"He said it might get him promoted in the office where he works," said Molly, "And he says the watch is a _very_ good one--he took it to a friend of his who is a jeweller. So you see, Auntie, though he couldn"t have sold it here--you remember they told us it was impossible to sell jewellery that isn"t one"s own here, as one has to tell all about where one got it and all that--he might have kept it for himself."
"Or sent it away to be sold somewhere else," said Sylvia.
"Oh yes, no doubt he could have done something with it, if he hadn"t been really honest."
"And yet so poor," said Auntie thoughtfully. Then she looked again at the watch with such a loving gaze that it brought tears to the girls"
eyes.
"Oh, Auntie darling, _how_ nice it is to see you looking like yourself again," said Molly. "It seems almost, doesn"t it," she added in a lower voice, "as if its coming back were a little message from grandmother?"
How different appeared everything that happy day! How bright the sunshine, even though but some pale wintry beams struggling through the cold gray sky; how nice everything they had to eat seemed--was it, perhaps, that the kind-hearted cook in her sympathy took unusual pains?--how Auntie smiled, nay, laughed right out, when Molly suddenly checked herself in saying something about what o"clock it was, forgetting that it was no longer a painful subject! How grateful they all felt to be able to go to bed in peace without the one ever-recurring, haunting thought, "If the watch could but be found!"
And with the night came another thought to Auntie.
"Sylvia and Molly," she said the next morning, "I have been thinking so about those poor people--the man who found the watch I mean--and his family," for he had told them he was married and had children. "I do feel so grateful to him. I feel that I must go and see for myself if they are so very poor. You have the exact address?"
"Oh yes," Molly replied, "we wrote it down. But oh, Auntie dear, you _will_ let us go with you."
Auntie hesitated a little, but yielded in the end.
"You will promise to let me go in first," she said, "just to see that it is quite respectable, and no infectious illness or anything that could hurt you."
Bernard hardly knew his little wife again when he got home that evening.
The fifty francs had greatly cheered her the night before, but their influence could not explain the state of delight between tears and laughter in which he found her this time.
"Oh, my friend--oh, Bernard," she exclaimed, "what a happy thing it was for us that you found the watch"s owner and took it at once! They have been here; only fancy such distinguished ladies coming themselves so far just to see if they could be of any service to us in return for ours to them. That was how they put it--was it not touching? The old lady"--poor Auntie, I don"t think she would _quite_ have liked that!--"to whom belongs the watch, so good and kind, oh, so kind; and the younger ones two angels, _angels_ simply, I repeat it, Bernard. And when they heard all--I could hide nothing, they questioned me with such sympathy, about Paul"s bronchitis and all--they set to work to consider how best they could help us. The lady gave Paul, into his own little hand, another note of fifty francs. That will clear off everything, and make us quite as well off as before his illness; and besides that, they have a good deal of work they want me to do, that will be well paid, better paid than what I do for the shops. And they will try to recommend me to some of their friends,--what I have always wished for, to work for ladies direct instead of for the shops. Oh, Bernard, it was a happy day for us when you found that old watch!"
There is no need to say that Auntie and her nieces were as good as their word.
"On the whole," said Molly, with her customary philosophy, "it was almost worth while to go through all the unhappiness for the sake of the delight of getting the watch back again, especially as it really has been a good thing for those nice poor people. But, Auntie, you will have all your dresses made with watch-pockets now, won"t you?"
"Indeed I will," said Auntie with a smile, "and thank you for your good advice, my Molly. Who would think you had ever been the complacent possessor of six pinless brooches?"
At which Molly and Sylvia both laughed, though Molly blushed a little too.
"I am really careful now, I do think," she said. "You know, dear Auntie," she added in a lower voice, "Sylvia and I, more than ever, _now_, try to do and be all that _she_ wished, in little as well as in big things. Dear, dear grandmother!"
MY PINK PET
Chapter I
"For there is no friend like a sister In calm or stormy weather----."
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
IT is getting to be "a good while ago" since I was a little girl.
Sometimes this comes home to me quite distinctly: I feel that I am really growing an old woman, but at other times I cannot believe it. I have to get up and cross the room and look at myself in the mirror, and see with my own eyes the gray hairs and the wrinkles in order to convince myself that childhood, and maidenhood, and even middle age, are all left far behind. At these times "now" appears the dream, "then" the reality; and, strangely enough, this very feeling, I am told, is one of the signs of real old age, of our nearing the land that at one time we fancied so "very far off"--farther off, it seems to me, in middle age than in early childhood, when it is easier for us to believe in what we cannot see, when no clouds have come between us and the true sky beyond.
I have been in many countries, and lived many different lives, since I was a little girl. I have been months together at sea, when dry land itself seemed almost to become a dream. I have been for long years in India, and grown so used to burning skies and swarthy faces that I could hardly believe in the reality of cool England, with its fresh fields and shady lanes; yet all these scenes are growing hazy, while clearly, and yet more clearly, there rises before me the picture of my old, old home and childish days, of special things that happened to me then, of little pleasures and troubles which then seemed very great, and in one sense really were so, no doubt, for they were great to _me_.
I will tell you about a trouble I once had, if you like. I am afraid you will hardly count it a _story_, but still some among you may find it interesting. For, after all, children are children even nowadays, when so much more is done to make them clever and wise than was the case when I was a little girl; and the feeling that your parents and grandparents had their childish sorrows and joys, and hopes and fears and wonders, just as you have, is always a good and wholesome feeling to foster on both your side and theirs.
Our home was in a small town in rather an out-of-the-way part of the country. It is out of the way still, I believe, as the railways have not gone very near it, but I know little about it now. It is many years since I was last there, and I do not think I wish ever to see it again.
I would rather keep my memory"s picture of it unchanged.
Our house stood at the outskirts of the little town; in front of it there stretched a wide heathery common, which extended a mile or two into the country; and over this common, at certain seasons, the west wind blew so strongly that it was, we used to say, really like living at the seaside. The sea was only six or eight miles away; sometimes we fancied the wind "tasted salt."
The house itself was comfortable and old-fashioned, and had plenty of rooms in it, which you will allow to have been necessary when I tell you that I was the youngest of nine children, most, or at least many, of whom had been brought up at home. My eldest sister was married--she had always been married, I thought, for I could not remember her anything else. My other three sisters were all more or less grown up, and the only brother at all near my own age was away at a boarding-school. So it came to pa.s.s that, though I had so many brothers and sisters, I was rather a solitary little girl.
But I was not an unhappy child by any means. I had everything I wanted, even down to a tiny little bedroom all to myself; and though I was not perhaps indulged as much as some children I see nowadays, I don"t think I was on that account to be pitied. My parents were quiet, and perhaps rather unusually undemonstrative; and indeed it was not then the fashion to be very familiar with one"s father and mother. We always said "sir"
and "ma"am" to them, and I never thought of entering or leaving the drawing-room without stopping to curtsey at the door. How would you like that, children? My father was very particular about such matters, more so than most, perhaps, from having been many years in the army, where, I once overheard an old brother-officer say, he had been considered rather a "martinet," if you know what that means; and my dear mother, who by herself, perhaps, would have been almost too gentle to keep all her family in good order, was firm as a rock where any wish of _his_ was concerned.
Till I was nearly nine years old I was exceedingly fond of dolls, of which I had several of different degrees of ugliness. But about that age I was taken away for a few weeks to visit an aunt of my mother"s at the seaside, and as we travelled all the way there and back in the coach, our luggage had to be much less in quant.i.ty than can now be comfortably stowed away in the van of an express train. And "Lois must leave her dolls at home" was the decision of my sixteen-year old sister Emilia, who, with my mother and myself, was to make the journey.
At first I was greatly distressed, though, being a very quiet and uncomplaining child, I said little.
"Mayn"t I take one?" I said humbly to my mother. "Miss Trotter or Lady Mirabelle would take up so little room; or might I carry one in my arms?"
Emilia, my sister, was desired to look over the dolls and report on them. She did so, but, alas! most unfavourably.
"They are such disreputable-looking things," she said half-laughingly to my mother, "I should really be ashamed for my aunt to see them. She likes everything so neat, you know. And mother, Lois is really growing a great girl--don"t you think it is a good time to break her of dolls?"
So my dolls were left behind. I don"t think I grieved _very_ much over them. The excitement of the journey and the being considered a great girl by Emilia went far to console me. Besides, I had been beginning to find such big dolls rather inconvenient, as I did not care to play with them in the common way merely. My great pleasure was in making them act the different characters in some romance of my own concoction, and I found smaller _dramatis personae_ more easily managed. Of late I had even tried to cut out figures in paper for this purpose, but I could not make them anything but grotesque and ugly, and had for some time past been "casting about" in my mind as to some less objectionable puppets.
How well I remember the first night at Sandilands! The journey I have somehow almost forgotten. I suppose it was in no way very remarkable, and it is not unlikely that I fell asleep in the coach, and that this had to do with what followed.
My great-aunt was a tiny little old lady, so tiny that small as I was myself she made me feel clumsy. Her house, too, was in proportion to herself. She received us with the greatest affection, but was so nervously anxious to make us comfortable that I could not but feel strange and shyer than usual. Notwithstanding my mother"s encouraging whispers and Emilia"s tugs and nods, I showed myself to sad disadvantage, which was especially unfortunate, as I was Aunt Lois"s G.o.d-daughter, and had been brought to see her on purpose to please her.
I spilt my tea, I trod on the cat"s tail, I knocked over a valuable Indian jar filled with pot-pourri, which fortunately, however, was not broken, till at last, in despair, my mother agreed to Emilia"s repeated suggestion that I had better go to bed.
And to bed I went, in considerable distress, though a little consoled by the kind way in which my aunt kissed me and patted me on the back as she said good-night.
I was to sleep in a small room, generally used as a sort of study. My aunt had thoughtfully arranged a little bed in it for me, thinking the only other unused bedroom, which was up at the top of the house, would be so far away from my mother and Emilia that I should feel lonely. I went to bed quietly, and, notwithstanding the strangeness of everything about me, soon fell asleep. But an hour or two later, just when my mother and aunt were sitting comfortably chatting, and Emilia trying over some old songs on the thin-toned piano, they and the two maid-servants in the kitchen were suddenly startled by piercing screams from my room.
Upstairs they all ran--Emilia arriving the first.
"What is the matter, Lois?" she exclaimed. "Have you set yourself on fire?"
I was sitting up in bed, my eyes almost starting out of my head with fright.
"The faces, the faces!" I cried. "See, Emilia, up there!"
It was a minute or two before she could see what I meant, and by that time my mother and aunt and the servants were all in the room. Emilia would have scolded me, but Aunt Lois hurried forward and soothed me, oh, so kindly, while she explained that what in my half-awakened state I had taken for two faces were nothing but two Dutch china vases, standing on the top of a high old-fashioned cabinet in a corner of the room. The door having been left slightly ajar, a ray of light from the lamp on the landing had penetrated into the room, just catching the cabinet, while leaving everything else in darkness.