Full text of "Pen"
by t^e author of
Miss
s Mission and
RS&rJIT&fc
PEN.
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Uniform to ill) tfjis Tolumr.
"TIP-CAT." i6mo. Cloth. $1.00.
We welcome another tale by the anonymous author of
"Laddie." In this unassuming story genuine humor, pa-
thos, and much observation of human, and especially chil-
dren's, nature are displayed, together with a delightful
style. Times.
OUR LITTLE ANN. i6mo. Cloth. $1.00.
Never were the simplicity and affectionateness of abused
girlhood and thorough womanhood drawn with more skill
and loving effect than in the character of the heroine,
Little Ann. Mail and Express.
MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION, AND LAD-
DIE. i6mo. Cloth. 50 cents.
To our mind there is more pathos and beauty between
the " twa boards " of this little book than is to be found in
mauy a three-volume novel. Guardian.
ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
Boston.
PEN.
E N.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"MISS TOOSEY'S MISSION "AND "LADDIE/
" TIP-CAT," AND "OUR LITTLE ANN."
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1888.
EntfjcrsttD
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. MOTHERLESS
II. AUNT PENELOPE
III. A FIRESIDE TALK
IV. FLOWERS FOR HER . .
V. Louis BRAND'S CHILDREN 55
VI. HIGHFIELD 65
VII. MOTHER'S GRAVE 80
VIII. A DAY OF REST 90
IX. THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION . . . 102
X. ONLY FOR A FORTNIGHT 112
XI. COMING BACK 121
XII. WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 140
XIII. A WOOING 158
XIV. THE WEDDING-DRESS 174
XV THE BRIDEGROOM 189
XVI. THERE 's MANY A SLIP . .... 198
6 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PACK
XVII. YOUNG TOM 209
XVIII. SANDY'S RETURN 222
XIX. GOING COURTING 232
XX. AMONG THE LILIES 244
XXI. LITTLE Miss TRE 253
XXII. DRIFTING 268
XXIII. A THREATENING OF GOUT . 282
PEN.
CHAPTER I.
MOTHERLESS.
I CAN begin my story as country folk in old
times used to begin their laborious letters :
" I now take up my pen ; " the pen in this case,
not being a finely crusted, old nib, stuck in a
much- nibbled holder, and held in inky country
fingers, but a very tear-stained, sobbing, little Pen,
in a large and rather ragged armchair, situated in
a shabby, little front parlor in Dalston. Penelope
Brand is just motherless, only just, for half an
hour, out in the cold world, without a mother's
wing, and she and little Tre are clinging together,
with arms round necks, and wet cheek pressed
to wet cheek.
Tre will soon get over it ; she is only six, and
has that blessed, but rather startling power of
rapid recovery that is granted to children; even
now, I think, her tears are more in sympathy
8 PEN.
with Pen than expressive of her own sorrow, and
she is even conscious that it is tea-time and that
the kitten is playing with the reels in mother's
work-basket ; while as for Pen, who is fifteen, the
grim presence of death in the house seems to
have swept away all times and seasons and ob-
jects for doing anything, and power to move or
speak or do anything but sit there with Tre, cud-
dled close to her sad, sore, little heart, and cry
and cry and cry and wish for mother, and listen
to strange footsteps in the room above, where a
gloomy old woman in a black bonnet had ap-
peared mysteriously on the scene, and had insisted
on Tre leaving that place by the bedside which
had been hers by right for so long. If it had
been still mother lying there, no power on earth
could have moved Pen ; but that still, silent, sol-
emn form was not mother ; hardly so much
mother to Pen's mind as the worn, shabby, old
dress hanging against the door, or the shawl that
lay still on the sofa ; so she was persuaded to go
away, and found her way, dazzled and shaking,
downstairs, where the daylight seemed to have an
unnatural glare, and all the old familiar things to
look strange and impossible.
Father was locked into the little room at the
back of the house which he called his studio, and
MOTHERLESS. 9
where his painting things lay about, not often dis-
turbed from their picturesque confusion by the
exertions of their master. There is no knowing
how long Pen would have sat there, sunk in a sort
of stupor of grief, if the sound of horses' feet had
not penetrated even to her poor, dulled, little brain
and brought her suddenly back to the conscious-
ness of a very rough head and crumpled collar on
her own part and a ragged pinafore and smeared
face in the part of Tre ; and she got up mechani-
cally and made a weary, ineffectual, little effort to
improve matters, and to poke up the ashy fire and
straighten the disordered furniture, which bore un-
mistakable signs of having been turned into a very
satisfactory railway while the attention of elders
was absorbed upstairs and Tre had it all her own
way below.
There seemed no immediate reason why the
even trotting of a pair of horses and the soft roll
of carriage wheels should have roused Pen to the
consciousness of the general untidiness ; many
other vehicles had passed since she first came
down from mother's room, and she had taken no
note of them ; the heavy prison van that the chil-
dren called " Black Maria " had lumbered by and
none of them had even cast a look or wondered
what burden of sin or sorrow it was carrying off
10 PEN.
to justice ; one of the red Parcels Post carts had
pulled up at the house opposite, and there had
been a long discussion over a wrongly directed
parcel, which at another time would have roused
great interest, and convictions that the parcel was
really intended for No. 37, but was now unno-
ticed ; some big wagons loaded to a giddy height
with chair-frames had darkened the room ; a milk-
cart had zigzagged along the road, dispensing
small tin cans to its various customers ; half a
dozen other carts of one sort or another had
passed, all with a noise and a rattle that were
wanting in the clean, even trot of this particular
pair of horses and the light roll of the wheels that
followed ; and yet these brought Pen hurriedly to
her feet, trying with trembling hands to remedy
rough hair and rumpled frocks and displaced
furniture.
That carriage was not unknown in Purton Street ;
for the last month it had frequently been seen
there, almost as often lately as the doctor's shabby
brougham, whose broken-kneed horse pulled up of
its own accord at No. 37. But, before proceeding
further, I had better explain how it was that this
apparition of sleek, well-groomed horses and fash-
ionably built brougham, every inch of whose glossy
coats and shining panels and silver-plated harness
MOTHERLESS. 1 1
told of West End affluence, was to be seen in the
sordid, shabby, little street in Dalston, and I will
take advantage of the few moments occupied by
the coachman in drawing up his horses with beau-
tiful precision on exactly the right spot, an art so
difficult to arrive at by amateur coachmen, who
generally hit the juste milieu between the house
they aim at and the next to right or left, and
either grate against the curb or steer so clear of
it that they have to hail the servant who opens
the door with a quarter-deck shout from the mid-
dle of the road. But the precision is not the only
thing to wonder at and admire in Miss Percival's
coachman ; we should also note the wooden ex-
pression of indifference and the apparent stiffness
of neck which is to be observed in him as in all
well- trained coachmen, not turning his head an
inch either to the right or left to look at the sur-
roundings, which might be Buckingham Palace or
a pigsty for all that he knows or cares, and like-
wise being apparently unconscious or indifferent as
to whether the occupant of the carriage, safely
piloted through the wild hubbub and confusion of
the City, gets out or remains in, that being no con-
cern of his, but the business of the tall footman in
an unbelievably long drab coat, who gets down,
touches his hat at the carriage door, and then gives
1 2 PEN.
as artistic a performance on the knocker of No.
37 as that very inferior instrument will permit,-
and then comes back with another touch of the
hat to open the carriage door, and turn back the
big lion-skin rug which has been protecting Miss
Percival from the inclemency of the weather.
Miss Percival is aunt to Tre and Pen, Aunt Pe-
nelope, though even now they were not sufficiently
used to her velvets and furs and clear, cold eyes to
venture to call her so, or hardly to believe that she
could in any way be of the same order of creation
as they were. She was sister too to "mother"
to the white, still mother lying upstairs in the little
bedroom, with the calm content of death on her
waxen lips. People used to say the two sisters
were wonderfully alike, though Pen would deny
it angrily, almost fiercely, with tears of indigna-
tion in her eyes; though unprejudiced observers
would have said it was a great compliment to the
wan, weary woman, whatever it might have been
when she and Penelope were girls together.
Yes, girls together, sisters only sisters too,
without mother or sister to share the love between
them, and yet, till six weeks ago, they had not
met for sixteen years.
No doubt the blame was entirely due to Mrs.
Brand, and she received it from all right-minded
MOTHERLESS. 13
people ; but, dear reader, if you and I are not quite
right-minded in this respect, we may shelter our-
selves under the grim segis of death de mortuis
nil nisi bonum and love and pity her instead.
There was but one opinion on the subject when
Theresa Percival, not quite eighteen, ran away with
her drawing-master. She had just left school and
was to be presented at the next drawing-room, and
come out with all the pomp and ceremony which
had attended Penelope's debut the year before ;
her presentation dress had come home, and the
girl had stood decked out in the " soft sheen of
satin and glimmer of pearls," light clouds of tulle
and snowy feathers ; and the admiring beholders
whispered that no lovelier debutante would kiss
her Majesty's hand that season, and no one had
noticed the strange, frightened look in the girl's
face and the wistful quiver of her lips.
But, two days after that rehearsal, she was
sought for in vain, and a note, in trembling char-
acters, with more than one blot where a tear had
fallen, told how her life's happiness was bound up
with Louis Brand ; that she knew it was useless
to ask her parents' consent, so she could only ask
them to forgive and forget their wretched, little
daughter, Theresa.
There was no doubt the Percivals bore the blow
14 PEN.
excellently. Society noticed some gray threads in
Mrs. Percival's smooth hair that were not there
before, and fancied that Colonel Percival stooped
a little more than of old, and that Penelope car-
ried her head higher, with a haughty look in her
eyes, as if to defy remark on their wounded pride.
The Percivals had always been such a proud
family, their line went back through generation
before generation, with honor unstained and un-
tarnished, and their arms had been quartered with
all the best and oldest in the kingdom.
And this miserable girl had brought disgrace on
them, and for what ? An artist fellow with a black
mustache and a velvet coat and a would-be Ital-
ian appearance, when any one who cared to ask
knew that his father kept a shop in Bristol.
But the Percivals behaved very well, indeed
Mrs. Percival's conduct may 'be described as he-
roic, for everything went on just as usual; with
one great exception, the whole brilliant programme
for the season was carried out to the last iota.
Mrs. Percival even went to that very drawing-room
and presented a niece, without an outward sign
of the sick, wounded mother's heart under the
moir and diamonds ; she went through the whole
round of balls and dinners and fetes and operas.
She never shirked a single engagement ; could any
MOTHERLESS. 1 5
Spartan matron have done more ? Only Theresa's
name was never mentioned again ; when once that
little, hastily scrawled, tear-blotted note was crum-
pled up and thrown into the fire no further refer-
ence was made to her ; her name never passed her
mother's lips. No useless efforts were made to re-
trieve the false step, no bitter reproaches or cruel
valedictory words were sent after the culprit ; only
the curtain of silence was dropped between her
and her family, and every belonging of hers that
might have recalled her to their minds was swept
out of sight, and for sixteen years her name was
never mentioned. Did they ever relent? No, I
think not, till it was too late. You see, every one
said they were in the right, and they firmly believed
it themselves, and perhaps it was so ; and they
could not understand that that was the very rea-
son why they could more easily have relented, as
it is so much easier for the injured to make the
first advances than the injurer.
Perhaps if Theresa Brand had come begging for-
giveness and help it might have been different, but
then she was proud too, and, all the more because
she was poor and struggling and not always very
happy, and hungered and thirsted after a word or
a look from her own people, she kept carefully
and scrupulously away, avoiding the barest chance
1 6 PEN.
of the meeting which might so easily have come
about even in this great, full world. Once I think
Mrs. Percival was not very far from relenting, when,
one Christmas, a letter arrived with the London
post-mark and directed in a hand all the more
familiar because it had not been seen for four
years which, I am afraid, sounds Irish, but is
true all the same.
Inside there was only a curl of the softest, most
golden hair, and on the paper containing it were
the words, " For grandmamma from little Pen."
She stood a long time looking at that golden
curl, and perhaps her eyes were not quite clear
enough to see how soft and bright it was, for there
was a troublesome moisture that dimmed them
more than once that Christmas morning, the morn-
ing of all others when mothers' hearts must need
be soft. But not even that would unlock those
closed lips from their four years' silence, and
when at last, a few years later, those poor lips
were trying to frame the daughter's name, the
power had been taken away. She was struck
with paralysis one morning and died in the even-
ing without recovering power of speech, though
the nurse, who was with her, told how, through
that long day, the poor lips tried and tried to
form some word, and the eyes looked with a
MOTHERLESS. I?
terrible appeal into the faces of those by the
bedside, who could not understand what she
meant. Penelope was away in Scotland and,
though she was telegraphed for, arrived too late
to see her mother alive ; and as for Colonel Per-
cival he was so entirely unmanned by this sudden
blow that he had to be kept entirely out of the
sick-room, where his irrepressible, hysterical grief
distressed the patient, even through the numbness
of mind and body that was deepening every hour.
The arrangements for the funeral all fell upon
Penelope, as her father was sunk into a sort of stu-
por of grief; but, if the thought of her sister crossed
her mind then, she did not know where to write to
her, and perhaps she took it for granted that she
would see the notice in the morning papers and
would write or come. But the " Times " and
" Morning Post " were not much in the way .of
Mrs. Brand, and it was not till nearly three months
after, that a lady in mourning arrived at Highfield
station and walked up to the little, old church, and
found her way to the corner where generation after
generation of Percivals rest under the great, ugly,
flat tombs. Near one of these, where the fresh let-
tering showed that Mary, wife of Philip Percival,
had departed this life August loth, that same year,
the stranger sat in the damp November grass for
1 8 PEN.
nearly an hour, and, when she went, left a wreath
of such costly beauty that many of the Highfield
people came to look and wonder, and the Hall gar-
dener himself (and who knew better?) wagered
that it had cost a pretty penny. No one recog-
nized her, and, if it had not been for that wreath,
the few who noticed her would have thought that
she was not of much account, for her dress was
shabby and she did not take a fly from the station.
And after that the time passed on again, and
Penelope was mistress at Highfield Hall and her
father's right hand ; for the Colonel was never the
same man after his wife's death, feeble in body and
a little bit childish in mind, needing all the support
that his stately, dignified, self-contained daughter
was so capable of giving. And so sixteen years
passed away and the sisters never met. Think of
it,, dear reader, sixteen years out of this short life,
with all the love and tenderness and comfort they
might have given and received ; and the loss in
not having given the love is more grievous really
than not receiving it, mere irretrievable, more
disastrous.
And when the meeting and reconciliation came
it was too late. It was quite by chance if there
is such a thing as chance that Penelope Per-
cival heard of her sister's illness. It was at one of
MOTHERLESS. 19
the winter exhibitions of pictures, when she was
spending a few days in London, that her eye was
caught by a name among the exhibitors which ar-
rested her attention, " Evening in North Devon "
by Louis Brand. It was quite a small picture and
pretty, without any particular talent in it, and the
lady who was with Miss Percival, and who was a
connoisseur in art and quite a recent acquaintance
of Penelope's, wondered at the fixed attention with
which she regarded the picture.
" Louis Brand? " she said. " Ah ! it was about
him that I heard such a sad story the other day :
the usual thing, a wife in the last stage of con-
sumption and a large family nearly starving. Ah !
look at this, No. 340, "A Gourmand." Isn't it
'*&
fine? the expression of that sweep's face and the
dog looking over his shoulder at the mutton pie !
Capital ! capital ! "
But that afternoon Miss Percival's carriage first
electrified the humble dwellers in Purton Street,
Dalston, and the knocker at No. 37 was roused
out of its usual indolent habit of giving one bang
to announce the milk or the tax-collector, and
made its first essay at a West End fantasia.
But even if Mrs. Brand had not been so ill that
reconciliation came too late. But perhaps you
may say it is never too late to be reconciled, and
20 PEN.
in one sense you are right ; but it is very soon too
late to get any happiness or pleasure out of a rec-
onciliation. Fancy what that meeting might have
been six days or six weeks or even six months
after their parting ; think how the two girls would
have clung together and kissed and clung again,
with such a store of sympathy and tender reproach
and loving explanation. Even after six years it
might have been just possible, but after sixteen
years what could you expect when every day had
been building up between them, little by little, a
wall of separate interests, different experiences,
loves and hates, in which the other could -have no
share ; sufferings and pleasures which the other
would hardly comprehend, much less sympathize
with?
And, added to this, Mrs. Brand was past caring.
She had longed with a sickening craving at times
to look into her mother's face, to show her bonny,
little Pen to her grandfather, to hold her sister's
hand and feel her kisses on her cheek, but that
was long ago, and now she turned away from that
sister's kiss which seemed cold and formal and
lifeless, and from the comforts with which Miss
Percival would gladly have surrounded her, to lay
her tired head on her husband's shoulder, with its
threadbare velvet coat ; for, after all, though he
MOTHERLESS. 21
might have been careless and improvident and in-
considerate, he had loved her, and his love had
been all her happiness during those sixteen years,
nearly half her lifetime ; and it was Pen's hand
she felt for when sight and sense were failing, and
to her, child as she was, that she committed the
little sister Tre. " Take care of her, dear," she
whispered ; and when Penelope would have taken
the little, rosy, sleeping child from the bed where
she lay by her dying mother's side, she shook her
head with a smile that cut like a sword to that
sister's heart.
"Don't trouble, dear," she said. "I like to
have her here, and when Pen will take care
of her."
CHAPTER II.
AUNT PENELOPE.
IT has taken so long to explain the presence of
Miss Percival's carriage in Purton Street, that
if, in the mean time, the door had not been opened
and Miss Percival admitted, I think that even
the coachman, with his stiff neck and regulation
manner, would have turned his head to see the
reason. But Eliza, the maid- of- all-work, with the
natural desire of her class to be the first to tell
bad news, which seems to have been a character-
istic of human nature as long ago as the time of
David, when Ahimahaz longed to carry the news
of Absalom's death, flew to open the door, before
the man's hand was off the knocker, and she had
the corner of her dirty apron to her eyes, and, on
her lips, the usual hackneyed words by which we
try to soften, in our vulgar way, the grim simplicity
of death.
There had been nothing in the outside aspect to
prepare Miss Percival ; the blinds were not pulled
down, except in the upper room, where they were
AUNT PENELOPE. 23
generally so ; and the day before Mrs. Brand had
seemed a little better the last flickering up of
the strength that often precedes the final extin-
guishing. But "Liza did not get any of the ex-
pected effects, which would have added so much
to the interest of the story, when she described
the scene afterwards ; Miss Percival did not
" swound away ; " she did not throw up her hands
and give a cry " as would have cut you to the
heart to hear ; " she did not turn " as white as a
sheet" or " tremble like a leaf;" but she just
swept past the girl in the narrow passage and
went into the sitting-room, even drawing away
her skirts from contact with the coal-scuttle,
which 'Liza had upset in her haste to answer the
door.
Her coming had startled the children's tears
away, and I am afraid this was not the first time
she had seen Tre with a dirty face, and Pen had no
traditions in her young life of the proper authorized
behavior in times of affliction, only an inborn sense
of courtesy, and a remembrance of mother's gra-
cious reception of visitors, however untimely ; so
she came forward with a little, difficult smile, to
extricate for her aunt's use a chair that had been
enacting the part of tender in the train, and she
made some little mechanical remark about the
24 PEN.
weather being bad and hoping that her aunt's cold
was better.
" But children have no hearts," Miss Percival
thought, as she sat down by the table, showing by
this judgment that she was as ignorant of human
nature in one way as 'Liza was in another, the one
by expecting stereotyped expressions of grief in
children, the other by looking for vulgar and vio-
lent manifestations of sorrow in a lady. To be
'sure she had very little experience of children,
except the village school children at Highfield,
who bobbed terrified, little courtesies to her, re-
garding her as a condensed form of the " betters,"
to whom they were to orde'r themselves lowly and
reverently. She also thought she knew a good
deal of the members of the Girls' Friendly Society,
to whom she gave most excellent advice, which
perhaps might have been of more use if she had
known anything really of the muddling, young
lives with their small, insignificant troubles and
foolish pleasures, and could have sympathized in
the smallest degree with those stupid, little drudges
whom she was desirous of helping to better things.
She had not felt attracted to these children of
her sister's, they could not exactly be treated as
friendly girls or national school children, and she
had made up her mind long ago as to what Louis
AUNT PENELOPE. 25
Brand's children were likely to be, and all through
her life Miss Percival's conclusions had been right ;
and no one, herself least of all, had ever doubted
the Q. E. D. that followed her deductions, or, at
any rate, had ever convinced her that she was in
the wrong ; so that not even Pen's delicate, little
face and gentle voice, or Tre's sweet, childish
grace could quite convince her that they were not
the underbred, common, little creatures she had
imagined. Louis Brand's children were not likely
to have deep feelings, and, after the first rather
mechanical kiss on the cheeks, where, if she had
noticed it, she might have found the tears were
scarcely dry, she sat down by the table, involun-
tarily straightening the table-cloth and stroking
out the creases in a way that conveyed a keen re-
proach to Pen for its untidiness, though indeed
Miss Percival was quite unconscious of her act ; or
of the shabby, disordered room ; or of Pen's anx-
ious little face ; or of Tre, with a firm hold on her
sister's protecting frock, gazing at her with big
eyes full of awe and reverence.
Her thoughts had gone back to old days at
Highfield, when she and her sister were all in all
to one another; to happy, girlish, light-hearted
days, before life had settled down into the dig-
nified monotony it had gradually assumed. Those
26 PEN.
days did not seem so far off now as they had done
when her sister was living, and when every word
and look reminded her of the gulf those sixteen
years had made between them. The Theresa who
was just dead was the girl-sister, the playfellow, the
confidante who had shared everything with her,
and been in such perfect sympathy that she had
seemed a second self; and not the weary, worn-
out woman, who had seen so much trouble and
poverty and loneliness, and who had a drawing-
master artist husband, and rough, troublesome
children.
Presently she got up and w.ent upstairs, up the
narrow, steep staircase. She gave a little irritable
shudder as she passed a door from which the sound
of men's voices and the smell of tobacco smoke
proceeded. It would have been odious to her to
come across Louis Brand making a pretence of
grief over his dead wife ; but at any rate he might
have had the decency to keep up appearances, and
not to be smoking, and probably drinking with
some of his boon companions within an hour or
two of his wife's death.
She hastened on to the bedroom, where .the dis-
order of a sick-room had given place to the chill
tidiness of death.
"'It is not mother," little Pen had said, as they
AUNT PENELOPE. 2/
led her aw.ay from the room ; but Miss Percival
gave a low cry of glad recognition "Theresa ! "
as she came to the bedside ; for the still, white
face had regained so much o^ the youth that it had
lost in life, that it might almost have been the
young sister who had passed out of Penelope's
life sixteen years ago.
Those ten minutes by her sister's side made
nearly as great a difference in the living as death
had done in the dead face ; for though years had
not dealt harshly with Penelope Percival, and
though many of her friends maintained that she
was handsomer now than she had been at eighteen,
she had seemed as changed to the eyes of her sis-
ter as Theresa had done to her, an,d if, as some
people love to think, the souls of the departed
linger yet a little beside their mortal habitations,
perhaps Theresa Brand may have gazed into her
sister's altered face, and recognized the Penelope
of old, happy days. But for me, dear reader, I
would rather think of glad souls rising up quickly
and going as Mary did, when they said, "The
Master is come, and calleth for thee." I would
rather think that the rest of the souls of the
righteous, which are in the hand of the Lord, is
not disturbed by the clamor of mourning and bitter
lamentation, any more than it can be disquieted
28 PEN.
by the lack of them, for " there shall no torment
touch them."
But whether or no the soul of one sister could
see the other's face, dbrtainly the sight of the dead
face spoke to Penelope's heart, and inspired a gen-
tler feeling for -the children below, who seemed
now more the dead sister's children, with the blood
of the Percivals running in their veins, and so with
possibilities about them, than the children of Louis
Brand, of whom, of course, nothing could be ex-
pected ; and, as she stooped to kiss the cold fore-
head, she whispered, " They shall be my children,
Theresa. I will be a mother to them."
The feeling was very warm in her heart just then,
so warm that it was not to be chilled by passing
that door, from which came renewed puffs of to-
bacco smoke and voices which seemed to rise
above the natural, subdued tones of sorrow. It
was certainly unfortunate that 'Liza's pity for the
children should have taken the form of shrimps for
tea, and those of a rather strongly flavored sort ;
and also that shrimps being a very unusual luxury
with Tre, and tea-time having, that day, been de-
layed to the extremest limits of human endurance,
she was discovered, when Miss Percival opened
the door, entirely engrossed in stripping off rather
limp brown shells, and consuming very thick bread
AUNT PENELOPE. 29
and butter, and rapidly becoming indued with
stickiness and shrimpiness in all sorts of unex-
pected places, such as her elbows and the back
of her neck.
Miss Percival was not of a gushing nature, but
she would have liked to have taken the children
into her arms, and kissed them, and told them
they should find their mother again in her; but
it was not to be expected that she could carry out
this intention on such a very shrimpy little object,
and so perhaps her words sounded rather cold
and formal, as she stood by the table looking
down at Tre, at a safe distance from sticky
fingers.
" Children," she said, " I will try to make up
to you for your great loss."
There was silence after this, and she felt
strangely awkward under the gaze of Tre's great
eyes, as she sat with her bread and butter arrested
on its way to her mouth. It was just such a pause
as can only be filled by a kiss, or by catching a
child suddenly to one's heart, which, of course,
was now out of the question.
Pen, inopportunely, poured out a cup of tea,
and offered it with a little hesitating gesture.
" No, thank you," Miss Percival went on, clear-
ing her throat and feeling that sentiment in these
3O PEN.
circumstances was out of place. " I am going to
take care of you now, and I will take you down to
Highfield, and you will live with me and your
grandfather, and be very happy little girls."
She added the last sentence quickly, for Tre's
eyes were opening wider and wider, with an ex-
pression that was certainly not pleasure ; and she
dropped her bread and butter, and doubled her
fists, and clinched her young teeth, with the evi-
dent intention of resisting sturdily if any attempt
should be made to carry her off there and then
an idea which she unjustly suspected her aunt of
harboring.
" Don't be naughty, Tre," Pen expostulated in
very trembling tones. She understood better than
the child did what her aunt meant, and knew that
it was not to be an immediate carrying off into
captivity ; but the notion was none the less terrible
to her, and she could not, on the spur of the mo-
ment, conjure up any appearance of satisfaction.
" I will come to-morrow and see your father,"
Miss Percival continued, " and tell him my inten-
tions. I can't stop now," she added hurriedly,
for just at that moment a door was heard to open
above, and the sound of voices and of a heavy
step on the stairs.
" Good-by, I will come to-morrow;" and she
AUNT PENELOPE. 31
hastened out, purposely turning her head away
and ignoring a tall man who stood at the foot
of the stairs to let her pass.
" I could not have spoken civilly to him," she
said to herself, as the carriage rolled away.
But it was not Louis Brand who stood there,
almost within sweep of her silken skirt, it was a
tall man, with a broad, kindly, freckled, ugly face,
and rough, dry, red hair that stood up in a mop
over his head, and curious light eyes, with thick
sandy lashes round them.
As soon as the door closed behind Miss Percival
he was in the little parlor, and had gathered up
Tre, shrimps and all, in his long, strong arms, and
had set her on his knee, and had an arm free in a
second to draw Pen in with them, and let her
choke down her sobs and hide her face against
his shoulder.
" My poor, poor, poor, little, mitherless bairns ! "
he said. And then almost upset Tre from her
perch on his knee, in hasty efforts to reach his
pocket-handkerchief, which, when it was un-
earthed, large and yellow and silk and spotted,
from his tail pocket, did duty all round to wipe up
wet faces, and they were soon composed enough
to return to the shrimps, while he did not despise
the cup of tea which Aunt Penelope had rejected.
32 PEN.
And by and by they even grew a little cheerful,
and the sound of a laugh reached the silent room
above, where there was no one to listen, a sound
which would not have troubled her if it could have
penetrated to the hearing of the dead, for often
and often she had greeted that laugh with a smile
of relief and a thought : " Ah ! there is Sandy
down there, the children will be safe and happy.
God bless him ! "
CHAPTER III.
A FIRESIDE TALK.
BY and by, when Tre was in bed, that first sad
going to bed without mother's good-night
kiss, and with the bitter, little doubt if it were
right still to let her ask God to bless dear mamma
and make her well ; when that was over, Pen came
down and found, to her relief, Sandy still sitting
by the fire in the little parlor, staring into the red
caverns and holes in the coals, which he had
heaped up with a lavish profusion very unusual at
No. 37.
There was mother's footstool close by his side,
and Pen sat down on it and rested her elbow on
his knee, and laid her head on it, a very aching
little head under its ruffled plaits of fair hair.
Sandy did not attempt any consolation beyond
now and then putting out a large, freckled fore-
finger to stroke the head on his knee, and when
a sob shook the slight girlish shoulders and he
guessed that tears were falling, he dropped the
comforting yellow handkerchief into her lap and
3
34 PEN.
took no further notice. I wonder if Sandy 'had
been glib with consoling words, and had been able
to coin into beautiful phrases the mine of love and
pity in his heart, whether it would have done more
to comfort the child than this silent sympathy?
The sobs quieted down after a bit, and Sandy
fancied she was asleep, she sat so still, and he
could not see her face ; but presently she stirred
and sat up, clasping her hands round her knees
and looking up at him, with a face wonderfully
like her mother's, Sandy noticed, having never ob-
served the slightest resemblance before ; but it is
remarkable how death will sometimes stamp a like-
ness on the survivors, which the closest intercourse
in life has failed to do.
" Sandy," she said, " do you think father will let
us go?"
"Go where?"
" To Highfield with Aunt Penelope. She says
she is going to take us to live there with her and
grandpapa. Tre was naughty about it just now
when I was undressing her, and she said she would
not go, and that she hates Anut Penelope. And I
scolded her as well as I could and said it was very
kind of Aunt Penelope to want to have us, and
that Highfield was a beautiful place, and that
mother loved it better than any other ; and then
A FIRESIDE TALK. 35
Tre cried, and said she wanted to go with mother,
and oh ! Sandy, I feel every bit the same as she
does, only twenty times worse."
Sandy whistled softly in a sympathizing way,
very encouraging to confidences, and Pen went
on : " I Ve been thinking and thinking and trying
to make up my mind to it, and to think I should
like it, and be happy, and that it would be much
better for Tre, and that she would grow up a
really proper young lady, not like me, you know,
Sandy."
A little indignant grunt of dissent from Sandy
broke in here, but she did not stay to argue the
point.
" I think Tre would very soon be like those chil-
dren we used to see in the park, when you took
us up there last spring. When her hair is nicely
done and she has her best frock on, she looks just
like them. I know she is rough sometimes, and
Aunt Penelope shudders when she comes tum-
bling into the room anyhow, and her hands will
get dirty and her hair untidy ; but still she is
very young and may improve," said Pen, with all
the wisdom and experience of fifteen, at which
great age improvement is, of course, out of the
question.
" Mother has told me so much about Highfield,
36 PEN.
and always how nice it is, and how pretty, and all
that ; but I always felt to hate it somehow, and
to think it must be hard and cold and dull, and
not a bit like home."
And yet all the child's idea of home was, as
Sandy remembered, marvelling, this poor, little,
shabby house in Purton Street, or one at Netting
Hill only a few shades better, where poverty was
always casting its chill shadow, and where the
mother's sweet face was the only brightness, and
that of sunset's most pathetic light telling of
coming night.
" I wonder if mother would wish us to go ?
She never said anything about it, but always that
I was to take care of Tre, and comfort father ;
and I don't think Aunt Penelope likes father, so
I don't suppose she would want him to come to
Highfield."
" Perhaps not," assented Sandy, who had been
now and then let behind the scenes, and witnessed
the antipathy that the lazy, undisciplined artist
cherished for his stately, conventional sister-in-law ;
and it did not require much penetration to divine
that the antipathy was mutual.
" I wish I had asked her ! I wish I knew ! " said
Pen, with such great, passionate yearning in her
eyes and on her lips as might, so Sandy thought,
A FIRESIDE TALK. 37
almost have pierced through the dark veil and
found the mother, even in the sweet unbroken
peace she had reached.
And Sandy found it so hard to know what to
advise, or to guess what was in the mother's heart
when she went away and left her little girls to a
father who, to speak in the mildest terms, was so
unsatisfactory, as that mother herself had surely by
bitter experience cause to know. There was no
doubt that, from a purely sensible point of view,
the very best thing for the children would be to
be taken clear away from Purton Street ; if Pen's
eyes had not been fixed on Sandy's face he would
have said so in a moment. Louis Brand was not
at all the person to take care of the children,
Sandy could see that plain enough, though the
two men had been friends now for several years.
Though Mrs. Brand had been ill so long, and lat-
terly so ill that she did not apparently take any
active part in the management of the house, it
was wonderful how now, directly her presence was
withdrawn, an indescribable air of discomfort and
want of gear had crept into the scene. It was not
that it had ever been a cut-and-dried clockwork
establishment such as Aunt Penelope loved to keep
going at Highfield, where everything moved with
perfect precision, and where five minutes lost was
38 PEN.
a crime, and half an inch out of position an enor-
mity ; it would have been an impossibility to ac-
commodate Louis Brand to such conditions ; but
still there had been some rule, some order main-
tained in the little house, a centre round which
things had turned ; a hand, though a very light
one, on the reins ; a court of appeal, very gentle
and tender, yet whose decisions were final.
Perhaps if Mrs. Brand had still been there, if
the silence in the room above had been that of
sleep instead of death, Sandy would not have no-
ticed that the tea-things were left on the side-
board, or that the front door was ajar, and that
'Liza had slipped out to the milk-shop round the
corner to tell the events of the day to a sym-
pathizing audience, leaving a tallow candle on
the table in the passage flaring and guttering in the
draught ; but still straws show the direction of the
current, and these and half a dozen other almost
imperceptible trifles made it evident to Sandy that
there was no longer a mistress in the house. He
had a sort of fidgety feeling of responsibility which
he never had felt before, as if he ought to give
'Liza a bit of his mind, or offer to carry down the
tea-things, or insist on Pen's going to bed ; any-
how he could not make up his mind to leave the
child sitting there by herself, there was something
A FIRESIDE TALK. 39
so very lonely in the little figure by the hearth,
where the fire was burning low.
Sandy could only just remember his own mother,
and that with no particularly tender feeling, and
her death had not, as far as he recollected, cost
him any acute pain, except so far as concerned the
pair of new boots in which he was taken to her
funeral, and which were so tight, that they im-
pressed the scene on his memory effectually ; but
he felt the loss for little Pen sharply, in some
points perhaps with an intensity beyond her own,
being more conscious maybe of what it meant to
her and Tre.
Pen's head had sunk down again on his knee
when he could find no answer to her question,
"Would mother wish us to go?" so Sandy could
ponder the matter without prejudice from her
eager eyes.
Ten years ago he had come across Louis Brand
in a small village in North Devon, where the art-
ist was sketching, and where Sandy was fishing and
idling and taking holiday. The men had been
thrown together constantly, and that strange thing,
friendship, had sprung up between them.
Love is curious and unaccountable enough, but
then it is allowed to be a madness, so it is not to
be argued about ; but friendship is supposed to be
40 PEN.
a reasonable and calm exchange of regard and af-
fection founded on mutual respect and sympathy
of tastes. As a rule it is nothing of the kind.
That saying that you can know a man by his
friends is as untrue as many other old sayings that
pretend to be of universal application. The most
incongruous natures are yoked together by friend-
ship ; the ox and the ass jog along side by side,
out of step, to the end of the long furrow of life ;
and the astonishing thing is that this union should
last when it is purely voluntary and could be
severed on either side at a moment's notice.
They are not born to it like relations; they are
not irrevocably pledged to it like married people ;
each sees the other's faults, he by no means exag-
gerates his virtues ; he does not take his advice ;
he disapproves of his politics, his religious opin-
ions, his style of dress, his personal appearance,
his behavior ; but friends they remain to the end
of the chapter, the usual end of this mortal chap-
ter, till death them do part ; and then the survi-
vor carries the ache and the want about with him
perhaps as long as or longer than a lovesick
swain carries that broken heart of his of which
we hear so much, and the torments of which are
described, from every point of view, in prose and
poetry, in every language under the sun, and call
A FIRESIDE TALK. 4!
forth sympathy on all sides ; while but little can be
spared for the pains of disappointed or bereaved
friendship, which, I am inclined to think, are often
more severe and generally more real.
So Sandy Maclaren and Louis Brand became
friends. Sandy, simple and real and honest and
true, and Louis Brand well, perhaps not exactly
the reverse ; but in describing his character, how-
ever favorably, those are not the words you would
pick out. But I never could judge Louis Brand as
hardly as some have done, for his wife loved him
so ; and especially just now, when his loyal cham-
pion is silent, I would treat him tenderly.
The friendship was renewed when the men met
again in London, and Louis Brand took Sandy
home with him one evening and introduced him to
his wife, an honor that was not accorded to many
of the acquaintances that Louis picked up during
his sketching expeditions. Sandy remembered that
evening so well, every detail came back to his
mind as he sat with Pen's head on his knee. It
had taken him by surprise that Louis Brand had a
wife at all, but he never had imagined such a wife
"as this, such a gracious, gentle, lady wife ; and as
for little five-year-old Pen, the moment she put
her little hand in his, and committed to his care
the broken arm of her doll, he became her de-
42 PEN.
voted slave ; and though the arrival of Tre on
the scene enlarged the number of his sovereign
ladies, Pen still retained her supremacy in Sandy's
heart.
They were living up at Netting Hill at that time,
when Sandy first saw Pen and her mother ; circum-
stances were better then ; Brand was working more
steadily, and there was a certain hopefulness and
expectation of better times coming, which died out
in later days. Looking back, Sandy could see how
by degrees they had come down ; one by one little
indulgences had been given up, always, he remem-
bered with a sigh, those which concerned Mrs.
Brand and Pen went first. The change to the sea
in the summer was a thing of the past even then,
but Louis Brand was of course obliged, in the way
of business, to go off sketching in lovely scenery
and refreshing air. Sometimes Sandy would notice
that Pen ran to open the door when he came, and
that Mrs. Brand's face was more tired-looking and
her hands rough and discolored, and then he
guessed that the servant was a luxury they were
trying to dispense with. And then the only way
to help, though he would gladly have cleaned the
knives and carried up coal-scuttles, was to keep out
of the way, so as not to make any extra work, and
to invite Louis Brand to dine with him as often as
A FIRESIDE TALK. 43
he could, knowing that it was any discomfort to
her husband that Mrs. Brand felt most acutely.
The only time Sandy ever saw her break down was
when there had been some failure over the dinner,
and then her lips trembled and her eyes filled up
with tears.
" I am such a wretchedly bad cook," she said.
" Why don't they teach girls something useful at
those schools?"
And Sandy was glad to remember how she was
comforted then by her husband holding those poor,
little, hard-worked hands and recalling those old
school days when she had learned of him, not to
draw she never could draw a straight line nor a
smooth curve but that more beautiful art, that
nobler science of love, at which she was an apt
pupil ; while Sandy drew little Pen away and pre-
tended to be as absorbed as she was in the spar-
rows on the window-sill. There were other times,
I am afraid, when Mrs. Brand had not such com-
fort, when her husband added to her burden by
his thoughtlessness or discontent ; but Sandy only
guessed dimly at these occasions, from a word let
slip by Pen, or a half-joking self-accusation by
Louis Brand himself; never from Mrs. Brand, who,
I do not fancy, ever even to herself blamed her
husband.
44 PEN.
When they were moving down to Dalston, Sandy
was changing his lodgings at the same time, and
found some in a street hard by Purton Street, and,
after that, hardly a day passed without his coming
to the Brands on one pretext or another, and lat-
terly without any pretext at all.
Pen was half asleep by the time that Sandy's
thoughts had come so far in his review of his
friendship with the Brands. At any rate strange
dream threads were being woven in with her
thoughts when Sandy stirred and gave a great yawn
and rubbed his eyes, which had certainly looked
quite wide awake the minute before, as he gazed
over Pen's head into the fire.
" Hollo ! " he said, " I shall be asleep, if I sit
here much longer."
And Pen got up, looking at him with eyes that
were quite unconscious how near they had been
to sleep themselves, and rather reproachful to him
for thinking of such a thing as sleep in all the
sorrow.
"You see I'm such a sleepy fellow," he said
apologetically, " and besides," with a sudden bright
idea, " I want to be up with the earliest of larks
to-morrow to go and get some flowers for her.
Would you like to come too? but you will not be
awake."
A FIRESIDE TALK. 45
She gave a little indignant gesture disclaiming all
possibility of sleep.
" Well, anyhow you must go right up to bed now
or I won't take you. Never mind about sleeping,
but go to bed and I '11 see what the signer is about
before I turn in. Off with you, little Pen, I think
I know what she would say to such a little white
face."
And unwillingly Pen was persuaded to go up to
the room where Tre lay sleeping, as sweetly as
if there were no such things as sorrow or death
to awake to by and by; while Sandy turned
into the studio, with the comforting conviction
that soon another head would be sleeping be-
side Tre's, equally unconscious of loneliness and
motherlessness.
CHAPTER IV.
FLOWERS FOR HER.
IT hardly seemed more than a few minutes to
Pen from the time when she had heard the
studio door close and had thrown herself down
half undressed on the bed by sleeping Tre, and
she was not conscious of having slept, when she
was roused by a low knocking at the door, and
started up with the dim feeling that mother was
wanting her, followed instantaneously by the bitter
memory that mother would never want her any
more.
" Pen," said Sandy's voice, " it is four o'clock
and I am just going to start, but I dare say you 're
too tired, and I will bring you some flowers."
" No," she said, " I 'd rather come."
It was quite dark, and, as Pen struck a light and
dressed herself, she had a numb, dazed sort of
feeling that night and day must needs be all mixed
up and confused now that mother was dead.
Neither did she wonder at Sandy having been able
to enter the house at that hour, though she did not
FLOWERS FOR HER. 47
know that the talk in the studio had gone on so
long that Sandy had only had an hour's sleep on
the sofa and had never gone home at all. But
when the world is all turned topsy-turvy why
should one be surprised at anything?
She dressed as quickly as she could and went
down, finding Sandy waiting for her in the passage
with a large plaid to wrap round her ; and he took
her hand as they passed out into the street and put
it under his arm, an action that made her feel more
grown up than she had ever done before, and pain-
fully conscious that her steps were shorter than his
long stride, and that she fell out of pace with him
every now and then, and that it was beneath her
dignity to give a little run occasionally, as she
might have done if he had been merely holding
her hand.
How strange and unnatural the streets looked
too ; so still, it seemed as if the whole world might
be dead like mother.
" Ne'er saw I, never felt a calm so deep,
Dear God, the very houses seem asleep,
And all that mighty heart is lying still."
The gas lamps seemed to look down with sur-
prise at these two untimely disturbers of their soli-
tude, and the tramp of a policeman's steps coming
48 PEN.
down a side street had quite a solemn and awful
sound in her ears. She could hardly recognize the
familiar streets where by day she knew every shop
and turn, and could thread her way, without a
thought, among the hurrying crowds, as she went
about her small marketings ; but now that the
shops were all closed and the crowds had dis-
appeared, she would have been at a loss to find
even the houses she knew best.
As they went on, the world no longer seemed in-
habited only by themselves and stray policemen,
strange, uncanny-looking figures passed them, night
birds, homeless some of them, tattered bundles of
rags starting up from dark entries and hurrying
away, as if Pen's pitiful young eyes had been a
policeman's lantern warning them to move on;
then there were some late revellers, homeward
bound, some of them unsteady in their gait and
uncertain which side they would pass ; but by de-
grees a more wholesome element was mixed with
these, workmen on their way to their work, with
their tools on their shoulders, gathering round the
early coffee stalls, which looked cheerful and warm
with their stoves and steaming cups of coffee,
which likewise smelt nice and fragrant as Pen and
Sandy passed by.
They were quite beyond Pen's geographical
FLOWERS FOR HER. 49
knowledge by this time, and indeed she had no
idea where they were going to get flowers for
" her," beyond a general idea that it must be
somewhere in the country, perhaps that place
where Sandy took her and Tre last spring, where
there were bluebells, and a cuckoo calling, and
a nest with large-mouthed, ugly, little birds in it.
But Sandy kept on steadily with that loose swing-
ing stride of his, and Pen was a good, little walker
and not easily tired. Now they came to some-
thing awake and stirring, the newspaper offices
were full of life and movement, and, outside, rows
of carts were waiting to carry off the papers the
moment they were out of the press. Otherwise
the houses were dark, except here and there,
where a light shone out of an upstairs window,
telling of early rising, or perhaps, late watching by
the sick. Then carts began to pass, clattering
milk- carts and wagons loaded high with cabbages,
and with a fresh country look about their smock-
frocked drivers, and these became more frequent
as they approached Covent Garden market,
where, though it was still dark and the stars shin-
ing overhead, life seemed to have begun in ear-
nest, carts and wagons in all directions, with
steaming horses tossing their nose- bags recklessly
into the faces of passers-by; country-women in
4
50 PEN.
print sun-bonnets presiding over great stacks of
wallflower and pyramids of tulips, surrounded by
crowds of eager, chattering flower-girls, with their
sharp London voices, and faces as sharp and as
uncountrified. Over there the watercress wagons
are unloading, and there the noise is louder than
anywhere, for the Irish brogue mixes largely in the
clamor, and the bareheaded women, with small
plaid shawls over their shoulders and big aprons,
push and jostle one another ; while small girls dive
into the mtlee under the elbows of their elders,
some of them so small and white and scantily
clothed, and yet with such a grim resolution to
make the very utmost of the halfpence they clutch
in their hands, and fight and shriek and struggle
with the best of them.
One of the women had set down her baby on
the outskirts of the crowd, behind some heaped-
up baskets, and the weird black-eyed imp had
managed to roll or crawl out of the friendly shel-
ter, and had been kicked or trodden on by some
passers-by, and had set up a desolate, little yell,
just as Pen and Sandy came up, a cry not likely
to reach the mother in the thick of the crowd
round the pump, where the watercresses were
being washed.
Sandy had the little thing up in a moment.
FLOWERS FOR HER. 51
"Hollo, old man, what's to pay?" and held it
aloft to see if any one would claim the odd,
little specimen, but no one seemed inclined to
volunteer.
"What am I to do with the brat? Who's to
find a mother for it among all these?"
The child was quite quiet in his arms, and had
taken a firm hold of his coat with one grimy, little
claw, but its face puckered up and a whimper
began when Sandy offered to put it down on a
heap of straw ; and as they were stopping up the
gangway and several busy passers-by had already
rather indignantly jostled against them, there was
nothing for it but to go on, little ragamuffin and
all, past the great fragrant hampers of violets,
primroses, cowslips and daffodils, to where the
boxes of rarer flowers were discharging their con-
tents almost in as great profusion : sheafs of pure
arums and eucharis lilies, which have something
sacred in their beauty; white azalea of such
fragile loveliness that it seems meant for heaven
alone ; camellias which are altogether as earthly
as azalea is heavenly, and suggest turnip flowers,
forced turkey, and Strauss's valses ; roses, primulas,
spiraea, maidenhair. Pen stood in a perfect daze
of delight at all the beauty, with tears slowly
welling up into her eyes, partly pleasure and partly
52 PEN.
with the prick of the thorn that would lie hid in
all her pleasure for many a day, " if only mother
could see it ! " It would have been enough for
her merely to look, she had been used all her life
to be satisfied with the sight of pretty things with-
out any thought of possession, and it quite took
her breath away the lavish manner in which Sandy
filled the empty basket he had brought, with flow-
ers every one of which would have been cherished
for days with scrupulous care, and treasured even
when its beauty was a thing of the past, and its
scent a memory.
But when their purchases were finished, and
even Sandy thought they had enough flowers,
the baby still remained on their hands and pre-
vented their immediate return ; so Sandy found
an out-of-the-way corner and a seat on the shafts
of a large yellow wagon, and the baby was pro-
vided with a bun from the coffee-stall, and Pen
and Sandy did not find a cup of coffee and a bun
come amiss, though Pen could hardly be persuaded
to put down her basket of flowers even for the
few minutes it took to consume the repast.
The dawn was stealing cold and wan into the
sky, making the gas look dull and dissipated, and
Pen was glad to wrap the shawl tightly round her,
as the air was chill. The bun and Sandy's strong,
FLOWERS FOR HER. 53
patient arms seemed to produce a wonderfully
soothing effect, for before long his grubby, little
burden was fast asleep, with one hand grasping
the half-eaten bun, and the other still clutching
Sandy's coat-sleeve, who, with his hat at the back
of his head, and a smear across his forehead, was
certainly not a very attractive object to look at.
But Pen, from her seat on the opposite shaft of
the wagon, seemed to find a sort of fascination
about him, and kept watching him so fixedly, with
her great sad eyes, that he grew quite embarrassed
at last, and extricated one hand from the baby to
run his fingers through his hair and straighten
his hat.
" Hollo ! " he said, "I did n't spend much time
in tittivating before I started. Wants a razor,
eh?"
But Pen was not thinking of his outer man, at
any rate not in disparagement, for she said, " I
was thinking, Sandy, and wondering why you never
had a wife."
He laughed, and then grew red all over to the
very ears, blushing like a school-girl.
" What put that in your head? "
" I was thinking," she went on, looking at him
so straight over the arums and lilies in the bas-
ket in her arms, without a cloud coming over
54 PEN.
the calm serenity of her earnest eyes, or a stain
of color into the pure paleness of her cheeks,
" that if I were older, you might have married
me, and taken care of me and Tre instead of
father."
CHAPTER V.
LOUIS BRAND'S CHILDREN.
MISS PERCIVAL certainly felt that she had
got through her interview with " that
artist fellow" with dignity and success, and she
found him much more reasonable and less theatri-
cal than she had expected. Gratitude, of course,
she did not expect, though after all that had passed
one would have thought that he would have been
almost overwhelmed at the generosity of the offer
to take his two daughters entirely off his hands,
and educate and bring them up like ladies ; and
he only stood opposite to her in the squalid, little
room, with no readable expression on his dusky,
pale face, with his dark eyes fixed so persistently
on one particular spot on the table-cloth, that Miss
Percival found herself continually looking at the
same place, where the rim of a damp cup had left
a sort of crescent-moon mark, and a spot of ink
added a star.
From time to time he bowed his head and gave
an indistinct murmur of what Miss Percival inter-
56 PEN.
preted as assent ; and she was so far impressed
with his sensible acquiescence in all her arrange-
ments, that she refrained from doing more than
hinting that, when the girls had once been received
at Highfield, no further interference with them on
their father's part could be tolerated, and that
Colonel Percival would be willing to assist him to
a reasonable extent at a distance.
" Of course," she said, " all details can be ar-
ranged later on." And she added after a mo-
ment's hesitation, "I my father will be pleased
if you will stop a day or two at Highfield after the
funeral."
He gave a quick look up at her just then from
the crescent mark on the cloth, and there was a
tightening of the lips over his teeth, which to a
reader of expression might have suggested mis-
chief, but Miss Percival was short-sighted, and
enjoyed the blessing or the curse of short sight,
that she did not see the premonitory symptoms
of human volcanoes, and, as most of these vol-
canoes subside without coming to an eruption, I
think perhaps short sight is more of a blessing, as
it saves its owner from needless apprehension. It
would have done Miss Percival no immediate good
to have known that, just across that narrow table,
was a man who would have liked to wring her
LOUIS BRAND'S CHILDREN. 57
neck ; who felt that hesitating invitation as more
of an insult even than offering to bring his daugh-
ters up as ladies, and the hint that this could only
be possible by separation from their father. He
had been selfish and thoughtless enough, but he
had known all along that his wife had given up
much for love of him, and that she had craved
and fretted after the old home, though I do not
suppose he knew one hundredth part how much.
In the early days of their marriage, when there
were possibilities painting themselves constantly
in rose-colored brightness before hopeful young
minds ; when it was quite impossible to imagine
hearts remaining stony forever; when any post
might bring a letter in a loved writing ; when to-
morrow must needs be brighter than to-day, she
used to describe, with loving minuteness, all the
rooms and gardens at Highfield. "You would
like that picture, Louis." "You would love that
deep window-seat and the old colored panes in
the glass," till at last he grew weary of these far-
away beauties, when everything around them was
poor and mean, and he let her see that it bored
him ; and then she took to painting them over to
herself in her long and frequent solitudes, taking
one room after another methodically, and remem-
bering every picture, chair, or ornament, even
58 PEN.
going so far as the books on the shelves before
which she used to kneel at family prayers, and
with childish, wandering thoughts study the letter-
ing on the backs of the big Encyclopaedia, Ast.
Bom., Bom. Bur., Bur. Cli., and so on.
By and by she found a ready and never-wearied
listener in Pen, who used to draw up her stool and
rest her elbows on her mother's lap, and her chin
in her hands, and look up into the smiling, ex-
pectant face above, and say, " Now tell me about
the morning room at Highfield ! " and would enter,
quite gravely, into the discussion as to whether the
pattern of the curtains were convolvulus or jessa-
mine, and whether the high-backed chair stood be-
tween the windows or in the corner of the room.
Highfield was like fairyland to little Pen when
described by mother, but it was very different when
Aunt Penelope proposed to take her into it.
The only point on which Miss Percival detected
any difference of opinion in the inscrutable dark
face opposite her, was when she took it for granted
that the little girls would not be present at their
mother's funeral. She herself had not been pres-
ent when her mother was buried ; it was not
among the traditions of the Percival family that
ladies should be present on these occasions. They
were to have no share in the comfort and the hope
LOUIS BRAND'S CHILDREN. 59
of the burial service, but to do their mourning at
home, and be ready in composure and crape to
receive the funeral party on their return. But
Louis Brand had been apparently so acquiescent
on every other point that Miss Percival did not
contest this, though she felt convinced that there
would be an undignified display of hysterical grief;
but she resolved that she would so far sacrifice
her personal feeling as to be present herself, so as
to be a check on any unnecessary or theatrical
exhibition.
Her interview with Pen was not so satisfactory.
She found her in the little back-room having a
lining tried on by a fussy, little dressmaker, who
joined freely in the conversation with her mouth
full of pins, in spite of Miss Percival's crushing in-
attention to her remarks. Miss Percival had been
revolving the question of the mourning in her mind
as she came along, debating whether she would
send her maid down to see after it, or put it in the
hands of her dressmaker in Maddox Street, but
both of these worthies were too elegant to imagine
comfortably in Purton Street. And when Miss Per-
cival found that mourning of a sort was in course
of preparation, she decided to let it alone, and
trust to putting them into decent attire when they
were safely at Highfield.
60 PEN.
" Of course you will not have to wear the things
afterwards," she said, looking through her double
eyeglasses at the roll of strongly smelling black
material and crape that lay on the table.
" No, I was just a-telling Miss Pen," put in the
pin-obscured voice of the dressmaker, " it don't
do to wear all one's best crape every day. Crape
is horfull wear ketches on everything and spoils.
My gracious ! and as for the dust ! I 've been
telling her as she '11 want a nice dress for common,
to save her best for company like, or going out ;
you '11 find some patterns there as I brought a pur-
pose under the fashion book. Raise your arm a
little, my dear, there a bit more that way."
" You will only want one dress with some crape
on it, Penelope," Miss Percival said icily, " the rest
I will arrange when you are at Highfield."
" Dear, dear ! did that pin run into you, my
dear?" said the little dressmaker sympathetically,
for Pen had given a little start and quiver that
might well have been caused by sudden physical
pain. " Poor lambs ! " in a breathy aside to Miss
Percival, " I know what it is to be motherless, and
I can feel for them."
" The less you have now the better," Miss Per-
cival went on. " I have made all the arrangements
with your father."
LOUIS BRAND'S CHILDREN. 61
But Pen made no reply, perhaps the exigencies
of being fitted prevented her being more respon-
sive, and that may also have been the reason why
her face was kept so persistently turned away from
Aunt Penelope ; and there was something in the
slim, young neck turned away, and the bare arm,
slender almost to thinness, hanging by her side,
that recalled her mother in the old days very viv-
idly to Miss Percival's mind, when she was just
such another slip of a girl ; and the remembrance
came back to her of some girlish misunderstanding
between the two, and of a sudden reconciliation,
when Theresa had come to her room half un-
dressed at night and had thrown her soft, slender
arms round her neck in such loving, frank apol-
ogy, that the cause of offence was forgotten and
forgiven before the clasping arms were loosed from
her neck. Ah ! that was twenty years ago, and
those warm, clasping arms were cold and dead,
crossed on the still breast with flowers of such
lavish beauty, that those she had brought seemed
poor and scanty and unworthy. Would the daugh-
ter's arms ever cling round her neck as the mother's
used to do? It did not seem likely. She hardly
felt as if she would care for it from Louis Brand's
daughter.
How long that tiresome dressmaker was fum-
62 PEN.
bling with those pins, as if it mattered if the frock
fitted or not, or, for the matter of that, as if it
were likely to fit at all, with all her pains. Miss
Percival got up impatiently and went to find Tre,
but if shrimps and tea had struck her the evening
before as unfeeling and unbecoming the situation,
what were her feelings now when she found the
child leaning as far out of window as the laws of
balance and Sandy's restraining hand would allow,
to give biscuits to a poor, little, grinning monkey,
who was perched on the railings and held out a
dirty, little velvet cap in a furtive way with one
cheek already much distended, in spite of the
jerks from the hand of his master, who naturally
wished for a share of the spoil.
It certainly was not conventional behavior in a
house of mourning, and 'Liza herself would have
seen the enormity of the action, though she and
Miss Percival had not many common grounds of
agreement, especially on points of etiquette. But
Miss Percival did not know, how should she?
that it was not mere childish forgetfulness of the
dead mother upstairs, but just the very opposite,
that prompted the action. For the last time the
monkey had come and the organ had ground out
that tiresome " Tommy Dodd " as it was doing
now, the monkey had been invited in out of the
LOUIS BRAND'S CHILDREN. 63
cold, foggy weather, and had sat on the end of
mother's sofa warming himself and chattering
softly to himself, and looking at mother out of
those odd, wise, sad, little eyes, which have such
a depth of melancholy in them in spite of their
mischief.
" Don't hurt him," mother said, " be very gentle
with him." And after that the children always
called him " our monkey," and went quite long
walks in quest of him, saving up stray sweets or
halfpence, and halfpence in the Brand family were
very stray, to bestow on him whenever they hap-
pened to light upon him.
So when Tre, peeping through the decently
drawn blind to look at Aunt Penelope's horses,
saw the organ man looking doubtfully up at the
house, with a hesitating hand on the organ handle,
and, catching sight of the little peeping face, gave
an inquiring grin of that matchless Italian bril-
liancy that is so infectious, what could Tre do
but smile back and nod ? whereupon " Tommy
Dodd " at once struck up, and the monkey began
climbing round the area railings.
Of course Tre, suddenly pulled back into the
room by Sandy when he saw who was standing at
the door with a look of dignified disapproval, was
utterly unable to explain the situation, and Sandy
64 PEN.
was so entirely ignored that he could not venture
to interfere, except to assist Tre's hurried effort
to close the window and pull down the blind.
"You had better go to your sister in the back
room," Miss Percival said ; and Tre slunk past her
like a beaten hound, dimly aware of having com-
mitted some crime connected with the monkey,
but very keenly conscious that Aunt Penelope was
horrid and cross, and that she could not endure
her.
"What shall I do with such children?" Miss
Percival sighed to herself as she got into the car-
riage. " But what can one expect from Louis
Brand's children?"
CHAPTER VI.
HIGHFIELD.
MISS PERCIVAL went down that afternoon
to Highfield. Colonel Percival had be-
come of late years entirely an invalid, and had
fallen into that stat in which the most minute
trifles of his daily routine were of more impor-
tance than I was going to say the greatest events
of state, but that is really the case with all of us
more or less ; so it would be more to the point
to say that these trifles were of more importance
to him than matters that seriously affected the wel-
fare of his family or his estate. I think that a dis-
turbed night or a badly cooked dinner was of more
consequence to him than the loss of half his for-
tune ; and I am afraid that the loss of his valet
would have been worse to him than that of his
daughter Penelope herself, provided he could have
escaped the business worries which her death would
necessarily have entailed.
Of course in these circumstances the loss of a
daughter whom he had not seen for sixteen years
5
66 PEN.
was hardly likely to affect him very keenly, and
it was not a subject of any apprehension to Miss
Percival as to how he would take the news of his
daughter's death, though her intention of having
the two girls to live at Highfield would require to
be put carefully before him, lest he should take
alarm at this invasion, and worry himself into the
idea that his comfort and quiet would be disturbed,
which she had resolved should not happen.
She reached Highfield just in time to dress and
go down to dinner. It was always pleasant to come
back to Highfield, but now it seemed specially so ;
whether it was that the memory of Purton Street
rose up with its sordid contrast to bring into
higher relief the comfort and dignity and quiet
luxury of her surroundings, or whether, as we are
all apt to do, she saw it in the light in which it
was likely to impress new-comers, who could hardly
have imagined such a place as Highfield, and to
whom it must certainly come as a delight and
surprise.
It was curious, and she did not in the least
realize it, how much she was building on those two
children's coming, even those children over whom
she had sighed as such hopeless subjects to deal with
the children of the shrimps and monkey epi-
sodes ; Pen, with her persistently turned-away head
HIGHFIELD. 6/
and her little clinched hand ; Louis Brand's chil-
dren. Quite unconsciously to herself she was asso-
ciating them with everything about the place, with
the broad, shallow steps of the staircase, with the
deep window-seat in the hall, with the old armor
and antlers that adorned the walls, with the family
portraits, where in one and another odd little re-
semblances peeped out to Louis Brand's children.
She turned aside, even though the dinner-bell had
rung, to open the door of the long-disused school-
room, where every well-worn book on the shelves,
or ink spot on the leather-covered table, recalled
some incident of long ago, when there were two
school-girls there, as silly and happy and idle as
most school-girls, no doubt. She crossed the room
and turned the old terrestrial globe, noting, with
an eye to a future word with the housemaid, that
the dust lay thick on the frame, and then caught
herself up and turned away to hasten down to take
her place opposite her father in the dining-room,
where the wax candles on the table only dimly
lighted up the darkness of the black oak panels and
the portraits of Percivals of other ages, frowning or
simpering down from the walls.
Miss Percival had resolved to put off telling her
father of her sister's death till after dinner, and had
prepared herself for leading away the conversation
68 PEN.
if the old man should ask after her ; but she might
have spared herself the trouble of such forethought,
for Colonel Percival was quite absorbed in some
delinquencies of the postman, which had just come
to light, and which he talked of with persistent
reiteration all through dinner, getting a little irrita-
ble at his daughter's indifference to what was to
him the principal interest of the hour.
"Of course it's nothing to you," he was saying
rather fretfully, when at last the dessert was on the
table and the quick, light-footed servants withdrew
and left the father and daughter alone, " of course
it is nothing to you whether you get your letters
regularly or no. A girl's letters pshaw ! But
my letters are of importance, and besides it is the
principle of the thing, the least delay or irregularity
ought to be shown up at once, or it leads to a de-
moralization of the whole system a demoraliza-
tion of the whole system," repeated the old man,
with a satisfaction in the sound of the last words,
which recalled to his mind old times, when he was
chairman of Quarter's Sessions, and was rather
proud of his well-turned sentences.
" Father," Miss Percival said, coming round from
her place at the end of the table and drawing a
chair to the old man's side, " you remember I told
you how ill I found poor Theresa ! "
HIGHFIELD. 69
" Yes, yes," he answered rather testily ; his ideas
moved slowly, and he did not like an abrupt change
of subject, and besides in old age, from various
causes, there are so much fewer subjects of interest
than you find in youth, and you have to be economi-
cal over them, and work one thoroughly dry before
you embark on another ; and there was a good deal
more to say about Jenkins' misdeeds. " I hope
she 's better. I have been very anxious about
her. I could not close my eyes for five min-
utes the night after your first letter came. It was
such a shock to me, and it ought to have been
broken to me more gently. Dr. Perry says I can't
bear a shock, it was only to-day he said so."
" I told you," Miss Percival went on, " that
there was no hope of her recovery, but the end
came sooner than I expected."
She thought he had not understood her mean-
ing, for he was apparently engrossed , in disen-
tangling a knot in the silk cord by which his eye-
glasses were attached, and she laid her hand on
his arm and repeated rather louder, " She died,
father dear, yesterday."
" Yes, yes. I heard what you said. I 'm not
deaf. I have many infirmities, but I am happy to
say deafness is not one of them. Poor Theresa !
she was always a great trouble to us, your poor
70 PEN.
mother felt it very acutely, she never got over it ;
she was never the same afterwards. And now
she 's gone, and there are only you and I, Pene-
lope, left."
"There are her children, father."
" Oh, yes, she had some children, I think you
mentioned it. I suppose I ought to do something
for them. I don't know what is expected of me."
" There are two girls, one of them fifteen is
named Penelope after me, and the other is only
six, and is named Theresa after her mother."
"No boys?"
" No, only the two girls."
"Well, what is one to do for them? Put them
to school, or what? "
He knew by her manner that there was some-
thing coming, she was arranging the little group of
wine-glasses at his side on the table, in various
positions, in a way that might almost have been
mistaken for nervousness if Miss Percival had been
nervously inclined, and she made no answer to his
last question.
" Well, what is one to do for them ? Put them
to school, or what? You don't want to have them
here, I suppose? "
"Yes," she said quietly, " that is just what I do
wish."
HIGHFIELD. 71
There was a fortunate interruption at this mo-
ment by the entrance of the coffee and Colonel
Percival's man to wheel his chair into the library,
where they sat in the evening when they were
alone ; and he also brought in a note to Miss Per-
cival, which required an answer, and she went away
to write it, and before she came back she went into
the bedroom that she and Theresa used to share
when they were little girls. She had been advanced
to a better room, but Theresa had kept this to the
end of her home-life, and it had never been used
much since, so that without any intention of keep-
ing the room sacred, it remained much the same
as she had left it. Miss Percival had no candle,
but the moonlight through the window showed her
the pictures on the walls and the knick-knacks on
the mantelpiece, and the books in the little hang-
ing bookshelf on the wall. She did not know how
familiar Pen was already with that room ; how she
knew the picture of" Dignity and Impudence " over
the fireplace, and the china pug dog, and the re-
mains of the little dessert service, in which childish
feasts had been served. Miss Percival was not fan-
ciful, no one had ever accused her of that, but as she
stood in the moonlit room with all the old associa-
tions rising up thickly around her, she could almost
have fancied that her sister was by her side again.
?2 PEN.
" Pen shall have this room," she said, " and Tre
shall have the old night nursery."
She had never condescended to shortening the
names into Pen and Tre before, even in her
thoughts. She thought abbreviations vulgar, and
had resolved that the silly shorts of Pen and Tre
should be left behind in London, with much be-
sides belonging to their early life. But somehow
the influence of the moonlit room and the thought
of the dead face softened some of the hard and
fast lines she had been laying down for the future,
and it seemed impossible to call the niece Theresa
when the sister's presence was so vividly real.
When she came back to the library, she found
that a fresh item of news about the postman had
turned her father's thoughts back into their former
channel.
"Tell me of my father," Theresa had said one
day, "does he look much older? Does he still do
this? Does he still like that? "
Penelope remembered the great eyes watching
her face as these questions were asked, with the
hungry look perhaps that Joseph may have worn in
all the plenty and riches of Egypt, when he asked,
"Is your father well? the old man of whom ye
spake, is he yet alive?" And it hurt her to feel
that there was no answering feeling, and it brought
HIGHFIELD. 73
before her more vividly than anything else had
done the irretrievable loss of those sixteen years.
He had been so fond of Theresa in those old times ;
she remembered feeling jealous of her and thinking
she was the favorite, and was made more of than
herself.
She recalled once when Theresa was ill the terri-
ble anxiety Colonel Percival had shown about her,
and the rejoicing over her recovery ; and now her
death did not seem to affect him in the smallest
degree.
As she sat opposite the old man, dozing in his
armchair, it seemed to her that she was the only
real mourner for her sister. She did not give Louis
Brand credit for anything but a theatrical, posturing
sort of sentiment ; and the children, as we have
seen, had not impressed her with the depth of their
feelings, and as for Sandy, she knew nothing about
him. And so she fancied herself as standing virtu-
ally alone beside her sister's grave, a very solitary
mourner ; and from that her thoughts drifted on to
her own funeral, and to the wonder of who would
mourn for her? Not her father, even if he survived
her, which did not seem likely. She felt that her
loss would hardly cost him more than Theresa's, if
his material comforts were not interfered with.
She had many friends ? Yes ; but as she ran
74 PEN.
through them in her mind, there was scarcely one
she could imagine even shedding a tear if she heard
that Penelope Percival was dead, or doing more
than giving a sigh of very mitigated regret as she
announced the fact to a sympathetic visitor. The
servants who had been in her service for years, and
whom she had treated with unfailing justice and
courtesy, would wear mourning and go about with
faces of the conventional length, and speak in sub-
dued voices for a day or two, but as to any sincere
heartache there was not one of them that she could
expect it of; it was not in the bond. The village
people too would gather to the church to see the
burying, and feel a sort of pride in the show, and
there might be a few sighs and shakes of the head,
and even a tear here and there among the more
lachrymose of the women, but it would be better
not to inquire how much of such signs of mourning
is sacred to memories of broth and flannel, and
intensified by doubt about the future in these
respects.
Miss Percival was not generally given to morbid
reflections, but to-night they crowded thickly upon
her, and for the first time in her life she seemed
able to stand apart from herself, and to see what a
very solitary, unloved person Miss Percival of High-
field was. Was she so unlovable? More than
HIGHFIELD. 75
one man had wished to marry her ; once she had
been engaged for a short time, she might, as the
saying is, have married well, but something had
always intervened, and there was not strong enough
feeling on her part to overcome obstacles or over-
look objections. Was there anything repellent
about her? The colonel was asleep in his chair
opposite, and she got up softly, with a half smile
at her own folly, and looked at herself in the
round mirror in a heavy antique frame over the
mantelpiece.
It was a gracious, pleasing face she saw there,
the shaded lamp and the glowing firelight softened
the sternness and lightened the hardness ; and the
eyes had a gentle, pleading look that did more than
shaded lamp or firelight glow ; she was pleading
with herself against herself that she was not un-
lovely and unlovable.
The children should love her ; come what might
she would win their love. This proud, independent
Penelope Percival just then, in the sudden chill
feeling of loneliness and lovelessness, felt a hunger
for the love of those children of Louis Brand's,
those rough, ill-bred, shrimpy, little creatures, for
whom she had felt a repugnance almost amount-
ing to disgust only a few hours before. ' She was
stretching out her hands to them across the gulf,
76 PEN.
which had just revealed itself to her, as separating
her from the love and sympathy of the rest of her
kind, begging for just a drop of the water of their
love to assuage the parching thirst of her nature.
She would win their love ; she would spare no
pains to make their life happy to them ; they, at
least, if no one else, should grieve for her and feel
her loss a heart-breaking and terrible matter ; she
was planning feverishly how she would endear her-
self to them as it were, laying traps for their affec-
tion, or seeking to bribe them out of it with all the
lavish outlay imagination could suggest.
Miss Percival was certainly not herself that night,
she was nervous and unhinged, and Colonel Per-
cival was irritably conscious of something amiss
with her, when he woke with a snort and found
her sitting, with her work dropped into her lap,
staring fixedly into the fire, which had sunk below
its usual comfortable proportions.
" Pshaw ! " he said with a shiver, " ring the bell
for Jackson, I 'm chilled to the bone ! Sitting
looking at the fire won't keep it alight, and I had
closed my eyes for a minute as I have had a lot of
worry to-day a lot of worry ! and the doctor said
it was as much as my life was worth to be worried."
Just for a moment he could not quite recall
what had been the worries of the day, but they
HIGHFIELD. 77
soon came back, and naturally the one first that
had most deeply impressed him.
" If a man can't have his letters delivered punc-
tually and regularly, a man, I say, who has business
affairs of importance Poor Theresa, too, yes,
yes, poor Theresa ! Gently, Jackson, gently, I
tell you. I 'm not made of cast-iron to be knocked
about in that way."
The letters, in spite of the postman's delinquen-
cies, were delivered at the proper hour next morn-
ing, and several of them taken up on the tray that
conveyed Miss Percival's early cup of tea. She had
not slept well, her mind had been feverishly work-
ing over the plans for the future, and the rearrange-
ments that would be necessary ; the redistribution
of the household work ; the new maid to wait on
the two girls; the hours and rules that would be
best for them ; of other girls in the neighborhood
who would be suitable friends for them. No one
would have given Miss Percival credit for such
castle-building, or have imagined for a moment
that Louis Brand's children could have been the
foundation on which these airy fabrics were built
up, but one of those letters on the silver salver
shattered them at a blow.
It was directed in an unknown hand, one of
those artificially original hands that are the fashion
78 PEN.
nowadays, carefully bold, with a great deal of char-
acter in them, but not the character of the writer,
because it is not natural. After all the copper-
plate, conventional writing of our forefathers might
have betrayed more traits of the writer's character
to the delineator, who undertakes to hit off all your
moral and intellectual qualities on receipt of six
stamps, than much of the affected caligraphy of
the present day.
Miss Percival knew at a glance who was the
writer, though it was the first time she had seen
her brother-in-law's writing, and though there was
not the depth of black edge that she would have
expected ; but with an odd sort of nervousness she
opened her other letters first, and drank her tea
before she opened this. She had a conviction that
it was to ask for money, and, as she held the en-
velope in her hand, she told herself that this was
no doubt the first of a series of such demands, and
that it would be necessary to have a very clear rule
laid down as to how much he was to have.
The letter was very short. There was no long-
winded palaver at any rate.
DEAR MADAM, I have arranged for the funeral of my
wife at Monkton-on-Sea on Saturday next.
Allow me to thank you for your kind intentions as
regards my children; but I do not think I need trouble
HIGHFIELD. 79
you to undertake their maintenance and education, seeing
that they still have a father living in the person of
Your obedient servant,
Louis BRAND.
Kindly let me know if you propose to attend the funeral
on Saturday.
CHAPTER VII.
MOTHER'S GRAVE.
*" I "HERE is an operation that is forcibly but
JL vulgarly described as cutting off your nose
to spite your face, and Louis Brand, before the
ink of that letter was dry, felt that he was being
guilty of an act of that description, and he called
"Liza back just as she was starting to put it in the
post, with half an idea of altering it so as at kast
to leave a loop-hole for possible reconciliation ;
and he even took it in his hand as if he were just
going to reopen it, while 'Liza stood at the door
tying her bonnet-strings, which she generally con-
sidered a superfluous elegance when merely going
to the post.
But after a minute Mr. Brand tossed the letter
back to her, saying, "There ! it can go as it is,"
and it accordingly appeared, as we have seen, at
Highfield with Miss Percival's early cup of tea.
It is very difficult to do Louis Brand justice
about this action of his, and, for the matter of
that, it is always very difficult to judge fairly of
MOTHER'S GRAVE. 81
others, and perhaps quite as much so of our-
selves, motives are so inextricably mixed. There
may be a tiny vein of the purest gold running
through and lost sight of in a mass of utterly
worthless rock, while, on the contrary, a flaw
may run through what looks like a solid piece of
precious metal.
It was not merely to gratify his feelings of re-
sentment and indignation at the treatment he had
received from his wife's family, nor from his
wounded pride at what he called, and perhaps
not untruly, the insolence of Miss Percival's pro-
posal, though both of these were largely repre-
sented : he had really loved his wife, quite as
much perhaps as dozens of unselfish, considerate,
attentive husbands, who never give their wives one
heartache, and who marry again as soon as a de-
cent time has elapsed after their deaths. Louis
Brand could no more have married again than he
could have turned into a satisfactory, dependable
individual, and his grief was as ill-regulated and
undisciplined as the rest of his feelings. His sor-
row was not however intensified by remorse, as
many men's might have been in his situation.
Looking back on his married life it seemed to
him a day-dream of happiness and love and sym-
pathy, and he lost sight of all the little daily
6
82 PEN.
clouds and mists that had interrupted the sunshine
of those days.
He had fixed on Monkton-on-Sea as the place
where his wife should rest, not only because he
would not have her admitted as it were by suffer-
ance among the people who would not recognize
her during her lifetime, but also because it seemed
like giving her back altogether, losing her utterly,
if she were laid away in the great, grim family
vault, where there would be no room for him be-
side her. And Monkton-on-Sea had been the
place where they had gone after their marriage,
where they had spent some happy, sunshiny spring
weeks, when the hope of speedy reconciliation with
her family had made what seemed only a tempo-
rary estrangement easy enough to bear.
There was a sweet, sunny churchyard there, he
remembered well, where they had sometimes sat,
talking as happy people will of death and parting,
as something so very far away and improbable that
they can afford to look at it in a tender, poetical
fashion, which can be cut short at any moment by
the warm pressure of living hands and the look of
loving eyes. He remembered how she had de-
scribed to him then the Percival tombs in High-
field churchyard, and had said, " When we are very
old, you and I, Louis, we will come and be buried
MOTHER'S GRAVE. 83
just here where we sit to-day, only you must let
me go first, just a little time first, for I could not
live a day without you."
What a child she was then ! But now she had
gone first, and the words spoken in almost a
tender jest should be carried out to the letter,
and she should be laid where they stood that
day in the spring sunshine, with the daffodils nod-
ding their golden heads in the beds along the
churchyard path, and a thrush singing a full-
throated song from the lilac bushes, on which the
buds were swelling almost visibly.
She had never spoken of her wishes during her
last illness, indeed no word of parting had passed
between them, and she had shown no yearning for
her old home, nor eager delight at her sister's
coming. As for the children, there was no doubt
what their wishes would be as regards Highfield.
Sandy had told him some of Pen's fireside confi-
dences, though, with what he felt was the deepest
treachery, he strongly advised Mr. Brand to weigh
well the advantages offered to the children in be-
ing brought up under their grandfather's roof.
Sandy was not much given to offering advice,
though he was a very sympathetic listener, which
is worth all the good advice in the world put to-
gether ; so perhaps he did not argue the matter
84 PEN.
with Louis Brand as forcibly as a more experi-
enced giver of advice might have done, and
moreover perhaps he was half-hearted about it
himself, and could not quite shake off the effect of
Pen's pleading eyes and the feeling that, when
once the children entered the gates of Highfield,
they passed out of his life altogether ; and that he
should never again feel Pen's hands clasping his
arm, and her sweet, little face looking up so con-
fidingly into his, or Tre's arms clinging round his
neck, with her round, soft cheek pressed to his.
So when he came in that evening soon after
that important letter had been despatched, and
heard the decision that Louis Brand had arrived
at, though he protested against the folly and self-
ishness of the step, and declared that the children
were being sacrificed to his false pride during
which tirade, Louis Brand leaned back in his chair
with his hands in his pockets and his eyebrows
raised, whistling softly to himself Sandy felt
really, in the bottom of his heart, a little feeling
of relief, and having satisfied his conscience by
protesting, threw himself heartily into all the ar-
rangements, and, I fancy, provided a good deal
of the necessary funds for carrying them out.
Louis Brand had never talked so energetically
or sensibly about the necessity of setting to work
MOTHER'S GRAVE. 85
and making a comfortable home for his little girls ;
and Sandy half believed there must be something
in it, and that the artist had taken a fresh start of
industry, and wondered at such being the first re-
sult of losing the wife who, to Sandy's mind, might
have inspired the most idle nature to boundless
efforts, if not to actual genius ; and when his mind
misgave him, he comforted himself with the feeling
that, at any rate, he would be at hand to keep an
eye on them, and they would not be altogether
lost to him as would have been the case if they
had gone to Highfield.
That Saturday was one of those lovely days that
are sometimes granted to us in March, but very
rarely, standing out in strong contrast with the days
of blustering rough winds, or sullen rain, or gray
ungenial gloom, or deceptive, steely sunshine, with
the biting east wind to blemish its good deeds.
This was balmy and kindly and gentle, with
little, dappled, soft clouds tossed about over the
blue sky, and a tender, little breeze to waft the
scent of violets, and the pleasant smell of fresh-
turned earth, and the sound of bubbling springs,
and the notes of birds ; it is only on such days
that we recognize the silence and scentlessness and
darkness of winter.
It was the very day for a funeral, full of hope
86 PEN.
and the sense of a coming brightness ; it is easy
enough to think of the Resurrection on such days ;
and the words of the burial service will always
be associated in Pen's mind with sunshine and
a broad expanse of blue sparkling sea, which
stretched out beyond the gray shoulder of the hill
that shelters little Monkton Church from the north
and east. She shed no tears, and once she looked
up into Sandy's face and smiled, and he smiled
back, but there were no hysterical manifestations
of grief such as Aunt Penelope had feared though
she was not there to see and keep them in check,
and there were only Louis Brand and the two girls
and Sandy, so they might have behaved as natur-
ally or vulgarly or unconventionally as they liked,
without any feeling of constraint.
When the service was over, Sandy took Pen
and Tre to a farmhouse near, where a kind, bust-
ling farmer's wife made much of them, and regaled
them with milk and large slices of home-made
bread and butter, and interested them both, and
more especially Tre, to whom such things had
hitherto been fabulous, or rather articles of faith,
as mother had often described them, so they must
really exist in a family of newly hatched ducks
with yellow plush bodies and button eyes, and
absurd embryo wings, and little webbed feet.
MOTHER'S GRAVE. 87
A farm appeared to Tre as a very superior sort
of Zoological Gardens, in which you were allowed
to come to much more satisfactory terms with the
animals, without the interference of troublesome
keepers.
When Louis Brand and Sandy came in, they
found Tre in perfect happiness, with her crape all
covered up safely under a capacious apron of Mrs.
Metcalfe's, sitting quite inside the big, open fire-
place, with a flannel bundle in her arms containing
a very interesting invalid, a young pig, the " barl-
ing" of a large family, who, being the weakest and
less able to assert its rights, had been put upon
and trampled by its more vigorous relations, and
had been rescued and brought indoors for a little
cosseting by the fire. She could hardly bear to
give up the sufferer, and Mrs. Metcalfe was anxious
to bestow it on her, but readily understood that it
would be an awkward addition to their party for
the Sunday, which was to be spent at Monkton,
whatever it might be later on in Purton Street;
and also that, considering they were going to walk
down to Monkton, and it was a good four miles,
even a barling might be somewhat of a burden to
carry.
When they came out of the farm they found that
mother's grave was filled in, and the mound
88 PEN.
covered with moss and flowers, which made it less
of a wrench to come away and leave her there.
Sandy had been busy helping the old sexton when
Pen and Tre were in the farm, and the grave
looked a very pleasant resting-place in the level
rays of the sun, that still rested lovingly on it, as
the children knelt down and whispered their last
good-night among the flowers, and then set off
with father and Sandy up the steep hillside, with
the gorse flowering bravely here and there on the
broad, heathy margin of the road, mixed with the
dull purple of last year's dead ling, and the remains
of the gallant show of golden brake and crimson
blackberry leaves that had weathered the winter's
snows. The sun had dipped behind the hill be-
fore they reached the brow, but it left such a
legacy of crimson glow, as might have glorified a
far less beautiful landscape of undulating meadows
and pine-clad hills and snug cottages, clustering
round thatched farmhouses, each with a body-
guard of stout ricks.
Pen had drawn her hand out of Sandy's, into
which it had naturally found its way, as she turned
away from the grave, and put it rather timidly
under her father's arm ; he looked so white and
gaunt and hollow-eyed, and so very lonely, as if
she and Sandy and little Tre might be miles away
MOTHER'S GRAVE. 89
from him, even though they were walking at his
side. He kept looking away too with those great
hungry dark eyes, with the same look in them as
when he had turned at the lych gate to look back
at the flower-covered grave, as if he could see it
still, though his eyes were fixed on the steep road,
and the hill-top purple against the crimson sky.
It was dark when they got into Monkton, Sandy
carrying little Tre, who was quite worn out with
the events of the day. There were lights shining
from the windows of the quaint, little town, and a
red lamp from the end of the small breakwater pier
drew a moving, wavy line across the water, reveal-
ing the fact that the great darkness in front was the
sea, which was confirmed by the soft lap and plash
on the beach below, and the fresh smell of sea-
weed in the air.
CHAPTER VIII.
A DAY OF REST.
LOOKING back at the last chapter it seems to
me that the geography of Monkton may
puzzle the reader, and that I ought to explain that
Monkton, where Mrs. Brand was laid, is, properly
speaking, Up-Monkton, just a little scattered ham-
let two miles from the sea, up a long coombe or
valley ; while Monkton proper, or Monkton-on-Sea,
lies on the seashore, not at the opening of the same
valley, but over the shoulder of the next bluff or
headland, over which the steep road from Up-
Monkton leads, and then descends abruptly, almost
precipitately, into the little, gray town, nestling
round a little, gray church down on the beach,
where the cliffs that rise so majestic and grim and
uncompromising on either side, dip down as if on
purpose to let the Monkton fishermen launch their
boats.
In that part of the world if you mean Up-
Monkton you point with your thumb indefinitely
over your shoulder, without any precise notion of
A DAY OF REST. 91
its being situated north, south, east, or west of
where you stand, the upward jerk is enough;
whereas if you mean Monkton-on-Sea you point,
still with the thumb, in a downward direction un-
der your elbow.
It was very early in the morning that Sandy
looked out of his little bedroom window in Beach
Cottages. He had not slept much, perhaps the
bed was not comfortable, perhaps his thoughts were
worrying and anxious, but it was still dark when he
opened his window and leaned out, though there
was a brightening in the east, a soft, throbbing
light that made the stars grow pale, and that, as it
strengthened, flushed the sky and sea from east to
west with rose-color, and turned a great bank of
cloud into deep purple gloom.
Louis Brand used to say that Sandy had no
appreciation of beauty, and Sandy never contested
the point, and, I think, almost believed it ; but still
I do not think the beauty of this dawn was wasted
on him. Beauty affects people so differently, some
of us consciously notice it and dissect and compare
it, while others imbibe it unconsciously, and are
happier, holier, and nearer heaven for it. There
are others, but these, I hope and believe, are few,
who are utterly impervious to outside influences,
and yet perhaps it would be better to hope there
92 PEN.
are many such, seeing how many thousands live
all their lives, or rather exist, in ugly and sordid
surroundings.
Before Sandy lay the beautiful sweep of Monk-
ton bay, which stretches away on either side till, at
the extremities, the headlands mix with and melt
into the clouds. It is only here and there that
the cliffs relax and dip down to the beach as they
do at Monkton, though, gray and uncompromising
as they look, they cannot resist the inroads of the
sea, that stretched so smiling and dimpling and
innocent before Sandy that morning. Occasionally
that sea comes dashing in in great, powerful, foam-
ing waves, which tear down masses of the gray
lias and undermine the cliffs, and scatter the beach
below with fossil treasures of rare beauty and in-
terest to enthusiastic youths with hammers, and
ardent old maids in spectacles and mushroom hats,
who can pronounce words of six syllables without
turning a hair. These fossils are a harvest to the
Monkton fishermen, who, without any knowledge
of mineralogy, or wish to acquire it, or power of
pronouncing breakjaw names, and guided only by
the all-powerful instinct of money-getting, ferret out
all sorts of curious objects, for the names of which I
would refer you to the guide book to Monkton, un-
der the heading of " Geology of the Neighborhood."
A DAY OF REST. 93
But Sandy gazed as ignorantly at the geological
strata along the cliffs as you or I might have done,
and noticed more how headland after headland
came in sight, in the strengthening light, and how,
when the sun showed its bright face over the hori-
zon, the crimson of sky and shore was drowned
in the golden sea of light that flooded the world.
The bedroom provided for Sandy was in the
next house to that where Louis Brand and the
children slept, as the few little lodging-houses on
the beach at Monkton are by no means spacious,
so that he could not tell if Pen and Tre were still
asleep ; and when, an hour later, he turned out on
to the little parade, and looked up at Beach Cot-
tage, the smallest of the little dolls' houses, and
the farthest from the town, there was no sign of
life or stirring about it, any more than in the other
houses, which were still asleep with drawn blinds
and closed doors.
Knowing by experience the soundness of the
slumbers of lodging-house keepers, and their wrath
at being awakened at unusual hours, he refrained
from ringing the bell if there was one, which I
rather doubt, so primitive is Monkton, but, instead,
threw up a pebble at the window over the door of
Beach Cottage. A minute afterwards the blind
was pulled aside and a wild struggle ensued with
94
the window, which was speedily raised by another
hand belonging to some one who kept discreetly
in the background ; while with no regard to ap-
pearances, and the fact that a nightgown is not
the usual style of costume for receiving morning
callers, Tre's bright face and curly head leant out
of the window, with two round arms stretched out
to Sandy, wishing him good-morning and begging
him to wait for her only a minute, she wanted to
go and dig in the sand, and catch some dear little
crabs, and pick up shells, and What else she
wanted was lost by her disappearance into the
room, and the window being closed.
Tre's toilet that morning must have been a hasty
affair, for Sandy had not been sitting for more than
five minutes on the breakwater that runs out into
the sea just in front of Beach Cottage, when a
precipitate rush of small feet behind would have
made him turn round, if an instinct had not told
him that they were meant to be unheard, and that
the first intimation of Tre's presence was to be the
clasping of her arms round his neck as she stood
on the breakwater behind him. And then there
was no getting rid of the creature, whatever it was,
that clung so tight, with thrills of young laughter
and tickling of soft breath on the back of his neck,
till he got up and ran down the breakwater and
A DAY OF REST. 95
jumped across to a piece of low rock, the brown
sea-weedy top of which had just been left visible
by the retreating tide, and pretended, with violent
contortions and exclamations of great terror, to
shake it off into the little, creamy waves that sur-
rounded them, and then it allowed itself to be
pulled round into view and to be revealed, as no
old man of the mountains, or strange and terrible
octopus, or sea-creature, but little Tre, rosy and
laughing as her mother would have loved to see
her.
" How heartless children are ! " Aunt Penelope
might have said, "and her mother only buried
yesterday ! " But I think that mother would have
smiled.
Pen joined the party before very long, and, as
she brought news that father was still asleep and
that there were np signs of breakfast, there was no
occasion to hurry back, and the three wandered
on far along the beach, allured from one object
of interest to another. There were green pools
in the rocks with waving brown seaweed, among
which pale and ghostly little crabs sidled, or dim,
shadowy shrimps flitted over the stones at the bot-
tom, stones that looked like gems of priceless
worth till you reached them ; slippery promonto-
ries covered with seaweed, with knobs that would
96 PEN.
pop if you squeezed them, over which it was excit-
ing and perilous to clamber, with the chance of
suddenly slipping into depths on either side ; a
lobster pot left high and dry by the tide, near
which, by a freak of the tide, an empty lobster tail
was lying, which Tre maintained had been left
behind by its owner when escaping from the trap,
though, as the shell was scarlet, it might have
seemed likely that the lobster in question had
gone through other experiences between its cap-
ture and parting with its shell.
At one time Tre got infected with a geological
mania, and had soon got her frock full of stones of
considerable weight, and she could hardly be per-
suaded to leave one with an indistinct broken fossil
at one end, which weighed half a hundredweight
or so ; but, before Sandy had committed himself
by an offer to carry this substantial curiosity, fa-
ther was descried in front of Beach Cottage, signal-
ling to them to come back ; and hunger and the
prospect of breakfast drove geology out of Tre's
head, and the lapful of stones was cast ruthlessly
aside.
Looking back on that Sunday at Monkton it
always seemed to Pen as her ideal of a Sabbath, as
if all the world were resting, mother in her flower-
covered grave, father sitting there on the breakwater
A DAY OF REST. 97
smoking his pipe and looking away across the seas,
which seemed resting too, so softly did the little
ripples fall on the beach, and sink back with a
peaceful, little, murmuring sigh, " e'en in its very
motion there was rest."
A fishing-boat anchored near the end of the pier
was reflected on the placid surface, its little mast
prolonged, in the reflection, to the proportions of
that of a racing- yacht ; and farther off the sails of
some small boats made quite a long line of white
on the sea. The gulls seemed resting too, settling
down on the water in groups, and idly rising and
falling with its gentle motion as if the strong wings,
that battle so bravely against wind and storm, were
weary. Tre, in spite of her active beginning of
the day, was tired, and sat quietly resting against
Sandy's arm and digging little holes in the sand
with his walking-stick ; while Pen herself, with that
sort of exhaustion that is almost pleasant if one
is left quite alone and can sit still and dream,
leaned against the stone breakwater and thought
of mother.
Life seemed so short just then, and the promised
land so near, it hardly seemed worth while to take
anxious thought for the morrow, and to wonder
how she could manage the housekeeping, and if
'Liza would mind what she said. I wonder if the
7
98 PEN.
Israelites stood and gazed like that into Canaan
before the order came to turn back into the wilder-
ness, to the wanderings hither and thither, to the
pitching and striking of tents, to the dreary desert
ways, to the manna-gathering, the light bread that
their ungrateful souls loathed ? Daily life, with its
little anxieties and trivial occupations and pleas-
ures, seems at such times very like the wilderness ;
but just for that day Pen could gaze into the
land flowing with milk and honey, which seemed
clearer than Portland Bill away there hi the dinr
horizon.
When the little cracked bell rang out for morn-
ing prayer, it was father who first roused up and
knocked the ashes out of his pipe and the sand
from his coat. Pen had supposed that she and
Tre would go to church, and perhaps Sandy, who
had taken to church-going lately, since mother had
not been able to go with them ; but father had never
gone with them before, and his going strengthened
the feeling that everything was different, and that
they were all nearer death and heaven ; and all the
service seemed a continuation of the burial service,
and every psalm or verse in the Lessons to contain
some allusion to mother, or recall some word or
look of hers.
Perhaps with Louis Brand there was, quite
A DAY OF REST. 99
unconsciously, a little bit of the feeling that the
country people have, with whom the Sunday after
a funeral is a great occasion, when all the relations,
including those who are dissenters and others who
usually attend no place of worship, betake them-
selves to church in long hat -bands and all the pomp
and panoply of woe, and are given the place of
honor in the free seats, and expect an appropriate
sermon, during which sniffs and shakes of the head,
and prolonged and audible sighs mark any particu-
larly forcible passage.
It was a sleepy, old church with high, narrow
pews, and frowning galleries, and dusty monuments,
and a clergyman to match in a chestnut wig ; the
singing was rough and unpretending, but had a
certain honest ring and simple sweetness that ech-
oed in after times in the memories of some that
heard it, even through the rare beauty of cathedral
choirs and exquisitely trained voices. The quaint,
old rhymes of Tait and Brady lingered in Pen's
mind, associated with the murmur of the sea close
outside, and a shaft of dusty sunshine through the
greenish glass of the window, striking on the corner
of a hatchment, and on the head of a marble cherub
on a tomb hard by.
" In tender grass He makes me feed,
And gently there repose ;
IOO PEN.
Then leads me to cool shades and where
Refreshing water flows.
I pass the gloomy vale of death,
From fear and clanger free,
For then His aiding rod and staff
Defend and comfort me."
Tre dropped asleep, leaning against Sandy's
arm, during the long doctrinal sermon, and though
Pen's eyes were raised with due propriety to the
thick crimson fringe of the pulpit cushion, over
which, from time to time, glimpses were afforded of
a bit of the preacher's black gown, or one of his
whiskers, I am afraid that she did not follow all the
intricacies of his reasoning, but that her thoughts
were away by the flower-covered grave, or in the
Paradise of gentle repose to which that grave
seemed the gate.
In the afternoon they were to have gone up to
Monkton, but the beautiful morning had clouded
over and a small persistent rain came on, and
Sandy found that Monkton had very strict views as
to keeping the Sabbath as regards the hire of any
sort of conveyance, or making any exertion to get
one ready, or even exercising their minds to think
on the question.
It was a disappointment to the children, but
Sandy, realizing the sadness of a wet churchyard
and lowering clouds, and of half-faded flowers
A DAY OF REST. IOI
washed and shattered by the rain, was not sorry that
it was out of the question getting there, and that
the children would carry away the memory of the
grave with the sunset light resting on it, and the
flowers still fresh and fragrant ; and Pen was fain
to confess that she was still tired, and that a long
walk, especially in the rain, was not very desirable,
and was quite impossible for Tre, who yet would
never have consented to stay behind if she had
gone.
So they sat in the little bow-window of the sit-
ting-room, and watched the scuds of rain sweeping
across the sea, sometimes mixing up sea and sky
into one gray misty mass, sometimes clearing off
and showing an indigo, hard horizon against the
sky. Father was asleep on the horsehair sofa be-
hind, so Sandy and Pen and Tre could talk freely
of mother, not in that impossible, unnatural way
into which we fall in speaking of the dead, but as
a living person, as of course she was, not changed
by that simple episode in life, by that mere " pass-
ing from this room into the next " which we call
death.
CHAPTER IX.
THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION.
"AT any rate I shall be close at hand to keep
-tV an eye on the children," Sandy had told
himself when he heard Louis Brand's decisive re-
fusal to let Pen and Tre go to Highfield ; but it
was not a fortnight after the funeral when a letter
arrived which seemed likely to introduce an im-
portant change into his life, and at all events called
him imperatively away from Purton Street for a
week or more.
Sandy had so entirely fallen into being an ad-
junct of the Brand family that, certainly, Pen and
Tre regarded him as their own special belonging,
and I think I have fallen into so regarding him,
and may have impressed the reader in the same
way. But Sandy Maclaren had a distinct indi-
viduality of his own, and was a member of a family
who, no doubt, on their side, regarded him merely
as a rather far-off satellite of theirs, a sort of Geor-
gium Sidus, <3r some still more remote member of
the solar system, toiling round an enormous orbit,
THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION. 10$
getting the very smallest possible amount of light
and heat from Phoebus Apollo, and not even within
sight, by the naked eye, of the more favored plan-
ets, who bask in the countenance of the sun-god.
It seems to me, who, as the reader will readily per-
ceive, have not a deep knowledge of astronomy,
and but a vague notion of the laws of gravity and
centrifugal force, that it is somewhat strange that
these poor, dull, painstaking, little planets do not
go off and join some other system where more ad-
vantages are offered. In human solar systems I
think they do, though the centres of such systems
sometimes like to imagine that the far-off cousins
and distant relations are still revolving round them,
and getting all their warmth and illumination from
them.
When Sandy Maclaren's mother died, which, as
I think I have stated, was while he was yet a little
boy, his father was out in China in a big tea-house
at Shanghai. Though he had only enjoyed the
society of his wife for about a quarter of the short
time that their married life lasted, as her health
would not allow of her remaining at Shanghai, or
his income allow of his leaving it, he took the
news of her death so deeply to heart, that he never
came back to England, and his two little boys,
Sandy and his elder brother Tom, were quartered
104 PEN.
out among their relations and sent to school as
soon as possible. They met with a great deal of
kindness from one and another, but kindness of a
desultory sort which in no way makes up for the
very dullest and strictest of homes. They got a
great deal of going to the theatre with the butler, and
plenty of high feeding, and unlimited confectionery,
and handsome tips, when they went back to school,
when kind-hearted uncles and aunts felt qualms of
conscience that the holidays had not been very
amusing for the poor boys. Hampers of good
things were sent to them, not on their birthdays
(how could you expect uncles and aunts, however
kind, to remember such trifles as school-boys' birth-
days?), ordered wholesale and packed at Fortnum
and Mason's, to the envy and admiration of other
boys, who punctually on their birthdays received
modest, little baskets, the contents of which had
each its home history, from the pie that mother
made with her very own hands, to the dusky, little
cake sent with baby's love.
School-boys are rather difficult visitors some-
times, and Tom and Sandy Maclaren, good, hon-
est, simple-minded creatures as they were, were
not favorable specimens of the genus, though I
dare say, if they had had a mother to admire them
and make much of them, and a home where they
THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION. 10$
could feel entirely at their ease, their awkwardness
would not have been so apparent. They were big,
raw-boned creatures, who grew outrageously fast,
and always arrived from school with two or three
inches of wrist _and ankle showing at the end of
much dilapidated sleeves and trousers; and they
did not seem even to be able to estimate the length
of their members accurately themselves, for they
were always knocking things over and kicking and
trampling about ; and their mental ungainliness
was almost as bad, and there was no knowing what
awkward or inconveniently truthful remark they
might make next.
I suppose hobbledehoyishness is a necessary
malady of youth, though some boys get through
it quickly, and take the disease so lightly, that
they are not intolerable to themselves or their
friends, to any perceptible extent ; but Tom and
Sandy took the complaint in its most violent form,
as they had done all the infantile maladies
whooping-cough, measles, scarlatina, and mumps
generally ; also managing to have them at the
most inconvenient times to themselves and other
people, before an examination, or during the prep-
arations for a family gathering or children's party,
so that their Aunt Isabel used to say that she never
sent out invitations during the holidays without
106 PEN..
calculating how many infectious maladies still re-
mained within the capability of those unlucky
boys. But luckily hobbledehoy awkwardness is
not infectious, or else Tom and Sandy might have
dealt destruction to all the elegance and grace they
came in contact with for many years, for Sandy
could not be said to have lost all the symptoms
even when my story begins, when he was thirty-
five years of age, and might have been expected
to have left such weaknesses nearly twenty years
behind him.
When they left school Tom went out to join his
father in Shanghai, a berth having been offered
him in the same house ; and Sandy dropped into
a situation in a big mercantile house in London, an
arrangement which his relations inwardly groaned
over, as entailing much painful exercise of hos-
pitality on their parts, not limited to Christmas and
Midsummer holidays, but scattered broadcast over
the whole year, and not allowing of being helped
off by tips or confectionery, or deputed to the
butler.
But things often turn out better than we expect,
and the very gaucherie that made Sandy such a
very awkward guest, made him also a very unwill-
ing one, so that consciences could be safely salved
by writing dozens of affectionate invitations, full of
THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION. IO/
playful scolding for never going near them, end
kindly imperious commands to report himself with-
out delay, without any risk of his availing himself
of them too frequently. And as time passed on,
he somehow fell out of sight altogether, and con-
sciences ceased to prick, so did not require salving,
and Jupiter and Venus rolled comfortably round
their easy little orbits with hardly a thought for
poor hobbledehoy Georgium Sidus out there in the
dark.
And meanwhile, as I have said, this poor Geor-
gium Sidus had found another constellation when
he was very much nearer the sun ; in fact Pen
and Tre sometimes thought he was the sun itself,
round which they revolved, for they associated
all the brightness and cheerfulness of their lives
with him.
Tom had a different experience of life. He ac-
tually got engaged on the voyage out, being then
only eighteen, and quite as intensely hobbledehoy-
ish as Sandy. I do not know how it happened,
but on a sea-voyage all sorts of extraordinary phe-
nomena occur, and I am inclined to think that
Mrs. Tom was a few years older than her husband,
and was sensible enough to see what a good fellow
he was in spite of his large red ears, and outra-
geous blushes and unmanageable hands; but I
108 PEN.
really do not know much about her, for she never
came back to England, and died six months before
my story begins, shortly before Sandy's father went
to rejoin his wife.
The days for making large fortunes in China are
long since past, as every one connected with China
trade takes pains to inform you, especially if you
happen to have sons that you are anxious to start
in life ; but, for the matter of that, the same is
curiously enough the case in all other professions
or branches of industry at home and abroad, and
each person particularly depreciates the chances of
success in his own special department, and hints
that any other would be better. Be this as it may,
when Sandy's father died, he left behind him a
tidy, little fortune to his two sons, leaving the most
to Tom, as being the eldest and having a wife and
son. And as Tom himself had not done badly
during his twenty years in China, the idea came
into his head that there was no reason for further
exertions, and that he might as well come home
and settle in England and bring up his son as a
country gentleman. He was not a man to act
hastily or to talk much beforehand of what he
was going to do, so it took all the community at
Shanghai by surprise when they heard that Tom
Maclaren and his boy were leaving for England ;
THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION. 1 09
and it took Sandy still more by surprise when a
letter from Tom announced his arrival by the next
boat, and requested Sandy to come and meet him
at Brindisi. And as the letter came, as I have
said, just a fortnight after Mrs. Brand's funeral,
and when he specially wanted to be near the
children, the surprise was not altogether one o
unmixed pleasure.
A brother in China is a different thing to a
brother in England, and your duties to him are
of a different character, and more varied than
those to the brother in China, for whom you can
do little more than write newsy letters at regular
intervals, and occasionally execute commissions
carefully and patiently, and endure with resigna-
tion the ingratitude and discontent that await your
best efforts in this direction. But a brother in
England may demand a good deal more than this ;
and as the very first call on his fraternal duty was
to start forthwith for Brindisi, Sandy gloomily anti-
cipated that the like might easily happen in the
future, and that he would no longer be free to
come and go as he liked ; in fact he suddenly
felt himself pulled back into the family constella-
tion, and he found himself looking ruefully at his
dress-coat, which was creased and crumpled in a
manner terrible to behold, and of an antiquated cut
1 10 PEN.
that betrayed how many years ago it had left the
tailor's hands ; with a dreadful vision floating be-
fore his eyes of long dinner-parties and evenings
of insupportable boredom, endured in the service
of that autocrat, Society. The only consolation in
the prospect was that there were no womenfolks
to deal with, for Sandy fancied himself a woman-
hater, never counting into the abhorred sex Mrs.
Brand, who was more than half an angel, or Pen,
or Tre, who were children, or indeed any other
feminine creature who was kind to him or help-
less ; so that the exceptions were likely to multiply
indefinitely with all the women Sandy was brought
into contact with ; for if you look round with as
little discernment and as simple a faith as Sandy
possessed, on all the women you know, and pick
out all the kind and helpless ones, there would
not be very many left to represent the heartless,
worldly, little-minded, capricious creature that
Sandy called woman in the abstract.
Unless those twenty years had changed Tom to
an altogether different character, he was not likely
to be devoted to society, and as to the child
why ! by Jove ! he was not a child, he must be
sixteen or seventeen, nearly as old, in fact, as Tom
when they parted on the deck of the steamer at
Southampton and thought themselves quite men ;
THE FAMILY CONSTELLATION. Ill
and Sandy, who had unconsciously been thinking
of pantomimes and the Crystal Palace, and plan-
ning various amusements suitable to a school-boy
of ten or eleven, suddenly realized that this young
Tom would be a man, at any rate in his own
estimation.
It would be, Sandy thought, like getting back
the same Tom who left him twenty years ago, and
another who might be a bit changed and twenty
years older.
CHAPTER X.
ONLY FOR A FORTNIGHT.
A FFAIRS at Purton Street were all going
-~JL smoothly. Mr. Brand was working with
an industry surprising to see, rising early, sitting
up late, never to be seen without a palette on his
thumb and many smears of paint on the velvet
coat. Sandy felt a little bit distrustful of this
ardor, which seemed too spasmodic to last ; and
he never went into No. 37, or opened the studio
door, without a presentiment that a reaction might
have set in, and that he would find Louis Brand
stretched at full length on the divan by the studio
fire, with his heels considerably higher than his
head, and a newspaper in his hand, and his palette
and brushes tossed into a corner, and his picture
turned with its face to the wall.
But, at any rate, so far his fears had not been
realized, and when he hinted the advisability of
moderation in work, as less likely to lead to ex-
haustion of energy, Louis Brand looked reproach-
fully at him, and said something about his mother-
ONLY FOR A FORTNIGHT. 113
less girls supplying a stimulus that could never
fail in its effect ; and Sandy was silent, only won-
dering in himself that the sweet mother's face had
not been the same stimulus all the past years when
Louis Brand had been idle.
Pen too was proving herself a most capable little
housekeeper, and 'Liza was everything that could
be wished, and rapidly acquiring the airs of an
old and valued servant. There were, of course,
occasional little rubs, where 'Liza did not show the
deference that sensitive young mistresses are apt
to expect, and exercised her private judgment too
freely on such matters as the quantities of meat
to be ordered, or the sort of pudding that was to
appear at dinner. Sandy was always very sym-
pathetic, but, being a man, he could not quite
enter into the pangs that these trifles inflicted on
Pen's dignity, and he was also inclined to take a
broader view of housekeeping expenses, and to
feel that tears were wasted over a greasy butcher's
book when the weekly amount came to a few more
pence than was expected ; and to think that if
people ate more of one thing, they were likely to
eat less of another, which is a very difficult fact for
young housekeepers to grasp.
Sandy used to declare that he could reckon the
amount of the weekly bills by the lines on Pen's
8
114 PEN.
forehead, as she drew her eyebrows together in an
anxious, little frown ; and he carried on the joke so
far, that Tre actually grew to believe it was a fact,
and to fancy she could make out figures on Pen's
forehead under the rings of hair that strayed over
it as if to protest that she was nothing more than a
curly-headed child still, and not a sober, anxious
woman, with all the cares of housekeeping and re-
sponsibility on her shoulders.
Sandy took all sorts of precautions on the chil-
dren's account for the fortnight that he should be
away ; it was to be a fortnight at the very outside,
ten days, or even a week perhaps, would see him
back again, and not much harm could happen in
that time. He laid in what seemed to Pen a mag-
nificent store of small additions to the commissariat
department, cakes and biscuits, chocolate and pot-
ted meats ; and he would dearly have liked to have
left a small sum of money to help out the weekly
allowance, but he had a vivid remembrance of Mrs.
Brand's face one day when the barrenness of the
land had become very conspicuous, and Sandy's
hand, without his thinking of it, had found its way
to his pocket. The color had rushed into her
sweet, pale face, and there had been a silent, elo-
quent deprecation in her eyes and hands, that
needed no words to drive it home to his very
ONLY FOR A FORTNIGHT. 115
heart. Even presents in kind must be kept within
certain limits limits that were tacitly understood
between them, though Mrs. Brand had none of
that want of generosity which is shown even more
distinctly by the dislike of receiving than by grudg-
ing in giving. And now she was gone the same
feeling remained with Sandy, strengthened by the
conviction that it was better for Louis Brand to
feel the responsibility on his shoulders, especially as
it seemed to inspire him with such unusual activity,
though sometimes it caused Sandy quite acute pain
to resist producing a coin out of his pocket, that
might have cleared away the lines from Pen's fore-
head and set everything straight.
He gave 'Liza a good talking to before he went
away; and I strongly suspect he gave her some-
thing besides a talking to, as people are not apt to
manifest enthusiasm for the givers of mere words,
or to talk of " 'an'some is as 'an'some does," and
"parties as is perfick gentlemen," when alluding
to them.
"I shall be back in a fortnight," Sandy said
at least those, I think, were his words, for Tre was
clinging round his neck and his voice had a muf-
fled sound occasionally " but if you want me
which, of course, you won't or if anything hap-
pens and why should it ? send round to my
Il6 PEN.
lodgings, and Mrs. Jones will know how to get
at me, and when I come home when I come
home " and actually the great stupid Scotch-
man's voice shook and trembled as if home were
something tender and beautiful to him, and not
shabby, cheap lodgings in Dalston, hard by Purton
Street, and two little motherless girls " when I
come home it will be warm weather, and we will go
out for a long, long day in the country, and catch
butterflies, eh, little Tre? "
It was only to Tre he talked ; with Tre that he
made plans of what they would do on his return ;
with Tre that he arranged sundry little matters of
business, such as the halfpenny every other day to
be given to a crossing-sweeper in whom they were
mutually interested ; but he was looking at Pen all
the time Pen with one of father's socks drawn
over her hand and a large darning-needle going
backwards and forwards laboriously, if not very
scientifically, looking so small and so very childish,
in spite of, or rather in consequence of, the big
armchair in which she sat, and the overflowing
work-basket, and the heap of tradesmen's books,
and the bunch of keys.
She was too busy with her darning to look up,
or perhaps she could not quite trust her eyes to
keep as steady and composed as befits the head
ONLY FOR A FORTNIGHT. 1 1/
of a household, and to hide the bitter feeling of
loneliness that was filling her heart, at the pros-
pect of even that fortnight without Sandy. It
seemed like another parting from mother, as if
she and the flower-covered grave and the sunny
funeral were farther off now that she would have
no one but Tre to talk to about them ; it was
a long day's march into the wilderness, away
from the Promised Land, that day that Sandy
went.
It was a relief when the parting was over and
Sandy had gone off running, pretending he should
be late for the train, and leaving Pen engaged in
comforting Tre, whose grief was of a loud and de-
monstrative character, and whose age permitted
of her feelings being expressed without any at-
tempt at self-restraint, lying face downwards on
the hearth-rug and kicking in answer to well-meant
attempts at consolation. What a tremendous relief
it would be in after years, sometimes if we might
do this roar for the very disquietness of our
heart, and kick out right and left recklessly, with-
out regard for appearances or the shins of our
sympathizing friends, whose words sometimes give
us such exquisite pain.
" It will only be for a fortnight at the very out-
side," Sandy kept saying to himself. "It shall
1 1 8 PEN.
be only a fortnight at the outside. Even if Tom
and the boy want to loiter about on the way, I
am not obliged to stay with them. I will be back
in a fortnight ! What can prevent? "
And perhaps it was the rattle and noise of the
Strand, as his hansom clattered into Charing Cross
Station, that prevented his hearing the answer to
this question of the future ; or perhaps the future
mercifully keeps its counsel and is silent when
we question it.
" What can prevent? "
" Circumstances."
He had found no difficulty in making arrange-
ments for this fortnight's leave of absence from his
office. Indeed the senior partner, with what Sandy
felt to be quite officious good-nature, had suggested
a longer holiday, and had treated the assurances
that Sandy would be back punctually at the end
of a fortnight in a light and airy way, as if it were
of no consequence ; instead of insisting on his
return at a given date, which would have been
a convenience for quotation to Tom in case of a
wish for delay. Sandy was in high esteem with
his chiefs; the other clerks enviously attributed
it to the fact that it was known that Maclaren
had plenty of private means, and did not care
about keeping his situation at all, and would resign
ONLY FOR A FORTNIGHT. 119
it any day if it interfered with his plans. They
used to say that Maclaren might do pretty much
as he liked, and do things that would have cost the
other clerks their situations, which situations meant
to them their bread and butter, and with some of
them the bread and butter of a wife and a couple
of babies, which is not bread and butter that can
be lightly dispensed with.
It certainly is a remarkable fact that what is
of little value to a person is not likely to be lost,
a truth which each one can illustrate from his own
experience, remembering how the empty purse,
or broken pen-knife, or pocket-handkerchief with
a hole in it, or cracked teacup sticks by you and
turns up in the most extraordinary manner, through
all sorts of changes and chances ; while the well-
lined porte-monnaie, or sharp blade, handkerchief
from a new and expensive set, or Dresden cup,
comes to grief or disappears in a manner little
short of miraculous. And it is the same, if you
come to think of it, with other possessions of ours
our dignity, our reputation, our health, our life,
the less one thinks of them the less danger we seem
to run of losing them.
So perhaps the other clerks were right, and the
amiability of the chiefs to Sandy was owing to the
fact that he did not care a snap if they were amia-
I2O PEN.
ble or not, and not to be attributed in any way to
eighteen years and more steady service and punc-
tuality, and general, unobtrusive capability of doing
work, which are by no means invariable character-
istics of the genus clerk.
CHAPTER XI.
COMING BACK.
IT was circumstances that prevented Sandy from
finding his way back to London and to Purton
Street, as he had firmly and confidently intended
and expected, at the end of a fortnight. Circum-
stances are stubborn things ; you hear, to be sure,
of people rising superior to them ; but I think it
is really the circumstances that raise the hero, just
as they press another down, without any apparent
weakness or fault of his own. Circumstances are
against some people all through life, standing in
the way of all their cherished plans and hopes
and ambitions ; and some we speak of as the sport
of circumstances, as they seem to be tossed up
and down, hither and thither, like driftwood on a
stormy sea. We are apt to consider circumstances
as cold, hard, unresponsive things, often pitiless
and relentless, against which we fling ourselves in
useless vain struggles with the inevitable ; to which
we must needs submit with bitter, grudging acqui-
escence. We cannot always see, any more than
122 PEN.
Balaam could, the angel of the Lord standing in a
path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side
and a wall on that side, or regard circumstances
as David did " The hills stand about Jerusa-
lem ; even so standeth the Lord round about his
people."
The circumstances which prevented Sandy from
coming back to England at the time fixed were
first of all the breaking down of the engines in the
steamer on which Tom and his son were coming up
the Red Sea, something very trifling, part of the
gear overheated, or a defective bolt in that myste-
rious region where bright steel elbows work, and
wheels turn, and darkened faces look up with a
glow on them from the furnaces, and there is a
throbbing and quivering of hot air, and a pervad-
ing smell of oil. So Sandy found a telegram
awaiting him at Brindisi, to say that they should
have to stop at Suez or Port Said for the next boat,
which would be in a week's time ; and there was
nothing for it but to wait, which Sandy did in
much discontent and unwillingness and heat, and
many flies and mosquitoes in a big barren hotel,
where they were used to people coming and going,
and did not at all lay themselves out to make the
place delightful to people who stayed longer.
There were a few fellow-sufferers, who were also
COMING BACK. 123
awaiting the arrival of the steamer, but Sandy was
in no mood to be sociable or even sympathetic,
and he only exchanged uninterested glances from
over the elderly English newspaper which he held
continually before his eyes, though he must have
had its contents pretty well by heart.
No doubt casual observers set him down as
quite a typical English tourist, as he sat at the
table d'hote stiff and unsociable, and ate his dinner
in solemn silence, except when he ordered any-
thing of the polyglot waiter, in very distinct Eng-
lish, looking hard and distrustfully at the dishes
handed to him, as if they might contain unholy in-
gredients that would stink in the nostrils of British
subjects.
It would have surprised these lookers-on if they
could have beheld the transformation that would
have been effected if the chairs on either side of
him had been occupied by Pen and Tre ; and I
think Sandy would have been quite as much sur-
prised himself to find what a thoroughly amusing
place dirty, little Brindisi had become all of a sud-
den if he could have looked at it through the
medium of Tre's young eyes.
He could not speak a word of Italian, and his
only experience of foreigners were the decidedly
shady ones he occasionally came across in the
124 PEN -
City, or in the artistic society affected by Louis
Brand. He had a suspicious feeling that all the
picturesque groups and graceful postures, the "little
bits " as Louis Brand would have called them, that
he saw at every turn in his aimless wanderings
about the narrow, dirty, little streets of the town,
and on the quays, were got up for effect, and had
something stagey and unreal about them, like a
scene in an opera, or the arrangement of models
for an artist. The groups of chattering women
in the market with their gay-colored skirts and
handkerchiefs and bright eyes, the bronzed men,
stretched asleep in the sun in graceful attitudes of
perfect repose an utter abandon of laziness such
as is never attained by the most indolent of Eng-
lishmen the lizards, darting hither and thither
on the stones, on which the maiden-hair fern grew
in every nook, the clear outlines, the lovely broad
shadows, even the unclouded blue sky up above
the solemn gray olive-trees, and the broad, sunny
stretch of the azure Mediterranean, this unappre-
ciative, sulky Englishman looked at merely as he
would at a sufficiently well-painted drop-scene,
which is down a trifle too long and retards the
progress of the serious business of the piece.
And at the end of that week at Brindisi, another
telegram came to say that young Tom had fallen
COMING BACK. 125
ill, and that they were at Port Said, and that
Sandy must come on by the first boat. And at
Port Said young Tom nearly ended his journey
for good and all, and lay for weeks so near this
life's terminus, that neither Sandy nor old Tom
could spare many thoughts for anything else.
They met over the lad's sick-bed as if they had
never parted. I think the first words Tom said
to Sandy were " Hollo, just hand me that cup ; "
and Sandy to Tom, " He wants another pillow ; "
and I am sure if during these first few days
Sandy had been asked if Tom had altered, he
could not have told you ; and it only dawned on
him after some time that his brother was bald,
a fact that was patent to the most superficial
observer.
Their meeting was very different to that between
Mrs. Brand and her sister, though the separation
had been longer ; but oceans and continents,
mountains and rivers, are nothing compared to
silence and estrangement, to separate hearts that
may even be beating side by side.
If young Tom had died, old Tom would have
gone straight back to China. He was wrapped up
in the lad, and if death's chill hand had stripped
that wrap off him, and left him cold and shivering,
just Tom Maclaren without wife or boy, he would
126 PEN.
have had no heart to clothe himself with fresh
interests, but would have sunk into old age at a
time of life when to many men life is only just
beginning.
But young Tom got better, not well all at once,
of course, after so serious an attack ; and it was
a very scarecrow young Tom that his father and
Sandy brought back by slow stages, very helpless
and dependent, given to sudden and unaccount-
able relapses, and clinging to Sandy as much as he
did to his father. Whenever there was a talk of
Sandy leaving them and going on alone to Eng-
land, there was always a bad night or a rise in
temperature, which brought old Tom anxious and
apologetic to Sandy's bedroom, where, hesitatingly
and dubiously (for Sandy had grown ridiculously
fond of this long, large- eyed, young Tom, and was
sorely torn in his mind), he was beginning to pack
his portmanteau and let his thoughts fix themselves
on Purton Street, and his departure had to be
postponed.
He had heard two or three times from Louis
Brand during the first fortnight of his absence ;
and had received two little letters from Pen, which
he read and re-read, trying to make out meanings
between the lines of stiff, unformed writing and
stiff, unformed expressions. They were such very
COMING BACK. I2/
childish letters, it was quite a surprise to Sandy,
remembering how in many ways she had the man-
ners of a grown-up girl; but on reflection he
guessed what was indeed the fact, that Pen had
never written a letter in her life before, and that,
though it was not a case of squaring her elbows
and leaning her cheek on one arm and putting her
tongue out, as her sisters in a lower rank might
have done, still writing the letters was no less a
work of great mental difficulty, and took a length
of time that would appear almost incredible to
most school-girls of her age, who carry on a volu-
minous correspondence with the greatest facility.
She had never been separated from her mother till
death did them part, so she had never had that
best of educations in the art of letter-writing, cor-
respondence with a mother ; nor had she indeed a
single written word of love of her mother's to read
over and treasure. Neither had she ever written
to her father ; for when he was away from home,
her mother had always written to him long, closely
written sheets, too full of her love for him, and of
praises of Pen, and of all the comfort she and little
Tre were to her in his absence for the girl ever to
get a sight of them. So she had no models to go
by; and when she sat down with her heart full
of all she had to tell Sandy, she found that she
128 PEN.
had not the pen of a ready writer, and that the
thoughts froze on her pen into dull, little, meaning-
less phrases, about father being well, and Tre well,
and that she hoped Sandy was well, and was enjoy-
ing himself, and was coming home soon. She did
not even quite know how to begin her letter ; she
had always called him. Sandy, but somehow it
looked rude and familiar in black and white, and
she tried once on the blotting-paper how " Dear
Mr. Maclaren " would look, and found it was
impossible.
The ending was simplified by Tre, who desired
to send kisses to Sandy, as 'Liza had shown her
the best way to transmit those articles by post in
the form of a flight of little crosses, which filled up
all the space remaining.
After these two letters he did not hear again,
though he wrote two or three times ; but letter-
writing did not come easy to Sandy either, and
day after day he hoped to be able to write and fix
the day for his return ; and sometimes he thought
that his return was so near that it was hardly
worth writing, and that he might say all he had to
say much more comfortably in the armchair at
Purton Street, with Tre on his knee and Pen on
the little stool looking up at him.
Two months actually slipped away in young
COMING BACK. 1 29
Tom's illness and relapses ; and when at last he
was really better and was established in an hotel at
Grindehvald, palpably getting stronger every day,
and being made a great pet of by the energetic
young ladies with nailed boots and alpenstocks,
who abounded, so that Sandy felt he could well be
dispensed with ; and when even Sandy's portman-
teau was packed, and his place engaged on the
omnibus to take him down to Interlaken, en route
for Purton Street, a fresh circumstance quietly
rolled in the way, and postponed his return for
another two months.
This circumstance was none other than Sandy's
own illness Sandy who had never known a day's
illness in his life, except those childish maladies
in which, as I have said, he and Tom always in-
dulged at the most inopportune moments he,
who had never had to consider fatigue, or cold, or
east wind, or wet clothes or unaired sheets in any
connection with himself or his health, now was
seized with a shivering fit, as he and Tom sat
smoking in the veranda of the hotel; and, after
vainly trying to prevent his teeth involuntarily per-
forming the part of castanets, was obliged to con-
fess that he was seedy, and that he had better turn
in early.
And next morning, after a night that seemed as
9
1 30 PEN.
long as the whole of his life put together, and after
superhuman efforts to get into his clothes, like a
reasonable human being, and walk across the room,
the floor of which seemed rising and falling before
his bewildered eyes, he was obliged to confess that
he did not feel much like travelling twenty-four
hours on end, and that he must give it up for a
day or two.
Which day or two spread out into a month or
two, so that it was nearly the end of August when
he found himself turning the well-known corner
into Purton Street, round which he had run in his
pretended hurry to catch the train four months
before in April.
He was rather a gaunter edition of the Sandy
who went away, and his clothes, which were never
of very fashionable cut, looked looser and less well-
fitting even than usual. He had found it difficult
even now to get away from the two Toms who
had taken to tyrannize over him during his illness,
and to treat him, as he protested, as if he were
unable to take care of himself, and were either an
inexperienced child or a decrepit, doddering, old
idiot. So young Tom was hardly to be persuaded
to let this helpless individual go on to London
while he and his father remained at Folkestone.
Where was the hurry? He would be roasted
COMING BACK. 131
alive ! There would not be a soul there at that
time of year.
Young Tom talked as people so often talk, as if
London in August were a howling wilderness with
grass growing in the streets and wild beasts roam-
ing about the deserted thoroughfares. Perhaps he
had more excuse for talking in this way than most
of us have, having only lately come within a
thousand miles of the great metropolis, and only
judging from hearsay ; but it is very curious how
we, who ought to and do know better, persistently
carry on this fable. It is true perhaps that in the
park, or in the more fashionable streets and squares,
and at the clubs, a difference may be seen ; a good
deal of cleaning and painting is going on, the
shutters are closed in many of the houses, and
shady women in bonnets have taken the place of
the gorgeous flunkeys. But outside these fashion-
able regions (and what a small part of London
they form after all !) it would be difficult to tell it
was not the season still, from the unabated throng
of vehicles, with a fair sprinkling of carriages and
pairs, from the shops, where business seems going
on as merrily as ever, with the usual crowd of ladies
at the counters, and the weary shopmen seeking to
satisfy their never-ending wants. It is as difficult
for nervous, old ladies to cross at Regent Circus ;
132 PEN.
there is quite as much employment for the police-
man in rescuing them from the horses' feet ; and
as you pass eastward the difference is even less
apparent ; the tide of business seems to rise as high
in the city, there is as much noise and bustle and
rush ; there are as many anxious, engrossed faces
hurrying to and fro, as though there were no such
things as broad harvest fields and breezy moors, or
stretches of sunny sea, or leafy woods full of quiet
whispers and soft shade. Still eastward, or rather
northeast, in Dalston, times and seasons make
little difference in the monotonous dulness, though
perhaps August may be a trifle more so ; there is a
parched, dusty look about everything, bits of paper
appear on the scene and accumulate in corners,
and, when a sultry, little breeze springs up, whirl
and frisk about the pavements ; children swarm in
all the side streets, showing, I suppose, that it is
the Board School holidays ; and in less respectable
streets than Purton Street, swings are established
across door-steps, and hop-scotch diagrams are
chalked out on the pavement. But Purton Street
being more dignified had not descended to such
practices ; and when Sandy turned the corner that
August evening, there was no one to be seen in the
length and breadth of the shabby, little street but
a mangy- looking cat, slinking along with that
COMING BACK. 133
abject want of dignity and self-respect that only
cats can sink to. Purton Street had never struck
Sandy before as being so dreary and mean. Per-
haps it was in contrast with the Swiss mountains,
the fair, white Jungfrau flushed, as he had seen it
only three evenings before, with the sunset, and
the great Eiger, with its noble outline. But after
all a palace might have looked mean after such
grand masterpieces of the great Builder, and how
much more little, dingy Purton Street, with its
sooty bricks, from which the mortar was crumbling
away, and its grimy paint and blistered doors.
Sandy had gone first of all to his own lodgings,
and had found changes there to account for his
having had no letters forwarded to him for some
time past. Mrs. Jones had fallen ill, and a niece
had come to nurse her, who, ultimately, had been
left in charge, while Mrs. Jones had gone off for
change of air to a brother " as lives over Southend
way and keeps a teagarding with little harbors and
a founting as plays beautiful, and tea and shrimps
at ninepence a 'ead."
The niece was garrulous, and poured forth a
flood of information as Sandy stood in the little
sitting-room, turning over the letters on the mantel-
piece, "which Mrs. Jones lef word was not to be
meddled with were it ever so, knowing as 'ow you
134 PEN.
was that particler." Bills and circulars most of
them, but two of them bore Pen's writing, and one
of these bore a post-mark of not many days before.
Well, at any rate she was living, for a dread had
come into Sandy's heart that the long silence might
mean the great silence ; and if he, strong man as
he was, had been ill and near death, why not that
little, delicate, fragile girl?
He did not open the letters, but put them in his
pocket, he could not read them while that woman
was clacking away in his ears ; and besides, he
.could reach Purton Street in two minutes and hear
and see for himself a million times better than the
most elaborate and exhaustive letter could possibly
tell him. So he interrupted the niece in a pro-
longed explanation of how the lamp-glass got
broken, and went off to No. 37.
As he approached it, he heard the somewhat
tremulous strains of a concertina ascending from
the open kitchen window, and stopped to listen,
with a smile, wondering if 'Liza had added this to
her other accomplishments during his absence.
" Hold the Fort " was the tune, played in rather
a jerky and laborious manner, and, at the end,
Sandy heard Tre's voice and it sounded very
small and clear and soft say, " Mr. Mangles, when
I 'm better will you teach me to play a tune ? Pen
COMING BACK. 135
says little girls always learn to play the piano.
Mother did when she was a much littler girl than
me. I 'd like to learn to play just one little tune
because, don't you know? I think in heaven peo-
ples have to play a good deal, and it would be
so bad not to be able to play one bit. I asked
Pen how it would be for poor, little girls that
could n't play and had never been taught, but she
did n't seem to know about it ; and I 've been
thinking, Mr. Mangles, that they could n't be angry,
could they? if it wasn't no fault of the little girls,
and that perhaps there might be a sort of a bar-
rel organ no, not the one with the monkey," a
shade of regret came into the voice here, "just
to begin with, and the angels would teach them
by and by."
And a gruff voice answered, " Ay, there 's no
knowing how things '11 turn out, but I '11 learn you,
my pretty, as many toons as yer like if I 'm here
long enough, bless yer ! "
Sandy's smile at the thought of 'Liza's new ac-
complishment had died away with Tre's first words.
"Mr. Mangles, when I'm better " Who was
this Mr. Mangles who was established in the front
kitchen? some friend of 'Liza's?
Sandy's exhortations to that young woman before
he went away must have had very little effect if a
136 PEN.
male friend or relative could be making himself at
home in this way ! "When I 'm better " there
was no doubt the voice was weak and languid that
spoke the words, very different from the voice that
had chattered and laughed on the beach at Monk-
ton, as they jumped from rock to rock ; and the
words gave the impression of heaven and the angels
seeming very near to the child, without the bright
interval of happy life that used in former talks
with Sandy to lie between her and that other
world.
A step nearer brought him in view of the
kitchen window, though the two within were too
much occupied to notice him. The areas in Pur-
ton Street are narrow, and not furnished with area
steps or even a ladder, and there are bars in front
of the kitchen windows which seem scarcely neces-
sary when there can be but little temptation to
burglars in such houses. The window was pushed
up as high as possible, and close to it lay Tre on
an improvised sofa of chairs and pillows, a very
shadow of the Tre Sandy had left sobbing on the
hearth-rug. There was a pot of rather spidery
musk on the window-sill outside, and, as Tre
talked, one little hand was playing with the leaves,
sending up to Sandy's nostrils the sweet, spicy
fragrance which in after years^ always recalled to
COMING BACK. 137
his mind that coming back, and the little, wasted
hand playing with the yellowish leaves, and the
outline of the wan, white cheek turned on the
pillow towards the old man, who sat beside her,
without his coat, and with the concertina rest-
ing on his knees while he took a prolonged pinch
of snuff, an operation watched by Tre with rapt
attention.
Not an attractive- looking old man this sup-
posed relation of 'Liza's ; bald, with gray eye-
brows nearly meeting and tufted, so that Tre used
to wonder the ends did not get into the small
gray eyes that looked out from under the pent-
house.
There were lines all over the face, accentuated
by the snuff which lodged in all convenient nooks
and crannies. There was a good deal of snuffy
gray whisker and growth under the chin, and a
tuft in the middle of the chin, which seemed to be
a particularly convenient resting-place for snuff,
and which wagged up and down when he played
the concertina, and, in difficult passages, quivered
in a manner interesting to behold. Of course
these details of his appearance were not taken
in at the first glance by Sandy, if indeed he ever
quite grasped them ; but to Tre there was a sort
of fascination in the lined old face, and she could
138 PEN.
almost have drawn a map of the wrinkles and
crow's-feet which formed isthmuses and promon-
tories and capes and headlands over it.
Sandy might have stood longer looking down
at the kitchen window, if a step coming along the
street had not roused him, and, looking round, he
saw that it was Pen. The weary, languid step
along the baking pavement told him a good deal ;
the shabby, dusty, black frock, and the brown,
rusty crape on her hat, and the small, gloveless
hands were very eloquent ; but the little face with
its great, shining eyes surrounded by dark circles,
and the mouth drawn into such lines of patience,
the pathetic mixture of childishness and most
unchildlike care written on it, were more than
Sandy could bear to look at ; and a few strides
took him to her, and her hands were grasped in
his, and he was asking, in rather a husky voice,
what the meaning of it all was, and what was the
matter.
The color had rushed into Pen's face and a
momentary brightness into her eyes, but she shook
so that she had to cling to Sandy for a minute
before she could go on, and the surprise seemed
to have taken away her breath, for she gasped out
little, short, breathless sentences in answer to his
questions.
COMING BACK. 139
"Tre has' been ill And you were away
And 'Liza has gone-"
" And who is Mr. Mangles? "
A gasp. "Well you see the rent was not
paid and "
" Oh ! " said Sandy.
CHAPTER XII.
WHAT 'S TO BE DONE ?
BY and by, when Sandy was established in that
old armchair in the parlor in which my
story began, with Tre in his arms, such a very light
Tre, not half the weight of the laughing thing that
had clung round his neck on the breakwater at
Monkton, he heard more about it, principally from
Tre, for Pen, though she was sitting in the old
place for confidences, the little stool by his side,
was not so communicative as of old, and every
now and then would seem to draw in and stop the
words that were pressing to be spoken.
Sandy fancied sometimes too that she was lis-
tening for some sound outside, for she would break
off in the middle of a sentence and start and shiver
if a step stopped on the pavement, but perhaps it
was only a symptom of the nervous, overstrained
condition in which she evidently was.
" What has been the matter with Tre? "
" She was sick, and always tired, and her head
ached, and she used to talk all night, and she could
not eat anything."
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 141
" Did you have the doctor? "
" No " A gasp stopped Pen's voice, but Tre
took up the story, with a certain wise, reasonable
tone that made Sandy's heart ache. " We could n't
have Dr. Bell, for he had n't been paid for coming
to see mother, and we did n't like to send for any
one else ; but Pen asked the chemist what he
thought was the matter with me, and 'Liza says
he 's better than any of the doctors, and knows a
lot more, and cured her toothache as easy as any-
thing, when she 'd been to ever so many doctors
and they could n't do nothing."
"What did he say?"
"He said," Pen resumed, "that it was most
likely low fever, for there was a lot about, and
that we 'd better ask a doctor, but he made up a
draught."
"And," interrupted Tre, "he sent me a rose
that had come up from the real country, because
he remembered me coming to the shop when
mother was ill. It was such a beauty, and I 've got
the leaves still and they smell nice ; and when I 'm
better I shall go and thank him, and say it made
me sleep at night and not think of tigers so much."
" But why did 'Liza go away? "
"She wanted some money at Whitsuntide and
there was none."
142 PEN.
" But," pursued Tre, " it was n't that, though she
said it was hard not to be able to have a new bon-
net and go out in a van like every one else ; but
she asked father one evening when he was funny,
and he was angry, and took hold of her and put
her right outside the~street door, and she 'd only
her cap on, and it was raining, and he would n't
let her in, and she had to run round to the milk-
shop and wait till father had gone to sleep, and
then we let her in again, but she just packed up
her box and went away; she said she wouldn't
sleep another night in the house. Father was
quite surprised to find she was gone next morning,
when me and Pen could n't make the kitchen fire
light anyhow."
Pen had got up from her seat and gone to the
window, and stood with her back turned; and
Sandy could see that she had flushed up to her
ears, all over the slight throat that showed so fair
above the shabby, black frock, and that Tre's
words, every now and then, produced a quiver in
her as of actual physical pain.
As for Sandy he did not notice much what the
child was saying; one word had caught his no-
tice and he stopped at that, turning it over in
his mind, " funny " ? " one evening when he
was funny " ? What was the meaning of that?
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 143
" How long is it since 'Liza left? "
" Oh ! a long time ago, before I was ill, and
then we had Bridget, and then Mrs. Jobson, just
for the day you know, and she always wore a bon-
net, and then we went on a bit without any one,
and then there was Alberta, but she went away the
day Mr. Mangles came ; she called him such a
funny name, what was it, Pen? and said she
would not demean herself to wait on such as him.
But he 's such a nice, old man, Sandy, I don't see
why she should have disliked him so, and he
does n't want any one to wait on him, but he does
lots of things for us, and lights the kitchen fire,
and cooks and carries up the water, and plays the
concertina beautiful."
Just then, as if in illustration of the usefulness
of Mr. Mangles, a knock came at the door, and a
tea-tray made its appearance with a plate of water-
cresses of strong, vigorous growth, arranged round
a salt-cellar in the approved style. Only the tea-
tray, and a pair of rather snuffy hands holding it,
could be seen, as Mr. Mangles was bashful at ap-
pearing before company ; but Pen went to receive
it from him and conveyed it into the room ; and
though Tre called to him to come in, he could not
be prevailed upon to do so, but retired down the
kitchen stairs with some indistinct remarks about
144
" folks wanting their teas," and " them creases
being pretty middlin'." .
" It 's very kind of him," Pen said with a tremu-
lous voice, " he 's not obliged to do it, and Alberta
says these men sometimes are so horrid. She said
they always were ; but he has been so good to us.
I think he was sorry for Tre, you know, and he
has some grandchildren he 's fond of, and he says
Tre 's just like one of them. But I don't think
she is, for he came one day and he was such an
ugly, little boy, with one eye larger than the other,
and a dirty nose."
" He 's a very good, little boy," Tre interrupted
reprovingly, being superior herself to pleasing ap-
pearances and such superficial attractions, " and
very clever, and knows a lot more than I do ; he
goes to a Board School, and to the Wesleyan
School, on Sundays, and he belongs to the Band of
Hope, and wears a blue ribbon and a medal."
Tre was evidently deeply versed in the history
of the Mangles family, and was prepared to retail
it for the edification of Sandy, never doubting for
a moment that it would be as interesting to him as
it had been to her ; for she had beguiled several
long sultry afternoons, or sleepless evenings, with
listening to slow stories of Juliarann, as lived over
Radcliffe way, and worked in the jam factory,
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 145
which seemed to Tre, when she was not feeling
sick, a pleasant walk of life ; and of the young
man she was going to marry, who was a chucker-
out at a public-house, and broke a man's nose once
with a knuckle-duster.
There was a great deal that occurred in the
course of the narrative that Tre did not the least
understand, but this in no way diminished the
interest but rather added to it ; which is a fact, I
always think, that should be more borne in mind
by the writers of literature for the young, who take
such elaborate pains to simplify and explain every-
thing, and leave nothing to be wondered over, and
no possible wrong conclusions to be arrived at
when, after all, the wondering and the wrong con-
clusions are half the fun of it.
I am afraid none of the party did much justice
to Mr. Mangles' " creases." Tre had no appetite,
and was too excited and talked too much ; and
Pen was nervous and distracted, sometimes acutely
conscious of what the child was saying, sometimes
evidently with her attention wandering, and with
that air of listening for some other sound that
Sandy had noticed before ; while as for Sandy, it
was not dark suspicions of snuff about the water-
cresses that kept him from partaking more freely
he would have swallowed it by the half- ounce if
146 PEN.
scattered by the hand of any one who had been
good to the children but his thoughts were also
distracted by little Tre's talk and by Pen's nervous
silence, and by wondering over those words " when
he was funny." Except for that there had been
no mention of Louis Brand till tea was nearly
over, when Sandy asked carelessly, " Where 's the
signor? " taking care not to look at Pen as he said
it, but conscious all the same of a quiver and a
sudden necessity for clearing the tea-things away.
" He 's not come in yet," Tre said, sinking her
voice almost to a whisper, as if it were a subject
not to be discussed openly, " he don't come in
sometimes till long, long, long after I 'm in bed ;
and once it was quite light when Pen came up to
bed. It seemed so funny undressing by daylight,
but we could n't go to sleep ; Pen's eyes were so
wide open, were n't they, Pen ? as if they never
would close up any more, so we did n't try, but
talked about mother, and Pen said that was better
than going to sleep."
The tea-things were all collected, by this time,
on the tray, with more clatter and noise than Pen's
actions were wont to occasion, and she lifted the
tray to carry it out. Sandy half got up to set Tre
down and take the tray, which looked too heavy
for the slight arms, but he wanted a word with Tre
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 147
alone, and this seemed his only chance, so he let
Pen carry the tray out, and then quickly asked the
question he was longing to have answered, but
which he could not ask before Pen, as he intui-
tively felt that it would touch her on the very
quick.
"What did you mean by father being funny? "
The child was silent, drawing her brows together
with a puzzled, thoughtful look.
" I don't quite know ; Pen won't let me talk of
it. But I Ve been thinking, Sandy, that perhaps
it 's the low fever father has, for Mr. Timmens said
it was so much about. He 's just like me some-
times in the morning, and his head is awful bad,
and he can't eat nothing, and he don't like the
leastest noise. And Pen says / was sometimes
funny at night, and talked nonsense, and did not
know what I said, and sometimes I cried, and
sometimes I laughed and sang, but I did not re-
member anything about it when I woke in the
morning, you know, Sandy, was n't it funny ? And
I Ve been thinking father must have caught the
low fever too, don't you think so, Sandy?"
That was all there was time for then, happily
for Sandy's sincerity, as Pen came back and Tre
seemed to understand that, in her presence, the
discussion of father's ailments had better drop.
148 PEN.
Sandy had a lot to tell them on his side of his
travels and adventures, and of young Tom and
their illness, and of the lovely Italian lakes and
the beautiful Swiss mountains ; he was quite sur-
prised to find how much of the beauty he had
taken in and appreciated, while at the time it had
hardly seemed to give him any pleasure at all.
But it all seemed to squeeze out of him now that
Tre's arm was round his neck and Pen's big eyes
were raised to his ; while all the time he talked,
his mind only half followed his words, while the
other half was pondering and trying to devise some
scheme for setting matters right, as there was no
doubt they were wofully wrong.
It was late when tea was ended, and they sat
on in the dusk by the window, while Sandy talked
and Tre grew silent, and her head pressed on
Sandy's shoulder, and the face he looked down
on in the twilight was very white and tired -looking.
Once he proposed to light the gas, but Pen hastily
discouraged the idea, and Sandy guessed that it
had been cut off and said no more ; but it puzzled
him to think why Pen was evidently so anxious
that he should not stop when she took Tre up to
bed. She was plainly in a fever of anxiety to get
rid of him, and yet she had been most unfeignedly
pleased to see him, and more than once she had
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 149
said it was all right now he had come back, and
that she had so much to tell him. But now she
begged him with tears in her eyes not to wait till
she came down again, and, when he said that he
wanted to see the signer, she assured him that
it might be very late before her father returned,
and that next morning would be much better
altogether.
She was so troubled and anxious about it that
at last Sandy reluctantly agreed to go after he
had had a word or two with Mr. Mangles, and he
went down into the kitchen for that purpose after
carrying Tre up to her room.
Mr. Mangles was smoking very strong tobacco,
and the kitchen, which had been sacred to 'Liza
in old times, was now reeking with smoke, enough
to make even Sandy's well-seasoned eyes smart and
prick. In answer to Sandy's questions he said,
"Yes, I were put in a week to-day. Sprigg and
Bateman 's my governors, and Mason 's the landlord,
lives round the corner in Beeston Street. Oh, it
ain't for much, bless yer ! and things could be
arranged in a jiffy. Mason ain't the man to be
'ard on a gent as is down on his luck ; but he 's
a bit pinched himself is Mason, 'ouses don't pay
nohow, what with run-away tenants and repairs con-
stant, and all this 'ullabaloo about drainage and
150 PEN.
water as parties makes nowadays, so he 's forced
to look after his rent pretty sharp, he is, and small
blame to him. But lookey here, if you 're a friend
of the guvnor here, you just give him a tip to mind
what he 's up to with them two ; " and Mr. Mangles
gave a significant jerk with the stem of his pipe
over his shoulder, in the direction of the staircase,
to indicate Pen and Tre. " Ain't he got any aunts
or mothers or such like belonging to him as could
take 'em clear away out of this ? it 's just killing of
'em ! They ain't the sort to rough it ; there 's chil-
dren as takes to debt and botheration like ducks
to the water and thrives on it, and there 's others
as it just kills, and that 's them," said Mr. Mangles
oracularly, resuming his pipe and drawing at it
fiercely, till his nostrils grew round and black and
distended. " See the guvnor first thing to-morrow?
And get me out? All right, sir, very good,
nothin' 'd please me better ; but I'm dashed if I
knows 'ow they '11 get along without nobody to do
nothing, them two little gals as is ladies every inch
of 'em, and did oughter have servants awaitin' on
'em 'and and foot. Why, bless yer ! I 've seen
duchesses' and countesses' children as could n't
'old a candle to 'em," ended Mr. Mangles, warm-
ing into eloquence, and having no doubt had vast
experience among the children of the aristocracy
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 151
perhaps when he was in possession at the ducal
residences.
This was a difficulty which Sandy had not cal-
culated upon, having been used to regard a man in
possession as an unmixed evil, and not as a sub-
stitute for a maid-of-all-work, but it was arranged
by Mr. Mangles remembering " a sister-law " of
his daughter's, " as is a widder woman and could
come in and do for them, as 'as a kind 'art and
'ave brought up a fambly of her own."
That being settled, Sandy took his leave, thank-
ing the old man for his kindness, but rendered still
more uneasy in his mind by Mr. Mangles' knowing
wink and meaning gesture when Louis Brand's
name was mentioned, and his evident unconcealed
opinion that their father's house was no place for
the little girls.
He was conscious too that Pen was listening for
his departure on the landing above, having come
more than once, in her restless impatience, to the
top of the kitchen stairs while he was talking to
Mr. Mangles ; and he almost fancied he heard a
sigh of relief as he opened the street door and
passed out into the sultry August night in Purton
Street.
He had accommodated ^himself to Pen's wishes
so far as leaving No. 37 was concerned, but he had
I$2 PEN.
not undertaken to go home and to bed, nor even
to leave Purton Street, nor to go out of sight of the
door ; and he had firmly made up his mind not
to do so till he had seen Louis Brand go in, and
satisfied himself as to whether the fears and sus-
picions about him, that Tre's words and Pen's looks
and Mr. Mangles' hints had aroused, were founded
on fact.
The clock of a neighboring church struck nine
soon after he came out, and he heard it strike ten
and eleven while he paced up and down the streets
in the immediate neighborhood, never going far
from Purton Street, but always coming back every
few minutes to see if the light were still burning in
the sitting-room window, showing that Mr. Brand
had not yet returned. He did not pass and repass
the house, as he knew that the window was open,
and that Pen's ear would catch the sound of his
footstep, and she would guess his object ; but once
or twice he drew near enough to look in, and see
her as she sat at the table, leaning her head on her
hands, having pushed aside the book and work-
basket, which could not occupy her thoughts, a
sad, desolate, little figure, which made Sandy's
heart bleed as he watched it.
Once as he stood there, he heard Mr. Mangles'
voice urging her to go up to bed.
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 153
" Doey now ! where 's the good of setting up ?
I ain't near done my pipe, nor sha'n't adone till
the guvnor comes in, and I '11 see to him all right.
He were just about put out t' other night, a-finding
you a-waiting up, and, bless yer ! I 'm a deal more
used to parties like that, and knows how to hu-
mor 'em. Wants to tell him about the gentleman
having called in, doey ? Why ! you 'd a lot better
wait and tell him to-morrow."
Sandy could not bear to hear any more, and
turned away; but Mr. Mangles' persuasions evi-
dently failed in their object, for when next he
came in sight of the window with the undrawn
blind, the little figure still sat there, with the head
leaning on the hands, in the same attitude of
weary patience, and Mr. Mangles had retreated to
the kitchen.
Sandy had been travelling all day, and was not
by any means as strong as he had been before his
illness ; and young Tom would certainly have been
strengthened in his impression, that Sandy did not
know how to take care of himself, if he could have
seen him, hard upon midnight, pacing the streets
about Dalston ; but Sandy forgot his own weariness
and that he had had no dinner, and partaken very
sparingly of Mr. Mangles' watercresses and bread
and butter. The distant roar of the great city was
154
sinking into the comparative silence of London
night, and, in the streets along which he paced, the
passers-by grew few and far between, augmented in
numbers and noise for a short time after eleven
when the public houses closed. He noticed also
at that time a reappearance of children about the
streets, and the sound of babies crying, and, on
questioning a group huddled in a doorway, he
found that these sadly wise and experienced small
creatures had found it was better to be out of the
way when their elders came in, till they had settled
down to their heavy drunken slumbers, and the
children could creep back to the corner of bed or
floor allotted to them, without fear of a kick or a
blow.
Up above, the August sky was clear, and the
great white moon looked down as quietly and
calmly on all the crime and cruelty of London,
as Sandy had seen it three nights before on the
lake of Thun's unruffled breast, and on the fair
snow mountains ; but Sandy's heart was too anx-
ious and troubled to get any calm from the cold,
unfeeling thing, that sailed so serenely through the
small clouds ; the very gas-lamps seemed more
sympathetic with their red blinking light.
It was close on twelve when at last a footstep
turned the corner into Purton Street, familiar and
WHAT'S TO EE DONE? 155
yet unfamiliar to Sandy. It was Louis Brand's
step, but with a difference, and Sandy's worst
fears were realized as he followed him along the
street, and noticed how heavy and uncertain it
was, and how he swerved more than once and
caught at the railings to steady himself. He
stopped once in the light of the street lamp and
Sandy saw his face, the face that Theresa Brand
loved so well, and died loving and trusting; the
face that Pen and little Tre looked up to as their
father's face, and were bidden by God's law to
honor. Heaven pity them !
Sandy's heart was so hot within him that he
could hardly restrain himself from seizing this
wretched man, who had been his friend, by the
arm, and telling him the disgust and indignation
he felt, but he resisted the impulse, and watched
his unsteady progress till he reached No. 37 and
made an ineffectual attempt to open the door with
his latch-key.
The next moment the door was opened, and
Sandy heard Louis Brand's voice in some indis-
tinct exclamation of anger, and, involuntarily,
Sandy started forward and was on the doorstep
as the door closed, in time to hear a cry, a sob-
bing, broken-hearted, desolate, little cry. Could
he have struck her ? Oh ! never, never ! that
156 PEN.
tender, gentle, little soul with her mother's sweet,
appealing eyes !
He seized the door and set his knee against it,
as if he would have forced it open, and then his
hands dropped to his side, with the feeling of the
uselessness of such interference. He could hear
voices on the other side of the door, Mr. Man-
gles' among them ; and he stood there listening
till the sounds died away, and the lights in the
downstairs windows were extinguished, and a pass-
ing policeman turned his bull's-eye suspiciously
on the tall figure that stood still on the doorstep
of No. 37.
He could not have struck her ! Sandy felt that
he could have murdered that one-time friend of
his if he could have believed this possible ; but it
does not need an actual physical blow to hurt
a tender creature like that to the very death.
"There 's others as it just kills," Mr. Mangles had
said, " and that 's them."
"What's to be done?" Sandy asked himself.
"What can I do?" And, as he asked himself
the question, there came back to him the memory
of an early spring morning in Covent Garden
Market, with the chill dawn struggling into the
sky, and Pen's childish face, white and sad then,
but not with the desperate sadness of to-day, look-
WHAT'S TO BE DONE? 157
ing at him across the white lilies and pure azalea,
as pure and as innocent as the flowers, and saying,
" I was thinking, Sandy, that if I were older you
might have married me, and taken care of Tre and
me instead of father."
CHAPTER XIII.
A WOOING.
" T NEVER heard tell of such goings on ! " Mrs.
JL Jones's niece said next morning, " and him,
as aunt says, was as steady and reg'lar in his 'abits
as old Time, not a-comin' in till close on one in
the morning and waken me up, as 'ad only jes'
drop off through the teethache, as ain't 'ad no rest
for nights, and then not a word but mumbling
something about 'avin' forgot his latch-key ! And
never going to bed all night neither, but a-trampin'
up and down over'ead, and the bed not slep' in,
and wantin' his breakfas' at eight o'clock as negro
slaves ain't nothin' to it ! "
Sandy was hardly accountable for his actions
that night, for in those few hours of pacing up
and down, he had gone through as much mental
exercise and emotion as some men spread over
several years of their life, had read the whole
first volume of his life's romance at one sitting,
instead of a page now and a chapter then, as is
the ordinary method in studying that enthralling
A WOOING. 159
work. He had to rearrange his whole life and get
it into proper perspective from this very new point
of view ; to get used to ideas that were so marvel-
lous and new, and yet so intoxicatingly sweet, that
he could hardly realize that such enchantment could
befall him ; to try and put all the facts impartially
before himself and judge what was right and fair
and best for every one ; struggling to be quite rea-
sonable, when always hitherto he had seemed to be
reasonable without a struggle ; to put aside a voice
that he had never in all his life 'been conscious of
hearing before, and that now, on a sudden, had
waxed so wondrously eloquent, that it made his
heart beat, and his pulses throb, and his eyes grow
dim. All his life hitherto he had seemed a spec-
tator .of other people's joys and sorrows, and now,
all at once, he was the actor, and was aware of
strong individuality and personal wishes that were
almost passionate in their strength, and rose-colored
dreams, not for others, or rather not only for others,
but for himself.
It seemed like an incredible, almost absurd fairy
tale at first, the idea that he, Sandy Maclaren, who
was getting to regard himself as quite an elderly
man, and was certainly so regarded by young Tom
and his father, should have a wife, a sweet child-
wife like Pen ; should have the right, not only to
160 PEN.
meddle in her concerns now and again, and put
in an occasional helping hand to avert some of the
catastrophes that threatened her, but to take her
clear out of all the trouble ; that it should be his
duty and his right to shield her from the least
breath of sorrow or uneasiness ; to compass her
about with sweet observances ; to make her life
all sunshine, and lead her to forget poverty, and
anxiety, and care.
This child-wife should have as long a time of
happy girlhood as she pleased, before she settled
to the more serious happiness of married life, she
should be like other girls be beautifully dressed,
and go to balls and dance, and ride in the Row.
He racked his brains to remember the sort of life
his young lady cousins lived, at the time when he
used to frequent their houses in the holidays, and,
with stupid want of observation, had hardly no-
ticed their butterfly comings and goings, except to
think them silly and tiresome.
If only some prophetic feeling had told him
then that twenty years or so later he should want
such experience for his wife, what a store of useful
information he might have hoarded. Now the
only thing that remained with him was a confused
memory of the scent of stephanotis, and of cob-
webby dresses that seemed to tear if school-boy
A WOOING. l6l
feet came within half a mile of them, and of a
French maid chattering volubly as she gave fin-
ishing touches. It was not easy to imagine little
Pen with her rusty, black frock, and her fair, ruf-
fled plaits, and her serious face in such circum-
stances, and, after all, Sandy hardly wished such a
transformation in his Cinderella.
It should all be just as she liked ; if she had a
fancy for further education though, to Sandy's
mind, this was quite unnecessary she should
have masters and teaching of the best. She should
travel and see beautiful scenery and pictures ; she
should go to the opera ; she should be presented
at court. The reader will observe to what a length
Sandy's madness had reached when he had come
to planning a society life for Pen, a life which
was of all things the one he had hitherto most
loathed.
He rummaged about in an out-of-the-way box
which he had not overhauled for years, making
much noise in the process over the long-suffering
head of Mrs. Jones's niece, for some rings of his
mother's, which had been sent him soon after
Tom's marriage, when his father had made a divi-
sion of his wife's jewelry between her two sons.
Sandy had never set much store by the things, and
accordingly they had never been lost or stolen.
1 62 PEN.
Among them was her wedding-ring, such a little
one ! Sandy recalled having heard that her hands
were very small, he could just get the top of his
little finger into it, and, as he held it there, a
warmer feeling for the dead mother came into her
son's heart than he had ever been conscious of
before, and a wish that she were living to take his
little bride into her arms and love and bless her ;
and he kissed the little dull gold circle, partly for
the mother's sake, partly for Pen's.
He was taking it quite for granted, you will say,
that Pen would agree to marry him, and I do not
think that, among the many doubts and uncertain-
ties that occurred to his mind, he ever reckoned on
any unwillingness on Pen's part.
That eight-o'clock breakfast, which was so com-
plained of by Mrs. Jones's niece, would have been
asked for two hours earlier if it had not been for
severe self-restraint on the part of Sandy ; there is
a good deal to be done and seen after on the eve
of one's wedding-day, especially when the propo-
sal has yet to be made and the parents' consent
obtained.
He had meant to see Mr. Mangles' employers
and get the immediate removal of that worthy, but,
on reflection, he came to the conclusion that, since
the children (he could not all of a sudden get out
A WOOING. 163
of thinking of Pen as a child) would leave Purton
Street the following day, and little Tre was evidently
fond of the old man, and Pen had got used to his
presence, and he was kind and helpful, it might be
as well to let him remain for another day.
The first thing to be done was to see Louis
Brand, and that was not to be accomplished very
early in the morning at the best of times; and
when Sandy knocked at the door of No. 37 at
ten o'clock he hardly hoped to find him visible,
and was surprised to find he was in the studio,
which Mr. Mangles irreverently described as " fust
floor back;" and Sandy made his way up there
unannounced.
" For heaven's sake, shut that door, and don't
make such an infernal noise ! Why, hollo ! Sandy,
is it you? Where on earth have you sprung from?
And what 's become of you all these months ? Oh !
you need n't trouble to look at that," with a dreary
laugh, " there 's nothing new ; " for Sandy, with
hardly a glance at the prostrate figure of Louis
Brand lying stretched on the divan half dressed,
had crossed the room to the easel and turned the
canvas, which stood upon it with its face to the
wall.
Nothing new indeed ! it seemed to Sandy that
the pretty, little view of Monkton Street with the
1 64 PEN.
old-fashioned, irregular houses and groups of fish-
ermen coming down with their nets, was exactly
at the same stage as when he had looked at it
last, four months ago, when Louis Brand was
working enthusiastically at it, with hardly time to
spare to answer the questions Sandy asked him.
Sandy, standing there in grim silence, looking
down at the pretty, unfinished picture, was not a
soothing sight to any one with a racking headache,
and nerves all strained and out of tune, and a
feverish mouth and an irritable brain. In such
circumstances it is almost unendurable to have a
personified conscience standing there, an accusing
angel, as represented by Sandy in his dusty coat,
with his eyebrows drawn together, and his mouth
shut in such grimly eloquent silence.
Louis Brand irritably tossed over on his side, to
be out of sight of the tall figure.
" Oh, yes ! all right ! I know ! Don't hit
a fellow when he 's down ! "
Still silence. Sandy was realizing how long this
must have been going on, how long Pen must have
been suffering and fretting and sorrowing, almost
ever since he went away ; all those four months of
beautiful spring, and fair early summer, and hot
midsummer weather, no more work done, no
more money coming in if only he had known !
A WOOING. 165
By and by he came and sat down in the arm-
chair by the divan, and Louis Brand drew himself
up into a sitting posture with his back against the
wall, and his knees up to his chin, and his hands in
his hair, which, Sandy noticed, had streaks of gray
in its blackness.
There was something so hopeless in his appear-
ance, so despairing and pitiful, that the flame of
anger that had been burning in Sandy's heart
against him all night died down into the ashes of
pity, and, after a few minutes' silence, he stretched
out his hand and laid it on Louis Brand's shoulder.
"Why didn't you tell me, old fellow? Why
didn't you let me know?"
And Louis Brand's head sank lower, and the
bitter, stubborn feeling of resentment which had
been growing in him since Sandy came in, and the
excuses, and the sense of somehow having been
hardly dealt with and having more to contend with
than other men, and having, after all, not been. so
much to blame, melted away, and he saw himself
pretty well as he really was, without the pretences
and allowances and excuses with which we are all
of us in the habit of decking out ourselves before
our indulgent mind's eye. I do not fancy if Sandy
had hurled at him all those indignant reproaches
that had been turning on his lips the night before,
1 66 PEN.
Louis Brand would have felt half so utterly abject
and worthless and inexcusable, as he did with the
touch of Sandy's pitying hand on his shoulder.
Perhaps when the books are opened, the pity in
the Judge's eye may not be the least of that day's
terrors to the guilty soul.
He was in no condition for any reasonable con-
sultation as to what had best be done ; at one time
he grew hysterical and Sandy was afraid that Pen
might hear or that he would have to call in help ;
but then he quieted down into silence that seemed
almost the stupefaction of despair, and Sandy
hardly knew if he listened or understood, as he un-
folded to him that plan he had been maturing, as
he tramped up and down his bedroom in the night,
and which sounded still more strange and improba-
ble, as he put it into words in broad daylight ; it
seemed like telling a dream, with all its grotesque
abruptness and want of sequence, facts and persons
shaken up together anyhow, like bits of glass in a
kaleidoscope, which form now and then pretty and
striking combinations.
" Do as you like ! Do as you like ! " was all
that Louis Brand said. He expressed no surprise,
he made no objection. It was certainly an unique
way of receiving a proposal for a daughter's hand ;
and when Sandy got up at last to go and find Pen,
A WOOING. 167
it was with an unsatisfactory feeling of doubt
whether the consent Louis' Brand had given, was
anything more than a mechanical agreement, with-
out any consciousness of his meaning.
"You understand?" he turned back to ask,
" there is no mistake about it ? I am going to ask
little Pen to marry me to-morrow, and I shall take
her and Tre right away. You understand? You
have no objection? You can't suggest any other
plan?"
And then Louis Brand lifted his head, and looked
up with his haggard, sunken eyes, from which all
the brightness had gone, and said : " Their mother
has gone, the children had better go too. It 's all
right, you can do as you like."
And then his head fell again, and Sandy left him,
sitting there with his head on his folded arms, rest-
ing on his knees.
There was no one in the sitting-room below, and
the only sound to be heard was Mr. Mangles
whistling and knife-cleaning in the kitchen, so
Sandy made his way down there, and found him
dividing his attention between the knife-board and
a small saucepan on the fire, from which issued a
savory smell when the lid was raised.
" Good-morning ! Where are the young ladies? "
asked Sandy.
1 68 PEN.
Mr. Mangles jerked a carving-knife over his
shoulder. " The little un have had a terrible bad
night, she 'ave, and she Ve just drop off and I 'm
gettin' a drop of broth ready agin she wakes. She
brisked up when you come along, as has a deal of
sperrit, but I could see as she was pretty well done
when I step up to say good-night; she couldn't
'ardly do more than kiss 'er little 'and, bless 'er !
I ain't 'ad no notice from my chiefs to clear out, I
don't know if you Ve called round there ? I got
my traps together thinking as 'ow I 'd be fetched
most likely fust thing."
" No," said Sandy. " I have been thinking it
over, and I thought that could be settled to-morrow.
I'm going to "and here the intended bride-
groom stammered and grew red to the roots of his
hair; it seemed to him almost as ridiculous an
idea, his marrying Pen, as if Mr. Mangles had pro-
posed to marry Tre, so he ended the sentence
" take the children away to-morrow, and I expect
Mr. Brand will leave too. Is Miss Pen upstairs?
I '11 go and find her."
Pen came to the door, with her finger to her
lips, when he knocked, and she showed him little
Tre, lying half across the bed, which was all tumbled
and tossed about with the night's feverish disquiet.
There was no doubt the child looked very ill, as
A WOOING. 169
she lay in this exhausted sleep, with her eyes only
half closed and the dry lips drawn and parched,
and her arms tossed over her head, in an unnatural
attitude, quite unlike a healthy child's sleeping
grace.
Sandy stood a moment, looking down at her,
trying to keep what he felt from appearing in his
face ; for Pen was scanning it, with that craving to
read a brighter opinion than she could persuade
herself to feel.
The little bedroom was so hot, the sun was beat-
ing on the window, and the blind had come partly
unnailed from the roller, letting in a shaft of dusty
sunlight, which was only kept from falling full on
the child's face by the bed-curtain being pinned
across, thus also keeping out the air such as it
was, coming from the dust-bins and back-yards of
Purton Street. A vision rose before Sandy's mind's
eye of some big, airy bedroom, with trees outside
the open window, and the wide sea beyond, and
fresh, sweet, life-giving air blowing in, and dainty,
little, white beds, and a motherly, responsible-
looking nurse, under whose skilful treatment fever
and exhaustion might be chased away, and happy,
bonnie, little Tre come back, with bright eyes and
round, rosy cheeks and merry laughter.
And then Sandy took Pen's hands in his and
I/O PEN.
drew her away from the bedside, out on to the
little landing, and closed the door gently behind
them. Such a dreary, dingy, little landing, with
the stair-carpet ragged and worn, and one of
the paltry, little banisters splintered and broken ;
with the paint pealing off the hand-rail and the
skirting-board, and a jagged strip torn from the
wall-paper, which would have had the intelligent
public believe that houses in Purton Street were
built of huge blocks of glistening gray granite
divided by blue mortar. The whole scene in its
meanness and unattractiveness was photographed
on Sandy's brain, to be recalled in many a year to
come as holding all that earth has of the most
beautiful, for which he would gladly have resigned
the most splendid surroundings, luxury, picturesque-
ness, everything, to stand once more with Pen's
little hands in his and with the wonderful growing
feeling swelling, strengthening, living in his heart.
Oh, reader, it is a great mystery, this feeling of
love ! I wonder why we all are so apt to make a
joke of it, when Saint Paul himself spoke of it as
so great a mystery that it might be even compared
to the union between Christ and His Church !
"Pen," he said, "little Pen" and, while he.
hesitated, the sounds of Mr. Mangles' birdlike
whistle rose from the kitchen, and swish, swish
A WOOING. I/I
from the knife-board, " I am years older than you,
and you are hardly more than a child, and I am
not a bit the sort of man to take a girl's fancy, but
I want to know if you will marry me, and let me
take you and Tre right away, and try to make up
to you for all the trouble and wretchedness? I
think you like me, Pen you and Tre have always
seemed to like me, and I am fonder of you than
all the world besides, and my whole life shall be
given to make you happy."
She was silent, gazing up at him with wide,
startled eyes, that seemed fascinated by his rapid
words, so different from his usual slow speech.
Her hands in his turned quite cold, but she did
not take them away, and he drew them nearer and
pressed them closer, as he went on speaking.
" If there were any other way, I would not ask it
of you, and it will be merely a form, over and done
with in half an hour, and then we will forget all
about it, and you shall still be little Pen, still a
child as long as ever you like. I will be so patient,
dear, till some day some day "
And then his voice shook and broke, and his
eyes took up the tale of what might befall when
that some day came.
And then, of a sudden, he flung her hands from
him and leaned against the wall, and hid his face
1/2 PEN.
from the clear eyes that looked so simply up to
his.
"Oh, my God! am I doing right? Isn't it a
wicked, cowardly thing I 'm doing, a thing for
which some day you may turn and reproach me
for having spoilt your life and done you a grievous
wrong, that your sweet, young life should have
been tied to mine, before you knew what it
meant?"
She was trembling a little now, and the color
was coming and going in her cheeks, and her
hands were twisting together, and her eyes had
dropped with a sudden feeling of shame, some
utterly new feeling, that there might be more in
her eyes than even Sandy should read all at once,
for the voice of love to the pure, young heart is as
the voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the
cool of the evening to Adam and Eve, and it is
ashamed and seeks to hide itself.
In those few minutes, since Sandy closed the
door on little, sleeping Tre, before Mr. Mangles
had come to the end of that elaborate tune he
was whistling, before the knives of the family, few
as they were, had been polished to his satisfaction,
little Pen had crossed the boundary, "where the
brook and river meet, womanhood and childhood
fleet." Sometimes the transit takes years, some-
A WOOING. 1/3
times it is made in a moment, as there was a
moment when marble Galatea blushed into liv-
ing, loving womanhood under Pygmalion's eyes, or
when the sleeping Princess woke from her long
slumber at the Prince's kiss.
" You shall still be a child as long as ever you
like," Sandy had said, not knowing that even as
he spoke, childhood had gone and that little Pen
could be a child no more.
"Will you trust me, little Pen?" he said, and
for all answer she put her hands in his. -
CHAPTER XIV.
THE WEDDING-DRESS.
I WONDER if there was ever a bride, how-
ever young or however old, who thought
nothing of her wedding-dress. Certainly, if such
there have been, too wise and experienced or too
young and innocent to think of such a trifle, Pen
was not one of them ; for Tre was greatly mystified
and slightly provoked by Pen's persistent divings
into drawers, and burrowings into heaps of long-
disused garments, in out-of-the-way boxes, till at
last a certain white muslin frock was brought to
light, which Pen had worn more than a year before
at her Confirmation ; a frock of which every tuck
had been run, and every simple little fold arranged,
by her mother's hand. I believe it is the fashion
now for grown-up young ladies to speak of their
outer garments as frocks ; they used in their moth-
ers' time to be called dresses, and in their grand-
mothers' gowns ; but this little white Confirmation
garment of Pen's was no elaborate Parisian con-
fection or arrangement of some exquisite man-
THE WEDDING-DRESS. 1/5
milliner, but a frock pure and simple; certainly
simple as far as any fashion or style was concerned,
and as pure as was to be expected after a year of
even the most careful stowing away in London.
It was crumpled, to be sure, but that was easily
to be rectified with an iron ; but Pen's eyes, as she
held it up before her, detected a shortness in the
skirt, which no shaking or pulling would obviate.
It was a humiliating fact, but Pen could not dis-
guise from herself, that she had grown since that
frock was made, and that there was nothing for it
but to let down a tuck to make it wearable.
Now I do not think that in all the various cir-
cumstances attending weddings, it can often have
been necessary for a bride to let down a tuck in
her wedding-dress, so I think I may claim original-
ity in this respect for my little heroine ; though she
felt bitterly ashamed of it herself, and her cheek
grew quite hot and flushed, as she took out the care-
ful, little stitches that mother had sat up so late to
finish, the night before the Confirmation.
Tre was very restless and fretful that day, and
more than once Pen had to stop in her unpicking,
and take the feverish, uneasy, little thing in her arms,
and press the hot cheek to hers, and rock gently
backwards and forwards, crooning out some tune,
a Moody and Sankey hymn or a music-hall song
1 76 PEN.
or an operatic bit made familiar by the organs.
Nothing seemed to quiet Tre so well as this, and
it would sometimes lull her into a doze, not sound
enough however to last, if the song or the move-
ment ceased for a moment.
In the afternoon Dr. Bell came in, having been
sent by Sandy ; and he stopped quite a long time,
and looked so kind and pitiful, and scolded them
for not having sent for him sooner, as if in the
course of his practice he did not, day after day,
come across cases as piteous and heart-breaking as
these two little, motherless girls.
" Mr. Maclaren tells me he is going to take you
both away to-morrow if little Miss Tre here is up
to the journey." He wondered a little at the sud-
den rush of color into Pen's listening face, and it
recalled to his memory a similar manifestation on
Sandy's part, when he mentioned this arrangement,
but this coincidence did not lead him within a
hundred miles of the right conclusion. " She cer-
tainly would not be up to it to-day," he went on,
" but this sort of feverish attack is often intermit-
tent, and you tell me she seemed quite herself
yesterday, so I dare say to-morrow may be a favor-
able day. If necessary precautions are taken and
not too long a journey is attempted, I think it can
be managed without risk. But I will come in and
THE WEDDING-DRESS. 1 77
see her to-morrow morning, and will send in a
draught," etc., etc.
"Is Sandy going to take us away, Pen?" Tre
asked when Dr. Bell had gone. " Where are we
going? Is it to that place he told us about, where
they eat macaroni and the lizards run about?
It 's so far off, Pen, and I don't like macaroni,
and Mr. Mangles thinks lizards bite. I think I "d
rather stop here. I like near places," said the
weary, little soul, aching all over, and restless, and
wanting something without knowing what. " And
oh, Pen, it 's not naughtiness ! it 's not naughti-
ness ! but I do so want to see the monkey with
the red jacket ! " And then she cried, protesting
all the time it was not naughtiness, and yet half
believing it was, and that little girls who cried for
monkeys must be naughty; knowing at any rate
that she was very wretched, and wanted something
very much, dreadfully, and she thought what she
wanted must be the monkey, unless it was some-
thing else, perhaps mother.
She was too ill and tired and confused in the
head even to be curious and ask questions ; and
Pen could only comfort her and cuddle her up
against the heart that was so full of its new happi-
ness, painfully full as if it must burst with the
greatness of it.
1/8 PEN.
She had told it to mother. For the last few
months, when there had been so much trouble
and no one but Tre to tell it to, she had found
it a great relief, when Tre was in bed at night,
to kneel down by the little bed and hide her
head in the bedclothes, and pour it all out,
aloud sometimes, sometimes to herself, but al-
ways fancying it was to mother she was telling
it, and always keeping up the same loving little
pretence that mother and daughter had preserved
between them about all that concerned Louis
Brand, it was never his fault, he was never to
be blamed, some excuse must always be found
for him.
But that morning, when Pen came back into
Tre's room, after that talk with Sandy, which had
changed her from a child to a woman ; when she
found the little sister still asleep, and, kneeling
down, buried her face in the old fashion to tell
what had happened to mother, that mother seemed
so near, so distinctly present, that when the touch
of a hand came on her head, it did not the least
surprise or frighten the girl, nor would she have
believed if you or I or any number of reliable
witnesses had testified that it was only Tre's fe-
verish, little hand that had rested there and was
then tossed away again.
THE WEDDING-DRESS. 1/9
" She knows about it and she is pleased," Pen
told herself, with firm conviction.
Sandy had given her his mother's wedding-ring.
Small as it was, it had slipped easily on to her finger
such a childish-looking finger, that had never had
a ring round it before, since the bead-rings which
she used to thread when she was almost a baby.
He had meant to take it back again as a guide
for the size of the ring he would buy ; but, after
the manner of rings, especially on unaccustomed
fingers, it did not come off as easily as it went
on, and just as she was trying to remove it, she
fancied she heard Tre calling, and went away, still
with the ring on her finger, and there it remained,
while she told mother; and, after that, till Tre
woke, she sat and looked at her left hand, with a
little laugh lurking round the corners of her mouth,
that were wont to droop so sadly, and with a
tinge of color in her cheeks that were usually
so pale and wan. Do what she would that hand
would not look natural with the wedding-ring on
it, would not look a bit like mother's hand, on
which the wedding-ring, loose as it became in
her long illness, seemed as natural a part as
either of the slender fingers or the blue veins.
She took it off by and by, and put it on the ribbon
she wore round her neck, suspending a little
180 PEN.
locket Sandy had given her on her eighth birth-
day, with a lock of mother's hair in it.
There were so many interruptions to the un-
doing of that tuck, from Tre's restlessness and Dr.
Bell's long visit, and from various little household
occupations, that could not be dispensed with
even on the eve of a wedding-day, that it was not
till the evening that the ironing could be accom-
plished, and then not till Tre was in bed ; and Pen
more than once debated in her mind if her black
frock could not be made to do. But at last Tre
was quiet and inclined to sleep, and father, when
she knocked at the studio door, called out that
he did not want anything and that she had better
go to bed.
She stood outside the door, with the crumpled
muslin frock on her arm, feeling a little sore and
sad. Sandy had told her that father knew all
about it and was quite satisfied, and painful as
were some of the memories of the past months,
there was nothing but love in her heart just then,
and she wanted to tell him so and yet she did
not want to worry him. It was comfort untold
to know he was there and seemed to have no
intention of going out, so there would be no
weary vigil for her with the usual grievous hu-
miliation of his return. He had been out for
THE WEDDING-DRESS. l8l
a short time in the afternoon, and her heart
had sunk when she heard him leave the house,
but he had come back in a very few minutes,
and had again shut himself up in the studio, and
had hardly answered when she came to the door
before.
"May I come in- and say good-night?" she
asked.
" Good-night," was the reply.
" May I come in?"
No answer, and she went in with her heart
beating.
He was sitting just as Sandy left him on the
divan, with his knees drawn up and his head rest-
ing on them. The small benzoline lamp on the
mantelpiece gave a dull, smoky light, that only
seemed to make the darkness of the room more
apparent, and, through the uncurtained window,
the moon threw a long, cold line of light across
the room, on to the empty easel from which the
picture had fallen, or been thrown, face downwards,
on the floor.
Pen came across and knelt by his side, timidly
putting her arm over his bowed shoulders.
"Father," she said, "won't you kiss me?"
He looked up at her with eyes that hardly
seemed to recognize her, and then disengaged her
I 82 PEN.
arm from his neck and turned her head so that the
light of the lamp fell upon her face.
" Theresa ! " he said, " sweet wife ! lady-love !
good-by ! " And then he seemed to recollect him-
self, and he turned almost fretfully from her. " Go
to bed, child," he said ; " I never thought you
were the least like your mother. Why should you
look at me with her eyes?"
Then he relapsed into his old position, and she
sat by his side, frightened by his strange manner
and afraid to irritate him by further words.
Presently she ventured to lay her hand on his
shabby velvet sleeve, and he started, as if he had
been unconscious of her presence, but he spoke
more kindly.
" There, run away, little Pen ; it can't be helped,
and the sooner you forget all about me the better,
but you can tell her Oh ! there, never mind !
Good-night." And he kissed her and pushed her
gently away from him, and she v/ent away, still
more sad and puzzled than when she came.
It was rather difficult to explain to Mr. Mangles
the necessity for ironing a muslin dress at nine
o'clock at night, when there was no one to sit up
for, nor object in devising work to fill up time
which otherwise might have hung heavy on hand.
Moreover the kitchen fire was low, and the iron
THE WEDDING-DRESS. 183
itself not easily to be found, having been used of
late mainly for keeping the scullery door open.
Pen too was not a great adept at the art,
not having had much experience in the higher
branches, and it made her nervous Mr. Mangles
looking on and offering advice between the puffs
of his pipe ; as one of his numerous daughters
having been a clear-starcher and getter up of fine
things, he was well acquainted with the tricks of
the trade.
Pen was contemplating retiring upstairs to be
out of the way of the tobacco smoke and advice ;
but Mr. Mangles was so good-natured in finding
the iron and getting up the fire, that she was afraid
of hurting his feelings and, besides, the iron would
get cold in the transit and would require reheating
at intervals, though to start with she got it so hot
as to scorch the front breadth and raise a blister
on her poor, little thumb.
The ironing would have been a very lengthy
business indeed I doubt if it would have been
accomplished much before the hour at which the
dress would be required next morning if Mr.
Mangles had not volunteered to take a turn at it.
Not that Pen was a helpless, little person by any
means or unused to do such things for herself; but
this evening she was nervous and excited, as was
1 84 PEN.
not unnatural ; and ironing is a thing that should
be done calmly, as indeed most things should ;
and scorching and blisters were the consequence,
and very bright eyes, and a hot patch on either
cheek, and breath coming in a panting, difficult
way as if the next breath would be a sob ; so, when
next the iron wanted heating, Mr. Mangles, who
had been taking in the situation out of what he
called the tail of his eye, kept possession of it, and
gently elbowed Pen out of the way, and turned up
his shirt-sleeves and pushed his hat to the back of
his head, and set to, as if, like his accomplished
daughter, he had been brought up to be clear-
starcher and getter up of fine things to the nobility
and gentry.
And so Pen's wedding-dress was ironed by a
snuffy old broker's man and not a bad job
either, he declared with honest pride, as he wiped
his forehead with his spotted, red pocket-handker-
chief, and surveyed his work lying on the blanket
before him.
"It ain't the fust time as I've tried my 'and at
it when my gal had a 'eavy job on, and Ameliar,
she says, as is fond of her jokes, ' I '11 take you on
reg'lar when I 'm short of 'ands,' says she."
The only thing to which Pen demurred was Mr.
Mangles' habit of spitting on the iron every time it
THE WEDDING-DRESS. 185
was reheated ; but that he assured her was quite
de rigueur, and in no way to be dispensed with or
superseded by any more elegant way of testing the
heat of the iron.
There must have been something suggestive of
weddings and bridal doings about that little mus-
lin frock, simple as it was ; for, somehow, Mr.
Mangles' conversation drifted in that direction
not that he had the very vaguest suspicion that he
was exercising his skill on a wedding-dress; he
would no more have thought of such a thing in
connection with little Pen than he would with a
baby in arms Pen, in her childish, black frock
and hair that had escaped from the pins that fas-
tened it in a coil at the back of her head, and fell,
first of all, in heavy plaits on her shoulders, and
then by degrees gradually untwisted itself into long,
soft strands of silky fineness.
And yet the talk was of weddings, and among
them of this same Ameliar's marriage, the clear-
starcher and getter up of fine things, of whose skill
he had spoken. " And between you and me,
Missy, I believe it were more than 'arf the name
that done it. She could n't abide the name of
Mangles, though she might have 'ad a worser to
my thinkin' ; but washin' bein' 'er trade, as the
sayin' is, folks was fond of jokin' 'er about 'er name.
1 86 PEN.
' Manglin' done 'ere,' they 'd say, or ' Turn the
Mangle,' or 'Mangles 'eavy in 'and,' and such like,
till she were kinder savage, and vowed she 'd
change it afore ever she went into business for
'erself, and 'ad cards struck off, and a notice in
the parler winder. She was mighty well pleased
when she took up with a young feller by the name
of Neville, and she thought it mighty fine, and
said 't were in the peerage and all sorts ; but, bless
yer ! she changed her mind the very first time one
of 'er brothers had a cold in his 'ead Joe were
given to colds in the 'ead, and he turned all 'is N's
into D's, and Neville don't sound so well that way
anyhow."
" Did she marry Mr. Neville? "
" No, she could n't never get over that cold in
the 'ead of Joe's, and she married a man by the
name of Smith, which ain't in the peerage as I
knows on. None on us thought much on 'im, and
as things 'as turned out, we was n't fur wrong ; but
she would n't listen to what folks said, she liked him
and he liked 'er, and that 's enough for 'em in a
general way, as you '11 find out some day, Missy.
Her mother was terrible set against 'im, and she
talked and she talked, but lor ! as I tell her, she
might quite as well 'ave 'eld 'er tongue, but women
can't never learn to save their breath, and they
THE WEDDING-DRESS. l8/
never seems to remember neither as they was just
such another theirselves when they was young.
So the missus just clacketed away from morning
till night, and Ameliar she listened, but I knew by
the look in her eye as it were n't a bit of good.
So I were n't so much surprised when she come to
me one night, after the missus was abed, and I
smokin' my pipe as I might be now, and she says,
quite quiet like, ' Dad,' says she (they called me
' Dad ' when they was kids) , ' me and Fred 's go-
ing to be married to-morrow morning ; we Ve been
called at the church ' (she knew as 't were safe
seeing we was Wesleyans when we was anything,
and never went near the church), ' and he Ve took
rooms for us in John Street.' ' Well,' says I, trying
to speak indifferent like, as if I did n't care a snap,
though she was my youngest and a pretty little
piece, though I say it as should n't, and young too
to think of marryin' right away from me and her
ma "
" How old? " with breathless interest.
" Why, she could n't abeen more 'n eighteen.
' Well,' says I, ' you knows what your ma thinks on
it.' ' Yes,' she says, ' time I knew that, as she
ain't talked of nothing else for the last six months.'
' And I quite agrees with 'er,' says I. ' No, you
don't,' she says, the little, impident hussy ! coming
1 88 PEN.
and kneelin' down and takin' my pipe right out of
my mouth, ' no, you don't,' she says, ' and you 're
just a-goin' to wish me joy ; and say, God bless yer,
my dear.' "
There was a mist gathering in the old man's
eyes, at the memory of the young daughter,
changed many years since into a hard, toil-worn
woman, with a worthless, idle husband to slave
for, and an answering mist rose in Pen's. She was
standing with the ironed dress laid over her arms,
to carry it up without crumpling, and her hair was
all in a tangled silken mass about her neck and
shoulders, and the old man was raking out the
fire.
He was full of those old times of which he had
been talking, and he hardly noticed that Pen, the
child as he called her in his mind, was lingering
still.
" Good-night, Mr. Mangles," she said, " and
thank you." And then, with a sudden impulse,
coming nearer the old man, she added, " Will you
say it to me too, as you did to your daughter,
' God bless you, my dear ' ? "
" Ay, ay ! to be sure I will, with all my heart.
God bless yer, my dear ! "
&
CHAPTER XV.
THE BRIDEGROOM.
"VT 7E agreed, I think, at the beginning of the
* * last chapter, that the bridal dress is a
subject of engrossing interest to brides of all de-
grees and in all circumstances ; but I am inclined
to go further than that, and to maintain that the
costume of the bridegroom is not altogether such
a matter of indifference to him as he would wish it
to be supposed.
Personal vanity had never been one of Sandy's
besetting sins, for obvious reasons, perhaps unkind
spectators might declare : but I do not think that
vanity is, as a rule, at all in proportion to the per-
sonal gifts that might justify it, but rather in the
reverse ratio, and many a man with less personal
attractions than Sandy has fancied himself an
Apollo. Do not imagine from this that I am going
to invest Sandy with all sorts of hitherto unmen-
tioned gifts and graces, as is the manner of many
writers of the present day, who introduce their
heroes as ugly to an almost diabolical degree, and
1 90 PEN.
their heroines as little, plain, uninteresting crea-
tures, but, by the middle of the second volume,
all this is changed ; the hero is, at any rate, a
Hercules of strength, at least a head and shoulders
taller than any one else in the book, has noble
features and a commanding presence, and fine
lines about his well- cut mouth; while the hero-
ine, it appears, has beautiful eyes and a wealth of
golden hair, and a milk-white skin and a graceful
figure, which in ordinary life would go far to make
her a very striking individual, and which surely
must have been apparent when she was first in-
troduced to us as dowdy and plain.
It is certainly rather a temptation to make the
best of Sandy at this juncture of my story ; it would
be so much more interesting if I could make him
a few years younger or less bony and awkward, or
discover that his eyes were really blue instead of
greenish yellow, or that his hair was any color ex-
cept sandy red of a very harsh and stubbly quality ;
but truth compels me to stick to my first descrip-
tion of him, and to represent him as he appeared
to himself in the shop windows as he passed, or in
the huge mirrors by which upholsterers try to take
away any lingering remnant of self-complacency in
the people who pass their shops.
Sandy had never been so painfully conscious of
THE BRIDEGROOM. IQI
his defects as he was that day indeed he had
hardly been conscious of them at all ; he had been
profoundly indifferent as to how he looked or
what men and, still more, women thought of him,
the only people he cared about liked him quite
as much in a shabby coat as in a new one, but
now he became sensitively conscious of his shab-
biness and the want of fit in his clothes and, as
I have said, took surveys of himself in the shop
windows, with much dissatisfaction and vexation
of spirit. He looked with envy at the young men
he met that wonderfully common type of young
man to be met with by hundreds in the City, each
exactly like the others, about five feet six in height,
with a small, neat mustache, closely cropped hair,
fresh complexion, clothes of precisely similar color
and make, flower in button-hole, dogskin gloves,
neatly rolled umbrella and small black bag. Talk
of the difficulty of distinguishing individual sheep
in a flock ! it can be nothing to the attempt to
identify a young man in London.
Sandy would have been only too glad to ex-
change his outward man with any of these ; but it
was quite out of the question trying to alter and
become like them : he was altogether cast in a
different and very much bigger mould, and, after
investing in a new tie and pair of gloves, both of
192 PEN.
which gave him unutterable dissatisfaction and
which he resolved not to wear almost before they
were paid for and crushed ruthlessly into his pocket,
he gave up any idea of improvement in his per-
sonal appearance as hopeless, and turned into
Covent Garden Market to order a bouquet of
white flowers, with such an utter disregard for ex-
pense, that the young lady who took the order
looked more than once into Sandy's freckled face
to see if it were a joke, and, not seeing anything
comic in his expression, felt strong suspicions that
he was a swindler, till the money paid in advance
convinced her of his honesty, when she ultimately
labelled him in her mind as an American or a
lunatic.
Little Pen's wedding was not by any means what
it should have been, but, at any rate, she should
have a bouquet fit for a royal bride. It was to be
delivered at his lodgings by nine o'clock next morn-
ing without fail ; a few shillings more to insure a
punctual messenger was a trifle, and the young
lady was still more perplexed by the address, at a
little street in Dalston, and made Sandy repeat it
many times over before she could be convinced
that it was not some mistake. Before leaving
Covent Garden Market he found his way to the
outside part, frequented in the early morning,
THE BRIDEGROOM. 193
where he and Pen had sat on the shafts of the
wagon, he with the dirty child in his arms, she
with the basket of flowers, and thought of the
words she had said then, so simply and guilelessly
words which had lain dormant in his heart
till they awoke to life and movement the night
before.
In his pocket all this time lay a document from
Archibald Campbell, by Divine Providence Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and
Metropolitan, graciously granting his License and
Faculty for the marriage of "our well-beloved
in Christ " Alexander Maclaren and Penelope
Brand. There was something so wonderful and
dreamlike in the affair, that he stopped more than
once as he passed through the streets to feel that
folded paper in his inside coat-pocket, and would
have dearly liked to open it and look at the names
therein recorded, if he could have found a quiet
corner where he could do so unobserved.
The evening was closing in when he got back
to Dalston. It was only a little more than twenty-
four hours since he had turned the corner into
Purton Street, after his four months' absence, and
had heard the strains of Mr. Mangles' concertina
rising from the kitchen window of No. 3 7 ; but it
seemed almost as if it might be weeks, months,
'3
194 PEN -
even years ago ; he felt so utterly different, with
altogether new prospects opening out before him,
with new feelings beating and burning at his
heart.
He had still to give notice at the church, and
when he reached St. Martha's, a dull, little place
of worship, built in the meagre style of fifty years
ago, he found an old woman just closing the
church after an evening service.
She regarded him at first with some suspicion,
perhaps as having designs on the almsboxes, which
however, I am afraid, do not often contain enough
to make them a strong temptation to burglars ;
but when he explained his errand, she became
more amiable, and allowed him to look into the
dark church, and even to go along the aisle and
stand for a moment in front of the altar, where he
would stand so soon with little Pen. The only
light in the church was from a solitary gas-jet
burning in the entrance lobby, which threw a
gigantic shadow of Sandy in front of him as he
walked up the church, so that one elbow blotted
out the reading-desk and the other the pulpit, while
his head swallowed up the altar and the book-desk
and cushion upon it, and the Ten Commandments
and Lord's Prayer on either side, and the deadness
of the colored window above.
THE BRIDEGROOM. 195
He stood for just a moment in front of the altar,
saying softly to himself, " For better for worse, for
richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love
and to cherish till death us do part." And then
the shrill, cracked voice of the old pew-opener
sounded down the church from the west door,
with that want of reverence that constant famil-
iarity with sacred things so often engenders, " I 'm
just a-going to lock the doors if you 're agreeable
to come out," and Sandy retraced his steps up the
aisle.
There must have been a lingering look of awe
on Sandy's face, a little remnant of the brightness
which does not fade immediately from the face
of one who has been in the holy mount, and which
is noticeable till he puts on the veil of conven-
tionality, for the woman peered up at him with
her weak, old eyes.
" It 's a niceish kind of church, ain't it ? since the
pews was all repainted. If it weren't so terrible
draughty of a winter, as my legs won't stand an-
other such. Yes, sure ! I won't forget thankye
kindly, sir, and many of 'em. I 'm just a-going to
Mr. Roach with the key ; he 's the clerk, sir, and
I '11 tell him at 'arf-past nine punkshal. Beggin'
your parding, sir, maybe it 's your daughter now as
is going to be married? Make so bold, 'avin'
196 PEN.
children of my own and knowin' what a parient's
feelings is. Good-night and thankye, sir."
He had made up his mind not to go to No. 37
again that day, so he sent a note to Pen to say that
he would come at nine next morning, and got a
little boy to take it, while he stood at the corner
of the street and watched him to make sure that
it was delivered. He saw Mr. Mangles open the
door and take the letter in, and then he passed
once or twice in front of the house, where the only
light was in the kitchen window, the blind of which,
however, prevented him from seeing the ironing
going on within. His conclusion was that Pen
was up in Tre's room at the back of the house, and
even the most sentimental of lovers would hardly
care to spend much time gazing at a blind, behind
which the man in possession is smoking his pipe ;
and Sandy was conscious that he was tired, and
that some supper would not come amiss.
Mrs. Jones's niece had nothing to complain of
that night indeed she quite regretted having
" spoken short to the gentleman," and was afraid
that it might be due to this his giving notice to
leave the apartments, " though he spoke very
nice, and said he would give a month's rent, as he
had n't given proper notice, which was 'andsome,
being a weekly lodger. He said as how he were
THE BRIDEGROOM. 197
leaving town next day on business, and his compli-
ments to Mrs. Jones, and he should remember how
comfortable her rooms was, and recommend 'em
to all his friends, and he give me a old ring as 'ad
been his mother's, he says, with some pearls and
some 'air in it, and he spoke so pleasant-like that
really if he 'd been a-going to stay on a bit longer
and aunt 'ad n't been comin' 'ome just yet," and
here she bridled and patted the fringe on her fore-
head into more becoming confusion " there 's no
knowing what might have 'appened ! Though he
ain't what you 'd call good-lookin', still he 's quite
the gentleman and no mistake."
CHAPTER XVI.
THERE 'S MANY A SLIP.
IT was a lovely morning, even in London, even
in Dalston, and the old proverb came into
Sandy's head as he saw the sun on his blind when
he woke in the morning Happy is the bride that
the sun shines on and he smiled at the thought
of what a child- bride his was, and resolved with all
his heart that the sun should shine on little Pen, as
far as he could influence it, all her life through, as
well as on her wedding-day.
He managed to control his impatience till close
upon nine o'clock, and then got into a fever at the
flowers not arriving before the hour he had ordered
them, blaming himself for idiotic stupidity for not
having named an earlier hour for their delivery.
He looked at his watch twenty times in a minute,
he compared it with the kitchen clock, he leaned
out of window to look down the street, he went to
the corner to see if the flowers were coming and
then hurried back, with the conviction that they
had come the other way while his back was turned ;
THERE 'S MANY A SLIP. 199
ultimately he made up his mind that if they did
not come by ten minutes past nine he would give
them up and punish the deceptive keeper of the
flower-shop with some dire vengeance to be in-
vented hereafter, and sat grimly with his watch in
his hand till the hands reached that time, when
he went off in dire wrath and indignation, and had
not left the house two minutes, before the boy
arrived in a hansom, having been delayed by some
misadventure which it is not worth inquiring into
here.
Anyhow Sandy turned into Purton Street with-
out the flowers, trying to smother his anger by
reflecting that no one would be disappointed but
himself, as no one but he knew they were
coming.
But as he turned the corner the flowers and
his anger went out of his head all of a sudden,
and surprise first, and then consternation, took
their place, for standing in front of No. 37 was
a well-appointed carriage and a pair of sleek,
glossy horses, round which was gathered a group
of admiring ragamuffins from the neighboring
streets.
The first impression conveyed to his mind was
that it was one of Louis Brand's mad freaks of
extravagance, and that he had hired the carriage
2OO PEN.
for the occasion ; but this idea only lasted for a
moment, for nowhere in Dalston could such a car-
riage be hired, nor such handsome horses, let alone
the pompous coachman on the box, and the foot-
man who" was conveying a cushion from the house
to the carriage at that moment.
It was not the first time Sandy had seen that
carriage standing there, though it had not been in
Purton Street for more than four months. There
was no mistaking Miss Percival's carriage.
He went on in a dazed way to the house, won-
dering by what fatality she had come there on
that day ; if Louis Brand could have let her know
what was intended, and she had come to protest
against the marriage, as it was incredible that she
could have come to give it the sanction of her
presence.
The door was open, the footman having re-
turned for something else after putting the cush-
ion in the carriage, so Sandy went in, catching
a glimpse of Mr. Mangles' face on the kitchen-
stairs, grinning in high delight and satisfaction,
and making unintelligible signals to Sandy as he
passed in.
In the little parlor a strange scene met his view.
The tall, long-coated footman was just lifting little
Tre, wrapped in blankets, very carefully to carry
THERE 'S MANY A SLIP. 2OI
her out lifting her from no other place than the
lap of Miss Percival, in whose arms the child had
been lying. Tre had been crying, there were tears
still in her big eyes, but they were looking up in
her aunt's face without the fear and aversion which
Sandy remembered in them on that former occa-
sion when the monkey had come to the window.
Perhaps she was too weak and ill to protest,
perhaps there was a look of mother in the aunt's
face, which surely was softer and gentler than of
old.
By the table Louis Brand stood, as unkempt and
dilapidated-looking as the day before, but with a
certain dignity about him that had been wanting
then, a certain look of resolution and purpose that
was a curious contrast to the pitiful weakness he
had displayed yesterday.
And then there was Pen. Sandy would have
said that he saw Pen first and Pen only in that
room, and yet he had taken in all the rest, even to
the expression each face showed. Pen wore a
limp white muslin frock, and her face was nearly
as colorless as her dress, and her eyes had a
strained, terrified look, like a hunted deer, and
turned to Sandy as he came in with an appeal in
them, the memory of which wrung his heart for
many a day to come. She made a movement as
202 PEN.
if she would have come to him, but at that moment
Miss Percival put her arm round the girl's slight
figure.
" Pen," she said, and her voice sounded won-
derfully like the dead mother's, " it is your father's
wish you should come with me, and little Tre will
want you. Your mother used to love me ; won't
you try to love me too for her sake? "
She had drawn the girl's fair head to her shoul-
der, and the tender embrace and the mention of
her mother's name opened the floodgates of Pen's
tears, which had been closed in her aching young
heart for many a sad day, and she clung sobbing
there, with Miss Percival's arm round her and
Miss Percival's cheek resting on the soft hair,
while she whispered comforting words of love
and tenderness.
It must have cost a reserved nature like Miss
Percival's a great deal to express her feelings thus.
It is a pain quite incomprehensible to more open,
demonstrative natures for such an one to push
aside the veil, with which she is used to shroud all
her tenderer feelings, and especially when the veil
has been undisturbed for a lifetime. But in pro-
portion to the pain so is the effect on the hearer ;
the words painfully uttered, few and stiff and halt-
ing though they may be, carry more weight than
THERE 'S MANY A SLIP. 203
endless, honey-sweet, glib eloquence from a more
gushing nature. It is just like the reproof of a
mistress who hates to find fault and who hurts her-
self with every severe word she says, and of whom
one word does more than a hundred from a nag-
ging mistress. I think Penelope Percival had
learned as much in those four months of comfort
and luxury and plenty and beauty at Highfield as
Penelope Brand had in poverty and anxiety and
scarcity and meanness in Purton Street.
Miss Percival was speaking to Louis Brand now.
" Believe me," she said, " I am very grateful to
you for trusting your children to me. I will do
my best to be a mother to them."
He only bowed his head in answer to this, and
she went on : "I want to ask your pardon for my
words when I was last here : I was inconsiderate
I did not mean "
"It is of no consequence."
" I want you to understand," she went on, and
her voice trembled, " that at any time you like to
come and see the children, you will be welcome at
Highfield."
He smiled.
" Most welcome," she repeated.
" Thank you," he answered, " I do not think I
shall be able to come."
2O4 PEN.
" Not now, perhaps," she urged, " but soon you
will want to see them."
" I think not."
" I am afraid," she continued nervously, with a
hesitation quite unlike her usual composure, and
with a glance round the shabby, little room, " that
you are in difficulties. If you will allow me "
"No," he interrupted a little sharply. "I do
not require help."
" Louis Brand," she said, and she stretched out
her hand, still holding Pen with the other, "will
you shake hands and let us part friends? "
He smiled again, that dreary sort of smile, and
took his hand lingeringly out of the pocket of his
velveteen cat. " If you care about it," he said.
"Oh, yes; we may as well part friends."
He turned away after that to the fireplace and
kept arranging the spills on the mantelpiece, as if
the completion of a design were the principal matter
in hand at present, while Miss Percival put a cloak
round Pen, who seemed quite stupefied and hardly
conscious what was done to her, while Sandy stood
looking on in a sort of mazed dream.
"Will you bid them good-by? " Miss Percival
said ; but Louis Brand only gave a motion of re-
fusal with his hand, and devoted himself with
closer attention to that pattern of stars and dia-
THERE 'S MANY A SLIP.
monds he was arranging with the spills. And then
Sandy drew back in the passage out of the way,
and Miss Percival led little Pen out, with never a
look or word or sign to him who might have been
standing at that very moment before the altar,
taking her for his wedded wife.
When the sound of the horses' feet had died
away, taking away Pen and Tre, as it almost
seemed, into another world, Sandy recovered from
the torpor into which he had fallen.
"What does it mean?" he asked, laying his
hand on Louis Brand's shoulder and speaking in a
thick, hoarse voice. " I don't understand. How
did it come about?"
" I telegraphed to Miss Percival yesterday after-
noon to come at once."
" But did n't you understand ? "
"Yes, I understood from what you said that I
was unfit to take care of the children any longer,
and I quite agreed with you."
His voice was quite calm and steady, but when
he turned to face Sandy he was deadly pale, and
his face was working with an emotion that was
terrible to see.
" Look here, Maclaren," he said, " let us have it
out at once, for I don't mean to mention their
names again as long as I live. I have given over
2O6 PEN.
the children to their aunt, and I never will see or
hear of them again. It is done once for all."
"And what do you mean to do? "
" Go to the devil as fast as possible. Ah, you
think, I dare say, that I was going that way fast
enough already, but I tell you, as long as the
children were with me there was always a chance
for me. I have been going down hill, but, I do
believe, it wasn't hopeless. I might have pulled
up, I might have got square again for the chil-
dren's sake, and for the sake of meeting her again.
I tell you, Maclaren, when she died it was not like
parting forever as it is to-day."
" Why did you let the children go, then ? "
" Why ? Do you think if any harm had come
to the children, through my fault, I could have
dared to meet her? even if the angel held open
the gate and there was all the peace and happiness
and rest and beauty they say there is up there?
Do you think if she had said ' Where are my little
girls ? ' and I could not answer, it would be heaven
to me even by her side ? I tell you, Maclaren, the
worst torments could not be so bad as that, and
hell fire itself would have its drop of comfort, if I
could lift up my eyes and see her with the children
safe and together. It 's safest and best and hap-
piest for the children to go to Highfield, and I
THERE 'S MANY A SLIP. 2O/
think," he said with a forlorn sort of smile, " that
the poor chance of such a miserable creature as I
am keeping straight is not to be weighed against
that. She gave up a lot for me. After all it 's not
much I am doing for her."
"Was there no other way?" Sandy asked, think-
ing of that other way he had planned, of the mar-
riage license in his pocket, of the bridal bouquet
that was no doubt at his lodgings 'by this time, of
the clergyman tired of waiting for the bridal party
that would never come.
" No. I would have told you what I intended,
but you had gone before I had quite brought my
mind to it."
" You must not lose sight of the children."
" Don't think I am going to do it by halves.
Don't think I shall change my mind and hang on
to them, and be pensioned off, and be a trouble
and shame. and disgrace to them. No, I will never
see or write to them, or, if I can help it, hear of
them again, gentle little Pen ! merry little Tre !
They are as dead to me as their mother is, and I
will never see them again, till, if such wonderful
grace is given to lost souls, I may see them with
their mother across the great gulf."
Then the two men sat silent in the room that
contained so many marks of the children's pres-
208 PEN.
ence, with Pen's work-basket on the table and
Tie's doll at the end of the sofa. All the house
was so quiet, as if there might be death in it.
Mr. Mangles even swallowed his whistling and
moved about on tiptoe.
In the afternoon the broker's men came in
and carted off the furniture ; and, by the evening
train, two passengers travelled down to Monkton-
on-Sea, one of them carrying a bouquet of such
choice beauty, that many turned to look at and
admire it.
" It is a bride's bouquet ! " they said, " he is
taking it to a wedding ; " but they were wrong,
for he was taking it to lay upon a grave.
CHAPTER XVII.
YOUNG TOM.
LUCKHAM DENE was the house upon which
Tom Maclaren ultimately settled, after much
painful indecision and wearisome visiting of eligi-
ble freehold properties, and sickening perusings of
hpuse-agents' lists and advertisements. He was in
that perplexing position of having no one to please
but himself and young Tom, having no ties to one
place more than another, and having the world
before him from which to select his place of resi-
dence, and with no lack of means to restrict his
choice. This is a truly pitiable condition to be
placed in, and frequently ends in the person so
circumstanced never settling on any place at all,
but remaining for the rest of his life in furnished
apartments.
But after a couple of years of looking about and
listening to people's advice, he declared that he
would take whatever place turned up next, as any-
thing was better than further uncertainty. And,
luckily for him, Luckham Dene chanced to be
M
2IO PEN.
recommended to his notice, and Luckham Dene
seemed as if it must have been built specially for
old and young Tom. It was a long white house,
with plenty of windows, those on the ground floor
opening into a wide veranda, which ran round two
sides of the place, and which was covered with
roses and clematis, such a pleasant place to sit and
smoke on a hot summer evening, in one of those
great, deep, softly cushioned chairs, and to look
across the tennis lawn to the meadow, where the
mild-eyed Alderney cows grazed, and which sloped
gently down to a piece of water, through which a
lazy, little stream finds its way, stirring the long
branches of the willows and the broad lily-leaves,
and, after meandering through meadows and cop-
ses, falls a mile or so farther into the Thames.
And beyond the water were pastures and cornfields
undulating up and down, in a manner delightful to
eyes that were accustomed to the dreary, flat mo-
notony of the country round Shanghai, and groups
of elm-trees, between which you could get a fur-
ther view of distant blue hills. It was that peace-
ful bit of landscape that settled Tom Maclaren
to take the house, the quiet and the greenness of
it ; and you must live abroad for half your life-
time to fully appreciate this latter quality.
Inside the house there were plenty of rooms>
YOUNG TOM. 211
small enough to be snug, big enough to be airy.
Billiard-room, dining-room, library, drawing-room
opening into conservatory. I seem to be describ-
ing it just like those house-agents' lists of which
Tom got so weary, and I shall find myself, unless I
pull up, giving the dimensions of the rooms, and
entering into details about the offices, and speaking
of it as a commodious family mansion. There
were gardens and orchards and stables, and plenty
of shooting to be had, and it was only thirty miles
from London, and there was a station not a mile
off though, happily for Tom's peaceful landscape,
the line did not cross it, to break the charm by a
sudden puff of smoke, or a bustling, little train in
the distance.
It was the sort of place where you could live
pretty much as you liked ; it did not entail the
necessity of keeping a retinue of servants and
living' in state ; it did not " take two men to open
the door," a remark which was made to me once
by an old lady in describing her son's house, and
which, in the innocence of my heart, I took to
mean the actual heaviness of the door, and won-
dered, with carpenters and joiners so easily to be
procured, that some easier means of egress might
not be devised, but I think I know now what she
meant. Certainly the door at Luckham Dene
212 PEN.
could be opened with ease, even by a neat-looking
parlor-maid. Neither was a French cook and
elaborate menu compulsory ; you might sit down
in the snug, little dining-room, or have your table
spread in the veranda, and have a chop, without
feeling ashamed of yourself; and yet there was
room - Tor a few friends if you asked them to dinner,
and the neighboring squires liked Tom Maclaren's
little dinners better than the solemn feeds which
the country gentry round were in the habit of
giving, with a pompous display of family plate
and flunkeys.
He found the life a little bit dull at first, while
young Tom was at Cambridge, till he had lighted
on an old China friend settled in the neighborhood,
and made a few congenial new ones, and had got in-
terested in his little farm. He had always reckoned
on Sandy's company, but in this he was disap-
pointed. It was most remarkable, he used to com-
plain, that his brother Sandy should have been sud-
denly attacked with a roving mania just when he
and young Tom had come home from China, with
a wish to settle down and forget all about foreign
parts. All the years they were out at Shanghai
Sandy stuck to London like a limpet to a rock ;
why ! he had never been outside this precious, little
island till he came over to Brindisi, and then on to
YOUNG TOM. 213
Port Said to meet them, and he was in a perfect
fever to get back again all the time young Tom was
ill, and would hardly give himself time to recover
at Grindehvald, so anxious was he, for some reason
or other, to get back to London, though he had
resigned his situation at Jones, Richardson & Co.'s
some time before, so it had nothing to do with
them.
It had always been understood that they should
have quarters together, and they would have been
company for one another while young Tom was
away. But though Sandy looked out comfortable
rooms for his brother and young Tom when they
came up to London, he altogether declined to
share them, and could only be persuaded to come
occasionally on very short visits, during the two
years they were in London, and still more seldom
when they went down to Luckham Dene.
There was some friend of his, a queer sort of
fellow, an artist, who never showed up, and who, as
far as Tom could make out, was a disreputable kind
of customer, and yet he seemed to have a sort of
fascination for Sandy, who was restless and fidgety
if they were many days apart. Tom fancied there
might be some daughter or sister to account
for Sandy's infatuation about this Louis Brand.
"There's generally a woman at the bottom of that
214 PEN -
sort of thing," he used to say, with that knowing
look with which people generally make that re-
mark, as if they were the very first to do so. It is
not such a very clever remark, after all, if you come
to think of it. Considering that there are but the
two sexes, and decidedly more women than men
in England, the chances are very much in favor of
a woman being concerned in most matters, and it
does not require great acuteness to see it. But, as
it turned out, this Louis Brand did not seem to
have any womankind belonging to him, so it must
have been pure friendship that kept Sandy dancing
attendance on him.
Old Tom had never seen him, though he had
repeatedly begged Sandy to bring him down to
Luckham Dene, which invitations had been always
declined. But young Tom, in spite of Sandy's
opposition, managed to get a sight of him, and
described him as a disreputable, out-of-elbows
sort of man, looking wretchedly ill and misera-
ble, and with nothing attractive or amusing about
him.
"Cognac?" asked old Tom, in answer to a sig-
nificant movement of his son.
" Yes, and worse," was the answer, " opium, if
I 'm not mistaken."
And old Tom, who had seen enough of it among
YOUNG TOM. 215
the Chinese, shook his head. " Ah ! then he 's
done for, poor chap ! "
Tom Maclaren thought his brother a little bit
cracked on the subject of Louis Brand ; but he
maintained that Sandy had never quite got over
that illness he had abroad, he was quite another
man after that, and never seemed to pick-up his
spirit or have any life in him, and he got to look
a lot older and grayer.
"When we met him first at Alexandria he
looked years younger than I did ; I had lost my
hair and had had more than one touch of liver,
which ages a man ; but now, by Jove ! Tom, I
think I look the younger of the two."
" Younger, sir ? I should rather think so ! Why,
Lucas of John's asked if my brother was still up.
They '11 be taking you for my son next."
Young Tom and Sandy were still very good
friends, and the lad tried vainly to re-establish the
tyranny which he had begun during Sandy's illness ;
but there was a change somehow which he could
not quite make out, and this tiresome Louis Brand
seemed to come in between them, whenever the
old terms were likely to be renewed. By and by,
when Tom had had a term or two at Cambridge,
and had plenty of friends, it did not matter to him
so much, and he took it for granted that Sandy
2l6 PEN.
would be off somewhere with Louis Brand, down
in Dorsetshire, in some-out-of-the-way fishing-vil-
lage, or in Jersey, or the south of France, or in
some village right away in the heart of the Ar-
dennes, and his absences grew longer and longer,
till at last neither old nor young Tom counted on
Sandy as any part of their every-day life.
And now ten years have passed since that Au-
gust day, when a bridal bouquet was laid on Mrs.
Brand's grave at Up-Monkton : not quite ten years,
for it is June, and the grass is long in the meadow
beyond the tennis lawn at Luckham Dene, sway-
ing and billowing as the evening air passes over it.
This chapter indeed is only the interlude between
the two acts in my drama, and would be despatched
on the play-bill in a few words " An interval of
ten years has elapsed between the acts," and all
the rest be left to the scene- shifters ; and the inci-
dents of those ten years be picked up from the
opening dialogue, and from the change in the ap-
pearance of the actors, So-and-So having a gray
wig, somebody else wrinkles, or a red nose, and
look ! the little tree they planted has grown up
above the actors' heads.
But I cannot quite leave the occurrences of
those ten years to be gathered by the reader from
YOUNG TOM. 217
the conversation of young and old Tom, as they
sit in the veranda smoking that June evening. In
every-day life people do not introduce the events
of the last few years casually into their ordinary
talk ; indeed, they are apt to converse more about
the events of the last few hours, or minutes even,
living, as we all do, so much in the all-powerful
Present.
Neither is Nature to be trusted as a property-
man or stage-manager, to work all the outward
signs of a lapse of time on the persons or scene ;
she will powder the hair of one, or provide a well-
constructed bald head, or paint wrinkles with the
heaviest of hare's feet, and let another appear in
the second act as smooth-faced and dark-haired as
in the first ; and as for that little tree, why, it is a
little tree still, through some mistake in the soil or
the planting, or some mystery of root or sap un-
dreamed of in the philosophy of play-writers or
scene-painters.
Old Tom, as we have seen, looked distinctly
younger, and as for young Tom, he hardly ap-
peared sufficiently in the first act to impress the
reader with the change that the ten years have
worked in him. I think Mrs. Tom Maclaren
must have been very charming, for I cannot be-
lieve that young Tom got his charm of manner
2 1 8 PEN.
from the Maclaren side of the family. He got his
dark eyes from her too, and old Tom thought him
quite a young Apollo. I do not suppose he was
quite that, though I do not fancy that Apollo, in
flannels and a blazer, would look very much above
the average of healthy, happy, young Englishmen ;
but Tom was certainly a good-looking, young fellow,
and had a taking way with him that most men
liked, and all girls.
His flirtations used to give his father great un-
easiness, and at times old Tom would remonstrate
very seriously, but was always brought to confusion
by the tables being turned on himself, and similar
accusations laid to his charge, for, be it remem-
bered, though we call him old Tom by way of dis-
tinguishing between the two, he was by no means
an old man, in spite of his bald head and some-
what enlarged waistcoat ; and many a dame, ay,
and damsel too, looked kindly at the widower,
and pitied his forlorn condition, and thought that
young Tom needed a mother's guidance, and the
Dene a mistress.
Young Tom declared he would have his father
made a ward in Chancery, to save him from the
designing attentions of the other sex, who were
always trying to betray his innocence ; but really
he knew well enough that there was no danger at
YOUNG TOM. 219
all of his ever having a stepmother, or perhaps he
would not have been so ready to joke about it.
But of late years, since Tom left Cambridge, his
father had begun to wish that one or other of these
flirtations of his son's should turn out something
more serious than the butterfly fancies that suc-
ceeded one another so rapidly ; that one of those
nice, pretty girls who smiled so sweetly on young
Tom's attentions, should smile her way deeper into
his heart, and reign there, and come as young Mrs.
Tom to be the mistress of Luckham Dene only
she must be something specially sweet and good
and pretty and nice to be worthy of young Tom.
This very June evening, as young Tom lay back
in his chair, with his cigar pointed almost straight
up at the roof of the veranda, and his racket
swinging still in one hand, he was describing a
little girl he had been playing tennis with all the
afternoon, till old Tom began to consider if this
might be the one or if it were only the fiftieth.
Young Tom was still in his tennis flannels, and,
in the almost horizontal position in which he lay,
the only part of him which met his father's eye was
the soles of his tennis shoes with their gray ribbed
surface, from which it would be difficult to judge
the depth of an impression produced on a heart
about five feet farther off.
220 PEN.
"A jolly, little girl, plays tennis awfully well.
You should have seen some of her strokes. I
really have n't seen anything so pretty as her
serving for a long time. I hope she '11 be at the
Lesters' on Saturday."
And then he relapsed into silence, so unusual
with young Tom that his father felt still more im-
pressed with the idea that this was something more
serious than former admirations, and wondered
what was before his mind's eye as he lay with
half-shut eyes looking up into the veranda.
And while old Tom can only wonder, we can
take a look and see a slight, fair girl in tennis dress
with a racket in her hand. Her hair has been
disordered in the play, and the heavy plaits have
fallen from their coil on to her shoulder and are
untwisting themselves into long, soft strands of
silky fineness.
Surely, surely, we have seen that little, delicate
face before, and those great, clear eyes, only there
is a tinge of sweet, healthy color on the cheeks
and brightness and laughter in the eyes, only that
the tennis dress is dainty and prettily made and
more becoming than a rusty, shabby, black frock,
and the little hand grasps a racket instead of a
flat-iron.
Ah ! here is a mistake of the property-man or
YOUNG TOM. 221
stage-manager with a vengeance. Pen was fifteen
ten years ago, in Purton Street ; she ought to be
five-and- twenty now, and the little tennis-player
cannot be more than sixteen all told. That would
have been a mistake indeed, but the little girl that
young Tom sees before him, up there in the ve-
randa, near the swallow's nest, is not Pen but
Tre, and she is sixteen to-morrow.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SANDY'S RETURN.
IT was that very evening that Sandy made his
appearance at Luckham Dene, walking up
from the station, carrying his bag, and coming
round the house into the veranda, as if it were
only the other day he had left them, and not eigh-
teen months before, when he had come for his
usual two days' visit.
I do not think we need find fault with Sandy's
make-up for his reappearance on the scene after
the ten years' interval. If anything, I think Nature
had overdone the markings of age. There was a
considerable sprinkling of gray in his hair Cay-
enne pepper and salt young Tom described it
he was thinner too, and had more lines and marks
in his face than time was altogether accountable
for, and a sort of patient look, as of one who had
nothing to expect or hope for.
There was the usual hearty welcome from the
two Toms, and the hurrying up of supper, and the
getting ready of his room, and the getting out of
SANDY'S RETURN. 223
some particular sort of wine, and the cheerful talk,
and the two collies coming up to rub against him
and put silken heads on his knee. Then after
supper there were various small alterations to be
shown, " If you 're not tired, and it 's not too dark,"
and the prospects of the hay-making to be dis-
cussed, and pacing up and down the garden walks
and leaning over the meadow gate, with the quiet
and fragrance of the midsummer night round them,
with the orange of the sunset hardly faded from
the west, and a few bright Starrs overnead, and
soft noises from the long grass in front, the chirp of
the grasshoppers and the whir of a cockchafer and
the flutter of a bird disturbed in the bushes near.
When they came back to the veranda, the lamp
had been lighted, round which the moths fluttered
and knocked, and young Tom was flicking with
his handkerchief at a ghastly, noiseless bat, who
flitted backwards and forwards in a weird, uncanny
way.
It was not till they were going to bed that old
Tom remembered to ask after Louis Brand.
"Well, and how 's Brand? "
And Sandy answered, "All right," and then
added quickly, " I mean he died last week at
Monkton."
" That 's a good " and then old Tom be-
224 PEN -
thought himself, and tried to cover his words with
a cough ; but Sandy quickly took up his remark
and finished it. "Yes, it's a good job, poor fel-
low ! " and old Tom grumbled out some inartic-
ulate expressions of condolence of a singularly
inappropriate description, and hastily said " Good-
night " and took himself off.
"Yes!" Sandy repeated to himself more than
once, " it is a good job ! " and yet he felt an emp-
tiness, a want that belied his words, an aching
feeling that his occupation and interest in life had
gone, and that it would be a good job when his
life was over too, since it had lost all object and
purpose, and no one wanted him.
It is not by any means the best people that we
miss the most, nor always the dearest that we most
mourn ; it is the cessation of an engrossing care
that leaves us with the greatest sense of loss. And
during those ten years Louis Brand had been
Sandy's care, growing heavier year by year a
hopeless, dreary sort of business, with constant,
ineffectual attempts to stop the downhill progress,
and to rouse him to some effort to pull himself
together and make a fresh start. I think any one
but Sandy would have given it up in despair long
since in fact, I do not think many would have
taken it in hand at all, seeing that there was no
SANDY'S RETURN. 225
obligation of relationship or bond of any sort be-
tween them, except that desultory sort of friend-
ship, the advantages of which had been entirely
one-sided. I think most men would have asked,
" Am I my brother's keeper? " this weak, worth-
less, disreputable brother and would not have felt
the least bit like Cain when they asked it. It was
patent to the priests and Levites at a glance that
this poor wretch was mortally wounded, much
more than half dead, oil and wine would be wasted
on him, it might even hasten his end ; it was
kinder to let him alone and pass by on the other
side.
But perhaps you may think that it was for Pen's
sake that Sandy stuck to Louis Brand, and perhaps
you are right. But not in any way as a link that
might bring them together again ; for during those
ten years her name was never once mentioned till
the very last day of Louis Brand's life. He was
weak enough in other things, he was strong in this
resolute silence ; even when his mind was not
under his own control, Sandy listened in vain for
the sound of the children's names. He never
wrote to them, he never heard from them, he took
elaborate precautions to cut off any chance of their
finding him out ; when he left London, he left no
address, he would give no clew to his whereabouts,
15
226 PEN.
he did not know whether they were alive or dead,
whether they were happy or unhappy. If they
ever tried to find him it was in vain; and that
they did makj such efforts Sandy knew, for more
than once he saw advertisements in the papers,
entreating Louis Brand to communicate with his
daughters, and he took care that Louis Brand
should see these advertisements, but he made no
remark.
At any rate, there were daughters. Little Tre
had got better, Pen was still living, and they were
free to try and find their father, so they were not
in utter bondage.
During those ten years Sandy had had plenty
of time to think over those two days which had
begun, or at any rate developed his romance so
suddenly, and still more suddenly closed it; but
he never altered -in the feeling that had forced it-
self on his unwilling heart as he stood at the door
of the little parlor in Purton Street, a silent but
terribly interested spectator of the scene taking
place there. It was quite right, it was a thousand
times better for little Pen, it was altogether a des-
perate expedient that he had devised, not to be
thought of if any other way offered. Great as his
love for her might be and was, he could not pro-
vide against all the deadly risks that might have
SANDY'S RETURN. 227
assailed her happiness in after years. She was
such a child, young even for her years ; as time
went on memory painted her to him as almost
more childish than she really was, .and he used to
laugh in a miserable sort of way at the ludicrous
idea of marrying such a baby ; it really would have
been quite comic, if it had not been so exquisitely
painful, and he thought he must have been out of
his mind when he seriously contemplated such a
thing.
Sometimes, indeed, the remembrance of her
face came back to him, as she stood that morning
in her limp white muslin, and looked at him with
great, appealing eyes, that were not quite child's
eyes, that spoke of something stronger than child-
ish grief; but he drove the thought away with self-
contempt at his own folly in imagining such things,
and forced himself to fancy a child's sorrow easily
comforted and a child's mind distracted by new
scenes and brighter surroundings.
" Why on earth should you bother yourself about
me? " Louis Brand used to say, in his intervals of
compunction, for as a rule Sandy got but little
thanks for the trouble he took for his friend, which
generally was treated as impertinent interference
and unwarrantable dictation. " Why don't you go
off to your brother? I can do well enough."
228 PEN.
But Sandy was not to be persuaded to leave
him, any more than he was to be driven away by
the irritable abuse and miserable ingratitude that
were the usual return for all his patient, unwearying
kindness.
Towards the end, when mind and body were
failing with Louis Brand, Sandy nursed him night
and day like a child, and it was on Sandy's patient
arm that Louis Brand's head sunk back in its last
sleep, and into his kind face, haggard with watch-
ing, that the dying eyes looked up, with the sudden
brightening that comes sometimes before the flame
dies out.
" Pen ! " he said, " Tre ! where are you? Sandy,
tell the children their mother wants them."
And then Sandy laid him gently down, and,
turning to the window, drew back the blind and
looked out on the same scene that had lain before
his eyes ten years before, the morning after Mrs.
Brand's funeral, the daily miracle of the sun rising
over the great and wide sea, telling of a mercy yet
more great and wide, and of a love new every
morning and as beautiful as if never before had
"God so loved -the world."
" Leave him alone," old Tom said to his son
in those first days of Sandy's return to Luckham
Dene, when the young man fidgeted over the list-
SANDY'S RETURN. 229
less depression that seemed to have fallen over his
uncle, and wanted to rouse him and cheer him up
and hunt him out of the blues. " Let him alone,
he 's out of sorts, body and mind. He 's had a
benefit with that friend of his, though he won't say
a word against him. Give him plenty of good
tobacco, and let him talk when he 's inclined, and
hold his tongue when he 's not, and don't bother
him, and he '11 soon come round."
And I think old Tom's prescription was a very
sensible one, and might with advantage be adopted
in some cases by the faculty ; for, I believe, that
Sandy smoked away a good deal of the heart-sick-
ness and weariness that oppressed him, as he sat
in the deep chair in the veranda, with his long
legs stretched out, and the lovely silence lapping
him round midsummer silence that is made up
of sounds, if you come to analyze it a bird's
chirp, a gnat's drowsy hum, a cock crowing in
some distant farmyard, the trot of a horse on
some unseen road, the pleasant sound of the
scythe sharpened on the hone, the clink of the
hammer in the village smithy, and a dozen other
sounds, which you can disentangle from what, at
first, you would call silence.
I think the dogs were a help to his recovery too.
Colin and Rob, the two collies, looked at him from
230 PEN.
the first with eyes full of sympathy, and pushed
soft noses into his hand, or pottered about the
garden paths after him, and treated him gently
and with consideration, instead of bouncing and
barking and prancing about, as they did with
young Tom ; and Rob had a way of coming and
rearing himself up and putting his forefeet on the
arm of Sandy's chair and looking down on him
with wistful eyes that almost spoke though how
should a dog know that, if only he could have
spoken, he could have told something that would
have roused Sandy effectually from the apathy into
which he was sunk? For those silken ears of
Rob's had been stroked and gently pulled by no
other hand than Pen's not many hours before,
when she and young Tom had been sitting to-
gether under the cedars at Mrs. Lester's garden-
party, discussing strawberries and cream, and
getting on so well together that old Tom, who
looked in just for a few minutes at the end, and
who naturally concluded that this was the same
little girl Tom had described so enthusiastically a
few days before, came away confirmed in the be-
lief that, after Tom's many flirtations, this was a
serious affair at last.
"And, by Jove ! " he said to Sandy when he
got home, " I don't wonder at his taste ; she 's ex-
SANDY'S RETURN. 231
actly the sort of girl I should like him to marry if
she 's half as sweet as she looks."
But he did not mention, and indeed he did not
know, that the name of this very suitable wife for
Tom was Penelope Brand.
CHAPTER XIX.
GOING COURTING.
IT was three weeks after Sandy had come to
Luckham Dene, and he was pretty well him-
self again, when, one Sunday afternoon, young Tom
proposed that they should go over to service at
Highfield church, just the other side of Warford.
" It is a goodish step," he said, " but I feel as if
I wanted to stretch my legs a bit, and it 's not too
hot to-day for a walk, and we can go across the
fields most of the way."
The name of Highfield did not strike on San-
dy's ear, and, if it had, I doubt if it would have
awakened any memories in his mind ; but Tom's
elaborate excuses and reasons for taking the walk
attracted his father's attention, and he winked
across the luncheon-table at Sandy in a meaning
manner.
" It 's a long three miles," he said, " and there
are half a dozen churches nearer, and I don't know
how it is you have grown so devout all of a sudden.
Once a day is more than enough church-going in a
GOING COURTING. 233
general way. Why don't you go down to the river
if you want a walk? Your uncle has not seen that
bit by the lock, which to my mind is the prettiest
all up the river."
" Oh, yes, it 's awfully pretty ; we '11 go there
another time ; but I want to see the keeper over
at Highfield about that retriever of mine, Shot ;
he's not a bit the thing."
" Oh, that keeper you said was a regular muff
and did n't know a dog from a cat, eh? "
Young Tom looked a bit put out, till he caught
the twinkle in his father's eye.
" Oh, yes ! " he said, " the long and the short of
it is I want to go up to the House and see how
they 're getting along. You Ve no objection, Sir? "
He looked so honest and manly and open as he
spoke, with just a little tinge of red coming into
his face and a touch of shamefacedness in his ex-
pression, that Sandy, who, after those two days of
being an actor, had resumed his old part of spec-
tator of other people's comedies and tragedies, as
he watched the little scene between father and
son, thought to himself that any girl might wel-
come the wooing of such a suitor as this, and that
it was no wonder old Tom beamed across the cold
lamb and salad, with quite the expression of the
heavy father in the play, and as if " Bless you, my
234 PEN -
children " might be his next remark, instead of
"Pass the mint sauce."
Do you know, reader, how old Hodge leaning
on the pigsty gate, in his Sunday shirt-sleeves,
smoking his Sunday pipe, watches Joe or Jimmy or
Bob setting off courting Jessy or Polly up at the
farm on a Sunday afternoon? and how sheepish
the young fellow looks as he fastens a bit of sweet-
william and southernwood in his button-hole and
cocks his hat a little on one side, over his well-
greased locks, and sticks his cane jauntily under
his arm? Old Hodge grins from ear to ear and
there is a warm feeling in his heart for the lad,
much the same feeling, though he could not put it
into words, as an Emperor might feel when the
Crown prince goes off to visit a foreign court,
where some suitable royal highness resides, or as
the Duke feels shortly before the " Morning Post "
announces that a marriage has been arranged be-
tween the Marquis of Something and Lady So and
So, though Hodge's feeling may be accounted
purer, being uninfluenced by state or public policy
or, as a general rule, by any considerations of
prudence or suitability.
Old Tom may be considered as a cut between
the Emperor and Hodge ; he was not in his shirt-
sleeves, though he had taken off his Sunday, go-to-
GOING COURTING. 235
meeting coat with much satisfaction, and put on a
loose shooting-coat in preparation for a dozy after-
noon in the veranda, and I would not undertake
to say that, at some period of the day, he would
not visit his pigsties and bestow some consider-
ation on his sleek, young porkers ; but, when
Sandy and young Tom set out on their walk, he
had not yet betaken himself to the farmyard, but
watched their departure from a more fragrant
situation, under the Mare'chal Niel rose-tree, from
which young Tom had just selected a half- open
rosebud for his button-hole, in place of the sweet-
william and southernwood of his brothers starting
on a similar quest. Tom's face was not shiny with
soap-and-water like Joe's, nor his hair so well
oiled, but he had that fresh, pleasant, well-turned-
out look that young Englishmen have, the sort of
look that Sandy had envied so much one after-
noon, ten years before, when he had gone to get a
marriage license and a bridal bouquet.
"I'm glad you're going," old Tom said to
Sandy while young Tom was giving a final brush
to his hat before starting. " I should like to have
your opinion of the girl. To my mind, she 's the
nicest girl I 've seen for a long time."
So Sandy and Tom set out on their walk, and
though Tom had declared that it was not hot and
236 PEN.
that most of the way lay across fields, there was
enough dusty road and sunny paths across corn-
fields, where the hot air shook and quivered above
the yellowing grain and scarlet poppies, and
through broad meadows, still showing the mark
of the scythe and the wheel-tracks of the wag-
ons that had carried off the hay a week ago, to
make them glad to turn into the beech-wood,
through which the path leads down to Highfield
church.
" The bells have n't begun yet," said Tom, " so
we .can take it easy," and he began flicking the
dust off his boots, while Sandy sat down on a
stump to rest and cool. There was a pretty, little
peep from where he sat of the church and church-
yard, a brick tower covered with a wealth of glossy
ivy and a large porch, on the tiles of which were
soft colorings of moss and lichen and shadows from
the big yew-tree. The churchyard was grassy and
green, not trimly kept like a garden like the one
where Louis Brand sleeps " after life's fitful fe-
ver," but pleasant and restful, with many unnamed
mounds and broad elm-tree shadows.
Other paths led through the beech-wood down
to the village, and along these, from time to time,
as Sandy sat there and Tom leant against the
smooth stem of the beech-tree near, various groups
GOING COURTING. 237
passed on their way to the church or village, old
men in the green smocks fast becoming extinct
among the English peasantry, except in very re-
mote regions ; children in smart hats, whose par-
ents without regard for consequences had provided
black-currant pudding for dinner; neat, little
friendly girls, with demure unconsciousness of
the troop of lads coming up behind ; one or
two examples of the Joe and Jessy genus, sheepish
and red-faced, walking out of step and silent ; and
then Sandy became aware that Tom had roused
himself into a position of expectancy, and was
settling his collar, which is very generally the part
affected by excitement or agitation, and was look-
ing up the mossy path, down which was coming,
between the smooth gray trunks of the beech-trees,
and with the soft lights and shadows from the foli-
age overhead dappling her white dress, a tall girlish
figure.
All in white ! There was something that struck
Sandy as beautiful and appropriate in Tom's lady-
love coming in such simple purity and sweet un-
consciousness along the woodland path to where
her young lover waited at the junction of the paths.
It was a happy omen too, Sandy thought, that just
at that very moment the sweet, mellow old bells
rang out from the church below, the bells that per-
238 PEN.
haps before very long might ring a wedding-peal
for the two that were meeting now in the beech-
wood, he with a glad empressement that Sandy felt
must be very winning, she with a certain serious
composure and quiet self-possession that struck
Sandy as not quite what he expected ; but then
what experience had he in the manners of young
ladies used to the ways of society?
Tom had gone a few paces up the path to meet
her, and now they were coming, side by side, talk-
ing, and Sandy got up from his seat on the stump
and straightened himself up for the introduction, a
little bit stiff in the back, a touch of rheumatism,
he told himself. And then, all of a sudden, a pair
of clear, serious eyes were looking at him, eyes that
suddenly as they looked changed to surprise and
joy and unspeakable delight, and in a moment
the midsummer beech-wood, with its lights and
shadows, and young Tom's smiling introduction,
and the soft clamor of the bells, and the stately
maiden dressed in white, disappeared and vanished,
and in its place was the dingy landing at Purton
Street, with its torn carpet and broken banister,
and shabby, little Pen with her rusty frock and pale
face was there, and her hands were in his again.
Hark ! don't you hear the swish-swish of the knife-
cleaning and Mr. Mangles' whistling? and don't
GOING COURTING. 239
you see how the paint is knocked off the hand-rail
and that bit of torn paper on the wall ?
He heard himself saying, " Pen ! why, little
Pen ! " in an odd, gasping way, and she answered,
" Sandy ! oh ! Sandy ! " in a dim, far-away voice ;
but then, of course, a voice sounding through ten
long empty years must needs be dim and far-away ;
and he was conscious too of young Tom, with
rather an odd, puzzled, and not over- pleased look,
picking up a parasol and prayer-book that had
somehow dropped on the moss ; but that was an
odd, incongruous mixture in this dream, for what
had young Tom got to do with little Pen? and
how could moss come to be growing so green and
fresh on the frowsy landing at Purton Street ?
It could only have been a couple of seconds
that the dream and confusion lasted, and it was
Tom's voice that brought him round and pulled
him together.
"Why, Sandy!" he was saying for this dis-
respectful nephew had long thrown aside the prefix
in addressing his uncle " why ! Sandy, I had no
idea you and Miss Brand were old friends."
And then Sandy let go of two little hands in
pearl-gray gloves, that he was grasping in a de-
cidedly unconventional manner, and stammered
out something about having known her long ago.
240 PEN.
Pen recovered her outward self-possession be-
fore he did, though after the rush of bright color
that came into her face at the first recognition
she had turned very pale, and her hand shook as
she took back her parasol from Tom, and her lip
quivered and her voice was not quite manageable
as she said, " It was such a surprise ! such a sur-
prise ! " And then she added, with a little trem-
ble in her voice as if a sob were not far off, " We
had better go into church ; the bells have changed
and afterwards you will come and see my
aunt, won't you ? and tell me "
And then she led the way down the path towards
the church, with young Tom at her side, and
Sandy following in a dull sort of dream, hardly
believing that it could be real, and that it was
really little Pen's soft skirt, that swept the path
just before him, the moss of which had hardly
recovered from the pressure of her light foot when
his crushed it down.
As they entered the porch, where a group of
hobbledehoys waited till the service was well begun,
before they went clattering in on hobnailed shoes,
as is the mysterious custom of their kind, Pen
asked, " My father? " and he showed her the band
on his hat, and she passed into the quiet little
church and led the way up to the Highfield seat,
GOING COURTING. 241
which, though it has been shorn of its high sides
and door and green curtains, still maintains its
place in the chancel, to the pain and grief of the
new vicar, who has modernized all the rest of the
church, and has a choir of little, cat-voiced plough-
boys in surplices, who are much limited for space
in consequence of the Squire's seat.
All around, wherever Sandy's eye rested, were
reminders of Percivals past and present, prayer-
books on the desk bearing the Percival crest and
motto, tablets on the walls recording the names
and virtues of departed Percivals, one of whom lay
extended in marble, with a substantial angel at his
head, and at his feet a skeleton Death, holding up
an hour-glass in his bony hand, while farther off
a cavalier Percival, clad in armor, knelt in prayer,
facing a beruffed and beringleted wife, and with
a procession of quaint, little children kneeling be-
hind them, many of them decapitated. There
were hatchments too, and a brass plate under the
window opposite the Percival seat made known
that it had been placed there to the memory of
Colonel Philip Percival, who departed this life in
October, five years before, which was the first inti-
mation Sandy had received of the death of the
children's grandfather.
It was wisely done of Pen to suggest that they
16
242 PEN.
should go into church, though there was still a
quarter of an hour before the service began : they
all three wanted time to think and get accustomed
to the new aspect of things. Of course this was
most the case with Pen herself and Sandy, but even
Tom had something to reflect upon and realize,
and there was an odd little, half- rueful twist of his
mouth under the mustache, that might have
amused a spectator if such there had been. He
had been so entirely the hero of the occasion up to
ten minutes ago and now he was simply nowhere ;
and then it was a revelation, and not altogether a
pleasant one, that this graceful, aristocratic-looking
girl, who had the character with most fellows
(though he could not say he had suffered from it)
of being proud and a trifle haughty, for which peo-
ple accounted by talking of the blue blood of the
Percivals and their long pedigree, should be the
daughter of that Louis Brand well, he was dead,
poor fellow, so one could not say any ill of him, but
there was precious little good one could say. Of
course it did not make any difference, but still it
wanted thinking over.
And Sandy, too, he had got to master the flood
of memories that poured into his mind, and bid fair
to drown sense and reason, and to set very plainly
before himself, that the sweet, graceful-looking girl
GOING COURTING. 243
sitting next him, with downcast eyes and head a
little bent, was not by any means the same as little
Pen of ten years ago. Though she was hardly
conscious he had looked at her at all and, when
she stole a glance at him from time to time, his
eyes were always fixed on the mailed arm grasping
a sword on the hatchment opposite, he had taken
in, not only every detail of her face and figure, but
every particular of her dress ; and though utterly
unversed in millinery and unconscious of what it
was that gave the nameless charm to her costume,
could have described, no doubt in very clumsy
and masculine language, but with perfect accuracy,
every fold and lace and ribbon that made up the
whole effect. He had to realize that this was
young Tom's lady-love and that this was the girl of
whom old Tom had said, " She is exactly the sort
of girl I should like him to marry."
CHAPTER XX.
AMONG THE LILIES.
I AM afraid that neither of the three occupants
of the Highfield seat that Sunday afternoon
paid much attention to the service, though in out-
ward appearance they were devout, and I think
they would have made a poor figure if they had
been catechized on the sermon, though Mr. Barnes,
the Vicar, flattered himself it was one of his best,
and was glad, as he told his wife, that he had se-
lected that for this afternoon, when there happened
to be two strangers in the Percival seat who paid
marked attention to it, and one of whom might
there was no knowing have a presentation to a
valuable living in his gift and be at a loss to find an
able and deserving man to whom to offer it.
But little as was the attention Sandy paid to it, he
was sorry when it came to an end, and the blessing
had been given and the organ, under the hands of
the village schoolmistress, poured forth a jubilant
strain, with one of the higher notes ciphering
gayly throughout, and the little chorister boys
AMONG THE LILIES. 245
shuffled out, followed by the Vicar. He had a
sort of nervous shrinking from further conversation
with Pen ; it had been unmixed joy meeting her
again ; it was perfect satisfaction to sit by her
side and feel her dress brush against him from time
to time, and to hear her voice in the responses,
and to be able to steal a look now and then at her,
and to see how sweet and lovely she was and how
like her mother, and how, fair and dainty as she
was, there were still the outlines and hues of health
about her, which had been so sadly wanting in her
mother ; to notice how prettily she was dressed,
simply enough but, as was apparent, even to his
ignorant eye, with a grace and elegance which can
only be arrived at by good taste combined with
money.
If only that last day at Purton Street could be
blotted out from her memory and his, and they
could go back to things as they were before then,
when he was the old friend and she was little Pen,
quite as much a child to him as Tre was, who could
rest her head on his knee without embarrassment,
and talk to him with as much confidence as she
could to her mother, and far more than to her
father. No doubt she had forgotten all about it
or only remembered it as a curious, dreadful sort
of dream in that feverish time of trouble and anxi-
246 PEN.
ety, or perhaps, indeed, she had understood it as
little at the time as Louis Brand had done, who
had never taken in the idea that Sandy proposed
to marry little Pen, though he had apparently
listened to every word spoken in the studio that
morning. Was it the same with Pen? But even
for the sake of the relief it would be to the embar-
rassment of their future intercourse, Sandy could
not bring himself to wish this and to give up the
belief, which he had hardly consciously acknowl-
edged to lurk in his inmost mind, that there had
been an answer to the passionate love in his heart,
a meaning in the down-dropped eyes, a promise in
the trembling, little hand.
But this was a thought he had discouraged from
the first, and systematically snubbed and mocked
at for the past ten years, so it must have had amaz-
ing vitality, to raise its soft, little head when he had
done his best to smother it, and to whisper in its
gentle voice against all the conclusive and crushing
arguments brought to bear on it. But now, he
told himself, he had done for it utterly. This new
argument, young Tom himself, with his pleasant
debonair manner and good-looking face, was quite
sufficient to put any ridiculous notion out of his
head. Why, he had only to look at Tom to assure
himself that it was not likely, when there were such
AMONG THE LILIES. 247
young fellows as he to have, that a girl, almost a
child, should give a thought to an ugly, clumsy, old
fellow like him or even, if by any wild improbability
she gave the thought, that it would not have died
out long ago and be a dead and forgotten thing at
the end of ten years.
So, as he followed Pen out of church, he resolved
to ignore that episode and be as unconstrained as
if it had never been.
" You must come and see my aunt," Pen said.
" Oh ! of course you must come. Tre would never
forgive me if I did not bring you back. You will
hardly know Tre, she has grown such a big girl.
We have so often fancied your coming, sometimes
one way, sometimes another, but never just stand-
ing in the beech-wood path as we came to after-
noon service. She will be so vexed that she did
not come this afternoon, but she had a headache
and Aunt Penelope would not let her because the
sun was hot. When we were in London she used
to watch for you by the hour together at the win-
dow. She said she was quite sure that some day
you would pass, and once, do you know? she per-
suaded Aunt Penelope to take us down to Purton
Street to try and find you and father; but they
did not even remember the name. Oh ! Sandy,
why did you and father never write ? We wanted
248 PEN.
so much to tell you that we were well and happy
and how good Aunt Penelope was to us."
They went slowly up the beechwood path with
young Tom walking behind, a little impatiently
flicking the small branches out of the way with
his walking-stick. He was so unused to play
second fiddle that I am afraid he did not do it
very gracefully, but perhaps in this case it was a
particularly difficult part to read off at sight.
From the beech-wood, a gate in some palings
leads into Highfield Park, across which goes a path
with lime-trees on either side, all in honey-sweet
flower, and from this lime-tree walk a door in the
old brick wall with heavy buttresses leads into the
kitchen garden, into a buzzing of bees and a warm
sunshiny smell of lavender and rosemary, and into
a temptation to step aside from the direct path
of duty, with its high box edging, to look at the
scarlet strawberries on the sloping bed to the right,
or to feel the golden apricots against the wall.
Little Tre when first she came to Highfield,
being unused to such displays, except behind shop
windows and under the jealous guardianship of
tradesmen, used to think that " Lead us not into
temptation " had special reference to that sunny
wall, and she connected the next clause, " Deliver
us from evil," with the nettles in the ditch beyond
AMONG THE LILIES. 249
the asparagus bed, into which once on a time she
fell headlong, and required outward application of
dock leaves for the rest of the afternoon, and
internal treatment with bread and hon'ey in the
housekeeper's room.
Long before they reached the kitchen garden
Sandy had become quite convinced that Pen had
forgotten all about that strange little episode in
Purton Street ; and if there was a pang of disap-
pointment in his heart at this conviction, he was
hardly conscious of it, so delightful was it to hear
her voice and meet her eyes seeking his with the
old unclouded confidence.
He told her what he could of her father, and
of his strange determination not to see or hear of
them again, from his persuasion that this separation
was better for them. In Sandy's simple words, it
sounded so great and noble a piece of heroism
and self-sacrifice, that the girl's eyes filled up with
tears.
"But he did not know how we fretted after
him," she said, " and Aunt Penelope was as anxious
as we were to find him. She has been so good to
us, Sandy, so very good, and we were so ungrateful
and disagreeable to her at first ; but Tre was ill
such a long time and nearly died, and you can't
imagine how kind she was then. I can't think,
PEN.
looking back now, how it was we disliked her so
and thought her so cold and proud and unlike
mother. We wrote to all the places where we
thought father might be and put several advertise-
ments in the papers, but we never heard, and the
only comfort was to think you were sure to see
him sometimes, and be a friend to him."
And Sandy said it was so and that he had seen
him pretty often, which was a mild way of putting
the fact that for the last ten years he had hardly
left him for more than a few days at a time ; and
he was glad that young Tom had dropped behind
to pick a particularly tempting strawberry, so that
he could not enlighten Pen's mind on the subject.
"Were you with him when he died?"
" Yes, fortunately I was at Monkton. It was
there he died. Do you remember, Pen, that little
house on the beach?"
She nodded. " Did he speak of us ? send us
any message?"
" Yes, the last words he said were, tell the chil-
dren their mother wants them."
They were leaving the kitchen garden by a path
with a high clipped yew-hedge on either side,
along which stood a stately row of Madonna lilies,
tall and pure ; and to Sandy's mind Pen in her
white dress was just such another. She was think-
AMONG THE LILIES. 251
ing of her father, and Sandy knew, as well as if he
could have seen into her mind, that the kind
magic of death and distance had conjured away all
that was sad and painful and bitter in the memory,
covering with a gentle hand his faults and failings,
and throwing soft light on all his good points ;
and Sandy felt that his ten years' patience was
more than repaid since it had given back a loving
memory of her father to little Pen.
That path led them out on to the broad, sun-
shiny lawn, and there under a large tulip-tree was
the tea-table spread and Miss Percival sitting in a
low chair, with Tre on the grass at her feet, with a
fox terrier, who was being taught some trick with
the bribe of a piece of cake, which, as he fully
understood that he would get it if the trick were
performed or not, was not a sufficient goad to urge
him to perfection.
" Tre ! "
At the sound of her sister's voice, the girl knelt
up and looked at the comers, shading her eyes
from the sun, a beam of which fell through the
foliage on her uncovered head. For a moment
she knelt there, looking, looking at the tall, gaunt,
loose-limbed man at Pen's side, and then she
gave a cry and sprang to her feet, and the next
moment she had run across the sunny turf and had
252 PEN.
sprung right into Sandy's arms, with her hands
clasped behind his neck, and kissed him, just as
she used to do ten years before.
" Upon my word ! I think we have had pretty
near enough of this ! " said young Tom to himself,
as he came out of the yew-tree walk, with a very
unusually ill-tempered expression.
CHAPTER XXI.
LITTLE MISS TRE.
" A NOTE for you, Sir, and the young lady
-~^- says, please, may she speak to you for a
minute?"
Followed almost immediately by the clatter of a
pony's feet on the gravel path outside the break-
fast-room window, and the apparition of a chestnut
pony and a blue- habited rider, looking half shyly,
half audaciously into the room, at which Sandy and
old and young Tom sat at their not too early break-
fast. A very sweet, smiling, little face it was, that
evidently knew itself to be welcome everywhere, a
face that had grown up in the sunshine, any one
could see. Aunt Penelope's love and kindness
were written in letters of gold plainly to be read
on Tre's happy young face.
"Aunt Penelope wants you to come to lunch,"
she said, " and I 've brought the note. Pen and I
have so much to say to you, we thought, perhaps,
you would ride back with me. Percy is on the
bay, which will carry you nicely."
254 PEN.
>
"Ride? My dear child, what do you take me
for? I don't think I Ve ever been on a horse in
my life since my earliest infancy, when I have a
dim remembrance of a ride during which I was
more often off than on."
" Oh ! how provoking ! Pen said I had much
better drive the pony carriage, but I wanted you
to see Dick, my new pony. Good-morning, Mr.
Maclaren," this to young Tom, who had just ap-
peared behind his uncle at the window. " Yes, this
is Dick, and he would like a piece of sugar.
What's to be done about Sandy? I 'm afraid to
lose sight of him, for fear he should n't come, and
I could n't face Pen without him, and he says he
can't ride. Mayflower is so quiet, he really is !
and Percy is getting so fat, the walk would do him
a lot of good."
A sound of prancing and kicking about on the
gravel, round the corner of the house, did not
give very convincing evidence of Mayflower's
steadiness, or may perhaps have been due to
Percy's resentment at the remark about his
stoutness.
" I could run behind," suggested Sandy, " and
hold on by Dick's tail. I suppose he does not
go very fast."
" Does n't he ? Why ! Mayflower could hardly
LITTLE MISS TRE. 255
keep up with him, and you should see him take
a fence ! Would you like me just to trot him
round the meadow for you to see his paces?
Aunt Penelope says she never saw a prettier
pony, and she knows a lot about horses, you
know."
Sandy did not know much about horses, but he
was quite sure he had never seen a prettier pony
or rider either ; and young Tom was of much the
same opinion, and they spent a considerable time
in the meadow admiring both.
" It is holiday time," Tre told them ; so she had
not to hurry back to lessons and could even spare
time to visit young Tom's retriever puppies, whose
fat bodies and broad foolish noses and light brown
eyes, squinting with youthfulness, and sudden man-
ner of sitting down on all occasions went straight
to her heart.
Old Tom had joined the party by this time,
and, allusion having been made to Tre's partiality
for small pigs, and to the little one that she had
nursed at Up-Monkton farm, nothing would satisfy
him but that he must display the treasures of his
sty to little Miss Tre ; and he found her a most
congenial companion in the farmyard, without
the usual conventional, young lady-like disgust to
the nasty, dirty creatures, but with an appreciation
256 PEN.
of their good points that you hardly ever find in
the female sex, and a respect for their mental
qualities that is rare in either.
Old Tom fell quite a captive to Tre's fascina-
tions, and he told Sandy that if the elder sister
were the same style, he was not a bit surprised at
young Tom having taken a fancy to her, nor could
Sandy be surprised either.
There is no doubt that Tre much enjoyed her-
self in this bachelor establishment, walking about,
with one hand slipped under Sandy's arm, while
with the other she held up her pretty riding-
skirt ; and with old Tom on the other side, hold-
ing forth about pigs, and asking her advice as if
she were an experienced farmer and had a reason,
beyond the aesthetical, for preferring black pigs
to white, and short noses to long, and curly tails
to straight ; and with young Tom bringing up the
rear and joining in the conversation whenever
she deigned to throw him a word or two over her
shoulder.
I am afraid there was a zest given to Tre's en-
joyment by the consciousness that Aunt Penelope
might not quite approve of this visit at all, still
less of its being so prolonged, and that even Pen
might look a little grave and say that Tre must
remember she was nearly grown up, and that
LITTLE MISS TRE. 257
grown-up young ladies do not pay calls on gentle-
men all by themselves. But, of course, Sandy
being there made all the difference, and old Mr.
Maclaren (you see, our adjective for him appeared
quite appropriate to the eyes of sixteen) was so
nice and good-tempered, and she had no idea, not
the least ! that young Mr. Maclaren had gone off
to pick strawberries for her till they got back to
the veranda, and found it spread out so tempting
and cool, with such great scarlet monsters, (much
bigger than ours, Pen,) with cream and sponge
cake and a great block of ice and lemonade, and
it would have seemed so ungrateful to come away,
when they had taken so much trouble, and besides
she had had breakfast early and quite a long ride,
and it was hot and she was really a little tired.
Such a lot of excuses were poured out to a rather
reproachful Pen by the delinquent, as she changed
her dress hurriedly, having appeared only just in
time to do so before lunch.
"And, Pen, do you think Aunt Penelope will
mind, but I asked old Mr. Maclaren to come and
see our pigs this afternoon and and young Mr.
Maclaren too? "
" qh ! Tre."
" Yes, of course I ought not, but it 's such a long
way for Sandy to walk, and I did n't know if we
17
258 PEN.
could drive him back, and they said they should be
driving this way and would come and fetch him.
What 's the matter, Pen ? Do you think Aunt
Penelope will be vexed ? "
" Oh no ! I dare say she won't mind ; but you
talk as if Sandy were quite a feeble, old man."
" Well ! he 's not so very young, and Mr. Tom
Maclaren said he was awfully tired when he got
back last night. He 's rheumatic too, and Mr.
Tom would not let him sit down on the grass when
we were out in the meadow. He says he has his
hands full, looking after the two old gentlemen and
taking care of them ; it is such fun to hear him
talk."
But Pen did not seem to appreciate the joke and
she thought Mr. Tom Maclaren was inclined to be
rather silly sometimes, and the luncheon bell would
ring in a minute, and Tre knew that Aunt Penelope
was vexed if she was late. And yet Pen lingered
till Tre was ready, so that they could go together
into the large drawing-room, where Sandy sat,
talking to Aunt Penelope.
He had not lost the feeling of amazement and
unreality that had overwhelmed him when he first
met Pen ; and it seemed almost impossible that he
should be sitting now in the Highfield drawing-
room, with Miss Percival entertaining him, and, as
LITTLE MISS TRE. 259
far as in her lay, unbending and being gracious to
him that same Miss Percival who had ignored
him with such utter disdain in Purton Street, and
had swept past him as if he were of less impor-
tance than 'Liza with her smutty apron, or the
umbrella-stand in the passage.
And in many points she was the very same Miss
Percival handsome, stately, dignified, not much
older-looking than then, proud still, and cold, and
a trifle hard to all the world but Pen and Tre. It
was not to be expected that because she took those
two into her heart, and lavished all the stores of
her love on them, she should take all the rest of
the world besides ; on the contrary, it was only per-
haps natural that she should be more reserved and
stiff to every one else. Even to the two girls her
affection was not of a demonstrative nature, they
had to take a good deal of it on trust, which is
perhaps the best plan in every-day life and produces
a more robust and long-lived attachment than that
of a more emotional and caressing character. I do
not think the servants found her by any means a
more easy-going mistress, or with any less sharp an
eye for dust or cobwebs, or more unconscious of
unpunctuality or neglect ; neither did the friendly
girls find her more lenient in the matter of feathers
in hats or fringes on foreheads, or the village peo-
2(50 PEN.
pie more easily to be moved to pity and broth, or
sympathy and flannel petticoats, by their long-
winded tales of distress.
To Sandy however she was unwontedly gracious,
and there was no denying that, when Miss Percival
chose to be gracious, she could be exceedingly
charming ; and Sandy, who even yet had not lost
his shyness and awkwardness, found himself placed
entirely at his ease, and not painfully conscious of
being a fish out of water, and boring his companion
and himself past all bearing.
As the two girls followed Sandy and Miss Perci-
val into the dining-room to lunch, they exchanged
glances of delighted surprise. When you like any
one very much indeed and want every one else to
share your sentiments, how you torment yourself
over the impression he or she is likely to produce ;
the more you like him, the less justice you do him,
and the less confidence you have in his not mis-
conducting himself in some gross and outrageous
way. Of course, directly the introduction is over,
you are ready to declare that you always knew he
would be liked and that no one could help admir-
ing him, and you forget all the misgivings you
felt.
So Pen had been torturing herself all the morn-
ing, till she had arrived at such a pitch of nervous-
LITTLE MISS TRE. 26 1
ness, that she almost hoped that Sandy would not
come, knowing how critical Aunt Penelope was apt
to be, and not having any experience of Sandy
under a society aspect. He was so big and con-
spicuous, you could not trust to anything he did
being overlooked or insignificant, as is the comfort
about our shorter brethren ; and poor Pen literally
shivered at the bare idea of Aunt Penelope's pince-
nez surveying him in the cold-blooded way in
which she had sometimes seen those instruments of
torture brought to bear on some pretentious or
impertinent upstart.
But, before she had been five minutes at lunch,
she would have declared with the greatest assur-
ance that she had never had the smallest doubt
that Aunt Penelope would like Sandy, and that he
would always be at his ease in any society, being
such a thorough gentleman which was quite a
mistaken argument on her part both as regards
gentlemen in general and Sandy in particular, as
he and many others are apt to feel ill at ease in
society, in spite of birth and breeding.
They were discussing over lunch how curious it
was that they should not have met sooner, not so
much Sandy and the two girls, seeing that his
visits to Luckham had been so few and far be-
tween, but that it was only within the last few
262 PEN.
months that Miss Percival had met his brother
and nephew, and then neither she nor the girls
had connected their name with their father's old
friend, nor had Tom noticed the coincidence of
Miss Percival's nieces having the same name as
the Louis Brand to whom his uncle was attached.
It is curious to observe in country society how
entirely it falls into circles, having for a centre
some town or church or rail way- station or big
gentleman's seat. The circles touch and some-
times interlace, but still keep their own centre ;
and very often people remain strangers to those
who live within a few miles of them, because they
happen to belong to different circles. This was
the case with Luckham Dene and Highfield House.
Luckham has Merfield for its centre, and goes up
to town by the G. W. R., and employs the Mer-
field doctor and tradesmen, and is in the Merfield
rural deanery, and belongs to the Merfield choral
union, and points its chants in the manner pleasing
to the musical curate at Merfield, and sends its
paupers to the Merfield workhouse, and its candi-
dates to be confirmed there ; whereas Highfield is,
you know, in the Ashling deanery, and goes up by
South Western, and is under the musical jurisdic-
tion of the Ashling organist, who has taken a
musical degree of some mysterious nature, which
LITTLE MISS TRE. 263
gives him a right to despise ignorant humanity for
miles round ; they are brought into the world and
despatched therefrom under the superintendence
of Dr. Perry of Ashling, and belong to the Ashling
Primrose League Habitation, of which, I need
hardly say, Miss Percival is a dame, whereas, I
am afraid, Merfield has its Liberal tendencies, and
belongs to that unpolitical or unpoetical class de-
scribed by Wordsworth
" A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."
It was partly due to their being thus in different
circles that the Maclarens and Miss Percival had
only lately become acquainted, and partly that,
during the first few years of the two Toms' living
at Luckham Dene, Colonel Percival had been still
living, but too much of an invalid to allow of any
society being kept up, and after his death there
was no gentleman in the house to call on other
gentlemen, which made a difficulty in establishing
visiting terms, with a house like Luckham Dene,
where there were no ladies.
Pen did not talk much at lunch, and Tre's chat-
ter was kept under restraint by Aunt Penelope's
presence ; but, after lunch, when Miss Percival
went away to write some notes, bidding the girls
264 PEN.
show Mr. Maclaren the garden and greenhouses,
there was plenty of talk, and " Oh ! Sandy, don't
you remember? " and " Oh ! Sandy, shall you ever
forget?"
Tre had her arm through his directly, and could
emphasize her memories by a squeeze of his arm
or by pressing her cheek against his shoulder ; and
Pen on the other side might have done the same,
if only she could have overcome that stupid feeling
of shyness that made her thrill all over if her hand
touched his even by accident.
Neither could she talk on like Tre without em-
barrassment, though there was so much more she
could remember than her sister, but perhaps that
was the secret of it, there was one memory that
made her tongue falter and the color rise in
her cheeks and her heart beat, and that one
memory would keep intruding itself among the
others, about which she might have talked so
pleasantly.
If Tre fell behind for a moment to pick a flower,
or ran on to speak to one of the gardeners, and
Pen was left alone with Sandy, a terror came
over her that he would say something about
that last day at Purton Street, and she talked fast
and rather incoherently to prevent that terrible
silence which she felt sure would preface the sub-
LITTLE MISS TRE. 265
ject ; and yet, as the afternoon passed on, she
began to wonder if Sandy could have forgotten
all about it.
" There are some people coming for tennis this
afternoon," Tre told him. " I hope your nephew
will come soon enough to play. You don't play,
do you, Sandy? No, of course not, but you shall
have the most comfortable chair under the tulip-
tree and be umpire. I shall choose the chair for
you that deep one with the red cushion, Pen,
don't you know?"
But Pen was not sympathetic about that deep
chair indeed Tre thought she was not at all kind
and considerate to Sandy. She said he ought to
play tennis, and that it was very lazy not to, when,
as Tre reasoned with herself, of course old people
don't care to be running about. And then, when
James had brought out that chair and Tre had
shaken up the cushion and set it in the best posi-
tion for shade and seeing the game, Pen herself sat
down in it, though she always said she did not like
that chair, it was so deep that her toes did not
reach the ground when she leant back, and she let
Sandy sit on a horrid, little, upright chair, that
went by the name of the stool of repentance, be-
cause it made one's back ache if one sat long in it,
and not only that, but she let James go quite out
266 PEN.
of hearing before she remembered that she wanted
her knitting from the drawing-room table, and ac-
tually let poor Sandy go across in the broiling sun
to fetch it for her, and she really did not want it at
all, for she was not the least fond of work, and did
not do a stitch all the afternoon, and let the ball
of wool roll away into the verbena-bed, just as if
she did it on purpose to make Sandy pick it up for
her, and he so stiff and rheumatic as young Mr.
Maclaren had said !
Pen was really very inconsiderate and odd to-
day, and Sandy must be very good-natured, for he
seemed to like it. She was so cross too, for when,
in the evening, Sandy had just driven off with his
brother and young Mr. Maclaren in the dog-cart,
and she and Tre were standing, watching them
down the drive, and Tre said " Oh ! Pen, it has
been so delightful to see how well Sandy gets on
with Aunt Penelope ! They have been talking
nearly all the afternoon, and I "m sure she likes
him very much, and oh ! Pen, I could n't help
thinking how nice it would be if she were to marry
him. He 's just the right age for her. Would n't
it be nice? " Pen turned on her quite angrily, and
said it was very silly to think of such things, and
that Aunt Penelope would be very angry, and that
it was only vulgar people who imagined that a lady
LITTLE MISS TRE. 267
and gentleman could not get on well without there
being a lot of nonsense.
Tre could not remember when she had seen Pen
so much put out, and she had never called her
vulgar before, never !
CHAPTER XXII.
DRIFTING.
'"TARE'S vulgar opinion about Sandy and Miss
JL Percival was not confined to herself. Old
Tom imparted the same, with much chuckling, to
his son, as they dressed for dinner that evening.
" By Jove ! Tom, that uncle of yours is a deep
fellow ! An uncommonly fine woman, Miss Per-
cival, and a tidy little estate, Highfield, and in first-
rate order ! and a man might do worse than step
into a house like that, and hang up his hat as its
master. She may be a bit of a Tartar, perhaps,
but Sandy 's an easy-going temper and won't in-
terfere, and he wants some one with a will of her
own to make up his mind for him. I never gave
him credit for being so wide awake. It really was
as good as a play to see him make the running this
afternoon. You did n't see half the fun because
you were playing tennis, but I nearly split more
than once, listening to the pace they were going.
And all this business over the bailiffs accounts that
Sandy is to help her with ! As if he knew as much
DRIFTING. 269
about farming as Rob there ! I dare say he can do
accounts right enough, but farming ! Now if she 'd
asked me "
" Oh ! that 's it? " said young Tom, with his chin
up in the air, buttoning his collar, " he 's put your
nose out of joint with the lovely Miss Percival eh,
Sir? I did n't know you had a soft corner in your
heart for Highfield House. Well ! there 's no de-
nying he 's cut you clean out. It seems to me
that I Ve got a word to say to it too. I don't
know how the old colonel left his money, but I
fancy it all went to Miss Percival, and the nieces
will come off second best if the aunt takes to her-
self a husband."
" So the money was the attraction, was it? " said
old Tom. " I was romantic enough to think it
was the pretty, little face. But it 's a mercenary
age ! "
" It is a pretty, little face, is n't it, Sir? I don't
know when I saw a prettier, and she has a way
of looking straight at you, so serious and in-
nocent, not goggling her eyes up and down to
show off her lashes though, by Jove ! ain't they
long? and she doesn't giggle like other girls,
but when she laughs, she laughs out as if she
meant it, and not just to show the dimples in her
cheeks."
2/O PEN.
During the ensuing weeks Sandy was very much
at Highfield House, and Tom the elder was more
and more strengthened in his belief in his own
sharp-sightedness and in his brother's acuteness ;
but young Tom, who managed also to be a good
deal at Highfield, though his opinion was not asked
about farming matters nor his services retained for
checking the bailiffs accounts, was not so entirely
convinced on either point, and was even fain to
confess to himself young people are not as a rule
willing to confess such weakness to others that
he was fairly puzzled.
I think between you and me, reader, that young
people do sometimes see farther into a stone-wall
than their elders, though it does not do to let them
think so, and this particular stone -wall was getting
to have more and more interest to young Tom, as
that sunny July rolled away into pleasant, mellow
August.
There was hardly a day on which the Highfield
party and the Luckham Dene party did not meet
on one excuse or other. Besides that business ex-
cuse which took Sandy over to Highfield frequently
in the morning, and which old Tom openly scoffed
at as the most paltry excuse imaginable, there were
meetings for tennis and luncheon and boating and
picnics and riding, there were messages to be taken
DRIFTING. 2/1
and notes delivered or something that had been
left behind to restore to its owner.
If any power on earth could make the course of
Tom's true love run smooth, his father would do it
not that old Tom was always quite judicious in
his interference with that capricious stream, which
runs smoothest as a rule when it is left alone, to
run under the bridge at its own sweet will. He
sometimes put his spoke in rather awkwardly, when
parties had to be divided, so as to throw Tom and
Pen together in the same boat, or on the return
walk in the moonlight, or on the same side at
tennis, and was surprised at irritated glances re-
warding his kind endeavors. He also had a way
of talking of "we old fellows" and "you young
folk," which was particularly annoying to Pen, and
not always quite acceptable to Sandy.
Sandy went drifting along just then without look-
ing ahead. It was very pleasant, life had never
seemed so bright, it was quite enough to live just
in the present, seeing Pen and Tre nearly every
day, being coaxed and teased and petted by Tre,
and being near Pen. Why cannot these pleasant
times go on indefinitely? Happiness is such a
fragile thing, it does not bear fingering ; if you try
to alter it at all it often disappears. But restless
mortals cannot learn to leave well alone, they al-
2/2 PEN.
ways want to be a little bit happier, and their
tinkering often ends in an entire collapse.
It was old Tom on this occasion who could
not leave well alone, and who, being afraid to
attack young Tom from that wholesome paternal
respect which parents of the present day are apt
to display, went at Sandy instead. He and young
Tom had an engagement for September to join a
big shooting-party in Warwickshire, and he was in
a fidget that matters should be settled, between
young Tom and Pen, before they went, and he
could not see why they should not be and what
was the reason of the delay.
" It 's as plain as a pikestaff," as he told Sandy,
" that the girl likes him and he likes her, so what 's
the good of all this shilly-shallying? I declare if
it goes on much longer, I shall take the matter
into my hands and say, ' My dear, Tom loves you
and wants you to marry him, only he has n't the
pluck to tell you so.' I wish you 'd have a talk to
him, Sandy, and put it before him. When I said
something the other day, he pretended to be cool
about it and to fancy the girl has a liking for some
one else, which is nonsense, pure nonsense ! for
who is there, I should like to know, except half-a-
dozen starveling curates that no sensible girl would
look twice at? Why, there is not a soul worth
DRIFTING. 2/3
looking at but Tom between this and Merfield.
Now is there ? " said this proud father, fully be-
lieving what he said.
" You 'd better speak to him yourself," Sandy
answered.
" I tell you he won't let me tackle him. Now
you 've known the girl all her life. I suppose there
could not have been any attachment before she
came to live with her aunt? but of course not,
she was only a child when she came twelve,
wasn't it?"
" Quite a child," Sandy testified, " fifteen or
about that."
" Well, I wish you would tell Tom that, and that
you are quite sure she does not care for any one
else. You like her, don't you, Sandy? You
really, honestly, think highly of her, and think her
good enough for Tom ? Of course it 's nothing or
very little to you, but it 's a serious thing to me,
and I feel sometimes that it is a great responsi-
bility helping it on at all ; that if it turned out un-
fortunate, or if she was not all one fancied, I should
never forgive myself. If you Ve any doubt on the
matter, just give me a hint, and I '11 manage to get
Tom away to Warwickshire sooner. I think he is
pretty hard hit, but still I Ve fancied the same be-
fore and it 's proved to be nothing at all ; so if
18
2/4 PEN.
you know any cause or impediment why these two
should not be joined in holy matrimony, as the
parsons say, out with it, and I '11 see if there 's not
some Warwickshire young lady who can put little
Miss Pen out of his head."
No, Sandy knew no cause or impediment, and
when further urged, declared that he thought Tom
would be lucky to get such a wife, which old Tom
thought was putting it rather strongly, much as he
liked Pen.
" But then, of course, she 's just like a child
of your own, isn't she, Sandy? quite like your
daughter, eh?"
" Quite," agreed poor Sandy.
" Then you '11 have a talk with Tom, and tell
him to pluck up his courage and have it out? I
can't think what he 's afraid of. She has given him
as much encouragement as you could expect from a
modest girl, and as for Miss Percival, it 's plain she
has no objection. Why, she 's always asking him
over. Oh yes, I know it 's not all on Miss Pen's
account, she 's so sociable, it 's one word for her
niece and two for herself, eh, Sandy?"
And then old Tom was wanted about something
in the farmyard, and he left Sandy to his reflections.
Not very pleasant reflections either ; that drifting
process is by no means a safe one, however pleas-
DRIFTING. 2/5
ant it may be, and somehow, through those July and
August days, Sandy had drifted some way from the
sensible resolution he had arrived at in the High-
field seat that Sunday afternoon when he first met
Pen, to regard her as young Tom's lady-love and
the very girl of all others suited to be his wife. It
was very odd, considering how much he had been
with the two, that it had been so little impressed
on his mind, when it was so very evident to old
Tom and no doubt to every one else ; it seemed to
him that Tom was as much with Tre as with Pen,
and that it was only when old Tom put in his
oar that there was any of that pairing off, that he
was always led to suppose came about naturally
without any assistance from outsiders. However,
no doubt he was dull and short-sighted, and
he had had, to be sure, no experience in such
matters.
It was not till quite the last thing at night that
Sandy could make up his mind to say anything to
young Tom, and then it was partly because old
Tom went up to bed and left them together, with a
meaning look at Sandy as much as to say, " Now 's
your time ! "
It was a lovely night, with the big harvest moon
shining clear and calm in the cloudless sky, throw-
ing black shadows across the lawn, and drawing a
2/6 PEN.
silver streak on the stream below, and showing
quite distinctly the sheaves of corn in the harvest
fields on the opposite hill.
Young Tom was sitting on the arm of a chair,
in the veranda, smoking and contemplating this
moonlight scene, with his face turned away, so that
Sandy could not gain anything from observing his
expression, while Sandy himself sat by the table
full in the lamplight, with the artlessness of age, so
that Tom could, every now and then, cast a look
over his shoulder at his uncle's face, and get a
good deal of information in that way.
Sandy plunged into the subject apropos to noth-
ing at all indeed I think the last matter of dis-
cussion had been rats, than which nothing could
have been more unsuggestive of Pen.
" I have been talking to your father about Pen."
" Ah? " knocking the ashes from his cigar.
" She is a very nice girl."
"Very."
' " And pretty."
" Quite."
" And you like her."
" I do."
"And she likes you."
" I hope so."
" Look here, Tom, nonsense apart, what do you
DRIFTING. 277
mean to do ? You 're not just amusing yourself,
and trifling with her? If you are "
" Oh come ! Sandy, don't look so fierce ! My
nerves won't stand it."
It was very unsatisfactory, and Sandy began to
wish he had left it alone ; but presently Tom him-
self renewed the subject in a more serious tone.
" I 'm rather glad to have a talk with you about
this matter. The governor is such an impetuous,
old person, he wants everything settled up, and
the day fixed and the ring bought, in a couple
of days."
"Ah," thought Sandy to himself, "one day is
enough for some people."
" There 's no doubt, as you say, that she 's a
very nice, pretty girl, but "
Sandy drew fiercely at his pipe. He was very
fond of Tom in a usual way, but somehow, at
this moment, the expression " puppy " associated
itself in his mind with his nephew, and there was
an irritable feeling in his toe, as if it would have
kicked somebody or something if it had followed
its own inclination. That " but " seemed a perfect
outrage on Pen Pen, as he saw her before his
mind's eye, standing in her white dress among the
lilies, pure and stately and gracious. Pen to be
spoken of with a " but " ! Sentiments read more
2/8 PEN.
plainly than their owner knew in the light of the
lamp.
" I can't help thinking," went on Tom imper-
turbably, " that she may have had some other
attachment, liked some other fellow. I suppose
you don't know of anything of the sort before
she came to Highfield?"
" She was a mere child when she came."
Sandy's voice was not very distinct, his pipe did
not seem to draw.
" Yes, to be sure ! so she was. Let me see,
how old was she ? "
" Fifteen," rather shortly.
" Oh, as much as that ? Well, many girls are
accomplished coquettes at that age."
" She was not."
" No, I should think not, she must have been
very like what her sister is now, only not so pretty."
" Not so pretty ? Tre will never be fit to hold
a candle to Pen ! "
" Oh, come now ! tastes differ. But I 'm not
denying that Miss Pen is pretty, only a trifle too
serious perhaps, a little old for her age. She
makes one feel almost like a boy when one talks
to her, as if she belonged to a generation above
one. Of course it 's absurd, she 's only how
old now ? Two or three and twenty ? But I
DRIFTING. 279
think the fact of the matter is, we all of us as a
family have rather a young taste. The governor,
if you notice, always gets on best with little girls,
and don't take to the dowagers at all, though, to
be sure, the mother was a year or two his senior.
Then you don't think there was any sort of love
affair before she came?"
" I think not. If there was, it must have been
too childish an affair to have lasted any time."
" And I suppose in those days in Dalston
Dalston, wasn't it? they didn't see many
people? hardly any one but you, I think you
told me."
" No."
" Then you think there is no doubt in that
quarter and that I might go ahead ? The gover-
nor seems very hot on it, and I think I have Miss
Percival on my side. Well, if the deed 's to be
done, it 's no use putting it off, though it makes a
fellow a bit nervous.
" ' He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who fears to put it to the touch
To win or lose it all,' "
sang Tom lightly. "To-morrow, shall it be?
What do you say? "
28O PEN.
"Why not to-morrow?"
"Why! are you going to bed already?" for
Sandy had got up and laid down his half-finished
pipe, every detail marked by a watchful eye from
the veranda an eye with a laugh lurking in the
corner of it. " I thought you would sit up a bit
longer and give me some advice for to-morrow.
A criminal used to be allowed a friend to bear
him company the night before he was turned off,
and if I am to make the fatal plunge to-
morrow "
There is a limit to human endurance ; the last
turn of the rack will wring a groan from the most
intrepid of martyrs, and Sandy could stand no
more.
" I think I '11 turn in," he said wearily, " I 'm
tired."
"You wish me success, don't you? She is a
dear little girl, and I 'm really very fond of her.
There 's no one in the world I 'd rather have for
my"
And here the door closed on Sandy, sick at
heart, tired to death, so that he did not hear the
concluding word of Tom's sentence, which, indeed,
was not meant for his ears.
" There 's no one in the world I 'd rather have
for my aunt."
DRIFTING. 28l
And then that worthless, good-for-nothing
nephew of his burst into peals of carefully
smothered laughter till the tears ran down his
cheeks, and he had to bend and rock backwards
and forwards to get the better of it.
" Poor, old buffer ! " he said, when he got
breath again.
CHAPTER XXIII.
A THREATENING OF GOUT.
" "\7"OUR uncle is seedy this morning," said old
* Tom at breakfast next day, " he 's got a
bit of a cold hanging about him, and, I tell you
what, Tom, I shouldn't be a bit surprised if he
hadn't a touch of the gout. I felt a bit like it
myself yesterday, and it 's not likely he '11 escape.
Why, I had it before I was five-and-twenty, and
I Ve not- had a clear twelvemonth since. Oh !
it 's no use talking about port wine. That 's quite
an exploded notion ; you can have gout quite as
well on toast and water nowadays, and it 's not the
least aristocratic, for paupers in the workhouse in-
firmary have their share of it every bit as much as
the ratepayers."
" He '11 have to be quick about it," said the un-
sympathizing Tom, " for he promised Miss Percival
to be over there this morning by eleven. I said I
would drive him over, as," with a would-be con-
scious look and a careful avoidance of his father's
beaming gaze, " I have a little business to settle
myself over there."
A THREATENING OF GOUT. 283
" He said that, perhaps, you would take his ex-
cuses to Miss Percival or he 'd write a note."
" Ah ! " said Tom coolly, " we can send the boy
over; my business can wait."
"Why shouldn't you go ?" urgently. "Sandy
seemed very anxious not to prevent your going,
and Miss Percival will think it queer if neither of
you turn up."
" Oh, hang it all ! am I to do Sandy's courting
for him ? That 's more than I bargained for. Am
I to ask Miss Percival her intentions? or get her
to name the day?"
Tom was in one of his tiresome moods, in which
his father, not being good at repartee, and also
being very much in earnest, always got the worst
of it.
" It 's very plain," he said, " that Sandy is not
up to much. He says he 's had a bad night, and
I heard him once, when I woke, tramping up and
down his room. Perhaps it was that cucumber
at dinner ; people with a gouty tendency ought to
be careful what they eat."
"Very," said Tom; "but it does not matter
what they drink, port wine, or toast and water,
it 's all the same. He did n't sleep ? did n't he ?
that 's odd ! but, of course, as you say, it may
have been the cucumber."
284 p EN.
Sandy certainly looked none the better for his
sleepless night, whether that sleeplessness was
caused by cucumber or anything else; he had
relapsed into the listlessness that had so struck
Tom when he first came back, which had quite
disappeared during the last few weeks. He came
slouching down with his shoulders up to his ears,
and his oldest coat on, and was chilly and irritable,
which certainly looked like gout. He kept com-
plaining of the cold, though it was a bright, fresh
August day; and, at his suggestion, a fire was
lighted in the smoking-room, and he pulled up an
armchair with its back to the window and collected
a heap of newspapers, to be a pretext for silence
if any one came into the room.
The sound of Tom's voice was particularly irri-
tating to his nerves, and the cheerful whistle he
kept up exasperated him almost beyond endur-
ance. Old Tom was much more supportable,
though his suggestions about the gout were an-
noying, but Sandy felt old and dilapidated, so
the remarks about " we old fellows " and " at
our age, you know, Sandy," which had irritated
him occasionally, now chimed in with his own
sentiments.
Young Tom, though sorely tempted, mercifully
forbore to torment him, and consented to go off
A THREATENING OF GOUT. 285
alone to Highfield, bearing a note of apology from
Sandy.
" Though I shall get nothing but black looks
when they see me arrive without you. They will
be horribly disgusted, I mean, of course, Miss
Percival."
When he was gone, and old Tom was off on
some farm business, Sandy was left to himself.
Such a wearisome old self to be left to ! and to
feel that to the end of his life no better company
was to be looked for !
He could not prevent his mind following Tom
and his high- stepping chestnut along the pleasant
road, under the hedgerow elms, heavy with their
thick, dark, summer foliage, untouched yet by
autumn's hand, past the broad, sunny, harvest
fields, where the big wagons were gathering the
golden sheaves, past the pretty lodge, covered
with honeysuckle and monthly roses, where the
lodge-keeper's wife would run out to open the gate
and smile and courtesy to the young fellow with,
no doubt, a shrewd guess at his errand ; then the
drive through the park up to the fine, old house
Where would he find her? In the drawing-room?
out in the garden ? under the tulip-tree ? down in
the shrubbery? Not, Sandy hoped, with a touch
of sharp pain, in the yew-tree walk where the
286 PEN.
lilies grew ! He could not bear to think that
Tom's tale of love should be told there ; that was
his, and though the lilies were long since gone, in
Sandy's mind they bloomed there still, white and
fragrant and pure, and Pen among them.
He took up a newspaper, and tried to turn his
thoughts by reading an article on ensilage, but his
attention would wander, and the print was bad, and
he could not see ; no doubt his sight was failing,
what could he expect at his age ? Then he poked
the fire and let the poker drop on his foot, which
recalled the idea of gout to his mind, and, by per-
sistent thinking, he began to persuade himself that
his foot was swelling and that he felt shooting pains
up his leg, and he had even gone so far as to give
vent to a groan, and to hoist his foot up on to a
chair, when an interruption occurred which put it
out of his head and apparently out of his foot too
for good and all.
It was the sound of wheels coming up the drive,
unmistakably those of Tom's dog-cart. WJiat did
this betide ? An accepted lover does not generally
fly from his lady's presence immediately ; a re-
jected ? Oh, no ! that was impossible. Perhaps
Pen was engaged with other visitors, and Tom saw
he would have no chance to-day.
But the next moment Tom opened the door and
A THREATENING OF GOUT. 287
looked in, with such a smiling face as put any idea
of rejection out of the question and made even
suspense seem improbable.
" I 've brought you some visitors," he said ; " as
the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet
has come to the mountain. Allow me to introduce
Mahomet."
And there were Pen and Tre, and before he
could get the so-called gouty foot down, or strug-
gle up from the depth of his armchair, they were
bending over him with faces of much concern
and compassion, and asking anxiously about his
health.
" I made out such a pitiful case," said Tom,
" that the young ladies could not rest till they had
seen the invalid, and I persuaded Miss Percival to
let them come and have lunch and share the bur-
den of nursing you. They have been attending
the ambulance class at Ashling, and know how to
treat all manner of ailments. Miss Tre has been
longing for me to come to grief in the dog-cart, so
that she might get a chance of bandaging a broken
arm or two. They have brought their bandages
and First Aidbook, and if you 're ready, Sir, they
will set to work and administer an emetic or open
an artery."
Tom went rattling on with his nonsense, and
288 PEN.
presently old Tom appeared and luncheon was
ready, and the whole" party adjourned to the
dining-room. Pen was very quiet ; Sandy fancied
she was a little nervous ; perhaps she knew what
was coming. Tom was in very good spirits, laugh-
ing and talking all lunch-time. Sandy rather re-
sented his behavior ; it would have been more be-
coming in him, he thought, if he had shown more
diffidence and had not made so sure of success.
It was not good taste either, it seemed to him, to
have brought Pen there ; the proposal should have
been made at Highfield, at the girl's own home,
so that, if the answer were unfavorable, there might
be no awkwardness for her.
In a moment of depression in the morning,
Sandy had ordered a basin of arrowroot for his
luncheon, which made its appearance accordingly,
much to his embarrassment and to the amusement
of young Tom, who, you may be sure, did not
allow the incident to pass unnoticed.
He was not permitted to drop the part of in-
valid altogether ; old Tom and Tre bo no. fide, and
young Tom from malice prepense, kept up the de-
lusion, young Tom offering his arm to help him
from the luncheon- table, and Tre running for a
footstool to put under his feet, and old Tom offer-
ing advice about things to be done and avoided
A THREATENING OF GOUT. 289
when an attack of gout was threatening; so, of
course, after lunch, when the party betook them-
selves into the garden and down the meadow to
see some waterfowl on the stream, Sandy was not
expected to join them, and Pen declared she was
a little tired and would stop with him.
But it was not likely that old Tom would allow
this division of the party, and before the meadow
was reached, young Tom was sent back to beg
Miss Pen to come, as his father particularly wanted
her to see the ducks.
There was a little, comical look on Tom's face
as he gave the message, the tete-a-tete in the
veranda looked very pleasant, Sandy had bright-
ened up amazingly, and Pen, in her low basket-
chair at his side, looked quite content with the
arrangement.
Pen got up a little reluctantly, and Sandy rose
too, as if he would have accompanied her, and
then stopped suddenly and sat down again. Was
it a twinge of the gout, or was it a sudden
recollection ?
" Go, my dear," he said, " I think you had
better. Go with Torn*."
And then Tom and Pen went out of the ve-
randa across the lawn, slowly as lovers go, and
stopped, as lovers are wont to stop, at the gate
'9
29O PEN.
into the meadow. Old Tom could see them as
he and Tre inspected the ducks, and fed them
with bread-crumbs, and, with much inward delight
and satisfaction, he tried to prolong as much as
possible Tre's interest in the ducking and diving
crowd, and to spin out the supply of bread, so that
nothing should suggest a return to the house or the
finding of any other sort of amusement.
Sandy too could see them, all too plainly for his
peace of mind, as he sat in his chair under the ve-
randa Tom, leaning over Pen in eager speech ;
Pen, with bent head and down-dropped eyes, play-
ing with a rose in her hand. Sandy could not
endure the sight for more than a minute, but im-
patiently jerked his chair round so that his view
was altered to that of the dining-room and the
servants clearing the luncheon-table. He felt so
old and cross and ill-natured, he could not stand
this billing and cooing, there was something nau-
seating about it to a man of his age ; he would go
clear away. Tom was no son of his, thank good-
ness ! he was not bound to stand by and admire
whatever this young divinity chose to do, and ap-
plaud as his father did. He would go off the very
next day, to some place where he could be as old
and disagreeable as he pleased, - to Monkton,
perhaps, to the two quiet graves, to the old, gray,
A THREATENING OF GOUT. 29 1
tossing sea, out of the way of congratulations and
wedding-bells.
And then he became aware of a step coming
towards him, a light step crossing the gravel path
and hesitating at the veranda. It was Pen, and
Pen by herself, with a strange, shy, wistful look
on her face and the color coming and going in
her cheeks, and she was disengaging something
from a ribbon at her throat.
One effort more ! he must wish her joy, he must
not spoil little Pen's happiness by his wretched
selfishness.
" Sandy," she said, " I have been talking to
Tom."
It was the first time she had spoken of him by
his Christian name, and Sandy's jealous ear marked
it with a pang.
"Yes," he answered, and his voice sounded very
harsh and cold and unfit for an old friend, who
had known her from her babyhood, and should have
been happy in her happiness and rejoiced in her
joy. " Yes, I know, my dear, I know. Where
is he? "
" He has gone down into the meadow with Tre.
Do you know, Sandy," she went on, and as she
spoke, standing in front of him, twisting a bit of
narrow ribbon in her hands, Sandy saw that on the
PEN.
third finger of her little left hand was a wedding-
ring, old and thin and worn, but bright, " do you
know he told me to-day, what I have guessed for
some time, that he loves little Tre ; only think of
that ! little Tre, who seems only a child still. And
do you know, Sandy, but I did not tell Tom so,
for he will find it out for himself one day, I
think little Tre loves him, though, perhaps, she
hardly knows it herself. He won't ask her yet,
there is no need, they are very happy as they are,
and she is not a poor, desolate, little girl who
wants a home ; but if he speaks to-day, or waits
for ten years, I think it will be all the same, that
Tre will love him and no one else to the end of
her life."
She was silent a moment, and so was Sandy, who
had got up and stood before her, with his eyes
riveted on that little ring, which she kept turning
on her finger as she spoke.
"Sandy," she said with a little gasp, "do you
remember what day it is? Do you remember
what you said to me this very day ten years
ago?"
He had her hand in his now, the hand with the
wedding-ring.
" You asked me if I could trust you then, and I
have trusted you all these ten years of silence, and
A THREATENING OF GOUT. 293
I trust you now, and I always shall as long as I
live. You said, Sandy, I should be a child as long
as I liked till some day. Oh, Sandy, has not that
some day come?"
It was half an hour later, when they were walk-
ing down the shrubbery path to find the others,
whom Tom had been carefully keeping out of the
way by all the arts known to him. Both Pen's
hands were clasped on Sandy's arm, and were
kept there by his large, right hand.
That little ring of Sandy's mother was still on
her finger ; as on a former occasion, it did not
come off as readily as it went on, but then, as
Pen explained it, it might be a gouty tendency in
the slim, little, white finger, " because, you know,
Sandy, at our age, we must expect such things."
And there was Tom coming to meet them, to
announce that tea was to be served in the boat-
house by the stream ; Tom with a world of mis-
chief lurking in his eyes, with stores, as Sandy
knew full well, of unsparing chaff to pour out on
him by and by ; but who cares for Tom's chaff?
not Sandy for one.
"Well?" he said to Pen, "shall you expect me
to call you Aunt Pen?"
" Of course I shall," she answered, and, as Sandy
grudgingly let go one of her hands that she might
294 PEN -
place it in Tom's, she added, " I think I shall like
my nephew Tom."
And he answered, "And I like you very much
for my Aunt Pen at present, but some day I should
like you better for a sister."
So Tom had his " some day " too.
THE END.
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MR. TANGIER'S VACATIONS.
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THE PENTAMERON, CITATION FROM WILLIAM SHAKES-
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THE PILGRIM'S SCRIP; OR, WIT AND WISDOM OF
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BALZAC'S NOVELS IN ENGLISH.
Translated by KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. Already
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DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS. THE COUNTRY DOCTOR.
PERE GORIOT. COUSIN PONS.
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE TWO BROTHERS,
CESAR BIROTTEAU. THE ALKAHEST.
EUGENIE GRANDET. MODESTE MIGNON.
THE MAGIC SKIN (LA PEAU DE CHAGRIN).
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COUSIN BETTE. LOUIS LAMBERT. SERAPHITA.
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THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM.
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This is the first issue in our new "HANDY LIBRARY: Companionable Books
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OUR RECENT ACTORS.
Being Recollections, Critical, and in many cases Personal, of Late
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PRINCE VANCE.
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5. The Story Of Realmah. By SIR ARTHUR HELPS.
6. The Truth About Clement Ker. A NOVEL.
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MODESTE MIGNON.
Scenes from Private Life. By HONORS DE BALZAC. Translated
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A BOOK OF POEMS.
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Of Mr. Chadwick's " Book of Poems " seven editions have been sold already.
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not been before collected. Thus diminished and enlarged, the publishers of
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larger circulation than it has heretofore enjoyed, though this has hardly been
exceeded by any of our minor poets.
THE EARLY LIFE OF SAMUEL ROGERS.
Author of " The Pleasures of Memory." By P. W. CLAYDEN.
I2mo. Cloth. Price, $1.75.
" ' The Early Life of Samuel Rogers,' which has been anticipated with an
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chief figures in English society, leaving to a promised volume the account of his
subsequent life and his brilliant devotion to the distinguished men and women
about him.
"The author, P. W. Clayden, in undertaking the work, took upon himself a
task long made obligatory upon competent writers, in behalf of the literature of
Rogers's day, as well as to justly describe and measure the quality and power of
Rogers himself. For with all that the poet has left regarding himself and his
friends, and with what many others have written to help, there has not been given
as yet that interior and completed view which profits the student most. Mr. Clay-
den has recognized this throughout, and fortunately has been enabled to add to
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Mr. Rogers, and in new letters of Richard Sharp, and that leaves little, if anything,
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" The volume at hand is particularly illustrative of the author's fidelity to a
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THE STUDY OF POLITICS.
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MRS. TILESTON'S SELECTIONS.
New editions of Mrs. Tileston's Selections from THOMAS A.
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" Roberts Brothers have issued charming, dainty Easter editions of three of
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things of the spirit ; and who can guide these meditations of ours more beautifully
than Tauler and Fdnelon ? " Boston Transcript.
LONDON OF TO-DAY, 1888.
By CHARLES E. PASCOE. Numerous illustrations. Fourth
year of publication. I2mo. Cloth. Price, $1.50.
MARTIN LUTHER, AND OTHER ESSAYS.
By FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE, author of " The Primeval
World," " Reason in Religion," " Atheism in Philosophy," etc.
I2mo. Cloth. Price, $2.00.
Gordon Browne's Series of Old Fairy Tales.
HOP O' MY THUMB.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
The Stories retold by LAURA E. RICHARDS. With colored
drawings by Gordon Browne. 410. Illuminated paper covers.
40 cents each.
"The venerable classics, 'Hop o' My Thumb' and ' Beauty and the Beast,'
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even the elder readers to renew their long-neglected studies." Home Journal.
TREASURE ISLAND. ILLUSTRATED.
A Story of Pirates and the Spanish Main. By ROBERT Louis
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THE UNITED STATES OF YESTERDAY AND OF TO-
MORROW.
By WILLIAM BARROWS, D.D., author of " Oregon ; the Strug-
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I vol. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.25.
This book has been written to answer questions. As the author in earlier days
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since in official work, during which he made ten tours over the border, and in the
East had devoted much labor to public addresses and lectures on our new country,
it was quite natural that a miscellaneous information should be solicited from him
concerning the territory between the Alleghanies and the Pacific.
For various reasons it has seemed best to let this information group itself into
topics, and so it stands classified under headings and in chapters. From tht
Introduction.
HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL,
Till the Time of King David. By ERNEST RENAN, author of
" Life of Jesus." Demy. 8vo. Cloth. Price, $2.50.
" It may safely be predicted that Renan's latest production will take rank as
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the most fascinating of modern writers." New York Times.
" To all who know anything of M. Renan's ' Life of Jesus ' it will be no sur-
prise that the same writer has told the ' History of the People of Israel till the Time
of King David' as it was never told before nor is ever like to be told again. For
but once in centuries does a Renan arise, and to any other hand this work were im-
possible. Throughout it is the perfection of paradox, for, dealing wholly with what
we are all taught to lisp at the mother's knee, it is more original than the wildest
romance; more heterodox than heterodoxy, it is yet full of large and tender rever-
ence for that supreme religion that brightens all time as it transcends all creeds."
The Commercial Advertiser.
HANNAH MORE.
By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, author of " Heir of Redclyffe," etc.
Famous Women Series, uniform with "George Eliot," " Margaret
Fuller," " Mary Lamb," etc. i6mo. Cloth. Price, $1.00.
" Perhaps a better selection of biographer for Hannah More could not have
been imagined than Charlotte M. Yonge, who has just added her life to the Famous
Women Series. Certainly the book is one of the most thoroughly entertaining of
the series. It is written in an easy and flowing style, and is full of telling points.
Miss Yonge is too well trained as a literary woman not to know how to make the
best of her material, and she is in most thorough sympathy with her subject. In-
deed, Miss Yonge might not unjustly be called the Hannah More of to-day. . . .
She has almost the same theories of the object of literary work as had Hannah
More, and can enter perfectly into her feelings and aims. The volume is full, too,
of personal anecdote, and of clever discrinr-iation of character." The Beacon.
Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Announcements.
LIFE OF DR. ANANDIBAI JOSHEE,
The Kinswoman and Friend of Pundita Ramabai. By Mrs.
CAROLINE H. BALL. i2ino. Cloth. Price, $1.00. It contains
many original letters, and is embellished by a full-length portrait of
Dr. Joshee. The author designs that the profits of the sale shall
go to the Ramabai " School Fund," and all well-wishers of high-
caste Hindu women are requested to interest themselves in this
book.
" A curious and touching little episode in life was observed in this country a
few years ago in the entrance of a Hindu woman to the Woman's Medical College
of Philadelphia as a student ; her life of three years in that institution ; her depar-
ture for her own country to fill a high professional position, and her death four
months after her return. . . . There are occasionally born into the world those who
become, indeed, ministering spirits ; souls finely touched from some diviner sphere,
who seem to be impersonated here for some especial and distinctive purpose ; and
of these Dr. Joshee was one. This memoir, written by Mrs. Caroline Healey Call,
of Washington, presents most fittingly and graphically the story of her life. Mrs.
Dall has entered into it with unerring sympathy, and has also brought to the work
her extensive scholarly knowledge and the culture born of wide experience in litera-
ture and life, out of which alone this biography could be fitly written. . . . Mrs.
Dall relates the story of her life with great accuracy of detail in historic allusion,
with broad comprehension of the relation this unique life bears to the general ad-
vancement of the condition of women in India, and its relation to social progress.
The book is one of the deepest interest, and the frontispiece, giving a full-length
portrait of Dr. Joshee in her Hindu costume, will be prized by all readers. To
write such a biography required exceptional powers, and too much can hardly be
said in praise of the admirable manner in which Mrs. Dall has accomplished the
work." Boston Evening Traveller
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT.
His Character. A Sermon by Rev. C. A. BARTOL. Containing
also a Tribute paid to Louisa M. Alcott. Pamphlet, 20 cents.
FOB SUMMER BEADING.
Neiv editions of the following popular books in paper covers, price,
50 rents each. Namely :
" Kismet," " Signer Monaldini's Niece," " The Colonel's Opera
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" A Lad's Love," " Button's Inn," " South-County Neighbors,"
' Ouvie'ves and Our Neighbors," "Mr. Tangier's Vacations,"
" Rosrer BerL<lev\ Probation."
The
No Name
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" No one of the numerous series of novels
with which the country has been deluged
of late contains as many good volumes of
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THIRD SERIES,
The publishers take pleasure in announcing a new and bright
novel in the popular " No Name " series. It is a study, with a
large basis of reality, illustrating the Cracker element in Florida
life. The eleventh volume in the Third Series is entitled
CRACKER JOE.
Previously Published.
FIRST SERIES. Afterglow ; Deirdre ; Is That All ? Will
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PRICE OF EACH VOLUME IS $1.00.
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FAMOUS WOMEN SERIES.
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GEORGE ELIOT. By Miss BLIND.
EMILY BRONTE. By Miss ROBINSON.
GEORGE SAND. By Miss THOMAS.
MARY LAMB. By MRS. GILCHRIST.
MARGARET FULLER. By JULIA WARD HOWE.
MARIA EDGEWORTH. By Miss ZIMMERN.
ELIZABETH FRY. By MRS. E. R. PITMAN.
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY. By VERNON LEE.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT. By MRS. E. R. PENNELL.
HARRIET MARTINEAU. By MRS. F. FENWICK MILLER.
RACHEL. By MRS. NINA H. KENNARD.
MADAME ROLAND. By MATHILDE BLIND.
SUSANNA WESLEY. By ELIZA CLARKE.
MARGARET OF ANGOULEME. By Miss ROBINSON.
MRS. SIDDONS. By MRS. NINA H. KENNARD.
MADAME DE STAEL. By BELLA DUFFY.
HANNAH MORE. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE.
ADELAIDE RISTORI. An Autobiography.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. By JOHN H.
INGRAM.
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ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, Boston.
"
