“Is Miss Sairah the young lady in the great house?” asked the stranger, looking up.
Mrs. Swayne assented with a little reluctance. “Oh! yes, sure enough; but they ain’t the real old Squires. Not as the old Squires was much to brag of; they was awful poor, and there never was nothing to be made out of them, neither by honest trade-folks nor cottagers, nor nobody; but him as has it now is nothing but a lawyer out of Masterton. He’s made it all, I shouldn’t wonder, by cheating poor folks out of their own; but there he is as grand as a prince, and Miss Sairah dressed up like a little peacock, and her carriage and her riding-horse, and her school, as if she was real old gentry. It was Mr. John as carried your girl indoors that time when she fell; and a rare troublesome one he can be when he gets it in his head, a-calling at my house, and knocking at the knocker when, for any thing he could tell, Swayne might ha’ been in one of his bad turns, or your little maid a-snatching a bit of sleep.”
“But why does he come?” said the lodger, once more looking up; “is it to ask after Mr. Swayne?”
Mr. Swayne’s spouse gave a great many shakes of her head over this question. “To tell you the truth,” she said, “there’s a deal of folks thinks if Swayne hadn’t a good wife behind him as kept all straight, his bad turns would come very different. That’s all as a woman gets for slaving and toiling and understanding the business as well as e’er a man. No; it was not for my husband. I haven’t got nothing to say against Mr. John. He’s not one of the sort as leads poor girls astray and breaks their hearts; but I wouldn’t have him about here, not too often, if I was you. He was a-asking after your girl.”
“Pamela?” said the mother, with surprise and almost amusement in her tone, and she looked back to the sofa where her daughter was lying with a flush too pink and roselike for health upon her cheek. “Poor little thing; it is too early for that—she is only a child.”
“I don’t put no faith in them being only children,” said Mrs. Swayne. “It comes terrible soon, does that sort of thing; and a gentleman has nice ways with him. When she’s once had one of that sort a-running after her, a girl don’t take to an honest man as talks plain and straightforward. That’s my opinion; and, thank Providence, I’ve been in the way of temptation myself, and I know what it all means.”
Mrs. Swayne’s lodger did not seem at all delighted by these commentaries. A little flush of pride or pain came over her colorless cheek; and she kept glancing back at the sofa on which her daughter lay. “My Pamela is a little lady, if ever there was a lady,” she said, in a nervous undertone; but it was evidently a question she did not mean to discuss with her landlady; and thus the conversation came to a pause.
Mrs. Swayne, however, was not easily subdued; and curiosity urged her even beyond her wont. “I think you said as you had friends here?” she said, making a new start.
“No, no friends. We’re alone in the world, she and I,” said the woman, hastily. “We’ve been long away, and every body is dead that ever belonged to us. She hasn’t a soul but me, poor dear, and I’m old. It’s dreadful to be old and have a young child. If I was to die—but we’re not badly off,” she continued, with a faint smile in answer to an alarmed glance all around the room from Mrs. Swayne, “and I’m saving up every penny for her. If I could only see her as well and rosy as she used to be!”
“That will come in time,” said the landlady. “Don’t you be afeard. It’s beautiful air; and what with fresh milk and new-laid eggs, she’ll come round as fast as the grass grows. You’ll see she will—they always does here. Miss Sairah herself was as puny a bit of a child as ever you set eyes on, and she’s a fine tall lass with a color like a rose—I will say that for her—now.”
“And I think you said she was about my child’s age,” said the mother, with a certain wistful glance out of the window. “Perhaps she and my Pamela—But of course a young lady like that has plenty of friends. Pamela will never be tall—she’s done growing. She takes after her father’s side, you see,” the poor woman added, with a sigh, looking round once more to the sofa where her child lay.
“And it ain’t long, perhaps, since you lost your good gentleman?” said Mrs. Swayne, curiosity giving a certain brevity to her speech.
“He was in the army,” said the lodger, passing by the direct question, “and it’s a wandering sort of life. Now I’ve come back, all are gone that ever belonged to me, or so much as knew me. It feels dreary like. I don’t mind for myself, if I could but find some kind friends for my child.”
“Don’t you fret,” said Mrs. Swayne, rising. “She’ll find friends, no fear; and its ridiklus to hear you talk like an old woman, and not a gray hair on your head—But I hear Swayne a-grumbling, Mrs. Preston. He’s no better nor an old washerwoman, that man isn’t, for his tea.”
When the conversation ended thus, the lodger rose, partly in civility, and stood before the fire, looking into the dark little mirror over the mantle-shelf when her visitor was gone. It was not vanity that moved her to look at herself. “Threescore and ten!” she was saying softly—“threescore and ten! She’d be near thirty by then, and able to take care of herself.” It was a sombre thought enough, but it was all the comfort she could take. “The child” all this time had to all appearance lain fast asleep under her wraps, with the red cloak laid over her, a childlike, fragile creature. She began to stir at this moment, and her mother’s face cleared as if by magic. She went up to the little hard couch, and murmured her inquiries over it with that indescribable voice which belongs only to doves, and mothers croodling over their sick children. Pamela considered it the most ordinary utterance in the world, and never found out that it was totally unlike the usually almost harsh tones of the same voice when addressing other people. The girl threw off her coverings with a little impatience, and came with tottering steps to the big black easy-chair. The limpid eyes which had struck Jack Brownlow when they gazed wistfully out of the carrier’s cart, were almost too bright, as her color was almost too warm, for the moment; but it was the flush of weakness and sleep, not of fever. She too, like her mother, wore rusty black; but neither that poor and melancholy garb, nor any other disadvantageous circumstance, could impair the sweetness of the young tender face. It was lovely with the sweetness of spring as are the primroses and anemones; dew, and fragrance, and growth, and all the possibilities of expansion, were in her lovely looks. You could not have told what she might not grow to. Seeing her, it was possible to understand the eagerness with which the poor old mother, verging on threescore, counted her chances of a dozen years longer in this life. These dozen years might make all the difference to Pamela; and Pamela was all that she had in the world.
“You have had a long sleep, my darling. I am sure you feel better,” she said.
“I feel quite well, mamma,” said the girl; and she sat down and held out her hands to the fire. Then the mother began to talk, and give an account of the conversation she had been holding. She altered it a little, it must be acknowledged. She omitted all Mrs. Swayne’s anxieties about Jack Brownlow, and put various orthodox sentiments into her mouth instead. When she had gone on so for some ten minutes, Pamela, who had been making evident efforts to restrain herself, suddenly opened her red lips with a burst of soft ringing laughter, so that the mother stopped confused.
“I am afraid it was very naughty,” said the girl; “but I woke up, and I did not want to disturb you, and I could not help listening. Oh, mamma, how clever you are to make up conversation like that. When you know Mrs. Swayne was talking of Mr. John, and was such fun! Why shouldn’t I hear about Mr. John? Because one has been ill, is one never to have any more fun? You don’t expect me to die now?”
“God forbid!” said the mother. “But what do you know about Mr. John? Mrs. Swayne said nothing—”
“She said he came a-knocking at the knocker,” Pamela said, with a merry little conscious laugh; “and you asked if he came to ask for Mr. Swayne. I thought I should have laughed out and betrayed myself then.”
“But, my dear,” said Mrs. Preston, steadily, “why shouldn’t he have come