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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 41906
   :PG.Title: Princess Sarah and Other Stories
   :PG.Released: 2013-01-23
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: John Strange Winter
   :DC.Title: Princess Sarah and Other Stories
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1897
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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PRINCESS SARAH AND OTHER STORIES
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   .. _`Cover`:

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      Cover

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   .. _`"'Princess Sarah,' he shouted, 'Her Royal Highness Princess Sarah of Nowhere.'"  (Page 41.)`:

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      :alt: "'Princess Sarah,' he shouted, 'Her Royal Highness Princess Sarah of Nowhere.'"  (Page 41.)

      "'Princess Sarah,' he shouted, 'Her Royal Highness Princess Sarah of Nowhere.'"  (Page `41`_.)

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      PRINCESS SARAH

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      AND OTHER STORIES

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      BY

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      JOHN STRANGE WINTER

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      AUTHOR OF
      "BOOTLES' BABY" "MIGNON'S SECRET" "MY POOR DICK"
      "HE WENT FOR A SOLDIER" ETC ETC

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      LONDON
      WARD, LOCK & CO LIMITED
      WARWICK HOUSE SALISBURY SQUARE E C
      NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE
      1897

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   Contents

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   Princess Sarah

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   CHAPTER I

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   `ORPHANED`_

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   CHAPTER II

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   `HER NEW-FOUND AUNT`_


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   CHAPTER III

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   `SARAH'S FUTURE IS ARRANGED`_


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   CHAPTER IV

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   `HER NEW HOME`_


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   CHAPTER V

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   `A TASTE OF THE FUTURE`_


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   CHAPTER VI

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   `THE AMIABLE FLOSSIE`_


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   CHAPTER VII

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   `COUSINLY AMENITIES`_


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   CHAPTER VIII

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   `FLOSSIE'S GRIEVANCES`_


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   CHAPTER IX

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   `AN ASTUTE TELL-PIE`_


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   CHAPTER X

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   `A PLEASANT RAILWAY JOURNEY`_


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   CHAPTER XI

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   `AUNT GEORGE`_


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   CHAPTER XII

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   `SARAH MAKES AN IMPRESSION`_


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   CHAPTER XIII

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   `THE TURNING POINT OF HER LIFE`_


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   CHAPTER XIV

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   `A BRILLIANT MARRIAGE`_


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   CHAPTER XV

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   `A FAMILY CATASTROPHE`_


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   CHAPTER XVI

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   `A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES`_


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   CHAPTER XVII

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   `SARAH'S OPPORTUNITY`_



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   `MISS MIGNON`_

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   `BOY'S LOVE`_

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   `YUM-YUM: A PUG`_

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   `OUR ADA ELIZABETH`_

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   `HALT!`_

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   `THE LITTLE LADY WITH THE VOICE`_

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   `JEWELS TO WEAR`_

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.. _`ORPHANED`:

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   Princess Sarah

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   |
   |  "Take this lesson to thy heart;
   |   That is best which lieth nearest."
   |       --Gasper Bacerra
   |

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CHAPTER I

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ORPHANED

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In a poor little street in a crowded city there
stood a small house, not alone, but in the middle
of a row of other houses exactly like it.  There
was a tiny bow window on the left of the door,
and two very small sash windows in the storey
above; the frames were warped, and the paint, like
that of the door, was blistered and cracked in
many places.  And the doorstep looked as if it
had been cleaned a week or so before with whiting
instead of pipe-clay, and evidently the person who
had done it had, doubtless with the very best
intentions in the world, given the lower part of the
door a few daubs with the same cloth, which had
not at all improved its shabby surface.

Between the house and the pavement there was
a small garden, a very humble attempt at a
garden, with a rockery in one corner and a raised
bed in the middle.

It was a noisy street, though it was not a
thoroughfare, for on that hot, sultry day the doors
and windows were all open and the children were
all playing about pavements and road, caring little
for the heat and dust, screaming, laughing,
shouting, crying, as children will, except when they
found themselves within reach of the house which
I have described; then their voices were hushed,
their tones sobered; then they stood to gaze up
at the closed blinds which beat now and then
against the open windows, as if a door had been
opened and allowed a draught of air to sweep
through the house; then one little maid of ten
years old or so lifted a warning finger to check
a lesser child, upon whom the fear and knowledge
of death had not yet fallen.  "Hush--sh!  Don't
make a noise, Annie," she said.  "Mr. Gray is dead."

The younger child, Annie, ceased her laughter,
turning from the closed house to stare at two
ladies who came slowly down the street, looking
from side to side as if they sought one of the
houses in particular.

"This must be it," said one, as her eyes fell
upon the closed blinds.

"Yes," returned the other; "that must be it."

So they passed in at the little gate and knocked
softly at the shabby door.

"Poor fellow!" said one, with a glance at the
bit of garden before the bow window, "*his* doing,
evidently; there's not another garden in the street
like it."

"No.  And what pains he must have taken
with it.  Poor fellow!" echoed the other.

There was a moment's scuffle within the house,
the sound of loudly-whispering voices; then a heavy
footstep, and the door was opened by a stout,
elderly person in a shabby black gown and white
apron--a person who was unmistakably a nurse.
She curtsied as she saw the ladies, and the one
who had spoken last addressed her.

"We heard early this morning.  I see the sad
news is too true," she began.

"Yes'm," shaking her head.  "He went off quite
quiet about ten o'clock last night.  Ah, I've seen
a-many, but I never saw a more peaceful end--never!"

The two ladies each made a murmur of sympathy.

"And the little girl?" said one of them.

"Well, mum, she do fret a good bit," replied
the nurse pityingly.

"Poor little thing!  We have brought some fruit
and some other little things," said the lady, handing
a basket to the nurse.

"It's real kind of you, mum!" the old woman
cried.  "She'll be rare and pleased, she will, poor
little missy!  You see, mum, it's been a queer,
strange life for a child, for she's been everything
to him, and she never could go out and play in
the street with the other children.  That couldn't
be, and it was hard for the little thing to see 'em
and be shut off from 'em all day as she was; and
the master on that account used to make hisself
more to her, which will make it all the harder for her
now, poor fatherless, motherless lamb that she is!"

"Of course, of course.  Poor little maid!  And
what will become of her, do you think?"

"I can't say for certain, mum; but the mistress,
she had relations, and the master wrote to one of
them on Thursday.  He was sore troubled about
little missy, was the master--aye, sore troubled.
The letter was sent, and an answer came this
morning to say that one of missy's aunts was
coming to-day.  The vicar opened it."

"Oh, well, I'm glad somebody is coming to the
poor child," said the lady who had brought the
basket of fruit.  "I hope it will be all right.  And
you will give her the things, nurse?" with a look
at the basket.

"Oh, yes, mum," with a curtsey.

There was not only some fruit in the basket,
but a pot of jam and a jar of potted meat, a glass
of jelly, some sponge cakes, and a packet of
sweeties, such as little folk love.

The old nurse carried them into the sitting-room
and set them down on the table before a little girl
who was sitting beside it.

"See, missy, what a nice basket of good things
Mrs. Tracy has brought for you!" the old woman
cried.  "Wasn't it kind of her?"

"Very kind," said the little girl, brightening up
somewhat at the unexpected kindness from one
almost a stranger to her.

"Grapes, Miss Sarah, and peaches, and Orleans
plums; and see--potted meat!  Now how could
she know you're so fond of potted meat?"

"I don't know, nurse; *he* liked potted meat too,
you know."

"Yes, dear, yes; but he's gone where he has all
he's most fond of, you know."

"Except me," murmured Sarah, under her breath.

"Ah, that's true, my lamb; but you mustn't
repine.  Him as took the master away so calm and
peaceful last night knew just what was best to do,
and He'll do it, never fear!  It's hard to bear, my
honey, and sure," with a sigh, "no one knows better
what bearing such is than old nurse.  And--hark! to
think of any one coming with a knock like that! enough
to waken the----"  But then she broke off
short, and went to open the door.





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.. _`HER NEW-FOUND AUNT`:

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   CHAPTER II


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   HER NEW-FOUND AUNT

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A short, stout, well-dressed woman stood upon
the door-step, and the cabman was just
hauling a box off the roof of his cab.

"Mr. Gray's 'ouse?" demanded the stout lady.
"Ah, pore thing!  I see it's all over.  Pore thing!
Well, I'm sorry, of course, though I don't suppose
'e'll be much loss to any one; pore, dreaming,
shiftless thing!"

"Miss Sarah is here, mum," said the old nurse,
pointing severely towards the door of the sitting-room.

"Miss Sarah--oh, the child!  Eh, well, my dear,"
going into the room, and taking Sarah's limp and
shaking hand, "I'm sorry to come on such an errand
the first time ever I see you; but that was your pore
pa's fault, not mine.  I never was one to turn my
back on my own flesh and blood--never, though
perhaps I say it that shouldn't; but your pore pa,
he was that awkward when he got a crotchet into
his 'ead, that there was no doing aught with him.
I think you favour your ma, my dear," she continued,
with a complete change of tone.  "Your pore
pa--  Eh?  What? oh, the cab!  Yes, I'll come," and then
she bustled out, fumbling at the fastening of a small
leather bag which hung over her wrist, and leaving
poor Sarah struck dumb with astonishment.

The child crept to the door and watched her
new-found aunt settle with the cabman; and it is certain
that never had Sarah seen a cabman settled with in
that fashion before.  They had not indulged in many
cabs during the course of her short life; but, on the
few occasions that they had enjoyed such luxuries,
her father had paid for them with the air of a prince,
and with a liberality such as made dispute out of the
question.  Alas, poor child! if the loving father now
lying white and silent in the room above had had
less of that princely air, and still less of that princely
instinct of hospitality and generosity, life would at
that moment probably have been very different for
her.  But all this was beyond Sarah, who was very
young, and therefore not likely to see the advantages
of the lengthened haggling process going on just
then at the gate.  A moment later Mrs. Stubbs
entered the house again in triumph.

"Lot of thieving vagabonds them cabmen are,
to be sure!" she remarked, with an air of indignation
mingled with satisfaction.  "But he don't get
the better of me, not if I know it; and so I told
him.  But, dear! dear!  *'Ow* like your pore ma you
are, child!  Stubbs 'll be glad of it--he never could
abide him as is gone, pore thing!  Well, well, we
needn't say aught again him now, for he won't
trouble us no more; only, as I say, Stubbs 'll be
glad of it."

"Please, who *is* Mr. Stubbs?" Sarah asked plaintively,
feeling instinctively that she had better not
try to argue with this strange relative.

Mrs. Stubbs, however, was so taken aback at so
unexpected a question, that she was obliged to sit
down, the better to show the extent of her astonishment.

"Well, I don't 'old with it!" she exclaimed to the
nurse, who had come in to spread the cloth for a cup
of tea which the visitor had expressed herself able
and willing to take.  "It's bringing up the child like
a 'eathen in ignorance of what her own flesh and
blood's very names is--'pon my word it is; it's
'eathenish."

"*Miss Sarah* doesn't understand," put in the old
nurse pointedly.

For a moment Mrs. Stubbs gasped, much as she
might have done if the older woman had dashed a
pail of water in her face; but she took the hint
with a very good grace, and turned to Sarah again.

"Your pore ma, my dear, was Stubbs' own sister,"
she said.

"Then Mr. Stubbs is my uncle--my own uncle?"
Sarah asked.

"Your own uncle, and I'm your aunt; not your
own aunt, of course, Sarah, but that's no matter.
I've a good and a feeling 'eart, whatever other faults
I may have to carry; and what's Stubbs' flesh and
blood is my flesh and blood, and so you'll find.
Besides, I've seven children of my own, and my
'eart feels for them that has no father nor mother
to stand by 'em.  And I believe in sticking to your
own--everybody's not like *that*, Sarah, though
maybe I say it that shouldn't.  There is folks that
believes in wearing yourself to the bone for other
people's advantage, and letting your own flesh and
blood starve in the gutter, so to speak.  Ah, well,
I ain't one of that sort, and I'm thankful for it, Sarah."

Poor little desolate Sarah, with her suddenly
empty life and great aching void in her heart, crept
a shade closer to her new-found aunt, and rested
her tired head against her substantial arm.

"And I have seven cousins of my own?" she
said, the shadows in her eyes clearing away for a
moment.

"*Seven* cousins of your own!" cried Mrs. Stubbs,
in an ecstasy of enjoyment.  "*Seven*, Sarah, my
dear!  Why, I have seven children!"

"And have I some more aunts and uncles?"
Sarah asked, feeling not a little bewildered.

"Why, dear, yes, three aunts and two uncles on
your pore ma's side, to say naught of all there may
be on your pa's side, with which I'm not familiar,"
said Mrs. Stubbs, with a certain air such as
conveyed to Sarah that her ignorance was a decided
loss to her father's family in general.

"There's your Uncle Joe--he 'as five boys, and
lives at 'Ampstead; and there's your Uncle George--he
'as only three girls, and lives in great style
at Brighton.  He's in the corn trade, is your Uncle
George."

Instinctively Sarah realized why once, when they
had been going to the seaside for a fortnight, her
father had said, "No, no, not Brighton," when that
town was suggested; and as instinctively she kept
the recollection to herself.

"And then there's Polly--your Aunt Mary, Sarah!
She's the fine lady of the family--very 'aughty, she
is, though her and me 'as always been very good
friends, always.  Still, she's uncommon 'aughty, and
maybe she 'as a right, for she married a gentleman
in the City, and keeps her carriage and pair and a
footman, too.  Ah, well! she 'asn't a family, 'asn't
Mrs. Lennard; perhaps if she 'ad 'ad seven children,
like me, she'd have 'ad to be content with a broom,
as I am."

"We have a broom, too," said Sarah, watching
the visitor stir her tea round and round; "indeed,
we have two, and a very old one that Jane uses
to sweep out the yard with."

For a minute Mrs. Stubbs was too thoroughly
astounded to speak; then she subsided into weak
fits of laughter, such as told Sarah she had made
a terrible mistake somehow.

"A very old one to sweep out the yard with!"
Mrs. Stubbs cried in gasps.  "Oh, dear, dear!  Why,
child, you're just like a little 'eathen.  A broom is
a carriage, a close carriage, something like a
four-wheel cab, only better.  Oh, dear, dear! and we
keep three, do we?  Oh, *what* a joke to tell Stubbs!"

"Miss Sarah knows," struck in the old nurse,
with some indignation; "the doctor's carriage is
what Mrs. Stubbs calls a broom, dearie."

Sarah turned her crimson face from one to the
other.  "But Father always called that kind of
carriage a *bro*\-am," she emphasized, "and I didn't
know you meant the same, Aunt."

"Well, never mind, my dear; I shouldn't 'ave
laughed at you," returned Mrs. Stubbs, stirring her
tea again with fat complaisance.  "Little folks can't
be expected to know everything, though there are
some as does expect it, and most unreasonable it is
of 'em.  Only, Sarah, it's more stylish to say broom,
so try to think of it, there's a good girl."

"I'll try," said Sarah, hoping that she had
somewhat retrieved her character by knowing what kind
of carriage her aunt meant by a "broom."

Then Mrs. Stubbs had another cup of tea, which
she seemed to enjoy particularly.

"And you would like to go upstairs, mum?" said
the nurse, as she set the cup down.

"Why, yes, nurse, it's my duty to go, and I'm not
one as is ever backward in doing 'er duty," Mrs. Stubbs
replied, upheaving herself from the somewhat
uncertain depths of the big chair, the only easy chair
in the house.

So the two women went up above together to
visit that something which Sarah had not seen since
the moment of death.

She sat just where they left her--a way she had,
for Sarah was a very quiet child--wondering how
life would be with this new-found aunt of hers.  She
was very kind, Sarah decided, and would be very
good to her, she knew; and yet--yet--there was
something about her from which she shrank
instinctively--something she knew would have offended
her father beyond everything.

Poor Sarah!  At that moment Mrs. Stubbs was
standing beside all that was left of him that had
loved her so dearly during all the years of her
short life.

"Pore thing!" she was saying.  "Pore thing!
We weren't good friends, nurse, but we must not
think of that now; and I'll be a mother to his little
girl just as if there'd never been a cloud between
us.  Pore thing, only thirty-six!  Ah, well, pore
thing; but he makes a pretty corpse!"

.. _`"Pore thing!" she was saying.  "Pore thing!"`:

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   :alt: "Pore thing!" she was saying.  "Pore thing!"

   "Pore thing!" she was saying.  "Pore thing!"





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.. _`SARAH'S FUTURE IS ARRANGED`:

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   CHAPTER III


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   SARAH'S FUTURE IS ARRANGED

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Two days later Sarah's father was buried, laid
quietly away in a pretty little churchyard two
miles outside the town, beside the young wife who
had died nine years before.

The funeral was a very unostentatious affair;
only one cab followed the coffin, and contained Sarah
and Mrs. Stubbs, the old nurse, and Jane, the untidy
little maid, who, after the manner of her sort, wept
and sobbed and choked, until Mrs. Stubbs would
right willingly have given her a good shaking.

Sarah was very subdued and quiet, and Mrs. Stubbs
cried a little, and would have cried more
had she not been so taken up with keeping an eye
on "that stupid ninny Jane."

And then they went back to the little hot, stuffy
house, and had a cup of tea, after which the vicar of
the parish called and had a long talk with
Mrs. Stubbs about Sarah's future.

"I can't say we was good friends with him, pore
thing," Mrs. Stubbs explained; "but when death
comes between, little differences should be forgotten.
And Stubbs and me will forget all our differences
now; it's Stubbs' wish as well as mine.  I believe in
sticking to your own flesh and blood, for if your own
won't, whose can you expect to do it?  So Sarah
and me is the best of friends, and she is going back
with me to share and share alike with my own children."

"Oh, you are going to take Sarah," said the vicar,
who had felt a great interest in the dreamy artist
whom they had just left to his last long rest in the
quiet country churchyard; "that is very good of
you, very good of you.  I have been wondering
what would become of the poor little woman."

"Why, what should become of her?" Mrs. Stubbs
said indignantly.  "Her mother was Stubbs' own sister."

"Yes," said the vicar, smiling; "but it is not
every lady who would at all encourage the idea of
bringing up a child because her mother happened to
be her husband's sister."

"You're right there, Mr. Moore; you are right,"
Mrs. Stubbs cried; "but some women 'ave 'earts of
stone instead of flesh and blood.  I'm not one of
that sort."

"And about the furniture, and so on," the vicar
broke in, having heard Mrs. Stubbs's remarks about
her own good qualities several times already.

Mrs. Stubbs looked round the room in good-natured
contempt.  "There's nothing to speak of,"
she answered--and she was right enough--"but
what there is 'll have to go to paying for the doctor
and the undertaker.  If there's a few pounds left over,
Stubbs says put it into the savings bank and let the
child 'ave it when she grows up.  She'll want to buy
a ring or something to remember her father by."

"And you are going to take the sole charge and
expense of her?" the vicar exclaimed.

"Oh, yes.  We've seven of our own, and when
you've so many, one more or less makes very little
difference.  But I wanted to ask you something else,
Mr. Moore, and I'll ask it before it slips my memory.
You know Mr. Gray--'e's gone now, pore thing, and
I don't wish to say aught against him--brought
Sarah up in a very strange way; indeed, as I said at
the time to the nurse, it's quite 'eathenish; and, it
you'll believe me, sir, she didn't even know how
many aunts and uncles she 'ad, nor what our very
names were.  But he 'as taught her some things,
and playing the fiddle is one."

"Yes, Sarah plays the violin remarkably well for
her age," said the vicar promptly.

"Yes, so the old nurse says," returned Mrs. Stubbs,
with an air of melancholy.  "But I don't altogether
'old with it myself; it seems to me such an
outlandish thing for a little girl to play on.  I wish it
had been the piano or the 'arp!  There's so much
more style about them."

"The violin is the most fashionable instrument a
lady can learn just now, Mrs. Stubbs," put in the
clergyman hastily, wishing to secure Sarah the free
use of her beloved violin, if it were possible.

"Dear me.  You don't say so.  What, are young
ladies about 'ere learning it?" Mrs. Stubbs asked,
with interest.

"Yes.  I was dining at Lord Allington's last
week, and in the evening one of his daughters played
a violin solo; but she doesn't play nearly as well as
Sarah," he replied.

"Then Sarah shall keep her violin and play to her
'eart's content," Mrs. Stubbs cried enthusiastically.
"That was what I wanted to ask you--if you
thought I should encourage or discourage the child
in keeping it up.  But, as you say so plainly
encourage, I will; and Sarah shall 'ave good lessons
as soon as she's fairly settled down at 'ome."

.. _`"Then Sarah shall keep her violin and play to her 'eart's content."`:

.. figure:: images/img-021.jpg
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   :alt: "Then Sarah shall keep her violin and play to her 'eart's content."

   "Then Sarah shall keep her violin and play to her 'eart's content."

"That will be the greatest delight to Sarah, for
the child loves her violin," said the vicar heartily;
"and that is not all, Mrs. Stubbs--but, if she goes
on as she has begun, there will always be a useful,
or at least a remunerative, accomplishment at her
fingers' ends."

"Oh, as to that," returned Mrs. Stubbs, with a
lordly indifference to money such as told her
visitor that she was well blessed with worldly goods,
"Stubbs 'll provide for the child along with his own,
and maybe her other uncles and aunts 'll do
something for her, too.  I will say that for *his* family, as
a family they're not mean.  I will say that for 'em."

So Sarah's future was arranged.  She was to go
home with Mrs. Stubbs, who lived at South
Kensington, and be one with her children.  She was to
have the best violin lessons to be had for love or
money; and Mrs. Stubbs, in the warmth of her
kindly but vulgar heart, even went so far as to
suggest that if Sarah was a very good, industrious
girl, and got on well with her practising, her uncle
might very likely be induced to buy her a new
violin for her next birthday, instead of the dingy
old thing she was playing on now.

Poor, well-meaning Mrs. Stubbs!  She little knew
that the whole of Sarah's grateful soul rose in
loathing at the suggestion.  She dropped her bow upon
the nearest chair, and hugged her precious violin as
closely to her breast as if it had been a thing of life,
and that life was threatened.

"Oh, Auntie!" she burst out; "a new violin!"

"Yes, child; I think it's very likely," returned
Mrs. Stubbs, delighted to see the effect of her suggestion
upon her pale little niece, and quite mistaking the
meaning of her emotion.  "Your uncle is very fond
of making nice presents.  He gave May a new
piano last Christmas."

"But," gasped Sarah, "my violin is a real Amati!
It belonged to my grandfather."

"And if it did, what then?" ejaculated Mrs. Stubbs,
in no way impressed by the information.
"All the more reason why you should 'ave a new
one.  The wonder to me is you play half as well as
you do on an old thing like that."

"It's--it's worth five hundred pounds!" Sarah
cried, her face in a flame.

.. _`"It's--it's worth five hundred pounds!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-024.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "It's--it's worth five hundred pounds!"

   "It's--it's worth five hundred pounds!"

Mrs. Stubbs fairly gasped in her surprise.  "Sarah,"
she said, "what are you saying?  Little girls ought
not to tell stories; it's wicked.  Do you know where
you'll go to?  Sarah, I'm shocked and surprised at you!"

"Auntie, dear," said Sarah, "it's true--all true.
It is, indeed!  Ask the doctor, ask the vicar--ask
*any* one who knows about violins, and they'll tell
you!  It's a real Amati; it's worth five hundred
pounds--perhaps more.  I'm not telling stories,
Auntie, but Father was offered that much for it, only
he wouldn't take it because he said it was all he had
to give me, and that it would be worth more to
me some day."

Never had Mrs. Stubbs heard Sarah say so much
at one time before; but her earnest face and manner
carried conviction with them, and she saw that the
child knew what she was talking about, and was
speaking only what she believed to be the truth.

"You really mean it, Sarah?" she asked, putting
out a hand to touch the wonderful instrument.

"Oh, yes, Auntie, it's *absolutely* true," returned
Sarah, using the longest adjective she could think
of the better to impress her aunt.

"Then," exclaimed the good lady, with radiant
triumph, "you'd better 'old your tongue about it,
Sarah, and not say a word about it--or you'll be
'aving the Probate people down on you, robbing the
fatherless and the orphan."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HER NEW HOME`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium

   HER NEW HOME

.. vspace:: 2

At last Mr. Gray's affairs were all cleared up,
and Sarah was about to leave dingy old Bridgehampton
behind for ever to take up her new life in
London, the great city of the world.

There were some very sad farewells to be made
still; and Mrs. Stubbs was a woman of very good
feeling, and encouraged the child to go and say
good-bye to everybody who had been kind to her
in the past.

"There is Mrs. Tracy," said Sarah on the last
day.  "She brought me all that fruit and jam and
the other things, Auntie."

"Oh, you must go and say good-bye to 'er, of
course," returned Mrs. Stubbs; "and we must go
and see your pore pa's grave, for 'eaven knows when
you'll see it again."

"I should like to do that, please," said Sarah in a
very low voice.

"Well, *I* can't drag out all that way," remarked
Mrs. Stubbs, who, being stout, was not good at
walking exercise.  "We'll have an open carriage if
nurse can get one; and nurse shall go too."

So Sarah went and said "good-bye" to her father's
grave; and the wise old nurse, after a minute spent
beside it, drew Mrs. Stubbs away to the other side
of the pretty churchyard to show her a curious
tombstone about which she had been telling her as
they drove along.  So Sarah, for a few minutes, was
left alone--free to kneel down and bid her farewell
in peace.

It was a relief to the child to be alone, for
Mrs. Stubbs, though meaning to be kindness itself, was
not a woman in whose presence it was possible to
grieve in comfort.  Her remarks about "your pore
pa" invariably had the effect of stifling any feeling
of emotion which was aroused in her childish heart.

She was very good.  Sarah knew that she meant
to be so.

"I'll try not to mind the difference, dear Father,"
she whispered to the brown sods above his dear
head.  "It's all so different to you, so different to
when there was just you and I together.  Nobody
will ever understand me like you, dear Daddy; but
Auntie means to be very kind, and I'll try my
hardest to grow up so that you'll love me better when
we meet again."

As she rose up, Mrs. Stubbs and the nurse were
coming across the grass between the graves to
fetch her.  Mrs. Stubbs noticed the tears on her
cheeks and still flooding her eyes.

"Nay, now, you mustn't fret, Sarah," she said
kindly; "'e's better off, pore thing, than when he
was 'ere, so you mustn't fret for 'im, there's a good girl."

Sarah wiped her eyes, and turned to go away.
She said nothing, for she knew it was no use trying
to make her aunt understand that her tears had
not been so much for him as for herself.  And
Mrs. Stubbs stood for a moment looking down upon the
mould, with its covering of brown, disjointed sods
and its faded wreaths.

"Pore thing!" she murmured; "it's a sad end
to 'ave.  And he must 'ave felt leaving the little
one badly 'fore he brought himself to write that
letter!  Pore thing!  Well, I'm not one to bear
ill-will for what's past and gone, and so beyond
'elp now; and I'll be as much a mother to Sarah
as if 'im and me had always been the best of
friends.  'E once said I was vulgar--and perhaps
I am--it's vulgar to 'ave 'earts and such like, and
he knows better now, pore thing!  For I have a
'eart.  Yes, and the Queen upon 'er throne, she
has a 'eart, too, bless her."

There were tears on the good soul's cheeks as
she turned to follow Sarah, whom she found at
the gate waiting for her.  By the time she had
reached the child she had wiped them, but Sarah
saw that they had been there.

"Dear Auntie," she said.  "He wasn't friends
with you, but he knows how good you are now,"--and
then she flung her arms round her, and her
victory over her uncle's wife was complete.

"Sarah," she said, when they were nearly at the
end of their journey, "you have never 'ad any
playfellows, have you, dear?"

"Never, Auntie--not *real* playfellows," Sarah
answered, and flushing up with joy at the
anticipation of those who were in store for her.

"Well, I'd better warn you, Sarah--it may not
be all sugar and honey till you get used to them,"
said Mrs. Stubbs solemnly.  "There's a good deal
of give and take about children's ways; that is,
if you want to get on peaceable.  If you get a
knock, you must just bear it without telling, or
else you get called a 'tell-pie,' and treated
according.  It's what I've never encouraged, and I must
do my children the justice to say if they gets a
knock they gives it back again, and there's no
more about it."

Thus Sarah was somewhat prepared for the
darker side of her new life, though she gathered
no true idea of the nest of young ruffians to
whom she was made known an hour later.

They came out with a rush to the door when
the carriage stopped, and welcomed their mother
home again with a fluent and boisterous torrent of
joy truly appalling to the little quiet and retiring
Sarah, who was not accustomed to the domestic
manners of children of the Stubbs class.

"Ma, what have you brought me?"

"Is that Sarah, Ma?  My, ain't she a littl'un!"

"Ma, Mary was late this morning.  Yes, and
our kao-kao was burnt--I told her I should tell you."

"Pa slapped Johnnie last night, because he
wouldn't be washed to come down to dessert."

"And Flossie has torn her best frock."

"And May----"

"Hush!  Be quiet, children!" exclaimed
Mrs. Stubbs, holding her hands to her ears.  "'Pon my
word, you're like a lot of young savages.  Miss
Clark can't have taken much care of you whilst
I've bin away.  Really, you're enough to frighten
Sarah out of her senses.  This is your cousin
Sarah.  She's going to live 'ere in future, so come
and say ''Ow d'ye do?' to her nicely."

Thus bidden, the young Stubbses all turned
their attention on their new cousin, and said their
greeting and shook hands with various kinds of
manner.

There was May, aged fourteen, a very consequential
young person, with an inclination to be
short and stout, like her mother, and had her nice
fair hair plaited into a tail behind and tied with a
bunch of mauve ribbon, worn with a white frock
in memory of the uncle by marriage whom she
had never seen.

"How d'you do, Cousin Sarah?" she said, with
a fine-lady air which petrified poor Sarah, who
thought that and her cousin's earrings and
watch-chain the finest things she had ever beheld about
any human being before.  Then there came the
redoubtable Flossie, who had torn her best frock,
and was twelve and a half.  Flossie, who was
nearly as big as May, came forward with a giggle,
and said "How----" and went off into fits of
laughter at some private joke of her own.

"I'm ashamed of you, Flossie," cried Mrs. Stubbs
sharply; "shake 'ands with your cousin
Sarah at once.  Ah! this is Lily--Lily's five and
a 'alf, Sarah--she's the baby."

Then there was Tom, the eldest boy, who
gripped hold of Sarah's hand and wrung it until
she could have shrieked with the pain, but, taking
it as an expression of kindness and welcome, she
bore it bravely and looked at him with a smiling
face; she knew better afterwards.

After Tom came the twins, Minnie and the
Johnnie who had been slapped the day before;
and last of all, Janey, the prettiest, and Sarah
fancied the sweetest, of them all.  Janey was
seven, or, as she said herself, nearly eight.

"I suppose," said Mrs. Stubbs, addressing herself
to Flossie, "that your pa 'asn't got 'ome yet?"

"No, Ma, not yet," returned Flossie.

But, presently, when Mrs. Stubbs had changed
her dress for a garment such as Sarah had never
beheld before, and which May told her was a
tea-gown, and was enjoying a cup of sweet-smelling
tea in the large and shady drawing-room--to
Sarah a perfect dream of beauty--he came!  Came
with a bustle and noise like a tempest, and caught
his stout wife round the waist, with a "Hulloa, old
woman, it's a sight for sore eyes to see you 'ome
again!"

Sarah had determined to be surprised at nothing,
but her Uncle Stubbs was altogether too much for
her resolution.  In apologising to herself afterwards,
she said she was obliged to stare.

"And where's the little lass?" Mr. Stubbs asked
when he had kissed his wife.  "Oh, there!  Well,
aren't you going to speak to your uncle, eh?"

"Yes, Uncle," said Sarah shyly.

He drew her nearer to him, and turned her face
to the light.

"Like her dear ma," put in Mrs. Stubbs.

"Yes," said Mr. Stubbs shortly.

"Not like her pa at all," Mrs. Stubbs persisted.

"No!" more shortly still; then, after a pause,
"I 'ope you'll be a good gal, Sarah, and remember,
though your father and me wasn't friends, yet, as
long as I've a 'ome to call my own, you're welcome
to a shelter in it.  Your mother was my favourite
sister, and though she turned 'er back on me, I'll
never do that on you, never."

"Father knows better now, Uncle," said the child,
with an effort; "he knows how good you and Auntie
are to me.  You'd be friends now, wouldn't you?"
earnestly.

"I don't know--I don't know at all," replied
Mr. Stubbs shortly; then, struck by the pleading look
on the child's wistful face, added gruffly, "I suppose
we should; any way, I hope so."

At this point Mrs. Stubbs broke in,--

"Any way, it's no fault of Sarah's that we wasn't
all the very best of friends, Stubbs; and Sarah and
me's real fond of one another already, aren't we,
Sarah?  So say no more about it; what's past and
gone is beyond 'elp.  Flossie, you can take Sarah
upstairs now.  It's just six--time for your tea.  Be
sure she gets a good tea."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A TASTE OF THE FUTURE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium

   A TASTE OF THE FUTURE

.. vspace:: 2

Thus bidden, Flossie took Sarah's hand and
led her upstairs.  "You won't like Miss
Clark," she remarked, as they went.  "We don't
like her, not any of us.  She's so mean; always
telling tales about somebody.  She got Johnnie
slapped and sent off to bed last night; it was all
spite--nasty old thing!"

"Who is Miss Clark?" Sarah asked, feeling
rather bewildered.

"Miss Clark!  What! didn't Ma tell you about
her?" ejaculated Miss Flossie, in surprise.

"No; Auntie never told me about her at all."

"Lor!  There, that shows Ma herself don't think
much of her!  I'll tell Miss Clark, any way."

"Don't, don't!" Sarah cried, in an agony.

"Yes, I shall," the amiable Flossie returned,
suddenly opening a door and dragging her cousin
into the midst of a noisy crew, all squabbling
round a tea-table.  "Miss Clark, what d'you think?
Ma actually never told Sarah a single word about you!"

"Well, my dear, never mind; perhaps Mrs. Stubbs
didn't say very much about any of us."

"She didn't," put in Sarah hastily.

"I suppose this is Sarah?" Miss Clark went on.

"Yes," answered Flossie, adding, under her
breath to Johnnie, "Stupid little thing!"

"How do you do, Sarah?" asked the governess,
with the air of primness which had made her
unruly young pupils dislike her.  "I hope we shall
be very good friends, and that you will do your
best to be a very tidy and industrious little girl."

This rather took Sarah's breath away, but she
replied, politely, that she would try her best.

"Come and sit by me, Sarah," said May, with
a very condescending air of protection.

"Yes, sit by May," added Miss Clark.  "May is
my right hand; without May I could not endure
all the worry and trial of the others.  Copy May,
and you will be quite right."

So Sarah watched May mincing with her knife
and fork, and conscientiously tried to do likewise,
to the infinite amusement of the younger ones, of
whom May took no notice whatever, and to whose
jibing remarks she showed a superb indifference.

"Sarah," shouted Tom, stuffing his mouth so
full of pressed tongue and bread-and-butter that
Sarah's heart stood still for fear of his choking,
"how many pieces of bread-and-butter can you put
into your mouth at once?"

"Disgusting boy!" remarked May disdainfully,
without giving Sarah time to reply.  "You grow
more atrociously vulgar every day you live!"

"Hi, hi!" shouted Tom, seizing a tablespoon and
ramming it down his throat until even boy's nature
revolted and expressed disapproval.

"Put that spoon down," cried Miss Clark
authoritatively.  "If I see you do that again, Tom, you
shall not go down to dessert."

Now this was almost the only threat by which
poor Miss Clark, whose life was one long-continued
struggle and fight, was able to hold her own over
Tom when he was at home for his holidays.  Not
going down to dessert meant, not only the
punishment of losing a share of the good things below,
but also it meant inquiry as to the cause of
absence, and other effects according to evidence.

Tom's exuberance of spirits settled down promptly
into discreet behaviour, and Miss Clark had time
to look round the table.

"Johnnie, you are forbidden to eat jam for a
week," she burst out.  "Minnie, take his plate away."

"It's a shame poor Johnnie isn't to have any
jam," Minnie began whining--"all for nothing, too.
It's a real downright shame, it is," and forthwith
she took the opportunity of daubing a thick slice
of bread-and-butter with jam off her own plate, and
smuggling it into the luckless Johnnie's hand in
such a way that he might eat it upside down,
to the intense delight of Tom opposite, who had
seen the little manoeuvre, and was bursting to
disclose it.

For once nodding and winking had no effect,
for nobody happened to be looking at him.  So
Tom, in despair lest such an amusing incident
should be altogether lost, began vigorously nudging
Flossie, who sat next to him, with his elbow.
Flossie, unfortunately, was in the act of raising a
large cup of very hot tea to her lips, and Tom's
nudge causing the hot cup to touch her knuckle,
made her jerk violently, and over the tea went in
a deluge on to her lap.

It is almost impossible to give an adequate
description of the scene which followed.  Flossie
shrieked and screamed as if she was being
murdered by a slow process; Tom vowed and
protested that it was not his fault; Janey had pushed
him over against Flossie; Janey appealed to Miss
Clark to remember that at the very moment she was
handing her cup in the opposite direction; and Miss
Clark began to wring her hands and exclaim that she
would ask to have Tom sent back to school again,
for stand his cruel and unbrotherly behaviour she
neither could nor would.  And in the midst of it
all, young Johnnie seized the opportunity of helping
Minnie freely to jam and eating off her plate, as if
he were eating for a wager.

Sarah sat looking, as she was, scared; and May
calmly surveyed the scene of uproar with disdainful
face.

"Disgusting boy!" she said to the still protesting
Tom.  "You get more vulgar every day.  Don't
take any notice, Sarah; you will get used to it by-and-by."

Eventually Miss Clark began to cry weakly.

"It's too much for me; how am I to bear four
weeks more of this dreadful boy?" she sobbed.

"Do like me, take no notice," suggested May.

"But I *must* take notice," Miss Clark cried
desperately.  "My only comfort is that you do sit
still, May dear.  As for Sarah, she is a good girl,
a pattern to you," with a withering glance at Tom.
"I feel sure Sarah has never seen such a disgraceful
scene before; have you, Sarah?"

"No," whispered Sarah, wishing fervently that
Miss Clark had been pleased to leave her out of
the discussion.

"I thought so.  I knew Sarah's manners were far
too good for her to have been brought up among
this sort of thing.  Sarah is like a young princess."

By this time the tumult had subsided a little.
Flossie had recovered from her fright, and was
consoling herself with buttered scones and honey,
looking darkly at Tom the while, just by way of
reminding him that she had not by any means
forgotten.  But Tom was unconscious of her wrath--a
fresh idea had presented itself to his volatile mind,
and for the moment he had utterly forgotten not
only Flossie's wrath, but also that other probable
wrath to come.

.. _`41`:

"Princess Sarah!" he shouted, pointing at his
cousin.  "Her Royal Highness Princess Sarah--of
Nowhere.  Princess Sarah!"

"Princess Sarah!" cried Johnnie, taking up the
taunt, and waving his bread-and-butter like a flag.
"Three cheers for Princess Sarah!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE AMIABLE FLOSSIE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium

   THE AMIABLE FLOSSIE

.. vspace:: 2

Miss Clark did not tell that time.  It was
not Flossie, but May, who poured oil on
the troubled waters.

"It's no use making a fuss, Flossie," she said
wisely.  "Tom didn't mean to spill your tea; he
only wanted you to look at Johnnie cribbing jam
when he'd been told not to have any.  And it's
the first night Ma's at home, and Tom's her
favourite; and if you get him into trouble with Pa,
she'll give what she's brought for you to somebody
else.  So you just hold your tongue, Flossie, and
be a bit nice to Miss Clark, and get her to say
nothing about it.  It isn't as if you were hurt--and
besides, you can't pretend you're hurt and then go
down to dessert.  It's your turn to go down
to-night."  Thus advised, Flossie went to Miss Clark
and begged her to say nothing more about Tom's
unfortunate accident.

"Tom says he didn't mean to, Miss Clark, and
Ma's tired, I dare say; so you won't say anything
about it, will you?"

"I think I ought to say something about it,
Flossie," said Miss Clark severely, though in her
heart she was as glad to get off telling as even
Tom himself could be.

"No, Miss Clark, I don't think you ought.  Ma
always gets a headache after a long journey, and
if Pa's put out with Tom, and perhaps whips him,
Ma 'll go to bed and cry all night.  And it wasn't
as if Tom meant to spill the tea over me--it was
quite an accident.  He was only jogging me to
look at Johnnie."

With much apparent reluctance, Miss Clark at
last consented to say no more about it; and so
occupied was she in making Flossie feel how great
a concession it was for her to do so, that she forgot
to ask what Johnnie had happened to be doing to
attract Tom's attention.

So Johnnie escaped scot free also, and Flossie
and Tom went off to prepare for going down to
dessert, which the young Stubbses did in strict turn,
two at a time.

As soon as the table was cleared, Miss Clark got
out a little work-box and began a delicate piece of
embroidery.  Sarah kept close to May, whom at
present she liked best of any of the young people
and May sat down with a piece of fancy work
also, of which she did very little.

"Miss Clark," she began, after she had done a
few stitches, "isn't it jolly without Tom?"

"Very," said Miss Clark, with a great sigh of relief.

"I don't think Tom meant to be disagreeable,"
said May, turning Miss Clark's silks over with
careless fingers; "but he's a boy, and boys are
very tiresome animals, Miss Clark."

"Yes," Miss Clark replied.

"How many times have you been engaged?"
and May leant her elbows upon the table and
regarded the governess with interested eyes.

.. _`"How many times have you been engaged?"`:

.. figure:: images/img-044.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "How many times have you been engaged?"

   "How many times have you been engaged?"

"Twice," answered Miss Clark, in a low voice.

"And he was nice?" May inquired, with vivid interest.

"I thought them both nice at the time," Miss
Clark returned, with a sigh and a smile.  "But--oh,
here is Flossie ready to go down.  Flossie, my
dear, how quick you have been!"

"But I'm quite tidy, Miss Clark," Flossie replied.
"I wish Tom would be quick.  I say, Sarah, don't
you wish you were going down, too?"

"Sarah's quite happy with Miss Clark and me,"
put in May; "ain't you, Sarah?"

"Yes, quite," Sarah replied.

"Oh, are you?  Then I shall tell Ma you said
you didn't want to go down to see her, then,"
Flossie retorted.

Poor Sarah's eyes filled with tears, and she
turned to May in the hope of getting protection
from her.

"Take no notice," said May superbly.  "You'll
get used to Flossie after a bit.  She's a regular
tell-tale; but she won't tell Ma, for Ma won't
listen.  She never does.  Ma never will listen to
tales, not even from Tom."

Flossie began to laugh uproariously, as if it was
the greatest joke in the world to tease Sarah, who
had yet to learn the peculiar workings of a Stubbs
character.  Then Miss Clark interrupted with a
remark that Flossie's sash was not very well tied.

"Come here and let me tie it properly," she
said sharply; and, as Flossie knew that any
shortcoming would be sharply noticed and commented
upon when she got downstairs, she turned
obediently round and allowed Miss Clark to
arrange her garments to her satisfaction.  By that
time Tom was ready, and the two went down together.

"Thank goodness," remarked May piously.
"Now, Miss Clark, we shall have a little peace."

May was destined to have even a greater peace
for her little chat with the governess than she had
anticipated, for a few minutes after Flossie and
Tom had gone downstairs one of the maids came
up and said that the mistress wished Miss Sarah
to come down at once.  Miss Sarah, she added,
was not to stay to dress more than she was then.

"Mayn't I just wash my hands?" Sarah asked
imploringly of May.

"Of course," May answered, good-naturedly.
"I'll go with you and make you straight."

May was very good-natured, though it is true
that she was somewhat condescending; and she
went with Sarah and showed her the room she was
to share with Janey and Lily, showed her where
to wash her face and hands, and herself combed
her hair and made her look quite presentable.

"There! you look all right; let Miss Clark see
you," she said.  And, after Sarah had been for
inspection and approval, she followed the maid, and
went down, for the first time in her life, to dessert.

"'Ere she is!" Mrs. Stubbs exclaimed, as the
little figure in black appeared in the doorway.
"Flossie ought to have known you would come
down to dessert the first evening; and, after that,
you must take it in turn with the others."

"Yes, Auntie," said Sarah shyly, taking the chair
next to Mrs. Stubbs, for which she was thankful.

"Will you 'ave some grapes, my dear?" Mrs. Stubbs
asked kindly.

"Sarah 'd like a nectarine," said Mr. Stubbs, who
made a god of his stomach, and loved good things.

"I doubt if she will," his wife said; "they're
bitter to a child's taste; but 'ave which you like
best, Sarah."

"Grapes, please, Auntie," said Sarah promptly.

As a matter of fact, Sarah did not exactly know
what nectarines were; and, not liking to confess
her ignorance, lest by doing so she should bring on
herself sarcastic glances, to be followed later by
sarcastic remarks from Flossie and Tom, she chose
what she was sure of; besides, she did not want
to run the risk of getting something upon her
plate which she did not like, and perhaps could
not eat.  Poor Sarah still had a lively recollection
of once helping herself to a piece of crystallised
ginger when out to tea with her father.  She could
not bear hot things, and it seemed to her that
that piece of ginger was the hottest morsel she had
ever put in her mouth.  She sucked and sucked in
the hope of reducing it, and so getting rid of it,
and the harder she sucked the hotter it grew.  She
tried crushing it between her sharp young teeth,
but that process only seemed to bring out the heat
more and more.

And at last, in sheer desperation, Sarah
bethought herself of her pocket-handkerchief, and,
putting it up as if to wipe her lips, ejected the
pungent morsel, and at the same time seized the
opportunity of putting her poor little burning
tongue out to cool.

"Have another piece of ginger, dear," the lady
of the house had said, seeing that her plate was empty.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`COUSINLY AMENITIES`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium

   COUSINLY AMENITIES

.. vspace:: 2

The following morning Mrs. Stubbs began
preparing vigorously for the move to Brighton,
which the family invariably made at this time of
the year.  Usually, indeed, they went a week or so
earlier, but Mrs. Stubbs being at Bridgehampton,
Miss Clark had done no more towards going than
to see that the children's summer and seaside frocks
and other clothes were all ready.

"I think May and Flossie must 'ave new white
best frocks," Mrs. Stubbs remarked; "and Sarah's
things must be attended to.  I knew it was no use
getting the child anything but a black frock in that
old-fashioned Bridge'ampton.  I'd better go and
see about them this morning; and if they're not
done by Thursday they can come after us."

So Sarah was dressed, and with May went out
in the neat "broom" with Mrs. Stubbs; and when
she had arranged about the white frocks for her
own children, Mrs. Stubbs began to lay in a stock
of clothes for Sarah.  Poor Sarah was bewildered,
and felt more ready to cry than anything else.

"Am I to wear *all* these?" she asked, with what
was almost horror, as she surveyed the pile of stockings,
petticoats, gloves, sash-ribbons, pocket-handkerchiefs,
and such things, which quickly accumulated
upon the counter.

Mrs. Stubbs laughed good-naturedly.  "You won't
say 'all' when you've been a month at Brighton
grubbing about on the shingle and going donkey-rides,
and such like.  You must be tidy, you know,
Sarah.  And I told you" (in an undertone) "that
you would be the same as my own.  I never do
things by 'alves; I'm not one of that sort, thank
'eaven."

So, to Sarah's dismay, she bought lavishly of many
things--frocks, boots, smart pinafores, a pretty, light
summer jacket, and two hats, one a white sailor hat,
the other a black trimmed one for best.

"Do you take cold easy, Sarah?" Mrs. Stubbs
inquired, pausing as they went out of the showroom
before a huge pile of furs.

"I think I do rather, Auntie; and I had bronchitis
last year."

"That settles it!" her aunt exclaimed.  "I don't
believe in bronchitis and doctors' bills; waste of
money, I call it.  You shall 'ave a fur cape."

Now for two years past the dream of Sarah's
life had been to possess a fur cape--"a beautiful,
warm, soft, and lovely fur cape," as she expressed
it; but until now, poor child, she had never dared
to think it might ever be more than a dream--that
it might come to be a possibility or a reality.
The sudden realization was almost too much for
her.  She gave a little gasp of delight, and squeezed
her aunt's arm *hard*.

"Oh, Auntie!" she whispered, with a sob of
delight, "what shall I ever do for you?"

"Nay, nay! don't, Sarah!" Mrs. Stubbs expostulated,
fearing the child was going to break down.
"Be a good girl and love your aunt, that's all, dear."

"Oh, Auntie, I do, I do!" Sarah whispered back;
"but if only Father knew--if only he knew!"

"Why, maybe he does," said Mrs. Stubbs kindly.
"But come, Sarah, my dear, let us try your cape
on.  We are wasting this gentleman's time."

The gentleman in question protested that it was
of no consequence, and begged Mrs. Stubbs not
to hurry herself.  But time was passing, and
Mrs. Stubbs wanted to get home again, so she urged
Sarah to be quick.

Ten minutes later Sarah was the proud possessor
of a beautiful brown fur cape, just a little large for
her, "that she might have room to grow," but so
warm and cosy, and so entirely to her liking, that,
in spite of the sultry day, the child would willingly
have kept it on and gone home in it.  She did not,
however, dare to propose it to her aunt, and if she
had done so Mrs. Stubbs had far too much good
sense to have allowed it.

So they went home gaily enough to lunch, which
was the young folk's dinner, but not without a
petition from May that they should stop at some
nice shop and have ices.

"It will spoil your dinner!" exclaimed Mrs. Stubbs.

"Oh, no, Mother," said May, who sometimes called
her mother so.  "And Sarah *ought* to have an ice
the very first time she has ever had a drive with you."

Thus pressed, Mrs. Stubbs gave in, and stopped
the carriage at a confectioner's in Regent Street.

"I'll have Vanilla," said May.  "Which are you
going to have, Sarah?"

"Whichever you like," said Sarah, who had never
tasted an ice in her life, and was thus gaining another
new experience.

"Try strawberry, then," said May, "and then we
can help one another to a spoonful."

Sarah did try strawberry, and very good she found
it.  And then, when they had each eaten about half
of their ices, May proposed that they should change
about.  Sarah did not find the Vanilla ice nearly
so much to her liking as the strawberry one had
been; but not liking to say so, as her cousin seemed
to appreciate the change, she finished her portion,
and said she had enjoyed herself very much.

"You'll buy us some sweets, Ma?" said May.

Sarah stared aghast; it seemed to her a terrible
extravagance to have had the ices, particularly after
having spent so much money as her aunt must have
done for the clothes that morning.  And then to
ask for sweets!  It seemed to her that May had
no conscience.

And perhaps she was not very far wrong.  But
May, if she had no conscience, had a wonderful
knack of smoothing the path of daily life for herself.
Mrs. Stubbs demurred decidedly to buying sweets;
but May gave a good reason for her demand.

"Oh, Ma, dear, do!  Flossie 'll be as cross as two
sticks at Sarah being out with you instead of her.
And she's sure to ask if we had ices, and, you know
we can't either of us tell a story about it--at least,
I can't, and I don't think Sarah's at all the
story-telling sort--are you, Sarah?"

"Oh no, indeed, Auntie, I'll never tell you a story,"
Sarah protested.

"And Flossie will go on anyhow, and taunt her;
I know she will.  She and Tom were at it last
night--calling her Princess Sarah--her Royal Highness
Princess Sarah," May went on--"didn't they, Sarah?"

"Never mind," said Sarah, trying to make light of it.

"But what did they call her that for?" Mrs. Stubbs
asked, listening in a way that was rare with
her to a bit of tittle-tattle from the schoolroom.

"Well, Ma, dear, you know what Tom is.  He
doesn't mean to be rough or rude, but he's just a
boy home for the holidays; and after she's had
the little ones all day, and perhaps not me to talk
to at all, Tom does get a bit too much for Miss
Clark's nerves.  And last night Tom was just a bit
more boisterous than usual, and poor Miss Clark
didn't feel very well, and it tried her, you know.
And Sarah was sitting by me, and very quiet, and
Miss Clark happened to say she behaved like a
princess--and so she did.  And Tom took it
up--Princess Sarah, of Nowhere; her Royal Highness
Princess Sarah, of Nowhere, and such-like.  I don't
think Tom meant to be unkind, but it wasn't very
nice for Sarah, being strange to us all; and then
Flossie took it up, and Johnnie, but Miss Clark told
Johnnie he should go to bed if he said it again, so
he soon shut up."

"Well, it's no use taking any notice of it," said
Mrs. Stubbs, stroking Sarah's hand kindly, "but you'd
better put a stop to it whenever you hear 'em at it,
May.  I only 'ope Tom won't let his pa 'ear him.
He'd be very angry, for Sarah's pore ma, that's
dead and gone, was 'is favourite sister, and Pa'd
never forgive a slight that was put on her little
girl.  It isn't," said Mrs. Stubbs, warming to her
subject, "any fault of Sarah's that she's left, at nine
years old, without a father, or a mother, or a 'ome;
and it's no credit of any of yours that you've got a
kind pa and ma, and a lux'r'ous 'ome, and a broom
to ride about in.  So, Sarah, my dear, don't take no
notice if they begin teasing you about anything.
Remember, your ma was your uncle's favourite
sister, and that you was as welcome as flowers in
May to him when I brought you 'ome."

Sarah looked up.  "I don't mind anything, Auntie,
dear," she said bravely, though her lips were
trembling and her eyes were moist.  "I'll remember
what you told me when we were coming--give and take."

"That's a brave little woman!" Mrs. Stubbs
exclaimed.  "Yes, you'd better go and choose some
sweets, May.  Perhaps it was a little 'ard on Flossie
she should have to stop at 'ome, but I can't do with
more than three in the broom--it gets so 'ot and so
stuffy.  Perhaps, some day, your pa 'll buy us an
open carriage, and then I don't mind 'ow many
there are."

May went out into the shop--for they had been
sitting alone in an inner room--to choose the sweets,
and Mrs. Stubbs continued her talk to Sarah.

"I don't 'old with telling, as a rule; I want my
children to be better than tell-pies," she said; "but
I am glad May told me of this.  If anything goes
wrong with you, you tell May about it, Sarah; she's
my right 'and; I don't know what I should do
without her."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`FLOSSIE'S GRIEVANCES`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium

   FLOSSIE'S GRIEVANCES

.. vspace:: 2

It was just as well that May had had sufficient
forethought to provide herself with a bundle of
sweets in the shape of a peace-offering for Flossie,
for when they got in they found Flossie in anything
but an amiable mood.

And when Flossie was not in an amiable mood,
she was anything but an agreeable young person.

She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring
sullenly out of the window and kicking impatiently
against the window-board in a way which upset
Miss Clark's nerves until they could only be fairly
described as "shattered."

.. _`She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring sullenly out of the window.`:

.. figure:: images/img-058.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring sullenly out of the window.

   She was sitting in the schoolroom, staring sullenly out of the window.

For everything from first to last had gone wrong
with poor Flossie that morning.  In the first place,
she had been intensely disappointed at being left at
home that Sarah might go in the carriage with
Mrs. Stubbs.  Flossie was particularly fond of going out
with her mother in the carriage, and was also very
fond of shopping.  It was, therefore, quite in vain
that Miss Clark tried to make her understand that
Sarah had not been taken for favouritism, but simply
in order that her aunt might buy her the clothes
necessary for their trip to Brighton.  Flossie thought
and said it was a horrid shame, and vowed
vengeance on the unfortunate and inoffensive, though
offending, Sarah in consequence.

"Nasty little mean white-faced thing!" she
exclaimed.  "I suppose I shall always be shoved into
the background now, just that she may be coddled
up and made to think herself better than anybody
else.  Princess Sarah!  Yes, that's to be the new
idea.  We're all to be put on one side for Princess
Sarah."

"Flossie," said Miss Clark, very severely, "you
ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.  To be
jealous of a poor little girl who has no father or
mother, who has come among strangers at nine years
old, and is fretting her poor little heart out for the
sake of the father who loved her better than any one
in all the world; to be jealous of her being taken
out once when you know it is only on business they
have gone--oh! for shame, Flossie! for shame!"

"Oh, well, she needn't fret after her pa so much,"
Flossie retorted, not taking Miss Clark's remarks to
heart at all.  "He didn't do so much for her.  He
wasn't a gentleman like Pa.  If he had been, he'd
have left her some money of her own."

Miss Clark's whole soul rose up in absolute
loathing within her.

"You vulgar, vulgar child!" she thought.  Aloud
she said, "Flossie, my dear, a *lady* would not say
such a thing as that.  Your mother would be very,
*very* angry if she heard it.  Come, it is useless to
stay grumbling and sulking here; you will have to
accept the situation.  Mrs. Stubbs is your mother,
and the mistress of this house and family.  She
does not ask your leave whether she shall take
you out with her or not.  She would be a very bad
mother to you if she did, instead of being, as she
is now, a very good one.  Let me hear not another
word, but put your things on to go out with me."

"Is Tom going?" Flossie inquired, not daring to
refuse, though she would dearly have liked to do so.

"No.  Tom and Johnnie are going out with Charles."

"And I have to just go out with you and three
stupid girls?"

"With your three sisters, certainly."

"It's a beastly shame," Flossie burst out.

"Not another word," said the governess sharply.
"Go and get ready at once."

And poor Flossie had to go.  Of course it
happened that as she began wrong at the beginning
nothing went very well with her during the rest of
the morning.  Miss Clark went the one way she
hated above all others; but Miss Clark had to do a
small but important commission for Mrs. Stubbs, and
was obliged to take it.

Then her sisters, whom she heartily despised--Tom
being her favourite--annoyed her excessively.
Janey would persist in lagging behind, and Minnie
got a stone in her shoe and had to stop and take
it off and shake out the pebble; and then, of course,
she had to stop also to have her shoe tied again,
and one or two people stopped to see what was
amiss, as people do stop when they see any
impediment to the general traffic in the London streets.
"Making a perfect show of them all," Flossie said angrily.

And when they got home, Flossie not feeling
quite so bad as when they set off, Mrs. Stubbs and
May and "*that* Sarah" actually had not come back.
It really was too bad, and Flossie sat down in the
schoolroom window to watch for them with a face
like a thunder cloud and a heart in which every
outraged and injured feeling capable of being felt
by weak human nature seemed to be seething and
struggling at once.

If only Tom had come back, it would not have
been so bad.  But Charles, the indoor servant, had
taken him and Johnnie down to Seven Dials to buy
some guinea-pigs, and Seven Dials being a long
way from South Kensington, they could not possibly
have got back by that time if they had tried ever
so.  Poor Flossie!

So she sat and brooded--brooded over what she
was pleased to call her wrongs.  She would not so
much have minded not going out with the "broom"
if only she might have gone with Charles and Tom
and Johnnie to enjoy the somewhat doubtful
delights of Seven Dials.  That, however, Mrs. Stubbs
had resolutely and peremptorily refused to allow.
So it happened that Flossie sat in the window
waiting for their return.

At last they came.  She saw them get out of the
carriage and disappear within the house; she saw
the carriage drive round to the stables.

And then there was a long pause.  But they
none of them seemed to think of coming upstairs,
even then.  Poor Flossie kicked at the window-board
more noisily than ever, and in vain Miss Clark,
driven almost to desperation, cried, "Flossie, *will*
you be quiet?"

And then the door opened quietly, and May came
in, looking radiant.  Flossie felt more ill-used even
than before.

"Oh, you are here, Flossie.  I've been looking for
you *every*\where," she remarked.

"Well, you can't have looked very hard, or you'd
have found me," Flossie snapped.  Then with a
fierce glance at the parcel in her sister's hand, she
blurted out, "You've been having ices!"

"Yes, we have," answered May; "but you needn't
look like that, Flossie; I've brought you back a
great deal more than both our ices cost."

"What have you brought?" half mollified.

"Caramels in chocolate."

"I hate caramels!" Flossie declared, fearing, with
the old clinging to ungraciousness that sulky people
have, that her last reply had sounded too much like
coming round, a concession which Flossie never
made too soon or made too cheap.

"Nougât?" said May, putting the caramels on one side.

"You *know* I can't eat nougât; it *always* makes
my teeth ache!" Flossie cried.

"Fondants?"  May knew that her sister was
passionately fond of that form of sweetmeats.  But
Flossie would have none of it.

"I detest fondants!" she said, with an impressiveness
which would have been worthy of the occasion
had she said that she detested--well, prussic acid, or
some pleasant and deadly preparation of that kind.

"Well, it's a pity I worried Ma for them at all,"
May remarked with her usual placid air of disgust.
"Perhaps, though, you'll think differently after lunch.
Come down, and pray don't look like that!  Pa's
at home."


.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AN ASTUTE TELL-PIE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium

   AN ASTUTE TELL-PIE

.. vspace:: 2

But not even the presence of Mr. Stubbs, who
was held in great awe by his sons and daughters,
and was most emphatically what is known as
"master in his own house," was sufficient to restore
the redoubtable Flossie to her usual careless,
happy-go-lucky, giggling sauciness.

She went down and took her seat at table, speaking
only when spoken to, but nevertheless contriving
to eat an uncommonly good meal.  And Tom entertained
her with an account of his excursion to the
Dials; and although Flossie had spent the last three
hours in a passion of jealousy, envy, and unhappiness
too great for alleviation, even when it came in the
shape of caramels, nougât, and fondants, yet she
could not resist the temptation of hearing all that
Tom had to say, and of arranging to go round to the
stables with him to see his new pets when lunch
should be over.

And presently she was graciously pleased to accept
the caramels and nougât and the fondants.  But for
some hours she did not forgive Sarah--"Princess
Sarah" she unceasingly called her, although solemnly
warned by May that "Ma" had already heard of the
name, and that if "Pa" heard it the consequences
would indeed be dreadful.

"Ah, I suppose Miss Tell-pie has been making
up to Ma this morning!" suggested Flossie, with a
frightful sneer.

"Nothing of the kind!" returned May quickly,
but in her most condescending tone; "it was quite
another person.  Sarah has never said a word, not
even when she was asked.  But, any way, Ma did
hear it, and she's very angry about it.  And Ma says
if Pa gets to know about it he'll be fearfully angry,
for Sarah's ma was his favourite sister.  And so
you'd better just mind what you're doing, Miss Flossie!"

"I do hate that Miss Clark!" Flossie remarked.

"Miss Clark!" exclaimed May.  "Why, whatever for?"

"Nasty, mean, spiteful tell-pie!" Flossie explained.

"It *wasn't* Miss Clark.  I tell you Ma got to
hear about it."

"Who was it then?"

"Ah, that I can't tell you; but, any way, Ma got
to hear of it, and she told me to put a stop to it, and
so you'd better be careful, that's all."

And never for a moment did Flossie suspect that
some blades are so sharp that they can cut two ways,
and that her informant was quite as clever at
carrying tales to one side as to the other.  Ah! but
blundering, boisterous Flossie was not nearly so
astute as Mrs. Stubbs's right hand--May.

When they had come from Bridgehampton
Mrs. Stubbs had only brought her own box and one
which contained Sarah's modest wardrobe with them.
Her father's pictures and the precious Amati, with
one or two bits of old carved oak, a chair, a table, a
little chest, and a stool, with one or two bits of
armour and a few pieces of very good china, were all
packed and sent off by goods train.

They arrived that afternoon, and Mrs. Stubbs had
them all unpacked, and declared her intention of
putting them into the little bedroom which, after
they came back from Brighton, should be Sarah's own.

"They're lovely things, and belong to the child
herself, and it's right she should have them kept for
'er, you know, Stubbs."

"Quite right, quite right," returned Mr. Stubbs
promptly, and turning to see the effect of his wife's
consideration on Sarah, whose character he was
studying earnestly and diligently for the purpose of
finding out whether any taint of what he called her
"fine gentleman father" was about her.

But Sarah was quite oblivious.  She had got hold
of her beloved violin, from which she had never been
parted before in all her life, and was dusting it
jealously with her little pocket-handkerchief.

Mrs. Stubbs saw the look and understood it

"The child didn't 'ear," she explained; and having
attracted Sarah's attention, told her what her plans
were for her future comfort.  "You'll like that, won't
you?" she ended.

Sarah's reply was as astounding as it was prompt.
"Oh, no, dear Auntie, not at all," she said earnestly.

"And why not?" Mrs. Stubbs inquired, while her
husband stared as if he thought the world might be
coming to an end.

"Why, Auntie, didn't you say your own self how
beautiful they were, and how well they would set off
a hall?  I'd much rather you'd put them downstairs
than in a bedroom, for you would see them every
time you went in and out, and that *would* please me."

"There's unselfishness for you!" Mrs. Stubbs cried.

"No, Auntie.  I don't think it is," said Sarah in
her sweet, humble voice.  "It's nothing so grand as
unselfishness; it's just because I love you."

"Kiss me, my woman," cried Mrs. Stubbs with rapture.

"And come and kiss *me*," said Mr. Stubbs.
"You're a good girl, Sarah, your mother's own
daughter.  She was right, my lass, to stick to the
husband she loved and married, though I never
thought so till this moment."

"Oh, Uncle!" Sarah gasped, for to hear him speak
so of the mother she had never seen, but whom she
had been taught to love from her babyhood, was joy
almost greater than her child's heart could bear.

"There, there!  If aught goes wrong, come to me,"
Mr. Stubbs murmured.  "And if you always speak
to your aunt as you've done to-day, I shall think
your pore father must have been a fine fellow, or
you'd never be what you are."

Oh, Sarah was so happy!  After all, what could,
what *did* it matter if Flossie and Tom did call her
Princess Sarah of Nowhere?  Why, just nothing at
all--nothing at all.

"Uncle," she said, after a moment or two, "may I
play you something on my violin?"

"Yes," he answered.

"That," remarked Mrs. Stubbs, as Sarah opened
the piano and began to tune up in a way which made
her uncle open his eyes with astonishment, "is the
fiddle Sarah says is worth five hundred pounds."

"Like enough.  Some of 'em are," he answered.

And then Sarah played a German *lied* and a
Hungarian dance; then "Home, Sweet Home."

"Well," said Mrs. Stubbs, looking at him, when
she ceased, "what do you think of it?"

"I think she's--a genius," answered Mr. Stubbs.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A PLEASANT RAILWAY JOURNEY`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium

   A PLEASANT RAILWAY JOURNEY

.. vspace:: 2

On the Thursday following the whole Stubbs
family went to Brighton.  Sarah enjoyed the
journey intensely, journeys being still almost a
novelty with her.  She would have enjoyed it more
if May had not grumbled at going second-class, and
if Flossie and Tom had not vied with one another
in trying how far they could lean out of either
window of the carriage.  Poor Miss Clark was almost
beside herself with fright.

"Tom, put your head in immediately," she cried
in desperation, and expecting every moment to see
the door fly open and Tom shoot out headlong, to
be picked up a mangled corpse or in actual fragments.
"Tom, do you hear me?  Tom, I insist upon it."

But if Miss Clark had shouted till she had killed
herself with shouting, Tom, leaning half his body
out of the window, with the wind whistling in his
ears and the roar and rattle of the engine and
wheels all helping to deaden any such small sounds
as that of a human voice, and that the voice of a
weak and rather helpless woman, could not have
heard her, and Miss Clark had no choice but, with
May's help, to tug Tom in by the nether part of
his garments.  This done, she pulled up the window
with a jerk.

.. _`Tom leaning half his body out of the window with the wind whistling in his ears.`:

.. figure:: images/img-071.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Tom leaning half his body out of the window with the wind whistling in his ears.

   Tom leaning half his body out of the window with the wind whistling in his ears.

"I forbid you to open that window again," she
said with such severity that even Tom was cowed,
and sat meekly down with a somewhat sulky air.

Miss Clark had thus time to turn her attention
to the other children, when, to her horror, she found
that Flossie was not only emulating but far surpassing
her brother, not contenting herself with leaning
well out of the window, but was actually standing
on the seat that she might push herself out the
farther.  To pull her in and put her down on her
seat with a bump was the work of but a moment.

"If I have to speak to you again, Flossie," she
said in accents of solemn warning, "I shall get
out at the next station and take you to your father's
carriage.  I fancy you will sit quiet there."

Flossie thought so too, and sat quietly enough
till the next station was passed; but after that May
complained so bitterly of the closed windows and
the horrid stuffiness of the carriage that Miss Clark's
sternness relented a little, and she allowed the
window beside which May was sitting to be let down.
And the very fact of the window being open
seemed to set all Tom's nerves, and muscles, and
longings tingling.  He moved about uneasily in his
seat, kept dodging round to look sideways through
the glass at the side, and finally jumped up in a
hurry and pushed his head and shoulders through
the window.  In vain did Miss Clark tug and pull at
him and his garments alike.  Tom had his elbows
out of the window this time, and, as he chose not to
give way, not all the combined strength of Miss
Clark and May, with such help as Sarah and Minnie
could give, had the smallest effect upon him.  At
last Miss Clark, who, as I have said, was not very
strong, sat down and began to sniff in a way which
sounded very hysterical, for she really was horribly
afraid some dreadful accident would happen long
before they got to their destination.  However, as the
suspicious little sob was heard and understood by
May, that young lady took the law into her own
hands and administered a sharp corrective immediately.

"Tom," she shouted, "come in."

Tom did not hear more than that he was being
shouted at, and, as a natural consequence, did not
move.  Whereupon May quietly reached up to the
rack and fished out Tom's own, his very own, riding-whip,
and with that she began to belabour him soundly.

It had effect!  After half a dozen cuts, Tom began
to struggle in, but May was a stout and heavily-set
young lady, and as resolute in will as ever was her
father, when she was once fairly roused.  So she
calmly held him by his neck and went on administering
her corrective until she was utterly tired.

Then she let him go, and when he, blind with rage
and fury, and vowing vengeance upon her, made for
her, and would have fought her, she sprang up at the
knob by which you can signal to the driver and stop
a train, and threatened to pull it if he touched her.

And oh, Tom was angry!  Angry--he was furious;
but he was mastered.  For it happened that on the
very day that he and Johnnie had gone with Charles
to Seven Dials, he had asked Charles all about the
alarm bell, by means of which trains may be stopped
if necessary, and Charles had explained the matter
in a clear and lucid way peculiar to himself--a talent
which made him especially valuable in a home where
there were boys.

"Why, Master Tom," he exclaimed, "you see
that's a indicator.  If you wants to storp the trayin
you just pulls that knob, and it rings a bell on the
engine somewhere, and the driver storps the trayin
at once."

"Let's stop it," suggested Tom, in high glee at the
prospect of a walk through a dark and dangerous
tunnel.

It must be admitted that Charles's heart fairly
stood still at the thought of what his explanation
had suggested.

"Master Tom," said he, with a face of horror which
was so expressive that Tom was greatly impressed by
it, "don't you go for to do nothing of the kind!  It's
almost a 'anging matter is storping of trayins--useless
like.  If you was took ill, or 'ad a fit, or somebody
was a-murdering of you, why, it would be all right;
but to storp a trayin when there's naught wrong, is--well,
I believe, as a matter of fact, it's seven years."

"Seven years--seven years what?" Tom asked,
thinking the whole thing a grand joke.

"Prison," returned Charles laconically; "that is, if
it was me.  If it was you, Master Tom, it would
mean reformatory school, with plenty of stick and
no meat, nor no 'olidays.  No, I wouldn't go for to
storp no trayins if I was you, Master Tom."

"But we needn't say it was us that rang," pleaded
Tom, whose fingers were just itching to ring that bell.

Charles laughed.  "Lor!  Master Tom, they're up
to that game!" he answered.  "Bless you!  they 'ave
a lot of numbers, and they'd know in a minute which
carriage it was that rang.  No, Master Tom, don't
you go for to ring no bells and storp no trayins.  I
lived servant with a young fellow once as had had
five years of a reformatory school, and the tales he
used to tell of what went on there was enough to
make your blood curdle and your very 'air stand on
end--mine did many a time!"

"Which--your blood or your hair, Charles?" Tom
inquired, with keen interest.

"Both!" returned Charles, in a tone which carried
conviction with it.

Thus Tom had no further resource, when May
vowed to ring the bell and stop the train if he
touched her, but to sit down and bear his aches and
his defeat in silence.  But, oh, he was angry!  To
be beaten and beaten again by a girl!  It was too
humiliating, too lowering to bear.  Yet poor Tom
had to bear it--that was the worst of it.  So they
eventually got to Brighton in safety.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AUNT GEORGE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium

   AUNT GEORGE

.. vspace:: 2

It would be hard for me to tell of all the joys
and pleasures which Brighton gave to the
Stubbs family and to Sarah in particular.  To the
younger of the Stubbs children all was joy and
delight, though they had been there several times
before; to Miss Clark it was rest and peace,
because she was not much troubled with Tom; and
Flossie, too, was allowed to go about with him and
Johnnie a great deal more freely than she ever was
at home.  May--always Miss Clark's favourite--spent
much of her time beside her, though she
went shopping sometimes with her mother, and
also driving.  But, on the whole, Mrs. Stubbs did
not give up very much of her time just then to
her children.

For Mr. Stubbs was taking his holiday, and
Mr. Stubbs was troubled with a threatened fit of the
gout, and do with the sound of the children's
racket and bustle he simply could not.  He was
often threatened with the gout, though the
threatenings seldom came to anything more than temper.
So, whilst they were at Brighton, Mrs. Stubbs--who
was as good a wife as she was a mother--devoted
herself to him, and left the children to
take care of themselves a good deal.

Their life was naturally quite a different one to
what it was in town.  They had a furnished house
in which they slept and took their meals, but
which at other times they did not much affect--they
had early dinner there, and a high tea at
seven o'clock, at which they all ate like ravenous
wolves, Sarah amongst the number.  This was a
very happy, free-and-easy meal; for, though
Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs joined in the early dinner, and
called it lunch, they did not go in for the high tea
but invariably went to the Grand Hotel and had
dinner there.

Oh, what happy, happy days they were!  There
was the early run out on the Parade or the Sea
Wall before breakfast; then the delicious seaside
breakfast, with fresh whitings every morning.
There was the daily dip in the sea, and the daily
donkey ride or goat-chaise drive.  There was the
ever new and delightful shingle, on which they
played and skipped, and dug and delved to their
hearts' content.  There were the niggers, and the
blind man who sang to his own accompaniment
on a sort of hand-organ, and wore a smart blue
necktie, and a flower in his button-hole.  There
was a sweet little child, too, wearing a big
sun-bonnet, whom they used to watch for every
morning, who came with toddling three-year-old gravity
with a penny for the niggers, to the infinite
amusement of the bystanders.

"Here, black man."

"Thank you, my little Snowdrop," was the
invariable reply of the nigger minstrel; and then
the little wee "Snowdrop" would make a stately
bow.  The nigger would take off his hat with a
bow to match it, and the little scene was over till
the morrow.

Then there was the Aquarium, and the delightful
shop, which they called "The Creameries," a
little way past Mutton's; and once or twice they
all, except Mr. Stubbs, went for a trip in the
steamer, when Mrs. Stubbs took chief charge, and
Miss Clark was so horribly ill that she thought
she would have died.

And once Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs went to
Newhaven, and thence to Dieppe, taking Tom with
them--not at all because Tom wanted to go, but
because May represented to her mother that
neither she nor Miss Clark were feeling very well,
and that without "Pa's" restraining influence she
was sure Tom would not only worry them all to
death, but would also incite Flossie into all
manner of dreadful pranks, the consequences of
which might be dire and terrible.

So Tom went with them over the water on to
French soil, and May remarked, triumphantly, to the
governess, "I've got rid of him, Miss Clark, so now
we shall have a little peace, and enjoy ourselves."

And so they did.  To be without Tom was like
the enjoyment of the calm which comes after a
storm; and they, one and all, with the exception
of Flossie, enjoyed it to the full.  Flossie was very
much aggrieved at being thus deprived of her
playfellow.

"It is too bad that Tom should have to go
with Pa and Ma," she complained.  "He won't
have a soul to speak to or a boy to play with, or
anything, except some stupid little French boy,
perhaps, who can't speak a word of anything but
gibberish.  I call it a beastly shame.  I suppose
it's old Clark's doing, and that she was just afraid
Tom would get an extra good time while they
were away.  Nasty old cat!"

"Miss Clark had no more to do with it than
you had," May replied.  "Ma chose to take him,
and that's enough."

As Tom was actually gone, there was not the
smallest use in grumbling.  So Flossie, thus left
idle, turned her attention upon Sarah.  It is
needless to say that very, very soon Flossie also began
to tease her, and, in consequence, Sarah's life
became more or less of a burden to her.  In this
way Sarah, who was a singularly uncomplaining
child, crept nearer and nearer to Miss Clark and
May, as there she was safe from Flossie's taunts
and jeers; and it was in this way that some notice
was taken of her by one of the great lights of the
Stubbs family, Mrs. George Stubbs, the corn-factor's
wife, who lived in great style at Brighton.

It happened that one morning Sarah and May
were waiting for Miss Clark to come out with the
younger children, when Mrs. George came slowly
along in a bath-chair.  As she passed by them she
called to the man to stop.  "Dear me, is that you,
May?" she remarked; "how you've grown.  Your
papa and mamma came to see us the other day, but
I was not at home.  I was out."

"They have gone over to Dieppe," said May,
"and Tom with them.  This is our cousin, Sarah,
Aunt George."

"Oh! is it?  Yes, your mamma told me when she
wrote last that she was coming to live with you.
How do you do, Sarah?"

All this was uttered in a languid tone, as if, on
the whole, life was too much trouble to be lived
at all.  Sarah had met with nothing of this kind
in all her life before, and looked only impressed;
in truth, she looked a good deal more impressed
than she was, or rather she looked *differently*
impressed to what she was, and Mrs. George Stubbs
was pleased to be a little flattered thereby.

"You must come and have tea with me," she
observed graciously to May.  "I have not been
able to get out except the day your mamma
called--my unfortunate neuralgia has been so very
trying.  You may bring Sarah.  Would you like
to come to-night?

"Very much indeed, thank you, Aunt George,"
responded May.

"Very much indeed," echoed Sarah.

"Your cousins are, of course, all at school in
Paris, and your uncle is in London, so we will
have high tea at seven o'clock.  Bring your music
with you."

"Sarah plays the violin," said May, who hated
playing in company herself.  "She plays it
beautifully.  She's going to have lessons."

"Then bring your violin and let me hear you,"
said Mrs. George to Sarah; "it is a most stylish
instrument."

"I will," said Sarah.

"Oh, is Flossie to come, Aunt George?" asked
May, as they shook hands.

"Flossie?  No.  I can-*not* do with Flossie,"
replied Mrs. George, in a tone which was enough
to remind May that the very last time they had
visited their aunt, Flossie had been clever enough
to break a beautiful Venetian glass, which was, as
Mrs. George had remarked pathetically over the
fragments, simply of priceless value.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SARAH MAKES AN IMPRESSION`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium

   SARAH MAKES AN IMPRESSION

.. vspace:: 2

"What a shame!" said Flossie, when she
heard of the invitation.  "Just like the
nasty old thing, to remember an accident that I
couldn't help.  Not that I care!  I shall enjoy
myself far better at home"; and Flossie caught hold
of Minnie's arm, and stalked along the Parade as if
she cared so little that she did not want to hear
any more about that great lady, her Aunt George.

"What did you think of her?" May asked of Sarah.

"Is she very ill?" Sarah asked, thinking of the
bath-chair and her aunt's languid wrists and tones.

"Ill?--no!  Ma says she's a hy-po-chon-driac,"
returned May, pronouncing the long word in syllables.
"That's fancying yourself ill when you ain't.
See?  But all the same, Aunt George is very stylish."

"She's not half so nice as Auntie," Sarah flashed out.

"No, she isn't!  But she's a great deal stylisher
than Ma is," May returned.  "Didn't you hear the
way she told the man to go on?  'Go-on-Chawles!'"
and May leant back on the seat, slightly waved a
languid hand, flickered her drooping eyelids, and
gave a half-languid, half-supercilious smile.

It was a fine imitation of Mrs. George's *stylish*
airs, and Sarah was lost in admiration of it.

"I wonder," she remarked presently, after thinking
the question over, "I wonder if she eats her dinner
like that; because, if she does, it must generally get
cold before she has half finished it."

"Oh, Aunt's much too stylish to eat much," May
explained.  "She nibbles at this and picks at that.
You'll see to-night."

And Sarah did see--saw that, in spite of her airs
and her nibbling and her picking, Mrs. George
contrived to put a good meal out of sight--quite as
much as ever her sister-in-law could manage to do.
That evening was also a new experience to Sarah;
it was so much more stately than anything she had
seen before.

Mr. and Mrs. George Stubbs lived in a very large
house in a large square in the best part of Brighton.
A resplendent footman received them when they got
out of the cab--yes, they had a cab, though it was
only a short way from their own house--and a solemn
butler ushered them into Mrs. George's presence.
She wore a tea-gown of soft yellow silk, with a very
voluminous trailing skirt, and showers of white lace
and broad yellow ribbons about it.  It was a
garment that suited the languid air, the quivering
eye-lids, the weak wrists, and the soft, drawling voice to
perfection.

The resplendent footman had relieved Sarah of
her violin-case and carried it upstairs for her.
Mrs. George motioned to it as he announced her visitors.
"With great care, Chawles," and "Chawles" put it
down on a chair beside the inlaid grand piano as if
it were a baby and might squeal.

.. _`"With great care, Chawles."`:

.. figure:: images/img-086.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "With great care, Chawles."

   "With great care, Chawles."

"How are you, dears?" Mrs. George said, giving
each a limp and languid hand.  "How oppressive
the evening is!"  Then to "Chawles," "Let tea be
served."

Very soon tea was announced, and they went
downstairs.  It was all new to Sarah--the large,
spacious dining-room, with its rich, costly art-furniture;
the pretty round table, with flowers and pretty-coloured
glasses, with quaint little figures holding
trays of sweets or preserves, or wheeling barrows of
tiny ferns or miniature palms.

And the board was well-spread, too.  There was
salmon, salad, and a boiled chicken covered with
white, frothy sauce.  There was an aspic jelly, with
eggs and green peas, and certain dark things which
May told her afterwards were truffles; and there
were several kinds of sweet dishes, and more than
one kind of wine.

To Sarah it was a resplendent feast--as resplendent
as the gorgeous footman who stood midway
between her chair and May's, only a little in the
rear; the solemn butler keeping guard over his
mistress, whom he served first, as if she had been
a royal queen.

"Now you shall play to me," Mrs. George said
to Sarah, when they had got back to the drawing-room again.

Sarah rose obediently

"What shall I play?" she asked.

"What *can* you play?" Mrs. George asked, in reply.

"Oh, a great many things," Sarah said modestly.

"Let Sarah play what she fancies," put in May,
who had established herself in a low, lounging chair,
and was fanning herself with a fan she had found
on a table at hand with the closest imitation of
Mrs. George she could manage; "she always plays
the best then."

"Very well," Mrs. George said graciously.  So
Sarah began.

She felt that in all her life before she had never
played as she played then.  The influence of the
luxurious meal of which they had just partaken was
upon her.  The exquisite coloured glass, the sweet-scented
flowers, the smell of the fragrant coffee, the
stately servants moving softly about with quiet
footsteps and smooth gestures, each and all had made
her feel calm and peaceful; and now the soft-toned
drawing-room, with its plush and lace hangings, its
delicate china, its Indian embroideries, and those
two quiet figures lying back in the half light, making
no movement except the slow waving to and fro of
their fans, completed the influence.  It was all food
to Sarah's artistic soul, and she made the Amati
speak for her all that was passing through her mind.
Mrs. George was spell-bound.  She actually
forgot to fan herself in the desire not to miss a single
note.  Nay, she did more, she forgot to be languid,
and sat bolt upright in her chair, her head moving
to and fro in time with Sarah's music.

"Why, child, you are a genius!" she exclaimed,
as Sarah came to a close and turned her speaking
eyes upon her for comment.

"That's just what Papa said," put in May, adjusting
her language to her company.

"If you go on--if you work," Mrs. George continued,
"your violin will be your fortune.  You will
be a great woman some day."

Sarah's great eyes blazed at the thought of it;
her heart began to beat hard and fast.

"Do you really think so, Aunt George?" she asked.

"I really do.  I am sure of it.  But, child, your
violin seems to me a very good one.  Where did
you get it?"

"Father gave it to me; it was his grandfather's,"
said Sarah, holding it out for inspection.  "It is an
Amati."

"It is worth five hundred pounds," said May, who
was eminently practical, and measured most things
by a pounds, shillings, and pence standard.

"Of course--if it is an Amati," murmured Mrs. George,
becoming languid again.  "But go on, my
child.  I should like a little more."

So Sarah played and played until the room grew
darker and darker, and gradually the shadows
deepened, until it was only by the lamps from the
square that she could distinguish the outlines of the
figure in the yellow sweeping robes.

It was like a shock when the door was gently
opened and the footman came in, bearing a huge
lamp with a crimson shade.  Then the coffee
followed, and before very long one of the servants
came back, and said that the cab for the young
ladies had come.

"You have given me great pleasure," said
Mrs. George to Sarah; "and when Mrs. Stubbs comes
back I must make an afternoon party, and Sarah
shall play at it.  I have not been so pleased for a
long time."  And then she kissed them both, and
with "good-night" they left her.

"Won't Ma be pleased!" remarked May, with
great satisfaction, as they drove along the Parade.
"I shan't mind a bit her being vexed that Flossie
wasn't asked.  Really, Sarah, I never saw Aunt
George so excited before.  She's generally so
die-away and all that."

But Sarah was hardly listening, and not heeding
at all.  With her precious Amati on her knee, she
was looking away over the moonlit sea, thinking of
what her aunt had said to her.  "If you go on--if
you work--your violin will be your fortune.  You
will be a great woman."

"I will go on; I will work," she said to herself.
"If I can be a great woman, I will."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TURNING POINT OF HER LIFE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium

   THE TURNING POINT OF HER LIFE

.. vspace:: 2

Mrs. George's opinion of Sarah's violin-playing
proved to be the turning point of
her life as a violin-player.  A few days later,
when Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs had returned from
Dieppe, she gave a large afternoon reception, to
which Sarah took her violin, and played--her best.
And the visitors--elegant ladies and gentlemen--crowded
round the child, and would have turned
her head with praises, had it not been such a
sensible little head that they had no sort of effect
upon it.

"They talked such a lot," she said to her aunt
afterwards, "that I felt frightened at first; but I
found that they didn't really know much about it,
for one of my strings got flat, and they praised
that more than anything."

But her aunt, Mrs. Stubbs, was proud enough
and elated enough for a dozen violin-players, and
she stood beside Sarah, explaining who she was
and how she was going to have lessons from the
best master they could get, until Mrs. George felt
sick to think that her grand friends should know
"that dreadful woman" was a relation of hers.

"Sarah, my dear, Lady Golladay wishes you to
play again.  Something pathetic."

So Sarah tuned up again, and Mrs. Stubbs was silent.

"She *can't* talk when the child is playing,"
murmured Mrs. George to her husband.  "Do take
her down to have some tea or something, and
keep her as long as you can--anything to keep
her out of sight."

"All right," he answered, and immediately that
Sarah's melody came to an end, followed by a burst
of applause, he offered his arm to his sister-in-law,
and begged her to go with him and have some
refreshments.

This reception completely opened Mrs. Stubbs's
eyes, and she went back to London strangely
impressed with a belief that Sarah was not only a
genius, but a new fashion.  She gave a party,
too--not an afternoon party, for she wanted her
husband to be there, and he was never at home
before six o'clock.  No, it was not an afternoon,
but an evening party, at which the elder children
were all present, and at which Sarah played.

And then Sarah began with her violin lessons,
and worked hard, very hard.  Mrs. George wrote
from Brighton that she would provide all the new
music she required, and that her Uncle George
enclosed a sovereign for herself.

So time went on.  Sarah had two lessons a
week, and improved daily in her playing.  Tom
went back to school, and Johnnie with him, and
Flossie's turbulent spirit became a good deal
subdued, though she never forgot to keep Sarah
reminded that she was "Princess Sarah of Nowhere."

The weeks rolled into months, and months into
years.  Miss Clark went away and got married--to
May's mingled sorrow and delight, and to
Flossie's unfeigned and unutterable disgust--for
Mrs. Stubbs chose a lady to fill her place, who
was what she called "a strict disciplinarian," and
Flossie had considerably less freedom and fun
than she had aforetime.  For Miss Best had not
only a strong mind and a strong will, but also a
remarkably strong body, and seemed able to be on
the alert at all times and seasons.  She had, too,
not the smallest objection to telling tales in school
or out of it.  The slightest infringement of her
rules was visited with heavy punishment in the
form of extra lessons, and the least attempt to
shirk them was reported to headquarters
immediately.  In fact, Miss Best was a power, a power
to be felt and feared, and Flossie did both
accordingly.

Of all her pupils, Sarah was Miss Best's favourite.
In her she recognised the only worker.  May
was good-tempered, and possessed the blessing of
a placid and dignified disposition; but May's
capacity for learning was not great, and Miss
Best soon found that it was no use trying to
drive her a shade faster along the royal road to
knowledge.  She went at a willing jog-trot; she
could not gallop because she had not the power.
With Flossie it was different.  Flossie had brilliant
capacities which she would not use.  Miss Best
was determined that she should use them and
exert them.  Flossie was equally determined that
she would not; and so for the first few months
life in the Stubbs's schoolroom was a hand-to-hand
fight between Flossie and Miss Best; and
Miss Best came off winner.

Yet, though she got the better of Flossie and
made her work, she never gave her the same
place in her heart that she gave to Sarah, who
worked with all her heart and soul, because she
was impressed with the idea that if she only
worked hard enough she might be a great woman
one day.

And as she was a favourite with Miss Best,
so was she a favourite with Signor Capri, the
master who taught her the violin.  He was quick
to recognise the true artist soul that dwelt within
her, and gave her all the help that lay in his
power; in fact, Sarah was his favourite pupil, his
pet, and he put many chances of advancement toward
her great ambition in her way.

.. _`Sarah was his favourite pupil.`:

.. figure:: images/img-097.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Sarah was his favourite pupil.

   Sarah was his favourite pupil.

For instance, many times he took her out with
him to play at concerts and private houses, so
that she might grow accustomed to playing before
an audience of strangers and also that she might
become known.

And known very soon Sarah was, and welcomed
to many a noble house for the sake of the
exquisite sounds she was able to draw from the
strings of the Amati.  Besides that, Sarah was a
very pretty child, and, as she grew older, was an
equally pretty girl.  She never had that gawky
legginess which distinguishes so many girls in
their teens--there was nothing awkward about her,
nothing rough or boisterous.  All her movements
were soft and gentle; her voice was sweet, and
her laugh very musical, but not loud; and with
her tall, slim figure, and the great, grey, earnest
eyes looking out from under the shining masses
of sunny hair, she was, indeed, an uncommon-looking
girl, and a great contrast to the young
Stubbses, who were all short, and inclined to be
stout, and had twine-coloured hair, and pale, pasty
complexions; though, in spite of that, they all
had, like their mother, a certain bonniness which
made them pleasant looking enough.

Sarah had been nearly four years living at
Jesamond Road, where Mrs. Stubbs's home was,
when May "came out."  May was then nearly
eighteen, and just what she had been when Sarah
first saw her--placid, good-tempered, and obliging,
not very quick in mind, nor yet in body; willing
to take advantage of every pleasure that came
in her road, but not willing to give herself the
smallest trouble that other people might have
pleasure too.  She was very different to Flossie,
who was a regular little spitfire, and had neither
consideration for, nor fear of, anything on earth,
except Miss Best, whom she detested, but whom
she dared not openly defy; if she had dared,
Flossie would have done it.

As for Tom, he was beyond the control of
anybody in that house, excepting his father.  He
was wilder, rougher, more unmerciful, and more
impudent than ever; and whenever Tom's holidays
drew near, Sarah used to quake for fear lest
her precious Amati should not survive the visit;
and invariably she carried it to the cupboard in
Miss Best's room for safety.  Happily, into that
room Master Tom did not presume to put even
so much as the tip of his nose.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A BRILLIANT MARRIAGE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium

   A BRILLIANT MARRIAGE

.. vspace:: 2

When May left the schoolroom behind her,
Sarah found a great difference in her life.
In her placid, good-natured way, May had always
been fond of her, and had in a great measure stood
between her and Flossie; but Flossie, when she
became the senior of the schoolroom, took every
opportunity she had of making the younger ones,
particularly Sarah, aware of that fact.

Sarah was then nearly fourteen, and rather taller
than Flossie, who was turned sixteen; so, had she
chosen to do so, she could easily have got the best
of her; but Sarah never forgot--never, indeed, was
allowed to forget--that she was not a daughter of
the house, and was not, therefore, free to fight and
wrangle as much and as disagreeably as the others
allowed themselves to do.

Very, very often, in those days, did she have the
old taunt of Princess Sarah thrown at her.  "Oh!
*Princess* Sarah is quite too high and mighty to
quarrel over it.  *Princess* Sarah is going to do the
mute martyr style of thing."

So Flossie would--though she did not know
it--encourage her cousin to work harder than ever,
just by way of showing that she had something
more in her than to spend her life in bickering and
snarling.  Stay!  I do Sarah an injustice there--she
was moved by another and a better motive,
both in trying to keep peace and in trying to get
on with her work, for she had always the grateful
feeling, "It will please Auntie so," and always a
feeling that it was a slight return to her uncle's wife if
she bore Flossie's attentions without complaining.

They did not see much of May; all day she was
in the drawing-room with her mother, if she was
not out on some errand of pleasure.  And at night,
when the schoolroom tea was over, she used to
come down for a minute and show herself, a vision
of comeliness--for May was considered a great
beauty in the Stubbs' set--in white or roseate airy
garments, with hair crimpled and fluffy, feathers and
flowers, fans and bangles, pearls and diamonds, and
all the other necessaries for a young lady of fashion
in her first season.

Some time previously Mr. Stubbs had made his
wife a present of an elegant landau and a pair of
high-stepping horses.  But Flossie, to her disgust,
found that her drives were no more frequent than
they had been in the days of the one-horse
"broom."  Then her mother had not unreasonably declared
herself unable to bear the stuffiness of a carriage
full of people.  Now May objected to any one going
with them on the score of her dress being crushed and
the unpleasantness of "looking like a family ark."

They had become very gay.  Scarcely a night
passed but they went out to some gay entertainment
or other, and many parties were given at home,
when the elder of the younger members of the family
had the pleasure of participating in them.

Flossie was terribly indignant at being kept at
home that May might have more room in the
luxurious and roomy carriage.

"Just you wait till I come out, Miss May."  She
said one day, "and then see if your airs and graces
will keep me in the background!  The fact is,
you're afraid to show off against me; you know as
well as I do that, with all your fine dress and your
finer airs, you are not half so much noticed as I
am!  And as for that Sarah----"

"Leave Sarah out of it!" laughed May; "she
doesn't want to go."

"I'd soon stop it if she did!" growled Flossie.

It was really very hard, and Flossie thought and
said so.  But May was inflexible, and long before
Flossie was ready to come out May became engaged
to be married.

It was a very brilliant marriage indeed, and the
entire family were wonderfully elated about it.
True, the bridegroom was a good deal older than
May, and was pompous to a degree.  But then he
was enormously rich, and had a great cheap clothes
manufactory down the East End somewhere, and
could give May bigger diamonds than anybody they
knew.  He had, too, a house in Palace Gardens
and a retinue of silk-stockinged servants, in
comparison with whom Mrs. George's footman at
Brighton was a mere country clod.

So in time May was married--married with such
pomp and ceremony that feelings seemed left out
altogether, and if tender-hearted Mrs. Stubbs shed
a few tears at parting with the first of all her brood,
they were smothered among the billows of lace
which bedecked her, and nobody but herself was
any the wiser.

After this it became an established custom that
Flossie should take May's place in the carriage;
and it was not long before she managed to persuade
her mother that it was time for her to throw off
Miss Best's yoke altogether, and go out as a young
lady of fashion.

Before very long Mrs. Stubbs began dearly to
repent herself of her weakness; for Flossie, with
her emancipation, seemed to have left her old self
in the schoolroom, and to have taken up a new
character altogether.  She became very refined,
very fashionable, very elegant in all her ideas and
desires.

"My mother really is a great trial to me," she
said one day to Sarah.  "She's very good, and all
that, you know; but she's so--well, there's no sort
of style about poor mother.  And it is trying to
have to take men up and introduce them to her.
And they look at her, don't you know, as if she
were something new, something strange--as if they
hadn't seen anything like her before.  It's annoying,
to say the least of it."

"Well, if I were you," retorted Sarah hotly, "I
should say to such people, and pretty sharply, 'If
my mother is not good enough for you, why, neither
am I.'"

"But then, you see, I am," remarked Flossie,
with ineffable conceit.

"You don't understand what I mean," said Sarah,
with a patient sigh.

"*That's* because you're so bad at expressing yourself,
my dear," said Flossie, with a fine air of
condescension.  "It all comes out of shutting yourself
up so much with that squeaking old violin of yours.
I can't think why you didn't go in for the guitar--it's
such a pretty instrument to play, and it backs
up a voice so well."

"But I haven't got a voice," cried Sarah, laughing.

"Oh, *that* doesn't matter.  Lady Lomys hasn't a
voice either, but she sings everywhere--everywhere."

"Where did you hear her?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, well, I haven't heard her myself," Flossie
admitted; "but then, that's what *everybody* says
about Lady Lomys."

"Oh!  I see," murmured Sarah, not at all impressed
by the mention of her ladyship's accomplishments.

It happened not very long after this that the
Stubbses gave a ball--not just a dance, but a
regular ball, with every available room in the house
cleared and specially decorated, with the balconies
covered in with awnings, and with every window
and chimney-shelf, every fireplace and corner, filled
with banks of flowers or stacks of exquisite palms
or ferns.  The entire house looked like fairyland,
and Mrs. Stubbs went to and fro like a substantial
fairy godmother, who was not quite sure how her
charms were going to work.

May came, with her elderly husband, from her
great mansion in Palace Gardens, wearing a white
velvet gown and such a blaze of diamonds that the
mind refused to estimate their real value, and ran
instinctively to paste.  And Mrs. George, who was
in town for "the season," came with her daughters,
and languidly patronised everything but those
diamonds, which she cheapened at once as being a
little "off colour" and a "trifle overdone."  Mrs. George
herself had put on every single stone she
was possessed of--even to making use of her
husband's breast-pin to fasten a stray end of lace on
the bosom of her gown; but that, of course, had
nothing really to do with her remarks on her niece's
taste--oh, no!

Flossie had a new dress for the occasion, of
course; and she had coaxed a beautiful diamond
arrow out of her father on some pretext or other.
Sarah thought she had never seen her look so
charming before, and she told her so; it was with
a smile and a conscious toss of her head that Flossie
received the information, and looked at herself once
more in the glass of her wardrobe.

As she stood there, with Sarah, in a simple white
muslin gown, watching her, a maid entered with a
large white cardboard box.

"For Miss Flossie," she said.

The box contained a beautiful bouquet of rare
and fragrant hothouse flowers, and attached to the
stem was a small parcel.  The parcel proved to
contain a superb diamond bangle, and Flossie went
proudly downstairs, wearing it upon her arm.

And that night it crept out among the young
ones in the Stubbs' schoolroom that Flossie was
going to be married.





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.. _`A FAMILY CATASTROPHE`:

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   CHAPTER XV


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   A FAMILY CATASTROPHE

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I am bound to say that Flossie's brothers and
sisters (and Sarah) received the news of her
approaching departure from her father's roof with
unmixed feelings.  Not a drop of sorrow was there
to mar the cup of joy which the occasion
presented to every one.  Not a regret at the blank her
going would cause leavened the general satisfaction
at her happiness.  And Flossie herself was the
least sorrowful, the least regretful, and the most
satisfied of all.

Like May, she was marrying well--that is to
say, she was marrying money.  But, unlike May's
husband, who was old, her future lord and master
was young--only five years older than herself.  It
is true he was not much to look at; but then, as
Mrs. Stubbs remarked to her husband, that was
Flossie's business.  It was equally true that he
was reputed to be a young scamp, with an
atrocious temper; but then, as Tom said, that was
Flossie's look-out, and decidedly Flossie was not
without little failings of that kind--though why, if
one bad-tempered person decides upon marrying
another bad-tempered person, it is generally
considered by the world to be all right, because the
one is as bad to get on with as the other, it
would be hard to say; perhaps it is on the principle
of two negatives making an affirmative, or in
the belief that two wrongs will make eventually a
right; I cannot say.  But, odd as it is, that is the
very general opinion.

The engagement was an unusually short one.
Indeed, the bride had barely time to get her
things ready by the day, and a great part of her
trousseau was not able to be ready before her
return from her honeymoon.  But still they never
seemed to think of putting off the wedding for a
single day, although it was fixed to take place
just six weeks from the day of the ball, when the
engagement had begun.

It seemed to Sarah, well used as she had
become to seeing liberal expenditure, that at this
time the entire family seemed to be spending
money like water!  May's wedding had been a
very grand one, but Flossie's outshone it in every
way--in the number of the bridesmaids, in the
number of the guests, in the number of the
carriages, and the servants, and the flowers, in the
splendour of the presents and the dresses of the
trousseau, nay, in the very length of the bride's
train.

The presents were gorgeous!  Mr. Stubbs gave
his daughter a gold-mounted dressing-case and a
cheque for a thousand pounds; Mrs. Stubbs gave
a diamond star, and May a necklace of such
magnificence that even Flossie was astounded when
she saw it.

So Flossie became Mrs. Jones, and passed away
from her old home; and when it was all over, and
the tokens of the great feast and merry-making
had been cleared away, the household for a few
days settled down into comparative quietude.

Only for a few days, however.  With the
exception of Sarah, who was too deeply engrossed in
her work to care much for passing pleasures, the
entire family seemed to have caught a fever of
restlessness and love of excitement.  After ten
days the bride and bridegroom returned, and there
were great parties to welcome them.  Every day
there seemed some reason why they should launch
out a little further, and yet a little further, and
instead of the family being less expensive now that
two daughters were married, the general expenditure
was far more lavish than it had ever been
before.  They had a second man-servant and
another maid, and then they found that it was
impossible to get on any longer without a second
"broom" horse for night-work.

They did, indeed, begin to talk about leaving
Jesamond Road, and going into a larger house.
The boys--Tom was just seventeen, and Johnnie
only fifteen--wanted a billiard-room, and Minnie
wanted a boudoir, and Mr. Stubbs wanted a larger
study, and Mrs. Stubbs wanted a double hall.
That change, however, was never made, although
Mrs. Stubbs and Minnie had seen and set their
hearts upon a mansion in Earl's Court at a
modest rental of five hundred a year, which they
thought quite a reasonable rent--for one awful
night the senior clerk came tearing up to the door
in a cab, with the horse all in a lather and his
own face like chalk, and asked for the master.

.. _`And asked for the master.`:

.. figure:: images/img-111.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: And asked for the master.

   And asked for the master.

The master and mistress were just going out to
a great dinner-party at the house of Mrs. Giath,
their eldest daughter, in Palace Gardens, but
Mr. Stubbs came down and saw him in the study.
They were shut up there together for some time,
until Mrs. Stubbs grew impatient, and knocked
several times at the door, with a reminder that
they would be very late, and that May would
not like to be kept waiting.  And at last
Mr. Stubbs opened the door and came out.

"Get my coat, James," he said to the servant;
then, as he buttoned it, added, "Mr. Senior will
have a glass of wine and a biscuit before he
goes.  Good-night, Senior.  See you in the morning."

"Lor, Pa!" exclaimed Mrs. Stubbs, as they
rolled away from the door, "I thought something
was the matter."

"No, my dear, only some important business
Senior thought I ought to know about," he
answered; and Mr. Stubbs that evening was the
very light and life of his daughter's party.

But in the morning the crash came!  Not that
he was there to see it, though; for just as they
reached home again, and he passed into his own
house, Mr. Stubbs reeled and fell to the ground
in all the hideousness of a severe paralytic seizure.

Nor did he ever, even partially, recover his
senses; before the day was done he had gone
out of the sea of trouble which overwhelmed
him, to answer for his doings before a high and
just tribunal, which, let us hope, would give him
a more merciful judgment than he would have
found in this world.

Mrs. Stubbs was broken-hearted and inconsolable.
"If he had only been spared for a bit,"
she sobbed to her married daughters, who came
to her in her trouble; "but to be taken sudden
like that!  oh, it is 'ard--it is 'ard."

"Poor Pa," murmured May; "he was so active,
he couldn't have borne to be ill and helpless, as
he would have been if he'd lived.  I wouldn't fret
so, if I were you, Ma, dear, I really wouldn't."

"There's nothing dishonourable," Mrs. Stubbs
sobbed; "all's gone, but your poor Pa's good
name's 'ere still.  I do thank 'eaven for that--yes,  I do."

"H'm!  If Pa'd been half sharp," Flossie
remarked, "he'd have taken care there was something left."

"He's left his good name and his good deeds
behind him--that's better than mere money," said
Sarah softly, holding her aunt's hand very tightly
in both of hers.

"Oh, well, as to that, Sarah," said Flossie, "of
course it isn't likely *you'll* blame Pa for being so
lavish as he was; dressed just the same as us,
and expensive violin lessons twice a week, and
all that."

Mrs. Stubbs and May both cried out upon
Flossie for her words.

"Cruel, cruel!" Mrs. Stubbs exclaimed; "when
you've had every lux'ry you could wish, to blame
your poor Pa for his charity before he's laid in
his grave.  I'm ashamed of you, Flossie, I am!"  And
then she hid her face on Sarah's slim young
shoulder, and broke into bitter sobs and tears.





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.. _`A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES`:

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   CHAPTER XVI


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   A CHANGE OF CIRCUMSTANCES

.. vspace:: 2

When her husband's affairs were all investigated
and arranged, it was found, to Mrs. Stubbs's
great joy, that matters were scarcely quite
so bad as had at first been anticipated.  True
everything--or what she called everything--was
gone; but no stain was there to sully a name which
had always been held among City men as a
blameless and honourable one.

The actual cause of the crash had been the failure
of a large bank, which had ruined two important
houses with which the firm of Stubbs & Co. had
very large dealings; these houses were unable to
pay their debts to Stubbs & Co.; and Stubbs &
Co., having been living in great extravagance up to
the last penny which could be squeezed out of the
business, were not able to stand the strain of the
unexpected losses.

But when everything was arranged, it was found
that, with careful nursing and management, the
business could be carried on for the benefit of the
children until such time as the boys should be of
an age to take the management of it themselves.
Meanwhile, the trustees took Tom away from the
expensive public school at which he was at the time
of his father's death, and, instead of sending him to
Oxford, as his father intended to have done a few
months later, put him into the clerks' department
of a large mercantile house, where they made him
work--as Tom himself said indignantly--as if he
were a mere under-clerk at a few shillings a week.

It happened that the trustees were both bachelors,
who understood the management of a large and
expensive household just about as well as they
sympathised with the desire for social prominence.
Therefore, they believed themselves to be doing a
really generous and almost unheard-of action when
they agreed to allow Mrs. Stubbs three hundred a
year out of the proceeds of the business.  "And
the lad will have his pound a week," they said to
one another, as a further proof of their consideration
for their old friend's widow.

But to Mrs. Stubbs it seemed as if the future
was all so black that she could not even see where
she was to get food for herself and her children.
Poor soul! she had forgotten what the old friends
of her dead husband remembered only too well--the
days when she had run up and down stairs after
her mother's lodgers, of whom poor John Stubbs was
one.  On the whole, it is pretty certain that we rise
much more easily than we fall.  We find climbing
up much easier than we find slipping down.  And
Mrs. Stubbs had got so used to spending twice
three thousand a year, that to her a descent to three
hundred seemed but very little better than the workhouse.

"A nice little 'ouse at Fulham!" she exclaimed,
when Flossie tried to paint such a home in glowing
colours.  "You know I never could a-bear little
'ouses.  Besides, 'ow am I to get them all into a nice
little 'ouse?  There's Sarah and me----"

"Oh, Sarah first, of course!" snapped Flossie.

"For shame, Flossie; you seem as if you don't
know how to be mean enough to Sarah.  I said 'er
name first because she's my right 'and just now,
and I lean on her for everything.  There's Sarah
and me, and Tom and Johnnie, and there's Minnie,
and Janey, and Lily--that's seven.  'Ow am I to
put seven of us away in what you call a nice little 'ouse?"

"Why, you'll have five bedrooms," Flossie cried.

"And where are the servants to go?" Mrs. Stubbs
demanded.  "Oh, I suppose I'm to do without a
servant at all!"

"Well, I shouldn't think you'll want more than
one," returned Flossie, who had six.

Mrs. Stubbs rocked herself to and fro in the depth
of her misery and despair.

"And what's to become of me when Lily comes
of age?" she cried.

For, by Mr. Stubbs's will, the business was to be
carried on for the benefit of his children until the
youngest should come of age, when the two boys
were to have it as partners.

He had believed his wife and children were safely
provided for out of his property, which had nothing
to do with the business, of which Mrs. Stubbs was
to take half absolutely, and the other half was to
go equally among the children.  Every penny of
this had, however, been swallowed up by the losses
which had in reality killed him; so that, though
there was a provision for the children, Mrs. Stubbs
was, except through the favour of the trustees,
absolutely unprovided for.

"Oh, well, it's a good long time till then," Flossie
returned coldly.  "And really, Ma, I do think it's
ungrateful of you to make such a fuss, when things
might be so different.  Just supposing, now, May
and I weren't married; you might grumble then."

"I 'aven't as much," Mrs. Stubbs cried, "to bring
up five children on as you and May each 'ave to
dress on."

"Perhaps not; but then, we have to go into a
great deal of society; and look what that costs,"
Flossie retorted.  "Any way, Mr. Jones is too much
disgusted at all this happening just now to let me
help you.  And as for my allowance, I have to pay
my maid out of it, so I really don't see that you
can expect me to do anything for you."

"I don't think Auntie wants you to do anything
for her; I'm sure she doesn't expect it," put in
Sarah, who was so utterly disgusted that she could
keep silence no longer, though she had determined
not to speak at all.

"Well, Sarah, I really can't see what occasion
there is for you to put your word in," said
Mrs. Jones, with an air of dignity.  "We have heard a
great deal about what you were going to do;
perhaps now you will do it, and let us see whether the
princess is going to turn out a real princess after
all or not."

For a moment Sarah looked at her with such
utter disdain in her grey eyes that the redoubtable
Flossie fairly quailed beneath her gaze.

"I am going always to treat my dear aunt with
the respect and love she deserves, Flossie," she said
gravely; "and, even if I prove an utter failure in
every other way, you might still take a lesson from
me with great improvement to yourself."

"Oh, you think so, do you?" sneered Flossie.

"Yes, I do," said Sarah promptly.

"Then let me tell you, Miss Sarah Gray, that I
think your tone and manner exceedingly impertinent
and familiar.  In future, call me Mrs. Jones, if you
please, and try if you can remember to keep your place."

"Mrs. Jones, I will; and do you remember to
keep yours," Sarah replied; "and do you remember,
too, that you need not insult my aunt any further."

"I shall speak as I like to my own mother," Flossie
cried furiously.

Sarah opened her eyes wide.

"If I do put you out of the house, Mrs. Jones,"
she said, speaking with ominous calmness, "I may
be a little rough with you."  And then the door
opened, and May came languidly in.

"What *is* the matter?" she cried.  "Flossie, is
that you--at it again?  Do go away, please.  I am
not well.  I came to have a little talk to Ma, and
I can't bear quarrelling.  Do go away, Flossie, I beg."

"That Sarah has insulted me," Flossie gasped--but
May was remarkably unsympathetic.

"Oh, I've no doubt--a very good thing, too, for
you've insulted her ever since you first saw her.  Do
go away.  I'm sure I shall faint.  I never could bear
wrangling and fighting; and poor Pa's going off
like that has upset me so--I just feel as if I could
burst out crying if any one speaks to me."

On this, Flossie, finding that May was unmistakably
preparing herself for a nice comfortable faint,
went stormily away, and rolled off in her grand
carriage, looking like a thunder-cloud.  May
recovered immediately.

"I really don't envy Flossie's husband the rest
of his life," she remarked.  "What a comfort she
has gone away!  Well, Ma, dear, I came in to have
a quiet talk with you, and that tiresome girl has
upset you.  I would not take any notice if I were
you, dear.  I don't suppose Flossie means it.  But
she is so impetuous, and she's so jealous of Sarah.
I'm sure I don't know what you ever did to upset
her, Sarah; but you and I were always the best of friends."

"The best of friends, May," said Sarah; then bent
down and kissed her cousin's soft ungloved hand.
"I didn't mean to speak, not to say a word--but
she was so unkind to poor Auntie--and, May, it is
hard on Auntie after all this"--looking round the
room--"and her beautiful carriages and horses, and
her kind husband who was so fond of her, to have
just three hundred a year to keep five children on.
It is hard."

Poor Mrs. Stubbs broke down and began to sob
instantly.  "Sarah puts it all so beautifully," she
said.  "That's just as it was--your poor Pa--and----"
but then she stopped, unable to go on, choked by
her tears.

"Now, Ma, dear, don't," May entreated; "we don't
know why everything is.  It might have been worse,
you know, dear; just think, if you'd had Flossie
at home."

"Ah! it is a comfort to me to think Flossie is
married," said Mrs. Stubbs, drying her eyes; "she's
never been like a child to me."

"And there might have been nothing, you know;
after all there is something, and you'll be able to
keep them all together.  I shall help you all I can,
Ma, dear; you know I shall do that!  And if I
can't do much else, I can take you for drives, and
see if I can't help Minnie to get married.  You'll
think it queer, Ma, dear, that I'm not just able to
say 'I'll give you a cheque for a hundred now and
then.'  But I can't.  Life isn't all roses for me either.
Of course I have a grand house in Palace Gardens,
and diamonds, and carriages, and all that; but
Mr. Giath doesn't give me much money; he isn't like
poor dear Pa.  Of course he made a very big
settlement--Pa insisted on that--but only at his
death.  I don't get it now, and he pays my dress
bills himself; and," with a sob, "I don't find it all
roses to be an old man's darling.  But I don't
want to trouble you with all that, Ma, dear; you've
got enough troubles and worries of your own.  But
you'll understand just how it is, won't you, dear?
And, of course, there'll be many little ways that I
shall be able to help you."

"Well, I have got my troubles," said Mrs. Stubbs,
drying her eyes, and looking at her daughter's pretty
flushed face; "but others has them as well.  You
were always my right 'and, May, from the time
you was a little girl in short petticoats; and you're
more comfort to me now than all my other children
put together, all of them.  Flossie's been 'ere turning
up her nose at her mother and insulting Sarah
shameful; and Tom's grumbling all day long at
what he calls his 'beggarly screw'; and saying it
won't pay for 'is cigars and cabs and such-like;
and Minnie's been crying all this morning because
it's her birthday and nobody's remembered it; and,
really, altogether I feel as if it wouldn't take much
more to send me off my head altogether."

"But I did remember it," cried May; "I've
brought her a birthday present, poor child."

"I'm sure it is good of you, May," poor
Mrs. Stubbs cried.  "Minnie 'll be a bit comforted now.
You know it is 'ard on her, for we used to make
so much of birthdays.  But neither she nor the little
ones ever seem to think of what they've 'ad--and
no more I do myself for that matter--only of what
they 'aven't got.  'Pon my word, there is but one
in the 'ouse to-day who hasn' 'ad their grumble over
something or other, and that's Sarah."

Sarah laughed as she patted her aunt's fat hand.
"I've got something else to do just now, Auntie,"
she said bravely.  "I've got to put my shoulder
to the wheel now.  I've been riding on the top of
the wagon all along."





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.. _`SARAH'S OPPORTUNITY`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium

   SARAH'S OPPORTUNITY

.. vspace:: 2

A few days later they made the move to the
little house at Fulham, which, in poor lavish
Mrs. Stubbs's eyes, was but a degree better than
a removal to the workhouse.

But Sarah--who somehow seemed to have naturally
the management of everything--worked like a
slave to get everything into good order before her
aunt should set foot in the place at all.  She turned
the house in Jesamond Road out that she might
take the prettiest and most suitable things for the
little Queen Anne box to which they were going,
and, with the help of Johnnie and the new servant,
succeeded in having everything in perfect order by
the time of Mrs. Stubbs's arrival.

But it was very, very small.  Mrs. Stubbs looked
hopelessly at the narrow passage and the narrower
doorways when she entered, sobbed as she recognised
one article of furniture after another, or missed
such as Sarah had not thought it wise or in good
taste to bring.

"Oh, dear, dear!  I ought to think it all very
pretty and nice," she wailed; "I left it all to you,
Sarah, and I know you've done your best--I know
it; but I *did* think I should have been able to
keep my own inlaid market writing-table that Stubbs
gave me on my last wedding-day--I did."

"Dear Auntie, you shall have it," Sarah explained,
soothingly.  "I couldn't get you to choose just what
you would have, and I had to be guided by size a
good deal.  But we can fetch the table easily
enough; it will stand here in the window
beautifully, and just finish off the room nicely."

"Flossie says she'll not be able to come and see
us very often."  Mrs. Stubbs wandered off again.
"She says it knocks the carriage about so, coming
down these new neighbourhoods.  Ah, *I* never used
to think of my carriages before my relations, never!"

"Flossie will have more sense by-and-by," said
Sarah, who had but small patience with Mrs. Jones's
airs and graces.

Poor Sarah was so tired of Flossie and her airs!
To her mind, she was hardly worth a moment's
consideration or regret; to her she was just an
ungenerous, self-sufficient, very vulgar and heartless
young person, who would have been more in her
place had she been scrubbing floors or washing
dishes than she was, or ever would be, riding in her
own carriage behind a pair of high-stepping horses
that had cost four hundred guineas.

"Don't think about Flossie at all, dear," she said
to her aunt.  "Some day she'll be sorry for all that
has happened lately; perhaps some day she may
have trouble herself, and then she will understand
how unkind she has been to you.  But May is
always sweet and good, though she is tied up by
that horrid old man, and can't help you as she
would like; and the little ones are different--they
would never hurt your feelings willingly."

Poor Mrs. Stubbs shook her head sadly.  She
had said nothing to Sarah, for a wonder--for as a
rule she carried all her troubles to her--but only
that morning Tom had flung off to "his beastly
office" in a rage, because she had not been able to
give him a sovereign and had suggested that the
pound a week he was receiving ought to be more
than enough for his personal expenses; and Minnie
had pouted and cried because she could not have
a pair of new gloves; and the little ones had looked
at her in utter dismay because there was not a fresh
pot of jam for their breakfast.  Perhaps
Mrs. Stubbs felt that Sarah was young, and must not
be disheartened when she was doing her best; I
know not.  Any way, she kept these things to
herself, and after shaking her head as a sort of tribute
to her troubles, promised that she would try to
make herself happy in her new home.

And then Sarah felt herself at liberty to go and
pay a visit to Signor Capri, her violin master, one
she had been wishing to pay ever since her uncle's
death.  She went at a time when she knew he
would be alone, and indeed she found him so.

"Ah, my little Sara!" he cried; "I was hoping
to see you again soon.  And tell me, you have
lost the good uncle, eh?"

"Yes, Signor," she answered, and briefly told him
all the story of her uncle's misfortune and death.
"And now," she ended, "I want to make money.
They have done everything for me; now I want to
do something for them.  Can you help me?"

.. _`"They have done everything for me; now I want to do something for them. Can you help me?"`:

.. figure:: images/img-129.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "They have done everything for me; now I want to do something for them. Can you help me?"

   "They have done everything for me; now I want to do something for them. Can you help me?"

"You are a brave child!" the violin-master cried;
"and God has given you the rarest of all good
gifts--a grateful heart.  I think I can help you; I
think so.  Only this morning I had a letter from a
friend who is arranging a concert tour; he has
first-rate *artistes*, and he wants a lady violinist."

"Me!" cried Sarah excitedly.

"But," said the maestro, raising his hand, "he
does not give much money."

"But it would be a beginning," she broke in.

"He gives six pounds a week."

"I'll go!" Sarah cried.

"Then we will go and see him at once; I have
an hour to spare," said the Italian kindly.

Well, before that hour was ended, Sarah had
engaged herself to go on a twelve weeks' tour, at
a salary of six pounds a week and her travelling
expenses; and before ten days more had gone over
her head, she had set off on her travels in search of
fame and fortune.

Flossie's remarks were very pious.  "I'm sure,
Sarah," she said, setting her rich folds of crape
and silk straight, "I am heartily glad to find that
you have so much good feeling as to wish to
relieve poor Ma of the expense of keeping you.
How much happier you will be to feel you are
no longer a burden on anybody!  There's nothing
like independence.  I'm sure every time I think of
poor Ma, I say to myself, 'Thank Heaven, *I'm* no
burden upon her!"

"That must be a great comfort to you, I'm sure,
Flossie," said Sarah gravely.

"Yes; I often tell Mr. Jones so.  And what
salary are you going to have, Sarah?"

"Enough to help my aunt a little," replied Sarah
coldly.

"Well, really, I can't see why you need be so
close about it," Flossie observed, "nor why you
should want to help Ma.  I'm sure she'll have
enough to live very comfortably, only, of course,
she must be content to live a little less
extravagantly than she did before.  I do believe," she
added, with a superb air, "in people being content
and happy with what they have; it's so much more
sensible than always pining after what they haven't
got.  By the bye, Sarah, we are going to have a
dinner-party to-morrow night; I couldn't ask Ma
because of her mourning, but if you like to come
in in the evening, and bring your violin, we shall
be very pleased, I'm sure."

"If you like to ask me as a professional, and pay
my fee," began Sarah mischievously.

"Pay your fee!  Well, I never!  To your own
cousin, and when you owe us so much!" Flossie
exclaimed.

"I don't think I owe *you* anything, Flossie, not
even civility or kindness," said Sarah coldly; but
Mrs. Jones had flounced away in a huff.

"Such impudence!" as she said to her husband
afterwards.

Well, Sarah went off on her tour, and won a fair
amount of success--enough to make her manager
anxious to secure her for the following winter on
the same terms.  But Sarah had promised Signor
Capri to do nothing without his knowledge, and he
wrote back, "Wait!  Before next winter you may
be famous."

But the months passed over, and still fame had
not come, except in a moderate degree.  The
manager was very glad to take Sarah on tour again at
a salary advanced to seven pounds a week instead
of six, and Sarah was equally glad to go.

In the meantime, she had made a good deal of
money by playing at private houses and at
concerts.  She had taken a well-earned holiday to the
Channel Islands, and had given her aunt and the
little ones a very good time there, all out of her
own pocket, and had added a very liberal sum to
the housekeeping purse of the little Queen Anne
house at Fulham.

Twice she had dined with the Giaths in Palace
Gardens, and had taken her violin because May
had not asked her to do so.  And more than once
she had been asked to go in the evening to grace
the rooms of Mrs. Jones--an honour which she
persistently declined.

So time went on, and Sarah worked late and
early, hoping, longing, praying to be one day a
great woman.

Thus several years went by, and at last there
came a glad and joyous day when she received
a command to play at a State concert--a day when
she woke to find herself looked upon as one of the
first violinists of the age.  It was wonderful, then,
how engagements crowded in upon her; how she
was sought out, flattered, and made much of; how
even the redoubtable Flossie was proud to go
about saying that she was Miss Gray's cousin.

Not that she ever owned it to Sarah; but Sarah
heard from time to time that Mrs. Jones had spread
the fact of the relationship abroad.  The object of
Flossie's life now seemed to be to get Sarah to
play at her house; for, as she explained to her
mother and May--now a rich young widow--"Of
course it looks odd to other people that they never
see Sarah at my house, and I don't wish to do
Sarah harm by saying that I don't care to have
her there.  But sometimes when she's staying with
you, May, you might bring her."

"I don't think she would come," laughed May.
"You see, you sat upon Sarah so frightfully when
she wasn't anybody in particular, that now, when
she is somebody of more consequence than all the
lot of us put together, she naturally doesn't feel
inclined to have anything to do with you.  I know
I shouldn't."

"And Lady Bright asked particularly if she was
going to play on the 9th," said Flossie, with a rueful
face, and not attempting to deny the past in any way.

"And what did you say?"

"I said I hoped so."

"Oh, well, that will be all the same.  Lady Bright
will understand after a time that 'Hope deferred
maketh the heart sick.'"  May laughed.  "And
perhaps it will be as well to remember in future
that ugly ducklings may turn out swans some day,
and that if they do, they are sometimes painfully
aware of the fact that some people would have kept
them ducklings for ever.  You see, you and Tom,
who is more horrid now even than he was as a
boy--yes, I see you agree with me--gave her the
name of Princess Sarah!  She has grown up to the
name, that is all."

.. vspace: 4

.. class:: center medium

   THE END

.. vspace:: 6

.. _`Miss Mignon`:

.. class:: left large

   Miss Mignon

.. vspace:: 2

It was a week before Christmas.  There were no
visitors at Ferrers Court, although a couple of
days later the great hall would be filled to
overflowing with a happy, light-hearted set of people,
all bent, as they always were at Ferrers Court, on
enjoying themselves to the uttermost.

The weather was cold and cheerless, though not
cold enough to stop the hunting, and Captain Ferrers
had been absent all day, and might now come home
at any moment.  Mrs. Ferrers was, in fact, rather
putting on the time, hoping he might return before
Browne brought in the tea.  The children meantime
were clamouring loudly for a story.

"A story?" said Mrs. Ferrers doubtfully; she
never thought herself very good at story-telling,
and often wondered that the children seemed to like
hearing her so much.

"Yes, a story," cried three or four fresh young
voices in a breath.

"I'm afraid I've told you *all* my stories,"
Mrs. Ferrers said apologetically.  "And I have told
them all so many times."

"Tell us about Mignon," cried Maud, for Mignon,
their half-sister, was still their favourite heroine.

Mrs. Ferrers pondered for a moment.  "I don't
believe," she remarked, "that I have ever told you
about Mignon being lost."

"Mignon--lost!" cried Maud.  "Oh! never."

"Lost!" echoed Pearl.  "And where was she lost, Mother?"

"Tell us," cried Bertie.

"Yes; do tell us," echoed Cecil.

"Tell us," cried Madge and Baby in the same breath.

So Mrs. Ferrers gathered her thoughts together
and began.

"It was when Pearl was about four months old"--at
which Pearl drew herself up and looked
important, as if she, too, had had a share in the
adventure--"we went to London for the season.  That
was in April.  We had not the house we have
now, for that was let for a term, so your father
took a house near the top of Queen's Gate."

"That's where the memorial is," said Pearl.  "I know."

"Yes; we know," echoed Maud.

"Well, Humphie, who had attended Mignon
ever since she was a year old, had, of course, the
entire care of Pearl, and I engaged a very nice
French maid--half-maid, half-nurse--for Mignon.  She
was under Humphie, of course, but she had to take
Mignon out--not very often, for she was accustomed
to going out a great deal with your father--and to
dress her, and so on.

"Well, one day your father and I were going to
a large afternoon party where we couldn't very well
take Mignon.  We stayed rather late, rushed back
and dressed and went to a dinner-party, not really
having time to see the children at all.  We had a
party or two later on, but to them we never went,
for just as we ladies were going through the hall
on our way up into the drawing-room, I caught
sight of Browne at the door of the inner hall.  I
turned aside at once.

"'Is anything the matter, Browne?' I asked.
Indeed, I saw by his white face that something
dreadful had happened.

.. _`"'Is anything the matter, Brown?'"  (Page 141)`:

.. figure:: images/img-141.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'Is anything the matter, Brown?'"  (Page 141)

   "'Is anything the matter, Brown?'"  (Page 141)

"'Oh, yes, ma'am, something dreadful!' he
answered.  'I scarcely know how to tell you.  Miss
Mignon is lost.'

"'Miss Mignon lost, Browne!  What do you
mean?' I said.  'How can she be lost?'

"'I only know she is,' he said, in a shaking voice.
'That silly idiot Hortense went out with her about
three o'clock, with orders to go into the Park.
She--this is her story, I cannot vouch for the truth of
it, ma'am--she admits that she took her first to
look at the shop-windows in the High Street, and
that then she thought she would like to go into the
Gardens, and that while there she fell asleep.  The
afternoon being so warm, she sat on a bench asleep
till half-past five, and when she woke up with a
start, feeling very shivery and cold--and serve her
right, too!--Miss Mignon was gone; there was not
a trace of her to be seen.'

"'If the silly creature had come straight home,'
Browne went on, 'something might have been done;
but instead of doing that, she must go into hysterics--with
nobody to see her, even!--and then go crying
about from one gate to the other, wandering about,
as if Miss Mignon would be likely to be sitting on
the edge of the pavement waiting for her.  At
last--I suppose when she began to get hungry'--Browne
went on savagely, 'she bethought herself
of coming home, and there she landed herself at
nine o'clock, and has been steadily going out of
one faint into another ever since.  I have sent James
round to the police station,' he said, 'but I thought
I had better come straight away and fetch you, ma'am.'

"Well," Mrs. Ferrers went on, "I said good-night
to our hostess and sent for your father, and we went
back at once.  We were five miles from home, and
it was half-past eleven when we got there.  And
there was no trace of Mignon.  James had taken a
cab and gone round to all the police stations within
reach of the house, and Humphie was waiting for
us, shaking like a leaf and as white as death, and
at the sight of us Hortense went off into wild
hysterics again and shrieked till--till--I could have
shaken her," Mrs. Ferrers ended severely.

"Well, your father and I just stood and looked
at one another.  'Where can she be?' I said.
'Can't you get any information out of Hortense?
Surely the woman must know where she was last
with her.'

"But, as your father said, the Gardens were all
deserted and closed hours ago.  She was not at all
likely to be there.  Almost without doubt she had
strayed out into the busy street, had then found
herself in a strange neighbourhood, and--and I
simply shuddered to think what might have
happened to her after that.

"For the time we were helpless; we did not
know, we could not think what to do next.  A
policeman came up from the nearest station as we
stood considering what we should do.  But he had
no news; he shook his head at my eager inquiry.
'No, madam,' he said, 'I'm sorry we have no news
of the little lady; but we telegraphed to all the
stations near, but no lost child has been brought in.
She must have fallen in with some private person.'

"As you may imagine," Mrs. Ferrers went on,
"I felt dreadfully blank--indeed, your father and
I simply stood and looked at one another.  What
should we, what could we do next?  To go out
and search about the streets at nearly midnight
would be like looking for a needle in a truss of
hay--we could not send a crier out with a bell--we
were at our wits' end.  Indeed, it seemed as if we
could do nothing but wait till morning, when we
might advertise.

"Then just as the policeman was turning away,
another policeman came and knocked at the door.
A little girl had been taken into the police station
at Hammersmith, a pretty fair-haired child about
six years old, who did not know where she lived,
and could not make the men there understand who
she was.

"'That's not Miss Mignon,' cried Humphie
indignantly; 'Miss Mignon knows perfectly well who
she is and who she belongs to.  That's never Miss
Mignon.'

"'Ah, well, Humphie,' said your father, 'Miss
Mignon has never been lost at dead of night before;
it's enough to frighten any child, and though she's
as quick as a needle, she's only a baby after all.'

"The carriage was still at the door, and we went
down as quickly as the horses could go to Hammersmith,
feeling sure that we should find Mignon there,
frightened and tired, but safe.  And when we got
there the child wasn't Mignon at all, but a little,
commonly-dressed thing who didn't seem even to
know what her name was.  However, its mother
came whilst we were there, and scolded her properly
for what she called 'running away.'

"I couldn't help it," Mrs. Ferrers went on.  "I
was in such trouble, wondering what had got
Mignon, and I just spoke to her straight.  'Oh,'
I said, 'you ought only to be thankful your little
girl is safe and sound, and not be scolding the
poor little frightened thing like that.  How can
your speak to her so?'

"'Well,' she said, 'if you had seven of them
always up to some mischief or other, and you'd
been running about for hours till you were fit to
drop, and you hadn't a carriage to take her home
in, I daresay you'd feel a bit cross, too.'

"And I felt," Mrs. Ferrers went on reflectively,
"that there was a great deal in what she said.
They didn't live more than a mile off, and it
was our way back, so we drove them home, and
the little girl went to sleep on her mother's knee;
and I told her what trouble we were in about
Mignon.  She was quite grateful for the lift, and
I promised to let her know if we found Mignon
all right.

"Well, we reached home again, and there wasn't
a sign of Mignon anywhere.  With every moment
I got more and more uneasy, for Mignon was
turned six years old, and was well used to going
about and seeing strange people.  I knew she
wasn't a child to get nervous unduly, or be
frightened of any one who offered to take care of
her, only I was so afraid that the wrong sort of
people might have got hold of her, and might
have decoyed her away for the sake of her clothes
or a reward.

"Oh, dear, what a dreadful night it was!  Your
father went out and got a cab and went round to
all the police-stations, inquiring everywhere for
traces of her.  And then he went and knocked
up all the park-keepers, but none of them had
noticed her either.

"And Humphie and I sat up by the nursery
fire; and about two in the morning, Hortense crept
down and went on her knees to me, praying and
imploring me to forgive her, and saying that if
anything had happened to little missie, she would
make away with herself."

.. _`"Hortense crept down and went on her knees to me, praying and imploring me to forgive her."`:

.. figure:: images/img-147.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Hortense crept down and went on her knees to me, praying and imploring me to forgive her."

   "Hortense crept down and went on her knees to me, praying and imploring me to forgive her."

"What's that?" asked Madge suddenly.

"Hanging herself," answered Pearl.  "Judas
hanged himself."

"Judas went out and hanged himself," corrected
Maud, who had a passion for accuracy of small
details.

"Yes, of course, but that doesn't matter," said
Pearl.  "The hanging was the principal thing.
He could have hanged himself without going out,
but going out without hanging himself would not
have been anything."

"Go on, Mother," cried a chorus of voices.  "What
happened next?"

"Well, nothing happened for a long time,"
Mrs. Ferrers replied.  "We all stayed up; I think
nobody thought of going to bed that night at
all--I know Humphie and I never did--and at
last the morning broke, and your father and
Browne began to make arrangements for putting
notices in all the papers, and when they had
written them all, they went off in the grey dim
light to try to get them put into that day's
papers.  Oh! it was a most dreadful night, and
a terrible morning.

"I didn't like to put it into words, but all night
long I had thought of the Round Pond, and
wondered if my Mignon was in there.  I found
out afterwards that your father had thought of
it too, and had made all arrangements for having
it dragged, though he wouldn't speak of it to me,
because he fancied I had not thought of it.

"And over and over again Humphie kept saying,
'I'm sure my precious lamb knows perfectly
well who she is and all about herself.  I'm sure
of it.  Why, we taught her years ago, ma'am, in
case it ever happened she got lost.  "I'm Miss
Mignon, and I belong to Booties," and "Captain
Ferrers, the Scarlet Lancers."  She knew it all,
years since.'

"'Yes, but, Humphie, has any one taught her
304, Queen's Gate, S.W.?' I asked.

"'No,' said Humphie.  'I can't say that we have.'

"'Then she might fall in with hundreds and
thousands of people in London who wouldn't
know Captain Ferrers from Captain Jones; and
she might be too frightened to remember anything
about the Scarlet Lancers.  It isn't as if we were
with the regiment still.'

"The morning wore on; nothing happened.  Your
father went to Scotland Yard, and detectives came
down and examined Hortense, who went off into
fresh hysterics, and threatened to go right away
and drown herself there and then; but there was
no news of Mignon.  And then Algy came in and
told me they had dragged the pond, and, thank
God, she wasn't there; though the suspense was
almost unbearable as it was.

"But we seemed no nearer to hearing anything of
her, and hardly knew what to be doing next, though
the day was wearing away, and it was horrible to
think of going through such another night as the one
we had just passed.

"And then--just at four o'clock--a handsome
carriage drew up at the door, and I heard Mignon's
voice: 'Yes, I'm sure that's the house,' she said.

"Oh!  I don't know how I got to the door; I
think I tore it open, and ran down the steps to meet
her.  I don't remember what I said--I think I cried.
I'm sure your father nearly choked himself in trying
to keep his sobs back.  We nearly smothered Mignon
with kisses, and it was ever so long before we had
time to take any notice of the strange lady who had
brought her home.

"'I'm afraid you've had a terrible night,' she said,
with tears in her eyes.  'I found your dear little
maid wandering about in South Kensington--oh! right
down in Onslow Gardens.  I saw that she was
not a child accustomed to being out alone, and I
asked her how it was.  She was perfectly cool and
unconcerned.

"'"I've lost my maid," she said.  "She sat down
on a seat, and I was picking daisies, and I don't know
how, but I couldn't find her again."

"'"And what is your name?" I asked her.

"'"Oh!  I'm Miss Mignon," she answered.

"'"And where do you live?" I inquired.

"'"Well, that's just what I can't remember.  When
I'm at home I live at Ferrers Court, and when we
were with the regiment, our address was, "The
Scarlet Lancers"--just that.  But now we are in
Town, I *can't* remember the name of the street.  I
thought when I lost Hortense that I should know
my way back, but I missed it somehow.  And
Mother will be so uneasy," she ended.

"'Well,' said the lady, 'I told her she had much
better come home with me, and that I would try to
find out Captain Ferrers; and so I did, but without
success.  Then it occurred to me that as soon as
the offices were open I would telegraph to the
Scarlet Lancers, asking for Captain Ferrers' address.
And so I did; and when the answer came back, it
was your country address--

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

"CAPTAIN FERRERS, *Ferrers Court,*
     *Farlington, Blankshire.*"

.. vspace:: 1

"'So I had no choice but to telegraph to Ferrers
Court for your town address.  And oh, dear lady! my
heart was aching for you all the time, for I
knew you must be suffering agonies," she ended,
holding out her hands to me.

"And so, of course, I had been," Mrs. Ferrers
went on; "but 'all's well that ends well'; and we
at once taught Mignon the name of the house
she lived in, and, indeed, for a long time we sewed
a little ticket on to the hem of her frock, so that
if she did forget it, she would easily make some one
understand where she wished to be taken."

"And Hortense--what did you do with her?"
Pearl asked.

"Oh! we gave her a month's wages, and sent
her away," Mrs. Ferrers answered; "and now here
is Browne with the tea, Pearl.  Can you manage it?"

"Oh! yes, Mother," Pearl answered.  She was
nearly fourteen, and loved to make the tea now
and then.  "Oh! here's Miss Maitland coming!
Miss Maitland, *I* am to pour out the tea.  Mother
says so."

"Willingly, so long as you don't scald yourself,"
said Miss Maitland, smiling.

"And here is Father," cried Maud.  "Bootles,
Mother has been telling us the dreadful story of
how Mignon was lost."

"Has she, sweetheart?  Well, we don't want to
go through that particular experience any more,
do we, darling?"

"No! once was once too often," said Mrs. Ferrers,
slipping her hand into his.

"Two lumps of sugar," said Pearl, bringing her
father his cup.

"And muffins!" added Maud.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Boy's Love`:

.. class:: left large

   Boy's Love

.. class:: noindent medium

   PART I

.. vspace:: 2

It was towards the close of the afternoon of a
warm June day that a short, sturdy, fair-haired
boy, wearing a dark blue uniform with a touch of
scarlet here and there about it, sat down at a long
desk to write a letter.  It was headed, "Duke of
York's School, Chelsea, S.W.," and began, "My dear
Mother."

When he had got thus far, the boy paused, leaned
his elbow upon the desk, and rested his head upon
his hand.  And then after a minute the hand slipped
downward, and rubbed something out of his
eyes--something hard to get rid of, apparently--for
presently one bright drop after another forced its
way through his fingers and fell on to the desk
beneath.

And yet, truth to tell, even those bright drops did
not help to get rid of the something, the something
which had a firm foothold in the heart below,
making it swell till it was well-nigh to bursting.
This was his letter:--

.. vspace:: 2

"My DEAR MOTHER,--This is my last day at
school.  To-morrow I am going to Warnecliffe to join
the 25th Dragoons; they call them the Black Horse.
I am very glad to leave school and be a soldier
like my father, but,"--and here the blurred writing
was an evidence of the trouble in the boy's
heart--"but I don't like losing my chum.  You know,
he is Tom Boynton, and we have been chums for
more than three years.  He is orderly to the
dispenser, and has leave to go out almost any time.
I am very fond of him, and haven't any other chum,
though he has another chum besides me.  I think
he likes me best.  I do love him, mother; and I
lay awake all last night crying.  Tom cried, too,
a little.  He is going to the Scarlet Lancers, and
I don't know when I shall see him any more.  I
wish we were going into the same regiment.

"I got your letter on my fourteenth birthday, the
day before yesterday.  Tom is seven months older
than me.  He would have left school before if he
had not been orderly to the dispenser.  We both
got the V.G.  Jack Green is going into my regiment.
I shall come home when I get my furlough--and
if Tom gets his at the same time, can I bring him
too?  Tom hasn't any father or mother at all.
This is a very long letter.  I hope you are very
well.

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

"I am your affectionate son,
     EDWARD PETRES."

.. vspace:: 2

He read the letter over, brushing his cuff across
his eyes when he came to that part of the paper
which showed traces of tears, and then he folded
it and directed the envelope, after which he had
finished.  Then he got up, took his cap, and with
the letter in his hand, went forlornly out of the
large room.

When he had got rid of it, he went in search
of his chum, Tom Boynton, whom he met just
coming away from his last service as "Dispenser's
Orderly" with a heaving chest and eyes almost as
red and swollen as poor Ted's own.

Ted turned back with him and took hold of his arm.

"Taken your last physic out, Tom?" said he,
with a gallant attempt at manly indifference to the
dreaded parting of the morrow.

"Aye," returned Tom in a choking voice and
with eyes carefully averted.

The dispenser had just bade him "good-bye," and
had told him in wishing him "God speed" that he
was very sorry to lose him, and would most likely
have to wait a long time before he again had help
as efficient; and then he had given him a tip of
half-a-crown, and had shaken hands with him.  So
Tom's heart was quite as full as Ted's, and of the
two, being the older and bigger and stronger, he
was far the most anxious to hide the emotion he felt.

"Have you seen Jack?" he asked, giving his head
a bit of a shake and crushing his trouble down right
bravely.

"Jack Green?" asked Ted shortly.  He was not
a little jealous of Jack Green, who was his chum's
other chum.

"Aye!  Where is he?"

"I haven't seen him--not all the afternoon,"
returned Ted curtly.

"I'll go and find him," said Tom, disengaging his
arm from Ted's close grasp.

The two lads parted then, for Tom swung away
in the direction of the playground, leaving Ted
staring blankly after him; and there he stood for
full five minutes, until, his eyes blinded with pain,
he could see no longer, and then he turned away and
hid his face upon his arm against a friendly
sheltering wall.

.. _`Hid his face upon his arm against a friendly sheltering wall`:

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   :align: center
   :alt: Hid his face upon his arm against a friendly sheltering wall

   Hid his face upon his arm against a friendly sheltering wall

But by-and-by his jealousy of Jack Green began
to wear away.  Perhaps, after all, he argued, Tom
only wanted to hide his trouble.  Tom was a big
lad, and was even more ashamed than Ted of being
betrayed into weeping and such-like exhibitions of
weakness.  So, by the time they turned in for the
night--the last night--Ted had forgotten the pain
of the afternoon.

"Tom," said he, going over to his chum's bed,
which was next to his, "Tom, I've come to talk to you."

"Yes," whispered Tom in reply.  The lights were
all out then, and most of the boys were fast asleep,
so big Tom drew his chum's head down to his, and
put his arm round his neck.

"It's the last night, Tom," said Ted in a strangled
voice.

"Yes," said Tom, in a whisper.

"We've been chums for three years and more,"
Ted went on, "and we've never been out of friends
yet.  P'raps I shall get an exchange to your
reg'ment yet."

"Or me to yours," answered Tom eagerly.

"I shan't have no chum now," Ted went on,
taking no notice of Tom's words.

"You'll have Jack Green," said Tom.

"Yes, there'll be Jack Green, but he ain't you,"
Ted answered mournfully.  "He'll never be my chum
like you was, Tom; but if ever I've a chance of doing
him a good turn, I will, 'cause *you* liked him."

"Will you, Ted?" eagerly.

"Yes, I will," answered Ted steadily.  "And,
Tom, it's our last time together to-night--we mayn't
ever get together again."

"I know," sighed Tom.

"I wish," Ted said hesitatingly--"oh, Tom,"
with a sorrowful catch in his voice and a great gulp
in his throat, "I--I--do wish you'd kiss me--just
once."

And so Tom Boynton put his other arm around
his chum's neck, and the two lads, who had been
friends for three years, held one another for a minute
in a close embrace; an instant later Ted Petres tore
himself away and sprang into his bed, dragging the
clothes over his head, and burying his face in the
pillow in a vain attempt to stifle his sobs.  And
before another day had gone over their heads they
had parted, to meet again--when--and where?





.. vspace:: 4

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   PART II

.. vspace:: 2

Seven years had gone by.  A fierce and scorching
sun shone down with glaring radiance
upon long stretches of arid and sandy country,
covered sparsely with coarse rank grass and
brushwood--the country which is called the Soudan;
the country where so many brilliant lives ended,
sacrificed in the cause of a crusade as hopeless as
the crusade of the children--who sought to win
Heaven with glory where the flower of the nations
had failed--sacrificed to the death in the too late
attempt to succour a gallant soldier, the noble
victim of an ignoble policy.

And between the brilliant glaring sky and the
sun-scorched arid earth, there hung a heavy cloud
of gunpowder smoke while the flower of two races
fought desperately for conquest.  In the midst a
square of British troops, with set white faces and
sternly compressed lips, with watchful eyes well on
the alert, and in each brave heart the knowledge
that the fight was for life or death.  And on all
hands swarms of stalwart Soudanese, reckless of
life and counting death their chiefest gain, shouting
on Allah and the prophet to aid them, and dying
happy in the certain faith of entering paradise if
but one Christian dog should fall to their hand.

Oh, what a scene it was!  Only a handful of men
at bay, while mass after mass of the enemy came
down upon them like the waves of the incoming
tide upon the sea shore; and as at times a
rock-bound coast gives way and falls before the
encroaching advances of the ocean, so that ill-fated
square gave way before the overwhelming numbers
of the soldiers of the Prophet, and in a moment
all chance for our men seemed over.

Ay; but the British lion can up and fight again
after he has had a roll over which would crush the
life out of most of his foes.  And so that day, by
sheer hard desperate fighting, the square closed up
and was formed again, and of all the enemy who
had dashed into the midst of it, not one lived to
tell the tale.

But, oh! what though the enemy fell half a score
to one?  How many a brave life was laid down that
day, and how many a bullet had found its billet
was proved by the shrieks of agony which rose and
rang above all the tumult of the fight.

It happened that our old friend, Ted Petres, no
longer a short and sturdy boy but a fine-grown
young fellow of one-and-twenty now, found himself
not very far from the place where the square had
been broken--found himself fighting hard to win
the day and check the mad on-rush of the sons of
the Prophet.  As the ranks closed up once more,
he, as did most others who were in the rear,
turned his attention to the seething mass of blacks
thus trapped, and to his horror saw his comrade,
Jack Green, down on his knees, striking wildly here
and there against the attacks of three Soudanese.
Quick as thought--the thought that this was the
first time he had ever had a chance of fulfilling his
last promise to his boy's love, Tom--Ted flew to
his aid, sent one shouting gentleman to paradise,
and neatly disabled the right arm of a second just
as the third put his spear through poor Jack's lungs.

To cleave him to the teeth was but the work of
a moment, and Ted Petres accomplished it before
the follower of the Prophet had time to withdraw his
spear! but, alas! poor Jack's life was welling out
of him faster than the sands run out of a broken
hour-glass!  It was no use to lift him up and look
round for help; Jack Green had seen his last service,
and Ted knew it.  But he did his best for him in
those last moments, and help came in the person of
one of their officers, one D'Arcy de Bolingbroke
who, though badly wounded in the arm himself, was
yet able to lend a hand.

"Petres, you're a splendid fellow," he exclaimed.
"I shall recommend you if we live to get out of this.
You ought to get the Cross for this."

"Thank you, sir," returned Ted gratefully.

And then between them they managed to get the
poor fellow to the doctors, who were hard at work
behind a poor shelter of wagons and store-cases.
But it was too late, for when they laid him down
Jack Green was dead and at ease for ever.

One of the hospital orderlies turned from a case
at hand, and Ted uttered a cry of surprise at the
sight of him.  "Why, *Tom*!" he cried, starting up
to take his hand, "I didn't even know you were with us."

There was no answering gleam of pleasure on Tom
Boynton's face; he stared at Ted, stared at the face
of the dead man lying at their feet, then dropped
upon his knees beside him.  "Oh, Jack, Jack, speak
to me," he cried imploringly.

.. _`"Oh, Jack, Jack, speak to me," he cried imploringly.`:

.. figure:: images/img-167.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Oh, Jack, Jack, speak to me," he cried imploringly.

   "Oh, Jack, Jack, speak to me," he cried imploringly.

"It's too late, Tom," said Ted, bending down.  "I
did my best, but it was too late, old man.  I did my
best."

Tom Boynton looked up in his old chum's face.
"You let him die?" he asked.

"We were three to one," returned the other humbly.

"You did your best, and you let him die," repeated
Tom blankly.  "And he was my chum," he added
miserably.

"Tom," cried Ted passionately, "I was your chum too."

"*You!*" with infinite scorn; then bending down
he kissed the dead face tenderly.

Ted Petres turned away, blind with pain.  He
might have won the Cross, but he had lost his
friend--the friend who had loved him less than that other
chum of whom he had not the heart now to feel jealous.

And that was how they met again--that was the
end of Tom Petres' boy's love.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Yum-Yum: A Pug`:

.. class:: left large

   Yum-Yum: A Pug

.. class:: noindent medium

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

For a pug Yum-Yum was perfect, and let me
tell you it takes a great many special sorts
of beauty to give you a pug which in any way
approaches perfection.

First, your true pug must be of a certain colour,
a warm fawn-colour; it must have a proper width
of chest and a bull-doggish bandiness about the legs;
it must have a dark streak from the top of its head
along its back towards the tail; it must have a
double twist to that same tail, and three rolls of fat
or loose skin, set like a collar about its throat; it
must have a square mouth, an ink-black--no, no, a
soot-black mask (that is, face) adorned with an
infinitesimal nose, a pair of large and lustrous
goggle-eyes, and five moles.  I believe, too, that there is
something very important about the shape and
colouring of its toes; but I really don't know much
about pugs, and this list of perfections is only what
I have been able to gather from various friends who
do understand the subject.

So let me get on with my story, and say at once
that Yum-Yum possessed all these perfections.  She
may have had others, for she was without doubt a
great beauty of her kind, and she certainly was
blessed with an admirable temper, an angelic temper,
mild as new milk, and as patient as Job's.

And Yum-Yum belonged to a little lady called
Nannie Mackenzie.

.. _`Yum-Yum: A Pug.`:

.. figure:: images/img-175.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Yum-Yum: A Pug.

   Yum-Yum: A Pug.

The Mackenzies, I must tell you, were not rich
people, or in any way persons of importance; they
had no relations, and apparently belonged to no
particular family; but they were very nice people,
and very good people, and lived in one of a large
row of houses on the Surrey side of the river Thames,
at that part which is called Putney.

Mr. Mackenzie was something in the city, and had
not apparently hit upon a good thing, for there was
not much money to spare in the house at Putney.
I rather fancy that he was managing clerk to a
tea-warehouse, but am not sure upon that point.
Mrs. Mackenzie had been a governess, but of course she
had not started life as a teacher of small children;
no, she had come into the world in an upper room
of a pretty country vicarage, where the olive branches
grew like stonecrop, and most visitors were in the
habit of reminding the vicar of certain lines in the
hundred and twenty-seventh Psalm.

In course of time this particular olive plant, like
her sisters, picked up a smattering of certain
branches of knowledge, and, armed thus, went out into
the wide world to make her own way.  Her
knowledge was not extensive; it comprised a fluent power
of speaking her mother-tongue with a pleasant tone
and correct accent, but without any very
well-grounded idea of why and wherefore it was so.
She also knew a little French of doubtful quality,
and a little less German that was distinctly off colour.
She could copy a drawing in a woodenly accurate
kind of way, with stodgy skies made chiefly of
Chinese white, and exceedingly woolly trees largely
helped out with the same useful composition.  At
that time there was no sham about Nora Browne's
pretensions to art--there they were, good, bad, or
indifferent, and you might take them for what they
were worth, which was not much.  It was not until
she had been Mrs. Mackenzie for some years that
she took to "doing" the picture-galleries armed with
catalogue and pencil, and talked learnedly about
*chiar-oscuro*, about distance and atmosphere, about
this school and that, this method or the other
treatment.  There were frequenters of the art-galleries of
London to whom Mrs. Mackenzie, *née* Nora Browne,
was a delightful study; but then, on the other hand,
there was a much larger number of persons than
these whom she impressed deeply, and who even
went so far as to speak of her with bated breath as
"a power" on the press, while, as a matter of fact,
Mrs. Mackenzie's little paragraphs were very
innocent, and not very remunerative, and generally won
for the more or less weekly society papers in which
they appeared a reputation for employing an
art-critic who knew a good deal more about the frames
than about the pictures within them.

However, all this is a little by the way!  I really
only give these details of Mrs. Mackenzie's doings
to show that the family was, by virtue of their
mother being a dabbler in journalism, in touch with
the set which I saw the other day elegantly described
as "Upper Bohemia."

Now in the circles of "Upper Bohemia" nobody
is anybody unless they can do something--unless
they can paint pictures or umbrella vases and
milking-stools, unless they can sing attractively, or play
some instrument beyond the ordinary average of
skill, unless they can write novels or make
paragraphs for the newspapers, unless they can act or
give conjuring entertainments, or unless they can
compose pretty little songs with a distinct *motif*, or
pieces for the piano which nobody can make head
or tail of.  It is very funny that there should be so
wide a difference necessary between the composition
of music for the voice and music for the piano.  For
the first there must be a little something to catch the
ear, a little swing in the refrain, a something to make
the head wag to and fro; the words may be ever so
silly if they are only bordering on the pathetic, and
if the catch in the refrain is taking enough the rest
of the song may be as silly as the words, and still it
will be a success.  But with a piece it is different.
For that the air must be resolutely turned inside out,
as it were, and apparently if the composer chances
to light on one or two pretty bits, he goes back again
and touches them up so as to make them match all
the rest.  It seems odd this, but the world does not
stop to listen, but talks its hardest, and as at the end
it says "How lovely!" I suppose it is all right.

But all these people stand in the very middle of
"Upper Bohemia," and, as a pebble dropped into the
water makes circles and ever-widening circles on the
smooth surface, so do the circles which constitute
"Upper Bohemia" widen and widen until eventually
they merge into the world beyond!  There are the
amateurs and the reciters, and the artists who put
"decorative" in front of the word which denotes their
calling, and then put a hyphen between the two!
And there are the thought-readers, and the palmists,
and the people who have invented a new religion!
All these are in the ever-widening circles of "Upper
Bohemia."  And outside these again come the
fashionable lady-dressmakers and the art-milliners, the
trained nurses and the professors of cooking.  After
these you may go on almost *ad libitum*, until the
circle melts into professional life on the one hand
and fashionable life on the other.

You have perhaps been wondering, my gentle
reader, what all this can possibly have to do with the
pug, Yum-Yum, which belonged to a little girl named
Nannie Mackenzie.  Well, it really has something to
do with it, as I will show you.  First, because it tells
you that this was the set of people to whom the
Mackenzies belonged and took a pride in belonging.
It is true that they had a stronger claim to belong to a
city set; but you see Mrs. Mackenzie had been brought
up in the bosom of the Church, and thought more of
the refined society in "Upper Bohemia" than she
did of all the money bags to be found east of Temple
Bar!  In this I think she was right; in modern
London it does not do for the lion to lie down with
the lamb, or for earthenware pipkins to try sailing
down the stream with the iron pots.  In "Upper
Bohemia," owing to the haziness of her right of
entry, Mrs. Mackenzie was quite an important person;
in the city, owing to various circumstances--shortness
of money, most of all--Mrs. Mackenzie
was nowhere.

Mrs. Mackenzie had not followed the example of
her father and mother with regard to the size of her
family; she had only three children, two girls and a
boy--Rosalind, Wilfrid, and Nannie.

At this time Nannie was only ten years old, a
pretty, sweet, engaging child, with frank blue eyes
and her mother's pretty trick of manner, a child who
was never so happy as when she had a smart sash
on with a clean white frock in readiness for any
form of party that had happened to come in her way.

Wilf was different.  He was a grave, quiet boy of
thirteen, already working for a scholarship at
St. Paul's School, and meaning to be a great man some
day, and meanwhile spending all his spare hours
collecting insects and gathering specimens of fern
leaves together.

Above Wilf was Rosalind, and Rosalind was sixteen,
a tall, willowy slip of a girl, with a pair of fine
eyes and a passion for art.  I do not mean a passion
for making the woodenly accurate drawings with
stodgy clouds and woolly trees which had satisfied
her mother's soul and made her so eminently
competent to criticise the work of other folk--no, not
that, but a real passion for real art.

Now the two Mackenzie girls had had a governess
for several years, a mildly amiable young lady of
the same class, and possessed of about the same
amount of knowledge as Mrs. Mackenzie herself had
been.  She too made wooden drawings with stodgy
clouds and woolly trees, and she painted flowers--such
flowers as made Rosalind's artistic soul rise
within her and loathe Miss Temple and all her works,
nay, sometimes loathe even those good qualities
which were her chiefest charm.

Rosalind wanted to go further a-field in the art
world than either her mother's paragraphs or Miss
Temple's copies; she wanted to join some well-known
art-class, and, giving up everything else, go
in for real hard, grinding work.

But it could not be done, for, as I have said, money
was not plentiful in the house at Putney, and there
was always the boy to be thought of, and also there
was Nannie's education to finish.  To let Rosalind
join an expensive art-class would mean being
without Miss Temple, and Mrs. Mackenzie felt that to
do that would be to put a great wrong upon little
Nannie, for which she would justly be able to
reproach her all her life long.

"It would not do, my dear," she said to Rosalind,
when her elder daughter was one day holding forth
on the glories which might one day be hers if only
she could get her foot upon this, the lowest rung of
the ladder by which she would fain climb to fame
and fortune; "and really I don't see the sense or
reason of your being so anxious to follow art as a
profession.  I am sure you paint very well.  That
little sketch of wild roses you did last week was
exquisite; indeed, I showed it to Miss Dumerique
when I was looking over her new art-studio in Bond
Street.  She said it would be charming painted on a
thrush's-egg ground for a milking-stool or a tall
table, or used for a whole suite of bedroom or
boudoir furniture.  I'm sure, my dear, you might
make quite an income----"

"Did Miss Dumerique *offer* to do one--to let me
do any work of that kind for her?" Rosalind broke
in impatiently.

"No, she did not," Mrs. Mackenzie admitted, "but----"

"But, depend upon it, she is at work on the idea
long before this," cried Rosalind.  She knew Miss
Dumerique, and had but small faith in any income
from that quarter, several of her most cherished
designs having *suggested* ideas to that gifted lady.

"If I only had twenty pounds, twenty pounds,"
Rosalind went on, "it would give me such a help,
such a lift I should learn so much if I could spend
twenty pounds; and it's such a little, only the price
of the dress Mrs. Arlington had on the other day,
and she said it was so cheap--'Just a cheap little
gown, my dear, to wear in the morning.'  Oh! if
only I had the price of that gown."

"Rosalind, my dear," cried Mrs. Mackenzie, "don't
say that--it sounds so like envy, and envy is a
hateful quality."

"Yes, I know it is, but I do want twenty pounds
so badly," answered Rosalind in a hopeless tone.

Mrs. Mackenzie began to sob weakly.  "If I
could give it to you, Rosalind, you know I would,"
she wailed, "but I haven't got it.  I work and work
and work and strain every nerve to give you the
advantages; ay, and more than the advantages that
I had when I was your age.  But I can't give you
what I haven't got--it's unreasonable to ask it or to
expect it."

"I didn't either ask or expect it," said Rosalind;
but she said it under her breath, and felt that, after
all, her mother was right--she could not give what
she had not got.

It was hard on them both--on the girl that she
could not have, on the mother that she could not
give!  Rosalind from this time forth kept silence
about her art, because she knew that it was useless
to hope for the impossible--kept silence, that is,
from all but one person.  And yet she could not
keep her thoughts from flying ever and again to the
art-classes and the twenty pounds which would do
so much for her.  So up in the room at the top of
the house, where she dabbled among her scanty
paints and sketched out pictures in any colours that
she happened to have, and even went so far in the
way of economy as to utilize the leavings of her
mother's decorative paints--hedge-sparrow's-egg-blue,
Arabian brown, eau de Nil, Gobelin, and others
equally unsuitable for her purpose,--Rosalind
Mackenzie dreamed dreams and saw visions--visions of
a great day when she would have paints in
profusion and art-teaching galore.  There was not the
smallest prospect of her dreams and visions coming
true, any more than, without teaching and without
paints, there was of her daubs growing into pictures,
and finding places on the line at the Academy and
the New.  It is always so with youth.  It hopes
and hopes against hope, and when hope is dead,
there is no longer any youth; it is dead too.

   |       "There are youthful dreamers,
   |   Building castles fair, with stately stairways;
   |       Asking blindly
   |   Of the Future what it cannot give them."





.. vspace:: 4

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   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

But there was one person to whom Rosalind
Mackenzie poured out all that was in her
mind,--that was her ten-year-old sister, Nannie.  In
Nannie she found a ready and a sympathetic
listener; moreover, in Nannie's mind there was no
doubt, no hesitation in believing that if Rosalind
only had that twenty pounds there would be
nothing to keep her back, nothing to prevent her
sailing on right ahead into the roseate realms of fame
and glory!  If only she had that twenty pounds!

Now Nannie undoubtedly had a very gay and
jovial disposition.  She was always ready for fun
and excitement, and had no tendency or any
desire to carve out a line for herself, as her brother
and sister had both had before they had reached
her age.  Yet she had what was better in many
people's eyes, a very tender heart and a very
affectionate nature; and her tender heart was
wrung and wrung again at the thought of her
sister's unsatisfied longings and the great future
that was being blighted, all for the want of twenty
pounds.

Yet what could a little girl of ten years old do
towards getting such a sum as that together?
Just nothing!  Why, if the sum was shillings
instead of pounds, she would still find it utterly
beyond her power and out of her grasp!  She
thought and she thought, but thinking did not
help matters!  She lay awake at night puzzling her
little brain, but that did no good, and Nannie's face
grew a good deal paler, and set her mother wondering
if the house was unhealthy, or thinking that perhaps
the air from the river was damp and injurious.

It was about this time that Yum-Yum, the pug
which had been given to Nannie by one of her
mother's friends two years before, suddenly
became the person of the most importance in the
household at Putney; for behold one fine morning
when Nannie came down to breakfast, Yum-Yum
presented her with three babies, three dear wee
pugs, which sent Nannie into ecstasies and made
her forget for a few days all about Rosalind's
unsatisfied longings, and her craving after higher
things than at present were attainable to her.

"You think they're real beauties, don't you,
Father?" said Nannie anxiously.

"Yes, they are great beauties," said Mr. Mackenzie,
holding one little snub-nosed pug up and
examining it closely.

"And what should you think that they are
worth, Father?" Nannie asked.

"Worth?  Oh! that would depend a good deal
on how they turn out.  Their pedigree is a very
fair one; and at the end of six weeks or two
months they might be worth three or four guineas
apiece--more, for that matter."

Nannie fairly gasped, and she clutched hold of
her father's arm.  "Oh! daddy dear," she
exclaimed, "do you really, really think I might be
able to get *any* thing like that for them?"

"Oh! yes, I think so," he answered, smiling at
her earnestness.  "But, Nannie, why do you want
this money so much?  Have you set your mind
on a watch and chain?"

"Oh! no, dear daddy," she answered eagerly,
"it's not for myself at all; it's poor Rosalind I'm
thinking of"--and forthwith she poured into her
father's surprised but sympathetic ear all the story
of Rosalind's artistic longings, her craving for
better art-lessons, for all the good things that may
be had for the sum of twenty pounds.

Long before the story came to an end Mr. Mackenzie
had drawn his little daughter very closely
to him, and I fancy he was thinking, when she
came to the end of it, more of the goodness of
his Nannie's heart than of the greatness of
Rosalind's future.

"My Nannie," he said tenderly, "my generous,
kind-hearted little woman!  Rosalind ought to
love you dearly for----"

"Rosalind does love me dearly, daddy," Nannie
explained; "only she can't help wanting to be a
painter--it's in her, you know, and it's choking her.
And Rosalind doesn't know a word about it.  She
wouldn't want me to sell Yummy's pups for her.
Only you know, daddy, we can't keep three dogs
besides Yummy; and we may just as well sell
them as give them away, and then Rosalind
would be able to have *some* of the lessons that
she wants so badly."

Mr. Mackenzie smiled at Nannie's voluble
information.  "Well, well, you shall sell the pups and
make Rosalind happy," he said; then after a
moment added, "You know, Nannie, that I am not
rich--in fact, I am very poor, but I will make the
sum up to ten pounds, and Rosalind can go on
thus far, at all events."

Well, a few weeks passed over, and the secret
was rigidly kept between Mr. Mackenzie and
Nannie.  More than once Mrs. Mackenzie grumbled
at the expense and the trouble Yummy's three
babies were in the kitchen, and one afternoon when
she came in from Town, she said--"Oh, Nannie,
Lady Gray would like to have one of Yummy's
puppies.  I told her I thought you would let her
have first choice."

"Then her ladyship must pay five guineas for
it, my dear," said Mr. Mackenzie promptly.  "Nannie
and I are going to sell the puppies this time."

Mrs. Mackenzie rather lifted her eyebrows.  "Oh! if
that is so," she said, "of course Lady Gray
must stand on one side.  But what are you going
to do with the money, Nannie?  Buy yourself
a watch?"

"No, Mother, but----" and Nannie looked
anxiously at her father, who quickly came to the
rescue, and evaded the question--which at that
moment was an awkward one, for Rosalind was
present.

It is probable that Mr. Mackenzie gave his wife
just a hint of what was a-foot, for she asked no
more questions about the puppies, and made no
further complaints of the extra food and milk
which Yummy required at this time.

And in due course, after a good deal of
correspondence through the columns of the *Queen*
and the *Exchange and Mart*, one by one the three
little pugs went away from the house at Putney
to homes of their own, and Nannie in return
became the proud possessor of no fewer than eight
golden sovereigns.

To these Mr. Mackenzie added the two which
he had promised to make up the sum of ten pounds,
and then Nannie had the supreme joy of going
to Rosalind--who was hard at work in her studio
painting a sunset in tints so startling that her artist
soul was sick within her--and flinging her offering
in a shower into her lap.

"Why, what is this, Nannie?" Rosalind cried,
half frightened.

"It's your lessons, Rosie," Nannie cried, "or at
least as much of them as you can get for ten pounds;
and I'm so glad, dear, dear Rosie, to be able to
help you, you don't know," and happy Nannie flung
her arms round her sister, almost crying for joy.

"But where did you get it?  Oh, the pugs!  I
forgot them," Rosalind cried.  "Oh! but Nannie,
my dear, darling, unselfish sister, I can't take your
money in this way----"

"You must," Nannie answered promptly.

"But your watch--you've longed so for a watch,
you know," said the elder girl.

"Well, I have, but I can long a bit more," returned
Nannie philosophically.  "I shall like it all
the better when I do get it."

"I *can't* take it, darling," Rosalind urged.

"Oh! yes, you can, if you try," continued Nannie.
"And as for my watch, why, when you are a great
swell painter you can buy me one--a real beauty--and
I shall like it *ever* so much better than any
other one in all the world."

Rosalind clasped Nannie close to her heart.

"My Nannie, my Nannie," she cried, "I shall
never be as brave and helpful as you are.  While I
have been grumbling, and growling, and railing at
fate, you have been putting your shoulder to the
wheel, and----.  Oh!  Nannie, Nannie, it is good
of you!  It is good!  I shall never forget it.  The
first penny I earn, dear, shall be yours; and I will
never forget what my dear little sister has done for
me, never--never, as long as I live."

A few days after this Rosalind was hard at work
in the studio of the artist for whose teaching she
had longed for so many weary months.  And how
she did work!

"I have one pupil who *works*," her maestro got
into the habit of saying.  "Some of you have a
natural gift; you have a correct eye, and you have
firm touch.  Every one of you might make progress
if you tried.  But there is only one of you all who
works.  That is Miss Mackenzie."

But, all too soon, Rosalind's ten pounds melted
away, until they had all gone.  And, as there was
no more where they had come from, Rosalind's
lessons must also come to an end!

"Oh!  Mother, can't you do *any*\thing to help
Rosie?" Nannie cried in piteously beseeching accents
the night before Rosalind was to go to the studio
for the last time.

"Nannie," answered Mrs. Mackenzie reproachfully,
"don't you think I would if I could?"

"Daddy, can you do nothing?" Nannie implored.

"My little one, I am so poor just now," he answered.

So poor Nannie went to bed in bitter disappointment
for her sister's trial.  She felt that it was
very, very hard upon Rosalind, who had worked
almost day and night that she might profit by every
moment of the time she was at the studio.  Yes,
it was very, very hard.

However, Rosalind was brave, and put a good
face upon the matter.

"Don't worry about it, my Nannie," she said just
before she got into bed.  "After all, I've learnt a
great deal while I have been able to go to
Mr. Raymond, and perhaps, after a time, daddy may
be able to help me to go again, and I may do some
work that will sell, and then I shall be able to go
again.  So don't worry yourself, my darling, for you
can't help me this time.  You see, Yummy hasn't
got any more pups to sell."

But Nannie had got an idea, and all through the
hours of that long night it stayed with her with the
pertinacity of a nightmare.  Still, whatever it was,
she did not say a word about it to Rosalind, and
when Rosalind looked round for her when she was
ready to start for the studio in the morning, she was
nowhere to be seen.

"Where is Nannie?" she asked.

"Oh! she's out in the garden," Mrs. Mackenzie
answered.

"Well, I haven't time to go down; but don't let
her worry about me, will you, Mother?" said
Rosalind anxiously.

"No, no; I will look after her," Mrs. Mackenzie
answered vaguely.

So Rosalind went off fairly satisfied.

"I have come for my last lesson, Mr. Raymond,"
she said, with rather an uncertain smile, as she bade
the maestro good-morning.

"Oh! well, well; we must have a talk about
that," he answered good-naturedly.

Rosalind shook her head a little sadly, and took
her place without delay--to her every moment was
precious.

But, though this was her last lesson, she was
not destined to do much work that day, for, as
soon as she opened her little paint-box, which
she had taken home the previous day that she
might do some work in the early morning, she
saw lying on the top of the paints a little note,
addressed in Nannie's round child's hand to "Rosalind."

The next moment maestro and pupils were alike
startled by the sight of Rosalind Mackenzie with
her face hidden in her hands, sobbing as if her heart
would break.

"My dear child," cried the maestro, running to
her side, "how now!  What is the matter?  Pray
tell me, my dear, tell me."

.. _`"'My dear child, what is the matter?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-194.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'My dear child, what is the matter?'"

   "'My dear child, what is the matter?'"

Then little by little Rosalind sobbed out the
whole story--how she had longed and pined for
these lessons, how her little sister Nannie had
sacrificed herself to help her, and then at last she put
into the maestro's hand the little note which she
had brought from home in the paint-box.

.. vspace:: 2

"Darling Rosalind," the maestro read aloud, "I
thought of a way to help you last night, but I did
not tell you about it, because I know you would
stop it.  You know that Mrs. Clarke, who bought
Yummy's little son, said she would give ten guineas
for her any day, so I'm going to get Father to take
her there this afternoon, and you shall have the
money.  I don't think I shall mind parting with
her much.--NANNIE."

.. vspace:: 2

Mr. Raymond took off his glasses and wiped them.

"Upon my word," he muttered in an uncertain
voice; "upon my word!"

"The darling!" cried one pupil.

"Is she fond of the dog?" asked another.

"Fond of her!" Rosalind echoed; "why, Yummy
is the very idol of her heart.  She has had her
from a puppy; it would break the child's heart to
part with her.  Why, I would die," she said
passionately, "before I would let her do it.  I would go
out as a charwoman, and scrub floors for my living
all the days of my life, rather than do such a mean
thing.  Mr. Raymond," she went on, "I must go
back at once, or I may be too late.  I must lose
my lesson--I can't help that.  But I must go back--for,
look at the poor little letter; all tears and----"
and there Rosalind broke down into tears and sobs
again; but, all the same, she gathered her brushes
together, and began to pack up all her belongings.

The maestro stood for a moment in deep thought,
but, as Rosalind put her hat on and resolutely dried
her eyes, he spoke to the others who were standing
around.

"I should very much like to see this out," he
said, "and, if you will set me free this morning, I
will give you each an extra lesson to make up for
the interrupted one to-day.  What do you say?"

"Yes! yes!" they all cried.

So the old painter and Rosalind went back to
the house at Putney together, and at the door
Rosalind put an eager question to the maid who opened
it for them.

"My mother?" she asked.

"Mrs. Mackenzie is dressing to go out, Miss
Rosalind," the maid answered.

"And Miss Nannie?"

"I believe Miss Nannie is in the garden," was the
reply.

So Rosalind led the maestro out into the garden,
where they soon espied Nannie curled up in a big
chair, with Yummy in her arms.  She did not notice
their approach; indeed, she was almost asleep, worn
out by the violence of her grief at the coming parting
with Yummy, and was lying with her eyes closed,
her cheek resting against the dog's satin-smooth head.

Rosalind flung herself down upon her knees
before the chair, and took child and dog into her
arms.

"My own precious little sister, my unselfish
darling," she cried; "as if I would let you part with
the dear doggy for my sake!  I couldn't, Nannie,
my dear, I couldn't--I couldn't part with Yummy
myself.  But I shall never forget it, Nannie--my
dear, unselfish Nannie."

.. _`"My own precious little sister, my unselfish darling," she cried.`:

.. figure:: images/img-197.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "My own precious little sister, my unselfish darling," she cried.

   "My own precious little sister, my unselfish darling," she cried.

Nannie looked past her sister towards the tall
old painter standing behind her.

"Your lessons," she faltered, with quivering lips.

"My little heroine," said the old painter tenderly,
"your sister is my favourite among all my pupils.
I would rather," he went on, laying his hand on
Rosalind's shoulder--"I would rather teach one real
worker such as she is for love, than fifty of the
usual kind who come to me.  She is just the real
worker one might expect with such a sister."

"You will go on teaching Rosalind," Nannie cried
in a bewildered way, "for nothing?"

"I will, gladly," the maestro answered; "and, in
return, you shall come one day, and bring the pug,
and let me paint a picture of you both."

And then the old man went away, leaving the
sisters, in the fulness of their joy, together.

For him this had been somewhat of a new
experience--a pleasant one.  They were young, and
he was old; but he went back to his pictures with
a heart fresh and young as it had not been for
years, asking of himself a question out of the pages
of a favourite poet: "Shall I thank God for the
green summer, and the mild air, and the flowers,
and the stars, and all that makes the world so
beautiful, and not for the good and beautiful beings
I have known in it?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Our Ada Elizabeth`:

.. class:: left large

   Our Ada Elizabeth

.. class:: noindent smaller

   "The sublime mystery of
   Providence goes on in silence, and
   gives no explanation of itself, no
   answer to our impatient questionings."--*Hyperion*.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left medium

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

The Dicki'sons lived in Blankhampton.  Not
in the fashionable suburb of Greater Gate,
for the Dicki'sons were not fashionable people--far
from it, indeed.  Nor yet in that exclusive part
which immediately surrounds the cathedral, which
Blankhampton folk familiarly call "the Parish."  No;
they lived in neither of these, but away on the
poorer side of the town and in the narrowest of
narrow lanes--so narrow, indeed, that if a cart came
along the passer-by was glad to get into a doorway,
and stand there trembling until the danger was
past and the road free again.

I must tell you that, although they were always
*called* the Dicki'sons, their name was spelt in the
usual way, with an "n" in the middle and without
an apostrophe; but, as their neighbours made an
invariable rule of pronouncing the word, as they
did themselves, in the way in which I have written
it, I will take the liberty of continuing the custom
in this story.

For their position, they were rather well-to-do.
Mr. Dicki'son, the father of the family, was a plumber
and glazier--not in business for himself, but the
foreman of a business of some importance in the
town; and Mr. Dicki'son was a plain man of
somewhat reserved disposition.  There were ill-natured
and rude persons in that neighbourhood who did
not hesitate to describe Mr. Dicki'son as "a sulky
beast"; but then the opinion of such was scarcely
worth having, and even they had not a word to
say against him beyond a general complaint of his
unsociable temper.

They were lively people who lived round about
Gardener's Lane.  The fathers worked hard all the
week, and mostly got frightfully drunk on Saturday
nights, when they went home and knocked their
dirty, slipshod wives about, just by way of letting
them know their duty to their lords and masters.
And after this sort of thing had subsided, the wives
generally gave the children a good cuffing all round,
just by way of letting them know that they need
not hope to take any liberties with their mothers
because of their fathers' little ways; and then they
all got quieted down for the night, and got up late
on Sunday morning with headaches.  If the day
was fine, the men sat dull and sodden in the
sunshine on the pavement in the wide street out of
which Gardener's Lane ran, propping their backs
against the wall and stretching their legs out, greatly
to the danger and annoyance of passers-by; and
while the men thus smoked the pipe of peace, the
women stood in groups at their doorways, scratching
their elbows and comparing their bruises; and the
children, who had gone to sleep the previous night
in tears and tribulation, found keen enjoyment
in watching for the parson and the few people
who went to the church round the corner, and
called names and uncomplimentary terms after
them as they turned in at the gates which led thereto.

Now, as Mr. Dicki'son was a person of a reserved
and taciturn disposition, who was distinctly
respectable in all his doings, who never got drunk, and
openly despised any one else who did, it will readily
be believed that he was not popular in the
neighbourhood of Gardener's Lane.  He was not anxious
to be popular, and had it not been that the house
in which he lived was his own, and that it suited
his family as a home, Gardener's Lane would not
have counted him among its inhabitants.

Mrs. Dicki'son was a good deal younger than her
husband--a pretty, weak, sentimental woman, rather
gushing in disposition, and very injudicious.  She
was always overwhelmed with troubles and babies;
although, as a matter of fact, she had but six
children altogether, and one of them died while still
an infant.  Gerty was twelve years old, and Ada
Elizabeth just a year younger; then came a gap of
two years ere a boy, William Thomas, was born.
William Thomas, if he had lived, would, I fancy,
have inherited his father's reserved disposition, for,
I must say, a more taciturn babe it has never at
any time been my lot to encounter.  He was a
dreadful trouble to his dissatisfied mother, who
felt, and said, that there was something uncanny
about a child who objected to nothing--who seemed
to know no difference between his own thumb and
the bottle which fed him, and would go on sucking
as patiently at the one as at the other; who would
lie with as much apparent comfort on his face as
on his back, and seemed to find no distinction
between his mother's arms and a corner of the
wide old sofa, which earlier and later babies resented
as a  personal insult, and made remarks
accordingly.  However, after six months of this
monotonous existence, William Thomas was removed from
this lower sphere, passing away with the same
dignity as he had lived, after which he served a
good purpose still, which was to act as a model to
all the other babies who resented the corner of
the sofa and declined to accept the substitution of
their thumbs, or any other makeshift, for the bottle
of their desires.

Two years later was a girl, called Polly, and two
years later again was Georgie; and then, for a time,
Mrs. Dicki'son being free from the cares of a baby,
fretted and worried that "'ome isn't like 'ome without
a baby in it."  But when Georgie was just turned
three little Miriam arrived, and Mrs. Dicki'son was
able to change her complaint, and tell all her
acquaintance that she did think Georgie was going
to be the last, and she was sure she was "just
wore out."

Most of the children took after their mother.
True, as I have already said, William Thomas had
given signs of not doing so; but William Thomas
had not really lived long enough for any one to
speak definitely on the subject.  All the rest thrived
and grew apace, and they all took after their mother,
both in looks and character, with the exception
of the second girl, "our Ada Elizabeth."

"The very moral of her father," Mrs. Dicki'son
was accustomed to sigh, as she tried in vain to trim
Ada Elizabeth's hat so that the plain little face
underneath it should look as bright and fresh as
the rosy faces of her sisters.  But it was a hopeless
task, and Mrs. Dicki'son had to give it up in despair
and with many a long speech full of pity for herself
that she, of all people in the world, should have
such a hard trial put upon her as a child who was
undeniably plain.

For the child was plain.  She had been a plain,
featureless baby, of uncertain colour, inclining to
drab--very much, indeed, what William Thomas was
after her.  A baby who, even when newly washed,
never looked quite clean; a little girl whose
pinafore never hung right, and with tow-coloured hair
which no amount of hair-oil or curl-papers could
make anything but lank and unornamental!  A
child with a heavy, dull face, and a mouth that
seldom relaxed into a smile though there were
people (not Mrs. Dicki'son among them, though)
who did not fail to notice that the rare smile was
a very sweet one, infinitely sweeter than ever was
seen on the four pretty rosy faces of the other children.

.. _`A child with a heavy, dull face.`:

.. figure:: images/img-208.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: A child with a heavy, dull face.

   A child with a heavy, dull face.

Mrs. Dicki'son was eloquent about Ada Elizabeth's
looks and temper.  "I'm sure," she cried one
day to Gerty, who was pretty, and quick of wit, and
knew to a hair's-breadth how far she could go with
her mother, "it's 'ard upon me I should have such
a plain-looking child as our Ada Elizabeth.  It's
no use me trying to trim her hat so as to make
her look a credit to us.  I'm sure it's aggravating,
it is.  I've trimmed your two hats just alike, and
she looks no better in hers than she does in her
old school hat, and I got two nice curly tips just
alike.  'Pon my word, it's quite thrown away on her."

"And I want another feather in mine to make
it perfect, Mother," murmured Gerty, with insinuating
suggestiveness.

Mrs. Dicki'son caught at the bait thus held out
to her.  "I've a good mind to take the tip out," she
said hesitatingly.

"Yes, do, Mother; our Ada Elizabeth won't care.
Will you, Ada Elizabeth?" appealingly to the child
who had had the misfortune to be born plain.

"No, I don't care," returned Ada Elizabeth, whose
heart was bursting, not with jealousy, but with a
crushing sense of her own shortcomings.

"Just like her father," remarked Mrs. Dicki'son,
loosening the feather from its place with one snip
of her scissors.  "He never cares 'ow he looks!
''Andsome is as 'andsome does,' is his motto; and
though he's been a good 'usband to me, and I'd be
the last to go again' him, yet I must say I do like
a bit of smartness myself.  But Ada Elizabeth's
the very moral of her father--as much in her ways
as she is in her looks."

So gradually it got to be an established custom
that Ada Elizabeth's attire should be shorn of those
little decorations with which Mrs. Dicki'son delighted
to add effect to her eldest child's prettiness; it was
felt to be quite useless to spend money over curly
tips and artificial roses to put above such a plain
little face, or "waste" it, as her mother put it, in
the not very delicate way in which she tried to
excuse herself to the child when some more obvious
difference than usual between her clothes and Gerty's
was contemplated.

Ada Elizabeth made no complaint.  If asked her
mind by the officious Gerty, she said she did not
care, and the answer was accepted as literal truth
by her mother and sister.  But Ada Elizabeth did
care.  She was not jealous, mind--alas! no, poor
child--she was only miserable, crushed with an
ever-present consciousness of her own deficiencies and
shortcomings, with a sense that in having been born
plain and in having taken after her father she had
done her mother an irreparable injury, had offered
her the deepest insult possible!  She honestly felt
that it was a hard trial to her mother that she
should have such a plain and dull child.  More than
once she made a desperate effort to chatter after
Gerty's fashion, but somehow the Dicki'son family
did not appreciate the attempt.  Gerty stared at
her and sniggered, and her mother told her with
fretful promptness that she did not know what she
was talking about; and poor Ada Elizabeth
withdrew into herself, as it were, and became more
reserved--"more like her father"--than ever, cherishing
no resentment against those who had so mercilessly
snubbed her, but only feeling more intensely than
ever that she was unlike the rest of the world, and
that her fate was to be seen as little as possible
and not heard at all.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: left large

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

The time had come round for the great annual
examination of the National Schools where
the young Dicki'sons received their education, and
on the great day itself the children came in at
tea-time full to overflowing with the results of their
efforts.  And Ada Elizabeth was full of it too, but
not to overflowing; on the contrary, she crept into
the kitchen, where her father and mother and little
two-year-old Miriam--commonly called "Mirry"--were
already seated at the table, and put her school-bag
away in its place with a shamefaced air, as if
she, being an ignominious failure, could have no
news to bring.

"Well," exclaimed Mrs. Dicki'son to Gerty, who
threw her hat and bag down and wriggled into her
seat with her mouth already open to tell her tale,
"did you get a prize?"

"No, I didn't, Mother," returned Gerty glibly.  "A
nasty old crosspatch Miss Simmonds is; she always
did hate me, and I think she hates me worse than
ever now.  Anyway, she didn't give me a prize--just
to show her spite, nasty thing!"

Mrs. Dicki'son always declared that her husband
was a slow man; and he looked up slowly then and
fixed his dull eyes upon Gerty's flushed face.

"H'm!" he remarked, in a dry tone, and then
closed his lips tight and helped himself to another
slice of bread and butter.

Gerty's flushed face grew a fine scarlet.  She knew
only too well what the "h'm" and the dry tone and
the tightly-closed lips meant, and made haste to
change the subject, or, at least, to turn the interest
of the conversation from herself to her sister.

"But our Ada Elizabeth's got the first prize of all,"
she informed them; and in her eagerness to divert
her father's slow attention from herself, she spoke
with such an air of pride in the unlooked-for result of
the examination that Ada Elizabeth cast a glance
of passionate gratitude towards her, and then visibly
shrank into herself, as if, in having won so
prominent a place, she had done something to make her
mother's trials harder to bear than ever.  "And
there's going to be a grander treat than we've ever
had this year," Gerty went on, in her glibest tones.
"And the dean's lady, Lady Margaret, is going to
give the prizes away, and all the company is going
to be at the treat, and--and----"

"Oh! what a pity!" exclaimed Mrs. Dicki'son,
turning a hopeless gaze upon poor Ada Elizabeth.
"Our Ada Elizabeth 'll never show up properly,
as you would, Gerty."

"Our Ada Elizabeth's lesson-books 'll show up
better than Gerty's, may be," put in Mr. Dicki'son,
in his quietest tone and with his driest manner.

"Oh!  Ada Elizabeth's not clever like Gerty,"
returned Mrs. Dicki'son, utterly ignorant as she
was indifferent to the fact that she was rapidly
taking all the savour out of the child's hour of
triumph.  "And you were so sure of it too, Gerty."

"So was the hare of winning the race; but the
tortoise won, after all," remarked Mr. Dicki'son
sententiously.

"What *are* you talking about, Father?" his wife
demanded.  "I'm sure if tidy 'air has anything to
do with it, Gerty ought to be at the top of the
tree, for, try as I will, I *can't* make Ada Elizabeth's
'air ever look aught like, wash it and brush it and
curl it as ever I will; and as for 'air-oil----"

Mr. Dicki'son interrupted his wife by a short
laugh.  "I didn't mean that at all"--he knew by
long experience that it was useless to try to make
her understand what he did mean--"but, now you
speak of it, perhaps Ada Elizabeth's 'air don't make
so much show as some of the others; it's like mine,
and mine never was up to much--not but what there's
scarcely enough left to tell what sort it is."

It was quite a long speech for the unsociable and
quiet Mr. Dicki'son to come out with, and his wife
passed it by without comment, only making a fretful
reiteration of Ada Elizabeth's plainness and a
complaint of the sorry figure she would cut among the
great doings on the day of the school treat and
distribution of prizes.

"*Is* our Ada Elizabeth a plain one?" said
Mr. Dicki'son, with an air of astonishment which
conveyed a genuine desire for information, then turned
and scanned the child's burning face, after which
he looked closely at the faces of the other children,
so little like hers, and so nearly like that of his
pretty, mindless, complaining wife.  "Well, yes, little
'un, I suppose you're not exactly pretty," he
admitted unwillingly; "you're like me, and I never
was a beauty to look at.  But, there, 'handsome is
as handsome does,' and you've brought home first
prize to-day, which you wouldn't have done, may be,
if you'd always been on the grin, like Gerty there.
Seems to me," he went on reflectively, "that that
there first prize 'll stand by you when folks has got
tired of Gerty's grin, that's what seems to me.  I
don't know," he went on, "that I set so much store
by looks.  I never was aught but a plain man, but
I've made you a good husband, Em'ly, and you can't
deny it.  You'll mind that good-looking chap, Joe
Webster, that you kept company with before you
took up with me?  He chucked you up for Eliza
Moriarty.  Well, I met her this morning, poor
soul! with two black eyes and her lips strapped up with
plaster.  H'm!" with a sniff of self-approval, "seems
to me I'd not care to change my plain looks for his
handsome ones.  'Handsome is as handsome does' is
*my* motto; and if I want aught doing for me, it's
our Ada Elizabeth I asks to do it, that's all *I* know."

The great day of the school treat came and went.
The dean's wife, Lady Margaret Adair, gave away
the prizes, as she had promised, and was so struck
with "our Ada Elizabeth's" timid and shrinking
air that she kept her for a few minutes, while she
told her that she had heard a very good account
of her, and that she hoped she would go on and
work harder than ever.  "For I see," said Lady
Margaret, looking at a paper in her hand, "that
you are the first in your class for these subjects,
and that you have carried off the regular attendance
and good-conduct prize as well.  I am sure you
must be a very good little woman, and be a great
favourite with your schoolmistress."

Mrs. Dicki'son--who, as the mother of the show
pupil of the day, and as a person of much
respectability in the neighbourhood, which was not famous
for that old-fashioned virtue, had been given a seat
as near as possible to the daïs on which Lady
Margaret and the table of prizes were accommodated--heard
the pleasant words of praise, which would
have made most mothers' hearts throb with exultant
pride, with but little of such a feeling; on the
contrary, her whole mind was filled with regret that
it was not Gerty standing on the edge of the daïs,
instead of the unfortunate Ada Elizabeth, who did
not show off well.  If only it had been Gerty!
Gerty would have answered my lady with a pretty
blush and smile, and would have dropped her
courtesy at the right moment, and would have
been a credit to her mother generally.

But, alas!  Gerty's glib tongue and ready smiles
had not won her the prizes which had fallen to
poor little plain Ada Elizabeth's share, and Gerty
was out in the cold, so to speak, among the other
scholars, while Ada Elizabeth, in an agony of
shyness and confusion, stood on the edge of the daïs,
first on one foot and then on the other, conscious
that her mother's eyes were upon her and that
their expression was not an approving one, feeling,
though she would hardly have been able to put it
into words, that in cutting so sorry a figure she was
making her poor mother's trials more hard to bear
than ever.  Poor little plain child, she kept courtesying
up and down like a mechanical doll, and saying,
"Yes, 'm," and "No, 'm," at the wrong moments,
and she altogether forgot that the fresh-coloured,
buxom lady in the neat black gown and with only
a bit of blue feather to relieve her black bonnet
was not a "ma'am" at all, but a "my lady," who
ought to have been addressed as such.  At last,
however, the ceremony, and the games and sports,
and the big tea were all over, and Ada Elizabeth
went home with her prizes to be a heroine no longer,
for she soon, very soon, in the presence of Gerty's
prettiness and Gerty's glib tongue and ready smiles,
sank into the insignificance which had been her
portion aforetime.  She had not much encouragement
to go on trying to be a credit to the family
which she had so hardly tried by taking after her
father, for nobody seemed to remember that she
had been at the top of the tree at the great
examination, or, if they did recall it, it was generally as
an example of the schoolmistress's "awkwardness"
of disposition in having passed over the hare for
the tortoise.  Yet sometimes, when Gerty was
extra hard upon Ada Elizabeth's dulness, or
Mrs. Dicki'son found the trial of her life more heavy
to bear than usual, her father would look up from
his dinner or his tea, as it might happen to be, and
fix his slow gaze upon his eldest daughter's vivacious
countenance.

"H'm!  Our Ada Elizabeth's too stupid to live,
is she?  Well, you're like to know, Gerty; it was
you won three first prizes last half, wasn't it?  A
great credit to you, to say nought about the 'good
conduct and regular attendance.'  Yes, you're like
to know all about it, you are."

"Dear me, Gerty," Mrs. Dicki'son would as often
as not chime in fretfully, having just wit enough
to keep on the blind side of "Father," "eat your tea,
and let our Ada Elizabeth alone, do; it isn't pretty of
you to be always calling her for something.  Our
Ada Elizabeth's plain-looking, there's no saying
aught again' it, but stupid she isn't, and never was;
and, as Father says, ''andsome is as 'andsome does';
so don't let me hear any more of it."

And all the time the poor little subject of
discussion would sit writhing upon her chair, feeling
that, after all, Gerty was quite right, and that she
was not only unfortunately plain to look at, but that,
in spite of the handsome prizes laid out in state on
the top of the chest of drawers, there was little doubt
that she was just too stupid to live.





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   CHAPTER III

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It was a very mild and damp autumn that year,
and the autumn was succeeded by an equally
mild winter; therefore it is not surprising that the
truth of the old saying, "A green Christmas makes a
fat kirkyard," became sadly realized in the
neighbourhood of Gardener's Lane.

For about the middle of December a dangerous
low fever, with some leaning towards typhoid, broke
out in the parish, and the men being mostly
hard-drinkers, and the majority of the women idle drabs
who did not use half-a-pound of soap in a month, it
flew from house to house until half the population
was down with it; ay, and, as nearly always happens,
not only the hard-drinkers and the idle drabs were
those to suffer, but the steady, respectable workmen
and the good housewives came in for more than their
just share of the tribulation also.  And, among others,
the Dicki'son family paid dearly for the sins and
shortcomings of their fellow-creatures, for the first to fall
sick was the pretty, complaining mother, of whom
not even her detractors could say other than that she
was cleanliness itself in all her ways.  And it was a
very bad case.  The good parson came down with
offers of help, and sent in a couple of nurses, whom
he paid out of his own pocket--though, if he had but
known it, he would have done much more wisely to
have spent the same amount of money on one with
more knowledge of her business and less power of
speech--and the doctor and his partner came and
went with grave and anxious faces, which did not
say too much for the sick woman's chance of recovery.

Mr. Dicki'son stayed at home from his work for a
whole week, and spent his time about equally
between anxiously watching his wife's fever-flushed face
and sitting with his children, trying to keep them
quiet--no easy task, let me tell you, in a house
where every movement could be heard in every
corner; and, as the schools were promptly closed, for
fear of spreading the epidemic, the children were on
hand during the whole day, and, poor little things,
were as sorely tried by the silence they were
compelled to keep as they tried the quiet, dull man
whose heart was full almost to bursting.

But he was very patient and good with them, and
Ada Elizabeth was his right hand in everything.  For
the first time in her life she forgot her plain looks
and her mother's trials, and felt that she had been
born to some purpose, and that purpose a good one.
And then there came an awful day, when the
mother's illness was at the worst, when the two
nurses stood one on each side of the bed and freely
discussed her state, in utter indifference to the husband
standing miserably by, with Gerty's little sharp face
peeping from behind him.

"Eh, pore thing, I'm sure!" with a sniff and a sob,
"it is 'ard at 'er age to go i' this way--pore thing, it
is 'ard.  Which ring did you say Gerty was to 'ave,
love?" bending down over the sick woman, who was
just conscious enough to know that some one was
speaking to her--"the keeper?  Yes, love; I'll see to
it.  And which is for Ada Elizabeth?"

"Her breathing's getting much harder," put in the
woman on the other side; "it won't be long now.
T' doctor said there was a chance with care, but I
know better.  I've seen so many, and if it's the
Lord's will to take her, He'll take her.  We may do
all we can, but it's no use, for I've seen so many."

Mr. Dicki'son gave a smothered groan, and turning
sharply round went out of the room and down the
narrow creaking stairs, with a great lump in his throat
and a thick mist in front of his eyes.  A fretful wail
from little Mirry had fallen upon his ear, and he found
her sobbing piteously, while Ada Elizabeth tried in
vain to pacify her.  She was more quiet when she
found herself in his arms; and then he noticed, with
a sudden and awful fear knocking at his heart, that
there was something wrong with his right hand, Ada
Elizabeth--that she looked fagged and white, and that
there was a brilliancy in her dull grey eyes such as
he had never seen there before.

"Ada Elizabeth, what ails you?" he asked anxiously.

.. _`"Ada Elizabeth, what ails you?" he asked anxiously.`:

.. figure:: images/img-225.jpg
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   :alt: "Ada Elizabeth, what ails you?" he asked anxiously.

   "Ada Elizabeth, what ails you?" he asked anxiously.

"Nought, Father; I'm a bit tired, that's all," she
answered, pushing her heavy hair away from her
forehead.  "Mirry was awake all night nearly, and I
couldn't keep her quiet hardly."

Mr. Dicki'son looked closely at Mirry; but
though the child was evidently heavy and inclined to
be fretful, there was not the same glitter in her eyes
as there was in her sister's.

"Here, Gerty," he said, "nurse Mirry a bit.  I
want to go upstairs for a minute."

"Can't Ada Elizabeth have her?" asked Gerty,
who always wanted to be in the sick-room, so that
she might know the latest news of her mother and be
to the front whoever came--for in those dark days,
between the rector and the doctors and the
neighbours who came in and out, there were a good many
visitors to the little house.  "Our Ada Elizabeth
always keeps Mirry quiet better than I can, father."

"Do as I bid you," returned Mr. Dicki'son sharply;
and thus rebuked, Gerty sat crossly down and
bumped little Mirry on to her knee with a burst of
temper, which set the child wailing again.

Mr. Dicki'son had already reached the sick-room,
where the nurses were still standing over his
half-unconscious wife's bed.

"I want you a minute, missus," he said to the one
who had been so anxious concerning the disposal of
Mrs. Dicki'son's few bits of jewellery.  "Just come
downstairs a minute."

The woman followed him, wondering what he
could want.  "Just look at this little lass," he said,
taking Ada Elizabeth by the hand and leading her
to the window.  "Do you think there is aught amiss
with her?"

There is little or no reserve among the poor, they
speak their minds, and they tell ill news with a
terrible bluntness which is simply appalling to those
of a higher station; and this woman did not hesitate
to say what she thought, notwithstanding the fact
that she knew that the man was utterly overwrought,
and that the child's fever-bright eyes were fixed
earnestly upon her.

"Mr. Dicki'son," she cried, "I'll not deceive you,
no; some folks would tell you as nought ailed, but
not me--wi' her pore mother dying upstairs.  I
couldn't find it in my 'eart to do it; I couldn't
indeed.  Pore Ada Elizabeth's took, and you'd better
run round to Widow Martin's and see if t' doctor's
been there this morning.  He telled me I might send
there for him up to one o'clock, and it's only ten
minutes past.  Ada Elizabeth, lie down on t' sofa,
honey, and keep yourself quiet.  Gerty, can't you
keep Mirry at t' window?  Ada Elizabeth's took
with the fever, and can't bear being tewed about wi' her."

Mr. Dicki'son was off after the doctor like a shot,
and less than a quarter of an hour brought him back
to see if the nurse's fiat was a true one.  Alas! it
proved to be too true, and the kind-hearted doctor
drew the grief-stricken man on one side.

"Look here, Dicki'son," he said, "your wife is very
ill indeed; it's no use my deceiving you--her life
hangs on a thread, and it will be only by the greatest
care if she is pulled through this.  The child has
undoubtedly got the fever upon her, and she cannot
have the attention she ought to have here.  There is
not room enough nor quiet enough, and there's
nobody to attend to her.  Get her off to the hospital at once."

"The hospital!" repeated Mr. Dicki'son blankly.
He had all the horror of a hospital that so many of
his class have.

"It's the child's best chance," answered the doctor.
"Of course, it may turn out only a mild attack.  All
the better that she should be in the hospital, in any
case; in fact, I wish your wife was there this minute."

"Doctor," said Mr. Dicki'son hoarsely, "I don't
like my little lass going to the hospital.  I don't like it."

"But there is no help for it, and she'll be far better
off there than she would be at home," the doctor
answered; "but, all the same, they'd better not talk
about it before your wife.  Even when she is delirious
or half-unconscious she knows a good deal of what's
going on about her.  I'll step up and have a look at
her, and will speak to the women myself."

Before a couple of hours were over, Ada Elizabeth
was comfortably in bed in the quiet and shady ward
of the well-managed hospital, and in the little house
in Gardener's Lane the struggle between life and
death went on, while Gerty had to devote herself as
best she could to the children.  Gerty felt that it
was desperately hard upon her, for Mirry and
six-year-old Georgie fretted without ceasing for "our
Ada Elizabeth," and would not be comforted; not,
all the same, that Gerty's ideas of comfort were very
soothing ones--a bump and a shake, and divers
threatenings of Bogle-Bo, and a black man who came
down chimneys to carry naughty children away, being
about her form; and little Mirry and Georgie found
it but a poor substitute for the tender if dull patience
of "our Ada Elizabeth."

However, in spite of all the very real drawbacks
which she had to fight against, Mrs. Dicki'son did
not die; slowly and painfully she struggled back to
her own senses again, with a dim realization of how
very near the gate of death she had wandered.  But,
alas! by the time the doctor had, with a kindly pat
upon his shoulder, told Mr. Dicki'son that his wife
would live if no very serious relapse took place, the
fever had fastened on another victim, and little Mirry
was tossing to and fro with fever-flushed face, and
the same unnatural brilliancy in her bonny blue eyes
as had lighted up Ada Elizabeth's dull, grey ones.

They had not taken her to the hospital; it was
so full that only urgent cases were admitted now: and
since the mother was on the road to recovery, there
was time to attend to the child.  And so she lay in
the next room to her mother, whose weakened senses
gradually awoke to the knowledge of what was going
on about her.

"Is that Mirry crying?" she asked, on the
morning when the child was at its worst.

"Now don't you fret yourself, love," returned the
nurse evasively.  "T' bairn's being took care of
right enough; they will cry a bit sometimes, you
know"; and then she shut the door, and the mother
dozed off to sleep again.

But in the evening the pitiful wail reached her ears
again.  "I want our Ada 'Liz'bet'," the child's fretful
voice cried; "Mirry do want our Ada 'Liz'bet' so
bad-a-ly--me want our Ada 'Liz'bet'."

Mrs. Dicki'son started nervously and tried to lift
herself in her bed.  "I'm sure Mirry's ill," she
gasped.  "Mrs. Barker, don't deceive me.  Tell me,
is she ill?"

"Well, my dear, I won't deceive yer," the nurse
answered; "poor little Mirry's been took with the
fever--yes, but don't you go and fret yourself.
Mrs. Bell's waiting of her, and she wants for nought, and
t' doctor says it's only a mild attack; only children
runs up and down so quick, and she's a bit more
fretful than usual to-night, that's all."

"Mirry do want our Ada 'Liz'bet'," wailed the sick
child in the next room.

Mrs. Dicki'son turned her head weakly from side
to side and trembled in every limb.

"Why *can't* Ada Elizabeth go to her?" she burst
out at last.

The nurse coughed awkwardly.  "Well, my dear,"
she began, "poor Ada Elizabeth isn't 'ere."

"Isn't 'ere!" repeated Mrs. Dicki'son wildly, and
just then her husband walked into the room and up
to the bedside.

She clutched hold of him with frantic eagerness.
"Father," she cried hysterically, "is it true our
Mirry's took with the fever?"

"Yes, Em'ly; but it's a very mild case," he
answered, feeling that it was best in her excited and
nervous condition to tell her the exact truth at once.
"She's fretty to-night, but she's not so ill that you
need worry about her; she's being took every care of."

"But she's crying for our Ada Elizabeth,"
Mrs. Dicki'son persisted.  "Hark!  There she is again.
Why *can't* Ada Elizabeth be quick and go to her?
Where is she?  What does Mrs. Barker mean by
saying she isn't 'ere?"

Mr. Dicki'son cast a wrathful glance at the nurse,
but he did not attempt to hide from his wife any
longer the fact that Ada Elizabeth was not in the
house.  "You know you was very ill, Em'ly, a bit
back," he said, with an air and tone of humble
apology, "and our Ada Elizabeth was taken with the
fever just the day you was at the worst; and there
was no one to wait on her, and the doctor would
have her go to the hospital, and--what was I to do,
Em'ly?  It went against my very heart to let the
little lass go, but she was willing, and you was taking
all our time.  I was very near beside myself, Em'ly
I was, or I'd never have consented."

Mrs. Dicki'son lay for some minutes in silence,
exhausted by the violence of her agitation; then the
fretful wail in the adjoining room broke the stillness
again.

"I do *want* our Ada 'Liz'bet'," the child cried
piteously.  Mrs. Dicki'son burst out into passionate
sobbing.  "I lie 'ere and I can't lift my finger for
'er," she gasped out, "and--and--it was just like
Ada Elizabeth to go and get the fever when she was
most wanted; she always was the contrariest child
that I had, always."

Mr. Dicki'son drew his breath sharply, as if some
one had struck him in the face, but with an effort
he pulled himself together and answered her gently:
"Nay, wife--Emily, don't say that.  The little lass
held up until she couldn't hold up no longer.  I'll go
and quiet Mirry.  She's always quiet enough with
me.  Keep yourself still, and I'll stop with the bairn
until she's asleep"; and then he bent and kissed her
forehead, and passed softly out of the room, only
whispering, "Not one word" to the nurse as he passed her.

But, dear Heaven! how that man's heart ached
as he sat soothing his little fever-flushed child into
quietness!  I said but now that he drew his breath
sharply as if some one had struck him in the face.
Alas! it was worse than that, for the wife of his
bosom, the mother of his children, had struck him,
stabbed him, to the lowest depths of his heart by her
querulous complaint against the child who had gone
from him only a few hours before, on whose little
white, plain face he had just looked for the last time,
and on which his scalding tears had fallen, for he
knew that, plain, and dull, and unobtrusive as she
had always been--the butt of her sister's sharp
tongue, the trial of his wife's whole existence--he
knew that with the closing of the heavy eyes the
brightest light of his life had gone out.

And little Mirry, wrapped in a blanket, lay upon
his breast soothed into slumber.  Did something fall
from his eyes upon her face, that she started and
looked up at him?  She must have mistaken the one
plain face for the other, for she put up her little hot
hand and stroked his cheek.  "You tum back, Ada
'Liz'bet'?" she murmured, as she sank off to sleep
again; "Mirry did want you *so* bad-a-ly."  The sick
child's tender words took away half the bitterness of
the sting which his wife had thrust into his heart,
and his whole soul seemed to overflow with a great
gush of love as he swayed her gently to and fro.
*She* had loved the unattractive face, and missed it
bitterly; *she* had wearied for the rare, patient smile
and the slow, gentle voice, and, to Mr. Dicki'son's
dull mind, the child's craving had bound Ada
Elizabeth's heavy brows with a crown of pure gold, with
the truest proof that "affection never was wasted."

.. _`"You tum back, Ada 'Liz'bet'?" she murmured.`:

.. figure:: images/img-235.jpg
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   :alt: "You tum back, Ada 'Liz'bet'?" she murmured.

   "You tum back, Ada 'Liz'bet'?" she murmured.





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.. _`Halt!`:

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   Halt!

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"Halt!  Who goes there?" cried a man's
voice through the thick gloom of the dark night.

There was no answer save silence; and, after
listening for a moment, Private Flinders turned, and
began to tramp once more along the ten paces which
extended from his sentry-box.  "I could have sworn
I heard a footstep," he said to himself.  "It's curious
how one's ears deceive one on a night like this."

Ten paces one way, ten paces the other; turn,
and back again, and begin your ten paces over
again.  Yes, it is monotonous, there is no doubt
of that; but it is the bounden duty of a sentry,
unless he happens to prefer standing still in his
box, getting stiff and chill, and perhaps running
the risk of being caught asleep at his post--no
light offence in a barrack, I can tell you.  Ten paces
one way, ten paces the other--a rustling, a mere
movement, such as would scarcely have attracted
the attention of most people, but which caught
Private Flinders' sharp ears, and brought him up
to a standstill again in an attitude of strict
watchfulness.

"Halt!  Who goes there?" he cried again, and
listened once more.  Again silence met him, and
again he stood, alert and suspicious, waiting for
the reply, "Friend."

"By Gum, this is queer," he thought, as he stood
listening.  "I'll search to the bottom of it though.
I daresay it's only some of the chaps getting at
me; but I'll be even with 'em, if it is."

He groped about in rather an aimless sort of
way, for the night was black as pitch; and his eyes,
though they had grown used to the inky want of
light, could distinguish nothing of his surroundings.

"Now, where are you, you beggar?" he remarked,
beginning to lose his habitual serenity, and laying
about him with his carbine.  After a stroke or
two the weapon touched something, though not
heavily, and a howl followed--a howl which was
unmistakably that of a small child.  It conveyed
both fear and bodily pain.  Private Flinders followed
up the howl by feeling cautiously in the part whence
the sounds had come.  His hand closed upon something
soft and shrinking, and the howls were redoubled.

"Hollo! what the deuce are you?" he exclaimed,
drawing the shrieking captive nearer to him.  "Why,
I'm blessed if it ain't a kid--and a girl, too.  Well,
I'm blowed!  And where did you happen to come from?"

The howl by this time had developed into a faint
sniffing, for Private Flinders' voice was neither harsh
nor forbidding.  But the creature did not venture
on speech.

"Where did you come from, and what are you
doing here?" he asked.  "Do you belong to the
barricks, and has your mammy been wollopping
of you?  Or did you stray in from outside?"

"Lost my mammy," the small creature burst out,
finding that she was expected to say something.

"What's your mammy's name?" Flinders asked.

"Mammy, of course," was the reply.

"And what's your name?"

"Susy."

"Susy.  Aye, but Susy what?"

"Susy," repeated the little person, beginning to
whimper again.

"Where do you live?"

"At home," said Susy, in an insulted tone, as if
all these questions were quite superfluous.

"Well! blest if *I* know what to do with you,"
said Flinders, pushing his busby on one side, and
scratching his head vigorously.  "I don't believe
you belong to the barricks--your speech haven't
got the twang of it.  And if you've strayed in from
outside, Gord knows what 'll become of you.  Certain
it is that you won't be let to stop here."

"Susy so cold," whimpered the mite pitifully.

"I should think you was cold," returned Private
Flinders sympathetically.  "I'm none too warm
myself; and the fog seems to fair eat into one's
bones.  Well, little 'un, I can't carry you back to
where you came from, that's very certain.  I can't
even take you round to the guard-room.  Now,
what the deuce am I to do with you?  And I
shan't be relieved for over a hour."

Private Flinders being one of the most good-natured
men in creation, it ended by his gathering
the child in his arms, and carrying her up and down
on his beat until the relief came.

"Why, what's the meaning of this?" demanded
the corporal of the guard, when he perceived the
unusual encumbrance to the private's movements.

"Ah!  Corporal, that's more than I can tell you,"
responded the other promptly.  "This here kid
toddled along over a hour ago; and as she don't
seem to know what her name is, or where she come
from, I just walked about with her, that she mightn't
be froze to death.  I suppose we'd best carry her
to the guard-room fire, and keep her warm till
morning."

"And then?" asked the corporal, with a twinkle
in his eye, which the dark night effectually hid.

"Gord knows," was the private's quick reply.

Eventually, the mite who rejoiced in the name
of Susy, and did not know whence she had come
or whither she was going, was carried off to the
guard-room and made as comfortable as circumstances
would permit--that being the only course,
indeed, at that hour of the night, or, to be quite
correct, of the morning--which could with reason
be followed.

She slept, as healthy children do, like a top or
dog, and when she awoke in the morning she
expressed no fear or very much surprise, and, having
enquired in a casual kind of way for her mammy,
she partook of a very good breakfast of bread and
milk, followed by a drink of coffee and a taste or
two of such other provisions as were going round.
Later on Private Flinders was sent for to the
orderly-room, and told to give the commanding officer such
information as he was in possession of concerning the
stray mite, who was still in the warm guard-room.

Now it happened that the commanding officer
of the 9th Hussars was a gentleman to whom
routine was a religion and discipline a salvation,
and he expressed himself sharply enough as to
the only course which could possibly be pursued
under the present circumstances.

"We had better send down to the workhouse
people to come and remove the child at once.
Otherwise, we may have endless trouble with the
mother; and, moreover, if it once got about that
these barracks were open to that kind of thing,
the regiment would soon be turned into a regular
foundling hospital.  Let the workhouse people be
sent for at once.  What did you say, Mr. Jervis?
That the child might be quartered for a few hours
among the married people.  Yes, I daresay, but if
the mother is on the look-out, which is very doubtful,
she is more likely to go to the police-station than
she is to come here.  As to any stigma, the mother
should have borne that in mind when she lost the
child.  On second thoughts, I think it is to the
police-station that we should send; yes, that will
be quite the best thing to do."

A few hours later the child Susy was transferred
from the guard-room to the police-station, and
there she made herself equally at home, only asking
occasionally, in a perfunctory kind of way, for
"Mammy," and being quite easily satisfied when
she was told that she would be coming along by-and-by.

During the few hours that she was at the
police-station she became quite a favourite, and made
friends with all the stalwart constables, just as
she had done with one and all of the strapping
Hussars at the cavalry barracks.  She was not
shy, for she answered the magistrate in quite a
friendly way, though she gave no information as
to her belongings, simply because she had no
information to give.  And the end was that she
was condemned to the workhouse, and was carried
off to that undesirable haven as soon as the
interview with the magistrate was over.

"A blooming shame, I call it, poor little kid,"
said Private Flinders that evening to a group of
his friends, in the comfortable safety of the
troop-room.  "She was a jolly little lass; and if I'd
been a married man, I'd have kept her myself,
dashed if I wouldn't!"

"Perhaps your missis might 'ave 'ad a word or
two to say to that, Flinders," cried a natty fellow,
just up to the standard in height, and no more.

"Oh, I'd have made it all right with her,"
returned Flinders, with that easy assurance of
everything good that want of experience gives.  "But
to send it to the workhouse--it's a blooming shame!
They treat kids anyhow in them places.  Now
then, Thomson, what are you a-grinning at?
Perhaps you know as much about workhouses as I
can tell you."

"Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don't," replied
Thomson, with provoking good temper.  "I wasn't
a-laughing at the workhouse; cussing them is
more like what one feels.  But to think of you,
old chap, tramping up and down with the blessed
kid asleep--well, it beats everything I ever heard
tell of, blame me if it don't."

Private Flinders, however, was not to be laughed
out of his interest in the little child Susy; and
regularly every week he walked down to the
workhouse, and asked to see her taking always a
few sweeties, bought out of his scanty pay, the
cost of which meant his going without some small
luxury for himself.  And Susy, who was miserably
unhappy in that abode of sorrow which we provide
in this country for the destitute, grew to look
eagerly for his visits, and sobbed out all her little
troubles and trials to his sympathetic ears.

"Susy don't like her," she confided to him one
day when the matron had left them alone together.
"She slaps me.  Susy don't love her."

"But Susy will learn to be a good girl, and
not get slapped," the soldier said, with something
suspiciously like a lump in his throat.  "See, I've
brought you some lollipops--you'll like them,
won't you?"

He happened to run up against the matron as
he walked away toward the door.  "She's a tender
little thing, missis," he remarked, with a vague
kind of notion that even workhouse matrons have
hearts sometimes.  And so some of them have,
though not many.  This particular one was among
the many.

.. _`"She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked.`:

.. figure:: images/img-247.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked.

   "She's a tender little thing, missis," he remarked.

"A very self-willed child," she remarked sharply,
"considering that she's so young.  We have a great
deal of trouble with her.  She does not seem to
know the meaning of the word obedience."

"She is but a baby," ventured the soldier
apologetically.

"Baby, or no baby, she'll have to learn it here,"
snapped the matron viciously; and then Flinders
went on his way, feeling sadder than ever, and
yet more and more regretful that he was not
married, or had at least a mother in a position to
adopt a little child.

The next time he went they had cut the child's
lovely long, curling locks, indeed, she had been
shorn like a sheep in spring-time.  Flinders' soft
heart gave a great throb, and he cuddled the mite
to his broad breast, as if by so doing he could
undo the indignity that had been put upon her.

"Susy," he said, when he had handed over his
sweets and she was busily munching them up, "I
want you to try and remember something."

Susy looked at him doubtfully, but nodded her
cropped head with an air of wise acquiescence.
Flinders went on talking quietly.

"You remember before you came here--you had
a home and a mammy, don't you?"

"Yes," said Susy promptly.

"What sort of a house was it?"

"Where my mammy was?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Big," replied Susy briefly, selecting another
sweetie with care.

"And what was it called?"

"The house," said the child, in a matter-of-fact tone.

Flinders gave a sigh.  "Yes, I dare say it was.
Don't you remember, though, what your mammy
was called?"

"Why mammy, of course," said Susy, as if the
question was too utterly foolish for serious
consideration.

"Yes, but other people didn't call her mammy--it
was only you did that," said Flinders desperately.
"What did other people call her?  Can't you
remember that?"

It happened that Susy not only remembered,
but immediately gave utterance to her recollections
in such a way as fairly made the soldier
jump.  "They called my mammy 'my lady,'" she
said simply.

Private Flinders gave the child a great hug, and
put her down off his knee.  "Gord bless you,
little 'un," he ejaculated.  "And see if I don't
ferret that mammy of yours out before I'm many
days older--see if I don't."

He met the matron as he went towards the
entrance.  "Missis," he said, stopping, "I've got
a clue to that little 'un's belongings.  I'm off to
the police station now about it.  I'd advise you to
treat her as tender as you can.  It'll come home to
you, mark my words."

"Dear me," snapped the matron; "is she going
to turn out a princess in disguise, then?"

"It'll perhaps turn out a pity you was in such
a hurry to crop her hair," said Private Flinders,
with dignity.

In the face of that sudden recollection of the
child's, he felt that he could afford to be, to a certain
extent, stand-offish to the cold-eyed, unloving woman
before him.

"Oh, rules are rules," said the matron, with an
air of fine disdain; "and, in an institution like
ours, all must be served alike.  It would be a pretty
thing if we had to spend half of every day curling
the children's hair.  Good-day to you."

He felt that he had got the worst of it, and that
it was more than possible that little Susy would
pay the penalty of his indiscretion.  Fool that he
had been not to hold his tongue until he had
something more tangible to say.  Well, it was done now,
and could not be undone, and it behoved him to
lose no time, but to find out the truth as soon as
possible.

The inspector whom he found in charge of the
police-station listened to his tale with a strictly
professional demeanour.

"Yes, I remember the little girl coming in and
being taken to the workhouse.  I remember the
case right enough.  You'd better leave it to us, and
we will find out whether such a child is missing
anywhere in the country."

I need hardly say that in Private Flinders' mind
there lurked that deep-rooted distrust of a policeman
that lives somewhere or other in the heart of
every soldier.  It came uppermost in his mind at
that moment.

"You'll do your best?" he said, a little wistfully.
"You'll not let time go by, and--and----?"

"We shall be in communication with every
police-station in the kingdom in a few hours," returned
the inspector, who knew pretty well what was
passing in the soldier's mind.  "But, all the same, you
mustn't be over-much disappointed if there proves
to be nothing in it.  You see, if such a child was
being inquired for, we should have heard of it
before this.  However, we'll do our best; you may be
very sure of that."

With that Private Flinders was obliged to rest
content.  He made inquiries from day to day, and
eventually this advertisement appeared in the
leading daily papers:--

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

TO PARENTS AND GUARDIANS.--A little
girl, apparently about three years old, is in charge
of the police at Bridbrook.  She says her name is Susy,
and appears to be the child of well-to-do parents.  Very
fair hair, blue eyes, features small and pretty.  Clothes
very good, but much soiled.--Address, POLICE STATION,
BRIDBROOK.

.. vspace:: 2

A few hours after the appearance of the advertisement,
a telegram arrived at the police-station:--

"Keep child.  Will come as soon as possible.--JACKSON."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1

Less than three hours afterwards, an excited
woman rushed into the station, having precipitated
herself out of a cab, and almost flung herself upon
the astonished inspector.

"I've come for the child--the little girl," she
gasped, as if she had run at racing speed direct
from the place indicated by the telegram.

"Oh, she belongs to you, does she?" remarked
the inspector coolly.  "Well, you've no call to be
in such a 'urry; you've been very comfortable about
her for the last six weeks."

"Comfortable!" echoed the excited one; "why,
I've been very near out of my mind.  I thought she
was drowned, and I was so frightened, I daren't
say a word to any one about it.  And my lady
away----"

"Then you're not the mother?" said the inspector
sharply.

"The mother!--my goodness, no!  I'm the head
nurse.  My young lady's mother is the Countess of
Morecambe."

"Then what does *she* say to all this, pray?" he asked.

"My lady went abroad two months ago to one
of those foreign cure places, and she doesn't know
but what Lady Susy is safe with me at this minute,"
the woman replied.

The inspector gave a prolonged whistle.

"Well, you're a pretty sort of nurse to leave in
charge of a child," he remarked.  "I shouldn't
wonder if you get the sack for this.  Do you know
the child's at the workhouse, and that they've
cropped her head as bare as mine?"

At this the woman simply sat down and sobbed aloud.

"Aye, you may well cry," said the inspector
grimly.  "I should if I was in your shoes."

She finally told how the child had been missed;
how she had refrained from giving notice to the
police through fear of publicity, and believing she
could find her by diligent search in the locality;
how "my lady" was a widow, with only this one
little child; how she had been advised to go for
this cure; how she had consented to the nurse
taking Lady Susy to the seaside meantime, well
knowing that she would be safe and happy with her.

"Yes, you may laugh at that," she wound up;
"but my dear lamb has often called me 'mammy'
as anything else, and my lady has often said she
was quite jealous of me."

"All the same, I shouldn't wonder if you get the
sack," repeated the inspector, who was not troubled
with much sentiment.

I scarcely know how to tell the rest--how Jackson
went off to the workhouse, and enlightened the
matron and others as to the child's station in life;
how she seized her little ladyship, and almost
smothered her with kisses; how she bewailed her
shorn locks, and wondered and conjectured as to
how she could possibly have got to a place so far
from her home as Bridbrook.

But, a few weeks later, a lovely woman in mourning
came to the cavalry barracks, and inquired for
Private Flinders.  She wept during the interview,
this lovely lady; and when she had gone away,
Private Flinders opened the packet she had put
into his hands, to find a cheque for a hundred
pounds, and a handsome gold watch and chain.
And at the end of the chain was a plain gold locket,
on one side of which was engraved Private Flinders'
initials, whilst on the other was written the single
word, "Halt!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Little Lady with the Voice`:

.. class:: left large

   The Little Lady with the Voice


.. class:: noindent medium

   A FAIRY TALE

.. vspace:: 2

Marjory Drummond was sitting on the
bank of the river, and, if the whole truth
must be owned, she was crying.  She was not
crying loudly or passionately, but as she rested her
cheek on her hand, the sad salt tears slowly gathered
in her eyes, and brimmed over one by one, falling
each with a separate splash upon the blue cotton
gown which she wore.

.. _`The sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes.`:

.. figure:: images/img-261.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes.

   The sad salt tears slowly gathered in her eyes.

The sun was shining high in the blue heavens,
the river danced and sang merrily as it went rippling
by, and all the hedgerows were alive with flowers,
and the air was full of the scent of the new-cut
hay.  Yet Marjory was very miserable, and for her
the skies looked dark and dull, the river only gave
her even sadder thoughts than she already had,
and the new-cut hay seemed quite scentless and
dead.  And all because a man had failed her--a
man had proved to be clay instead of gold.  And
so she sat there in the gay summer sunshine and
wished that she had never been born, or that she
were dead, or some such folly, and the butterflies
fluttered about, and the bees hummed, and all nature,
excepting herself, seemed to be radiant and joyous.
An old water-vole came out of his hiding-place by
the river and watched her with a wise air, and a
dragon-fly whizzed past and hovered over the
surface of the sunlit water, but Marjory's eyes were
blind to each and all of these things, and still the
tears welled up and overflowed their bounds, and
she wept on.

"What is the matter?" said a voice just at her ear.

Marjory gave a jump, and dashed her tears away;
it was one thing to indulge herself in her grief, but
it was quite another to let any one else, and that a
stranger, see her.  "What is wrong with you,
Marjory?" said the voice once more.

"Nothing!" answered Marjory shortly.

"I may, perhaps, be able to help you," the gentle
little voice persisted.

"Nobody can help me," said Marjory, with a great
sigh, "nobody can help me--nobody."

"Don't be so sure of that," said the voice.  "Why
do you keep this curl of hair?  Why do you turn
so persistently away from me?  Why don't you
look at me?"

Marjory turned her head, but she could see no
one near.  "Who are you?  Why do you hide?"
she asked in turn.

"You look too high," said the voice.  "Look
lower; yes--ah, how d'you do?"

Marjory almost jumped into the river in her fright,
for there, standing under the shade of a big
dandelion, was the smallest being she had ever seen in
her life.  Yet, as she sat staring at her, this tiny
woman seemed to increase in size, and to assume a
shape which was somehow familiar to her.  "You
know me now?" asked the little woman, smiling at
her again.

"N--o," replied Marjory, stammering a little.

"Oh, yes, you do.  You remember the old
woman whose part you took a few weeks ago--down
by the old church, when some boys were
teasing her?  Well, that was me--me--and now
I'm going to do something for you.  I am going
to make you happy."

"Are you a witch?" asked Marjory, in a very
awed voice.

"Hu--sh--sh!  We never use such an uncomplimentary
word in *our* world.  But you poor
mortals are often very rude, even without knowing
it.  I am not what is called a witch, young lady.
I am a familiar."

Marjory's eyes opened wider than ever; she bent
forward and asked an earnest question: "Are you
my familiar?" she said.

"Perhaps, perhaps," answered the little woman,
nodding her head wisely.  "That all depends on
yourself.  If you are good, yes; if you are bad,
no--most emphatically, no.  I am much too important
a person to be familiar to worthless people."

"I'm sure you are very kind," said Marjory
meekly.  "But what will you do to make me
happy?  You cannot give me back my Jack,
because he has married some one else--the wretch!"
she added under her breath, but the ejaculation was
for the woman whom Jack had married, not for
Jack himself.

"You will learn to live without your Jack, as
you call him," said the little woman with the soft
voice, sagely, "and to feel thankful that he chose
elsewhere.  You once did me a service, and that is
a thing that a familiar never, never forgets.  I have
been watching you ever since that time, and now
I will reward you.  Marjory Drummond, from this
time henceforth everything shall prosper with you;
everything you touch shall turn to gold, everything
you wish shall come to pass; what you strive after
you shall have; your greatest desires shall be
realised; and you shall have power to draw tears
from all eyes whenever you choose.  This last I
give you in compensation for the tears that you
have shed this day.  Farewell!"

"Stay!" cried Marjory.  "Won't you even tell
me your name?  May I not thank you?"

"No.  The thanks are mine," said the little lady.
"When we meet again I will tell you my name--not
before."

In a moment she was gone, and so quickly and
mysteriously did she go that Marjory did not see
her disappear.  She rubbed her eyes and looked
round.  "I must have been asleep!" she exclaimed.
"I must have dreamt it."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1

Several years had gone by.  With Marjory
Drummond everything had prospered, and she was on
the high road to success, and fame, and fortune.
Whenever her name was spoken, people nodded
their heads wisely, and said: "A wonderful girl,
nothing she cannot do"; and they mostly said it
as if each one of them had had a hand in making
her the clever girl that she was.

As an artist she was extremely gifted, being well
hung in the Academy of the year; as an actress,
though only playing with that form of art, she was
hard to beat; and she had written stories and tales
which were so infinitely above the average that
editors were one and all delighted at any time to
have the chance of a story signed with the initials
"M.D.," initials which the world thought and
declared were those of one of the most fashionable
doctors of the day.

And at last the world of letters woke up and
rubbed its eyes very much as Marjory had rubbed
her eyes that day on the river's bank, and the world
said, "We have a great and gifted man among us."  "'M.D.'
is *the* writer of the time."  And slowly,
little by little, the secret crept out, and Marjory
was fêted and flattered, and made the star of the
season.  Her name was in every one's mouth, and
her work was sought after eagerly and read by all.
And among those who worshipped at her shrine
was the "Jack" who had flouted her in the
old days, yet not quite the same, but a "Jack"
very much altered and world-worn, so that
Marjory could no longer regret or wish that the
lines of her life had fallen otherwise than they
had done.

And often and often, as the years rolled by, and
she was still the darling star of the people who love
to live in the realms of fiction, did Marjory ponder
over that vivid dream by the riverside, and try to
satisfy herself that it really was no more than a
dream, and that the old lady with the sweet clear
voice had had no being except in her excited brain.
"I wish," she said aloud one day, when she was
sitting by the fire after finishing the most important
work that had ever yet come from her pen, "I wish
that she would come back and satisfy me about it.
It seemed so real, so vivid, so distinct, and yet it
is so impossible----"

"Not impossible at all," said a familiar voice at
her elbow.

Marjory looked round with a start.  "Oh! is it
you?" she cried.  "Then it was all true!  I have
never been able to make up my mind whether it
was true or only a dream.  Now I know that it
was quite real, and everything that you promised
me has come about.  I am the happiest woman in
all the world to-day, and, dear friend, if ever I did
a service to you, you have amply repaid me."

"We never stint thanks in our world," said the
little old lady, smiling.  "Then there is nothing
more that you want?"

"Yes, kind friend, just one thing," said Marjory.
"You promised me that when we met again you
would tell me your name."

The little woman melted away instantly, but
somewhere out of the shadows came a small sweet
sighing voice, which said softly, "My name is--Genius!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Jewels to Wear`:

.. class:: left large

   Jewels to Wear

..

   |
   |   "Torches are made to burn;
   |   jewels to wear."--*Shakespeare*
   |

.. class:: left medium

   CHAPTER I

.. vspace:: 2

"I can't think, Nancy, why you cannot get
something useful to occupy yourself with.
It seems to me that I have slaved and sacrificed
myself all my life, in every possible direction, simply
that you may waste your whole time spoiling good
paper, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, from morning
till night, with your fingers inky, and your thoughts
in the clouds, and your attention on nothing that I
want you to attend to.  I don't call it a good reward
to make to me.  You will never do any good with
that ridiculous scribbling--never!  When I think
of what you *might* save me, of how you *might* spare
me in my anxious and busy life, it makes me
positively ill to think I am your mother.  Here have I
been thinking of you, Nancy, and working for you,
and struggling, and fighting, and slaving for you for
twenty years, and now that the time has come when
you might do something for me, you have only one
idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories
that nobody will ever want to buy!"

.. _`"You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-272.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"

   "You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"

The girl thus addressed turned and looked at her mother.

"Mother, dear," she said depreciatingly, "I am
sorry that I am not more useful.  I can't help it.
I do think of you, I try to do everything I can to
relieve you, and help you; but these stories will
come into my head.  They won't be put out of it.
What am I to do?"

"What are you to do?" echoed the mother.
"Why, look at that basket of stockings to darn!"

"I am quite willing to darn them," said Nancy meekly.

"Yes, you are quite willing, I daresay.  You are
quite willing *when* I tell you.  But you don't seem to
see what a burden it is to me to have to tell you
everything as if you were a baby.  There are the
stockings, and there are you; at your age, you don't
surely need me to tell you that the stockings need
mending!"

"I will do them at once," said Nancy.  "I will
do them this minute."

"Yes, with your thoughts in the clouds, and your
mind fixed on scribbling.  What, may I ask you,
Nancy, do you think you will ever do with it?"

"I don't know," said Nancy desperately.  "Perhaps
I may make some money some day."

"Never, never!  Waste it, you mean.  Waste it
over pens, ink, paper and tablecloths.  There is the
tablecloth in your bedroom spotted with ink from
end to end.  It is heart-breaking."

"Well, Mother, what do you wish me to do?" the
girl asked in desperation.

"Your plain and simple duty.  I would like you
to give up all idea of wasting your time in that
way from now on," said the mother deliberately.

"Won't you even let me write a little to amuse
myself in my spare time?" asked the girl piteously.

"Your spare time!" echoed the mother
impatiently.  "What spare time have poor people
such as we are?  What spare time have I?  Here
are we with this great boarding-house on our hands,
twenty-three boarders to be made comfortable, kept
in good temper, fed, housed, boarded--everything to
be done for them, and I have to do it.  Why, in the
time that you waste over those stories, you might
make yourself a brilliant pianist, and play in the
evening to them.  Then you would be of some use."

"I don't think," said Nancy, "that anything will
ever make me a brilliant pianist, Mother.  There's
no music in me--not of that kind, and I don't think
that the boarders would like me half as well if I
went and strummed on the drawing-room piano
every evening for an hour or two, I really don't, Mother."

"No, you know better than I do, of course.  That
is the way with the young people of the present day.
You are all alike.  Ah, it was different when I was
a girl.  I would no more have dreamed of defying
my mother as you defy me----"

"Mother, I don't defy you," Nancy broke in indignantly.
"I never defied you in my life.  I never
thought of such a thing."

"Don't you write stories in defiance of my
wishes?" Mrs. Macdonald asked, dropping the
tragedy air, and putting the question in a plain,
every-day, businesslike tone.

At this, Nancy Macdonald flushed a deep full red,
a blush of shame it was, or what felt like shame,
and as it slowly faded away until her face was a dull
greyish white, all hope for that gift which was as the
very mainspring of her life, seemed to shrink and
die within her.

"Mother," she said at last, in a firm tone, "I will
do what you wish.  I will give up writing, I promise
you, from this time forward, and I will not write
at all while I have any duty left in the day.  You
will not mind my doing a little when I have seen the
after dinner coffee served, will you?"

"That means, I suppose," said Mrs. Macdonald
rather tartly, "that you will sit up half the night
ruining your health, spoiling your eyesight, wasting
my gas, and making it perfectly impossible that you
should get up in good time in the morning."

"Mother," said the girl, in a most piteous tone,
"when I am once late in the morning, I will promise
you to give it up altogether, and for ever; more than
that I cannot say.  As you said just now, it is a hard
life here, and we have not very much leisure time;
but, I implore you, do not take my one delight and
pleasure from me altogether!"

"If you put it in that way," said Mrs. Macdonald
rather grudgingly, "of course, we can but try the
experiment; but what good, I ask you, Nancy, do
you think will ever come of it!"

"I don't know," said Nancy; "I can't say.  Other
people have made fortunes; other people have done
well by writing; why should not I?"

"As if *you* would ever make a fortune!" said
Mrs. Macdonald, with the contemptuousness of a woman
to whom the struggle of life had been hard and to
whom pounds, shillings and pence in the very hand
were the only proofs of reason for what she called
"wasting time" over story-writing.

"Well, if not a fortune, at least a comfortable
income," said Nancy eagerly; "and if I did, Mother,
I should give it all to you!"

"Thank you for nothing, my dear," was the
ungracious reply.

To this Nancy made no answer.  She carried the
big basket of stockings to the window, and sat down
in the cold winter light to do such repairs as were
necessary.  Poor child!  It was a hard fate for her.
She was the eldest of a family of five, all dependent
on the exertions of her widowed mother in keeping
afloat the big boarding-house by which they lived.
For a boarding-house, be it ever so liberally managed,
be the receipts ever so generous, is but a sordid
abode, especially to those who have the trouble and
care of managing it; and to an eldest daughter,
and one who stands between the anxious mother
and the younger children, who mostly resemble
young rooks with mouths chronically open, such a
life appears perhaps more sordid than it does to
any one else.

To Nancy Macdonald, with her mind full of
visionary beauty, and living daily in a world of
her own--not a world of boarding-houses--the life
they lived seemed even more sordid, more trivial,
more petty, than it was in reality.  Her wants were
not many; she was never inclined to rail at fate
because she had not been born with a silver spoon
in her mouth, not at all.  But if only she could have
a quiet home, with an assured income, just sufficient
to cover their modest wants, to provide good
wholesome food, to buy boots and shoes for the little ones,
to pay the wages of a good servant, to take those lines
of anxious care from her mother's forehead, so that
she could employ her leisure in cultivating her
Art--she always called it her Art, poor child!--she
would have been perfectly happy, or she *thought*
she would have been perfectly happy, which, in the
main, amounted to the same thing.  As she sat
in the cold light of that winter's afternoon, darning,
as if for dear life, the great pile of stockings which
were her portion, she soon drifted away from the
tall Bloomsbury dwelling into a bright, brilliant land
of romance, where there were no troubles, no cares,
where nothing was sordid, and everything was
bright and rosy, and even troubles and worries might
have been adequately described as "double water gilt."

Young writers do indulge in these blessed dreams
of fancy, and Nancy, remember, was only twenty.
Her heroines were always lovely, always
extravagantly rich or picturesquely poor; her heroes were
all lithe and long, and most of them had tawny
moustaches, and violet eyes like a girl's.  They were
all guardsmen or noblemen.  They knew not the want
of money; if they were *called* poor, they went
everywhere in hansoms, and had valets and gambling
debts.  It was an ideal world, and Nancy Macdonald
was very happy in it.

From that time forward a new life began for the
girl.  The household certainly went more smoothly,
because of that promise to her mother; and
Mrs. Macdonald's sharp tongue whetted itself on other
grievances more frequently than on that old one
about Nancy's scribbling propensities.  It was
irritating to Nancy, of course, to hear her mother
continually nagging about something or other; but
then, as she reminded herself very often during the
day, her mother had great anxieties and grievous
worries.  She was a sort of double-distilled Martha,
"careful and troubled," not about many things, but
about everything--everything that did happen, or
might happen, even what could happen under
given circumstances which might and probably never
would occur.  Still, it was not so trying to bear when
the shafts of sarcasm and complaining were aimed at
others instead of herself, and to do Nancy strict
justice, she did try honestly to do the work which
lay to her hand.

In the midst of the multitudinous cares of the
large household it must be owned that the girl's
writing suffered.  It is all very well for a girl in
fiction to do scullery work all day long, and write the
brilliant novel of a season in odd moments, in a cold
and cheerless bedroom, but in real life it is very
different.  Nancy Macdonald gave her attention to
stockings and table-linen, and shopping and ordering
and dusting; to keeping boarders in good temper,
and making herself generally useful; to superintending
the education and manners of the little ones, to
smoothing down the rough edges of her mother's
chronic asperity--in short, to being a real help; but
her much loved work practically went to the wall.
She dreamed a good deal while she was doing other
things, but mere dreaming is not of much help
towards making name or fortune; work is the only
road which leads to either.  Still, you cannot do your
duty without improving your character, and Nancy
Macdonald's character was strengthening and
softening every day.  She worked a little at night, but
often she was far too tired and weary to attempt it.
Very often when she did so, she found that the words
would not run, the incidents would not connect
themselves, and frequently that her eyes would not keep
open; and then I am obliged to say that it was not
an uncommon thing for Nancy Macdonald to get
into bed and cry herself to sleep.

Still, her character was strengthening.  With every
day that went by she learnt more of the power of
endurance; she became more patient, more fixed in
her ideas; the goal of her desires was set more
immediately in front of her.  It was less visionary, but
it was infinitely more substantial.  In a desultory
kind of a way she still worked, still wrote of lords
and ladies whom she did not know in the flesh, still
drew pictures of guardsmen with longer legs and
tawnier moustaches even than before.  She spent the
whole of her pocket-money (which, by the bye,
consisted of certain perquisites in the house, the
medicine bottles and the dripping forming her chief
sources of income) on manuscript paper, and was
sometimes hard pushed to pay the postage on the
mysterious packages which she smuggled into the
post-office, and to provide the stamps for paying the
return fare of these children of her fancy.  Poor
things, they always required it.  No enterprising
editors wanted the long-legged guardsmen, their blue
eyes and tawny moustaches notwithstanding.
Nobody had a welcome for the lovely ladies, who were
all dressed by Worth, though they never seemed to
have heard of such a person as Felix.  The disappointments
of their continued return were very bitter
to her; yet, at heart, Nancy Macdonald was a true
artist, and had all the true artist's pluck and
perseverance, so that she never thought of giving up her
work.  It was only that she had not yet found her
*métier*.





.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: left medium

   CHAPTER II

.. vspace:: 2

For about six months after Nancy's promise to
her mother that she would not even try to
write during the working hours, life went fairly
prosperously with the widowed boarding-house keeper.
Then a spell of bad luck set in.  Several boarders
left and were not replaced.  Their best paying
permanent boarder--a rich old gentleman, the head of a
large business in the city--died suddenly, died
without a will, although he had several times spoken of
his intention of leaving Mrs. Macdonald a handsome
legacy; and his next-of-kin did not seem to think it
necessary to do more than pay the actual expenses
which their relative had incurred.  Twice they had
visitors who left without paying their bills; and, as
a last crowning act of ill-luck, the youngest child fell
sick, and the doctor pronounced the illness to be
scarlet fever.

   |   "When troubles come, they come not single spies,
   |   But in battalions";

and that is as true to-day as when Shakespeare
penned the lines more than three hundred years ago.

Mrs. Macdonald was almost beside herself.  She
ceased to gird at any member of the family or
household; she girded at Fate instead, morning, noon, and
night.  She discussed the situation in a frenzied
manner, with tears in her eyes and a large amount of
gesticulation, which would have formed an excellent
object-lesson to a student for the stage; but, at the
same time, it must be owned that raving appeals to
the Almighty, passionate assertions that she was the
most unlucky woman that the light of day had ever
shone upon, bitter forebodings of what her daily life
would be like when she was safely landed in the
nearest workhouse, did not avail anything.  No, the
Macdonald family was in for a spell of bad luck, and
all the asseverations in the world would not alter it
or gainsay it.

At this time Nancy was like a rock in the midst of
a stormy sea.  She, after much self-communing,
threw over her promise to her mother concerning the
time of her writing.  She felt, as every true artist
feels, that it was in her to do great things; and that
even a little money earned in such a crisis would be
of double value.  So every moment that she could
steal from the now greatly decreased house duties she
spent in her own room, working with feverish haste
and anxiety at a new story, a story which was not
about lords and ladies, or majestic guardsmen, or
lovely heroines in costly Parisian dresses; no, she
felt, all in a moment, the utter futility of trying to
draw a phase of life with which she herself was not
familiar.  It seemed to come to her like a flash of
light that her children of pen and ink were not real;
that she was fighting the air; that she was like an
artist drawing without a model.  Like a living human
voice a warning came into her mind, "Write what
you know; write what you see; before all things be
an impressionist."  So her new child was slowly
coming to life, a child born in poverty and reared in
a boarding-house.  The form of the child was crude,
and was the work of an unpractised hand; but it
was strong.  It was full of life; it was a thing alive;
and as line after line came from under her hand, as
the story assumed shape and colour from under
her nervous fingers, Nancy Macdonald felt that
she was on the right tack at last, that this time she
would not fail.

As soon as her story was done, she sent it with
breathless hope to a well-known weekly magazine
which is almost a household word, and then she sat
down to wait.  Oh! but it is weary waiting under
such circumstances.  After three days of sickening
suspense, Nancy decided in her own mind that if she
had to wait as many weeks she would be raving mad
at the end of them.  So she locked herself in her
room and began another story, the story of a love
affair which came about in just such a house as
their own.

Meantime, it can scarcely be said that the
Macdonald fortunes improved.  It is true that the
fever-stricken child recovered, and was sent away to a
superior convalescent home at the seaside.  It is true
that one or two fresh boarders came, and that there
were hopes that the family would be able to weather
the storm, supposing, that is, that they were able to
tide over the next few months.  Still, in London, it
is not easy to tide over a few months when your
resources have been drained, and your income has
been sorely diminished.  There were bills for this
and that, claims for that and the other, and these
came in with great rapidity and with pressing
demands for payment.

Mrs. Macdonald pitied herself more than ever; her
tones, as she recalled the virtues of her past life,
were more tragic; her debit and credit account with
the Almighty she showed to be clearly falsified.
Never was so good a woman so abominably used
of Providence and humanity alike.  She wept
copiously over her deservings, and railed furiously
against her fate.  Poor Mrs. Macdonald!  For many
a weary year she had toiled to the best of her
ability, and she had done her duty by her children
according to her lights, which were pitiably dim,
"The Lord must indeed love me," she remarked,
with bitterest irony, one day, when a mysterious
visitor had put a gruesome paper into her unwilling
hands.

"It is but the beginning of the end, Nancy," she
said resignedly, "the beginning of the end.  I
haven't a sovereign in the house, and how I am
to pay nine pounds seventeen and fourpence is
beyond me altogether.  It won't last long; we
shall have the roof of the workhouse over our
heads soon.  We can't go on like this.  Where's
the money to come from?"

And that, of course, Nancy knew no more than
her mother.

"Could not we sell something?" she said, looking
round their shabby little sitting-room, where all
that was worst in the house was gathered together
because it was only used by themselves.  "Couldn't
we sell something?"

"I might sell my cameo brooch," said Mrs. Macdonald,
with a huge sigh.  "It was the last present
your poor father ever gave me."

"And I don't suppose it would fetch anything
like nine pounds seventeen and fourpence," said
Nancy doubtfully.

"Your father paid a great deal for it," returned
Mrs. Macdonald, "but when one has to sell, it's
different to buying.  One gives one's things away."

As a matter of fact, the late Mr. Macdonald had
given fifty shillings for the cameo brooch in
question, having bought it in a pawnshop in the Strand;
but neither Mrs. Macdonald nor Nancy were aware
of that fact.

"Dear Mother," said Nancy, "I would not worry.
You have still a fortnight before you need settle it
one way or the other.  A great many things may
turn up in a fortnight."

"Not a ten pound note," said Mrs. Macdonald,
with an air of conviction.

"You don't know, Mother.  Look how many
things have turned up when we least expected
them, and money has come that seemed to have
dropped from the clouds.  At all events, I would
not break down over it until the very last day
comes; I would not indeed, Mother."

"Ah, perhaps you would not," said the mother,
"I should not have done so when I was your
age.  When you are mine, you will understand me
better."

"Yes, dear, perhaps I shall; but you know, even
if the worst happens--oh, but we shall manage
somehow, depend upon it, we shall manage somehow."

But Nancy's youthful philosophy did not tend
to check the flow of Mrs. Macdonald's troubled
spirit.  A whole week went by, which she passed
chiefly in tears, and in drawing gloomy pictures
of the details of the life which would soon, soon
be hers.  "I shall have to wear a poke bonnet and
a shawl," she remarked, in a doleful tone one day,
"and I never could bear a shawl, even when they
were in fashion--horrid cold things."  At meals, of
course, poor lady, she had to keep a cheerful
countenance, so that her guests should not suspect
how badly things were going with them; but Nancy
noticed that she ate very little, and like most young
people, her chief idea for a panacea for all woes
took the form of food.  In Mrs. Macdonald's case,
it took the form of fresh tea and hot buttered
toast; and, really, I would be sorry to say how
much tea was used in that household during those
few days, by way of bolstering its mistress's strength
and spirits against what might happen in the
immediate future.

The fortnight of grace soon passed away, and
with every day Mrs. Macdonald's spirits sank lower
and lower.  She looked old and aged and worn;
and Nancy's heart ached when she realised that
there was no prospect of anything turning up, and
apparently no chance of the danger which
threatened them being averted.  What money had
come in had mostly been imperatively required
to meet daily expenses.  It seemed preposterous
that people with a large house as they had
should be in such straits for so small a sum;
and yet, if they began selling their belongings,
which, with the exception of the cameo brooch
and Mrs. Macdonald's keeper ring, almost entirely
consisted of furniture, she knew that it would be
impossible to replace them, or even to dispose of
them without the knowledge of their guests.  She
hardly liked to suggest it to her mother, and yet
she felt that when the last day came, she would
have no other course open to her.

It was the evening before the last day of grace,
and still the needful sum had not been set aside.
Twice during the day Mrs. Macdonald had subsided
in tears and wretchedness into the old armchair by
their little sitting-room fire, while Nancy had brought
her fresh fragrant tea and a little covered plate of
hot buttered toast, and had delicately urged her to
decide between selling the precious brooch and
appealing to one or other of the boarders for an
advance payment.

"I will just wait till the morning," she said to
herself, as she came down from the drawing-room
after dispensing the after-dinner coffees.

"Nancy!  Nancy!" cried her younger sister Edith,
at that moment.  "Where are you?"

"I am here, dear," Nancy replied.  "What is the
matter?"

The child, for Edith was only some thirteen or
fourteen years old, came running up the stairs two
steps at a time.

"Here's a letter for you, Nancy," she said eagerly.

"A letter?" cried Nancy, her mind flying at once
to her story.

"Yes, it's got a Queen's head on it or something.
Here it is."

The two girls reached the large and dimly-lighted
entrance-hall together, one from upstairs and one
from down.

"Give it to me," said Nancy, breathlessly.

She felt that it was a letter about her story.
The very fact that it had come without an
accompanying roll of manuscript gave her hope.  She
tore open the envelope with trembling fingers, and
by the light of the single flickering gas-lamp, read
its contents.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: small

   "The Editor of the *Family Beacon* presents his compliments
   to Miss Macdonald, and will be pleased to accept her story,
   'Out of Gloom into the Sun,' for the sum of fifteen guineas,
   for which a cheque will be sent immediately on receipt of
   her reply."

.. vspace:: 2

For a few moments the poor painted hall, with
its gaunt umbrella stand and cold black and white
marble floor, seemed to be rocking up and down,
and spinning round and round.  The revulsion of
feeling was so intense that the girl staggered up
against the wall, fighting hard with her palpitating heart.

"Oh, Nancy, what is it?" cried Edith, staring in
a fright at her sister's chalk-white face.  "Is it bad
news?"

"Oh, no, GOOD news; the best news.  Where's
Mother?  I----" she could not speak, she simply
could not finish the sentence.  Her trembling lips
refused to perform their office.  In her shaking
hands she still clutched the precious letter, and
gathering her wits together, she turned and literally
tore down the stairs to the basement.

"Mother!  Mother!  Where are you?" she cried.

"What is it?" cried Mrs. Macdonald, who, poor
soul, was ready for all and every evil that could
fall upon her.

For a moment Nancy tried to control herself
sufficiently to speak, but the revulsion of feeling
was too great.  Twice she opened her mouth, but
no words would come.  Then she dropped all of
a heap at her mother's feet, and hiding her head
upon her knee, she burst into a passion of tears.

.. _`Then she dropped all of a heap at her mother's feet, and hiding her head upon her knee, she burst into a passion of tears.`:

.. figure:: images/img-293.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Then she dropped all of a heap at her mother's feet, and hiding her head upon her knee, she burst into a passion of tears.

   Then she dropped all of a heap at her mother's feet, and hiding her head upon her knee, she burst into a passion of tears.

In spite of her acidity, and her disputes with
Providence and things in general, Mrs. Macdonald
still retained some of her mother's instinct. She
drew the girl's head to her breast, and held her
there tightly, with a tragic at-least-we-will-all-die-together
air that was utterly pathetic.  She had
no words of consolation for what she believed was
some new and terrible trouble come upon them.
Then, as Nancy still sobbed on, she drew the letter
from her unresisting fingers, mastered its contents,
and sat like a woman turned to stone.

"I am afraid," she said, after a long silence, "that
I have been very cruel to you, Nancy.  I have
called your scribbling, rubbish; I have scolded you;
I have been very hard on you; and instead of my
being punished for my blindness, it is *your* work
which has come to save me from the end which I
so dreaded.  But I shall never forgive myself."

But Nancy, the storm over, brushed the tears
away from her eyes, and sat back, resting her elbow
upon her mother's knee.

"Oh, it is very silly of me to go on like this,"
half laughing, and half inclined to weep yet more.
"I have been so worried you know, Mother.  It's
really stupid of me; but you mustn't blame
yourself now that good luck has come to us, must you?
You did what you thought was right, and you had
a right to speak; and, after all, I *did* leave
everything to you--everything, and I might have wasted
all my time.  You were quite right, Mother."

"What was that line Willie was writing in his
copybook last week?" said Mrs. Macdonald, holding
the girl's hand fast, and looking, oh, so unlike
her usual self--"Torches were made to burn; jewels
to wear."

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   20 Infelice.   A. J. EVANS WILSON
   21 St. Elmo.  A. J. EVANS WILSON
   22 At the Mercy of Tiberius.  A. J. EVANS WILSON
   23 A Young Girl's Wooing.  REV. E. P. ROE
   24 A Humble Enterprise.  ADA CAMBRIDGE
   25 Titus.  FLORENCE M. KINGSLEY
   26 John Halifax, Gentleman.  MRS. CRAIK
   27 In His Steps.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   28 The Pillar of Fire.   REV. J. H. INGRAHAM
   29 Mabel Vaughan.  MISS CUMMING
   30 Miss Lou.  REV. E. P. ROE
   31 Holiday House.  CATHERINE SINCLAIR
   33 Opening a Chestnut Burr.  REV. E. P. ROE
   34 Macaria.  A. J. EVANS WILSON
   35 A Man's Foes.  E. H. STRAIN
   36 A Day of Fate.  REV. E. P. ROE
   37 Prisoners of the Sea.  F. M. KINGSLEY
   38 What Katy Did Next.  SUSAN COOLIDGE
   39 Crucifixion of Phillip Strong.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   40 His Brother's Keeper.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   41 Richard Bruce.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   42 The Twentieth Door.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   43 Malcom Kirk.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   44 Robert Hardy's Seven Days.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   45 He Fell in Love with His Wife.  REV. E. P. ROE
   46 Two Years Ago.  CHAS. KINGSLEY
   47 Danesbury House.  MRS. HENRY WOOD
   48 Ministering Children.  MISS CHARLESWORTH
   49 Monica.  E. EVERETT GREEN
   50 A Face Illumined.  REV. E. P. ROE
   51 Vashti.  A. J. EVANS WILSON
   52 The Earth Trembled.  REV. E. P. ROE
   53 Princess Sarah.  JOHN STRANGE WINTER
   54 His Sombre Rivals.  REV. E. P. ROE
   55 The Cross Triumphant.  FLORENCE M. KINGSLEY
   56 Paul.  FLORENCE M. KINGSLEY
   57 An Original Belle.  REV. E. P. ROE
   58 Daisy in the Field.  ELIZABETH WETHERELL
   59 Naomi.  MRS. J. B. WEBB
   60 Near to Nature's Heart.  REV. E. P. ROE
   61 Edward Blake.  CHAS. M. SHELDON
   62 That Lass o' Lowrie's.  MRS. F. H. BURNETT
   63 A Mother's Holiday.  JOHN STRANGE WINTER
   64 Stepping Heavenward.  ELIZABETH PRENTISS

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large

   The Youths' Library

.. class:: center medium

   *Large Crown 8vo, Cloth, with Four Illustrations, 1/6*

Entirely new editions, well printed on good
paper. Each volume containing four full-page
illustrations by well-known artists, and attractively
bound.

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   1 FROM LOG CABIN TO WHITE HOUSE.  By W. M. THAYER
   2 ROBINSON CRUSOE.  By DANIEL DEFOE
   3 BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS
   4 GRIMM'S FAIRY STORIES
   5 GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES
   6 THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
   7 ANDERSEN'S POPULAR TALES
   8 ANDERSEN'S STORIES
   9 BOY'S OWN SEA STORIES
   10 TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST.  By R. H. DANA
   11 SCOTTISH CHIEFS.  By JANE PORTER
   13 IVANHOE.  By SIR WALTER SCOTT
   14 PRISONERS OF THE SEA.  By F. M. KINGSLEY
   15 WESTWARD HO!  By CHARLES KINGSLEY
   16 ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENTS
   18 FRANK ALLREDDY'S FORTUNE.  By CAPT. FRANKLIN FOX
   20 TWO YEARS AGO.  By CHARLES KINGSLEY
   21 THE LAST OF THE BARONS.  By BULWER LYTTON
   22 HAROLD.  By BULWER LYTTON
   23 THE HOLY WAR.  By JOHN BUNYAN
   24 THE HEROES.  By CHARLES KINGSLEY
   25 THE BEACHCOMBERS.  By GILBERT BISHOP
   26 WILLIS, THE PILOT.  A Sequel to the "Swiss Family Robinson."
   27 THE CORAL ISLAND.  By R. M. BALLANTYNE
   28 MARTIN RATTLER.  By R. M. BALLANTYNE
   29 UNGAVA.  By R. M. BALLANTYNE
   30 THE YOUNG FUR-TRADERS.  By R. M. BALLANTYNE
   31 PETER, THE WHALER.  By W. H. G. KINGSTON
   32 THE HEIR OF LANGRIDGE TOWERS.  By R. M. FREEMAN
   33 THE RAJAH OF MONKEY ISLAND.  By ARTHUR LEE KNIGHT
   34 THE CRUISE OF THE "GOLDEN WAVE".  By W. N. OSCAR
   35 THE WORLD OF ICE.  By R. M. BALLANTYNE
   36 OLD JACK.  By W. H. G. KINGSTON

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.. class:: center large

   The Rainbow Series.

.. class:: center medium

   *Crown 8vo, in cloth, Design in Colours, 1/- each.*

The cheapest Series of Standard Gift Books issued.
As Birthday Presents, Day or Sunday School
Prizes, the Series is unrivalled at the price.

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   1 ROBINSON CRUSOE.  With many Illustrations
   2 SANDFORD & MERTON.  With numerous Illustrations
   3 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.  With numerous Illustrations
   4 TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST.  By R. H. DANA
   5 GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES
   6 GRIMM'S FAIRY STORIES
   7 BUNYAN'S PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.  Illustrated
   7A BUNYAN'S HOLY WAR
   8 A BOY'S LIFE ABOARD SHIP.  Illustrated
   9 LIFE IN A WHALER.  Illustrated
   10 HANS ANDERSEN'S POPULAR TALES.  Illustrated
   11 HANS ANDERSEN'S FAIRY STORIES.  Illustrated
   12 HANS ANDERSEN'S POPULAR STORIES.  Illustrated
   13 ANDERSEN'S FAVOURITE TALES.  Illustrated
   14 FROM LOG CABIN TO WHITE HOUSE.  Illustrated
   17 LAMB'S TALES FROM SHAKESPEARE
   18 SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON
   19 WILLIS, THE PILOT
   20 ARABIAN NIGHTS
   21 THE CORAL ISLAND
   22 MARTIN RATTLER
   23 UNGAVA
   24 THE YOUNG FUR-TRADERS
   25 THE WORLD OF ICE
   26 WESTWARD HO!
   27 EVENINGS AT HOME
   30 IN SEARCH OF FRANKLIN
   31 THE WAY TO VICTORY
   33 NEVER SAY DIE
   37 PRINCE GOLDENBLADE
   38 FEATS ON THE FIORD

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.. class:: center medium

   Uniform with the "Rainbow Series."

.. class:: center large

   The Works of E. P. Roe.

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   41 OPENING A CHESTNUT BURR
   42 A FACE ILLUMINED
   43 BARRIERS BURNED AWAY
   44 WHAT CAN SHE DO?
   45 A DAY OF FATE
   46 AN UNEXPECTED RESULT
   47 TAKEN ALIVE
   48 WITHOUT A HOME
   49 A KNIGHT OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
   50 NEAR TO NATURE'S HEART
   51 FROM JEST TO EARNEST
   52 HIS SOMBRE RIVALS
   53 AN ORIGINAL BELLE
   54 HE FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS WIFE
   55 THE EARTH TREMBLED
   56 MISS LOU
   57 FOUND, YET LOST
   58 A YOUNG GIRL'S WOOING
   59 DRIVEN BACK TO EDEN

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.. class:: center large

   The 1/- "Pansy" Series.

.. class:: center medium

   (CLOTH BOUND.)

.. class:: center medium

   *Crown 8vo, Cloth, Design in Colours, 1/- each.*


Comprising Books of every Kind:--Books for Youths,
Religious Works, Standard Works, Popular Useful Books,
Novels, &c., &c.

.. class:: center medium

   By "PANSY."

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   1 Four Girls at Chautauqua
   2 The Chautauqua Girls at Home
   3 Christie's Christmas
   4 An Endless Chain
   5 Ruth Erskine's Crosses
   6 Links in Rebecca's Life
   7 Mrs. Solomon Smith Looking on
   8 From Different Standpoints
   9 Three People
   10 Ester Ried
   11 Ester Ried yet Speaking
   12 Julia Ried
   13 Wise and Otherwise
   14 The King's Daughter
   15 The Hall in the Grove
   16 A New Graft on the Family Tree
   17 Interrupted
   18 The Man of the House
   19 The Pocket Measure
   20 Household Puzzles
   21 Tip Lewis and His Lamp
   22 Sidney Martin's Christmas
   23 Little Fishers and their Nets
   25 The Randolphs
   26 One Commonplace Day
   27 Chrissy's Endeavour
   28 A Sevenfold Trouble


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.. class:: center medium

   *BY OTHER AUTHORS.*

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   38 John Halifax, Gentleman.  By MRS. CRAIK
   39 Danesbury House.  By MRS. HENRY WOOD
   40 Ministering Children.  By M. L. CHARLESWORTH
   41 Ben-Hur.  By LEW WALLACE
   42 The Fair God.  By LEW WALLACE
   43 Naomi.  By MRS. WEBB
   44 Beulah.  By A. J. EVANS WILSON
   45 Infelice.  By A. J. EVANS WILSON
   46 John Ward, Preacher.  By MARGARET DELAND
   47 St. Elmo.   By A. J. EVANS WILSON
   48 At the Mercy of Tiberius.  By A. J. EVANS WILSON
   49 Vashti.  By A. J. EVANS WILSON
   50 Macaria.  By A. J. EVANS WILSON
   51 Inez.  By A. J. EVANS WILSON
   53 Melbourne House.  By ELIZABETH WETHERELL
   54 Daisy.  By ELIZABETH WETHERELL
   54A Daisy in the Field.  By ELIZABETH WETHERELL
   55 Little Women.  LOUISA M. ALCOTT
   56 Good Wives.  LOUISA M. ALCOTT
   57 Aunt Jane's Hero.  MRS. E. PRENTISS
   58 Flower of the Family.  MRS. E. PRENTISS
   60 The Old Helmet.  E. WETHERELL
   61 What Katy Did.  By SUSAN COOLIDGE
   62 What Katy Did at School.  By SUSAN COOLIDGE
   62A What Katy Did Next.  By SUSAN COOLIDGE
   63 The Lamplighter.  By MISS CUMMING
   64 The Wide, Wide World.  By E. WETHERELL
   65 Queechy.  By E. WETHERELL
   67 Stepping Heavenward.  By E. PRENTISS
   68 The Prince of the House of David.  By REV. J. H. INGRAHAM
   69 Anna Lee.  By T. S. ARTHUR
   70 The Throne of David.  By REV. J. H. INGRAHAM
   71 The Pillar of Fire.  By REV. J. H. INGRAHAM
   72 Mabel Vaughan.  By MISS CUMMING
   73 The Basket of Flowers.  By G. T. BEDELL
   74 That Lass o' Lowrie's.  By MRS. F. H. BURNETT

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.. class:: center medium

   By CHAS. M. SHELDON.

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   91 In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?
   92 The Crucifixion of Phillip Strong
   93 His Brother's Keeper.
   94 Richard Bruce; or, The Life that Now Is.
   95 The Twentieth Door.
   96 Malcom Kirk: Overcoming the World
   97 Robert Hardy's Seven Days.

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.. class:: center medium

   WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED.

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.. pgfooter::
