Archie shrugged his shoulders at this: he had never quite recognized his blessings in this respect. Isabel and Dottie might be tolerated, but he could easily have dispensed with Susie and Laura and Clara; he had a knack of forgetting their existence when he was absent from them, and when he was at home he did not always care to be reminded of their presence. He was one of those men who are very exacting to their women-kind, who resent it as a personal injury if they fail in good looks or are not pleasant to the eye. He did not go so far as to say to himself that he could dispense with poor Mattie too, but he certainly acted on most occasions as though he thought so.
"Are you not fond of all your sisters?" asked Phillis, rather maliciously, for she had remarked the shrug.
"Oh, as to that," replied the young man, coloring a little, "one cannot expect to be interested in a lot of school-girls. I am afraid I know very little about the four youngest, except that they are working Grace to death. Just fancy, Miss Challoner!" he continued, addressing Nan, and quite disregarding Phillis"s sympathetic looks. "Grace has actually no life of her own at all; she teaches those girls, sits with them, walks with them, helps them mend their clothes, just like a daily or rather a nursery governess, except that she is not paid, and has no holidays. I cannot think how my mother can find it in her heart to work her so hard!" finished Archie, excited to wrath at the remembrance of Grace"s wrongs.
"Well, do you know," returned Nan, thoughtfully, as he seemed to expect an answer to this, and Phillis for a wonder was silent, "I cannot think your sister an object of pity. Think what a good and useful life she is leading! She must be a perfect treasure to her mother; and I dare say they all love her dearly."
"The girls do," was the somewhat grudging response: "they follow her about like four shadows, and even Isabel can do nothing without her advice. When I am at home I can scarcely get her for a moment to myself; it is "Grace, come here," and "Grace, please do this for me,"
until I wonder she is not worn out."
"Oh, how happy she must be!" responded Nan, softly, for to her no lot seemed sweeter than this. To be the centre and support of a large family circle,--the friend and trusted confidante of each! What a wonderful creature this Grace must be! and how could he speak of her in that pitying tone? "No life of her own!" Well, what life could she want better than this? To be the guide and teacher of her younger sisters, and to be loved by them so dearly! "Oh, I think she is to be envied! her life must be so full of interest," she said, addressing the astonished Archie, who had certainly never taken this view of it.
And when she had said this, she gave a slight signal to her sisters, which they understood at once; and then they paced slowly down the beach, with their faces towards the town, talking as they went.
They did not walk four abreast, as they used to do in the Oldfield lanes; but Nan led the way with Mr. Drummond, and Phillis and Dulce dropped behind.
Archie was a little silent; but presently he said, quite frankly, as though he had known her for years,--but from the first moment he had felt strangely at home with these girls,--
"Do you know, you have thrown a fresh light on a vexed subject? I have been worrying myself dreadfully about Grace. I wanted her to live with me because there was more sympathy between us than there ever will be between my sister Mattie and myself. We have more in common, and think the same on so many subjects; and I knew how happy I could have made her."
"Yes, I see," returned Nan; and she looked up at him in such an interested way that he found no difficulty in going on:
"We had planned for years to live together; but when I accepted the living, and the question was mooted in the family council, my mother would not hear of it for a moment. She said Grace could not possibly be spared."
"Well, I suppose not, after what you have told me. But it must have been a great disappointment to you both," was Nan"s judicious reply.
"I have never ceased to regret my mother"s decision," he returned, warmly; "and as for Grace, I fear she has taken the disappointment grievously to heart."
"Oh, I hope not!"
"Isabel writes to my sister Mattie that Grace is looking thin and pale and has lost her appet.i.te, and she thinks the mother is getting uneasy about her; and I cannot help worrying myself about it, and thinking how all this might have been averted."
"I think you are wrong in that," was the unexpected answer. "When one has acted rightly to the very best of one"s power, it is of no use worrying about consequences."
"How do you mean?" asked Archie, very much surprised at the decided tone in which Nan spoke. He had thought her too soft in manners to possess much energy and determination of character; but he was mistaken.
"It would be far worse if your sister had not recognized her duty and refused to remain at home. One cannot find happiness if one moves out of one"s allotted niche; but of course you know all this better than I, being a clergyman. And, oh! how beautifully you spoke to us last Sunday!" finished Nan, remembering all at once that she was usurping his place and preaching a little sermon of her own.
"Never mind that," he replied, impatiently: "tell me what you mean.
There is something behind your speech: you think I am wrong in pitying poor Grace so much?"
"If you ask me so plainly, I must say yes, though perhaps I am not competent to judge; but, from what you tell me, I think you ought not to pity her at all. She is fulfilling her destiny. Is she not doing the work given her to do? and what can any girl want more? You should trust your mother, I think, Mr. Drummond; for she would not willingly overwork her. Mothers are mothers: you need not be afraid," said Nan, looking up in her clear honest way.
"Thank you; you have taken a weight off my mind," returned Archie, more moved by this than he cared to own. That last speech had gone home: he must trust his mother. In a moment scales seemed to fall from the young man"s eyes as he walked along gravely, and silently by Nan.
"Why, what manner of girls could these be?" he thought; "frolicsome as kittens, and yet possessing the wisdom of mature womanhood?" And those few simple words of Nan abided long with him.
What if he and Grace were making a mistake, and there was no hardship in her case at all, but only clear duty, and a most high privilege, as Nan hinted? What if his mother were right, and only they were wrong?
The idea was salutary, but hardly pleasant; for he had certainly aided and abetted Grace in her discontent, and had doubtless increased her repinings at her dull surroundings. Surely Grace"s talents had been given her for a purpose; else why was she so much cleverer than the others,--so gifted with womanly accomplishments? And that clear head of hers,--she had a genius for teaching, he had never denied that. Was his mother, a sensible large-sighted woman in her way, to be secretly condemned as a tyrant, and wanting in maternal tenderness for Grace, because she had made use of this gifted daughter for the good of her other children, and had refused to part with her at Archie"s request?
Archie began to feel uncomfortable, for conscience was waxing warm within him; and there had been a grieved hurt tone in his mother"s letters of late, as though she had felt herself neglected by him.
"Mothers are mothers: you need not be afraid," Nan had said, with simple wholesome faith in the instincts of motherhood; and the words had come home to him with the strongest power.
His poor hara.s.sed mother,--what a hard life hers had been! Archie began to feel his heart quite tender towards her; perhaps she was a little severe and exacting with the girls, but they none of them understood her in the least, "for her bark was always worse than her bite," thought Archie; and girls, at least the generality of them, are sometimes aggravating.
He thought of the weary times she must have had with his father,--for Mr. Drummond could make himself disagreeable to his wife when things went wrong with him, and the sullen fort.i.tude with which he bore his reversal of fortune gave small opening to her tenderness; the very way in which he shirked all domestic responsibilities, leaving on her shoulders the whole weight of the domestic machinery and all the home-management, had hardened and embittered her.
A large family and small means, little support from her husband,--who interfered less and less with domestic matters,--all this had no doubt fostered the arbitrary will that governed the Drummond household. If her husband had only kept her in check,--if he had supported her authority, and not left her to stand alone,--she would have been, not a better woman, for Archie knew his mother was good, but she would have been softer and more lovable, and her children would have seen deeper into her heart.
Some such thoughts as these pa.s.sed through Archie"s mind as he walked beside Nan; but he worked them out more carefully when he was alone that night. Just before they reached the Friary, he had started another subject; for, turning to Phillis and Dulce, whom he had hitherto ignored, he asked them whether he might enroll one or all of them among his Sunday-school teachers.
Phillis"s eyes sparkled at this.
"Oh, Nan, how delightful! it will remind us of Oldfield."
"Yes, indeed:" chimed in Dulce, who had left her infant-cla.s.s with regret; but, to their surprise, Nan demurred.
"At Oldfield things were very different," she said, decidedly: "we played all the week, and it was no hardship to teach the dear children on Sunday; but now we shall have to work so hard that we shall be glad of one day"s rest."
"But surely you might spare us one hour or two in the afternoon?"
returned Archie, putting on what Grace called "his clerical face."
"In the afternoons mother will be glad of our company, and sometimes we shall indulge in a walk. No, Mr. Drummond, our week-days are too full of work, and we shall need all the rest we can get on Sunday."
And, with a smile, Nan dismissed the subject.
Phillis spoke regretfully of it when he had left them.
"It would have been so nice," she pleaded; but Nan was inexorable.
"You can go if you like, Phil; but I think mother is ent.i.tled to that one afternoon in the week, and I will not consent to any parish work on that account; and then I am sure we shall often be so tired." And Nan"s good sense, as usual, carried the day.
After that they all grouped round the window in the little parlor, and repeated to their mother every word of their conversation with Mr.
Drummond.
Mrs. Challoner grew alarmed and tearful in a moment.
"Oh, my darlings, promise me to be more careful for the future!" she pleaded. "Of course it was only fun, Phillis and he will not think anything of it. Still, in a strange place, where no one knows you----"
"Dulce and I will never run a race again, I think I can promise you that," replied Phillis, very grimly, who felt that "Bravo, Atalanta!"
would haunt her in her dreams.
"And--and I would not walk about with Mr. Drummond, though he is our clergyman and a very gentlemanly person. People might talk: and in your position, my poor dears"--Mrs. Challoner hesitated, for she was very nice in her scruples, and not for worlds would she have hinted to her daughters that Mr. Drummond was young and unmarried, and a very handsome man in the bargain: "You see, I cannot always be with you, and, as you have to work for your living, and cannot be guarded like other girls, you have all the more need to be circ.u.mspect. You don"t think me over strict, do you, darlings?"
"No, dear mother, you are perfectly right," returned Nan, kissing her.
"I knew how you would feel, and so we came home directly to get rid of him: it would never do for the vicar of the parish to be seen walking about with dressmakers."
"Don"t, Nan!" exclaimed Phillis, with a shudder. Nevertheless, as she turned away she remembered how she had enjoyed that walk down the Braidwood Road that very morning, when he offered to carry home Mrs.
Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs"s dress and she would not let him.