Out in the Forty-Five / Duncan Keith's Vow

Emily Sarah Holt

"Out in the Forty-Five"

Chapter One.

We alight at Brocklebank Fells.

“Sure, there is room within our hearts good store;
For we can lodge transgressions by the score:
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
We leave Thee.”
George Herbert.

“Girls!” said my Aunt Kezia, looking round at us, “I should just like to know what is to come of the whole four of you!”

My Aunt Kezia has an awful way of looking round at us. She begins with Sophy—she is our eldest—then she goes to Fanny, then to Hatty, and ends up with me. As I am the youngest, I have to be ended up with. She generally lays down her work to do it, too; and sometimes she settles her spectacles first, and that makes it feel more awful than ever. However, when she has gone round, she always takes them off—spectacles, I mean—and wipes them, and gives little solemn shakes of her head while she is doing it, as if she thought we were all four going to ruin together, and had got very near the bottom.

This afternoon, when she said that, instead of sitting quiet, as we generally do, Hatty—she is the pert one amongst us—actually spoke up.

“I should think we shall be married, Aunt Kezia, one of these days—shan’t we?”

“My dear, if you are,” was my Aunt Kezia’s reply, more solemn than ever, “the only wedding present that I shall be conscientiously able to give to those four misguided men will be a rope a-piece to hang themselves with.”

“Oh dear! I do wish she would not!” said Fanny in a plaintive whisper behind me.

“Considering who brought us up, Aunt Kezia,” replied impertinent Hatty, “I should have thought they would have had better bargains than that.”

“Hester, you forget yourself,” said my aunt severely. Then, though she had only just finished wiping her spectacles, she took them off, and wiped them again, with more little shakes of her head. “And I did not bring you all up, neither.”

My cheeks grew hot, for I knew that meant me. My Aunt Kezia did not bring me up, as she did the rest. I was thought sickly in my youth, and as Brocklebank Fells is but a bleak place, I was packed off to Carlisle, where Grandmamma lived, and there I have been with her until six weeks back, when she went to live with Uncle Charles down in the South, and I came home to Brocklebank, being thought to have now outgrown my sickliness. My Aunt Kezia is Father’s sister, and has kept house for him since Mamma died, so of course she is no kin to Grandmamma at all. I know it sounds queer to say “Father and Mamma,” instead of “Father and Mother,” but I cannot help it. Grandmamma would never let me say “Mother;” she said it was old-fashioned and vulgar: and now, when I come back, Father will not hear of my calling him “Papa,” which he says is new-fangled finnicking nonsense. I did not get used, either, to saying “Papa,” as I did “Mamma,” for Grandmamma never seemed to care to hear about him; I don’t believe she liked him. She never seemed to want to hear about anything at Brocklebank. I don’t think she ever took even to the girls, except Fanny. They all came to see me in turns, but Grandmamma said Sophy was only fit to be a country parson’s wife; she knew nothing except things about the house and sewing and mending: she said fine breeding would be thrown away upon her. She might do very well, Grandmamma said, with her snuff-box elegantly held in her left hand, and taking a pinch out of it with the mittened fingers of her right—that is, Grandmamma, not Sophy—she said Sophy might do very well for a country squire’s eldest daughter and some parson’s wife, to cut out clothes and roll pills and make dumplings, but that was all she was good for. Then Hatty’s pert speeches she could not bear one bit. Grandmamma said it was perfectly dreadful, and that her great glazed red cheeks—that is what she called them—were insufferably vulgar; she wouldn’t like anybody to hear that such a creature was her grand-daughter. She wanted Hatty to take a lot of castor oil or some such horrid stuff, to bring down her red cheeks and make her slender and ladylike; she was ever so much too fat, Grandmamma said, and she thought it so vulgar to be fat. She wanted to pinch her in with stays, too, but it was all of no use. Hatty would not be pinched, and she would not take castor oil, and she would eat and drink—like a plough-boy, Grandmamma said—so at last she gave her up as a bad job. Then Fanny came, and she is more like Grandmamma in her ways, and she did not mind the castor oil, but swallowed bottles of it; and she did not mind the stays, but let Grandmamma pinch her anyhow she pleased, so I think she rather liked Fanny. I was pale and thin enough without castor oil, so she did not give me any, for which I am thankful, for I could not have swallowed it as meekly as Fanny.

It looked very queer to me, after Grandmamma’s houseful of servants, to come home and find only four at Brocklebank, and but three of those in the house, and my Aunt Kezia doing half the work herself, and expecting us girls to help her. Grandmamma would hardly let me pick up my kerchief, if I dropped it; I had to call Willet, her woman, to give it to me. And here, my Aunt Kezia looks as if she thought I ought to want no telling how to dust a table or make an apple pie. She has only cook-maid and chambermaid,—Maria and Bessy, their names are,—and Sam the serving-man. There is the old shepherd, Will, but he only comes into the house by nows and thens. Grandmamma had a black man who waited on us. She said it gave the place an air, and that there were gentlewomen in Carlisle who would scarce have come to see her if she had not had a black man to look genteel. I don’t fancy I should care much for people who would not come to see me unless I had a black servant. I should think they came to visit him, not me. But Grandmamma said that my old Lady Mary Garsington, in the Close, never came to see anybody who had less than a thousand a year, and did not keep a black. She was the grandest person Grandmamma knew at Carlisle, for most of her friends live in the South.

I do not know exactly where the South is, nor what it is like. Of course London is in the South; I know that. But Grandmamma used to talk about the South as if she thought it so fine; and my Uncle Charles once said nobody could be a gentleman who had not lived in the South. They were all clodhoppers up here, he said, and you could only get any proper polish in the South. Fanny was there then, and she was quite hurt with it. She did not like to think Father a clodhopper; and I am sure he is not. Besides, our ancestors did come from the South. Our grandfather, William Courtenay, who bought the land and built Brocklebank, belonged (Note 1.) Wiltshire, and his father was a Devonshire man, and a Courtenay of Powderham, whatever that may mean: Father knows more about it than I do, and so, I think, does Fanny. Grandmamma once told me she would never have thought of allowing Mamma to marry Father, if he had not been a Courtenay and a man of substance. She said all his other relations were so very mean and low, she could not have condescended so far as to connect herself with them. Why, I believe one of them was only a farmer’s daughter: and I think, from what I have heard Grandmamma and my Uncle Charles say, that another of them had something to do with those low people called Dissenters. I don’t suppose she really was one—that would be too shocking; but Grandmamma always went into the clouds when she mentioned these vulgar ancestors of mine, so I never heard more than “that poor wretched mother of your grandfather’s, my dear,” or “that dreadful farming creature whom your grandfather married.” I once asked my Aunt Dorothea—that is, Uncle Charles’s wife—if this wretched great-grandmother of mine had been a very bad woman. But she said, “Oh no, not bad”—and I think she might have told me something more, but my Uncle Charles put in, in that commanding way he has, “Could not have been worse, my dear Dorothea—connected with those Dissenters,”—so I got to know no more, and I was sorry.

Father once had two more sisters, who were both married, one in Derbyshire, and one in Scotland. They both left children, so we have two lots of cousins on Father’s side. Our cousins in Derbyshire are both girls; their names are Charlotte and Amelia Bracewell: and there are two of our Scotch cousins, but they are a boy and a girl, and they have queer Scotch names, Angus and Flora Drummond. At least, they were boy and girl, I suppose; for Angus Drummond must be over twenty now, and Flora is not far off it. It is more than ten years since we saw the Drummonds, but the Bracewells have been to visit us several times. Amelia Bracewell is Fanny made hotter, or Fanny is Amelia and water—which you like. She makes me laugh, and my Aunt Kezia sniff. The other day, my Aunt Kezia came into the room while we were talking about Amelia, and she heard Fanny say,—

“She is so full of sympathy. She always comes and wants you to sympathise with her. She just lives upon sympathy.”

“So full of sympathy!” said my Aunt Kezia, turning round on Fanny. “So empty, child, you mean. What poor weak thing are you talking about?”

“Cousin Amelia Bracewell,” answered Fanny. “She is such a charming creature. Don’t you think so, Aunt Kezia? Such a dear sympathetic darling!”

“It is well you told me whom you meant, Fanny,” said my Aunt Kezia, pursing up her lips. “I should never have guessed you meant Amelia Bracewell, from what you said. Well, how differently two people can see the same thing, to be sure!”

“Don’t you like her, Aunt Kezia?” returned Fanny in an astonished tone.

“If I am to speak the full truth, my dear,” said my Aunt Kezia, “I am afraid I come as near to despising her as a Christian woman and a communicant has any business to do. I never had any fancy for birds of prey.”

“Birds of prey!” exclaimed Fanny, blankly.

“Birds of prey,” repeated my aunt in a very different tone. “She is one of those folks who are for ever drawing twopenny cheques upon your feelings, and there are no funds in my bank to meet them. I can stand a bucketful of feeling drawn out of me, but I hate to let it waste away in a drop here and a driblet there about nothing at all. Now I will just tell you, girls—I once went to see a woman who had lost fifteen hundred a year, all at a blow, without a bit of warning. What she had to say was—‘The Lord has taken it, and He knows best. I can trust Him to care for me.’ Well, about a week afterwards, I had a visit from another woman, who had let a pan boil over, and had spoilt a lot of jam. She wanted me to say she was the most tried creature since Adam. And I could not, girls—I really could not. I have not the slightest doubt there have been a million women worse tried since the battle of Prague, never mention Adam. As to Amelia Bracewell, who carries her fan as if it were a sceptre, and slurs her r’s like a Londoner, silly chit! I have hardly any patience with her. Charlotte’s bad enough, but Amelia! My word, she takes some standing, I can tell you!”

Now, I always admired the way Amelia sounds her r’s, or, I suppose I ought to say, the way she does not sound them. It is so soft and pretty. Then she writes poetry,—all about the blue sea and the silver moon, or else the gleaming sunbeams and the hoary hills—so grand! I never read anything so beautiful as Amelia’s poetry. She told me once that a gentleman from London, who was fourth cousin to a peer of some sort, had told her she wrote as well as Mr Pope. Only think!

Charlotte is as different as she can be. Her notion of things is to go down to the stable and saddle her own horse, and scamper all over the country, all by herself. Father says she is a fine girl, but she will break her neck some day. My Aunt Kezia says, Saint Paul told women to be keepers at home, and she thinks that page must have dropped out of Charlotte’s Bible. She does some other things, too, that I do not fancy she would care for my Aunt Kezia to hear. She calls her father “the old gentleman,” and sometimes “the old boy.” I do not know what my Aunt Kezia would say, if she did hear it.

I wonder what Flora Drummond is like now. I used to think she had not much in her. Perhaps it was only that she did not let it come out. However, I shall have a chance of finding out soon; for she and Angus are coming to stay with us, on his way to York, where his father is sending him on some kind of business. I do not know what it is, and I don’t care. Business is always dry, uninteresting stuff. Flora will stay with us while Angus goes on to York, and then he will pick her up again as he comes back. I wish the Bracewells might be here at the same time. I should like Flora and Amelia to know one another, and I do not think they do at all.

It is shocking dull here at Brocklebank. I dare say I feel it more than my sisters, having lived in Carlisle all my life, so to speak: and as to my Aunt Kezia, I do believe, if she had her garden, and orchard, and kitchen, and dairy, and her work-box, and a Bible, and Prayer-book, and The Compleat Gentlewoman, she would be satisfied to live at the North Pole or anywhere. But I am perfectly delighted when anybody comes to see us, if ’tis only Ephraim Hebblethwaite. He is the son of Farmer Hebblethwaite, lower down the valley, and I believe he admires Fanny. Fanny cannot bear him; she says he has such an ugly name. But I think he is very pleasant, and I suppose he could change his name, though I can’t see why it signifies. Beside him, and Ambrose Catterall, and Esther Langridge, we know no young people except our cousins. Father being Squire of Brocklebank, we cannot mix with the common folks.

Old Mr Digby is the Vicar, and I do not think he is far short of a hundred years old. He is an old bachelor, and has nobody to keep his house but our Sam’s mother, a Scotchwoman—old Elspie they call her. He does not often preach of late years—except on Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and such high days. A pleasant old man he used to be, but he grows forgetful now, for the last time we met him, he patted my head just as if I were still a little child, and I shall be seventeen in March. He has been Vicar over sixty years, and christened Father and married my grand-parents.

I do wish we had just a few more friends. It really is too bad, for we might have known the family at Seven Stones, only two miles off, if they had not been Whigs, and there are five sons and four daughters there. Father would no more think of shaking hands with a Whig (if he knew it) than he would eat roast beef on Good Friday. I should not care. Why should one not have some fun, because old Mr Outhwaite is a Whig?

I shall have to keep my book locked up if I tell it all I think, as I have been doing now. I would not have Hatty get hold of it for all the world. And as to my Aunt Kezia—I believe she would whip me and send me to bed if she read only the last page.

Here comes Ambrose Catterall up the walk, and I must go down, though I do not expect there will be any fun. He will stay supper, I dare say, and then he and Father will have a game of whist with Sophy and Fanny, and I shall sit by with my sewing, and Hatty will knit and whisper into my ear things that I want to laugh at and dare not. If I did, Father would look up over his cards with a black brow and say “Silence!” in such a tone that I shall wish I was somebody else. Who I don’t know—only not Caroline Courtenay.

Father does not like our names—at least mine and Sophy’s. Mamma named us, and he says we have both fine romantic silly names. Hatty was called after his mother, and that he likes; and Fanny is after a sister of Mamma’s who died young. But Father never gives over growling because one of us was not a boy.

“Four girls!” he says: “four girls, and never a lad! Who on earth wants four girls? I’ll sell one or two of you cheap, if I can find him.”

But I don’t think he would, if it came to the point. I know, for all his queer speeches sometimes, he is proud of Fanny’s good looks, and Sophy’s good housekeeping, and even Hatty’s pert sayings. I know by the way he chuckles now and then when she says anything particularly smart. I don’t know what he is proud of in me, unless it is my manners. Of course, having lived in Carlisle with Grandmamma, I have the best manners of any. And I speak the best, I know. Sophy talks shockingly broad; she says, “Aw wanted him to coom, boot he would not.” Fanny has found that will not do, so she tries to imitate my Aunt Dorothea and Amelia Bracewell, but she goes on the other side of her pattern, and does not sound the u full where she ought to do it, but says, “The basin is fell of shegar.” Hatty laughs at them both, and lets her u go where it likes, but she is not so bad as Sophy.

I think I shall try and put the notion into my Aunt Kezia’s head to have the Bracewells here for Christmas. I know Angus and Flora will be here then, and later. That would make a decent party, if we got Ephraim Hebblethwaite, and Ambrose Catterall too.

After all, I went on writing so late, that I only got down-stairs in time to see Ambrose Catterall’s back as he went down the drive. He could not stay for some reason—I did not hear what. Father growled as he heard him go off, singing, down the walk.

“Where on earth did the fellow get hold of that piece of whiggery?” said he. “Just listen to him!”

I listened, and heard the refrain of the Whigs’ favourite song,—

“Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us—”

“Disgusting stuff!” said Father, with some stronger words which I know my Aunt Kezia would not let me put down if she were looking. “Where did the fellow get hold of it? His father is a decent Tory enough. What is he at now? Listen, girls.”

Ambrose’s tune had changed to,—

“King George he was born in the month of October,—
’Tis a sin for a subject that month to be sober!”

“I’ll forbid him my house!” cries Father, starting up. “I’ll send a bullet through his head! I’ll October him, and sober him too, if he has not a care! Fan! Where’s Fan? Go to the spinnet, girl, and sing me a right good Tory song, to take the taste of that abominable stuff out of my mouth.”

“Nay, Brother,” saith my Aunt Kezia, who was pinning a piece of work on the table, “surely a man may use respect to the powers that be, though they be not the powers he might wish to be?”

“‘Powers that be!’” saith Father. “Powers that shouldn’t be, you mean. I’ll tell you what, Kezia,—you may have been bred a Tory, but you were born a Puritan. Whereon earth you got it—! As for that fellow, I’ll forbid him my house. ‘King George,’ forsooth! Let me hear one of you call the Elector of Hanover by that name, and I’ll—I’ll—. Come along, Fan, and give me a Tory song.”

So Fanny sat down to the spinnet, and played the new song that all the Tories are so fond of. How often she made Britain arise from out the azure waves, I am sure I don’t know, but she, and Father with her, sang it so many times that all that day I had “Britons never shall be slaves!” ringing in my ears till I heartily wished they would be slaves and have done with it.

At night, when we were going to bed, after Father had blessed us, Hatty runs round to his back and whispers in his ear.

“Don’t send Ambrose Catterall away, there’s a good Father!” says she: “there will be two of us old maids as it is.”

Father laughed, and pinched Hatty’s ear. So I saw my gentlewoman had been thinking the same thing I had. But I don’t think she ought to have said it out.

Stay, now! Why should it be worse to say things than to think them? Is it as bad to think them as to say them? Oh dear! but if one were for ever sifting one’s thoughts in that way,—why, it would be just dreadful! Not many people are careful about their words, but one’s thoughts!

No, I don’t think I could do it, really. I suppose my Aunt Kezia would say I ought. I do so dislike my Aunt Kezia’s oughts. She always thinks you ought to do just what you do not want. If only people would say, now and then, that you ought to eat plum-pudding, or you ought to dance, or you ought to wear jewels! But no! it is always you ought to sew, or you ought to carry some broken victuals to old Goody Branscombe, or you ought to be as sweet as a rosebud when Hatty says things at you.

Stop! would it be so if I always wanted to do the things I ought? I suppose not. Then why don’t I?

But why ought I? There’s another question.

I wish we either wanted to do what we ought, or else that we ought to do what we want!

I was obliged to stop last night all at once, because I heard Hatty coming up the garret stairs. I always write in the garret and keep my book there, so that none of the girls shall get hold of it—Hatty particularly. She would make such shocking game of it. I had only just put my book away safely when in she came.

“What on earth are you doing up here?” cried she.

“What are you doing?” said I.

“Looking for you,” she says.

“Then why should not I be looking for you?” said I.

“Because you weren’t, Miss Caroline Courtenay!” and she makes a swimming courtesy. “Oh yes, you don’t need to tell me you have a secret, my young gentlewoman. I know as well as if I had seen it. O Pussy, have you come too? Do you know what it is, Pussy? Does she come up here to read her love-letters—does she? Oh, how charming! Wouldn’t I like to see them! How does she get them, Pussy? She has been rather fond of going to see Elspie this past week or two; is that it, Pussy? Won’t you tell me, my pretty, pretty cat?”

“Hatty, don’t be so absurd!” cried I.

“We know, don’t we, Pussy?” says Hatty in a provoking whisper to the cat in her arms. “I thought there would be somebody at Carlisle that she would be sorry to leave—didn’t you, Pussy-cat? What is he like, Pussy? Tall and dark, I’ll wager, with a pair of handsome mustachios, and the most beautiful black eyes you ever saw! Won’t that be about it, Pussy?”

I could have thrown the cat at her. How could any mortal creature be sweet, or keep quiet, talked to in that way? I flew out.

“Hatty, you are the most vexatious tease that ever lived! Do, for pity’s sake, go down and let me alone. You know perfectly well it is all stuff and nonsense!”

“Oh, how angry she is, my pretty pussy!” says Hatty, hiding her laughing face behind the cat. “It was all nonsense, you know; but really, when she gets into such a tantrum, I begin to think I must have hit the white. What do you say, Pussy?”

I stamped on the garret floor.

“Hatty, will you take that hideous cat down and be quiet?” cried I.

“Dear, dear! To think of her calling you a hideous cat! Doesn’t that show how angry she is? People should not get angry—should they, Pussy? She will box our ears next. I really think we had better go, my darling tabby.”

So off went Hatty with the cat in her arms, but as she was going down the stairs, she said, I am sure for me to hear,—

“We will come some other time, won’t we, Pussy? when the dragon is out of her den: and we will have a quiet rummage, you and I; and we’ll find her love-letters!”

Now is not that too bad? What is one to do? Job could not have kept his temper if he had lived with Hatty. I wish she would get married—I do! Fanny never interferes with any one—she just goes her way and lets you go yours. And when Sophy interferes, it is only because something is left untidy, or you have not done something you promised to do. She does not tease for teasing’s sake, like Hatty.

And then, when I came down, after having composed my face, and passed Hatty on my way into the parlour, what should she say but,—

“Didn’t you wish I was in Heaven just now?”

“I should not have cared where you were, if you had kept out of the garret!” said I.

Hatty gave one of her odious giggles, and away she went.

Now, how can I live at peace with Hatty, will anybody tell me?

I am so delighted! My Aunt Kezia has come into my plan for having the Bracewells here at Christmas, along with the Drummonds.

“It might be as well,” said she, “if we could do some good to that poor frivolous thing Amelia; but don’t you get too much taken up with her, Caroline, my dear. She is a silly maid at best.”

“Oh, Amelia is Fanny’s friend, not mine, Aunt Kezia,” said I. “And Charlotte is Sophy’s.”

“And is Flora to be yours?” said Aunt Kezia.

“I have not made one yet,” I answered. “I do not know what Flora is like.”

“As well to wait and see, trow,” says my Aunt Kezia.

Sam was bringing in breakfast while this was said; and as soon as he had set down the cold beef he turned to my Aunt Kezia and said,—

“Then she’s just a braw lassie, Miss Flora, nae mair and nae less; and she’ll bring ye a’ mickle gude, and nae harm.”

“Why, how do you know, Sam?” asked my Aunt Kezia.

“Hoots! my mither’s sister’s daughter was her nurse,” said he. “Helen Raeburn they ca’ her, and her man’s ane o’ the Macdonalds. Trust me, but I ha’e heard monie a tale o’ thae Drummonds,—their faither and mither and their gudesire and minnie an’ a’.”

“What is Angus like, Sam?” said I.

“Atweel, he’s a bonnie laddie; but no just—”

Sam stopped short and pulled a face.

“Not just what?” says my Aunt Kezia.

“Ye’ll be best to find oot for yersel, Mrs Kezia, I’m thinkin’.”

And off trudged Sam after jelly, and we got no more out of him.

I wonder where the living creature is that could stand Hatty! There was I at work this morning in the parlour, when in she came—there were Sophy and Fanny too—holding up something above her head.

“‘Busk ye, busk ye, my bonnie, bonnie bride!’” sang Hatty. “Look what I’ve found, just now, in the garret! Oh yes, Miss Caroline, you can look too.”

“Hatty, if you don’t give me that book this minute—!” cried I. “I did think I had hidden it out of search of your prying fingers.”

“Dear, yes, and of my bright eyes, I feel no doubt,” laughed Hatty. “You are not quite so clever as you fancy, Miss Caroline. Carlisle is a charming city, but it does not hold all the brains in the world.”

“What is it, Hatty?” said Sophy. “Don’t tease the child.”

“Wait a little, Miss Sophia, if you please. This is a most interesting and savoury volume, wherein Miss Caroline Courtenay sets down her convictions on all manner of subjects in general, and her unfortunate sisters in particular. I find—”

“Hatty, do be reasonable, and give the child her book,” said Fanny. “It is a shame!”

“Oh, you keep one too, do you, Miss Frances?” laughed Hatty. “I had my suspicions, I will own.”

“What do you mean?” said Fanny, flushing.

“Only that the rims of your pearly ears would not be quite so ruddy, my charmer, if you were not in like case. Well, I find from this book that we are none of us perfect, but so far as I can gather, Fanny comes nearest the angelic world of any of us. As to—”

“Hatty, you ought to be ashamed of yourself if you have been so dishonourable as to read what was not meant for any one to see.”

“My beloved Sophy, don’t halloo till you are out of the wood. And you are not out, by any means. You are vulgar and ill-bred, my dear; you say ‘coom’ and ‘boot,’ and you are only fit to marry a country curate, and cut out shirts and roll pills.”

“I say what?” asked Sophy, disregarding the other particulars.

“You say ‘coom’ and ‘boot,’ my darling, and it ought to be ‘kem’ and ‘bet’,” said Hatty, with such an affected pronunciation that Sophy and Fanny both burst out laughing.

“What do you mean?” said Sophy amid her laughter.

“Then—Fanny, my dear, you are not to escape! You are better bred than Sophy, because you take castor oil—”

“Hatty, what nonsense you are talking!” I cried, unable to endure any longer. But Hatty went on, taking no notice.

“But you drop your r’s, deah, and say deah Caroline,—(can’t manage it right, my dear!)—and you are slow and affected.”

“Hatty, you know I never said so!” I screamed.

“Then as to me,” pursued Hatty, casting her eyes up to the ceiling, “as to poor me, I am—well, not one of the angels, on any consideration. I tease my sweetest sister in the most cruel manner—”

“Well, that is true, Hatty, if nothing else is,” said Fanny.

“I have ‘horrid glazed red cheeks,’ and I eat like a plough-boy; and I don’t take castor oil. Castor oil is evidently one of the Christian graces.”

“How can you be so ridiculous!” said Sophy. “See, you have made the poor child cry.”

“With passion, my dear, which is a very wicked thing, as I am sure my Aunt Kezia would tell her. A little castor oil would—”

“What is that about your Aunt Kezia?” came in another voice from the doorway.

Oh, I was so glad to see her!

“Hoity-toity! why, what is all this, girls?” said she, severely. “Hester, what are you doing? What is Cary crying for?”

“Hatty is teasing her, Aunt,” said Fanny. “She is always doing it, I think.”

“Give me that book, Hester,” said my Aunt Kezia; and Hatty passed it to her without a word. “Now, whom does this book belong?”

“It is mine, Aunt Kezia,” I said, as well as my sobs would let me; “and Hatty has found it, and she is teasing me dreadfully about it.”

“What is it, my dear?” said my Aunt Kezia.

“It is my diary, Aunt Kezia; and I did not want Hatty to get hold of it.”

“She says such things, Aunt Kezia, you can’t imagine, about you and all of us.”

“I am sure I never said anything about you, Aunt Kezia,” I sobbed.

“If you did, my dear, I dare say it was nothing worse than all of you have thought in turn,” saith my Aunt Kezia, drily. “Hester, you will go to bed as soon as the dark comes. Take your book, Cary; and remember, my dear, whenever you write in it again, that God is looking at every word you write.”

Hatty made a horrid face at me behind my Aunt Kezia’s back; but I don’t believe she really cared anything about it. She went to bed, of course; and it is dark now by half-past five. But she was not a bit daunted, for I heard her singing as she lay in bed, “Fair Rosalind, in woful wise,” (Note 2.) and afterwards, “I ha’e nae kith, I ha’e nae kin.” (Note 3.) If Father had heard that last, my Aunt Kezia would have had to forgive her and let her off the rest of her sentence.

I have found a new hiding-place for my book, where I do not think Hatty will find it in a hurry. But when I sit down to write now, my Aunt Kezia’s words come back to me with an awful sound. “God is looking at every word you write!” I suppose it is so: but somehow I never rightly took it in before. I hardly think I should have written some words if I had. Was that what my Aunt Kezia meant?

Note 1. This and similar expressions are Northern provincialisms.

Note 2.

“Fair Rosalind, in woful wise,
Six hearts has bound in thrall;
As yet she undetermined lies
Which she her spouse shall call.”

Note 3. Perhaps the most plaintive and poetical of all the popular Jacobite ballads.

Chapter Two.

Tawny Eyes.

“She has two eyes so soft and brown,
Take care!
She gives a side-glance and looks down,—
Beware! Beware!
Trust her not,
She is fooling thee!”
Longfellow.

Here they all are at last, and the house is as full as it will hold. The Bracewells came first in their great family coach and four—Charlotte and Amelia and a young friend whom they had with them. Her name is Cecilia Osborne, and she is such a genteel-looking girl! She moves about, not languidly like Amelia, but in such a graceful, airy way as I never saw. She has dark hair, nearly black, and brown eyes with a sort of tawny light in them,—large eyes which gleam out on you just when you are not expecting it, for she generally looks down. Amelia appears more listless and affected than ever by the side of her, and Charlotte’s hoydenish romping seems worse and more vulgar.

The Drummonds did not come for nearly a week afterwards. I was rather afraid what Cecilia would think of them for I expected they would talk Scotch—I know Angus used to do—and Cecilia is from the South, and I thought she would be quite shocked. But I find they talk just as we do, only with a little Scots accent, as if they were walking over sandhills in their throats—as least that is how it sounds to me. Flora has rather more of it than Angus, but then her voice is so clear and soft that it sounds almost pretty. A young gentleman came with them, named Duncan Keith, who was going with Angus about that business he has to do. They only stayed one night, didn’t (Note 4.) Mr Keith and Angus, and then went on about their business; but Father was so pleased with Mr Keith, that he invited him to come back when Angus does, which will be in about three weeks or a month. So here we are, eight girls instead of four, with never a young man among us. Father says, when Angus and Mr Keith come back, we will have Ephraim Hebblethwaite and Ambrose Catterall to spend the evening, and perhaps Esther Langridge too. I don’t feel quite sure that I should like Esther to come. She is not only as bad as Sophy with her “buts” and her “comes” but she does not behave quite genteelly in some other ways: and I don’t want Cecilia Osborne to fancy that we are a set of vulgar creatures who do not know how to behave. I don’t care half so much what Flora thinks.

Cecilia has not been here a fortnight, and yet I keep catching myself wondering what she will think about everything. It is not that I have made a friend of her: in fact, I am not sure that I quite like her. She seems to throw a sort of spell over me, does Cecilia, as if I were afraid of her and must obey her. I don’t half like it.

My Aunt Kezia has put us into rooms in pairs, while they are here. In Sophy’s chamber, where I generally sleep, are Sophy and Charlotte. In Fanny’s, which she and Hatty have when we are by ourselves, are Fanny and Amelia. In the green spare chamber are Hatty and Cecilia; and in the blue one, Flora and me. My Aunt Kezia said she thought we should find that the pleasantest arrangement; but I do wish she had given Flora to Hatty, and put Cecilia with me. I am sure I should have understood Cecilia much better than Hatty, who will persist in calling her Cicely, which she says she does not like because it is such a vulgar name—and so common, too. Cecilia says she wishes she had not been called by a name which had a vulgar short one to it: she would like to have been either Camilla or Henrietta. She thinks my name sweetly pretty; but she wonders why we call Hester, Hatty, which she says is quite low and ugly, and hardly, is the proper short for Hester. She says Hatty and Gatty are properly short for Harriet, and Hester should be Essie, which is much prettier. But then we call Esther Langridge, Essie, and we could not do with two Essies. I know Father used to call Mamma, Gatty, but Grandmamma said she always thought it so vulgar.

Grandmamma was always talking about things being vulgar, and so is Cecilia. I notice that some people—for instance, my Aunt Kezia and Flora—never seem to think whether things are vulgar or not. Cecilia says that is because they are so vulgar they don’t know it. I wonder if it be. But Cecilia says—she said I was not to repeat it, though—that my Aunt Kezia and Sophy are below vulgarity. When we were dressing one morning, I asked Flora what she thought. She is as genteel in her manners as Cecilia herself, only in quite a different way. Cecilia behaves as if she wanted you to notice how genteel she is. Flora is just herself: it seems to come natural to her, as if she never thought about it. So I asked Flora what she thought “vulgarity” meant, and if people could be below vulgarity.

“I should not think they could get below it,” said she. “It is easy to get above it, if you only go the right way. How can you get below a thing which is down at the bottom?”

“But how would you do, Flora, not to be vulgar?”

“Learn good manners and then never think about them.”

“But you must keep, up your company manners,” said I.

“Why have any?” said she.

“What, always have one’s company manners on!” cried I, “and be courtesying and bowing to one’s sisters as if they were people one had never seen before?”

“Nay, those are ceremonies, not manners,” said Flora. “By manners, I do not understand ceremonies, but just the way you behave to anybody at any time. It is not a ceremony to set a chair for a lame man, nor to shut a door lest the draught blow on a sick woman. It is not a ceremony to eat with a knife and fork, or to see that somebody else is comfortable before you make yourself so.”

“Why, but that is just kindness!” cried I.

“What are manners but kindness?” said Flora. “Let a maiden only try to be as kind as she can to every creature of God, and she will not find much said in reproof of her manners.”

“Are you always trying to be kind to everybody, Flora?”

“I hope so, Cary,” she said, gravely.

“Flora, have you any friend?” said I. “I mean a particular friend—a girl friend like yourself.”

“Yes,” she said. “My chief friend is Annas Keith.”

“Mr Duncan Keith’s sister?”

“Yes,” said Flora.

“Do tell me what she is like,” said I.

“I am not sure that I could,” said Flora. “And if I did, it would only be like looking at a map. Suppose somebody showed you a map of the British Isles, and put his finger on a little pink spot, and told you that was Selkirk. How much wiser would you be? You could not see the Yarrow and Ettrick, and breathe the caller air and gather the purple heather. And I don’t think describing people is much better than to show places on a map. Such different things strike different people.”

“How?” said I. “I don’t see how they could, in the same face.”

“As we were coming from Carlisle with Uncle Courtenay,” said Flora, smiling, “I asked him to tell me what you were like, Cary.”

“Well, what did Father say?” I said, and I felt very much amused.

“He said, ‘Oh, a girl with a pale face and a lot of light thatch on it, with fine ways that she picked up in Carlisle.’ But when I came to see you, I thought that if I had had to describe you, those were just the things I should not have mentioned.”

“Come, then, describe me, Flora,” said I, laughing. “What do you see?”

“I see two large, earnest-looking blue eyes,” she said, “under a broad white forehead; eyes that look right at you; clear, honest eyes,—not—at least, the sort of eyes I like to look at me. Then I see a small nose—”

“Let my nose alone, please,” said I: “I know it turns up, and I don’t want to hear you say so.”

Flora laughed. “Very well; I will leave your nose alone. Underneath it, I see two small red lips, and a little forward chin; a rather self-willed little chin, if you please, Cary—and a good figure, which has learned to hold itself up and to walk gracefully. Will that do for a description?”

“Yes,” I said, looking in the glass; “I suppose that is me.”

“Is it, Cary? That may be all I see; but is it you? Why, it is only the morocco case that holds you. You are the jewel inside, and what that is, really and fully, I cannot see. God can see it; and you can see some of it. But I can see only what you choose to show me, or, now and then, what you cannot help showing me.”

“Do you know that you are a very queer girl, Flora? Girls don’t talk in that way. Cecilia Osborne told me yesterday she thought you a very curious girl indeed.”

“I think my match might be found,” said Flora, rather drily. “For one thing, Cary, you must remember I have had nothing to do with other girls except Annas Keith. Father and Angus have been my only companions; and a girl who has neither mother nor sisters perhaps gets out of girls’ ways in some respects.”

“But you are not the only ‘womankind,’ as Father calls it, in the house?” said I.

“Oh, no, there is Helen Raeburn,” answered Flora: “but she is an old woman, and she is not in my station. She would not teach me girls’ ways.”

“Then who taught you manners, Flora?”

“Oh, Father saw to all that Helen could not,” she said. “Helen could teach me common decencies, of course; such as not to eat with my fingers, and to shake hands, and so forth: but the little niceties of ladylike behaviour that were beyond her—Father saw to those.”

“Well, I think you have very pleasant manners, Flora. I only wish you were not quite so grave.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Miss Caroline Courtenay,” said Flora, dropping me a courtesy. “I would rather be too grave than too giddy.”

That very afternoon, Cecilia Osborne asked me to walk up the Scar with her. Somehow, when she asks you to do a thing, you feel as if you must do it. I do not like that sort of enchanted feeling at all. However, I fetched my hood and scarf, and away we went. We climbed up the Scar without much talk—in fact, it is rather too steep for that: but when we got to the top, Cecilia proposed to sit down on the bank. It was a beautiful day, and quite warm for the time of the year. So down we sat, and Cecilia pulled her sacque carefully on one side, that it should not get spoiled—she was very charmingly dressed in a sacque of purple lutestring, with such a pretty bonnet, of red velvet with a gold pompoon in front—and then she began to talk, as if she had come for that, and I believe she had. It was not long before I felt pretty sure that she had brought me there to pump me.

“How long have you known Miss Drummond?” she began.

“Well, all my life, in a fashion,” I said; “but it is nearly ten years since we met.”

“Ten years is a good deal of your life, is it not?” said Cecilia, darting at me one of those side-glances from her tawny eyes.

I tried to do it last night, and made my eyes feel so queer that I was not sure they would get right by morning.

“Well, I suppose it is,” said I; “I am not quite seventeen yet.”

“You dear little thing!” said Cecilia, imprisoning my hand. “What is Miss Drummond’s father?”

“A minister,” said I.

“A Scotch Presbyterian, I suppose?” she said, turning up her nose. I did not think she looked any prettier for it.

“Well,” said I, “I suppose he is.”

“And Mr Angus—what do they mean to make of him, do you know?”

“Flora hopes he will be a minister too. His father wishes it; but she is not sure that Angus likes the notion himself.”

“Dear me! I should think not,” said Cecilia, “He is fit for something far better.”

“What can be better?” I answered.

“You have such charming ideas!” replied Cecilia. She put in another word, which I never heard before, and I don’t know what it means. She brought it with her from the South, I suppose. Unso—unsophy—no, unsophisticated—I think that was it. It sounded uncommon long and fine, I know.

“I suppose Scotch ministers have not much money?” continued Cecilia.

“I don’t know—I think not,” I answered. “But I rather fancy my Uncle Drummond has a little of his own.”

Cecilia darted another look at me, and then dropped her eyes as if she were studying the grass.

“And Mr Keith?” she said presently, “is he a relation?”

“I don’t know much about him,” said I, “only what I have heard Flora say. He is no relation of theirs, I believe. I think he is the squire’s son.”

“The squire’s son!” cried Cecilia, in a more interested tone. “And who is the squire?—is he rich?—where is the place?”

“As to who he is,” said I, “he is Mr Keith, I suppose. I don’t know a bit whether he is rich or poor. I forget the name of the place—I think it is Abbotsmuir, or something like that. Either an abbot or a monk has something to do with it.”

“And you don’t know if Mr Keith is a rich man?” said Cecilia, I thought in rather a disappointed tone.

“No, I don’t,” said I. “I can ask Flora, if you want to know.”

“Not for the world!” cried Cecilia, laying her hand again on mine. “Don’t on any account let Miss Drummond know that I asked you such a question. If you like to ask from yourself, you know—well, that is another matter; but not from me, on any consideration.”

“I don’t understand you, Miss Osborne,” said I.

“No, you dear little thing, I believe you don’t understand me,” said Cecilia, kissing me. “What pretty hair you have, and how nice you keep it, to be sure!—so smooth and glossy! Come, had we not better be going down, do you think?”

So down we came, and found dinner ready; and I do not think I ever thought of it again till I was going to bed. Then I said to Flora,—“Do you like Cecilia Osborne?”

“I—think we had better not talk about people, Cary, if you please.”

But there was such a pause where I have drawn that long stroke, that I am sure that was not what she intended to say at first.

“Then you don’t,” said I, making a hit at the truth, and, I think, hitting it in the bull’s eye. “Well, no more do I.”

Flora looked at me, but did not speak. Oh, how different her look is from Cecilia’s sudden flashes!

“She has been trying to pump me, I am sure, about you and Angus, and Mr Keith,” said I; “and I think it is quite as well I knew so little.”

“What about?” said Flora.

“Oh, about money, mostly,” said I. “Whether Uncle had much money, and if Mr Keith was a rich man, and all on like that. I can’t bear girls who are always thinking about money.”

Flora drew a long breath. “That is it, is it?” she said, in a low voice, as she tied her nightcap, but it was rather as if she were speaking to herself than to me. “Cary, perhaps I had better answer you. I am afraid Miss Osborne is a very dangerous girl; and she would be more so than she is if she were a shade more clever, so as to hide her cards a little better. Don’t tell her anything you can help.”

“But what shall I say if she asks me again? because she wanted me not to tell you that she had asked, but to get to know as if I wanted it myself.”

“Tell her to ask me,” said Flora, with more spirit than I had expected from her.

When Cecilia began again (as she did) asking me the same sort of things, I said to her, “Why don’t you ask Cousin Flora instead of me? She knows so much more about it than I do.”

Cecilia put her hands on my shoulders and kissed me.

“Because I like to ask you,” said she, “and I should not like to ask her.”

My Aunt Kezia was just coming into the room.

“Miss Cecilia, my dear,” said she, “do you always think what you like?”

“Of course, Mrs Kezia,” said Cecilia, smiling at her.

“Then you will be a very useless woman,” said my aunt, “and not a very happy one neither.”

“Happy—ah!” said Cecilia, with a long sigh. “This world is not the place to find happiness.”

“No, it isn’t,” said my Aunt Kezia, “for people who spend all their time hunting for it. It is a deal better to let happiness hunt for you. You don’t go the right way to get it, child.”

“I do not, indeed!” answered Cecilia, with a very sorrowful look. “Ah, Mrs Kezia, ‘the heart knoweth his own bitterness.’ That is Scripture, I believe.”

“Yes, it does,” said my aunt, “and it makes a deal of it, too.”

“Oh dear, Mrs Kezia!” cried Cecilia. “How could anybody make unhappiness?”

“If you don’t, you are the first girl I have met of your sort,” saith my Aunt Kezia, turning down the hem of a kerchief. Then, when she came to the end of the hem, she looked up at Cecilia. “My dear, there is a lesson we all have to learn, and the sooner you learn it, the better and happier woman you will be. The end of selfishness is not pleasure, but pain. You don’t think so, do you? Ah, but you will find as you go through life, that always you are not only better, but happier, with God’s blessing on the thing you don’t like, than without it on the thing you do. Ay, it always turns to ashes in your mouth when you will have the quails instead of the manna. I’ve noted many a time—for when I was a girl, and later than that, I was as self-willed as any of you—that sometimes when I have set my heart upon a thing, and would have it, then, if I may speak it with reverence, God has given way to me. Like a father with an obstinate child, He has said to me, as it were, ‘Poor foolish child! You will have this glittering piece of mischief. Well, have your way: and when you have cut yourself badly with it, and are bleeding and smarting as I did not wish to see you, come back to your Father and tell Him all about it, and be healed and comforted.’ Ah dear me, the dullest of us is quite as clever as she need be in making rods for her own back. And then, if our Father keep us from hurting ourselves, and won’t let us have the bright knife to cut our fingers with, how we do mewl and whine, to be sure! We are just a set of silly babes, my dear—the best of us.”

“My Aunt Dorothea once told me,” said I, “that the Papists have what they call ‘exercises of detachment.’ Perhaps you would think them good things, Aunt Kezia. For instance, if an abbess sees a nun who seems to have a fancy for any little thing particularly, she will take it from her and give it to somebody else.”

“Eh, poor foolish things!” said Aunt Kezia. “Bits of children playing with the Father’s tools! They are more like to hurt themselves a deal than to get His work done. Ay, God has His exercises of detachment, and they are far harder than man’s. He knows how to do it. He can lay a finger right on the core of your heart, the very spot where it hurts worst. Men can seldom do that. They would sometimes if they could, I believe; but they cannot, except God guides them to it. Many’s the time I’ve been asked, with a deal of hesitation and apology, to do a thing that did not cost me a farthing’s worth of grief or labour; and as lightly as could be, to do another which would have gone far to break either my back or my heart. Different folks see things in such different ways. I’ll be bound, now, if each of us were asked to pick out for one another the thing in this house that each cared most about, we should well-nigh all of us guess wrong. We know so little of each other’s inmost hearts. That little kingdom, your own heart, is a thing that you must keep to yourself; you can’t let another into it. You can bring him to the gate, and let him peep in, and show him a few of your treasures; but you cannot give him the freedom of the city. Depend upon it, you would think very differently of me from what you do, and I should think differently of each of you, if we could see each other’s inmost hearts.”

“Better or worse, Mrs Kezia?” said Cecilia.

“May be the one, and may be the other, my dear. It would hang a little on the heart you looked at, and a great deal on the one who looked at it. I dare say we should all get one lesson we need badly—we might learn to bear with each other. ’Tis so easy to think, ‘Oh, she cannot understand me! she never had this pain or that sorrow.’ Whereas, if you could see her as she really is, you would find she knew more about it than you did, and understood some other things beside, which were dark riddles to you. That is often a mountain to one which is only a molehill to another. And trouble is as it is taken. If there were no more troubles in this world than what we give each other in pure kindness or in simple ignorance, girls, there would be plenty left.”

“Then you think there were troubles in Eden?” said Cecilia, mischievously.

“I was not there,” said my Aunt Kezia. “After the old serpent came there were troubles enough, I’ll warrant you. If Adam came off scot-free for saying, ‘The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me,’ Eve must have been vastly unlike her daughters.”

I was quite unable to keep from laughing, but Cecilia did not seem to see anything to laugh at. She never does, when people say funny things; and she never says funny things herself. I cannot understand her. She only laughs when she does something; and, nine times out of ten, it is something in which I cannot see anything to laugh at—something which—well, if it were not Cecilia, I should say was rather silly and babyish. I never did see any fun in playing foolish tricks on people, and worrying them in all sorts of ways. Hatty just enjoys it; but I don’t.

However, before anything else was said, Father came in, and a young gentleman with him, whom he introduced as Mr Anthony Parmenter, the Vicar’s nephew (He turned out to be the Vicar’s grand-nephew, which, I suppose, is the same thing.) I am sure he must have come from the South. He did not shake hands, nor profess to do it. He just touched the hand you gave him with the tips of his fingers, and then with his lips, as if you were a china tea-dish that he was terribly frightened of breaking. Cecilia seemed quite used to this sort of thing, but I did not know what he was going to do; and, as for my Aunt Kezia, she just seized his hand, and gave it a good old-fashioned shake, at which he looked very much put out. Then she asked him how the Vicar was, and he did not seem to know; and how long he was going to stay, and he did not know that; and when he came, to which he said Thursday, in a very hesitating way, as if he were not at all sure that it was not Wednesday or Friday. One thing he knew—that it was hawidly cold—there, that is just how he said it. I suppose he meant horribly. My Aunt Kezia gave him up after a while, and went on sewing in silence. Then Cecilia took him up, and they seemed to understand each other exactly. They talked about all sorts of things and people that I never heard of before; and I sat and listened, and so did my Aunt Kezia, only that she put in a word now and then, and I did not.

Before they had been long at it, Fanny and Amelia came in from a walk, in their bonnets and scarves, and Mr Parmenter bowed over their hands in the same curious way that he did before. Amelia took it as she does everything—that is, in a languid, limp sort of way, as if she did not care about anything; but Fanny looked as if she did not know what he was going to do to her, and I saw she was puzzled whether she ought to shake hands or not. Then Fanny went away to take her things off, but Amelia sat down, and pulled off her scarf, and laid it beside her on the sofa, not neatly folded, but all huddled up in a heap, and there it might have stayed till next week if my Aunt Kezia (who hates Amelia’s untidy ways) had not said to her,—

“My dear, had you not better take your things up-stairs?”

Amelia rose with the air of a martyr, threw the scarf on her arm, and carrying her bonnet by one string, went slowly up-stairs. When they came down together, my Aunt Kezia said to Fanny,—

“My dear, you had better take a shorter walk another time.”

“We have not had a long one, Aunt,” said Fanny, looking surprised. “We only went up by the Scar, and back by Ellen Water.”

“I thought you had been much farther than that,” says my Aunt Kezia, in her dry way. “Poor Emily (Note 1.) seemed so tired she could not get up-stairs.”

Fanny stared, and Amelia gave a faint laugh. My Aunt Kezia said no more, but went on running tucks: and Amelia joined in the conversation between Cecilia and Mr Parmenter. I hardly listened, for I was trying the new knitting stitch which Flora taught me, and it is rather a difficult one, so that it took all my mind: but all at once I heard Amelia say,—

“The beauty of self-sacrifice!”

My Aunt Kezia lapped up the petticoat in which she was running the tucks, laid it on her knee, folded her hands on it, and looked full at Amelia.

“Will you please, Miss Emily Bracewell, to tell me what you mean?”

“Mean, Aunt?”

“Yes, my dear, mean.”

“How can the spirit of that sweet poetical creature,” murmured Fanny, behind me, “be made plain to such a mere thing of fact as my Aunt Kezia?”

“Well,” said Amelia, in a rather puzzled tone, “I mean—I mean—the beauty of self-sacrifice. I do not see how else to put it.”

“And what makes it beautiful, think you?” said my Aunt Kezia.

“It is beautiful in itself,” said Amelia. “It is the fairest thing in the moral world. We see it in all the analogies of creation.”

“My dear Emily,” said my Aunt Kezia, “you may have learned Latin and Greek, but I have not. I will trouble you to speak plain, if you please. I am a plain English woman, who knows more about making shirts and salting butter than about moral worlds and the analogies of creation. Please to explain yourself—if you understand what you are talking about. If you don’t, of course I wouldn’t wish it.”

“Well, a comparison, then,” answered Amelia, in a slightly peevish tone.

“That will do,” said my Aunt Kezia. “I know what a comparison is. Well, let us hear it.”

“Do we not see,” continued Amelia, with kindling eyes, “the beauty of self-sacrifice in all things? In the patriot daring death for his country, in the mother careless of herself, that she may save her child, in the physician braving all risks at the bedside of his patient? Nay, even in the lower world, when we mark how the insect dies in laying her eggs, and see the fresh flowers of the spring arise from the ashes of the withered blossoms of autumn, can we doubt the loveliness of self-sacrifice?”

“How beautiful!” murmured Fanny. “Do listen, Cary.”

“I am listening,” I said.

“Charming, Madam!” said Mr Parmenter, stroking his mustachio. “Undoubtedly, all these are lessons to those who have eyes to see.”

I did not quite like the glance which was shot at him just then out of Cecilia’s eyes, nor the look in his which replied. It appeared to me as if those two were only making game of Amelia, and that they understood each other. But almost before I had well seen it, Cecilia’s eyes were dropped, and she looked as demure as possible.

“Some folk’s eyes don’t see things that are there,” saith my Aunt Kezia, “and some folk’s eyes are apt to see things that aren’t. My Bible tells me that God hath made everything beautiful in its season. Not out of its season, you see. Your beautiful self-sacrifice is a means to an end, not the end itself. And if you make the means into the end, you waste your strength and turn your action into nonsense. Take the comparisons Amelia has given us. Your patriot risks death in order to obtain some good for his country; the mother, that she may save the child; the physician, that he may cure his patient. What would be the good of all these sacrifices if nothing were to be got by them? My dears, do let me beg of you not to be caught by claptrap. There’s a deal of it in the world just now. And silly stuff it is, I assure you. Self-sacrifice is as beautiful as you please when it is a man’s duty, and as a means of good; but self-sacrifice for its own sake, and without an object, is not beautiful, but just ridiculous nonsense.”

“Then would you say, Aunt Kezia,” asked Amelia, “that all those grand acts of mortification of the early Christians, or of the old monks, were worthless and ridiculous? They were not designed to attain any object, but just for discipline and obedience.”

“As for the early Christians, poor souls! they had mortifications enough from the heathen around them, without giving themselves trouble to make troubles,” said my Aunt Kezia. “And the old monks, poor misguided dirty things! I hope you don’t admire them. But what do you mean by saying they were not means to an end, but only discipline? If that were so, discipline was the end of them. But, my dear, discipline is a sharp-edged tool which men do well to let alone, except for children. We are prone to make sad blunders when we discipline ourselves. That tool is safer in God’s hands than in ours.”

“But there is so much poetry in mortification!” sighed Amelia.

“I am glad if you can see it,” said my Aunt Kezia. “I can’t. Poetry in cabbage-stalks, eaten with all the mud on, and ditch water scooped up in a dirty pannikin! There would be a deal more poetry in needles and thread, and soap and water. Making verses is all very well in its place; but you try to make a pudding of poetry, and you’ll come badly off for dinner.”

“Dinner!” said Amelia, contemptuously.

“Yes, my dear, dinner. You dine once a day, I believe.”

“Dear, I never care what I eat,” cried Amelia. “The care of the body is entirely beneath those who have learned to prize the superlative value of the mind.”

My Aunt Kezia laughed. “My dear,” said she, “if you were a little older I might reason with you. But you are just at that age when girls take up with every silly notion they come across, and carry it ever so much farther, and just make regular geese of themselves. ’Tis a comfort to hope you will grow out of it. Ten years hence, if we are both alive, I shall find you making pies and cutting out bodices like other sensible women. At least I hope so.”

“Never!” cried Amelia. “I never could demean myself to be just an every-day creature like that!”

“I am sorry for your husband,” said my Aunt Kezia, bluntly, “and still more for yourself. If you set up to be an uncommon woman, the chances are that instead of rising above the common, you will just sink below it, into one of those silly things that spend their time sipping tea and flirting fans, and making men think all women foolish and unstable. And if you do that—well, all I have to say is, may God forgive you!—Cary, I want some jumballs for tea. Just go and see to them.”

So away I went to the kitchen, and heard no more of the talk. But what was I to do? I knew how to eat jumballs very well indeed, but how to make them I knew no more than Mr Parmenter’s eyeglass. She forgets, does my Aunt Kezia, that I have lived all my life in Carlisle, where Grandmamma would as soon have thought of my building a house as making jumballs.

“Maria,” said I, “my Aunt Kezia has sent me to make jumballs, and I don’t know how, not one bit!”

“Don’t you, Miss Cary?” said Maria, laughing: “well, I reckon I do. Half a pound of butter—will you weigh it yourself, Miss?—and the same of white sugar, and a pound of flour, and three ounces of almonds, and three eggs, and a little lemon peel—that’s what you’ll want.” (Note 2.)

We were going about the buttery, as she spoke, gathering up and weighing these things, and putting them together on the kitchen table. Then Maria tied a big apron on me, which she said was Fanny’s, and gave me a little pan in which she bade me melt the butter. Then I had to beat the sugar into it, and then came the hard part—breaking the eggs, for only the yolks were wanted. I spoiled two, and then I said,—

“Maria, do break them for me! I shall never manage this business.”

“Oh yes, you will, Miss Cary, in time,” says she, cheerily. “It comes hard at first, till you’re used to it. Most things does. See now, you pound them almonds—I have blanched ’em—and I’ll put the eggs in.”

So we put in the yolks of eggs, and the almonds, and the flour, and the lemon peel, till it began to smell uncommon good, and then Maria showed me how to make coiled-up snakes of it on the baking-tin, as jumballs always are: and I washed my hands, and took off Fanny’s apron, and went back into the parlour.

I found there all whom I had left, and Hatty and Flora as well. When tea came, and my jumballs with it, my Aunt Kezia says very calmly,—

“Pass me those jumballs, my dear, will you? Amelia won’t want any; she is an uncommon woman, and does not care what she eats. You may give me some, because I am no better than other folks.”

“O Aunt Kezia, but I like jumballs!” said Amelia.

“You do?” says my Aunt Kezia. “Well, but, my dear, they don’t grow on trees. Somebody has to make them, if they are to be eaten; and ’tis quite as well we are not all uncommon women, or I fear there would be none to eat.—Cary, you deserve a compliment, if you made these all by yourself.”

I hastened to explain that I deserved none at all, for Maria had helped me all through; but my Aunt Kezia did not seem at all vexed to hear it; she only laughed, and said, “Good girl!”

“Isn’t it horrid work?” said Cecilia, who sat next me, in a whisper.

“Oh no!” said I; “I rather like it.”

She shrugged her shoulders in what Hatty calls a Frenchified way. “Catch me at it!” she said.

“You can come to the kitchen and catch me at it, if you like,” said I, laughing. “But it is all as new to me as to you. Till a few months ago, I lived with my grandmother in Carlisle, and she never let me do anything of that sort.”

“What was her name?” said Cecilia.

“Desborough,” said I; “Mrs General Desborough.”

“Oh, is Mrs Desborough your grandmother?” cried she. “I know Mrs Charles Desborough so well.”

“That is my Aunt Dorothea,” said I. “Grandmamma is gone to live with my Uncle Charles.”

“How pleasant!” said Cecilia. “You are such a sweet little darling!” and she squeezed my hand under the table.

I began to wonder if she meant it.

“O Cary!” cried Cecilia the next morning, “do come here and tell me who this is.”

“Who what is?” said I, for I looked out of the window, and could see nobody but Ephraim Hebblethwaite.

“Oh, that handsome young man coming up the drive,” returned she.

“That?” I said. “Is he handsome? Why, ’tis but Ephraim Hebblethwaite.”

“Whom?” cried Cecilia, with one of her little shrieking laughs. “You never mean to say that fine young man has such a horrid name as Ephraim Hebblethwaite!”

Hatty had come to look over my shoulder.

“Well, I am afraid he has,” said I.

“Just that exactly, my dear,” returned Hatty, in her teasing way. “Poor creature! He is sweet on Fanny.”

“Is he?” asked Cecilia, in an interested tone. “Surely she will not marry a man with such a name as that?”

“Well, if you wish to have my private opinion about it,” said Hatty, in her coolest, that is to say, her most provoking manner, “I rather—think—she—will.”

“I wouldn’t do such a thing!” disdainfully cried Cecilia.

“Nobody asked you, my dear,” was Hatty’s answer. “I hope you would not, unless you are prepared to provide another admirer for Fanny. They are scarce in these parts.”

“I cannot think how you can live up here in these uncivilised regions!” cried Cecilia. “The country people are all just like bears—”

“Do they hug you so very hard?” said Hatty.

“They are so rough and unpolished,” continued Cecilia, “so—so—really, I could not bear to live in Cumberland or any of these northern counties. It is just horrid!”

“Then hadn’t you better go back again?” said Hatty, coolly.

“I am sure I shall be thankful when the time comes,” answered Cecilia, rather sharply. “Except you in this family, I do think—”

“Oh, pray don’t except us!” laughed Hatty, turning round the next minute to speak to Ephraim Hebblethwaite. “Mr Ephraim Hebblethwaite, this is Miss Cecilia Osborne, a young lady from the South Pole or somewhere on the way, who does not admire us Cumbrians in the smallest degree, and will be absolutely delighted to turn her back upon the last of us.”

“You know I never said that!” said Cecilia, rather affectedly, as she rose and courtesied to Ephraim.

Ephraim is the only person I know who can get along with Hatty. He always seems to see through what she says to what she means; and he never answers any of her pert speeches, nor tries to explain things, nor smooth her down, as many others do.

“Miss Osborne must stay and learn to like us a little better,” said he, good-humouredly. “Where is Fanny?”

“Looking in the glass, I imagine,” said Hatty, calmly.

“Hatty!” said I. “She is in the garden with Sophy.”

“You are the Nymphs of the Winds,” laughed Ephraim, “and Hatty is the North Wind.”

“Are you sure she is not the East?” said I, for I was vexed. And as I turned away, I heard Hatty say, laughing,—

“I do enjoy teasing Cary!”

“For shame, Hatty!” answered Ephraim, who speaks to us all as if we were his sisters.

“I assure you I do,” pursued Hatty, in a voice of great glee, “particularly when my lady puts on her grand Carlisle air, and sweeps out of the room as she did just now. It is such fun!”

I had slipped into the next window, where they could not see me, and I suppose Hatty thought I had gone out of the door beyond. I had not the least idea of eavesdropping, and what I might hear when they fancied me gone never came into my head till I heard it.

“You see,” Hatty went on, “there is no fun in teasing Sophy, for she just laughs with you, and gives you as good as you bring; and Fanny melts into tears as if she were a lump of sugar, and Father wants to know why she has been crying, and my Aunt Kezia sends you to bed before dark—so teasing her comes too expensive. But Cary is just the one to tease; she gets into a tantrum, and that is rich!”

Was it really Cecilia’s voice which said, “She is rather vain, certainly, poor thing!”

“She is just as stuck-up as a peacock!” replied Hatty: “and ’tis all from living with Grandmamma at Carlisle—she fancies herself ever so much better than we are, just because she learned French and dancing.”

“Well, if I had a sister, I would not say things of that sort about her,” said Ephraim, bluntly. “Hatty, you ought to be ashamed.”

“Thank you, Mr Hebblethwaite, I don’t feel so at all,” answered laughing Hatty.

“And she really has no true polish—only a little outside varnish,” said Cecilia. “If she were to be introduced at an assembly in Town, she would be set down directly as a little country girl who did not know anything. It is a pity she cannot see herself better.”

“There are some woods that don’t take polish nearly so well as others,” said Ephraim, in a rather curious tone. I felt hurt; was he turning against me too?

“So there are,” said Cecilia. “I see, Mr Hebblethwaite, you understand the matter.”

“Pardon me, Miss Osborne,” was Ephraim’s dry answer. “I am one of those that do not polish well. Compliments are wasted on me—particularly when the shaft is pointed with poison for my friends. And as to seeing one’s self better—I wish, Madam, we could all do that.”

As Ephraim walked away, which he did at once, I am sure he caught sight of me. His eyes gave a little flash, and the blood mounted in his cheek, but he kept on his way to the other end of the room, where Fanny and Amelia sat talking together. I slipped out of the door as soon as I could.

That wicked, deceitful Cecilia! How many times had she told me that I was a sweet little creature—that my life at Carlisle had given me such a polish that I should not disgrace the Princess’s drawing-room! (Note 3.) And now—! I went into my garret, and told my book about it, and if I must confess the truth, I am afraid I cried a little. But my eyes do not show tears, like Fanny’s, for ever so long after, and when I had bathed them and become a little calmer, I went down again into the parlour. I found my Aunt Kezia there now, and I was glad, for I knew that both Cecilia and Hatty would be on their best behaviour in her presence. Ephraim was talking with Fanny, as he generally does, and there was that “hawid” creature Mr Parmenter, with his drawl and his eyeglass and all the rest of it.

“Indeed, it is very trying!” he was saying, as I came in; but he never sounds an r, so that he said, “vewy twying.” I don’t know whether it is that he can’t, or that he won’t. “Very trying, truly, Madam, to see men give their lives for a falling cause. Distressing—quite so.”

“I don’t know that it hurts me to see a man give his life for a falling cause,” saith my Aunt Kezia. “Sometimes, that is one of the grandest things a man can do. But to see a man give his life up for a false cause—a young man especially, full of hope and fervency, whose life might have been made a blessing to his friends and the world—that is trying, Mr Parmenter, if you like.”

“Are we not bound to give our lives for the cause of truth and beauty?” asked Amelia, in that low voice which sounds like an Aeolian harp.

“Truth—yes,” saith my Aunt Kezia. “I do not know what you mean by beauty, and I am not sure you do. But, my dear, we do give our lives, always, for some cause. Unfortunately, it is very often a false one.”

“What do you mean, Aunt?” said Amelia.

“Why, when you give your life to a cause, is it not the same thing in the end as giving it for one?” answered my Aunt Kezia. “I do not see that it matters, really, whether you give it in twenty minutes or through twenty years. The twenty years are the harder thing to do—that is all.”

“Duncan Keith says—” Flora began, and stopped.

“Let us hear it, my dear, if it be anything good,” quoth my Aunt Kezia.

“I cannot tell if you will think it good or not, Aunt,” said Flora. “He says that very few give their lives to or for any cause. They nearly always give them for a person.”

“Mr Keith must be a hero of chivalry,” drawled Mr Parmenter, showing his white teeth in a lazy laugh.

(Why do people always simper when they have fine teeth?)

“Chivalry ought to be another name for Christian courage and charity,” saith my Aunt Kezia. “Ay, child—Mr Keith is right. It is a pity it isn’t always the right person.”

“How are you to know you have found the right person, Aunt?” said Hatty, in her pert way.

My Aunt Kezia looked round at her in her awful fashion. Then she said, gravely, “You will find, Hatty, you have always got the wrong one, unless you aim at the Highest Person of all.”

I heard Cecilia whisper to Mr Parmenter, “Oh, dear! is she going to preach a sermon?” and he hid a laugh under a yawn. Somebody else heard it too.

“Mrs Kezia’s sermons are as short as some parsons’ texts,” said Ephraim, quietly, and not in a whisper.

“But you would not say,” observed Mr Parmenter, without indicating to whom he addressed himself, “that this cause, now—ha—of which we were speaking,—that the lives, I mean—ha—were sacrificed to any particular person?”

“I never saw one plainer, if you mean me,” said my Aunt Kezia, bluntly. “What do nine-tenths of the men care about monarchy or commonwealth—absolute kings or limited ones—Stuart or Hanoverian? They just care for Prince Charles, and his fine person and ringing voice, and his handsome dress: what else? And the women are worse than the men. Some men will give their lives for a cause, but you don’t often see a woman do it. Mostly, with women, it is father or brother, lover or husband, that carries the day: at least, if you have seen women of another sort, they haven’t come my way.”

“But, Aunt, that is so ignoble a way of acting!” cried Amelia, as though she wanted to show that she was one of the other sort. “Love and devotion to a holy or chivalrous cause should be free from all petty personal considerations.”

“You can get yours free, my dear, if you like—and find you can manage it,” said my Aunt Kezia. “I couldn’t. As to ignoble, that hangs much on the person. When Queen Margaret of Scotland was drowning in yonder border river, and the good knight rode into the water and held forth his hand to her, and said, ‘Grip fast!’ was that a petty, ignoble consideration? It was a purely personal matter.”

“Oh, of course, if you—” said Amelia, and did not go on.

“Things look very different, sometimes, according to the side on which you see them,” saith my Aunt Kezia.

I could not help thinking that people did so.

Note 1. Emily was used during the last century as a diminutive for Amelia. There is really no etymological connection between the two names.

Note 2. In and about London, the name of jumbles is given to a common kind of gingerbread, to be obtained at the small sweet-shops: but these are not the old English jumball of the text.

Note 3. There was no Queen at this time. Augusta of Saxe Gotha was Princess of Wales, and the King had three grown-up unmarried daughters.

Note 4. This provincialism is correct for Lancashire, and as far as I know for Cumberland.

Chapter Three.

The Hunt-Supper.

“Alas! what haste they make to be undone!”
George Herbert.

Before he went away, Ephraim came up into the window where I sat with my knitting. Mr Parmenter was gone then, and Cecilia was up-stairs with Fanny and Amelia.

“Cary,” said he, “may I ask you a question?”

“Why, Ephraim, I thought you did that every day,” I said, feeling rather diverted at his saying such a thing.

“Ah, common questions that do not signify,” said he, with a smile. “But this is not an insignificant question, Cary; and it is one that I have no right to ask unless you choose to give it me.”

“Go on, Ephraim,” said I, wondering what he meant.

“Are you very fond of Miss Osborne?”

“I never was particularly fond of her,” I said, rather hotly, and I felt my cheeks flush; “and if I had been, I think this morning would have put an end to it.”

“She is not true,” he said. “She rings like false metal. Those who trust in her professions will find the earth open and let them in. And I should not like you to be one, Cary.”

“Thank you, Ephraim,” said I. “I think there is no fear.”

“Your Cousin Amelia is foolish,” he went on, “but I do not think she is false. She will grow out of most of her nonsense. But Cecilia Osborne never will. It is ingrain. She is an older woman at this moment than Mrs Kezia.”

“Older than my Aunt Kezia!” I am afraid I stared.

“I do not mean by the parish register, Cary,” said Ephraim, with a smile. “But she is old in Satan’s ways and wiles, in the hard artificial fashions of the world, in everything which, if I had a sister, I should pray God she might never know anything about. Such women are dangerous. I speak seriously, Caroline.”

I thought it had come to a serious pass, when Ephraim called me Caroline.

“It is not altogether a bad thing to know people for what they are,” he continued. “It may hurt you at the time to have the veil taken off; and that veil, whether by the people themselves or by somebody else, is often pulled off very roughly. But it is better than to have it on, Cary, or to see the ugly thing through beautiful coloured glass, which makes it look all kinds of lovely hues that it is not. The plain white glass is the best. When you do come to something beautiful, then, you see how beautiful it is.” Then, changing his tone, he went on,—“Esther Langridge sent you her love, Cary, and told me to say she was coming up here this afternoon.”

I did not quite wish that Esther would keep away, and yet I came very near doing it. She is not a beautiful thing—I mean in her ways and manners. She speaks more broadly than Sophy, and much worse than the rest of us, and she eats her peas with a knife, which Grandmamma used to say was the sure sign of a vulgar creature. Esther is as kind-hearted a girl as breathes; but—oh dear, what will Cecilia say to her! I felt quite uncomfortable.

And yet, why should I care what Cecilia says? She has shown me plainly enough that she does not care for me. But somehow, she seemed so above us with those dainty ways, and that soft southern accent, and all she knew about etiquette and the mode, and the stories she was constantly telling about great people. Sir George Blank had said such a fine thing to her when she was at my Lady Dash’s assembly; and my Lady Camilla Such-an-one was her dearest friend; and the Honourable Annabella This carried her to drive, and my Lord Herbert That held her cloak at the opera. It was so grand to hear her!

Somehow, Cecilia never said things of that kind when my Aunt Kezia was in the room, and I noted that her grand stories were always much tamer in Flora’s or Sophy’s presence. She did not seem to care about Hatty much either way. But when there were only Amelia, Fanny, Charlotte and me, then, I could not help seeing, she laid the gilt on much thicker. Charlotte used to sit and stare, and then laugh in a way that I thought very rude; but Cecilia did not appear to mind it. When Father came into the parlour, she did so change. Oh, then she was so sweet and amiable!—so delicately attentive!—so anxious that he should be made comfortable, and have everything just as he liked it! I did think, considering that he had four daughters, she might have left that to us. To Ephraim Hebblethwaite she was very attentive and charming, too, but in quite a different way. But she wasted no attention at all on Mr Parmenter, except for those side-glances now and then out of the tawny eyes, which seemed to say that they perfectly understood one another, and that no explanations of any sort were necessary between them.

I cannot make out what Mr Parmenter does for his living. He is not a man of property, for the Vicar told Father that his nephew, Mr Parmenter’s father, left nothing at all for his children. Yet Mr Anthony never seems to do anything but look through his eyeglass, and twirl his mustachios, and talk. I asked Amelia if she knew, for one of the Miss Parmenters, who is married now, lives not far from Bracewell Hall. Amelia, however, applied to Cecilia, saying she would be more likely to know.

“Oh, he does nothing,” said Cecilia; “he is a beau.”

“Now what does that mean?” put in Hatty.

“I’ll tell you what it means,” said Charlotte. “Emily, you be quiet. It means that his income is twenty pence a year, and he spends two thousand pounds; that he is always dressed to perfection, that he is ready to make love to anybody at two minutes’ notice—that is, if her fortune is worth it; that he is never at home in an evening, nor out of bed before noon; that he spends four hours a day in dressing, and would rather ten times lose his wife (when he has one) than break his clouded cane, or damage his gold snuff-box. Isn’t that it, Cicely?”

“You are so absurd!” said Amelia, languidly.

“I told you to keep quiet,” was Charlotte’s answer. “Never mind whether it is absurd; is it true?”

“Well, partly.”

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “How can a man spend two thousand pounds, if he have but twenty pence?”

“Know, ignorant creature,” replied Charlotte, with mock solemnity, “that lansquenet can be played, and that tradesmen’s bills can be put behind the fire.”

“Then you mean, I suppose, that he games, and does not pay his debts?”

“That is about the etiquette, (Note 1.) my charmer.”

“Well, I don’t know what you call that down in the South,” said I, “but up here in Cumberland we do not call it honesty.”

“The South! Oh, hear the child!” screamed Charlotte. “She thinks Derbyshire is in the South!”

“They teach the children so, my dear, in the Carlisle schools,” suggested Hatty.

“I don’t know what they teach in the Carlisle schools,” I said, “for I did not go there. But if Derbyshire be not south of Cumberland, I haven’t learned much geography.”

“Oh dear, how you girls do chatter!” cried Sophy, coming up to us. “I wish one or two of you would think a little more about what wants doing. Cary, you might have made the turnovers for supper. I am sure I have enough on my hands.”

“But, Sophy, I do not know how,” said I.

“Then you ought, by this time,” she answered. “Do not know how to make an apple turnover! Why, it is as easy as shutting your eyes.”

“When you know how to do it,” put in Hatty.

“That is more than you do,” returned Sophy, “for you are safe to leave something out.”

Hatty made her a low courtesy, and danced away, humming, “Cease your funning,” just as we heard the sound of horses’ feet on the drive outside. There were all sorts of guesses as to who was coming, and none of them the right one, for when the door opened at last, in walked Angus Drummond and Mr Keith.

“Well, you did not expect us, I suppose?” said Angus.

“Certainly not to-night,” was Sophy’s answer.

“We finished our business sooner than we expected, and now we are ready to begin our holiday,” said he.

Father came in then, and there was a great deal of kissing and hand-shaking all round; but my Aunt Kezia and Flora were not in the room. They came in together, nearly half an hour later; but I think I never saw such a change in any girl’s face as in Flora’s, when she saw what had happened. She must be very fond of Angus, I am sure. Her cheeks grew quite rosy—she is generally pale—and her eyes were like stars. I did not think Angus seemed nearly so glad to see her.

Essie Langridge was very quiet all the evening; I fancy she was rather frightened of Cecilia. She said very little.

Father had a long day’s hunting yesterday, and Angus Drummond went with him. Mr Keith would not go, though Father laughed about it, and asked if he were afraid of the hares eating him up. Neither would he go to the hunt-supper, afterwards. There were fourteen gentlemen at it, and a pretty racket they made. My Aunt Kezia does not like these hunt-suppers a bit; she would be glad if they were anywhere else than here; but Father being the squire, of course they cannot be. She always packs us girls out of the way, and will not allow us to show our heads. So we sat up-stairs, in Sophy’s chamber, which is the largest and most out of the way; and we had some good fun, first in finding seats, for there were only two chairs in the room, and then in playing hunt the slipper and all sorts of games. I am afraid we got rather too noisy at last, for my Aunt Kezia looked in with,—

“Girls, are you daft? I protest you make nigh as much racket as the gentlemen themselves!”

What Mr Keith did with himself I do not know. I think he went off for a walk somewhere. I know he tried to persuade Angus to go with him, but Angus said he wanted his share of the fun. I heard Mr Keith say, in a low voice,—

“What would your father say, Angus?”

“Oh, my father’s a minister, and they are bound to be particular,” said Angus, carelessly. “I can’t pretend to make such a fash as he would.”

I did not hear what Mr Keith answered, but I believe he went on talking about it. When I got up-stairs with the rest, however, I missed Flora; and going to our room to look for her, I found her crying. I never saw Flora weep before.

“Why, Flora!” said I, “what is the matter with you?”

“Nothing with me, Cary,” she said, “but a great deal with Angus.”

“You do not like his being at the supper?” I said. I hardly knew what to say, and I felt afraid of saying either too much or too little. It seems so difficult to talk without hurting people.

“Not only that,” she said. “I do not like the way he is going on altogether. I know my father would be in a sad way if he knew it.”

I told Flora what I had heard Angus say to Mr Keith.

“Ah!” she said, with another sob, “Angus would not have said that three months ago. I was sure it must have been going on for some time. He has been in bad company, I feel certain. And Angus always was one to take the colour of his company, just as a glass takes the colour of anything you pour in. What can I do? Oh, what can I do? If he will not listen to Duncan—”

“Ambrose Catterall says that young men must always sow their wild oats,” I said, when she stopped thus.

“That is one of the Devil’s maxims,” exclaimed Flora, earnestly. “God calls it sowing to the flesh: and He says the harvest of it is corruption. Some flowers seed themselves: thistles do. Did you ever know roses grow from thistle seed? No: ‘whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he reap.’ Ah me, for Angus’s harvest!”

“Well, I don’t see what you can do,” said I.

“There is the sting,” she replied. “It would be silly to weep if I did. No, in such cases, I think there is only one thing a woman can do—and that is to cry mightily unto God to loose the bonds of the oppressor, and let the oppressed go free. I don’t know—I may be mistaken—but I hardly think it is of much use for women to talk to such a man. It is not talking that he needs. He knows his own folly, very often, at least as well as you can tell him, and would be glad enough to be loosed from his bonds, if only somebody would come and tear them asunder. He cannot: and you cannot. Only God can. Some evil spirits can be cast out by nothing but prayer. Cary—” Flora broke off suddenly, and looked up earnestly in my face. “Don’t mention this, will you, dear? I should not have said a word to you nor any one if you had not surprised me.”

I promised her I would not, unless somebody first spoke to me. She would not come to Sophy’s room.

“Tell the girls,” she said, “that I want to write home; for I shall do it presently, when I feel a little calmer.”

Something struck me as I was turning away. “Flora,” I said, “why do you not tell my Aunt Kezia all about it? I am sure she would help you, if any one could.”

“Yes, dear, I think she would,” said Flora, gently; “but you see no one could. And remember, Cary!” she called me back as I was leaving the chamber, and came to me, and took both my hands; and her great sorrowful eyes, which looked just like brown velvet, gazed into mine like the eyes of a dog which is afraid of a scolding: “remember, Cary, that Angus is not wicked. He is only weak. But how weak he is!”

She broke down with another sob.

“But men should be stronger than women,” said I, “not weaker.”

“They are, in body and mind,” replied Flora: “but sex, I suppose, does not extend to soul. There, some men are far weaker than some women. Look at Peter. I dare say the maid who kept the door would have been less frightened of the two, if he had taunted her with being one of ‘this man’s disciples.’”

“Well, I should feel ashamed!” I said.

“I am not sure if women do not feel moral weakness a greater shame than men do,” replied Flora. “Men seem to think so much more of want of physical bravery. Many a soldier will not stand an ill-natured laugh, who would want to fight you in a minute if you hinted that he was afraid of being hurt. Things seem to look so different to men from what they do to women; and, I think, to the angels, and to God.”

I did not like to leave her alone in her trouble: but she said she wanted nothing, and was going to write to her father; so I went back to Sophy’s room, and gave Flora’s message to the girls.

“Dear! I am sure we don’t want her,” said Hatty: and Charlotte added, “She is more of a spoil-sport than anything else.”

So we played at “Hunt the slipper,” and “Questions and commands,” and “The parson has lost his cloak,” and “Blind man’s buff”: and then when we got tired we sat down—on the beds or anywhere—Hatty took off the mirror and perched herself on the dressing-table, and Charlotte wanted to climb up and sit on the mantel-shelf, but Sophy would not let her—and then we had a round of “How do you like it?” and then we went to bed.

In the middle of the night I awoke with a start, and heard a great noise, and Sam’s voice, and old Will’s, and a lot of queer talking, as if something were being carried up-stairs that was hard to pull along; and there were a good many words that I am sure my Aunt Kezia would not let me write, and—well, if He do look at what I am writing, I should not like God to see them neither. I felt sure that the gentlemen were being carried up to bed—such of them as could not walk—and such as could were being helped along. I rather wonder that gentlemen like to drink so much, and get themselves into such a queer condition. I do not think they would like it if the ladies began to do such things. I could not help wondering if Angus were among them. Flora, who had lain awake for a long while, and had only dropped asleep, as she told me afterwards, about half an hour before, for she heard the clock strike one, slept on at first, and I hoped she would not awake. But as the last lot were being dragged past our door, Flora woke up with a start, and cried,—

“What is that? O Cary, what can be the matter?”

I wanted to make as light of it as I could.

“Oh, go to sleep,” I said; “there is nothing wrong.”

“But what is that dreadful noise?” she persisted.

“Well, it is only the gentlemen going to bed,” said I.

Just then, sounds came through the door, which showed that they were close outside. Somebody—so far as I could guess from what we heard—was determined to sit down on the stairs, and Sam was trying to prevail upon him to go quietly to bed. All sorts of queer things were mixed up with it—hunting cries, bits of songs, invectives against Hanoverians and Dissenters, and I scarcely know what else.

“Who is that wretched creature?” whispered Flora to me.

I had recognised the voice, and was able to answer.

“It is Mr Bagnall,” said I, “the vicar of Dornthwaite.”

“A minister!” was Flora’s answer, in an indescribable tone.

“Oh, that does not make any difference,” I replied, “with the clergy about here. Mr Digby is too old for it now, but I have heard say that when he was a younger man, he used to be as uproarious as anybody.”

At last Sam’s patience seemed to be exhausted, and he and Will between them lifted the reverend gentleman off his feet, and carried him to bed despite his struggles. At least I supposed so from what I heard. About ten minutes later, Sam and Will passed our door on their way back.

“Yon’s a bonnie loon to ca’ a minister,” I heard Sam say as he went past. “But what could ye look for in a Prelatist?”

“He gets up i’ t’ pu’pit, and tells us our dooty, of a Sunda’, but who does hisn of a Monda, think ye?” was old Will’s response.

The footsteps passed on, and I was just going to relieve my feelings by a good laugh, when I was stopped and astonished by Flora’s voice.

“O Cary, how dreadful!”

“Dreadful!” said I, “what is dreadful?”

“That wretched man!” she said in a tone which matched her words.

“He does not think himself a wretched man, by any means,” I said. “His living is worth quite two hundred a year, and he has a little private property beside. They say he does not stand at all a bad chance for a deanery. His wife is not a pleasant woman, I believe; she has a temper: but his son is carrying all before him at college, and his daughters are thought to be among the prettiest girls in the county.”

“Has he children? Poor things!” sighed Flora.

“Why, Flora, I cannot make you out,” said I. “I could understand your being uncomfortable about Angus; but what is Mr Bagnall to you?”

“Cary!” I cannot describe the tone.

“Well?” said I.

“Is the Lord nothing to me?” she said, almost passionately; “nor the poor misguided souls committed to that man’s charge, for which he will have to give account at the last day?”

“My dear Flora, you do take things so seriously!” I said, trying to laugh; but her tone and words had startled me, for all that.

“It is well to take sin seriously,” said she. “Men are serious enough in Hell; and sin is its antechamber.”

“You don’t suppose poor Mr Bagnall will be sent there, for a little too much champagne at a hunt-supper?” said I. I did not like it, for I thought of Father. I have heard him singing “Old King Cole” and half a dozen more songs, all mixed up in a heap, after a hunt-supper. “Men always do it there. And I can assure you Mr Bagnall is thought a first-class preacher. People go to hear him even from Cockermouth.”

“That is worse than ever,” said Flora, “A man who preaches the truth and serves the Devil—that must be awful!”

“Flora, you do say the queerest things!” said I. “Does your father never do so?”

“My father?” she answered in an astonished, indignant voice. “My father! Cary! but,”—with a change in the tone—“you do not know him, of course. Why, Cary, if he knew that Angus had been for once in the midst of such a scene as that, I think it would break my father’s heart.”

I wondered how Angus had fared, and if he were singing snatches of Scotch songs in some bed-chamber at the other end of the long gallery, but I had not the cruelty to say it to Flora.

When we came down the next morning, I was curious to peep into the dining-room, just to see what it was like. The wreck of a ship is the only thing I can think of, which might look like it. Half the chairs were flung over in all directions, and two broken to pieces; a quantity of broken glass was heaped both on the floor and the table; dark wine stains on the carpet, and pools upon the table, not yet dry, were sufficient signs of what the night had been. Bessy stood in the window, duster in hand, picking up the chairs, and setting them in their places.

“Didn’t the gentlemen enjoy theirselves, Miss Cary?” said she. “My word, but they made a night on’t! I’d like to ha’ been wi’ ’em, just for to see!”

I made no answer beyond nodding my head. Flora’s words came back to me,—“It is well to take sin seriously.” I could not laugh and jest, as I dare say I should have done but for them.

When I came into the parlour, I only found three of all the gentlemen in the house,—Father, Mr Keith, and Ambrose Catterall. I thought Father seemed rather cross, and he was finding fault with everybody for something. Sophy’s hair was rough, and Hatty had put on a gown he did not like, and Fanny’s ruffle had a hole in it; and then he turned round and scolded my Aunt Kezia for not having us in better order. My Aunt Kezia said never a word, but I felt sure from her drawn brow and set lips, as she stood making tea, that she could have said a great many. Mr Keith was silent and grave. Ambrose Catterall seemed to think it his duty to make fun for everybody, and he laughed and joked and chattered away finely. I asked where old Mr Catterall was.

“Oh, in bed with a headache,” laughed Ambrose, “like everybody else this morning.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Mr Keith. “I have not one.”

“Well, mine’s going,” returned Ambrose, gaily. “A cup of Mrs Kezia’s capital tea will finish it off.”

“Finish what off?” asked my Aunt Kezia.

“My last night’s headache,” said he.

“That tea must have come from Heaven, then, instead of China,” replied she. “Nay, Ambrose Catterall; it will take blood to finish off the consequence of your doings last night.”

“Why, Mrs Kezia, are you going to fight me?” asked he, laughing.

“Young man, why don’t you fight the Devil?” answered my Aunt Kezia, looking him full in the face. “He does not pay good wages, Ambrose.”

“Never saw the colour of his money yet,” said Ambrose, who seemed extremely amused.

“I wish you never may,” quoth my aunt. “But I sadly fear you are going the way to do it.”

The more Ambrose laughed, the graver my Aunt Kezia seemed to grow. Before we had finished breakfast, Angus came languidly into the room.

“What ails you, old comrade?” said Ambrose; and Flora’s eyes looked up with the same question, but I think there were tears on the brown velvet.

“Oh, my head aches conf— I mean—abominably,” said Angus, flushing.

“Take a hair of the dog that bit you,” suggested Ambrose; “unless you think humble pie will agree with you better. I fancy Miss Drummond would rather help you to that last.”

I saw a flash in Mr Keith’s eyes, which gave me the idea that he might not be a pleasant person to meet alone in a glen at midnight, if he had no scruples as to what he did.

“You hold your tongue!” growled Angus.

“By all means, if you prefer it,” said Ambrose, lightly.

One after another, the gentlemen strolled in,—all but two who stayed in bed till afternoon, and of these Mr Catterall was one. Among the last to appear was Mr Bagnall; but he looked quite fresh and gay when he came, like Ambrose.

“We had to say grace for ourselves, Mr Bagnall,” said Father. “Sit down, and let me help you to some of this turkey pie.”

“Thanks—if you please. What a lovely morning!” was Mr Bagnall’s answer. “The young ladies look like fresh rosebuds with the dew on them.”

“We have not you gentlemen to thank for it, if we do,” broke in Hatty. “Our slumbers were all the less profound for your kind assistance. Oh yes, you can look, Mr Bagnall! I mean you. I heard ‘Sally in our Alley’ about one o’clock this morning.”

“No, was I singing that, now?” said Mr Bagnall, laughing. “I did not know I got quite so far. But at a hunt-supper, you know, everything is excusable.”

“Would you give me a reference to the passage which says so, Mr Bagnall?” came from behind the tea-pot. “I should like to note it in my Bible.”

Mr Bagnall laughed again, but rather uncomfortably.

“My dear Mrs Kezia, you do not imagine the Bible has anything to do with a hunt-supper?”

“It is to be hoped I don’t, or I should be woefully disappointed,” she answered. “But I always thought, Mr Bagnall, that the Word of God and the ministers of God should have something to do with one another.”

“Kezia, keep your Puritan notions to yourself!” roared Father from the other end of the table; and he put some words before it which I would rather not write. “I can’t think,” he went on, looking round, “wherever Kezia can have picked up such mad whims as she has. For a sister of mine to say such a thing to a clergyman—I declare it makes my hair stand on end!”

“Your hair may lie down again, Brother. I’ve done,” said my Aunt Kezia, coolly. “As to where I got it, I should think you might know. It runs in the blood. And I suppose Deborah Hunter was your grandmother as well as mine.”

Father’s reply was full of the words I do not want to write, but it was not a compliment to his grandmother.

“Come, Mrs Kezia,” said Mr Bagnall, “let us make it up by glasses all round, and a toast to the sweet Puritan memory of Mrs Deborah Hunter.”

“No, thank you,” said my Aunt Kezia. “As to Deborah Hunter, she has been a saint in Heaven these thirty years, and finely she’d like it (if she knew it) to have you drinking yourselves drunk in her honour. But let me tell you—and you can say what you like after it—she taught me that ‘the chief end of man was to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.’ Your notion seems to be that the chief end of man is to glorify himself, and to enjoy him for ever. I think mine’s the better of the two: and as to yours, the worst thing I wish any of you is that you may get mine instead of it. Now then, Brother, I’ve had my say, and you can have yours.”

And not another word did my Aunt Kezia say, though Father stormed, and the other gentlemen laughed and joked, and paid her sarcastic compliments, all the while breakfast lasted. There were two who were silent, and those were Angus and Mr Keith. Angus seemed too poorly and unhappy to take any interest in the matter; and as to Mr Keith, I believe in his heart (if I read it right in his eyes) that he was perfectly delighted with my Aunt Kezia.

“The young ladies did not honour us by riding to the meet,” said Mr Bagnall at last, looking at that one of us who sat nearest him—which, by ill luck, happened to be Flora.

“No, Sir. I do not think my aunt would have allowed it; but—” Flora stopped, and cast her eyes on her plate.

“But if she had, you would have been pleased to come?” suggested Mr Bagnall, rubbing his hands.

He spoke in that disagreeable way in which some men do speak to girls—I do not know what to call it. It is a condescending, patronising kind of manner, as if—yes, that is it!—as if they wanted to amuse themselves by hearing the opinion of something so totally incapable of forming one. I wish they knew how the girls long to shake the nonsense out of them.

But Flora did not lose her temper, as I should have done: she held her own with a quiet dignity which I envied, but could never have imitated.

“Pardon me, Sir. I was about to say the direct contrary—that if my aunt had allowed it, I for one would rather not have gone.”

“Afraid of a fall, eh?” laughed Mr Bagnall. “Well, ladies are not expected to be as venturesome as men.”

Now, why do men always fancy that it is a woman’s duty to do what men expect her? I cannot see it one bit.

“I was not afraid of that, Sir,” said Flora.

Father, with whom Flora is a favourite, was listening with a smile. I believe Aunt Drummond was his pet sister.

“No? Why, what then?” said Mr Bagnall, shaking the pepper over his turkey pie until I wondered what sort of a throat he would have when he had finished it.

“I am afraid of hardening my heart, Sir,” said Flora, in her calm decisive way.

“Hardening your heart, girl! What do you mean?” said Father. “Hardening your heart by riding to hounds!”

“A little puzzling, certainly,” said Sir Robert Dacre, who sat opposite. “We must ask Miss Drummond to explain.”

He did not speak in that disagreeable way that Mr Bagnall did; but Flora flushed up when she found three gentlemen looking at her, and asking her for an explanation.

“I mean,” she answered, “that one hardens one’s heart by taking pleasure in anything which gives another creature pain. But I beg your pardon; indeed I did not mean to put myself forward.”

“No, no, child; we drew you forward,” said Father, kindly. He gets over his tempers in a moment, and he seemed to have quite forgotten the passage at arms with my Aunt Kezia.

“Still, I do not quite understand,” said Sir Robert, not at all unkindly. “Who is the injured creature in this case, Miss Drummond?”

Flora’s colour rose again. “The hare, Sir,” she said.

“The hare!” cried Mr Bagnall, leaning back in his chair to laugh. “Well, Miss Flora, you are quixotic.”

“May I quote my father, Sir?” was her reply. “He says that Don Quixote (supposing him a real person, which I take it he was not) was one of the noblest men the world ever saw, only the world was not ready for him.”

“The world not ready for him? No, I should think not!” laughed Father. “Not just yet, my little lady-errant.”

Flora smiled quietly. “Perhaps it will be, some day. Uncle Courtenay,” she said.

“When the larks fall from the sky—eh, Miss Flora?” said Mr Bagnall, rubbing his hands again in that odious way he has.

“When ‘they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,’” was Flora’s soft answer.

“Surely you don’t suppose that literal?” replied Mr Bagnall, laughing. “Why, you must be as bad—I had nearly said as mad—as my next neighbour, Everard Murthwaite (of Holme Cultram, you know,” he explained aside to Father). “Why, he has actually got a notion that the Jews are to be restored to Palestine! Whoever heard of such a mad idea? Only think—the Jews!”

“Ridiculous nonsense!” said Father.

“Is it not usually the case,” asked Mr Keith, who till then had hardly spoken, “that the world counts as mad the wisest men in it?”

“Why, Mr Keith, you must be one of them!” cried Mr Bagnall.

“Of the wise men? Thank you!” said Mr Keith, drily.

There was a laugh at this.

“But I can tell you of something queerer still,” Mr Bagnall went on. “Old Cis Crosthwaite, in my parish, says she knows her sins are forgiven.”

Such exclamations came from most of the gentlemen at that! “Preposterous!” said one. “Ridiculous!” said another. “Insufferable presumption!” cried a third.

“Cis Crosthwaite!” said Sir Robert Dacre, more quietly.

“Yes, Cis Crosthwaite,” repeated Mr Bagnall; “an old wretch of a woman who has never been any better than she should be, and whom I met sticking hedges only last winter. Her son Joe is the worst poacher in the parish.”

All the gentlemen seemed to think that most dreadful. I do not know why it is they always appear to reckon snaring wild game which belongs nobody a more wicked thing than breaking all the Ten Commandments. Would it not have been in them if it were?

Only Sir Robert Dacre said, “Poor old creature! don’t let us saddle her with Joe’s sins. I dare say she has plenty of her own.”

“Plenty? I should think so. She is a horrid old wretch,” answered Mr Bagnall. “And do but think, if this miserable creature has not the arrogance and presumption to say that her sins are forgiven!”

“I suppose Christ died that somebody’s sins might be forgiven?” said Mr Keith, in his quiet way.

“Of course, but those are respectable people,” Mr Bagnall said, rather indignantly.

“Before or after the forgiveness?” asked Mr Keith.

“Sir,” said Mr Bagnall, rather stiffly, “I am not accustomed to discuss such matters as these at table.”

“Are you not? I am,” said Mr Keith, quite simply.

“But,” continued Mr Bagnall, “I thought every one understood the orthodox view—namely, that a man must do his best, and practise virtue, and lead a proper sort of life, and then, when God Almighty sees you a decent and fit person, and endeavouring to be good He helps you with His grace.” (Note 2.)

“Of course!” said the Vicar of Sebergham—I suppose by way of Amen.

“Men are to do their best, then, and practise these virtues, in the first instance, without any assistance from God’s grace? That Gospel sounds rather ill tidings,” was Mr Keith’s answer.

Everybody was listening by this time. Sir Robert Dacre, I thought, seemed secretly diverted; and Hatty’s eyes were gleaming with fun. Father looked uncomfortable, and as if he did not know what Mr Keith would be at. From my Aunt Kezia little nods of satisfaction kept coming to what he said.

“Sir,” demanded Mr Bagnall, looking his adversary straight in the face, “are you not orthodox?”

He spoke rather in the tone in which he might have asked, “Are you not honest?”

“May I ask you to explain the word, before I answer?” was Mr Keith’s response.

“I mean, are you one of these Methodists?”

“Certainly not. I belong to the Kirk of Scotland.”

Mr Bagnall’s “Oh!” seemed to say that some at any rate of Mr Keith’s queer notions might be accounted for, if he were so unfortunate as to have been born in a different Church.

“But,” pursued Mr Keith, “seeing that the Church of England, and the Kirk of Scotland, and the Methodists, all accept the Word of God as the rule of faith, they should all, methinks, be sound in the faith, if that be what you mean by ‘orthodox.’”

“By ‘orthodox,’” said the Vicar of Sebergham, after a sonorous clearing of his throat, “I understand a man who keeps to the Articles of the Church, and does not run into any extravagances and enthusiasm.”

“Hear him!” cried Mr Bagnall, as if he were at a Tory meeting. Hatty burst out laughing, but immediately smothered it in her handkerchief.

“I do hear him, and with pleasure,” said Mr Keith. “I am no friend to extravagance, I assure you. Let a Churchman keep to the Bible and the Articles, and I ask no more of him. But excuse me if I say that we are departing from the question before us, which was the propriety, or impropriety, of one saying that his sins were forgiven. May I ask why you object to that?—and is the objection to the forgiveness, or to the proclamation of it?”

“Sir,” said Mr Bagnall, warmly, “I think it presumption—arrogance—horrible self-conceit.”

“To have forgiveness?—or to say so?”

“I cannot answer such a question, Sir!” said Mr Bagnall, getting red in the face, and seizing the pepper-box once more, with which he dusted his pie recklessly. “When a man sets himself up to be better than his neighbours in that way, it is scandalous—perfectly scandalous, Sir!”

“‘Better than his neighbours!’” repeated Mr Keith, as if he were considering the question. “If a pardoned criminal be better than his neighbours, I suppose the neighbours are worse criminals?”

“Sir, you misunderstand me. They fancy themselves better than others.” Mr Bagnall was getting angry.

“But seeing all are criminals alike, and they own it every Sunday,” was Mr Keith’s answer, “does it not look rather odd that an objection should be made to one of them stating that he has been pardoned? Is it because the rest are unpardoned, and are conscious of it?”

“Come, friends!” said Sir Robert, before Mr Bagnall could reply. “Let us not lose our tempers, I beg. Mr Keith is a Scotsman, and such are commonly good reasoners and love a tilt; and ’tis but well in a young man to keep his wits in practice. But we must not get too far, you know.”

“Just so! just so!” saith Father, who I think was glad to have a stop put to this sort of converse. “Mr Bagnall, I am sure, bears no malice. Sir Robert, when do the Holme Cultram hounds meet next?”

Mr Bagnall growled something, I know not what, and gave himself up to his pie for the rest of the time, Mr Keith smiled, and said no more. But I know in whose hands I thought the victory rested.

Note 1. The word “ticket” was still spelt “etiquette.”

Note 2. These exact expressions are quoted in Whitefield’s sermons.

Chapter Four.

Things begin to happen.

“The untrue liveth only in the heart
Of vain humanity, which fain would be
Its own poor centre and circumference.”
Rev. Horatius Bonar, D.D.

This afternoon I went up the Scar by myself. First I climbed right to the top, and after looking round a little, as I always like to do on the top of a mountain, I went down a few yards to the flat bit where the old Roman wall runs, and sat down on the grass just above. It was a lovely day. I had not an idea that any one was near the place but myself, and I was just going to sing, when to my surprise I heard a voice on the other side of the Roman wall. It was Angus Drummond’s.

“Duncan Keith, why don’t you say something?” He broke out suddenly, in a petulant tone—rather the tone of a child who knows it has been naughty, and wants to get the scolding over which it feels sure is coming some time.

“What do you wish me to say?”

Mr Keith’s tone was cold and constrained, I thought.

“Why don’t you tell me I am an unhanged reprobate, and that you are ashamed to be seen walking with me? You know you are thinking it.”

“No, Angus. I was thinking something very different.”

“What, then?” asked Angus, sulkily.

“‘Doth He not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until He find it?’”

There was no coldness in Mr Keith’s tone now.

“What has that got to do with it?” growled Angus in his throat.

“Angus,” was the soft answer, “the sheep sometimes makes it a very hard journey for Him.”

I know I ought to have risen and crept away long before this: but I did not. It was not right of me, but I sat on. I knew they could not see me through the wall, nor could they get across it at any place so near that I could not be gone far enough before they could catch sight of me.

“I suppose,” said Angus, in the same sort of sulky murmur, “that is your way of telling me, Mr Keith, that I am a miserable sinner.”

“Are you not?”

“Miserable enough, Heaven knows! But, Duncan, I don’t see why you, and Flora, and Mrs Kezia, and all the good folks, or the folks who think themselves extra good, which comes to the same thing—”

“Does it? I was not aware of that,” said Mr Keith.

“I can’t see,” Angus went on, “why you must all turn up the whites of your eyes like a duck in thunder, and hold up your hands in pious horror at me, because I have done just once what every gentleman in the land does every week, and thinks nothing of it. If you had not been brought up in a hen-coop, and ruled like a copy-book, you would not be so con—so hideously strict and particular! Just ask Ambrose Catterall whether there is any weight on his conscience; or ask that jolly parson, who tackled you and Flora at breakfast, what he has to say to it. I’ll be bound he will read prayers next Sabbath with as much grace and unction as if he had never been drunk in his life. And because I get let in just once, why—”

Angus paused as if to consider how to finish his sentence, and Mr Keith answered one point of his long speech, letting all the rest, go.

“Is it just this once, Angus?”

“I suppose you mean that night at York, when I got let in with those fellows of Greensmith’s,” growled Angus, more grumpily than ever. “Now, Duncan, that’s not generous of you. I did the humble and penitent for that, and you should not cast it up to me. Just that time and this!”

“And no more, Angus?”

Angus muttered something which did not reach me.

“Angus, you know why I came with you?”

“Yes, I know well enough why you came with me,” said Angus, bitterly. “Just because that stupid old meddler, Helen Raeburn, took it into her wooden head that I could not take care of myself, and talked my father into sending me with you now, instead of letting me go the other way round by myself! Could not take care of myself, forsooth!”

“Have you done it?”

“I hadn’t it to do. Mr Duncan Keith was to take care of me, just as if I had been a baby—stuff! There is no end to the folly of old women!”

“I think young men might sometimes match them. Well, Angus, I have taken as much care as you let me. But you deceived me, boy. I know more about it than you think. It was not one or two transgressions that let you down to this pitch. I know you had a private key from Rob Greensmith, and let yourself in and out when I believed you asleep.”

Angus sputtered out some angry words, which I did not catch.

“No. You are mistaken. Leigh did not tell of you or his brother. Your friend Robert told me himself. He wanted to get out of the scrape, and he did not care about leaving you in it. The friendship of the wicked is not worth much, Angus. But if I had not known it, I should still have felt perfectly sure that there had been more going on than you ever confessed to me. Three months since, Angus, you would not have used words which you have used this day. You would not have spoken so lightly of being ‘let in’—let into what? Just stop and think. And twice to-day—once in Flora’s presence—you have only just stopped your tongue from a worse word than that. Would you have said such a thing to your father before we left Abbotscliff?”

“Uncle Courtenay was as drunk as any of them last night,” Angus blurted out.

I did not like to hear that of Father. Till now I never thought much about such things, except that they were imperfections which men had and women had not, and the women must put up with them. Sins?—well, yes, I suppose getting drunk is a sin, if you come to think about it; but so is getting into a passion, and telling falsehoods, and plenty more things which one thinks little or nothing about, because one sees everybody do them every day. It is only the extra good people, like my Aunt Kezia, and Flora, and Mr Keith, that put on grave faces about things of that kind.

But stay! God must be better than the extra good people. Then will He not think even worse of such things than they do?

It was just because those three seemed to think it so awful, and to be inclined to make a fuss over it, that I did not like to hear what Angus said about Father. Grandmamma never thought anything about it; she always said drinking and gaming were gentlemanly vices, which the King himself—(I mean, of course, the Elector, but Grandmamma said the King)—need not be ashamed of practising.

I listened rather uneasily for Mr Keith’s answer. I am beginning to feel a good deal of respect for his opinion and himself, and I did not want to hear him say anything about Father that was not agreeable. But he put it quietly aside.

“If you please, Angus, we will let other people alone. Both you and I shall find our own sins quite enough to repent of, I expect. You have not answered my question, Angus.”

“What question?” grumbled Angus. I fancy he did not want to answer it.

“Would you, three months since, have let your father see and hear what you have let me do within even the last week?”

Angus growled something in the bottom of his throat which I could not make out.

Mr Keith’s tone changed suddenly.

“Angus, dear old fellow, are you happier now than you were then?”

“Duncan, I am the most miserable wretch that ever lived! I want no preaching to, I can tell you. That last text my father preached from keeps tolling in my ear like a funeral bell—and it is all the worse because it comes in his voice: ‘Remember from whence thou art fallen!’ Don’t I remember it? Do I want telling whence I have fallen? Haven’t I made a thousand resolves never, never to fail again, and the next time I get into company, all my resolves melt away and my hard knots come undone, and I feel as strong as a spoonful of water, and any of them can lead me that tries, like an animal with a ring through his nose?”

“Water is not a bad comparison, Angus, if you look at both sides of it. What is stronger than water, when the wind blows it with power? And you know who is compared to the wind. ‘Awake, O North Wind, and come, Thou South; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.’ It is the wind of God’s Spirit that we want, to blow the water—powerless of itself—in the right direction. It will carry all before it then.”

“Oh, yes, all that sounds very well,” said Angus, but in a pleasanter tone than before—not so much like a big growling dog. “But you don’t know, Duncan—you don’t know! You have no temptations. What can you know about it? I tell you I can’t keep out of it. It is no good talking.”

“‘No temptations!’ I wish that were true. But you are quite right as to yourself; you cannot keep out of it. Do you mean to add that God cannot keep you?”

I did not hear Angus’s reply, and I fancy it came in a gesture, and not in words. But Mr Keith said, very softly,—

“Angus, will you let Him keep you?”

Instead of the answer for which I was eagerly listening, another sound came to my ear, which made me jump up in a hurry, almost without caring whether I was heard or not. That was the clock of Brocklebank Church striking twelve. I should be ever so much too late for dinner; and what would my Aunt Kezia say? I got away as quietly as I could for a few yards, and then ran down the Scar as fast as I dared for fear of falling, and came into the dining-room, feeling hot and breathless, just as Cecilia, looking fresh and bright as a white lily, was entering it from the other end. The rest were seated at the table. Of course Mr Keith and Angus were not there.

“Caroline, where have you been?” saith my Aunt Kezia.

I trembled, for I knew what I had to expect when my Aunt Kezia said Caroline in full.

“I am very sorry, Aunt,” said I. “I went up the Scar, and—well, I am afraid I forgot all about the time.”

My Aunt Kezia nodded, as if my frank confession satisfied her, and Father said, “Good maid!” as I slipped into the chair where I always sit, on his left hand. But Cecilia, who was arranging her skirts just opposite, said in that way which men seem to call charming, and women always see through and despise (at least my Aunt Kezia says so),—

“Am I a little late?”

“Don’t name it!” said Father.

“Dear, no, my charmer!” cried Hatty. “Cary’s shockingly late, of course: but you are not—quite impossible.”

Cecilia gave one of her soft smiles, and said no more.

I really am beginning to wish the Bracewells gone. Yet it is not so much on their own account, Amelia is vain and silly, and Charlotte rude and romping; but I do not think either of them is a hypocrite. Charlotte is not, I am sure; she lets you see the very worst side of her: and Amelia’s affectation is so plain and unmistakable, that it cannot be called insincerity. It is on account of that horrid Cecilia that I want them to go, because I suppose she will go with them. Yes, truth is truth, and Cecilia is horrid. I am getting quite frightened of her. I do not know what she means to do next: but she seems to me to be always laying traps of some sort, and for somebody.

I wonder if people ever do what you expect of them? If somebody had asked me to make a list of things that could not happen, I expect that I should have put on it one thing that has just happened.

Sophy and I went up this morning to Goody Branscombe’s cot, to take her some wine and eggs from my Aunt Kezia. Anne Branscombe thinks she is failing, poor old woman, and my Aunt Kezia told her to beat up an egg with a little wine and sugar, and give it to her fasting of a morning: she thinks it a fine thing for keeping up strength. We came round by the Vicarage on our way back, and stepped in to see old Elspie. We found her ironing the Vicar’s shirts and ruffles, and she put us in rocking-chairs while we sat and talked.

Old Elspie wanted to know all we could tell her about Flora and Angus, and I promised I would bring Flora to see her some day. She says Mr Keith—Mr Duncan Keith’s father, that is—is the squire of Abbotscliff, a very rich man, and a tremendous Tory.

“You’re vara nigh strangers, young leddies,” said Elspie, as she ironed away. “Miss Fanny, she came to see me a twa-three days back, and Miss Bracewell wi’ her; and there was anither young leddy, but I disremember her name.”

“Was it Charlotte Bracewell?” said Sophy.

“Na, na, I ken Miss Charlotte ower weel to forget her, though she has grown a deal sin’ I saw her afore. This was a lassie wi’ black hair, and e’en like the new wood the minister has his dinner-table, wi’ the fine name—what ca’ ye that, now?”

“Mahogany?” said I.

“Ay, it has some sic fremit soun’,” said old Elspie, rather scornfully. “I ken it was no sae far frae muggins (mugwort). Mrs Sophy, my dear, ha’e ye e’er suppit muggins in May? ’Tis the finest thing going for keeping a lassie in gude health, and it suld be drinkit in the spring. Atweel, what’s her name wi’ the copper-colourit e’en?”

“Cecilia Osborne,” said I. “What did you think of her, Elspie?”

The iron went up and down the Vicar’s shirt-front, and I saw a curious gathering together of old Elspie’s lips—still she did not speak. At last Sophy said,—

“Couldn’t you make up your mind about her, Elspie?”

“I had nae mickle fash about that, Mrs Sophy,” said Elspeth, setting down her iron on the stand with something like a bang. “And gin I can see through a millstane a wee bittie, she’ll gi’e ye the chance to make up yourn afore lang.”

“Nay, mine’s made up long since,” answered Sophy. “I shall see the back of her with a deal more pleasure than I did her face a month ago. Won’t you, Cary?”

“I don’t like her the least bit,” said I.

“Ye’ll be wiser lassies, young leddies, gin ye’re no ower ready to say it,” said Elspie, coolly. “It was no ane o’ your white days when she came to Brocklebank Fells. Ay, weel, weel! The Lord’s ower a’.”

As we went down the road, I said to Sophy, “What did old Elspie mean, do you suppose?”

“I am afraid I can guess what she meant, Cary.”

Sophy’s tone was so strange that I looked up at her; and I saw her eyes flashing and her lips set and white.

“Sophy! what is the matter?” I cried.

“Don’t trouble your little head, Cary,” she said, kindly enough. “It will be trouble in plenty when it comes.”

I could not get her to say more. As we reached the door, Hatty came dancing out to meet us.

“‘The rose is white, the rose is red,’—
The sun gives light, Queen Anne is dead:
Ladies with white and rosy hues,
What will you give me for my news?”

“Hatty, you must have made that yourself!” said Sophy.

“I have, just this minute,” laughed Hatty. “Now then, who’ll bid for my news?”

“I dare say it isn’t worth a farthing,” said Sophy.

“Well, to you, perhaps not. It may be rather mortifying. My sweet Sophia, you are the eldest of us, but your younger sister has stolen a march on you. You have played your cards ill, Miss Courtenay. Fanny is going to be the first of us married, unless I contrive to run away with somebody in the interval. I don’t know whom—there’s the difficulty.”

“Well, I always thought she would be,” said Sophy, quite good-humouredly. “She is the prettiest of us, is Fanny.”

“So much obliged for the compliment!” gleefully cried Hatty. “Cary, don’t you feel delighted?”

“Is Ephraim here now?” I said, for of course I never thought of anybody else.

“Ephraim!” Hatty whirled round, laughing heartily. “Ephraim, my dear, will have to break his heart at leisure. Ambrose Catterall has stolen a march on him.”

“You don’t mean that Fanny and Ambrose are to be married!” cried Sophy, with wide-open eyes.

“I do, Madam; and my Aunt Kezia is as mad as a hatter about it. She would have liked Ephraim for her nephew ever so much better than Ambrose.”

“Well, I do think!” exclaimed Sophy. “If Ephraim did really care for Fanny, she has used him shamefully.”

“So I think!” said Hatty. “I mean to present him on his next birthday with a dozen pocket-handkerchiefs, embroidered in the corner with an urn and a willow-tree.”

“An urn, you ridiculous child!” returned Sophy. “That means that somebody is dead.”

“Don’t throw cold water on my charming conceits!” pleaded Hatty. “Now go in and face my Aunt Kezia—if you dare.”

We found her cutting out flannel petticoats in the parlour. My Aunt Kezia’s brows were drawn together, and my Aunt Kezia’s lips were thin; and I trembled. However, she took no note of us, but went on tearing up flannel, and making little piles of it upon the table end.

Sophy, with heroic bravery, attacked the citadel at once.

“Well, Aunt, this is pretty news!”

“What is?” said my Aunt Kezia, standing up straight and stiff.

“Why, this about Fanny and Ambrose Catterall.”

“Oh, that! I wish there were nothing worse than that in this world.” My Aunt Kezia spoke as if she would have preferred some other world, where things went straighter than they do in this.

“Hatty said you were put out about it, Aunt.”

“That’s all Hatty knows. I think ’tis a blunder, and Fanny will find it out, likely enough. But if that were all— Girls, ’tis nigh dinner-time. You had better take your bonnets off.”

“What is the matter with my Aunt Kezia?” said I to Sophy, as we went up-stairs.

“Don’t ask me!” said that young lady.

Half-way up-stairs we met Charlotte.

“Oh, what fun you have missed, you two!” cried she. “Why didn’t you come home a little sooner? I would not have lost it for a hundred pounds.”

“Lost what, Charlotte?”

“Lost what? Ask my Aunt Kezia—now just you do!”

“My Aunt Kezia seems unapproachable,” said Sophy.

Charlotte went off into a fit of laughter, and then slid down the banister to the hall—a feat which my Aunt Kezia has forbidden her to perform a dozen times at least. We went forward, made ourselves ready for dinner, and came down to the dining-parlour.

In the dining-room we found a curious group. My Aunt Kezia looked as stiff as whalebone; Father, pleased and radiant; Flora and Mr Keith both seemed rather puzzled. Angus was in a better temper than usual. Charlotte was evidently full of something very funny, which she did not want to let out; Cecilia, soft, serene, and velvety; Fanny looked nervous and uncomfortable; Hatty, scornful; while Amelia was her usual self.

When dinner was over, we went back to the parlour. My Aunt Kezia gathered up her heaps of flannel, gave one to Flora and another to me, and began to stitch away at a third herself. Amelia threw herself on the sofa, saying she was tired to death; and I was surprised to see that my Aunt Kezia took no notice. Fanny sat down to draw; Hatty went on with her knitting; Charlotte strolled out into the garden; and Cecilia disappeared, I know not whither.

For an hour or more we worked away in solemn silence. Hatty tried to whisper once or twice to Fanny, making her blush and look uncomfortable; but Fanny did not speak, and I fancy Hatty got tired. Amelia went to sleep.

At last, and all at once, Flora—honest, straightforward Flora—laid her work on her knee, and looked up at my Aunt Kezia’s grim set face.

“Aunt Kezia, will you tell me, is something the matter?”

“Yes, my dear,” my Aunt Kezia seemed to snap out. “Satan’s the matter.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Aunt,” said Flora.

“’Tis a mercy if you don’t. No, child, there is not much the matter for you. The matter’s for me and these girls here. Well, to be sure! there’s no fool like an old f— Caroline! (I fairly jumped) can’t you look what you are doing? You are herring-boning that seam on the wrong side!”

Alas! the charge was true. I cannot tell how or why it is, but if there are two seams to anything, I am sure to do one of them on the wrong side. It is very queer. I suppose there is something wanting in my brains. Hatty says—at least she did once when I said that—the brains are wanting.

However, we sat on and sewed away, till at last Amelia woke up and went up-stairs; Flora finished her petticoat, and my Aunt Kezia told her to go into the garden. Only we four sisters were left. Then my Aunt Kezia put down her flannel, wiped her spectacles, and looked round at us.

I knew something was coming, and I felt quite sure that it was something disagreeable; but I could not form an idea what it was.

“Girls,” said my Aunt Kezia, “I think you may as well hear at once that I am going to leave Brocklebank.”

I fairly gasped in astonishment. Brocklebank without my Aunt Kezia! It sounded like hearing that the sun was going out of the sky. I could not imagine such a state of things.

“Is Sophy to be mistress, then?” said Fanny, blankly.

“Aunt Kezia, are you going to be married?” our impertinent Hatty wanted to know.

“No, Hester,” said my Aunt Kezia, shortly. “At my time of life a woman has a little sense left; or if she have not, she is only fit for Bedlam. I do not think Sophy will be mistress, Fanny. Somebody else is going to take that place. Otherwise, I should have stayed in it.”

“What do you mean, Aunt Kezia?” said Fanny, speaking very slowly, and in a bewildered sort of way.

Sophy said nothing. I think she knew. And all at once it seemed to come over me—as if somebody had shut me up inside a lump of ice—what it was that was going to happen.

“I mean, my dear,” my Aunt Kezia replied quietly, “that your father intends to marry again.”

Sophy’s face and tongue gave no sign that she had heard anything which was news to her. Fanny cried, “Never, surely!” Hatty said, “How jolly!” and then in a whisper to me, “Won’t I lead her a life!” I believe I said nothing. I felt shut up in that lump of ice.

“But, Aunt Kezia, what is to become of us all? Are we to stay here, or go with you?” asked Fanny.

“Your father desires me to tell you, my dears,” said my Aunt Kezia, “that he wishes to leave you quite free to please yourselves. If you choose to remain here, he will be glad to have you; and if any of you like to come with me to Fir Vale, you will be welcome, and you know what to expect.”

“What are we to expect if we stop here?” asked Sophy, in a hard, dry voice.

“That is more than I can say,” was my Aunt Kezia’s answer.

“But who is it?” said Fanny, in the same bewildered way.

“O Fanny, what a bat you are!” cried Hatty.

“I wonder you ask,” answered Sophy. “I have seen her fishing-rod for ever so long. Cecilia, of course.”

“Cecilia!” screamed Fanny. “I thought it was some middle-aged, respectable gentlewoman.”

Hatty burst out laughing. I never felt less inclined to laugh. My Aunt Kezia had taken off her spectacles, and was going on with her tucks as if nothing had happened.

“Well, I will think about it,” said Sophy. “I am not sure I shall stay.”

“I shall stay,” announced Hatty. “I expect it will be grand fun. She will fill the house with company—that will suit me; and I shall just look sharp after her and keep her in order.”

“Hatty!” cried Fanny, in a shocked tone.

“I hope you will keep yourself in order,” said my Aunt Kezia, drily. “Little Cary, you have not spoken yet. What do you want to do?”

Her voice softened as I had never heard it do before when she spoke to me. It touched me very much; yet I think I should have said the same without it.

“O Aunt Kezia, please let me go with you!”

“Thank you, Cary,” said my Aunt Kezia in the same tone. “The old woman is not to be left quite alone, then? But it will be dull, child, for a young thing like you.”

“I would rather have it dull than lively the wrong way about,” said I; and Hatty broke out again.

“Would you!” said she, when she had done laughing. “I wouldn’t, I promise you. Sophy, don’t you know a curate you could marry? You had better, if you can find one.”

“Not one that has asked me,” was Sophy’s dry answer. “You don’t want me, then, Miss Hatty?”

“You would be rather meddlesome, I am afraid,” said Hatty, with charming frankness. “You would always be doing conscience.”

“Don’t you intend to keep one?” returned Sophy.

“I mean to lay it up in lavender,” said Hatty, “and take it out on Sundays.”

“Hatty, if you haven’t a care—”

“Please go on, Aunt Kezia. Unfinished sentences are always awful things, because you don’t know how they are going to end.”

“You’ll end in the lock-up, if you don’t mind,” said my Aunt Kezia; “and if I were you, I wouldn’t.”

“I’ll try to keep on this side the door,” said Hatty, as lightly as ever. “And when is it to be, Aunt Kezia?”

“The month after next, I believe.”

“Isn’t Cecilia going home first, to see what her friends say about it?”

“She has none belonging to her, except an uncle and his family, and she says they will be delighted to hear it. Hatty, you had better get out of the way of calling her Cecilia. It won’t do now, you know.”

“But you don’t mean, Aunt Kezia, that we are to call her Mother!” cried Fanny, in a most beseeching tone.

“My dear, that must be as your father wishes. He may allow you to call her Mrs Courtenay. That is what I shall call her.”

“Isn’t it dreadful!” said poor Fanny.

“One thing more I have to say,” continued my Aunt Kezia, laying down her flannel again and putting on her spectacles. “Your father does not wish you to be present at his marriage.”

“Aunt Kezia!” came, I think, from us all—indignantly from Sophy, sorrowfully from Fanny, petulantly from Hatty, and from me in sheer astonishment.

“I suppose he has his reasons,” said my Aunt Kezia; “but that being so, I think Sophy had better go home for a while with the Bracewells, and Hatty, too. You, Cary, may go with Flora instead, if you like. Fanny, of course, is arranged for already, as she will be married by then, and will only have to stop at home.”

I thought I would very much rather go with Flora.

“I have had a letter from your Aunt Dorothea lately,” my Aunt Kezia went on, “in which she asks for Cary to pay her a visit next June. But now we are only in March. So, as Cary must be somewhere between times, and I think she would be better out of the way, she will go to Abbotscliff with Flora—unless, my dear,” she added, turning to me, “you would rather be at Bracewell Hall? You may, if you like.”

“I would rather be at Abbotscliff, very much, Aunt Kezia,” said I; and I think Aunt Kezia was pleased.

“Aunt Kezia, don’t send me away!” pleaded Sophy. “Do let me stay and help you to settle at Fir Vale. I should hate to stay at Bracewell, and I should just like bustling about and helping you in that way. Won’t you let me?”

“Well, my dear, we will see,” said my Aunt Kezia; and I think she was pleased with Sophy too. Hatty declared that Bracewell would just suit her, and she would not stay at any price, if she had leave to choose. So it seems to be settled in that way. Fanny will be married on the 30th,—that is three weeks hence; and the week after, Hatty goes with the Bracewells, and I with Flora, to their own homes; and my Aunt Kezia and Sophy will remain here, and only leave the house on the evening before the marriage.

It seems very odd that Father should have wished not to have us at his wedding. Was it Cecilia who did not wish it? But I am not to call her Cecilia any more.

When my cousins came in for tea, they were told too. Charlotte cried, “Well, I never!” for which piece of vulgarity she was sharply pulled up by my Aunt Kezia. Amelia fanned herself—she always does, whatever time of year it may be—and languidly remarked, “Dear!” Angus said, “Castor and Pollux!” for which he also got rebuked. And after a sort of “Oh!” Flora said nothing, but looked very sorrowfully at us. Cec—I mean Miss Osborne—did not appear at all until tea was nearly over, and then she came in from the garden, and Mr Parmenter with her, that everlasting eyeglass stuck in his eye. I do so dislike the man.

Father never comes to tea. He says it is only women’s rubbish, and laughs at Ephraim Hebblethwaite because he says he likes it. I fancy few men drink tea. My Uncle Charles never does, I know; but my Aunt Dorothea says she could not exist a day without tea and cards.

I wonder if it will be pleasant to stay with my Aunt Dorothea. I believe she and my Uncle Charles are living in London now. I should like dearly to see London, and the fine shops, and the lions in the Tower, and Ranelagh, and all the grand people. And yet, somehow, I feel just a little bit uneasy about it, as if I were going into some place where I did not know what I should find, and it might be something that would hurt me. I do not feel that about Abbotscliff. I expect it will be pleasant there, only perhaps rather dull. And I want to see my Uncle Drummond, and Flora’s friend, Annas Keith. I wonder if she is like her brother. And I never saw a Presbyterian minister, nor indeed a minister of any sort. I do hope my Uncle Drummond will not be like Mr Bagnall, and I hope all the gentlemen in the South are not like that odious Mr Parmenter.

Flora seems very much pleased about my going back with her. I do not know why, but I fancied Angus did not quite like it. Can he be afraid of my telling his father the story of the hunt-supper? He knows nothing of what I heard up on the Scar.

I do hope Ephraim Hebblethwaite is not very unhappy about Fanny. I should think it must be dreadful, when you love any one very much, to see her go and give herself quite away to somebody else. And Ambrose thinks of going to live in Cheshire, where his uncle has a large farm, and he has no children, so the farm will come to Ambrose some day; and his uncle, Mr Minshull, would like him to come and live there now. Of course, if that be settled so, we shall lose Fanny altogether.

Must there always be changes and break-ups in this world? I do not mean the change of death: that, we know, must come. But why must there be all these other changes? Why could we not go on quietly as we were? It seems now as if we should never be the same any more.

If that uncle of Cecilia’s would only have tied her to the leg of a table, or locked her up in her bed-chamber, or done something to keep her down there in the South, so that she had never come to torment us!

I suppose I ought not to wish that, if she makes Father happier. Ay, but will she make him happy? That is just what I am uncomfortable about! I don’t believe she cares a pin for him, though I dare say she likes well enough to be the Squire’s lady, and queen it at Brocklebank. Somehow, I cannot trust those tawny eyes, with their sidelong glances. Am I very wicked, or is she?

Will things never give over happening?

This morning, just after I came down—there were only my Aunt Kezia, Mr Keith, Flora, and me in the dining-parlour—we suddenly heard the great bell of Brocklebank Church begin to toll. My Aunt Kezia set down the chocolate-pot.

“It must be somebody who has died suddenly, poor soul!” cried she. “Maybe, Ellen Armathwaite’s baby: it looked very bad when I saw it last, on Thursday. Hark!”

The bell stopped tolling, and we listened for the sound which would tell us the sex and age of the departed.

“One!” Then silence.

That meant a man. Ellen Armathwaite’s baby girl it could not be. Then the bell began again, and we counted. It tolled on up to twenty—thirty—forty: we could not think who it could be.

“Surely not Farmer Catterall!” said my Aunt Kezia, “I have often felt afraid of an apoplexy for him.”

But the bell went on past sixty, and we knew it was not Farmer Catterall.

“Is it never going to stop?” said Flora, when it had passed eighty.

My Aunt Kezia went to the door, and calling Sam, bade him go out and inquire. Still the bell tolled on. It stopped just as Sam came in, at ninety-six.

“Who is it, Sam?—one of the old bedesmen?”

“Nay, Mrs Kezia; puir soul, ’tis just the auld Vicar!”

“Mr Digby!” we all cried together.

“Ay; my mither found him deid i’ his bed early this morrow. She’s come up to tell ye, an’ to ask gin’ ye can spare me to go and gi’e a haun’, for that puir witless body, Mr Anthony Parmenter, seems all but daft.”

Miss Osborne and Amelia came in together, and I saw Cecilia turn very white. (Oh dear! how shall I give over calling her Cecilia?) My Aunt Kezia told them what had happened, and I thought she looked relieved.

“What ails Mr Parmenter?” asked my Aunt Kezia.

“’Deed, and what ails a fule onie day?” said Sam, always more honest than soft-spoken. “He’s just as ill as a bit lassie—fair frichtened o’ his auld uncle, now he is deid, that ne’er did him a bawbee’s worth o’ harm while he was alive. My mither says she’s vara sure he’ll be here the morn, begging and praying ye to tak’ him in and keep him safe frae his puir auld uncle’s ghaist. Hech, sirs! I’ll ghaist him, gin’ he comes my way.”

“Now, Sam, keep a civil tongue in your head,” quoth my Aunt Kezia, “and don’t let me hear of your playing tricks on Mr Parmenter or any one else. You should be old enough to have some sense by this time. I will come out and speak to your mother in a moment. Yes, I suppose we must let you go. What cuckoos there are in this world, to be sure!”

But Mr Parmenter did not wait till to-morrow—he came up this afternoon, just as Sam said he would. Father was not at home, and to my surprise my Aunt Kezia would not take him in, but sent him on to Farmer Catterall’s. I do not think the tawny eyes liked it, for though they were mostly bent on the ground, I saw them give one sidelong flash at my Aunt Kezia which did not look to me like loving-kindness.

I feel to-night what I think Angus means when he says that he is flat. Everything feels flat. Fanny is gone—she was married on Saturday. Amelia, Charlotte, and Hatty set forth on Tuesday, and they are gone. I thought that Ce— Miss Osborne would have gone with them, and have returned by-and-by; but she stays on, and will do so, I hear, almost till my Aunt Kezia goes, when Mrs Hebblethwaite has asked her to stay at the Fells Farm for the last few days before the wedding. It is settled now that my Aunt Kezia and Sophy stay here till the day before it. It does seem so queer for Sophy to be here till then, and not be at the wedding! I don’t believe it is Father’s doing. It is not like him. Flora, Angus, Mr Keith, and I are to start to-morrow; but Mr Keith only goes with us as far as Carlisle—that is, the first day’s journey; then he leaves us for Newcastle, where he has some sort of business (that horrid word!), and I go on with my cousins to Abbotscliff. We shall be met at Carlisle by a Scots gentleman who is travelling thence to Selkirk, and is a friend of my Uncle Drummond. He goes in his own chaise, with two mounted servants, and both he and they are armed, so I hope we shall get clear of freebooters on the Border. He has nobody with him, and says he shall have plenty of room in the chaise. It is very lucky that this Mr Cameron should just be going at the same time as we are. I don’t think Angus would be much protection, though I should not wish him to know I said so.

If Ephraim Hebblethwaite have broken his heart, he behaves very funnily. He was not only at Fanny’s wedding, but was best man; and he looks quite well and happy. I begin to think that we must have been mistaken in guessing that he cared for Fanny. Perhaps it only amused him to talk to her.

Fanny’s wedding was very smart and gay, and everybody came to it. The bridesmaids were we three, Esther Langridge, and two cousins of Ambrose’s, whose names are Annabel Catterall and Priscilla Minshull. I rather liked Annabel, but Priscilla was horrid. (Sophy says I say “horrid” too often, and about all sorts of things. But if people and things are horrid, how am I to help saying it?) I am sure Priscilla Minshull was horrid. She reminded me of Angus’s saying about turning up one’s eyes like a duck in thunder. I never watched a duck in thunder, and I don’t know whether it turns up its eyes or it does not: only Priscilla did. She seemed to think us all (my Aunt Kezia said) no better than the dirt she walked on. And I am sure she need not be so stuck-up, for Mr James Minshull, her father, is only a parson, and not only that, but a chaplain too: so Priscilla is not anybody of any consequence. I said so to Flora, and she replied that Priscilla would be much less likely to be proud if she were.

I was dreadfully tired on Sunday. We had been so hard at work all the fortnight before, first making the wedding dress, and then dressing the wedding-dinner; and when I went to bed on Saturday night, I thought I never wanted to see another. Another wedding, of course, I mean. However, everything went off very well; and Fanny looked charming in her pink silk brocaded with flowers, with white stripes down it here and there, and a pink quilted slip beneath. She had pink rosettes, too, in her shoes, and a white hood lined with pink and trimmed with pink bows. Her hoop came from Carlisle, and was the biggest I have seen yet. The mantua-maker from Carlisle, who was five days in the house, said that hoops were getting very much larger this year, and she thought they would soon be as big as they were in Queen Anne’s time. We had much smaller hoops—of course it would not have been seemly to have the bridesmaids as smart as the bride—and we were dressed alike, in white French cambric, with light green trimmings. Of course we all wore white ribbons. I think Father would have stormed at us if we had put on any other colour. I should not like to be the one to wear a red ribbon when he was by! (Note 1.) We wore straw milk-maid hats, with green ribbon mixed with the white; and just a sprinkle of grey powder in our hair. Cecilia would not be a bridesmaid, though she was asked. I don’t think she liked the dress chosen; and indeed it would not have suited her. But wasn’t she dressed up! She wore—I really must set it down—a purple lutestring, (Note 2.) over such a hoop that she had to lift it on one side when she went in at the church door; this was guarded with gold lace and yellow feathers. She had a white laced apron, purple velvet slippers with red heels, and her lace ruffles were something to look at! And wasn’t she patched! and hadn’t she powdered her hair, and made it as stiff with pomatum as if it had been starched! Then on the top of this head went a lace cap—it was not a hood—just a little, light, fly-away cap, with purple ribbons and gold embroidery, and in the middle of the front a big gold pompoon.

What a contrast there was between her and my Aunt Kezia! She wore a silk dress too, only it was a dark stone-colour, as quiet as a Quakeress, just trimmed with two rows of braid, the same colour, round the bottom, and a white silk scarf, with a dark blue hood, and just a little rosette of white lace at the top of it. Aunt Kezia’s hood was a hood, too, and was tied under her chin as if she meant it to be some good. And her elbow-ruffles were plain nett, with long dark doe-skin gloves drawn up to meet them. Cecilia wore white silk mittens. I hate mittens; they are horrid things. If you want to make your hands look as ugly as you can, you have only to put on a pair of mittens.

The wedding-dinner, which was at noon, was a very grand one. It should have been, for didn’t my arms ache with beating eggs and keeping pans stirred! Hatty said we were martyrs in a good cause. But I do think Fanny might have taken a little more trouble herself, seeing it was her wedding. Now, let us see, what had we? There was a turkey pie, and a boar’s head, chickens in different ways, and a great baron of roast beef; cream beaten to snow (Sophy did that, I am glad to say), candied fruits, and ices, and several sorts of pudding, for dessert. Then for drink, there were wine, and mead, purl, and Burton ale.

Well! it is all over now, and Fanny is gone. There will never be four of us any more. There seems to me something very sad about it. Poor dear Fanny, I hope she will be happy!

“I dare guess she will, in her way,” says my Aunt Kezia. “She does not keep a large cup for her happiness. ’Tis all the easier to fill when you don’t; but a deal more will go in when you do. There are advantages and disadvantages on each side of most things in this world.”

“Is there any advantage, Aunt Kezia, in my having just pricked my finger shockingly?”

“Yes, Cary. Learn to be more careful in future.”

Note 1. The white ribbon, like the white cockade, distinguished a Jacobite; the red ribbon and the black cockade were Hanoverian.

Note 2. A variety of silk then fashionable.

Chapter Five.

Leaving the Nest.

“I’ve kept old ways, and loved old friends,
Till, one by one, they’ve slipped away;
Stand where we will, cling as we like,
There’s none but God can be our stay.
’Tis only by our hold on Him
We keep a hold on those who pass
Out of our sight across the seas,
Or underneath the churchyard grass.”
Isabella Fyvie Mayo.

Carlisle, April the 5th, 1744 or 5.

I really feel that I must put a date to my writing now, when this is the first time of my going out into the great world. I have never been beyond Carlisle before, and now I am going, first into a new country, and then to London itself, if all go well.

News came last night, just before we started, that my Lord Orford is dead—he that was Sir Robert Walpole, and the Elector’s Prime Minister. Father says his death is a good thing for the country, for it gives more hope that the King may come by his own. I don’t know what would happen if he did. I suppose it would not make much difference to us. Indeed, I rather wish things would not happen, for the things that happen are so often disagreeable ones. I said so this evening, and Mr Keith smiled, and answered, “You are young to have reached that conviction, Miss Caroline.”

“Oh, rubbish!” said Angus. “Only old women talk so!”

“Angus, will you please tell me,” said I, “whether young men have generally more sense than old women?”

“Of course they have!” replied he.

“The young men are apt to think so,” added Flora.

“But have young women more sense than old ones?” said I. “Because I see, whenever people mean to speak of anything as particularly silly, they always say it is worthy of an old woman. Now why an old woman? Have I more commonsense now than I shall have fifty years hence? And if so, at what age may I expect it to take leave of me?”

“You are not talking sense now, at any rate,” replied Angus—who might be my brother, instead of my cousin, for the way in which he takes me up, whatever I say.

“Pardon me,” said Mr Keith. “I think Miss Caroline is talking very good sense.”

“Then you may answer her,” said Angus.

“Nay,” returned Mr Keith. “The question was addressed to you.”

“Oh, all women are sillies!” was Angus’s flattering answer. “They’re just a pack of ninnies, the whole lot of them.”

“It seems to me, Angus,” observed Mr Keith, quite gravely, “that you must have paid twopence extra for manners.”

Flora and I laughed.

“I was not rich enough to go in for any,” growled Angus. “I’m not a laird’s son, Mr Duncan Keith, so you don’t need to throw stones at me.”

“Did I, Angus? I beg your pardon.”

Angus muttered something which I did not hear, and was silent. I thought I had better let the subject drop.

But before we went to bed, something happened which I never saw before. Mr Keith took a book from his pocket, and sat down at the table. Flora rose and went to the sofa, motioning to me to come beside her. Even Angus twisted himself round, and sat in a more decorous way.

“What are we going to do?” I asked of Flora.

“The exercise, dear,” said she.

“Exercise!” cried I. “What are we to exercise?”

A curious sort of gurgle came from Angus’s part of the room, as if a laugh had made its way into his throat, and he had smothered it in its cradle.

“The word is strange to Miss Caroline,” said Mr Keith, looking round with a smile. “We Scots people, Madam, speak of exercising our souls in prayer. We are about to read in God’s Word, and pray, if you please. It is our custom, morning and evening.”

“But how can we pray?” said I. “There is no clergyman.”

“Though I am not a minister,” replied Mr Keith, “yet I trust I have learned to pray.”

It seemed to me so strange that anybody not a clergyman should think of praying before other people! However, I sat down, of course, on the sofa by Flora, and listened while Mr Keith read something out of the Gospel of Saint John, about the woman of Samaria, and what our Lord said to her. But I never heard such reading in my life! I thought I could have gone on listening to him all night. The only clergymen that I ever heard read were Mr Bagnall and poor old Mr Digby, and the one always read in a high singsong tone, which gave me the idea that it was nothing I need listen to; and the other mumbled indistinctly, so that I never heard what he said. But Mr Keith read as if the converse were really going on, and you actually heard our Lord and the woman talking to one another at the well. He made it seem so real that I almost fancied I could hear the water trickling, and see the cool wet green mosses round the old well. Oh, if clergymen would always read and preach as if the things were real, how different going to church would be!

Then we knelt down, and Mr Keith prayed. It was not out of the Prayer-Book. And I dare say, if I were to hear nothing but such prayers, I might miss the dear old prayers that have been like sweet sounds floating around me ever since I knew anything. But this evening, when it was all new, it came to me as so solemn and so real! This was not saying one’s prayers; it was talking to one’s Friend. And it seemed as if God really were Mr Keith’s Friend—as if they knew each other, and were not strangers at all, but each understood what the other would like or dislike, and they wanted to please one another. I hope I am not irreverent in writing so, but really it did seem like that. And I never saw anything like it before.

I suppose, to the others, it was an old worn-out story—all this which came so new and fresh to me. When we rose up, Angus said, without any pause,—

“Well! I am off to bed. Good-night, all of you.”

Flora went up to him and offered him a kiss, which he took as if it were a condescension to an inferior creature; and then, without saying anything more to Mr Keith or me, lighted his candle and went away. Flora sighed as she looked after him, and Mr Keith looked at her as if he felt for her.

“I shall be glad to get him home,” said Flora, answering Mr Keith’s look, I think. “If he can only get back to Father, then, perhaps—”

“Aye,” said Mr Keith, meaningly, “it is all well, when we do get back to the Father.”

Flora shook her head sorrowfully. “Not that!” she answered. “O Duncan, I am afraid, not that, yet! I feel such terrible fear sometimes lest he should never come back at all, or if he do, should have to come over sharp stones and through thorny paths.”

“‘So He bringeth them unto their desired haven,’” was Mr Keith’s gentle answer.

“I know!” she said, with a sigh. “I suppose I ought to pray and wait. Father does, I am sure. But it is hard work!”

Mr Keith did not answer for a moment; and when he did, it was by another bit of the Bible. At least I think it was the Bible, for it sounded like it, but I should not know where to find it.

“‘Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.’”

Castleton, April the sixth.

Mr Keith left us so early this morning that there was not time for anything except breakfast and good-bye. I feel quite sorry to lose him, and wish I had a brother like him. (Not like Angus—dear me, no!) Why could we four girls not have had one brother?

About half an hour after Mr Keith was gone, the Scots gentleman with whom we were to travel—Mr Cameron—came in. He is a man of about fifty, bald-headed and rosy-faced, pleasant and chatty enough, only I do not quite always understand him. By six o’clock we were all packed into his chaise, and a few minutes later we set forth from the inn door. The streets of Carlisle felt like home; but as we left them behind, and came gradually out into the open country, it dawned upon me that now, indeed, I was going out into the great world.

We sleep here to-night, where Flora and I have a little bit of a bed-chamber next door to a larger one where Mr Cameron and Angus are. On Monday we expect to reach Abbotscliff. I am too tired to write more.

Abbotscliff Manse, April the ninth.

I really could not go on any sooner. We reached the manse—what an odd name for a vicarage!—about four o’clock yesterday afternoon. The church (which Flora calls the kirk) and the manse, with a few other houses, stand on a little rising ground, and the rest of the village lies below.

But before I begin to talk about the manse, I want to write down a conversation which took place on Monday morning as we journeyed, in which Mr Cameron told us some curious things that I do not wish to forget. We were driving through such a pretty little village, and in one of the doorways an old woman sat with her knitting.

“Oh, look at that dear old woman!” cries Flora. “How pleasant she looks, with her clean white apron and mutch!”

“Much, Flora?” said I. “What do you mean?” I thought it such an odd word to use. What was she much?

Flora looked puzzled, and Mr Cameron answered for her, with amusement in his eyes.

“A mutch, young lady,” said he, “is what you in the South call a cap.”

“The South!” cried I. “Why, Mr Cameron, you do not think we live in the South?”

I felt almost vexed that he should fancy such a thing. For all that Grandmamma and my Aunt Dorothea used to say, I always look down upon the South. All the people I have seen who came from the South seemed to me to have a great deal of wiliness and foolishness, and no commonsense. I suppose the truth is that there are agreeable people, and good people, in the South, only they have not come my way.

When I cried out like that, Mr Cameron laughed.

“Well,” said he, “north and south are comparative terms. We in Scotland think all England ‘the South,’—and so it is, if you will think a moment. You in Cumberland, I suppose, draw the line at the Trent or the Humber; lower down, they employ the Thames; and a Surrey man thinks Sussex is the South. ’Tis all a matter of comparison.”

“What does a Sussex man call the South?” said Angus.

“Spain and Portugal, I should think,” said Mr Cameron.

“But, Mr Cameron,” said I, “asking your pardon, is there not some difference of character or disposition between those in the North and in the South—I mean, of England?”

“Quite right, young lady,” said he. “They are different tribes; and the Lowland Scots, among whom you are now coming, have the same original as yourself. There were two tribes amongst those whom we call Anglo-Saxons, that peopled England after the Britons were driven into Wales—namely, as you might guess, the Angles and the Saxons. The Angles ran from the Frith of Forth to the Trent; the Saxons from the Thames southward. The midland counties were in all likelihood a mixture of the two. There are, moreover, several foreign elements beyond this, in various counties. For instance, there is a large influx of Danish blood on the eastern coast, in parts of Lancashire, in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and in the Weald of Sussex; there was a Flemish settlement in Lancashire and Norfolk, of considerable extent; the Britons were left in great numbers in Cumberland and Cornwall; the Jutes—a variety of Dane—peopled Kent entirely. Nor must we forget the Romans, who left a deep impress upon us, especially amongst Welsh families. ’Tis not easy for any of our mixed race to say, I am this, or that. Why, if most of us spoke the truth (supposing we might know it), we should say, ‘I am one-quarter Saxon, one-eighth British, one-sixteenth Iberian, one-eighth Danish, one-sixteenth Flemish, one-thirty-secondth part Roman,’—and so forth. Now, Miss Caroline, how much of that can you remember?”

“All of it, I hope, Sir,” said I; “I shall try to do so. I like to hear of those old times. But would you please to tell me, what is an Iberian?”

“My dear,” said Mr Cameron, smiling, “I would gladly give you fifty pounds in gold, if you could tell me.”

“Sir!” cried I, in great surprise.

He went on, more as if he were talking to himself, or to some very learned man, than to me.

“What is an Iberian? Ah, for the man who could tell us! What is a Basque?—what is an Etruscan?—what is a Magyar?—above all, what is a Cagot? Miss Caroline, my dear, there are deep questions in all arts and sciences; and, without knowing it, you have lighted on one of the deepest and most interesting. The most learned man that breathes can only answer you, as I do now (though I am far from being a learned man)—I do not know. I will, nevertheless, willingly tell you what little I do know; and the rather if you take an interest in such matters. All that we really know of the Iberii is that they came from Spain, and that they had reached that country from the East; that they were a narrow-headed people (the Celts or later Britons were round-headed); that they dwelt in rude houses in the interior of the country, first digging a pit in the ground, and building over it a kind of hut, sometimes of turf and sometimes of stone; that they wore very rude clothing, and were generally much less civilised than the Celts, who lived mainly on the coast; that they loved to dwell, and especially to worship, on a mountain top; that they followed certain Eastern observances, such as running or leaping through the fire to Bel,—which savours of a Phoenician or Assyrian origin; and that it is more than likely that we owe to them those stupendous monuments yet standing—Stonehenge, Avebury, the White Horse of Berkshire, and the White Man of Wilmington.”

“But what sort of a religion had they, if you please, Sir?” said I; for I wanted to get to know all I could about these strange fathers of ours.

“Idolatry, my dear, as you might suppose,” answered Mr Cameron. “They worshipped the sun, which they identified with the serpent; and they had, moreover, a sacred tree—all, doubtless, relics of Eden. They would appear also to have had some sort of woman-worship, for they held women in high honour, loved female sovereignty, and practised polyandry—that is, each woman had several husbands.”

“I never heard of such queer folks!” said I. “And what became of them, Sir?”

“The Iberians and Celts together,” he answered, “made up the people we call Britons. When the Saxons invaded the country, they were driven into the remote fastnesses of Wales, Cumberland, and Cornwall. Some antiquaries think the Picts had the same original, but this is one of the unsettled points of history.”

“I wish it were possible to settle all such questions!” said Flora.

“So do the antiquaries, I can assure you,” returned Mr Cameron, with a smile. “But it is scarce possible to come to a conclusion with any certainty as to the origin of a people of whom we cannot recover the language.”

“If you please, Sir,” said I, “what has the language to do with it?”

“It has everything to do with it, Miss Caroline. You did not know that languages grew, like plants, and could be classified in groups after the same manner?”

“Please explain to us, Mr Cameron,” said Flora. “It all sounds so strange.”

“But it is very interesting,” I said. “I want to know all about it.”

“If you want to know all about it,” answered our friend, “you must consult some one else than me, for I do not know nearly all about it. In truth, no one does. For myself, I have only arrived at the stage of knowing that I know next to nothing.”

“That’s easy enough to know, surely,” said Angus.

“Not at all, Angus. It is one of the most difficult things to ascertain in this world. No man is so ready to give an off-hand opinion on any and every subject, as the man who knows absolutely nothing. But we must not start another hare while the young ladies’ question remains unanswered. Languages, my dears, are not made; they grow. The first language—that spoken in Eden—may have been given to man ready-made, by God; but I rather imagine, from the expressions of Holy Writ, that what was granted to Adam was the inward power of forming a tongue which should be rational and consistent with itself; and, if so, no doubt it was granted to Eve that she should understand him—perhaps that she should possess a similar power.”

“The woman made the language, Sir, you may be sure,” said Angus. “They are shocking chatterers.”

“Unfortunately, my boy, Scripture is against you. ‘Whatsoever Adam’—not Eve—‘called the name of every living creature, that was the name thereof.’ To proceed:—The confusion of tongues at Babel seems, from what we can gather, to have called into being a number of languages quite separate from each other, yet all having a certain affinity. The structure differs; but some of the words are alike, or at least so nearly alike that the resemblance can be traced. Take the word for ‘father’ in all languages: cut down to its root, there is the same root found in all. Ab in Hebrew, abba in Syriac, pater in Greek and Latin, vater in Low Dutch, père in French, padre in Spanish and Italian, father in English—ay, even the child’s papa and the infant’s daddy—all come from one root. But this cutting away of superfluities to get at the root, is precisely what a ’prentice hand should not attempt; like an unskilled gardener, he will prune away the wrong branches.”

“Then, Sir,” I asked, “what are the languages which belong to the same class as ours?”

“Ours, young lady, is a composite language. It may almost be said to be made up of bits of other languages. German or Low Dutch is its mother, and the Scandinavian group—Swedish, Danish, and so forth—may be termed its aunts. It belongs mostly to what is called the Teutonic group; but there are in it traces of Celtic, and though more dimly perceptible, even of Latin and Oriental tongues. We are altogether a made-up nation—to which fact some say that we owe those excellences on which we are so fond of priding ourselves.”

“Please, Sir, what are they?” I asked.

Mr Cameron seemed much amused at the question.

“What are the excellences we have?” said he; “or, what are those on which we pride ourselves? They are often not the same. And—notice it, young ladies, as you go through life—the virtue on which a man plumes himself the most highly is very frequently one which he possesses in small measure. (I do not say, in no measure.) Well, I suppose the qualities on which we English—”

“We are not English!” cried Angus, hotly.

“For this purpose we are,” was Mr Cameron’s answer. “As I observed before, the Lowland Scots and the northern English are one tribe. But I was going to say, when you were so rude as to interrupt me, English and Scots, young gentleman.”

Angus growled out, “Beg your pardon.”

“Take it,” said Mr Cameron, pleasantly. “Now for the question. On what good qualities do we plume ourselves? Well, I think, on steadiness, independence, loyalty, truthfulness, firmness, honesty, and love of fair play. How far we are justified in doing so, perhaps other nations are the better judges. They, I believe, generally regard us as a proud and surly race—qualities on which there is no occasion to plume ourselves.”

“Much loyalty we have got to glory in!” said Angus.

“We have always tried,” replied Mr Cameron, “to run loyalty and liberty together; and when the two pull smoothly, undoubtedly the national chaise gets along the best. Unhappily, when harnessed to the same chariot, one of those steeds is very apt to kick over the traces. But we will not venture on such delicate ground, seeing that our political colours differ; nor is this the time to do it, for here is the inn where we are to dine.”

When we drove up to the manse on Wednesday, the floor stood open, and in the doorway was Helen Raeburn, who had evidently seen our chaise, and was waiting for us. Flora was out the first, and she and Helen flew into one another’s arms, and hugged and kissed each other as if they could never leave off. I was surprised to find Helen so old. I thought Elspie’s niece would have been between thirty and forty; and she looks more like sixty. Then Flora flew into the house to find her father, and Helen turned to me.

“You’re vara welcome, young leddy,” said she, “and the Lord make ye a blessin’ amang us. Will ye come ben the now? Miss Flora, she’s aff to find the minister, bless her bonnie face!—but if ye’ll please to come awa’ wi’ me, I’ll show ye the way.—Maister Angus, my laddie, welcome hame!—are ye grown too grand to kiss your auld nursie, my callant?”

Angus gave her a kiss, but not at all like Flora; rather as if he had it to do, and wanted to get it over.

“Well, Helen!” said Mr Cameron, as he came down from the chaise, “and how goes the world with you, my woman?”

“I wish ye a gude evening, Mr Alexander,” said she. “The warld gaes vara weel wi’ me, thanks to ye for speirin’. No that the warld’s onie better, but the Lord turns all to gude for His ain. The minister’s in his study, and he’ll be blithe to see ye. Now, my lassie—I ask your pardon, but ye see I’m used to Miss Flora.”

“Please call me just what you like,” I said, and I followed Helen up a little passage paved with stone, and into a room on the right hand, where I found Flora standing by a tall fine-looking man, who had his arm round her shoulders, and who was so like her that he could only be her father. Flora’s face was lighted up as I had seen it but once before—so bright and happy she looked!

“And here is our young guest, your cousin,” said my Uncle Drummond, turning to me with a very kind smile. “My dear, may your stay be profitable and pleasant among us,—ay, and mayest thou find favour in the eyes of the God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust!”

It sounded very strange to me. Did these people pray about everything? I had heard Father speak contemptuously of “praying Presbyters,” and I thought Uncle Drummond must be one of that sort. But I could not see that a minister looked at all different from a clergyman. They seemed to me very much the same sort of creature.

Mr Cameron was to stay the night at the manse, and to go on in the morning to his own home, which is about fourteen miles further. Flora carried me off to her chamber, where she and I were to sleep, and we changed our travelling dresses, and had a good wash, and then came down to supper. During the evening Mr Cameron said, laughingly,—

“Well, my fair maid who objects to the South, have you digested the Iberii?”

“I think I have remembered all you told us, Sir,” said I; “but if you please, I am very sorry, but I am afraid we do come from the South. Our family, I mean. My father’s father, I believe, belonged Wiltshire; and his father, who was a captain in the navy, was a Courtenay of Powderham, whatever that means. My sister Fanny knows all about it, but I don’t understand it—only I am afraid we must have come from the South.”

Mr Cameron laughed, and so did my Uncle Drummond and Flora.

“Don’t you, indeed, young lady?” said the first. “Well, it only means that you have half the kings of England and France, and a number of emperors of the East, among your forefathers. Very blue blood indeed, Miss Caroline. I do not see how, with that pedigree, you could be anything but a Tory. Mr Courtenay is rather warm that way, I understand.”

“Oh, Father is as strong as he can be,” said I. “I should not dare to talk of the Elector of Hanover by any other name if he heard me.”

“Well, you may call that gentleman what you please here,” said Mr Cameron; “but I usually style him King George.”

“Nay, Sandy, do not teach the child to disobey her father,” said my Uncle Drummond. “The Fifth Command is somewhat older than the Brunswick succession and the Act of Settlement.”

“A little,” said Mr Cameron, drily.

“Little Cary,” said my uncle, softly, turning to me, “do you know that you are very like somebody?”

“Like whom, Uncle?” said I.

“Somebody I loved very much, my child,” he answered, rather sadly; “from whom Angus has his blue eyes, and Flora her smile.”

“You mean Aunt Jane,” said I, speaking as softly as he had done, for I felt that she had been very dear to him.

“Yes, my dear,” he replied; “I mean my Jeannie. You are very like her. I think we shall love each other, Cary.”

I thought so too.

Mr Cameron left us this morning. To-day I have been exploring with Flora, who wants to go all over the house and garden and village—speaks of her pet plants as if they were old friends, and shakes hands with everyone she meets, and pats every dog and cat in the place. And they all seem so glad to see her—the dogs included; I do not know about the cats. As we went down the village street, it was quite amusing to hear the greetings from every doorway.

“Atweel, Miss Flora, ye’ve won hame!” said one.

“How’s a’ wi’ ye, my bairn?” said another.

“A blessing on your bonnie e’en, my lassie!” said a third.

And Flora had the same sort of thing for all of them. It was, “Well, Jeannie, is your Maggie still in her place?” or, “I hope Sandy’s better now?” or, “Have you lost your pains, Isabel?” She seemed to know all about each one. I was quite diverted to hear it all. They all appeared rather shy with me, only very kindly; and when Flora introduced me as “her cousin from England,” which she did in every cottage, they had all something kind to say: that they hoped I was well after my journey, or they trusted I should like Scotland, or something of that sort. Two told me I was a bonnie lassie. But at last we came to a shut door—most were open—and Flora knocked and waited for an answer. She said gravely to me,—

“A King’s daughter lies here, Cary, waiting for her Father’s chariot to take her home.”

A fresh-coloured, middle-aged woman came to the door, and I was surprised to hear Flora say, “How is your grandmother, Elsie?”

“She’s mickle as ye laft her, Miss Flora, only weaker; I’m thinkin’ she’ll no be lang the now. But come ben, my bonnie lassie; you’re as welcome as flowers in May. And how’s a’ wi’ ye?”

Flora answered as we were following Elsie down the chamber and round a screen which boxed off the end of it. Behind the screen was a bed, and on it lay, as I thought, the oldest woman on whom I ever set my eyes. Her face was all wrinkled up, yet there was a fresh colour in her cheeks, and her eyes, though much sunk, seemed piercingly bright.

“Ye’re come at last,” she said, in a low clear voice, as Flora sat down on the bed, and took the wrinkled brown hand in hers.

“Yes, dear Mirren, come at last,” said she. “I’m very glad to get home.”

“Ay, and that’s what I’ll be the morn.”

“So soon, Mirren?”

“Ay, just sae soon. I askit Him to let me bide while ye came hame. I ay thocht I wad fain see ye ance mair—my Miss Flora’s lad’s lassie. He’s gi’en me a’ that ever I askit Him—but ane thing, an’ that was the vara desire o’ my heart.”

“You mean,” said Flora, gently, “you wanted Ronald to come home?”

“Ay, I wanted him to come hame frae the far country!” said old Mirren with a sigh. “I’d ha’e likit weel to see him come hame to Abbotscliff—vara weel. But I longed mickle mair to see him come hame to the Father’s house. It’s no for his auld minnie to see that. But if it’s for the Lord to see some ither day, I’m content. And He has gi’en me sae monie things that I ne’er askit Him wi’ ane half the longing that I did for that, I dinna think He’ll say me nay the now.”

“Is He with you, Mirren dear?”

I could not imagine how Flora thought Mirren was to know that. But she answered, with a light in those bright eyes,—

“Ay, my doo. ‘His left haun is under my heid, and His richt haun doth embrace me.’”

I sat and listened in wonder. It all sounded so strange. Yet Flora seemed to understand. And I had such an unpleasant sense of being outside, and not understanding, as I never felt before, and I did not like it a bit. I knew quite well that if Father had been there, he would have said it was all stuff and cant. But I did not feel so sure of my Aunt Kezia. And suppose it were not cant, but was something unutterably real,—something that I ought to know, and must know some day, if I were ever to get to Heaven! I did not like it. I felt that I was among a new sort of people—people who lived, as it were, in a different place from me—a sort of whom I had never seen one before (that did not come from Abbotscliff) except my Aunt Kezia, and there were differences between her and them. My Uncle Drummond and Flora, and Mr Keith, and this old Mirren, and I thought Helen Raeburn and Mr Cameron, all belonged this new sort of people. The one who did not seem to belong them was Angus. Yet I did not like Angus nearly so well as the rest. And yet he belonged my sort of people. It was a puzzle altogether, and not a pleasant puzzle. And how anybody was to get out of the one set into the other set, I could not tell at all.

Stop! I did know one other person at Brocklebank who belonged this new sort of people. It was Ephraim Hebblethwaite. He was not, I thought—well, I don’t know how to put it—he did not seem so far on the road as the others; only he was on that road, and not on this road. And then it struck me, too, whether old Elspie, and perhaps Sam, were not on the road as well. I ran over in my mind, as I was walking back to the manse with Flora, who was very silent, all the people I knew; and I could not think of one other who might be on Flora’s road. Father and my sisters, Esther Langridge, the Catteralls, the Bracewells, Cecilia—oh dear, no!—Mr Digby, Mr Bagnall (yet they were parsons), Mr Parmenter—no, not one. At all the four I named last, my mind gave a sort of jump as if it were quite astonished to be asked the question. But where did the roads lead? Flora and her sort, I felt quite sure, were going to Heaven. Then where were Angus and I and all the rest going?

And I did not like the answer at all.

But I felt that the two roads led in opposite ways, and they could not both go to one place.

As we walked up the path to the manse, Helen came out to meet us.

“My lassie,” she said to Flora, “there’s Miss Annas i’ the garden, and Leddy Monksburn wad ha’e ye gang till Monksburn for a dish o’ tea, and Miss Cary wi’ ye.”

Flora’s face lighted up.

“Oh, how delightful!” she said. “Come, Cary—come and see Annas Keith.”

I was very curious to see Annas, and I followed willingly. Under the old beech at the bottom of the garden sat a girl-woman—she was not either, but both—in a gown of soft camlet, which seemed as if it were part of her; I do not mean so much in the fit of it, as in the complete suitableness of it and her. Her head was bent down over a book, and I could not see her face at first—only her hair, which was neither light nor dark, but had a kind of golden shimmer. Her hat lay beside her on the seat. Flora ran down the walk with a glad cry of “Annas!” and then she stood up, and I saw Annas Keith.

A princess! was my first thought. I saw a tall, slight figure, a slender white throat, a pure pale face, dark grey eyes with black lashes, and a soul in them. Some people have no souls in their eyes, Annas Keith has.

Yet I could not have said then, and I cannot say now, when I try to recall her picture in my mind’s eye, whether Annas Keith is beautiful. It does not seem the right word to describe her: and yet “ugly” would be much further off. She is one of those women about whose beauty or want of beauty you never think unless you are trying to describe them, and then you cannot tell what to say about it. She takes you captive. There is a charm about her that I cannot put into words. Only it is as different from the spell that Cecilia Osborne threw over me (at first) as light differs from darkness. The charm about Annas feels as if it lifted me higher, into a purer air. Whenever I had been long with Cecilia, my mind felt soiled, as if I had been breathing bad air.

When Flora introduced me, Miss Keith turned and kissed me, and I felt as if I had been presented to a queen.

“We want to know you,” she said. “All Flora’s friends are our friends. You will come, both of you?”

“I thank you, Miss Keith,” said I. “I should like to come very much.”

“Annas, please,” she said quietly, with that sweet smile of hers. It is only when she smiles that she reminds me of her brother.

“And how are the Laird and Lady Monksburn?” said Flora.

I did not know that the Laird (as they always seem to call the squires here) had been a titled gentleman: and I said so. Annas smiled.

“Our titles will seem odd to you,” said she. “We call a Scots gentleman by the name of his estate, and every laird’s wife is ‘Lady’—only by custom and courtesy, you understand. My mother really is only Mrs Keith, but you will hear everybody call her Lady Monksburn.”

“Then if my father were here, they would call him—” I hesitated, and Flora ended the sentence for me.

“The Laird of Brocklebank; and if you had a mother she would be Lady Brocklebank.”

I thought it sounded rather pleasant.

“And when is Duncan coming home?” asked Flora.

“To-morrow, or the day after, we hope,” said Annas.

I noticed that she had less of the Scots accent than Flora; and Mr Keith has it scarcely at all. I found after a while that Lady Monksburn is English, and that Annas has spent much of her life in England. I wanted to know what part of England it was, and she said, “The Isle of Wight.”

“Why, then you do really come from the South!” cried I. “Do tell me something about it. Are there any agreeable people there?—I mean, except you.”

Annas laughed. “I hope you have seen few people from the South,” said she, “if that be your impression of them.”

“Only two,” said I; “and I did not like either of them one bit.”

“Well, two is no large acquaintance,” said Annas. “Let me assure you that there are plenty of agreeable people in the South, and good people also; though I will not say that they are not different from us in the North. They speak differently, and their manners are more polished.”

“But it is just that polish I feel afraid of,” I replied. “It looks to me so like a mask. If we are bears in the North, at least we mean what we say.”

“I do not think you need fear a polished Christian,” said Annas. “A worldly man, polished or unpolished, may do you hurt.”

“But are we not all Christians?” said I. And the words were scarcely out of my lips when the thoughts came back to me which had been tormenting me as we walked up from old Mirren’s cottage. Those two roads! Did Annas mean that only those were Christians who took the higher one? Only, what was there in the air of Abbotscliff which seemed to make people Christians? or in that of Brocklebank, which seemed unfavourable to it?

“Those are Christians who follow Christ,” said Annas. “Do you think they who do not, have a right to the name?”

“I should like to think more about it,” I answered. “It all looks strange to me.”

“Do think about it,” replied Annas.

When we came to Monksburn, which is about a mile from the manse, I found it was a most charming place on the banks of the Tweed. The lawn ran sloping down to the river; and the house was a lovely old building of grey stone, in some places almost lost in ivy. Annas said it had been the Abbots grange belonging to the old Abbey which gives its name to Abbotscliff and Monksburn, and several other estates and villages in the neighbourhood. Here we found Lady Monksburn in the drawing-room, busied with some soft kind of embroidered work; and I thought I could have guessed her to be the mother of Mr Keith. Then when the Laird came in, I saw that his grey eyes were Annas’s, though I should not call them alike in other respects.

Lady Monksburn is a dear old lady; and as she comes from the South, I must never say a word against Southerners again. She took both my hands in her soft white ones, and spoke to me so kindly that before I had known her ten minutes I was almost surprised to find myself chattering away to her as if she were quite an old friend—telling her all about Brocklebank, and my sisters, and Father, and my Aunt Kezia. I could not tell how it was,—I felt so completely at home in that Monksburn drawing-room. Everybody was so kind, and seemed to want me to enjoy myself, and yet there was no fuss about it. If those be southern manners, I wish I could catch them, like small-pox. But perhaps they are Christian manners. That may be it. And I don’t suppose you can catch that like the small-pox. However, I certainly did enjoy myself this afternoon. Mr Keith, I find, can draw beautifully, and they let me look through some of his portfolios, which was delightful. And when Annas, at her mother’s desire, at down to the harpsichord, and sang us some old Scots songs, I thought I never heard anything so charming—until Flora joined in, and then it was more delicious still.

I think it would be easy to be good, if one lived at Monksburn!

Those grey eyes of Annas’s seem to see everything. I am sure she saw that Flora would like a quiet talk with Lady Monksburn, and she carried me to see her peacocks and silver pheasants, which are great pets, she says; and they are so tame that they will come and eat out of her hand. Of course they were shy with me. Then we had a charming little walk on the path which ran along by the side of the river, and Annas pointed out some lovely peeps through the trees at the scenery beyond. When we came in, I saw that Flora had been crying; but she seemed so much calmer and comforted, that I am sure her talk had done her good. Then came supper, and then Angus, who had cleared up wonderfully, and was more what he used to be as a boy, instead of the cross, gloomy young man he has seemed of late. Lady Monksburn offered to send a servant with arms to accompany us home, but Angus appeared to think it quite unnecessary. He had his dirk and a pistol, he said; and surely he could take care of two girls! I am not sure that Flora would not rather have had the servant, and I know I would. However, we came safe to the manse, meeting nothing more terrific than a white cow, which wicked Angus tried to persuade us was a lady without a head.

Chapter Six.

New Ideas for Cary.

“O Jesu, Thou art pleading,
In accents meek and low,
I died for you, My children,
And will ye treat Me so?
O Lord, with shame and sorrow,
We open now the door:
Dear Saviour, enter, enter,
And leave us never more!”
Bishop Walsham How.

As we drank our tea, this evening, I said,—

“Uncle, will you please tell me something?”

“Surely, my dear, if I can,” answered my Uncle Drummond kindly, laying down his book.

“Are all the people at Abbotscliff going to Heaven?”

I really meant it, but my Uncle Drummond put on such a droll expression, and Angus laughed so much, that I woke up to see that they thought I had said something very queer. When my uncle spoke, it was not at first to me.

“Flora,” said he, “where have you taken your cousin?”

“Only into the cottages, Father, and to Monksburn,” said Flora, in a diverted tone, as if she were trying not to laugh.

“Either they must all have had their Sabbath manners on,” said my Uncle Drummond, “or else there are strange folks at Brocklebank. No, my dear; I fear not, by any means.”

“I am afraid,” said I, “we must be worse folks at Brocklebank than I thought we were. But these seem to me, Uncle, such a different kind of people—as if they were travelling on another road, and had a different end in view. Nearly all the people I see here seem to think more of what they ought to do, and at Brocklebank we think of what we like to do.”

I did not, somehow, like to say right out what I really meant—to the one set God seemed a Friend, to the other He was a Stranger.

“Do you hear, Angus, what a good character we have?” said my Uncle Drummond, smiling. “We must try to keep it, my boy.”

Of course I could not say that I did not think Angus was included in the “we.” But the momentary trouble in Flora’s eyes, as she glanced at him, made me feel that she saw it, as indeed I could have guessed from what I had heard her say to Mr Keith.

“Well, my lassie,” my Uncle Drummond went on, “while I fear we do not all deserve the compliment you pay us, yet have you ever thought what those two roads are, and what end they have in view?”

“Yes, Uncle, I can see that,” said I. “Heaven is at the end of one, I am sure.”

“And of the other, Cary?”

I felt the tears come into my eyes.

“Uncle, I don’t like to think about that. But do tell me, for that is what I want to know, what is the difference? I do not see how people get from the one road to the other.”

I did not say—but I feel sure that my Uncle Drummond did not need it—that I felt I was on the wrong one.

“Lassie, if you had fallen into a deep tank of water, where the walls were so high that it was not possible you could climb out by yourself, for what would you hope?”

“That somebody should come and help me, I suppose.”

“True. And who is the Somebody that can help you in this matter?”