“What idle progeny succeed
To chase the rolling circle’s speed,
Or urge the flying ball.”—GRAY.
THE afternoon at Clipstone was a success. Gillian was at home, and every
one found congeners. Lady Merrifield’s sister, Miss Mohun, pounced upon
Miss Prescott as a coadjutor in the alphabet of good works needed in the
neglected district of Arnscombe, where Mr. Earl was wifeless, and the
farm ladies heedless; but they were interrupted by Mysie running up to
claim Miss Prescott for a game at croquet. “Uncle Redgie was so glad to
see the hoops come into fashion again,” and Vera and Paula hardly knew
the game, they had always played at lawn tennis; but they were delighted
to learn, for Uncle Redgie proved to be a very fine-looking retired
General, and there was a lad besides, grown to manly height; and one boy,
at home for Easter, who, caring not for croquet, went with Primrose to
exhibit to Thekla the tame menagerie, where a mungoose, called of course
Raki raki, was the last acquisition. She was also shown the kittens of
the beloved Begum, and presented with Phœbus, a tabby with a wise face
and a head marked like a Greek lyre, to be transplanted to the Goyle in
due time.
“If Sister will let me have it,” said Thekla.
“Of course she will,” said Primrose. “Mysie says she is so jolly.”
“Dear me! all the girls at our school said she was a regular Old Maid.”
“What shocking bad form!” exclaimed Primrose. “Just like cads of girls,”
muttered Fergus, unheard; for Thekla continued—“Why, they said she must
be our maiden aunt, instead of our sister.”
“The best thing going!” said Fergus.
“Maiden aunts in books are always horrid,” said Thekla.
“Then the books ought to be hung, drawn, and quartered, and spifflicated
besides,” said Fergus.
“Fergus doesn’t like anybody so well as Aunt Jane,” said Primrose,
“because nobody else understands his machines.”
Thekla made a grimace.
“Ah!” said Primrose. “I see it is just as mamma and Mysie said when they
came home, that Miss Prescott was very nice indeed, and it was famous
that she should make a home for you all, only they were afraid you seemed
as if—you might be—tiresome,” ended Primrose, looking for a word.
“Well, you know she wants to be our governess,” said Thekla.
“Well?” repeated Primrose.
“And of course no one ever likes their governess.”
This aphorism, so uttered by Thekla, provoked a yell from Primrose,
echoed by Fergus; and Primrose, getting her breath, declared that dear
Miss Winter was a great darling, and since she had gone away, more’s the
pity, mamma was real governess to herself, Valetta, and Mysie, and she
always looked at their translations and heard their reading if Gillian
was not at home.
“And they are quite grown-up young ladies!”
“Mysie is; but I don’t know about Val. Only I don’t see why any one
should be silly and do nothing if one is grown up ever so much,” said
Primrose.
“As the Eiffel Tower,” put in Fergus.
“Nonsense!” said Primrose, bent on being improving. “Don’t you know what
that old book of mamma’s says, ‘When will Miss Rosamond’s education be
finished?’ She answered ‘Never.’”
Thekla gave a groan, whether of pity for Rosamond or for herself might be
doubted; and a lop-eared rabbit was a favourable diversion.
There was a triad who seemed to be of Rosamond’s opinion regarding
education, for Agatha was eagerly availing herself of the counsel of
Gillian, and the books shown to her; with the further assistance of the
cousin, Dolores Mohun, now an accredited lecturer in technical classes,
though making her home and headquarters at Clipstone.
Thekla’s views of young ladyhood were a good deal more fulfilled by the
lessons on cycling which were going on among the other young people after
the game of croquet had ended. Every size and variety seemed to exist
among the Clipstone population, under certain regulations of not coasting
down the hills, the girls not going out alone, and never into the town,
but always “putting up” at Aunt Jane’s.
Vera and Paulina were in ecstasy, and there was a continual mounting,
attempting and nearly falling, or turning anywhere but the right, little
screams, and much laughter, Jasper attending upon Vera, who, in spite of
her failures, looked remarkably pretty and graceful upon Valetta’s
machine; while Paula, whom Mysie and Valetta were both assisting, learnt
more easily and steadily, but looked on with a few qualms as to the
entire crystal rock constancy that Vera had professed, more especially
when Jasper volunteered to come over to the Goyle and give another
lesson.
Magdalen, after her game at croquet, had spent a very pleasant time with
Lady Merrifield and her brother and sister, till they were imperiously
summoned by Primrose to come and give consent to the transfer of Phœbus,
or to choose between him and the Mufti, to whom Thekla had begun to
incline.
The whole party adjourned to the back settlements, where Magdalen was
edified by the antics of the mungoose, and admired the Begum and her
progeny with a heartiness that would have won Thekla’s heart, save that
she remembered hearing Vera say, over the domestic cat in the morning,
that M.A.’s were always devoted to cats. But, on the whole, the visit
had done much to reconcile the young sisters to their new surroundings;
books, bicycles, and kitten had reconciled them even to the intimacy with
“swells.”
The hired bicycle and tricycle had arrived in their absence, and the
moment breakfast was over the next morning, the three younger ones all
rushed off to the enjoyment, and, at ten minutes past the appointed hour
for the early reading and study, Agatha felt obliged to go out and tell
them that the M.A. was sitting like Patience on a monument, waiting for
them; on which three tongues said “Bother,” and “She ought to let us off
till the proper end of the holidays.”
“Then you should have propitiated her by asking leave after the Scripture
was done,” said Agatha; “you might have known she would not let you off
that.”
“Bother,” said Vera again; “just like an M.A.”
“I did forget,” said Paula; “and you know it was only just going through
a lesson for form’s sake, like the old superlative.”
They had, in fact, read the day before; when Thekla had made such
frightful work of every unaccustomed word, and the elders by one or two
observations had betrayed so much ignorance alike of Samuel’s history and
of the Gospel of St. Luke, that she had resolved to endeavour at a
thorough teaching of the Old and New Testaments for the first hour on
alternate days, giving one day in the week to Catechism and Prayer Book.
She asked what they had done before.
“Mrs. Best always read something at prayers.”
“Something?”
“Something out of the Bible.”
“No, the Testament.”
“I am sure it was the Bible, it was so fat.”
“And Saul was in it, and we had him yesterday.”
“That was St. Paul before he was converted,” said Paula.
There their knowledge seemed to end, and it further appeared that Mrs.
Best heard the Catechism and Collect on Sundays from the unconfirmed, and
had tried to get the Gospel repeated by heart, but had not succeeded.
“We did not think it fair,” said Vera. “None of the other houses did.”
“Yes,” said Agatha, “Miss Ferris’s did.”
“Oh, she is a regular old Prot,” said Paula, “almost a Dissenter, and it
is not the Gospel either, only texts out of her own head.”
“Polly!” said Agatha. “Texts out of her own head!”
“It is Bible, of course, only what she fancies; and they have to work out
the sermon, and if they can’t do the sermon, a text. They might as well
be Dissenters at once!” said Paula.
“Janet M’Leod is,” said Vera. “It was really Dissentish.”
Magdalen could not help saying, “So you would not learn the Gospel
because Dissenters learnt pieces of Scripture! You seem to me like the
Roman Catholic child, who said there were five sacraments, there ought to
be seven, but the Protestants had got two of them.”
She was sorry she had said it, for though Agatha laughed, the other two
drew into themselves, as if their feelings were hurt. “These are the
boarding-house habits,” she said. “What is done at the High School
itself?”
“The Vicar comes when he has time, and gives a lecture on an Epistle,”
said Agatha, “or a curate, if he doesn’t; but I was working for the
exam., and didn’t go this last term. What was it, Polly?”
“On the—on the Apollonians,” answered Paulina, hesitating.
“My dear, where did he find it?”
“I know it was something about Apollo,” said Vera.
“It was Corinthians,” said Paula. “I ought to have recollected, but the
lectures are very dull and disjointed; you said so yourself, Nag, and the
Rector is very low church.”
“So you could not learn from him!”
“Really, sister,” said Agatha, “the lectures are not well managed, they
are in too many hands, and too uncertain, and it is not easy to learn
much from them.”
“Well, that being the case, I think we had better begin at the beginning.
Suppose I ask you to say the first answer in the Catechism.”
On which Vera said they had all been confirmed except Thekla, and passed
it on to her.
However, the endeavours of that half-hour need not be recounted, and the
moment half-past ten chimed out the young ladies jumped up, and would
have been off to the bicycles, if Magdalen had not felt that the time was
come for asserting authority, and said, “Not yet, if you please. We
cannot waste whole days. You know Herr Gnadiger is coming to-morrow, and
it would be well to practise that sonata beforehand; you ought each to
practise it; Paula, you had better begin, and Vera, you prepare this
first scene of Marie Stuart to read with me when Thekla’s lessons are
over. Change over when Paula has done.”
“It is of no use my doing anything while anyone is playing,” said Vera.
“Nonsense,” Agatha muttered; but Magdalen said, “You can sit in the
drawing-room or your own room. Come, Tick-tick, where’s your slate?
Come along.”
“Don’t sulk, Flapsy,” said the elder sister, “it is of no use. The M.A.
means to be minded, and will be, and you know it is all for your good.”
“I hate my good,” said naughty Vera.
“So does every one when it is against the grain,” said Agatha; “but
remember it is a preparation for a free life of our own.”
“It is our cross,” said Paula, as she placed herself on the music stool
with a look of resignation almost comical.
Nor did her performance interfere with the equations which Agatha was
diligently working out; but Vera, though refusing to take refuge from the
piano, to which, in fact, she was perfectly inured, worried her elder as
much as she durst, by inquiries after the meaning of words, or what
horrid verb to look out in the dictionary; and it was a pleasing change
when Paula proceeded to work the same scene out for herself without
having recourse to explanations, so that Agatha was undisturbed except by
the careless notes, which almost equally worried Magdalen in the more
distant dining-room.
This was really the crisis of the battle of study. As the girls were
accustomed to it, and knew that they were of an age to be ground down,
they followed Agatha’s advice, and submitted without further open
struggle, though there was a good deal of low murmur, and the foreman’s
work was not essentially disagreeable, even while Vera maintained, what
she believed to be an axiom, that governesses were detestable, and that
the M.A. must incur the penalty of acting as such.
Very soon after luncheon appeared three figures on bicycles. Wilfred
Merrifield, with Mysie and Valetta, come to give another lesson on the
“flying circle’s speed.”
Magdalen came out with her young people to enjoy their amusement, as well
as to watch over her own precious machine, as Vera said. It was admired,
as became connoisseurs in the article; and she soon saw that Wilfred was
to be trusted with the care of it, so she consented to its being ridden
in the practice, provided it was not taken out into the lanes.
Mysie turned off from the practising, where she was not wanted, and
joined Miss Prescott in walking through the garden terraces, and planning
what would best adorn them, talking over favourite books, and enjoying
themselves very much; then going on to the quarry, where Mysie looked
about with a critical eye to see if it displayed any fresh geological
treasures to send Fergus in quest of. She began eagerly to pour forth
the sister’s never-ending tale of her brother’s cleverness, and thus they
came down the outside lane to the lower gate, seeing beforehand the
sparkle of bicycles in its immediate proximity.
It was not open, but Vera might be seen standing with one hand on the
latch, the other on Magdalen’s bicycle, her face lifted with imploring,
enticing smiles to Wilfred, who had fallen a little back, while Paula had
decidedly drawn away.
None of them had seen Magdalen and Mysie till they were round the low
stone wall and close upon them. There was a general start, and Vera
exclaimed, “We haven’t been outside! No, we haven’t! And it is not the
Rockquay Road either, sister! I only wanted a run down that lane up
above.”
Wilfred laughed a little oddly. It was quite plain that he had been
withstanding the temptress, only how long would the resistance have
lasted?
Downright Mysie exclaimed, “It would have been a great shame if you had,
and I am glad Wilfred hindered you.”
“Thank you,” said Magdalen, smiling to him. “You know better than my
sisters what Devon lanes and pneumatic tyres are!”
Perhaps Wilfred was a little vexed, though he had resisted, for he was
ready to agree with Mysie that they could not stay and drink tea.
But he did not escape his sister’s displeasure, for Mysie began at once,
“How lucky it was that we came in time. I do believe that naughty little
thing was just going to talk you over into doing what her sister had
forbidden.”
“A savage, old, selfish bear. It was only the lane.”
“Full of crystals as sharp as needles, enough to cut any tyre in two,”
said Mysie.
“Like your tongue, eh, Mysie?”
“Well, you did not do it! That is a comfort. You would not let her
transgress, and ruin her sister’s good bicycle.”
“She is an uncommonly pretty little sprite, and the selfish hag of a
sister only left orders that I was to take care of the bike! I could see
where there was a stone as well as anybody else.”
“Hag!” angrily cried Mysie, “she is the only nice one of the whole lot.
Vera is a nasty little thing, or she would never think of meddling with
what does not belong to her, or trying to persuade you to allow it.”
“I call it abominable selfishness, dog in the mangerish, to shut up such
a machine as that, and condemn her sisters to one great lumbering one.”
“That’s one account,” said Valetta. “Paula said it was only till they
had learnt to ride properly, and till the stones have a little worn in.”
“Yes,” said Mysie, “I could see Vera is an exaggerating monkey, just
talking over and deluding Will, just as men like when they get a silly
fit.”
By this time Wilfred had thought it expedient to put his bicycle to
greater speed, and indulge in a long whistle to show how contemptible he
thought his sisters as he went out of hearing.
“Paulina is nice and good,” said Valetta, “she has heard all about St.
Kenelm’s, and wants to go there. Yes, and she means to be a Sister of
Charity, only she is afraid her sister is narrow and low church.”
“That is stuff and nonsense,” said Mysie. “I have had a great deal of
talk with Miss Prescott. She loves all the same books that we do. She
is going to have G. F. S. and Mothers’ Union, and all at poor Arnscombe,
and she told me to call her Magdalen.”
With which proofs of congeniality Valetta could not choose but be
impressed.