brother, and is above
his namesake whenever it is a case of plodding ability versus idle
genius. But, after all, how little one can know of one’s boys.”
“Or one’s girls,” said Mary, thinking of governess experiences.
It was a showery summer evening when the brother and sister walked up
to the Folly in a partial clearing, when the evening sun made every bush
twinkle all over with diamond drops. Childish voices were heard near the
gate, and behind a dripping laurel were seen Elvira, Armine, and Barbara
engaged in childhood’s unceasing attempt to explore the centre of the
earth.
“What do you expect to find there?” they were asked.
“Little kobolds, with pointed caps, playing at ball with rubies and
emeralds, and digging with golden spades,” answered Babie.
“And they shall give me an opal ring,” said Elfie, “But Armine does not
want the kobolds.”
“He says they are bad,” said Babie. “Now are they, Mr. Ogilvie? I know
elder women are, and erl kings and mist widows, but poor Neck, that
sat on the water and played his harp, wasn’t bad, and the dear little
kobolds were so kind and funny. Now are they bad elves?”
Her voice was full of earnest pleading, and Mr. Ogilvie, not being
versed in the spiritual condition of elves could best reply by asking
why Armine thought ill of their kind.
“I think they are nasty little things that want to distract and bewilder
one in the real great search.”
“What search, my boy?”
“For the source of everything,” said Armine, lowering his voice and
looking into his muddy hole.
“But that is above, not below,” said Mary.
“Yes,” said Armine reverently; “but I think God put life and the
beginning of growing into the earth, and I want to find it.”
“Isn’t it Truth?” said Babie. “Mr. Acton said Truth was at the bottom of
a well. I won’t look at the kobolds if they keep one from seeing Truth.”
“But I must get my ring and all my jewels from them,” put in Elfie.
“Should you know Truth?” asked Mr. Ogilvie. “What do you think she is
like?”
“So beautiful!” said Babie, clasping her fingers with earnestness. “All
white and clear like crystal, with such blue, sweet, open eyes. And she
has an anchor.”
“That’s Hope?” said Armine.
“Oh! Hope and Truth go hand in hand,” said Babie; “and Hope will be all
robed in green like the young corn-fields in the spring.”
“Ah, Babie, that emerald Hope and crystal Truth are not down in the
earth, earthy,” said Mary again.
“Nay, perhaps Armine has got hold of a reality,” said Mr. Ogilvie. “They
are to be found above by working below.”
“Talking paradox to Armine?” said the cheerful voice of the young
mother. “My dear sprites, do you know that it is past eight! How wet you
are! Good night, and mind you don’t go upstairs in those boots.”
“It is quite comfortable to hear anything so commonplace,” said Mary,
when the children had run away, to the sound of its reiteration after
full interchange of good nights. “Those imps make one feel quite eerie.”
“Has Armine been talking in that curious fashion of his,” said Carey,
as they began to pace the walks. “I am afraid his thinker is too big--as
the child says in Miss Tytler’s book. This morning over his parsing he
asked me--‘Mother, which is _realest_, what we touch or what we feel?’
knitting his brows fearfully when I did not catch his meaning, and going
on--‘I mean is that fly as real as King David?’ and then as I was more
puzzled he went on--‘You see we only need just see that fly now with our
outermost senses, and he will only live a little while, and nobody cares
or will think of him any more, but everybody always does think, and
feel, and care a great deal about King David.’ I told him, as the best
answer I could make on the spur of the moment, that David was alive in
Heaven, but he pondered in and broke out--‘No, that’s not it! David was
a real man, but it is just the same about Perseus and Siegfried, and
lots of people that never were men, only just thoughts. Ain’t thoughts
_realer_ than things, mother?’”
“But much worse for him, I should say,” exclaimed Mary.
“I thought of Pisistratus Caxton, and wrote to Mr. Ogilvie. It is a
great pity, but I am afraid he ought not to dwell on such things till
his body is grown up to his mind.”
“Yes, school is the approved remedy for being too clever,” said Mr.
Ogilvie. “You are wise. It is a pity, but it will be all the better for
him by-and-by.”
“And the elder ones will take care the seasoning is not too severe,”
said Caroline, with a resolution she could hardly have shown if this had
been her first launch of a son. “But it was about Bobus that I wanted
to consult you. His uncle thinks him headstrong and conceited, if not
lazy.”
“Lazy he is certainly not.”
“I knew you would say so, but the Colonel cannot enter into his wish to
have more physical science and less classics, and will not hear of his
going to Germany, which is what he wishes, though I am sure he is too
young.”
“He ought not to go there till his character is much more formed.”
“What do you think of his going on here?”
“That’s a temptation I ought to resist. He will soon have outstripped
the other boys so that I could not give him the attention he needs, and
besides the being with other boys, more his equals, would be invaluable
to him.”
“Well, he is rather bumptious.”
“Nothing is worse for a lad of that sort than being cock of the walk. It
spoils him often for life.”
“I know exactly the sort of man you mean, always liking to lay down the
law and talking to women instead of men, because they don’t argue with
him. No, Bobus must not come to that, and he is too young to begin
special training. Will you talk to him, Mr. Ogilvie? You know if my
horse is not convinced I may bring him to the water, but it will be all
in vain.”
They had reached the outside of the window of the dining-room, where
the school-boys were learning their lessons for the morrow. Bobus was
sitting at the table with a small lamp so shaded as to concentrate
the light on him and to afford it to no one else. On the floor was a
servant’s flat candlestick, mounted on a pile of books, between one John
sprawling at full length preparing his Virgil, the other cross-legged,
working a sum with ink from a doll’s tea-cup placed in the candlestick,
and all the time there was a wonderful mumbling accompaniment, as there
always was between those two.
“I say, what does pulsum come from?”
“What a brute this is of a fraction! Skipjack, what will go in 639 and
852?”
“Pulsum, a pulse--volat, flies. Eh! Three’ll do it. Or common measure it
at once.”
“Bother common measure. The threes in--”
“Fama, fame; volat, flies; pulsum, the pulse; cecisse, to have ceased;
paternis regnis, in the paternal kingdom. I say wouldn’t that rile
Perkins like fun?”
“The threes in seven--two--in eighteen--”
“I say, Johnny, is pulsum from pulco?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Bobus, is it pulco, pulxi, pulsum?”
“Pulco--I make an ass of myself,” muttered Bobus.
“O murder,” groaned Johnny, “it has come out 213.”
“Not half so much murder as this pulsum. Why it will go in them both. I
can see with half an eye.”
“Isn’t it pello--pulsum?”
“Pello, to drive out. Hurrah! That fits it.”
“Look out, Skipjack, there’s a moth.”
“Anything worth having?” demanded Bobus.
“Only a grass eggar. Fama, fame; volat, flies; Idomoeea ducem, that
Idomaeeus the leader; pulsum, expelled. Get out, I say, you foolish
beggar” (to the moth).
“Never mind catching him,” said Bobus, “we’ve got dozens.”
“Yes, but I don’t want him frizzling alive in my candle.”
“Don’t kick up such a shindy,” broke out Johnny, as a much stained
handkerchief came flapping about.
“You’ve blotted my sum. Thunder and ages!” as the candlestick toppled
over, ink and all. “That is a go!”
“I say, Bobus, lend us your Guy Fawkes to pick up the pieces.”
“Not if I know it,” said Bobus. “You always smash things.”
“There’s a specimen of the way we learn our lessons,” said Caroline, in
a low voice, still unseen, as Bobus wiped, sheathed, and pocketed his
favourite pen, then proceeded to turn down the lamp, but allowed the
others to relight their candle at the expiring wick.
“The results are fair,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
“I think of your carpet,” said Mary, quaintly.
“We always lay down an ancient floorcloth in the bay window before the
boys come home,” said Carey, laughing. “Here, Bobus.”
And as he came out headforemost at the window, the two ladies discreetly
drew off to leave the conversation free.
“So, Brownlow,” said Mr. Ogilvie, “I hear you don’t want to try your
luck elsewhere.”
“No, sir.”
“Do you object to telling me why?”
“I see no use in it,” said Bobus, never shy, and further aided by the
twilight; “I do quite well enough here.”
“Should you not do better in a larger field among a higher stamp of
boys?”
“Public school boys are such fools!”
“And what are the Kenites?”
“Well, not much,” said Bobus, with a twitch in the corner of his mouth;
“but I can keep out of their way.”
“You mean that you have gained your footing, and don’t want to have to
do it again.”
“Not only that, sir,” said the boy, “but at a public school you’re
fagged, and forced to go in for cricket and football.”
“You would soon get above that.”
“Yes, but even then you get no peace, and are nobody unless you go in
for all that stuff of athletics and sports. I hate it all, and don’t
want to waste my time.”
“I don’t think you are quite right as to there being no distinction
without athletics.”
“Allen says it is so now.”
“Allen may be a better judge of the present state of things, but I
should think there was always a studious set who were respectable.”
“Besides,” proceeded Bobus, warming with his subject, “I see no good in
nothing but classics. I don’t care what ridiculous lies some old man who
never existed, or else was a dozen people at once, told about a lot of
ruffians who never lived, killing each other at some place that never
was. I like what you can lay your finger on, and say it’s here, it’s
true, and I can prove it, and explain it, and improve on it.”
“If you can,” said Mr. Ogilvie, struck by the contrast with the little
brother.
“That’s what I want to do,” said Bobus; “to deal with real things, not
words and empty fancies. I know languages are necessary; but if one can
read a Latin book, and understand a Greek technical term, that’s all
that is of use. If my uncle won’t let me study physical science in
Germany, I had rather go on here, where I can be let alone to study it
for myself.”
“I do not think you understand what you would throw away. What is the
difference between Higg, the bone-setter, and Dr. Leslie?”
“Higg can do that one thing just by instinct. He is uneducated.”
“And in a measure it is so with all who throw themselves into some
special pursuit without waiting for the mind and character to have full
training and expansion. If you mean to be a great surgeon--”
“I don’t mean to be a surgeon.”
“A physician then.”
“No, sir. Please don’t let my mother fancy I mean to be in practice, at
everyone’s beck and call. I’ve seen too much of that. I mean to get a
professorship, and have time and apparatus for researches, so as to get
to the bottom of everything,” said the boy, with the vast purposes of
his age.
“Your chances will be much better if you go up from a public school,
trained in accuracy by the thorough work of language, and made more
powerful by the very fact of not having followed merely your own bent.
Your contempt for the classics shows how one-sided you are growing.
Besides, I thought you knew that the days are over of unmitigated
classics. You would have many more opportunities, and much better ones,
of studying physical science than I can provide for you here.”
This was a new light to Bobus, and when Mr. Ogilvie proved its truth
to him, and described the facilities he would have for the study, he
allowed that it made all the difference.
Meantime the two ladies had gone in, Mary asking where Janet was.
“Gone with Jessie and her mother to a birthday party at Polesworth
Lawn.”
“Not a good day for it.”
“It is the perplexing sort of day that no one knows whether to call it
fine or wet; but Ellen decided on going, as they were to dance in
the hall if it rained. I’m sure her kindness is great, for she takes
infinite trouble to make Janet producible! Poor Janet, you know dressing
her is like hanging clothes on a wooden peg, and a peg that won’t stand
still, and has curious theories of the beautiful, carried out in a
still more curious way. So when, in terror of our aunt, the whole female
household have done their best to turn out Miss Janet respectable,
between this house and Kencroft, she contrives to give herself some
twitch, or else is seized with an idea of the picturesque, which sets
every one wondering that I let her go about such a figure. Then Ellen
and Jessie put a tie here, and a pin there, and reduce the chaotic mass
to order.”
It was not long before Janet appeared, and Jessie with her, the latter
having been set down to give a message. The two girls were dressed in
the same light black-and-white checked silk of early youth, one with
pink ribbons and the other with blue; but the contrast was the more
apparent, for one was fresh and crisp, while the other was flattened and
tumbled; one said everything had been delightful, the other that it had
all been very stupid, and the expression made even more difference than
the complexion, in one so fair, fresh, and rosy, in the other so sallow
and muddled. Jessie looked so sweet and bright, that when she had gone
Miss Ogilvie could not help exclaiming, “How pretty she is!”
“Yes, and so good-tempered and pleasant. There is something always
restful to me in having her in the room,” said Caroline.
“Restful?” said Janet, with one of her unamiable sneers. “Yes, she
and H. S. H. sent me off to sleep with their gossip on the way home! O
mother, there’s another item for the Belforest record. Mr. Barnes has
sent off all his servants again, even the confidential man is shipped
off to America.”
“You seem to have slept with one ear open,” said her mother. “And oh!”
as Janet took off her gloves, “I hope you did not show those hands!”
“I could not eat cake without doing so, and Mr. Glover supposed I had
been photographing.”
“And what had you been doing?” inquired Mary, at sight of the brown
stains.
“Trying chemical experiments with Bobus,” said her mother.
“Yes!” cried Janet, “and I’ve found out why we did not succeed. I
thought it out during the dancing.”
“Instead of cultivating the ‘light fantastic toe,’ as the Courier calls
it.”
“I danced twice, and a great plague it was. Only with Mr. Glover and
with a stupid little middy. I was thinking all the time how senseless it
was.”
“How agreeable you must have been!”
“One can’t be agreeable to people like that. Oh, Bobus!” as he came into
the room with Mr. Ogilvie, “I’ve found out--”
“I thought Jessie was here,” he interrupted.
“She’s gone home. I know what was wrong yesterday. We ought to have
isolated the hypo--”
“Isolated the grandmother,” said Bobus. “That has nothing to do with
it.”
“I’m sure of it. I’ll show you how it acts.”
“I’ll show you just the contrary.”
“Not to-night,” cried their mother, as Bobus began to relight the lamp.
“You two explosives are quite perilous enough by day without lamps and
candles.”
“You endure a great deal,” said Mr. Ogilvie.
“I’m not afraid of either of these two doing anything dangerous singly,
for they are both careful, but when they are of different minds, I never
know what the collision may produce.”
“Yes,” said Bobus, “I’d much sooner have Jessie to help me, for she does
what she is bid, and never thinks.”
“That’s all you think women good for,” said Janet.
“Quite true,” said Bobus, coolly.
And Mr. Ogilvie was acknowledged by his sister to have done a good deed
that night, since the Folly might be far more secure when Janet tried
her experiments alone.