The Old Pincushion; or, Aunt Clotilda's Guests
CHAPTER I.
THE LETTER WITH BAD NEWS
No, Kathie, I don't believe you care one bit; I really don't,' said Neville reproachfully.
Kathie was seated as she loved to be – on the edge of a rather high table. Her skirts were short and her legs were long; from her present elevation she could swing the latter about delightfully. She gave them an extra energetic fling before she replied to her brother, and then, trying her best to look concerned and distressed, and only succeeding in giving to her funny little face an expression of comical demureness, she turned to Neville, —
'I do care. You haven't any right to say I don't. If I didn't care for myself, I'd care because you do, and because they do. I'm not a – a – unnatural monster. I'd cry if it was my way, but you know it isn't; and a good thing too. A nice life I'd have had here,' with great contempt, 'if I'd been a crying child like little Philippa Harley. She's tired everybody out. But what's more, I do care for myself too. I've been looking forward to them coming home, and nice proper holidays, like other children. Yes, indeed, I should just think I had.'
'Holidays only!' Neville repeated. 'It would have been much better than holidays – for you, any way. They wouldn't have left you here. I'd have stayed at school, I suppose – boys must; but I don't mind school. I'd like it very well if I had a home besides.'
Kathie did not seem to have noticed his last words. A new expression had come into her face, as she repeated softly to herself, 'They wouldn't have left me here. I never thought of that.'
'You'll begin to care really now, I suppose,' said her brother, rather bitterly. 'I didn't think you were so selfish.'
The little girl faced about at that.
'I'm not selfish – at least, if selfish means only caring about oneself and not about other people. I don't pretend not to care about myself too. I'm one of the people in the world as well as being myself. I should care for myself. But I care for others too. I'm sorry for you, and for them, though not as sorry as for you, because I know you and I don't know them. That's natural. I can't pretend to care for them the same as if I knew them. People who want their children to care a lot for them shouldn't leave them when they're too little to remember, and never see them again for years and years.'
'It isn't much "shouldn't" about it,' the boy replied. 'It's nothing but "can't." Papa and mamma would be only too glad to come home if they could. I'm sure you might know that, Kathie.'
'Well, I've been looking forward to their coming as well as you,' said Kathie, rather grumpily. 'I'm sure I've thought about it ever since last year, when mamma wrote they'd be sure to come before this next summer. I don't see but what if that hor – ' she stopped; 'if that old aunt wouldn't leave papa anything else, she might at least have left him money enough to come home on a visit, as she had promised to pay it.'
'Kathie,' said Neville, in a rather awe-struck tone, 'you shouldn't speak that way when she is dead.'
'I don't see any harm in it,' the little girl replied, undauntedly. 'She should have settled things properly, and then we could have felt nicely sorry about her. I don't understand you, Neville – I don't think you're fair to me. First you scold me for not being sorry and not caring, and then when you've regularly worked me up, you turn upon me for saying what I feel.'
Neville looked rather at a loss.
'I don't mean to do that,' he said. 'I suppose the truth is, I'm so dreadfully disappointed that I don't know what to say. But I must be going, Kathie. I suppose you don't want me to leave you the letter?' and as he spoke he half held out to her an envelope he held in his hand.
Kathie shook her head.
'No, you'd better keep it. You'll answer it at once, I suppose. I shouldn't know what to say. You tell them from me that I'm awfully sorry, and I'll write next week.'
'And,' Neville went on, 'about writing to Aunt Clotilda? Can't you write to her, Kathie? Mamma says one of us should.'
'Well, you'd do it far better than I. I shouldn't like to send it without you seeing it first, any way. I don't feel inclined to write to her – I think she's been very stupid – she might have managed better if she really cares for them as she makes out.'
'Kathie!' said Neville – this time with real displeasure in his tone, 'I do think that's too bad of you. Poor Aunt Clotilda! You see, papa says she is almost the most to be pitied of anybody. And there's another thing, Kathie: I don't think it's right of you always to speak of papa and mamma as "they" or "them." It's not – not respectful; not as if you cared for them.'
'Oh, bother!' said Kathie; 'if you're going to begin again about my not caring, Neville, I just wish you'd go. I'm tired of explaining to you, and – there; I must go. Miss Eccles is sending for me;' and as the footsteps her quick ears had heard coming along the passage stopped at the door, Kathleen slid down from the table, and stood erect and demure, as a girl of seventeen or so, with a sharp, dark face looked in.
'Miss Powys,' she said, 'it is time to get ready for dinner. You must be up-stairs in five minutes;' and so saying, disappeared.
'Good-bye, Kathie,' said Neville, as he kissed her. 'It was kind of Mr. Fanshaw to let me come, wasn't it? And – oh! I forgot – Mrs. Fanshaw's going to write to Miss Eccles to ask if you may spend next Wednesday with us – all day: that's to say, to come to dinner and stay till the evening. I'm to fetch you walking, and bring you back in a hansom.'
'That will be splucious!' said Kathie, her eyes sparkling. 'Oh! I say, I do hope old Eccles will let me go.'
A slight look of annoyance crossed the boy's face. He disliked to hear his little sister talking slang, or any approach to it.
'Old Eccles!' he repeated. 'I wish you wouldn't say that, Kathie. "Splucious" I don't mind – it was our own nursery word.'
'Neville, you are a prig!' said Kathie. 'However, I'll forgive you in return for the good news. Good-bye till Wednesday, and do thank them awfully. I do wish old Eccles was like them.'
And already, in the prospect of the immediate pleasure, more than half forgetting the important bad news which her brother had come to tell her, Kathleen flew along the passage, and up-stairs two steps at a time, by way of working off some of her excitement.
She was only twelve years old, though, to judge by her height, she might have been older. But she had the thin, lanky look of a fast-growing child; there was nothing the least precocious about her.
'She is such a baby still,' thought Neville, as he made his way soberly along the street. 'I suppose she can't help it,' he went on, with a vague idea of excusing her to himself for he scarcely knew what. 'But I do wish, oh! how I do wish they were coming home! Five years more, papa says; five years more it will be. It won't matter for me so much. I've been so fortunate in being with the Fanshaws; and any way, I'd have had to be going to a big school by now. But for Kathie, she'll be seventeen, and she won't have been with mamma for eleven years. It doesn't seem right, somehow. And just now, when everything might have been easy. Oh dear! I wonder why things go wrong when they might just as well go right!'
Neville Powys was only thirteen and a half, barely eighteen months older than Kathleen. But in mind and temperament he was twice her age. And he seemed to himself to have grown years older since that very same morning when the Indian mail had brought the letter which had been the reason of his visit to his sister.
It had been a terrible disappointment to him, and he had hoped for thorough sympathy from Kathie. Yet again, perhaps it was well that she had not taken it to heart so acutely as he. She was less happily placed under Miss Eccles' trustworthy, but cold and unloving care, than he in the Fanshaw family. And had she been of a more sensitive or less buoyant nature, she might have been in some ways dwarfed and crushed painfully. But she was strong and elastic; so far, her six years of stiff and prim school life had done her no harm beyond leaving her, in several ways, as much of a 'baby' as when they had first begun. Still, Neville's instinct that it was more than time that Kathie should be in other hands, that the 'womanliness' in her would suffer unless there were some change,