"I should think it the most delightful thing!" cried Anne.
"You two are instances of the way in which people wish for the advantages they have not, and undervalue those they have," said Lady Merton, smiling.
"Advantages!" repeated Helen.
"Why, do not you think it an advantage to have sisters?" said Anne; "I wish you would give some of them to me if you do not."
"Indeed," said Helen warmly, "I do value my sisters very much; I am sure I am very fond of them."
"As long as they give you no trouble," said Lady Merton.
"Well," said Helen, "I see you may well think me a very poor selfish creature, but I really do mean to try to improve. I will offer to undertake Dora"s music; Lizzie does not understand that, and it is often troublesome to Mamma to find time to hear her practise, and I think I should pay more attention to it than Kate does sometimes. I think Dora will play very well, and I should like her to play duets with me."
"I am glad you can endure one of your sisters," said Anne, laughing rather maliciously.
"Pray say no more of that, Anne," said Helen; "it was only my foolish indolence that made me make such a speech."
As Helen finished speaking, Elizabeth came into the room, looking rather weary, but very blithe. "I have been having a most delightful talk about the Consecration with the girls," said she, "hearing what they saw, and what they thought of it. Mary Watson took her master"s children up the hill to see the church-yard consecrated, and the eldest little boy--that fine black-eyed fellow, you know, Helen--said he never could play at ball there again, now the Bishop had read the prayers there. I do really hope that girl will be of great use to those little things; her mistress says no girl ever kept them in such good order before."
"I was going to compliment you on the good behaviour of your children at St. Austin"s, Lizzie," said Lady Merton; "I thought I never saw a more well conducted party."
"Ah! some of our best children are gone to St. Austin"s," said Elizabeth; "I quite grudge them to Mr. Somerville; I hate the girls to get out of my sight."
"So do I," said Anne, "I am quite angry when our girls go out to service, they _will_ get such horrid places--public houses, or at best farm houses, where they have a whole train of babies to look after, and never go to church."
"And very few of the most respectable fathers and mothers care where their children go to service," said Elizabeth; "I am sure I often wish the children had no parents."
"In order that they may learn a child"s first duty?" said Lady Merton.
"Well, but is it not vexatious, Aunt Anne," said Elizabeth, "when there is a nice little girl learning very well in school, but forgetting as soon as she is out of it, her mother will not put herself one inch out of the way to keep her there regularly; when the child goes to church continually, the mother never comes at all, or never kneels down when she is there. If you miss her at school on the Sunday morning, her mother has sent her to the shop, and perhaps told her to tell a falsehood about it; if her hand is clammy with lollipops, or there is a perfume of peppermint all round her, or down clatters a halfpenny in the middle of church, it is all her father"s fault."
"Oh! except the clatter, that last disaster never happens with us,"
said Anne; "the shop is not open on Sunday."
"Ah! that is because Uncle Edward is happily the king of the parish,"
said Elizabeth; "it has the proper Church and State government, like Dante"s notion of the Empire. But you cannot help the rest; and we are still worse off, and how can we expect the children to turn out well with such home treatment?"
"No, Lizzie," said Lady Merton; "you must not expect them to turn out well."
"O Mamma! Mamma!" cried Anne.
"What do you teach them for?" exclaimed Helen.
"I see what you mean," said Elizabeth; "we can only cast our bread upon the waters; we must look to the work, and not to the present appearance. But, Aunt Anne, the worst is, if they go wrong, I must be afraid it is my fault; that it is from some slip in my teaching, some want of accordance between my example and my precept, and no one can say that it is not so."
"No one on earth," said her aunt solemnly; "and far better it is for you, that you should teach in fear."
"I sometimes fancy," said Elizabeth, "that the girls would do better if we had the whole government of them, but I know that is but fancy; they are each in the place and among the temptations which will do them most good. But oh! it is a melancholy thing to remember that of the girls whom I myself have watched through the school and out into the world, there are but two on whom I can think with perfect satisfaction."
"Taking a high standard, of course?" said Lady Merton.
"Oh yes, and not reckoning many who I hope will do well, like this one of whom I was talking, but who have had no trial," said Elizabeth; "there are many very good ones now, if they will but keep so. One of these girls that I was telling you of, has shewn that she had right principle and firmness, by her behaviour towards a bad fellow-servant; she is at Miss Maynard"s."
"And where is the other?" asked Anne.
"In her grave," said Elizabeth.
"Ah!" said Helen, "I missed her to-day, in the midst of her little cla.s.s, bending over them as she used to do, and looking in their faces, as if she saw the words come out of their mouths."
"Do you mean the deaf girl with the speaking eyes?" said Anne; "you wrote to tell me you had lost her."
"Yes," said Elizabeth; "she it was whose example shewed me that an infirmity may be a blessing. Her ear was shut to the noises of the world, the strife of tongues, and as her mother said, "she did not know what a bad word was," only it was tuned to holy things. She always knew what was going on in church, and by her eager attention learnt to do everything in school; and when her deafness was increased by her fever, and she could not hear her mother"s and sisters" voices, she could follow the prayers Papa read, the delirium fled away from them.
Oh! it is a blessing and a privilege to have been near such a girl; but then--though the last thing she said was to desire her sisters to be good girls and keep to their church and school--she would have been the same, have had the same mind, without our teaching--our mere school-keeping, I mean. Aunt Anne, you say you have kept school in your village for thirty years; you were just in my situation, the clergyman"s daughter; so do tell me what effect your teaching has had as regards the children of your first set of girls. Are they better managed at home than their mothers?"
"More civilized and better kept at school, otherwise much the same,"
said Lady Merton. "Yes, my experience is much the same as yours; comparatively few of those I have watched from their childhood have done thoroughly well, and their good conduct has been chiefly owing to their parents. Some have improved and returned to do right, perhaps partly in consequence of their early teaching."
"Sad work, sad work, after all!" said Elizabeth, as she left the room to finish hearing the little ones, and release Mrs. Woodbourne.
"And yet," said Helen, as the door closed, "no one is so happy at school as Lizzie, or delights more in the children, or in devising pleasure for them."
"I never shall understand Lizzie," said Anne, with a kind of sigh; "who would have suspected her of such desponding feelings? and I cannot believe it is so bad an affair. How can it be, taking those dear little things fresh from their baptism, training them with holy things almost always before them, their minds not dissipated by all kinds of other learning, like ours."
"I do not know that that is quite the best thing, though in a degree it is unavoidable," said her mother.
"So I was thinking," said Helen; "I think it must make religious knowledge like a mere lesson; I know that is what Lizzie dreads, and they begin the Bible before they can read it well."
"But can it, can it really be so melancholy? will all those bright-faced creatures, who look so earnest and learn so well, will they turn their backs upon all that is right, all they know so well?"
said poor Anne, almost ready to cry. "O Mamma, do not tell me to think so."
"No, no, you need not, my dear," said Lady Merton; "it would be grievous and sinful indeed to say any such things of baptized Christians, trained up by the Church. The more you love them, and the more you hope for them, the better. You will learn how to hope and how to fear as you grow older."
"But I have had as much experience as Lizzie," said Anne; "I am but a month younger, and school has been my Sunday delight ever since I can remember; Mamma, I think the Abbeychurch people must be very bad--you see they keep shop on Sunday; but then you spoke of our own people. It must have been my own careless levity that has prevented me from feeling like Lizzie; but I cannot believe--"
"You have not been the director of the school for the last few years, as Lizzie has," said Lady Merton; "the girls under your own protection are younger, their trial is hardly begun."
"I am afraid I shall be disheartened whenever I think of them," said Anne; "I wish you had not said all this--and yet--perhaps--if disappointment is really to come, I had better be prepared for it."
"Yes, you may find this conversation useful, Anne," said Lady Merton; "if it is only to shew you why I have always tried to teach you self-control in your love of the school."
"I know I want self-control when I let myself be so engrossed in it as to neglect other things," said Anne; "and I hope I do manage now not to shew more favour to the girls I like best, than to the others; but in what other way do you mean, Mamma?"
"I mean that you must learn not to set your heart upon individual girls, or plans which seem satisfactory at first," said Lady Merton; "disappointment will surely be sent in some form or other, to try your faith and love; and if you do not learn to fear now that your hopes are high, you will hardly have spirit enough left to persevere cheerfully when failure has taught you to mistrust yourself."
"I know that I must be disappointed if I build upon schemes or exertions of my own," said Anne; "but I should be very conceited--very presumptuous, I mean--to do so, and I hope I never shall."
"I cannot think how you, or anybody who thinks like you, can ever undertake to keep school," said Helen; "I never saw how awful a thing it is, before; not merely hearing lessons, and punishing naughty children, I am sure I dread it now; I would have nothing to do with it if Papa did not wish it, and so make it my duty."
"n.o.body would teach the children at all if they thought like you, Helen," said Anne; "and then what would become of them?"