ALL ABOUT THE FAMILY.
Dr. Maybright had eight children, and the sweetest and most attractive
wife of any man in the neighborhood. He had a considerable country
practice, was popular among his patients, and he and his were adored by
the villagers, for the Maybrights had lived in the neighborhood of the
little village of Tyrsley Dale for many generations. Dr. Maybright's
father had ministered to the temporal wants of the fathers and mothers
of these very same villagers; and his father before him had also been in
the profession, and had done his best for the inhabitants of Tyrsley
Dale. It was little wonder, therefore, that the simple folks who lived
in the little antiquated village on the borders of one of our great
southern moors should have thought that to the Maybrights alone of the
whole race of mankind had been given the art of healing.
For three or four generations the Maybright family had lived at Sleepy
Hollow, which was the name of the square gray house, with its large
vegetable garden, its sheltered clump of forest trees, and its
cultivated flower and pleasure grounds. Here, in the old nursery, Polly
had first opened her bright blue-black eyes; in this house Dr.
Maybright's eight children had lived happily, and enjoyed all the
sunshine of the happiest of happy childhoods to the full. They were all
high-spirited and fearless; each child had a certain amount of
individuality. Perhaps Polly was the naughtiest and the most peculiar;
but her little spurt of insubordination speedily came to nothing, for
mother, without ever being angry, or ever saying anything that could
hurt Polly's sensitive feelings, had always, with firm and gentle hand,
put an extinguisher on them.
Mother was really, then, the life of the house. She was young to have
such tall slips of daughters, and such little wild pickles of sons; and
she was so pretty and so merry, and in such ecstasies over a picnic, and
so childishly exultant when Helen, or Polly, or Katie, won a prize or
did anything the least bit extraordinary, that she was voted the best
playfellow in the world.
Mother was never idle, and yet she was always at leisure, and so she
managed to obtain the confidences of all the children; she thoroughly
understood each individual character, and she led her small brood with
silken reins.
Dr. Maybright was a great deal older than his wife. He was a tall man,
still very erect in his figure, with square shoulders, and a keen,
bright, kindly face. He had a large practice, extending over many miles,
and although he had not the experience which life in a city would have
given him, he was a very clever physician, and many of his brothers in
the profession prophesied eminence for him whenever he chose to come
forward and take it. Dr. Maybright was often absent from home all day
long, sometimes also in the dead of night the children heard his
carriage wheels as they bowled away on some errand of mercy. Polly
always thought of her father as a sort of angel of healing, who came
here, there, and everywhere, and took illness and death away with him.
"Father won't let Josie Wilson die," Polly used to say; or, "What bad
toothache Peter Simpkins has to-day--but when father sees him he will
be all right."
Polly had a great reverence for her father, although she loved her
beautiful young mother best. The children never expected Dr. Maybright
to join in their games, or to be sympathetic over their joys or their
woes. They reverenced him much, they loved him well, but he was too busy
and too great to be troubled by their little concerns. Of course, mother
was different, for mother was part and parcel of their lives.
There were six tall, slim, rather straggling-looking Maybright
girls--all overgrown, and long of limb, and short of frock. Then there
came two podgy boys, greater pickles than the girls, more hopelessly
disreputable, more defiant of all authority, except mother's. Polly was
as bad as her brothers in this respect, but the other five girls were
docility itself compared to these black lambs, whose proper names were
Charley and John, but who never had been called anything, and never
would be called anything in that select circle, but Bunny and Bob.
This was the family; the more refined neighbors rather dreaded them, and
even the villagers spoke of most of them as "wondrous rampageous!" But
Mrs. Maybright always smiled when unfriendly comments reached her ears.
"Wait and see," she would say; "just quietly wait and see--they are
all, every one of them, the sweetest and most healthy-minded children in
the world. Let them alone, and don't interfere with them. I should not
like perfection, it would have nothing to grow to."
Mrs. Maybright taught the girls herself, and the boys had a rather
frightened-looking nursery-governess, who often was seen to rush from
the school-room dissolved in tears; but was generally overtaken half-way
up the avenue by two small figures, nearly throttled by two pairs of
repentant little arms, while eager lips vowed, declared, and
vociferated, that they would never, never be naughty again--that they
would never tease their own sweet, sweetest of Miss Wilsons any more.
Nor did they--until the next time.
Polly was fourteen on that hot July afternoon when she lay on the grass
and skillfully captured the living thrushes, and held them to her
smooth, glowing young cheeks. Her birthday had been over for a whole
fortnight; it had been a day full of delight, love, and happiness, and
mother had said a word or two to the exultant, radiant child at the
close. Something about her putting away some of the childish things, and
taking up the gentler and nobler ways of first young girlhood now. She
thought in an almost undefined way of mother's words as she held the
fluttering thrushes to her lips and kissed their downy breasts. Then had
come the unlooked-for interruption. Polly's life seemed cloudless, and
all of a sudden there appeared a speck in the firmament--a little cloud
which grew rapidly, until the whole heavens were covered with it. Mother
had gone away for ever, and there were now nine children in the old gray
house.