"Dear me!" said Lady Myrtle, "she must be a very busy person."
"Yes," said Jacinth, "she is. She is very, _very_ useful, I know. And one couldn"t have expected her to give up all the things she"d been at so many years, all of a sudden, when we came. We don"t mind, except that it seems a little lonely sometimes; but--I don"t think Aunt Alison cares much for children or girls like us. She says she"s got out of the way of it. But she"s quite kind."
"You have a governess, I suppose?" asked Lady Myrtle.
"No," said Jacinth, "we go every day but Sat.u.r.day to Miss Scarlett"s school."
She coloured a little as she said it, for she had an instinct that "school" for girls was hardly one of the things that her hostess had been accustomed to in _her_ youth, and notwithstanding Jacinth"s decision of character, she was apt to be much influenced by the opinions and even prejudices of those about her. But still she knew that Miss Scarlett"s was really a somewhat exceptional school.
"To Miss Scarlett"s," repeated Lady Myrtle. "I have heard of it. I believe it is very nice, but still--I prefer home education. But perhaps I should not say so. No doubt your parents and guardians have acted for the best. I should like you to tell Miss Alison Mildmay all I have asked you, and I will write to her. And in the meantime, that she may not think me too eccentric an old woman, pray tell her that I was--that your own grandmother--I like you to call her that--Lady Jacinth Moreland, afterwards Lady Jacinth Denison, and I, were the--yes, the very dearest of friends when we were young. It is possible that Miss Alison Mildmay may have heard my name from your mother. I think your mother--what is her name--"Eugenia," oh yes, I remember--I think your mother must have heard of me even in her childhood. My unmarried name was Harper, "Myrtle Harper;" your grandmother and I first took to each other, I think, because we had such uncommon names."
"Harper!" exclaimed Frances eagerly, "there are some--what is it, Jacinth?--I mean Bessie and Margar"----
"We must go," said Jacinth, getting up, as she spoke. "Frances, will you call Eugene? and"--turning to her hostess, "thank you _very_ much for being so kind. And oh, if you will ask Aunt Alison to let us come again, it would be such a pleasure."
She raised her beautiful eyes to Lady Myrtle"s face. A mist came over the keen bright old pair gazing at her in return. Partly perhaps to conceal this sudden emotion, Lady Myrtle stooped--for, tall though Jacinth was for her age, she was shorter than her grandmother"s old friend--and kissed the soft up-turned cheek. "My dear, you are _so_ like her--my Jacinth, sometimes," she murmured, "that it is almost too much for me."
Then a practical thought struck her.
"You have not told me your address at Thetford," she said. "I had better have it, though no doubt Miss Alison Mildmay is well known in the place."
Jacinth gave it.
"Number 9, Market Square Place," she said.
"Oh, I know where it is--a row of rather nice quaint old houses. Still, you must feel rather cooped up there sometimes, after Stannesley; was not that the Denisons" place? I was there once."
"We miss the grounds, and--yes, we miss a good many things," said Jacinth simply.
"Then I hope that Robin Redbreast will make up to you for some of them,"
said Lady Myrtle. "You know the name of my funny old house, I daresay?"
"Oh yes," said Francis, who had just rejoined them with Eugene and Phebe, "we heard it the very first day. And we"ve always thought it lovely--both the house and the name. And we always pa.s.s by this way when we can, because of the gates. We call them "Uncle Marmy"s gates," for it was here we said good-bye to him--good-bye _properly_, I mean."
"Kissing, and trying not to cry," added Eugene, by way of explanation.
Lady Myrtle seemed a little startled.
"Uncle Marmy!" she repeated, "that was your grandfather"s name. I thought your mother was an only child."
"Yes," said Jacinth, "Uncle Marmaduke is not our real--not our full uncle. He is mamma"s half-brother only."
"Oh," exclaimed the old lady, "now I understand."
"But we love him just as much--_quite_ as much as if he was our whole uncle," said Frances, eagerly. "He"s perfectly--oh, he"s as nice as he can _possibly_ be."
Lady Myrtle smiled, and gave a little pat to Frances"s shining tangle of curly hair.
"Good-bye then, my dears, for to-day," she said.
But she stood at the gate looking after them till they reached the corner of the lane, when some happy impulse made Jacinth--undemonstrative Jacinth--turn round and kiss her hand to the solitary old figure.
"She"s like a sort of a grandmother to us," said Eugene. "What a good thing," with extreme self-complacency, "I made you go in!--what a good thing I was"--after a great effort--"wursty!"
But Jacinth"s face was slightly clouded. She drew Frances a little apart from the others.
"Frances," she said severely, "you must have more sense. How could you begin about those girls at school?" Lady Myrtle, if she does notice us, won"t want to hear all the chatter and gossip of Miss Scarlett"s. And it"s such a common sort of thing, the moment you hear a name, to start up and say "Oh, _I_ know somebody called that," and then go on about your somebodies that no one wants to hear anything of."
Frances looked rather ashamed. She was barely two years younger than her sister, but on almost every subject--on questions of good manners and propriety above all--Jacinth"s verdict was always accepted by her as infallible, though whence Jacinth had derived her knowledge on such points it would have been difficult to say. No one could have been less a woman of the world than the late Mrs Denison; indeed, the much misused but really sweet old word "homely" might have been applied to her in its conventional sense without unkindly severity. And no life could have been simpler, though from that very fact not without a certain dignity of its own, than the family life at Stannesley, which was in reality the only training these girls had ever known.
"I"m very sorry, Ja.s.s," said the younger sister, penitently. "It was only--it did seem funny that her name was Harper, when I am so fond of Bessie and Marg"----
"I"m getting tired of your always talking of them," said Jacinth. "I daresay they"re nice enough"----
"And they"re _quite_ ladies," interposed Frances, "though they are so very poor."
"I wouldn"t look down on them for _that_; I should think you might know me better," said Jacinth. "We"re not at all rich ourselves, though I suppose papa and mamma seem so in India with all the parties and things they"re obliged to have. And I never said the girls weren"t "quite ladies," as you say. But I know how it will end: in a little while you won"t like Bessie and Margaret any better than Prissy Beckingham. You fly at people so at first."
"I don"t think it will be that way this time," said Frances in a tone of quiet conviction. "There"s something _different_ about the Harpers."
"It isn"t a very uncommon name," said Jacinth. "There are all sorts of Harpers. Why, at Stannesley, the village schoolmaster"s wife was called Harper before she married, I remember. And then Lord Elvedon"s family name is Harper."
They had drawn nearer to the other two by this time, and Phebe overheard the last words.
"If you please, Miss Jacinth, that is Lady Myrtle"s family. Her father was Lord Elvedon, two or three back, and the Lord Elvedon now is a nephew or a cousin"s son to her, though they never come near the place; it"s been let ever since I can remember."
"I wonder if she was brought up at Elvedon," said Frances. "It must seem rather sad to her, if she was there when she was a little girl, to have no one belonging to her there now."
Altogether the adventure--and a real adventure it was--gave them plenty to think of and to talk about all the way home and after they got there.
Eugene forgot his fatigue, and chattered briskly about the goodness of the little brown cakes, till he got a snub from Jacinth about being so greedy. His appet.i.te, however, did not seem to have suffered, and he was quite ready to do justice to the tea waiting for them at home, though not without some allusions to Lady Myrtle"s delicious cakes, and wishes that Aunt Alison would sometimes give them "a change from bread and b.u.t.ter."
For one of Miss Mildmay"s fixed ideas about children was that they could not be brought up too plainly.
"We do have a change sometimes," said Jacinth. "We always have golden syrup on Sat.u.r.days and jam on Sundays, and you know we"ve had buns two or three times on birthdays."
"Other children have buns and cakes far oftener than us," said Eugene.
"Like we used to at Stannesley."
"It was quite different there," said Jacinth; "a big country-house and baking at home."
"_Everything_ was nice at Stannesley," said Frances with a sigh. "Granny and Uncle Marmy really loved us; that makes the difference."
"Aunt Alison loves us in her way," said Jacinth. "Everybody can"t be the same. I think you"re getting into a very bad habit of grumbling, Frances. And this afternoon you really should be pleased. For I shouldn"t at all wonder if Lady Myrtle often asks us to go to see her, and that would be a treat and a change. But what you say about poor granny and Uncle Marmy reminds me to say something. You really needn"t fly up so on the defensive every time I name them; you did it again to-day, and I"m sure Lady Myrtle must have thought it very queer, just as if I"----
But this second reproof for her behaviour at Robin Redbreast did not find Frances as meek as the former one, which, in deference to Jacinth"s superior knowledge on such subjects, she had felt she perhaps deserved.
"I will "fly up" as you call it," she interrupted angrily, "when you talk in that cold measured way about dear granny and Uncle Marmy, as if you were almost ashamed of them. For one thing I can"t bear you to say "poor" granny; it"s not right. She was a sort of a saint, and I"m quite sure that now she"s"----But here Frances burst into tears.