“Then we will go the first fine day papa does not want me.”
“I wonder if I could finish my purple frocks. But here’s the tea. Now, Richard, don’t tell me to make it. I should do something wrong, and Flora will never forgive you.”
Richard would not let her off. He stood over her, counted her shovelfuls of tea, and watched the water into the teapot—he superintended her warming the cups, and putting a drop into each saucer. “Ah!” said Ethel, with a concluding sigh, “it makes one hotter than double equations!”
It was all right, as Flora allowed with a slightly superior smile. She thought Richard would never succeed in making a notable or elegant woman of Ethel, and it was best that the two sisters should take different lines. Flora knew that, though clever and with more accomplishments, she could not surpass Ethel in intellectual attainments, but she was certainly far more valuable in the house, and had been proved to have just the qualities in which her sister was most deficient. She did not relish hearing that Ethel wanted nothing but attention to be more than her equal, and she thought Richard mistaken. Flora’s remembrance of their time of distress was less unmixedly wretched than it was with the others, for she knew she had done wonders.
The next day Norman told Ethel that he had got on very well with the verses, and finished them off late at night. He showed them to her before taking them to school on Monday morning, and Ethel thought they were the best he had ever written. There was too much spirit and poetical beauty for a mere schoolboy task, and she begged for the foul copy to show it to her father. “I have not got it,” said Norman. “The foul copy was not like these; but when I was writing them out quite late, it was all I don’t know how. Flora’s music was in my ears, and the room seemed to get larger, and like an ocean cave; and when the candle flickered, ’twas like the green glowing light of the sun through the waves.”
“As it says here,” said Ethel.
“And the words all came to me of themselves in beautiful flowing Latin, just right, as if it was anybody but myself doing it, and they ran off my pen in red and blue and gold, and all sorts of colours; and fine branching zig-zagging stars, like what the book described, only stranger, came dancing and radiating round my pen and the candle. I could hardly believe the verses would scan by daylight, but I can’t find a mistake. Do you try them again.”
Ethel scanned. “I see nothing wrong,” she said, “but it seems a shame to begin scanning Undine’s verses, they are too pretty. I wish I could copy them. It must have been half a dream.”
“I believe it was; they don’t seem like my own.”
“Did you dream afterwards?”
He shivered. “They had got into my head too much; my ears sang like the roaring of the sea, and I thought my feet were frozen on to an iceberg: then came darkness, and sea monsters, and drowning—it was too horrid!” and his face expressed all, and more than all, he said. “But ’tis a quarter to seven—we must go,” said he, with a long yawn, and rubbing his eyes. “You are sure they are right, Ethel? Harry, come along.”
Ethel thought those verses ought to make a sensation, but all that came of them was a Quam optime, and when she asked Norman if no special notice had been taken of them, he said, in his languid way, “No; only Dr. Hoxton said they were better than usual.”
Ethel did not even have the satisfaction of hearing that Mr. Wilmot, happening to meet Dr. May, said to him, “Your boy has more of a poet in him than any that has come in my way. He really sometimes makes very striking verses.”
Richard watched for an opportunity of speaking to Harry, which did not at once occur, as the boy spent very little of his time at home, and, as if by tacit consent, he and Norman came in later every evening. At last, on Thursday, in the additional two hours’ leisure allowed to the boys, when the studious prepared their tasks, and the idle had some special diversion, Richard encountered him running up to his own room to fetch a newly-invented instrument for projecting stones.
“I’ll walk back to school with you,” said Richard. “I mean to run,” returned Harry.
“Is there so much hurry?” said Richard. “I am sorry for it, for I wanted to speak to you, Harry; I have something to show you.”
His manner conveyed that it related to their mother, and the sobering effect was instantaneous. “Very well,” said he, forgetting his haste. “I’ll come into your room.”
The awe-struck, shy, yet sorrowful look on his rosy face showed preparation enough, and Richard’s only preface was to say, “It is a bit of a letter that she was in course of writing to Aunt Flora, a description of us all. The letter itself is gone, but here is a copy of it. I thought you would like to read what relates to yourself.”
Richard laid before him the sheet of notepaper on which this portion of the letter was written, and left him alone with it, while he set out on the promised walk with Ethel.
They found the old woman, Granny Hall, looking like another creature, smoke-dried and withered indeed, but all briskness and animation.
“Well! be it you, sir, and the young lady?”
“Yes; here we are come to see you again,” said Richard. “I hope you are not disappointed that I’ve brought my sister this time instead of the doctor.”
“No, no, sir; I’ve done with the doctor for this while,” said the old woman, to Ethel’s great amusement. “He have done me a power of good, and thank him for it heartily; but the young lady is right welcome here—but ’tis a dirty walk for her.”
“Never mind that,” said Ethel, a little shyly, “I came—where are your grandchildren?”
“Oh, somewhere out among the blocks. They gets out with the other children; I can’t be always after them.”
“I wanted to know if these would fit them,” said Ethel, beginning to undo her basket.
“Well, ’pon my word! If ever I see! Here!” stepping out to the door, “Polly—Jenny! come in, I say, this moment! Come in, ye bad girls, or I’ll give you the stick; I’ll break every bone of you, that I will!” all which threats were bawled out in such a good-natured, triumphant voice, and with such a delighted air, that Richard and Ethel could not help laughing.
After a few moments, Polly and Jenny made their appearance, extremely rough and ragged, but compelled by their grandmother to duck down, by way of courtesies, and, with finger in mouth, they stood, too shy to show their delight, as the garments were unfolded; Granny talking so fast that Ethel would never have brought in the stipulation, that the frocks should be worn to school and church, if Richard, in his mild, but steady way, had not brought the old woman to listen to it. She was full of asseverations that they should go; she took them to church sometimes herself, when it was fine weather and they had clothes, and they could say their catechiz as well as anybody already; yes, they should come, that they should, and next Sunday. Ethel promised to be there to introduce them to the chief lady, the president of the Committee, Mrs. Ledwich, and, with a profusion of thanks, they took leave.
They found John Taylor, just come out of the hospital, looking weak and ill, as he smoked his pipe over the fire, his wife bustling about at a great rate, and one of the infants crying. It seemed to be a great relief that they were not come to complain of Lucy, and there were many looks of surprise on hearing what their business really was. Mrs. Taylor thanked them, and appeared not to know whether she was glad or sorry; and her husband, pipe in hand, gazed at the young gentleman as if he did not comprehend the species, since he could not be old enough to be a clergyman.
Richard hoped they would find sponsors by that time; and there Mrs. Taylor gave little hope; it was a bad lot—there was no one she liked to ask to stand, she said, in a dismal voice; but there her husband put in, “I’ll find some one if that’s all; my missus always thinks nobody can’t do nothing.”
“To