{305}

THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER

[Transcriber’s Note: This Table of Contents was not present in the original.]

LINNÆA.
SELF-CULTURE FOR GIRLS.
SOCIAL INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF AN EAST END GIRL.
ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.
ABSENCE.
THREE GIRL-CHUMS, AND THEIR LIFE IN LONDON ROOMS.
CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.
VARIETIES.
OLD ENGLISH COTTAGE HOMES.
“OUR HERO.”
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

LINNÆA;

THE STORY OF A FRIENDSHIP.

“‘I DESPISE YOU!’”

All rights reserved.]

CHAPTER III.

Linnæa’s first waking thoughts carried with them the conviction that life was different—why was it? Ah, she remembered! Last night’s scene came back to her with a rush of feeling that brought the warm colour to her face. Then came the colder and more prosaic feelings which so often come with the morning. Gwendoline would soon be like the others—she would go over to the popular opinion, and Linnæa would be thrust upon her own companionship as before. These thoughts were passing through her mind when she heard a tap at the door, and a voice called, “May I come in?”

Linnæa opened the door, and there stood Gwendoline, her arms full of knick-knacks of all sorts.

“You are only dressing! I have been dressed for an hour. I awoke early and thought I would rise and deck my cubicle; but I haven’t room for half the things I brought. As you haven’t many things in yours, I thought perhaps you might like a few. Would you care for them?”

“Very much indeed! It was very kind of you to think of me!”

“Oh, not at all, if you will let me help you to put them up, for that is the best fun! Here is rather a pretty picture we might hang opposite the bed. It has no frame, but I suppose you won’t mind. This is a bracket which you might find convenient within reach of your bed; I brought a pair, but will only need one. I did wish I had had it up last night. I lay awake a long time during the night, and rose to get my bon-bon box. First of all I could find no matches to light my candle, then I searched my trunk in the dark for my box. I only found it after sticking my fingers in a box of ointment and nearly swallowing some pills. This morning, as you{306} may imagine, my trunk was a sight to behold. The ointment has spoiled a pair of new gloves, and I found a pill reposing restfully in the toe of my slipper. Lisette, my maid, never forgets to pack anything; but she puts things in the most unlikely places. I possess two bon-bon boxes—one she has filled with sweets, the other with pills.”

Linnæa scarcely knew her cubicle when Gwendoline’s things were arranged in it. She could not have believed that a few knick-knacks would make such a difference.

“Now there is one thing more I want you to let me do.”

“What is that?”

“Let me dress your hair for you. Why do you take it back so tightly from your face? It is such a pretty colour, and, I believe, might be quite wavy if you would allow it.”

“I never thought of it. It never seemed to me that it mattered how my hair looked.”

“Oh, but that isn’t right; you should make it as nice as you can. Lisette says I have a talent for hairdressing; I have dressed mine myself for more than a year, for Lisette confesses she cannot do it so well as I can. Come now, and we shall see what can be done with yours.”

There was indeed a wonderful improvement in Linnæa when she went downstairs that morning; all the girls noticed it, and a few complimented her on the improvement of her hair. A few of them guessed who had done it, and understood that Gwendoline was proceeding with the work she had taken in hand, but no remarks were passed on that subject; for had not that been forbidden by Gwendoline?—and already Gwendoline’s will was law in that small community.

That night Gwendoline and Linnæa again walked up to bed together and parted at Linnæa’s door. Linnæa’s heart beat quickly as they neared her door. Would Gwendoline kiss her to-night? If so, the kiss should be returned. She would at least make an effort to keep this sweet friendship which had entered into her barren life so suddenly.

“Let me come in for a minute,” said Gwendoline. “We are to be friends, are we not?” she said, slipping her arm round Linnæa’s waist, and looking at her with her large, lustrous eyes.

“I hope so, indeed,” Linnæa answered, her voice husky with emotion.

“Very well, dear. Good night.”

She was gone, and Linnæa had kissed her—the first schoolgirl she had ever kissed.

What a happy girl she was that night. There was no doubt about it now; she had a friend at last—and such a friend—the loveliest, richest, most courted girl in the school.

At the end of a week it was quite a noticeable friendship. Teachers saw it and remarked to each other on this strange freak of the new pupil in attaching herself to the girl who had kept herself so solitary hitherto. This view of it was wonderful, but equally so was it that Linnæa should return the affection; and that she did so in thorough earnest, no one could doubt. Her usually dull face lighted up when her eyes fell on Gwendoline—but indeed, her face was never so dull now, as it had once been; her very step was more elastic, and her voice had a different tone.

And what of Gwendoline?

She had fulfilled her vow, and awakened the love which had hitherto been slumbering in that lonely heart.

The girls said inwardly it was a splendid piece of acting; anyone watching Gwendoline would have said the love was as much on her side as Linnæa’s. Her attitude towards Linnæa was such that, if the girls had not known it to be assumed, some of them would have been intensely jealous. Gwendoline Rivers, with her beauty and independence of character, had taken the school by storm, and a few would have given a good deal to have got half of the attention lavished upon Linnæa. Great were the talks which took place with reference to it, when they thought themselves fairly out of the hearing of both girls.

One evening six or seven were together in the small schoolroom after preparation hours were over, and their conversation turned upon this ever-interesting topic.

“I never saw anything like it in my life. Linnæa March simply worships her.”

“It is most amusing to see Gwendoline single her out whenever she comes into the room; you would really think, to watch her, it must be real and not put on.”

“Well, for my part, I think it is a very mean proceeding to pretend to be so fond of the girl, all to show what she can do; and very probably when she has led her far enough she will cast her off!”

“Oh, she may never find out that it isn’t genuine! Do you think she would mind very much if she did? We all thought she had no feelings of that kind. I wonder if we have been mistaken?”

“I am beginning to think——”

At this moment the schoolroom door opened and Linnæa March entered. But was it Linnæa? She had never looked like this before. She was transformed from the dull, uninteresting girl, who had lived amongst them for seven years—unknowing and unknown—to a trembling, excited, and passionate being, almost terrible in her rage and indignation.

Before she spoke she seemed to force back the tumult of angry words that rushed to her lips. She paused a moment in the doorway, and then said, in a voice, calm though piercing—

“Girls, I have heard what you said. It may have been mean of me, but I heard what Janet said about—Gwendoline—pretending to love me—and—I could not help it—I listened until now.”

The girls were dumb. What could they say to this injured and justly indignant girl? They could not retract what they had said; alas, it was all too true! One and all pitied her; and yet, pity was scarcely the word—they almost feared her. Yes—feared Linnæa March, whom before they had scarcely noticed. But, as she stood there in her anger, she might have struck them, and they would not have been surprised. She stood for a moment, then turned and shut the door.

Not a word was spoken until the sound of her footsteps had died away. Then they faced the situation.

Would it come to Miss Elder’s ears? What would Gwendoline say? If Linnæa’s anger were so terrible when roused, what would Gwendoline’s be, who had seldom, or never, been crossed in her life? What would Linnæa say or do when she met Gwendoline?

These were some of the questions that presented themselves to the girls’ minds. They did not know whether they wanted to witness the meeting or not.

“I don’t care,” said one, “it serves her right, she had no business doing such a mean thing, and it was right she should be found out. She would not have kept it up much longer in any case, she would soon have tired of paying her such attention after she had gained her object.”

“But she will blame us for it—she will say we ought to have been more careful how we talked about it.”

“Ought we to tell Gwendoline what she has heard, do you think?”

“I think it would be better.”

“She will very likely be down soon. She is studying hard to-night; she seems determined to come out high in the exam. I shouldn’t wonder if she beats even you, Edith.”

“Do you notice how much better Linnæa March learns her lessons since Gwendoline came?”

“Yes. Gwendoline helped her with them, and she takes ever so much more interest in them now.”

“All in the plan, I suppose—really I am very sorry for Linnæa.”

“Did you think she could ever have looked as she did to-night? I always thought her rather soft and stupid, but I can tell you there was no softness about her then. I almost admired her as she stood, so proud and angry.”

The girls were not to have an opportunity of preparing Gwendoline for her meeting with Linnæa, for, as Linnæa went up to her room, she met Gwendoline coming down from hers.

Gwendoline’s face lit up as she saw Linnæa, and she advanced towards her to put her arm round her waist.

Linnæa drew herself back with a sudden twitch, and turned on her with a face almost livid with anger.

“Go!—don’t touch me!—don’t dare to come near me!”

“Linnæa! what is it?”

“I have found you out! Do you need to ask any more? I know the reason of all your pretence of affection and friendship. Oh, it was mean! mean!”

“But Linnæa——”

“No, I will hear no excuses; let me go. Perhaps to-morrow I may be able to look on you with a little less hatred. The others have been kind to me compared to you; they, at least, let me alone; you have drawn me on with your false pretences, all to show your dangerous powers of fascination. I despise you! O that I might never see you again!”

Gwendoline walked away in the direction of the small schoolroom, her head bowed. She entered the room, and, sitting down near the door, began to read a book she had in her hand.

The girls noticed at once that something was wrong. Her face was white and drawn and she did not, as usual, make some bright remark on entering the room; but they did not guess that she had already met Linnæa.

“Have you a headache, Gwen?” said Edith Barclay.

“Yes, I have a headache; and I want you to tell Miss Elder I have gone to bed, as I mean to go in a minute or two.”

“You are studying too hard,” said another, “you won’t keep your position as beauty of the school, if you carry on in this style. I declare you look quite ill!”

“I think we ought to tell you something, Gwendoline,” Janet Hillyards said, summoning up courage to confess the havoc they had just played.

“What is it?” asked Gwendoline, with a vague idea of the confession about to be made.

“We were talking—talking about the joke you were playing upon Linnæa—and—and she overheard us.”

“I know. I met her just now.”

Gwendoline kept her head down, and continued to look at the book in her hand; but the words had no meaning for her, if, indeed, she saw them at all.

The girls were speechless. Where was the anger and the indignation they had expected to meet with when the knowledge of their carelessness came to Gwendoline’s ears? Was this white, subdued, quiet-looking girl the proud and haughty Gwendoline, whose wrath they had been afraid to encounter? Surely they were dreaming, and had reversed the two—Gwendoline for Linnæa, and Linnæa for Gwendoline; there must be some mistake. They heard the timepiece mark the seconds as they passed, and not one could break the{307} silence. Tick—tick—tick—tick—someone must speak. Each one looked at another; who was it to be?

Gwendoline rose. “Will you do as I asked, and tell Miss Elder? I am going up now.” The spell was broken, and Janet Hillyards found her voice.

“Will you forgive me, Gwen? It was my fault—I began it. I never thought of her being near.”

Surely Gwendoline would speak to them now; she could not mean to cut them all for this mistake they had made. Surely their friendship was of more value to her than Linnæa March’s. They would much rather she would scold them roundly, and be done with it.

“There is no question of my forgiving you. The fault was mine, and I must suffer for it. I blame no one but myself.”

She was gone, and the girls were free to talk it over—this strange and unexpected development of affairs. To say they were astonished would be to put the case very mildly. They were perfectly thunderstruck. It had been food for surprise that Linnæa should betray a capacity for wounded pride and anger they had not dreamed her capable of, but that the quick-tempered Gwendoline should receive fiery and contemptuous words from Linnæa—for of this they had little doubt—and also the information of their neglect of her command, with such meekness and evident sorrow and regret, was beyond their comprehension.

If it were regret for the feelings she had stirred and not returned, why did she do it at all? She had done it with her eyes open—had only attained the object she had desired; the only thing for her to regret seemed to them to be that her designs should have been made known to Linnæa: and she had as much as said it was not this that troubled her. Altogether it was too deep for them, and they gave it up. And the two girls who had caused this unusual excitement, what of them? Linnæa lay on her bed in a passion of tears. Rage, wounded pride, love, and hate, all strove for the mastery. What had she done, she moaned, that everyone should be against her? Was it not enough that she should be naturally unattractive, but this cruel siren must go out of her way to find a refined system of torture for her? How was she to live in the school with this girl she had loved, and who had so basely deceived her?

And Gwendoline?

She sat on a chair by her bed, her head laid on the pillow, hot tears chasing one another down her cheeks.

“Oh, Linnæa, Linnæa,” she moaned, “if you only knew how I love you; but you will never know now, you would never believe me, and I don’t deserve you should! Would she believe if someone were to tell her? No—why should she? She would think it some trumped-up story told to keep her quiet.”

She could see no way to undo the evil she had wrought. Linnæa could never trust her now, would have no more to do with her.

The facts of the case were these. Gwendoline had tried to attract Linnæa, as we all know, at first to fulfil her vow. From the second day she had felt drawn to her for her own sake. Linnæa was totally different with Gwendoline from what she was with anyone else. She seemed to get out of herself, and to forget the reserve and awkwardness which characterised her when with others. The girls did not even see this, for the presence of a third person was enough to stifle any show of demonstrativeness on the part of Linnæa. If they had seen it they would not have wondered so much, for Linnæa with Gwendoline was attractive and lovable.

Thus insensibly Gwendoline had come to love Linnæa with as great ardour as she was loved in return. We need not then be astonished at her feelings now. Gwendoline’s character was a strong one, but—surrounded by luxury all her life, with scarcely a wish ungratified—there had been little as yet to develop it. She had never cared very greatly for any of her companions; a great many had taken a violent fancy to her, and she had come to regard it as a matter of course that she should be courted and made much of. Her love for Linnæa was the first which had touched her heart, and it was none the less strong on that account. She had tried to forget the way in which the friendship had been begun and many a time had she hoped that Linnæa would not hear of it. Surely the girls must see, she thought, that it was genuine now; and yet, she could not forget having called upon them all to witness the conquest she was about to make, and the remembrance brought a flush of shame to her face.

Now, what she had dreaded had taken place, and in the most untoward way—in such a way that it was almost impossible for Linnæa now to learn the truth.

(To be concluded. )

SELF-CULTURE FOR GIRLS.

PART II.

In our last paper on this subject we reduced the word “culture” to its simple and original meaning, and used the familiar illustration of a plot of garden ground, showing that weeds would spring up if cultivation were neglected; that things useful and beautiful alike flourish in the ideal garden; that the quality of the soil and other conditions should be taken into account by the wise cultivator; and that, culture being a process as well as a result, a little work in that direction is better than none at all. We might follow the simile further; but we are now met by a difficulty, and can imagine some critic expostulating, “Your illustration of the garden is all very well, but it breaks down at the most important point. The ground cannot cultivate itself, and needs an experienced gardener. If let alone, it becomes, as you have said, a tangle of weeds and deserves Hamlet’s words—

“So our mental faculties, our whole nature, are like a garden susceptible of being properly cultivated; but when there is no gardener, no intelligence from without to direct the process, what is to be done?”

The simile, it is true, does break down, as similes are apt to do if pushed too far. And, dear reader, we freely confess that in the term “self-culture” all the difficulty is expressed. It is a hard matter to be dependent upon one’s unaided efforts in this matter. We may even go further and confess that nothing can quite make up for the contact with people of culture, the student life in the atmosphere of a college, the marvellous, enchanting process of education received when one is old enough to appreciate it.

We cannot perhaps wonder if those who know the stimulus of University life at its keenest, the delight of interchange of thought, the unspeakable associations

look with serenest pity on any attempt at “culture” outside that and kindred regions.

But it is exclusive and cruel to laugh down the attempts of the partially educated to attain farther; and certainly it is unreasonable to tell them, “You must have all, or nothing.”

Much can be done by the most ignorant—no one can say how much—and at any rate it is worth the while of every reader who scans this page to do something towards the process of self-culture. For there are outside helps within the reach of all. No girl, however cut off she may be from people who can help her to study, can be, especially in the present day, altogether cut off from Books.

How much books may do, is a commonplace often dilated upon. But have you, who are glancing down this column, ever reflected upon it as regards your own individual self?

How fine a thing you would think it if you had the privilege of introduction to some great author and could exchange a few words with him! How great an honour if you could enjoy his friendship, and spend an hour with him from time to time in intimate conversation! What a means of culture you would consider it to be!

But the power of reading admits you to the society of the wise and great without let or hindrance, and to their society at their best moments. It is often a very disappointing thing to be introduced to the literary hero or heroine of one’s adoration. One expects an utterance equal to the author’s reputation, and there comes instead some commonplace suggested by the surrounding circumstances. We have heard of a young lady devotee taken down to dinner by a great poet, whom to meet had been her dream for years. She listened for his voice in breathless silence, unable to eat for excitement, but he said nothing during soup, fish, entrées; until at length, on the appearance of a fresh course, he remarked, “I like mutton cut in wedges.”

Whether the story be true or not, it is a good illustration. On first meeting a stranger it is impossible for the wisest man to drag up from the depths of his being some remark equal to his reputation. There is nothing to call it forth, and it would probably sound affected, or far-fetched, if he began instantly to “talk like a book,” especially like his own books. You cannot get at the inner nature of the man without long friendship, and without a likeness of disposition. But in his book you find him at once, with no tedious preliminary process, at his very best. As Mr. J. R. Lowell has said, the art of reading is the talisman that admits “to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moments; that enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.”

To the girl, then, who has aspirations, or even a dim stirring of faint desire, after self-culture, we may say, “Read; in the second place, Read; and yet again, Read.”

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In Matthew Arnold’s published Letters, he gives a piece of excellent advice to a young lady who is a relation of his:

“If I were you, I should now take to some regular reading, if it were only an hour a day. It is the best thing in the world to have something of this sort as a point in the day, and far too few people know and use this secret. You would have your district still and all your business as usual, but you would have this hour in your day, in the midst of it all, and it would soon become of the greatest solace to you. Desultory reading is a mere anodyne, regular reading, well chosen, is restoring and edifying.”

It would be a good thing if every girl would study Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, and follow the advice therein contained. It has been so often quoted that we hesitate again to transcribe it; but it cannot be read too frequently.

“Have you measured and mapped out this short life and its possibilities? Do you know if you read this that you cannot read that; that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable boy when you may talk with queens and kings? Will you jostle with the common crowd for entrée here and audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open to you, with its society wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time?”

Time is precious and is fleeting fast. There would be less poring over fashion-plates, fewer pennies spent on miscellaneous collections of tawdry scraps of useless information garnished with comic anecdotes, if it were realised that each hour spent in aimless, silly reading is an hour lost, never to be regained.

This may seem “a counsel of perfection.” We do not say, read nothing at all of the ephemeral literature whose aim is to enliven and amuse, but if you have any desire for self-culture, read something else as well. If you get into the habit of this light, disconnected, desultory reading, you will find it spoil your taste and your appetite for anything else. The loss you will suffer will be simply incalculable. Amuse a few spare minutes at the railway station, on the tedious journey, by all means: but do not let your reading stop short at mere entertainment or information about dress.

It is a terrible thing when this power of reading—the instrument, almost the only instrument, of self-culture—is turned so persistently to other ends that it becomes a warped and worthless tool.

“It is of paramount importance,” says Schopenhauer, the German philosopher, “to acquire the art not to read.... We should recollect that he who writes for fools finds an enormous audience, and we should devote the ever scant leisure of our circumscribed existence to the master spirits of all ages and nations—those who tower over humanity, and whom the voice of Fame proclaims; only such writers cultivate and instruct us.”

Too stringent perhaps! and yet a truth lies here which may well be taken to heart. A more modern critic, Frederic Harrison, puts it thus:

“Every book that we take up without a purpose is an opportunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose; every bit of stray information which we cram into our heads without any sense of its importance is for the most part a bit of the most useful information driven out of our heads and choked off from our minds.... We know that books differ in value as much as diamonds differ from the sand on the seashore ... and I cannot but think the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us of the actual power of using them.”

What to read, will form the subject of future articles; only let the girl who scans this page make up her mind that she will follow its advice and read something. “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability” is a familiar sentence of Lord Bacon. Even the busiest girl can lay this to heart and profit by it, as was shown by some articles which appeared in The Girl’s Own Paper on the life of working girls—“My Daily Round.” Some of the most charming sentences in those interesting papers were the sentences where appreciation of literature as a companion to the scant hour of freedom held a conspicuous place.

Life is often a very hard and sordid thing, and far too many women are forced to spend their days in detail of a distasteful kind. We must not extol a spirit of discontent with “the trivial round, the common task,” and must remember the French motto, “When one cannot have what one likes, one must like what one has.” Yet we all need a resource. Every man or woman, young or old, ought to have a refuge wherein to flee from the worries and minute cares of “this troublesome world”—a refuge that shall prove

And for this self-culture is invaluable.

Walter Besant somewhere observes that he often sees in London omnibuses, girls returning from the work of the day, whose lips are noiselessly moving. Their look is harassed, and they are talking to themselves in irritated fashion of what has gone wrong; perhaps uttering imaginary repartees to unreasonable employers. Some engrossment in poetry or romance, some mental diversion which should force them to turn away their thoughts, would be a panacea, and they might dwell with consolation, remembering such employers, on one of the antitheta of Lord Bacon—“In reading we hold converse with the wise; in the business of life, generally with the foolish.”

And study is a priceless relief and refuge to women in any grade of society. A girl who really loves reading possesses an inexhaustible charm to lift her above the little worries of daily life, in whatever sphere that life may be.

In Switzerland one finds a summer stay in the valleys, beautiful and fertile as they are, beset by certain annoyances, of which perhaps the most dire and disturbing is a peculiar sort of fly, like a horse-fly, that settles and stings even through a thick glove. The most lovely summer resorts beside the lakes are infested by this creature, which comes everywhere with slow, sleepy virulence, alighting upon face and hands and thrusting in its poison. To escape it, one must go to the mountains; far up on the fragrant slopes where the pine trees hang in air, and the torrent leaps down among them, and the blue gloom of the valley lies below, and the everlasting snows stretch far away behind, up and up against the sky. Here there are no poisonous insects to buzz and sting; the wanderer has ascended too high.

So in life we can escape the trivial vexations and irritations of life by rising above them to the height of some lofty thought, some beautiful idea, whence we can view the plains of daily existence with its petty cares and stings far, far below.

Lily Watson.

(To be continued. )

SOCIAL INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF AN EAST END GIRL.

PART II.

A WEDDING.

At one time my proposed expedition seemed threatened with extinction, for my family strongly objected to my running about the East End with no more efficient protector than Belinda Ann—on a bank holiday too! In vain I painted her character in glowing colours; in vain I cited my hostess of the club as an authority that I should come to no harm. The family were obdurate. Either I must find someone to go with me who could look after me properly, or I must give up the idea.

I was loath to do the latter so I set about the former, and by great good luck discovered a lady who spent most of her time amongst Belinda Ann and her friends and knew the bride and her family intimately.

I admit it robbed the expedition of some of its fun to thus have a chaperon tacked on to me, and there was a lurking doubt in my mind as to how Belinda Ann herself would regard the innovation. When, after a long, hot omnibus ride, we arrived at the place where we had appointed to meet her we caught sight of her waiting, my eyes anxiously sought her face to judge from its expression whether or no she would resent the unexpected addition to the party. Luckily she both knew and liked the lady in question (who shall be called Miss H.), and though for a moment her face clouded over, it soon brightened again, and, with a great air of importance, she bustled us off to the tram.

On the way I had time to note that she had evidently bestowed great pains on her person, for the straight fringe was elaborately curled and surmounted by a wonderful crimson plush hat, à la Gainsborough, adorned with a profusion of feathers to match shaded off to palest pink.

“That must have cost her a lot of money,” I whispered to Miss H.; but the latter replied, “She belongs to a feather club, of course.”

I did not understand what she meant, and there was no opportunity of then asking; but I resolved to inquire into this at some future period.

Meanwhile Belinda Ann, by means of a dexterous application of her thin sharp elbows and a running fire of chaff, secured us an entrance into the tram which was already inconveniently crowded in my opinion; but everyone was so heartily good-natured, no one could possibly show temper at being a little squeezed.

Belinda Ann ensconced herself near the door, where she kept a lively look-out for every fresh arrival, whom she greeted with some choice specimen of wit which, if replied to in the proper spirit, afforded her unbounded satisfaction.

During this period of waiting I was able to study, from the window of the tram, the fashionable hand-shake as practised by a lady with a market-basket taking leave of another matron on the pavement. There was a sort of perpendicular and horizontal movement combined about it which was very difficult to catch but{309} most effective, and I could not but admire the elegance with which it was done. It is, I believe, sacred to trams.

Presently the tram moved off, rather to my relief, for it was decidedly warm waiting in the sun, and we rolled smoothly along, Miss H. ever and anon pointing out objects of interest on the route.

“There’s the bridegroom!” she whispered presently, clutching my arm; and, looking in the direction of her glance, I espied a well set-up young man emerging from a barber’s shop.

Belinda Ann caught sight of him at the same time, and in a sarcastic undertone remarked, “My! Ain’t ’e done ’isself proper?”

I suppose I looked mystified, and, indeed, it was Greek to me until Miss H. silently pointed to the sign over the door—“Shaving done here. Fresh water for every person.” And even then I didn’t quite see it till she explained that the latter was by no means a sine quâ non, but that the bridegroom on this important occasion evidently thought it incumbent on him to do the thing in style!

Next we passed a church with an inscription outside to the effect that parties could be married there for sevenpence halfpenny.

I was still lost in wonder at this legend when a wedding-party emerged and made a wild rush for the tram. The bride came inside and the bridegroom went outside, and I felt grieved to think they should be separated so soon after their sevenpence-halfpennyworth. Judging from the bride’s apparent age, I concluded that the youthful bridesmaid of ten was her eldest daughter.

At this moment a man plumped down next to me carrying a trio of remarkably lively puppies, and the remainder of the drive was rendered extremely hilarious by the antics of the small doggies, who persisted in swarming on to the floor ever other minute, and then abjectly licking our boots.

“They don’t allow live-stock inside the trams on Sundays,” remarked Miss H., as she hauled up a puppy for the twentieth time and handed it over to its rightful owner. “Still,” she added meditatively, “a man may get in holding a sack, not by the neck, but round the loins, so to speak, and if he lets go to get his fare or his handkerchief, you see the sack wriggle!”

I had not done laughing at this graphic description when Belinda Ann, who had been keeping a sharp look-out all this time, gave us the signal to dismount, which we did in a breathless scramble owing to the tram starting on again before we were well off the step.

I found there was still some little distance to walk before we arrived at the house, but everything was so new to me that I did not mind.

Thus, passing a second-hand clothier’s window, my eye was at once caught by a white dress in the window labelled, “A boon to young ladies about to marry! Let out by the day!”

It was made of some soft silky material in the prevailing fashion and thoughtfully cut large enough to accommodate any figure, as of course any superfluity could be pinned over should the hirer happen to be of a sylph-like form!

“I s’pose I shall come ter that if any chap ever says ‘Chairs’ ter me!” remarked Belinda Ann, with a last glance at it as we tore ourselves away.

“Says what?” I inquired, not very elegantly, I fear.

“Chairs!” she replied shortly, for she took the surprise in my voice to imply a doubt of her ever wanting a wedding-dress.

“What in all the world has that to do with it?” I asked, after a moment’s puzzled silence.

She surveyed me for a second with a sort of pitying scorn for my ignorance, and then proceeded to enlighten me.

“Why, yer see, yer may walk out with a feller fer months an’ never get no forrader, so ter speak, or yer may chynge about with another feller an’ no one think any harm of it; but if any on ’em mentions ‘furniture’ to yer, it’s a sign that he means bizness, an’ yer can begin ter think about yer trossax.”

This tickled my fancy so much that I doubt if I should ever have stopped laughing if Belinda Ann had not shown signs of temper by remarking huffily, “In coorse I knows as ’ow toffs don’t manage it that wy; but yer arsked me about it, an’ it ain’t bad fer all that.”

“I think it’s a perfectly charming plan,” I put in hastily, smothering my mirth as well as I could; but I nearly went off again at the reflection that the innocent remark, “Can I get you a chair?” would be construed by an East End beauty into a proposal of marriage.

Belinda Ann did not quite recover her good humour till we arrived at the bride’s mansion, which fortunately was not far off, for once there her smiles returned in full force, and she quite forgot my ill-timed merriment.

We stepped straight from the court into the banqueting-hall, without even the formality of a doorstep, and the bride received us in person, her mother being busy in the back premises over her toilette.

The heroine of the occasion was of such colossal proportions she might almost have gone about in a show, and her complexion matched her gown, which was of a warm brickdusty red.

This was not, however, the wedding garment, for, after having greeted us, she disappeared with Belinda Ann and many apologies to reappear later on in a really elegant grey silk, presented by Miss H. and her sister in fulfilment of a very old promise.

She had rather spoilt the effect by hanging round her neck a string of iridescent beads, so large that they looked like homœopathic globules, and wearing the inevitable befeathered hat, this time of a crude violet hue; but otherwise she was all that could be desired, and was immensely admired.

Belinda Ann had added to her attire a huge lace collar and a silver chain, from which hung a locket to match about the size of a small warming-pan, and the party was completed by the bride’s mother, also dressed in an old gown of Miss H.’s.

Now Miss H. being tall and slim, while Mrs. Hogg was of the same generous proportions as her daughter, the dress proved somewhat too scanty, so she had taken some of the material from the waist to eke out the bodice, and to hide this theft had donned a black velvet apron. It looked a little odd, perhaps, but on the whole was pronounced very fair, and we set off for the church. Not on foot, although the edifice was just round the corner. That would, indeed, have been a serious breach of etiquette on such an occasion. No! Two four-wheeled cabs had been chartered for the drive, and into these we packed, the bride, her mother and father (who turned up at the last minute in a fearful state of heat and nervousness) going in the first, and Belinda Ann, Miss H., and I taking the second.

An enthusiastic crowd was hanging round the porch cheering wildly when we alighted, and at first I thought that Miss Hogg must be the most popular girl in the East End; but I was soon undeceived. She was not the only expectant bride of the occasion, for Bank Holiday is a favourite East End wedding-day, for obvious reasons.

The crowd inside was so great, although perfectly orderly and reverent, that I could see little or nothing of the actual ceremony, and was rather glad than not when, all formalities having been complied with, our party disentangled itself from the general mêlée, and we drove back in the same order as we had come, with the addition of the bridegroom, of course.

In our absence the table had been elegantly laid with wine-glasses of every shape, colour, and size, borrowed right and left for the occasion, each with half a sheet of clean notepaper stuck in it. I puzzled over these for some time, till I came to the conclusion that possibly this was in imitation of the serviettes placed in wine-glasses at restaurants.

As each guest appeared, he or she was hospitably pressed to say what he or she would take (“Give it a nyme!” was the general form of invitation), and he or she usually seemed quite prepared for the question and quite ready with an answer, for without any false delicacy they promptly replied, “Drop o’ port!” This was immediately handed them, and there they sat in a row, never opening their mouths except to empty into them the aforesaid “drop o’ port.”

I was sorely troubled as to what to do with mine, which I would have gladly refused only that I was warned that it was considered as great an insult as to refuse in the real East to drink the cup of black coffee offered at the threshold; so there I sat with the rest, occasionally raising it to my lips, till an opportunity offered to stick it behind a flower-pot, where it may remain to this day for all I know.

The honeymoon was to be spent on Hampstead Heath, and we were pressed to accompany the party, but excused ourselves as politely as possible and shortly after took leave, as everyone was obviously aching to be off, though far too polite to say so.

Our presence had added great éclat to the proceedings in the opinion of our hosts, and when we took leave the bridegroom insisted on presenting each of us with seven Tangerine oranges!

Now he was by profession a fruiterer, and a kind Providence had thoughtfully endowed him with hands so large that he could easily hold seven oranges (or anything else for the matter of that) in one. My hands, unluckily, are not on the same liberal scale; consequently when he dropped the seven oranges into them, about six were bound to fall on the ground in spite of all my efforts. Of course, they rolled into all sorts of inaccessible corners, after their perverse nature; but the company collected them with unfailing good-humour, and my secret hope that one or two of them at least might be irrevocably lost was not realised.

We left Belinda Ann behind to share the forthcoming trip, and soon found ourselves in an omnibus rolling westwards.

“I never refuse little gifts of this kind,” said Miss H., as she rescued an orange from bounding out of the door, “for it seems more friendly to accept. Besides, I know if they send or give me sixpennyworth of lemons, I can readily make it up to them later on by something costing half-a-crown.”

I assented, and then remarked dreamily, “Those hats are the most wonderful erections!”

“They may not be very artistic,” she replied, “but they are a sign of self-respect. The last thing a respectable woman parts with, as a rule, is her headgear, and the last thing a self-respecting man leaves off is having his boots cleaned. When you see a man with dirty boots, and a woman bareheaded, you may know they have touched the lowest depths.”

I was still meditating on this when the omnibus stopped with a jerk, precipitating all my oranges into the gutter, and thus settling once for all the vexed question of how I was to get them home.

{310}

ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.

By JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of “Sisters Three,” etc.

CHAPTER XIX.

In consideration of Arthur’s presence and of the late hours and excitement of the night before, the next day was observed as a holiday in the vicarage. Mrs. Asplin stayed in bed until lunch time, the boys went for a bicycle ride, and Peggy and her brother had a delightful chat together by the schoolroom fire, when he told her more details about his own plans than he had been able to touch upon in a dozen letters.

“The preliminary examination for Sandhurst begins on the 26th this year,” he explained, “and so far as I can make out I shall romp through it. I am going to take all the subjects in Class I.—mathematics, Latin, French, geometrical drawing, and English composition; I’ll astonish them in the last subject! Plenty of dash and go, eh Peggy,—that’s the style to fetch ’em! In Class II. you can only take two subjects, so I’m going in for chemistry and physics. I rather fancy myself in physics, and if I don’t come out at the head of the list, or precious near the head, it won’t be for want of trying. I have worked like a nigger these last six months; between ourselves I thought I had worked too hard a few days ago; I felt so stupid and dizzy, and my head ached until I could hardly open my eyes. If I had not come away, I believe I should have broken down, but I’m better already, and by Tuesday I shall be as fit as a fiddle. I hope I do well, it would be so jolly to cable out the news to the old pater, and I say, Peg, I don’t mean to leave Sandhurst without bringing home something to keep as a souvenir. At the end of each Christmas term a sword is presented to the cadet who passes out first in the final exam.—‘The Anson Memorial Sword.’ Mariquita!” Arthur smote his breast, and struck a fierce and warlike attitude. “That sword is mine! In the days to come when you are old and grey-headed, you will see that rusty blade hanging over my ancestral hearth, and tell in faltering tones the story of the gallant youth who wrested it from his opponents.”

“Ha, ha!” responded Peggy deeply. There was no particular meaning in the exclamation, but it seemed right and fitting in the connection, and had a smack of melodrama which was quite to her taste. “Of course you will be first, Arthur!” she added, “and, oh dear! how proud I shall be when I see you in all your uniform! I am thankful all my men relations are soldiers, they are so much more interesting than civilians. It would break my heart, Arthur, to think of you as a civilian! Of course wars are somewhat disconcerting, but then one always hopes there won’t be wars.”

“I don’t,” cried Arthur loudly. “No, no, active serve for me, and plenty of it! ‘Come one, come all, this rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I!’ That’s my motto, and my ambition is the Victoria Cross, and I’ll get that too before I’m done; you see if I don’t! It’s the great ambition of my life, Peg. I lie awake and think of that little iron cross; I go to sleep and dream of it, and see the two words dancing before my eyes in letters of fire, ‘For Valour,’ ‘For Valour,’ ‘For Valour.’ Ah!”—he drew a deep breath of excitement—“I don’t think there is anything in the world I should envy if I could only gain that.”

Peggy gazed at him with kindling eyes. “You are a soldier’s son,” she said, “and the grandson of a soldier, and the great grandson of a soldier; it’s in your blood; you can’t help it—it’s in my blood too, Arthur! I give you my solemn word of honour that if the French or Germans came over to invade this land, I’d”—Peggy seized the ruler and waved it in the air with a gesture of fiercest determination—“I’d fight them! There! I’d shoot at them; I’d go out and spike the guns; I’d—I’d climb on the house-tops and throw stones at them. You needn’t laugh, I tell you I should be terrible! I feel as if I could face a whole regiment myself. The spirit, the spirit of my ancestors is in my breast, Arthur Reginald, and woe betide that enemy who tries to wrest from me my native land!” Peggy went off into a shriek of laughter, in which Arthur joined until the sound of the merry peals reached Mrs. Asplin’s ears as she lay wearily on her pillow, and brought a smile to her pale face. “Bless the dears! How happy they are,” she murmured to herself, nor even suspected that it was a wholesale massacre of foreign nations which had been the cause of this gleeful outburst.

Arthur left the vicarage on Tuesday evening, seemingly much refreshed by the few days’ change, though he still complained of his head and pressed his hand over his eyes from time to time as though in pain. The parting from Peggy was more cheerful than might have been expected, for in a few more weeks Christmas would be at hand, when, as he himself expressed it, he hoped to return with blushing honours thick upon him. Peggy mentally expended her whole ten pounds in a present for the dear handsome fellow, and held her head high in the consciousness of owning a brother who was destined to be Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in the years to come.

The same evening Robert returned from his visit to London. He had heard of Peggy’s escapade from his father and sister, and was by no means so grateful as that young lady had expected.

“What in all the world possessed you to play such a mad trick?” he queried bluntly. “It makes me ill to think of it. Rushing off to London on a wet, foggy night, never even waiting to inquire if there was a return train, or to count if you had enough money to see you through! Goodness only knows what might have happened! You are careless enough in an ordinary way, but I must say I gave you credit for more sense than that.”

“Well, but Rob,” pleaded Peggy aggrieved, “I don’t think you need scold! I did it for you, and I thought you would be pleased.”

“Did you indeed. Well, you are mightily mistaken; I wouldn’t have let you do a thing like that for all the prizes in the world. I don’t care a rap for the wretched old microscope.”

“Oh! Oh!”

“In comparison, I mean. Of course I should have been glad to get it if it had come to me in an ordinary way, but I was not so wrapped up in the idea that I would not have been reasonable if you had come to me quietly, and explained that you had missed the post.”

Peggy shook her head sagely. “You think so now, because the danger is over, and you are sure it can’t happen. But I know better. I can tell you exactly what would have happened. You wouldn’t have stormed or raged, it would have been better if you had, and sooner over; you would just have stood still, and—glared at me! When I’d finished speaking, you would have swallowed two or three times over, as if you were gulping down something which you dared not say, and then turned on your heel and marched out of the room. That’s what you would have done, my dear and honourable sir, and you know it.”

Robert hung his head and looked self-conscious.

“Well, if I had! A fellow can’t hide all he feels in the first moment of disappointment. But I should have got over it, and you know very well that I should never have brought it up against you. ‘Glared!’ What if I did glare? There is nothing very terrible in that, is there?”

“Yes, there is. I could not have borne it, when I had been trying so hard to help you. And it would not have been only the first few minutes. Every time when you were quiet and depressed, when you looked at your specimens through your little old glass and sighed, and pitched it away as I’ve seen you do scores and scores of times,{311} I should have felt that it was my fault, and been in the depths of misery. No, no, I’m sorry to the depths of my heart that I scared dear Mrs. Asplin and the rest, but it is a matter of acute satisfaction to me to know that your chance has in no way been hindered by your confidence in me!” and Peggy put her head on one side, and coughed in a faint and lady-like manner, which brought the twinkle back into Robert’s eyes.

“Good old Mariquita!” he cried, laughing. “‘Acute satisfaction’ is good, Mariquita, decidedly good! You will make your name yet in the world of letters. Well, as I said before, you are a jolly little brick, and the best partner a fellow ever had! Mind you, I tell you straight that I think you behaved badly in cutting off like that; but I’ll stand by you to the others, and not let them sit upon you while I am there.”

“Thanks!” said Peggy, meekly. “But, oh, I beseech of you, don’t bring up the subject if you can help it! I’m tired to death of it all! The kindest thing you can do is to talk hard about something else, and give them a fresh excitement to think about. Talk about—about—about Rosalind if you will; anything will do, only, for pity’s sake, leave me alone, and pretend there is not such a thing in the world as a calendar!”

“Right you are!” said Robert, laughing. “I’ll steer clear of the rocks! And as it happens I have got a piece of news that will put your doings into the background at one fell swoop. Rosalind is going to give a party! The Earl and Countess of B—— are coming down to the Larches the week after next, and are going to bring their two girls with them. They are great, lanky things, with about as much ‘go’ in the pair as in one of your little fingers; but this party is to be given in their honour. The mater has asked everyone of a right age within a dozen miles around, and the house will be crammed with visitors. Your card is coming to-morrow, and I hope you will give me the honour of the first round, and as many as possible after that.”

“The first with pleasure; I won’t promise any more until I see how we get on. It doesn’t seem appropriate to think of your dancing, Bob; there is something too heavy and serious in your demeanour. Oswald is different; he would make a charming dancing-master. Oh, it will be an excitement! Mellicent will not be able to eat or sleep for thinking of it; and poor Mrs. Asplin will be running up seams on the sewing-machine, and making up ribbon bows from this day to that. I’m glad I have a dress all ready and sha’n’t be bothered with any trying on! You don’t know what it is to stand first on one leg and then on the other, to be turned and pulled about as if you were a dummy, and have pins stuck into you as if you were a pin-cushion! I adore pretty clothes, but every time I go to the dressmaker’s I vow and declare that I shall take to sacks. Tell them at dinner, do, and they will talk about it for the rest of the evening!”

Peggy’s prophecy came true, for the subject of Rosalind’s party became a topic of such absorbing interest as left room for little else during the next few weeks. New dresses had to be bought and made for the girls, and Peggy superintended the operations of the village dressmaker with equal satisfaction to herself and her friends.

Rosalind appeared engrossed in preparations, and two or three times a week, as the girls trudged along the muddy roads, with Fräulein lagging in the rear, the jingle of bells would come to their ears, and Rosalind’s two white long-tailed ponies would come dashing past, drawing the little open carriage in which their mistress sat, half-hidden among a pile of baskets and parcels. She was always beautiful, and radiant, and, as she passed, she would turn her head over her shoulders and look at the three mud-bespattered pedestrians with a smile of pitying condescension which made Peggy set her teeth and draw her eyebrows together in an ominous frown.

One day she condescended to stop and speak a few words from her throne among the cushions.

“How de do? So sowwy not to have been to see you! Fwightfully busy, don’t you know. We are decowating the wooms, and don’t know how to furnish in time. It’s going to be quite charming!”

“We know! We know! Rob told us. I’m dying to see it. You should ask Peggy to help you if you are in a hurry. She’s s—imply splendid at decorations! Mother says she never knew anyone so good at it as Peggy!” cried Mellicent, with an outburst of gushing praise, in acknowledgment of which she received a thunderous frown and such a sharp pinch on the arm as penetrated through all her thick winter wrappings.

Rosalind, however, only ejaculated, “Oh, weally!” in an uninterested manner, and whipped up her ponies without taking any further notice of the suggestion; but it had taken root in her mind all the same, and she did not forget to question her brother on the first opportunity.

Mellicent Asplin had said that Peggy Saville was clever at decoration. Was it true, and would it be the least use asking her to come and help in the decorations?

Robert laughed, and wagged his head with an air of proud assurance.

Clever! Peggy? She was a witch! She could work wonders! If you set her down in an empty room, and gave her two-and-sixpence to transform it into an Alhambra, he verily believed she could do it. The way in which she had rigged up the various characters for the Shakespeare reading was nothing short of miraculous. Yes, indeed, Peggy would be worth a dozen ordinary helpers. The question was, would she come?

“Certainly she will come. I’ll send down for her at once,” said Rosalind promptly, and forthwith sat down and wrote a dainty little note, not to Peggy herself, but to Mrs. Asplin, stating that she had heard great accounts of Peggy Saville’s skill in the art of decoration, and begging that she might be allowed to come up to the Larches to help with the final arrangements, arriving as early as possible on the day of the party, and bringing her box with her so as to be saved the fatigue of returning home to dress. It was a prettily-worded letter, and Mrs. Asplin was dismayed at the manner of its reception.

“No, Peggy Saville won’t!” said that young person, pursing her lips and tossing her head in her most high and mighty manner. “She won’t do anything of the sort! Why should I go? Let her ask some of her own friends! I’m not her friend! I should simply loath to go!”

“My dear Peggy! When you are asked to help! When this entertainment is given for your pleasure, and you can be of real use——”

“I never asked her to give the party! I don’t care whether I go or not! She is simply making use of me for her own convenience!”

“It is not the first or only time that you have been asked, as you know well, Peggy. And sometimes you have enjoyed yourself very much. You said you would never forget the pink luncheon. In spite of all you say, you owe Rosalind thanks for some pleasant times; and now you can be of some service to her—— Well, I’m not going to force you, dear. I hate unwilling workers, and if it’s not in your heart to go, stay at home, and settle with your conscience as best you can.”

Peggy groaned with sepulchral misery.

“Wish I hadn’t got no conscience! Tiresome, presuming thing that it is—always poking itself forward and making remarks when it isn’t wanted. I suppose I shall have to go, and run about from morning till night, holding a pair of scissors and nasty little balls of string, for Rosalind’s use! Genius indeed! What’s the use of talking about genius? I know very well I shall not be allowed to do anything but run about and wait upon her. It’s no use staring at me, Mrs. Asplin. I mean it all—every single word.”

“No, you don’t, Peggy! No, you don’t, my little kind, warm-hearted Peggy! I know better than that! It’s just that foolish tongue that is running away with you, dearie. In your heart you are pleased to do a service for a friend, and are going to put your whole strength into doing it as well and tastefully as it can be done.”

“I’m not! I’m not! I’m not! I’m savage, and it’s no use pretending——”

“Yes, you are! I know it! What is the good of having a special gift if one doesn’t put it to good use? Ah, that’s the face I like to see! I didn’t recognise my Peggy with that ugly frown. I’ll write and say you’ll come with pleasure.”

“It’s to please you, then, not Rosalind!” said Peggy obstinately. But Mrs. Asplin only laughed, dropped a kiss upon her cheek, and walked away to answer the invitation forthwith.

(To be continued. )

{312}

ABSENCE.

By INA NOEL.

THREE GIRL-CHUMS, AND THEIR LIFE IN LONDON ROOMS.

By FLORENCE SOPHIE DAVSON.

CHAPTER V.

THE MARCH WIND BLOWS.

“Well, Jane, tell us something interesting,” said Ada, as the trio sat toasting their toes before the fire on a gusty evening in March.

Jane yawned, and the wind whistled eerily round the house.

“I can’t think of anything,” she said, after a minute or two. “My head feels as if it were stuffed with cotton wool. I wish this wind would go down.”

“You have not told us any anecdotes of your children for ever so long. How are the little things getting on?”

“A detachment of volunteers came to drill in the school yard this afternoon, and they were all longing to look out of the windows and watch.”

“Why could you not let them?”

“Oh, they never settle down to their work properly if interruptions like that are allowed,” said Jane, getting more wide awake.

“Are your classes full?”

“There is a great deal of illness about, and that keeps some of them at home. The people are terribly poor. I wish I could persuade some of the better class people about to give me orders for dinners for the poor people. It would cost so little, and I would be very careful to give it to those who most needed it. I ask this of everyone who happens to come in to see the children at work, but except for a chance order now and then, it is very difficult to get rid of the food.”

“Who buys the things that the children make?” asked Marion.

“The children are supposed to buy the things themselves; and they generally do buy rock cakes and gingerbread and things that are of no practical use to them. But more sensible dishes, such as stews and soup, are very difficult to sell without outside help. There are one or two people in some workmen’s buildings just near who buy from time to time, and when the beef-tea lesson comes round, the vicar is very kind in buying it for anyone who is sick. It is very difficult to get along sometimes,” added Jane, gazing dolefully into the depths of the fire.

“I was just thinking,” said Ada meditatively, after a minute or two’s thought; “I was just thinking if there was no one to whom we could mention the matter, who would be glad to help. Of course, one can understand that there are certain objections. For instance, if it became widely known that food was given away at the cookery school, people would be always coming in to beg, and it would be very inconvenient. Besides, there would be so much jealousy amongst those who did not get it, and it would be impossible to satisfy all. But I should think a few private orders might be managed, and they would certainly be a great help to you, Jennie, and if you told the people who came for dinners not to mention it to others, I should think it would be all right.”

“They would not do that, I am sure,” said Jane. “They do not like it known that they are taking charity, unless it is some widely recognised institution like a soup-kitchen. I have often noticed that.”

“There are the Baddeleys, now; they live near your school in Warrington Road. Do you ever see them?”

“No; I had forgotten about them. I do not think they know that I teach up there. I will write to-night and ask them to come and see me.”

“I will write,” said Ada, patting her sister’s nut-brown head, “you are so tired.”

“The wind has made my eyes ache.”

So Ada wrote to Mrs. Baddeley, knowing her to be a philanthropic woman, and her appeal was warmly answered.

Mrs. Baddeley called to see Jane at her school two days after, to her great delight. The lady in question was an old friend of their mother’s, but they had not seen her for some time. She had heard that the girls had come to live in London, but had not yet been to see them, and she had had no idea that Jane was teaching so near to her.

“I had heard that cookery was taught to the children in the schools, but I did not know exactly where. I am so pleased to come and see the cookery kitchen, and still more to find you in it,” said the sympathetic lady, as she sat down in a chair by the dresser and looked round admiringly at the gleaming pots and pans which Jane’s little scholars kept in order.

Jennie explained her difficulty to her genial friend.

“You do not have to spend your own money on the food for the classes, do you?” asked Mrs. Baddeley.

“No; I have some given me to start the lessons with, but if I do not sell anything for a day or two it is difficult to get along.”

{314}

“Of course, it must be, but I think I see a way out of your difficulty. I shall be only too glad if you can manage to prepare three dinners twice a week for some poor old people whom I try to help. I will give you the names, and they shall call for the dishes. But I hope the dinners will be quite plain and simple but very nourishing.”

Jane assured Mrs. Baddeley that she taught no dishes that were not plain and simple, and mentioned such items as Exeter stew, Irish stew, beef skirt pie, liver and bacon, and for puddings fruit in batter, milk puddings, baked ginger puddings, and so on.

And so the compact was made; Mrs. Baddeley’s protégées came for their dinners punctually every other day at the appointed time, and the arrangement proved equally satisfactory to all concerned.

It was now near the end of March. On looking through her dinner lists, which she kept by her to avoid a too frequent repetition of any one thing, Marion noticed that the time for pork would soon be at an end, for she believed in the old saying that pork is not wholesome in any month that has not an “r” in it. So as April was the last “r” month, she treated her household to a nice little piece of roast loin, which they appreciated very much. It was allowed plenty of time to cook; about half an hour longer than a piece of beef or mutton of the same weight would have been, and it was so well basted that the crackling was beautifully crisp and very unlike the tough leathery pieces that are occasionally served only to be left on the plates of those to whom they are given. On the following day she cut up the remains into dice, and, having purchased half a pound of chuck steak and cut it up small, made it into a curry to which she added the remains of the pork.

This is her list for the week—

Sunday.

• Roast Ptarmigan.
• Artichokes.
• Baked Potatoes.
• Lemon Sponge.
• (Supper. ) Sardines. Brown Bread and Butter.
• Cocoa.

Monday.

• Roast Pork. Apple Sauce.
• Boiled Potatoes.
• Stewed Prunes.
• Rice Shape.

Tuesday.

• Curry and Rice.
• Boiled Batter Pudding.

Wednesday.

• (High Tea. ) Sausages.
• Oat Biscuits.

Thursday.

• Pea Soup.
• Baked Whitings with Brown Sauce.
• Sea-kale.
• Cauliflower with Cheese Sauce.

Friday.

• Stuffed Sheep’s Heart with Forcemeat Balls.
• Loch Lomond Pudding.

Saturday.

• Fried Liver and Bacon.
• Cabbage.
• Baked Potatoes.
• Semolina Pudding.

Lest my readers should be startled to see sea-kale on the list, and think that our housekeeper was forgetting her economy, I will explain at once that it was not the expensive sea-kale at eighteenpence the basket that one sees wrapped in blue paper in the green-grocers’ shops. It was some sold at twopence the pound—a quite small kind—that Marion had discovered at some local “stores” which she occasionally frequented. It was not as delicate as the expensive kind, but it was very nice. The salesman told her that they were the siftings of the finer kind. The ptarmigan she bought on a day when they were for sale very cheap, as there had been a large supply in the market, and they hung for a day or two until they were wanted. They took so little time to cook—about twenty-five minutes, that it was hardly more trouble to cook them than to warm up a pie or stew as they often did on a Sunday. The oat biscuits and the Loch Lomond pudding were both made from recipes given some years before to Marion’s mother by a Highland lady famous for her good things. Here they are:—

Oat Biscuits. —Mix a teaspoonful of baking powder with six ounces of flour; mix in four ounces of fine oatmeal with two ounces of brown sugar; mix with beaten egg to a dough. Roll out, stamp into rounds with a wineglass, lay on a greased tin and bake in a rather slow oven about twenty minutes.

Loch Lomond Pudding. —Beat a quarter of a pound of dripping to a cream, stir in two tablespoonfuls of brown sugar, two tablespoonfuls of raspberry jam, and half a teaspoonful of carbonate of soda; add four ounces of flour, and lastly beat in two eggs one by one. Bake in a buttered pie-dish about three-quarters of an hour.

The food bill for the week was certainly economical. The breakfasts on the alternate mornings, when they did not take porridge, were dried haddocks, Monday and Wednesday, and bacon on Friday. The haddocks were left to soak in milk and water all night and then cooked in a frying-pan in the milk and water until quite tender, skimmed carefully, drained on a fish-slice, put on a hot dish that had first been rubbed with a little piece of butter, and another bit was put on the top of the fish. Then they were peppered and brought quickly to table.

Food account:—

Towards the end of the month, as oranges were getting much sweeter, and were very cheap, they made some excellent marmalade. Jane, Marion and Abigail cut up the oranges one Saturday morning, put them in a large earthenware pan with the right quantity of water, covered the pan and let the contents soak all Sunday. On Monday Marion cooked it until it was sufficiently firm and put it in jars, which she tied down on the following day. This is her recipe—

Orange Marmalade. —Shred finely sixteen Seville oranges, twelve sweet ones and four lemons, carefully removing the pips as you do so, and put them to soak in an earthenware pan with six quarts of water, cover the pan and let it soak for forty-eight hours. Put in a stewpan or fish-kettle with eight pounds of loaf sugar. As soon as the sugar has melted, boil the marmalade, quickly skimming all the while for twenty minutes, and then let it simmer until the marmalade jellies.

(To be continued. )

[From photo: Copyright 1896, by Franz Hanfstaengl, Munich.

“MY SPIRIT CALLING THROUGH THE DARK.”

CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.

By MARGARET INNES.

CHAPTER V.

OUR FIRST DAYS IN THE BARN.

The route we had chosen, a drive of about eighteen miles, was supposed to be the least steep in its ups and downs; an important consideration, with our heavy load. When we crept round the last turning and could see our hill, with its little patch of brown earth turned up, and the barn which looked like a small wooden box, we felt that our difficulties for the day were conquered. At that moment we were passing a ranch which was just being enclosed with a fence made of narrow laths wired together; these were lying in large bundles at intervals all along the road for a distance of about a quarter of a mile. To our dismay, when Dan reached the first of these bundles, he put back his ears and gave a sudden and most violent shy, almost lurching the surrey over, and then stood trembling, his legs planted apart in an obstinate manner, and absolutely refused to move an inch further.

We tried coaxing, then whipping, till Dan showed us his heels in a series of most vicious kicks, higher and higher, till we feared he would break some part of the harness, or the surrey itself.

Eventually he did allow himself to be slowly coaxed past, I making myself as broad as possible to try and screen that side of the road, and leading him, and my husband checking his evident desire to bolt after each separate bundle was left behind. By this time it was grey twilight, and when we reached our haven, we had to be satisfied with the simplest arrangements possible for the night.

As we were occupying the rooms which by rights belonged to the horses, they had to be staked out on the open hillside, and during the night Joe managed to get loose and went careering off, up and down and round the barn, so that we were awakened by the clattering of his hoofs. It was a brilliant starlit night, perfectly still and mild, and all the family turned out in their night gear to help to catch him and fasten him up again. It was a curious sensation to be so absolutely alone, and free, with nothing but the great ranges of big bare mountains lying spread out into the far distance.

The absolute stillness was very weird; the smallest sound from miles around reached us in the calm quiet. The plaintive call of the little brown owls had a sad uneasy ring in it, and the coyote’s mocking yelp seemed most uncomfortably near.

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The mountain ranges looked so calm and stately and unreachable in the cold clear moonlight, and we felt horribly lonely.

There was one cañon some four miles away, across the Silvero Valley, called Mexican Cañon, and we wondered uneasily whether Indians and Mexicans lived there; for we seemed to be on the very borders of civilisation. When we got to know the neighbourhood better, we found nothing but peaceable ranches, and more ranches far back into the hills.

Returning to the barn we were rather glad to roll the big door to, and close it fast. We crept into our makeshift beds and were asleep before long. But we were awakened with a disagreeable start, hearing right inside the barn a strange cry, which, in our sleepiness and ignorance, might well have been the call of a Red Indian, straight from the Mexican Cañon, intent on securing the scalps of us “tenderfeet.” The cry was repeated, as we sat up listening eagerly, and then we all laughed to see a little squatty figure sitting on one of the open windows, and recognised a harmless little brown owl.

In the morning we made some kind of order and comfort around us. The one large room in the barn (viz., the hayloft) we had divided into two with a temporary screen, one half for our bedroom, the other for sitting- and dining-room. A small shanty had been added outside for kitchen, and a shed which was to receive the cow, when we had one, served meanwhile as bedroom for our “coloured lady.” There was a lower floor which was divided into stalls for the horses, and which was entered by a lower road, as the barn stood on a steep slope.

The fifty cases of furniture, which had been stored at San Francisco till we sent for them, were strewn all about the hill top on which the barn stood, and our first task was to open most of these, take a few things out, and pack away all the rest safely before the rains came.

For days and days we worked away busily at this, my husband and I, and our boys, standing out in that hot glaring Californian sun, with the dry dust of the soil getting into our shoes and stockings and soaking all our clothes. Our ranchman was busy with the trees, and the coloured lady looked on when she was not cooking; looked on with a disdainful air, showing by many signs a great contempt for people who could be so foolish as to carry about such quantities of “stuff,” as she called it.

To English eyes many Californian houses look very empty, and no doubt our possessions did seem ridiculously unnecessary to this darky, who thought only of the bother they would be to keep clean.

As we packed away case after case into every available corner, stringing up chairs and sofas, and all manner of things on to the rafters, we began to wonder where we ourselves were to be housed. We have always since considered that it was a proof positive of great sweetness of temper that we got through a time of such terribly close quarters without doing any violence to each other.

But with all our contriving there were a number of cases for which we could find no room, and these we covered with bits of oil-cloth, and left them out of doors. They led us a dreadful life, those seven cases; our ranchman was for ever predicting rain, which did not come, but kept us anxiously on the watch. Finally, when it did come, it was unexpected, and we had to rush out one night to see if the high wind, which had risen with the rain, had dislodged the oil-cloth. That was a lively night, for the rain came running down the inside walls of our barn in little streams on the windward side, and pictures and other things hung there for safety had to be hurriedly removed.

It was the first night, too, that a large, handsome kangaroo rat paid us a visit, running about like an acrobat among the chairs on the rafters, and when I carried a candle quite near to him, to see what he was like, he looked down at me with the greatest coolness and impudence, with his brilliant black eyes. The place seemed to suit him, for he became a constant visitor. Another intimate guest was a particularly large lizard, who darted in and out under the big door.

We were a little uneasy lest some less harmless visitors should invite themselves. We knew that there were scorpions and tarantulas; the men who had built our barn had unwittingly pitched their tent the first night just over a nest of tarantulas, and had discovered them in the early evening, and spent the rest of the night in searching for and killing them with their hammers.

Ugly, wicked-looking things they are, with their enormous hairy legs and body and cruel nippers; they are very aggressive, too, and would much rather fight than run away.

But most of all we dreaded the rattlesnakes. Our ranchman had killed thirty on the adjoining land, and several had already been found on ours. Everyone told us they were very easy to kill, but that did not reassure us.

Our first introduction to snakes was more alarming than dangerous. We had put all our umbrellas and sticks into a corner of the barn behind a large corner seat. One day whilst we were quietly resting after dinner, our youngest boy, Gip, asleep on his couch, my husband chanced to be looking at these umbrellas, thinking sleepily that he did not recognise one of the handles, which seemed to stand out from the rest, when he was suddenly made wide awake by seeing it move quietly round, first to one side then to the other, and knew that it was a snake. He reached out his hand quietly for something to strike it with, but it darted out of sight at once behind the couch, and though we searched long for it, we did not find it. We found, however, a large notch hole through which it had probably crept in, and we lost no time in closing this securely. It was not a rattlesnake, however, and was probably quite harmless, as numbers of the snakes are, some of them being considered valuable as destroyers of vermin.

Some of these try to pass themselves off as rattlers, however, and we often wondered how they knew that the faint sound of the rattle is so strangely horrible and frightening, that they should try to imitate it as a means of defence.

Another fright which we had, while still in the barn, was very thrilling. It was in the night, and we had been fast asleep, when all at once we became wide awake, straining our ears for the repetition of a horrible sound that we seemed to have heard in our sleep. It is impossible to describe the cold horror and fear which that curious dry rattle gives one.

Here was the thing we had so dreaded—a rattlesnake in the room. As we sat up in the dark the sound was repeated, seemingly from the middle of the room. Someone whispered, “Do you hear,” and we answered, “Do not move.” We reached cautiously for matches and candle, and of course these poor, wretched Californian matches—the worst surely in the world—did nothing but break off or go out. For some minutes the sound continued with an angry crescendo, till we began to wonder if the dreadful thing had got itself wedged in somewhere between the piles of furniture.

At last a feeble, uncertain light and four pairs of strained eyes searched the dim room. And there, sitting nicely balanced on his hind legs, with his sharp black eyes shining brightly, was a small field mouse with a long rattle between his teeth, shaking it about vigorously every few minutes, then running a few paces and rattling it again.

We had cut off a number of rattles from the snakes killed on our ranch to keep them as curiosities, and this was one of them which the mouse had got hold of and seemed to find such a good plaything.

(To be continued. )

VARIETIES.

How He grew Rich.

A man who had by his own unaided exertions become rich, was asked by a friend the secret of his success.

“I accumulated,” said he, “about one-half of my property by attending to my own business and the other half by letting other people’s entirely alone.”

Toil on.—If you want knowledge you must toil for it; if food you must toil for it; if pleasure you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When a girl gets to love work her life is a happy one.

I Don’t Care!—When you say “I don’t care!” see that your tone of voice doesn’t indicate that you do.

No, not Heavy.

A little girl was wandering in an Edinburgh street, dragging about a great baby boy almost as big as herself.

A clergyman who was passing stopped and said, “Why, my little lass, can you carry that boy? He must be heavy.”

The child looked up in his face and gasped, “No, sir, he’s no heavy. He’s my brither.”

Surely a whole sermon in itself!

With his Friend.

In a London mission school near a “settlement,” the teacher asked, “Where does Jesus live?”

A small boy spoke up: “Some of His friends have come to live in our alley, and I think He lives with them.”

A Poet’s Marriage.

Robert Browning, the famous poet, and Elizabeth Browning, one of the sweetest and truest of our poetesses, were married on the 12th of September, 1846, in the parish church of St. Marylebone.

The poet proved a model husband, intensely devoted to his wife, proud of her genius, and watchful over her happiness. In his “Life” we read that in 1851, and indeed “on each succeeding visit paid to London with his wife, he commemorated his marriage in a manner all his own. He went to the church in which it had been solemnised and kissed the paving-stones in front of the door.”

Time for Everything.—There is time enough for everything in the day if you do but one thing at once.

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OLD ENGLISH COTTAGE HOMES;
OR,
VILLAGE ARCHITECTURE OF BYGONE TIMES.

PART V.

In our last paper upon this subject we described some examples of cottages in the immediate neighbourhood of London, and we propose devoting this one to a continuation of the same subject.

Close to the Church of Ryslip, and opposite to its western end, is a group of cottages, one of which is undoubtedly of early date, probably 16th century. It is long and low, the ground floor storey being of brick, and the upper portion of “Post-and-pan,” so that it is what is architecturally known as a “half timber” structure; one end has been plastered over in later times, and the whole forms a row of small cottages. We are in some doubt whether, as originally arranged, it may not have formed one single dwelling-house, the whole, or, at any rate, the centre portion of which was the parsonage. It has some curious features about it. A large black cross of brick is built into the wall, it is of the form known in heraldry as a “Cross Calvary” that is, it stands upon three steps. We do not, however, suggest that it has any heraldic signification, as its position seems to point to a different purpose. This cross is not in the centre of the building, but is placed exactly opposite to the western door of the church, and immediately over it are three windows, the centre one of which is much longer than the other two, and is now blocked up, showing that it was unnecessary for giving light to the room. These peculiarities seem to point out the fact that in former times this was the residence of the rector or vicar of the parish. The cross was placed there to mark out the house to any who might need his ministrations, and the long window over it to give light to his “study,” where he might write or read, and at the same time look out upon the church door to see who went in or came out of the sacred edifice. All the other windows are very small and high up, because those who resided in the other cottages, not requiring to read and write, and having no special interest in watching the church door, could do well enough without extra light in their rooms. The whole group of cottages is very interesting. The oak beams are well moulded, and have stood the test of time admirably. If our suggestion is correct, these buildings have a peculiar interest, as there are so very few mediæval parsonages in existence. Some thirty years back an interesting one was to be seen at Willesden, but in improving the churchyard they “improved” this venerable relic of church history off the face of the earth. It was of the same homely but substantial and picturesque character as the building at Ryslip.

Our second sketch represents some of those thatched and whitewashed cottages which are common all over the home counties. They are for the most part built of wattle clogged with clay, and covered over with a thin coating of lime mortar, whitewashed all over, and roofed with thatch composed of rushes or straw; they are comfortable and cheerful little abodes, cool in summer and warm in winter, with a thorough look of home about them. They, however, have two great drawbacks: they are liable to fire, and are less durable than buildings constructed of more solid materials. Consequently we rarely come across examples which are above a century old, though we not unfrequently find portions of the timber framing considerably more ancient, especially the angle posts and “spurs,” which have been protected by that judicious arrangement, followed in all ancient timber buildings in England, of making the upper storeys of the structure project over the lower. Some writers tell us that this was done to save ground space! This, however, cannot be the case because land in a country village could never have been of sufficient value to have caused such a peculiarity in construction. The idea undoubtedly was to protect the ends of the upright beams from wet, because when wood is cut “with the grain,” as it should always be when used for constructive purposes, the ends of the beam absorb the moisture, but the sides are little affected. Now by making the storeys overlap as they ascend, and the roof overlap the top storey, however lofty a house may be, its timbers are thoroughly protected from the rain.

The general effect of a village consisting of thatched and whitewashed cottages is very pleasing, especially when there is an ancient stone or flint-built church in their midst. The clean bright whitewash forms a lovely contrast to the soft velvety look of the thatch. The red brick chimneys, grey lichen-covered walls of the old church, the lofty elms, and brilliant patches of garden, combine together to form a charming scene of peaceful and homely life.

Up to within some five years back an old thatched cottage stood at Shepherd’s Bush green, and another close to Paddington churchyard; both have now disappeared, and we do not know of the existence of any old thatched cottages within four miles of Charing Cross. Don’t let our readers imagine that we should suggest the building of thatched houses in London or any great city. Such structures would be contrary to all architectural propriety in such localities, and dangerous in case of fire.

(To be continued. )

COTTAGE HOMES AT RYSLIP.

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THATCHED AND WHITE-WASHED COTTAGES, ESSEX.

“OUR HERO.”

A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.

By AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc.

CHAPTER XX.

A GLIMPSE OF LOVELY POLLY.

“Now, my dear Polly, I pray you make the very most this evening of your charms. For somebody will be there whom you little think to see.”

Polly and Molly, both on a visit to the Bryces in London, looked up sharply.

“Yes, indeed, and you may guess, but I vow you’ll never guess the truth. Two young maidens to have such good fortune! Had it come to me in my young days, why, I think ’twould have driven me out of my senses with joy. But you may conjecture—you may conjecture, Polly. Who in the world can it be?”

Polly was seated upright on a straight-backed chair, looking as usual exceedingly pretty. Her eyes, softer and more than ever like brown velvet, took a faraway expression, and the delicate tinting of her cheeks grew roseate. She said demurely, after a pause—

“If I might conjecture that which my desires would prompt, ma’am, I would say—Captain Ivor!”

Mrs. Bryce tapped the floor impatiently with her slippered and sandalled foot.

“Pish-pshaw! To be sure, that is proper enough, my dear. But now you may rest satisfied that you have said what propriety demands. And since Captain Ivor is a prisoner in foreign parts, and likely so to remain for many a long year to come, being therefore out of the question, we’ll e’en dismiss the thoughts of him, and I’ll ask Molly whom she would most desire to meet at the dance to-night.”

Molly sat upon a second high-backed chair, busily netting. At sixteen—close upon seventeen, indeed—she was more altered from the child of twelve than her twin-brother in the same lapse of time. She had not grown tall, and she was more rounded than in earlier years. Her black eyes looked less big and less anxious, partly because the face had lost its peakiness. A healthy complexion and an expression of straightforward earnestness served in place of good looks. Molly Baron would never be a “belle,” but she might become a woman to whom men and women alike would turn, with a restful certainty of finding in her what they wanted. Her reply was more prompt than Polly’s had been, and it consisted of one single syllable.

“Roy!”

“But Roy, like Captain Ivor, is a prisoner, child. Like to remain so also. Who next?”

“Jack!” Molly said, with equal rapidity.

“Nay, Jack is nobody. Jack is one of ourselves, and is in and out perpetually. Jack’s a genteel young fellow enough, I make no question, but somewhat better than Jack awaits you this evening. Eh, Polly—what if it be—no other than Captain Peirce?”

“Captain Peirce better than Jack! Nay!” Molly said indignantly.

Polly’s colour went up again, as it was wont to do on slight provocation, delicately and prettily. Polly also tossed her head, and arranged the light scarf, which covered her shoulders.

“Captain Peirce is welcome enough, ma’am,” she made answer carelessly.

“I do not like Captain Peirce,” murmured Molly.

“Nobody desired you to like Captain Peirce, my dear Molly. ’Tis vastly more to the point whether Polly likes him, since of a certainty Captain Peirce’s affections are engaged in a certain direction, which may be named without difficulty. Captain Peirce is a{318} prodigious favourite with everybody, especially, I can assure you, with all the young women of mode. And he has eyes for none of ’em except Polly.”

Polly looked studiously down, offering no remark; and Molly frowned.

“If Captain Peirce were what a man should be, he would never come after Polly as he does, knowing that Polly is engaged to another, and he out of reach!”

“Tut, tut, my dear Molly! Pish! Pshaw! What know you of such matters? A chit of a young female of sixteen! I’m positively ashamed of you! Why, you’re scarce out of the nursery, child. And here’s Polly, the prettiest girl in all London, past twenty-one, and not yet married. No, nor no chance to be married, while old Nap lives; and depend on’t, he’ll not die yet, for many a long year. Is Polly to wait and wait, till her prettiness goes, and she turns into an elderly maiden, whom no man of ton will ever deign to cast eyes upon, while Captain Ivor spends perhaps fifteen or twenty years in France, and forgets his past fancy, and marries some beauteous young Frenchwoman?”

Molly gazed at Polly’s downcast face. “But Polly knows Captain Ivor better!” she suggested.

“Knows Captain Ivor better! And how may that be?” demanded the vivacious lady. “Since Polly has seen him but from time to time, and that at long intervals, and I have been acquainted closely with him since he was left an orphan at the age of seven. Nor have I a word to speak against Captain Denham Ivor, save only that to expect Polly to wait for him twenty years, losing her bloom and growing old, would be altogether unreasonable. And I have said the same before, Molly.” Which certainly she had.

“Polly is still a long way off from growing old,” persisted Molly.

“Well, well, that’s as may be. But you’ve not divined my secret yet,” pursued Mrs. Bryce. “Jack will be at my Lady Hawthorn’s to-night; and ’tis not Jack of whom I speak. Captain Peirce will be there; and ’tis not Captain Peirce. The Admiral will be there; and ’tis not the Admiral. Somebody else also will be there—and ’tis he.”

Mrs. Bryce lifted a book from the table. “Who was it that read last week the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ and that said she would give half she was possessed of to set eyes on the writer of that most elegant poem?”

“Mr. Walter Scott!” The rapture on Molly’s girlish face fully repaid Mrs. Bryce, who, whatever her faults might have been, did dearly love to give pleasure. Polly too smiled, but more quietly, having her mind greatly preoccupied.

“Mr. Walter Scott is now in London, and will be at Lady Hawthorn’s assemblage. So now, Miss, what say you to my promise of somebody that shall be worth seeing?”

“Really and truly?” questioned Molly, half incredulously. “May we in truth hope to see Mr. Walter Scott himself to-night? That will be worth going for, were there naught else. Think, Polly, Mr. Walter Scott himself, that writ all about William of Deloraine and the ‘Fair Ladye Margaret of Branksome Hall.’”

“You may count yourself a fortunate young woman, Molly,” complacently observed Mrs. Bryce. “At the early age of sixteen, not only to have a personal acquaintance with so distinguished a martial hero as Sir John Moore, but also to have had a sight of Mr. Southey, the author of ‘Thalaba,’ as well as of Mr. Southey’s friend, Mr. William Wordsworth, and now to be brought face to face with Mr. Scott himself—I give you joy of such good fortune.”

“And the last will be the best,” remarked Molly. “For I love the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ infinitely more than I love ‘Thalaba.’ Sure, ma’am, so great a poet as Mr. Scott has never yet been known.”

“If the public voice be true, ’tis even so. Mr. Southey complains sorely of his ill-luck in the poor sale of his poems, and I know not that Mr. Wordsworth has much to boast of. Whereas Mr. Scott’s poems go off by the myriad, and are read of all. I’m informed that Mr. Constable is this year paying him one thousand pounds in advance for a poem not yet completed—a poem about a place that is called ‘Rokeby.’ And ten thousand people are on the look-out for its appearance. But now ’tis full time you began to prepare yourselves; and Polly must look her best this night.”

Polly was in no wise unwilling. It was as natural to her to adorn her dainty self as to a wren to preen and perk. Molly, being no professed beauty, made shorter work of her toilette. Her white muslin gown was of the simplest; and her short black hair was all but hidden under a turban of white silk. But every strand of Polly’s abundant mane needed attention, though crowned with a fantastic hat, which carried lofty white feathers; and her embroidered white gown, made with its waist under the arm-pits, left throat and snowy shoulders bare. The skirt was clinging and scanty; and a large white muff completed her ball-room equipment, except that a light scarf was wound round the said shoulders, and that the dainty feet bore satin slippers.

Polly looked exquisitely pretty. Her skin was like ivory; the blush-rose tinting was just where it ought to have been; and the smile in her velvet eyes was in itself a sunbeam.

She could never enter a crowded room, without becoming at once a centre for all glances. Molly, close behind, was neglected by comparison, and was quite content to have it so. While amused with the scene, she did not expect admiration.

The one thing on which her heart was set was the promised sight of Mr. Walter Scott, the future “Wizard of the North.” His real work in life, the writing of the “Waverley Novels,” had not then been so much as begun; but he was already well known as the very successful author of divers historical ballads, which had taken the fashionable world by storm. When he came from his Scotch home to London, he was fêted and made much of to any extent.

Molly pictured him to herself as a quite ineffable individual, with fathomless dark eyes and flowing locks of ebony, such as should befit an immortal poet. And “immortal” Scott doubtless is, in the literary sense, with still no peer, but hardly as a poet. Popular judgment made a mistake there—not for the first or the last time in its existence.

This is not a quotation; it is merely a specimen of the kind of thing that our great-grandmothers and grandmothers in their early youth admired and doted on. The bump of veneration must have been more highly developed on people’s heads in those days than in these. And how they did admire and did dote, the dear young things! Just as Molly Baron did that evening. She sat upon her quiet seat, neglected, yet perfectly happy at the thought of the glorious poet-form, which her gaze was soon to rest upon. She did not care to talk. She did not wish to dance. She was wrapped in a dream, from which Mrs. Bryce’s decisive finger-tips aroused her.

“Wake up, my dear. Are you asleep, Molly? Here he comes.”

Molly looked rapturously around and about in eager quest. But she saw no wondrous human form to correspond to the image in her mind. A lame man, of good height, rather robust in make, healthy, but scarcely “elegant,” with brown hair, flaxen eyebrows, a long upper lip, and a frank genial expression—no, that was not Molly Baron’s ideal of an immortal poet. His eyes were only light grey in colour, not dark and wild, as a poet’s should have been. Yet the gleams of arch brightness which lighted up his face, as he talked, went a long way towards redeeming it from homeliness.

Then Molly was called up to be presented to the poet; and he said a few kind words to the young girl—she could not afterwards remember what they were. In later years she would be glad to know always that she had seen and spoken with him; but at the moment her mind was full of its sudden disillusionment.

Mr. Walter Scott passed on, surrounded by a host of friends; and Molly retreated again to her seat. Plenty was going on to amuse and interest her. She had danced twice, and now a rather long pause had come, no fresh partners turning up. Molly was of course under Mrs. Bryce’s wing, but that lady had too many irons in the fire to spare much time for the quiet country girl at her side. Molly cared little. She liked to look and listen, indulging in cogitations of her own. Mrs. Bryce’s gay talk was entertaining{319} enough, as the good lady expatiated on this person and that, flirted her fan at one elderly gentleman and captured another, dissected theoretically one lady’s “bewitching gown,” and descanted on the “superb equipage” possessed by another, reverting then to the “London Particular Madeira” which had been served at a recent grand dinner-party, and hoping for some of the same at supper.

Growing surfeited with this, Molly turned her attention elsewhere, and descried Admiral Peirce close at hand, button-holing another gentleman, and holding forth to him in a loud voice on the advantages of London as a place of residence.

“Why, sir,” he was saying, “why, sir, there’s nothing after all like old Thames. Give me the blue ocean and tossing waves. But for a landsman—why, the Thames is as good as he may look to find. And I tell you what, sir, the water of the river Thames is the finest drinking-water in the world! Only has to stand and ferment a little, and then it’ll keep as long as ever you want it.[1] Yes, sir, it will indeed.”

Molly, being sublimely indifferent to the qualities of London drinking-water, which in those days was not considered a question of pressing interest, wandered farther afield. A slight pucker came between her brows, as she made out Polly at a short distance, with Captain Albert Peirce in close attendance. He was bending towards Polly, saying something in a low and confidential voice; and it was impossible from Polly’s look to know whether she were pleased or displeased.

The gay scene around faded from Molly’s vision. She was looking down, thoughtfully, at her own half-furled fan; but she did not see the fan, or the crowds of gay women around in their low dresses and hats or turbans, scarves and muffs and satin shoes. Another scene had risen before her mental eyes. She seemed again to be in a day long gone by; and Roy was giving her a boisterous kiss.

“All right, Molly!” he was calling gaily. “It’s only for two weeks, you know, and then we shall be back again.” And as Roy ran off, in high glee, she had looked up, and had seen Denham Ivor holding Polly’s hands in a firm clasp, while Polly’s sweet face was downward bent and blushing. But it was not Polly who in one moment had left an indelible impression upon Molly’s childish memory. When she thought of that day it was always Ivor’s face—the young Guardsman’s look of silent grave devotion—which unbidden came up.

“How can Mrs. Bryce say such things? He will never, never forget!” murmured Molly, her lips unconsciously moving with the energy of her own thoughts.

“Molly, this is sure scarce a place for audible meditation,” a voice said at her side.

“Jack!”

Molly’s whole face grew bright. Now she had all, or nearly all, that she wanted. She was extremely fond of Jack, and Jack of her. They were exactly like brother and sister, so Molly, not Jack, often stated. He was quite next to Roy in her estimation. Roy held inviolate the first place in his twin-sister’s affections; but Jack came closely after.

“Were you spouting Mr. Scott’s last new poem, Molly?” demanded Jack, as he deposited himself in an empty chair by her side.

“You love to plague me, Jack! Why should I be spouting aught?”

Jack gave her a quizzical look.

“’Tis dull work for a young maiden to be seated here. What may Mrs. Bryce be after, not to find you partners?”

“Jack, be cautious, she is near. See!”—with a motion of her fan. “And I am not dull. I am never dull. I have danced two whole dances, Jack.”

“And three with me to come. You do not forget.”

“Two,” corrected Molly. “And they will be the best of all”—with childish frankness. “But my grandmother desired me to dance no more than two with any one man. And what news of Sir John?” Molly had a quick womanly instinct, which not all women possess, as to what people would like to speak about, and she generally managed to hit the mark, whence her quiet popularity in the little circle of those who knew her well.

“I went to Cobham but a week since, and saw his mother. She fears Sir John is sorely worried by these Sicilian complications. The Queen of Sicily must be a strange personage. She detests the English, and gives all her confidence to Frenchmen—so says Sir John—yet our government fights in defence of the King, her husband, and pays him too a subsidy.”

“And ’tis but a year since Sir John was all on the alert to be sent to India.”

“Ay; so he told me, and his mother speaks of it still. She says that Sir John deems India to be by far the most important colony our nation has ever had. He thought then that he might well be spared for a while from Europe, matters being somewhat at a standstill. Since Trafalgar there can be no further dread of an invasion, and little was doing or is doing on the Continent, to check the Emperor’s advance. For my part, I doubt not that Sir John would prefer above all to be at the head of affairs in India. I have heard him say that that was the greatest and most important command which could fall to a British officer. But Mr. Fox refused to spare him, saying that England could not do without him in Europe.”

Jack had always plenty to say, when once he got upon the subject of his Hero.

(To be continued. )

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