“Well, you have set them up very nicely,” said Jessie; “but fancy taking so much trouble about common flowers.”
“What would you think worth setting up?” asked Janet. “A big dahlia, I suppose, or a great red cactus?”
“We have a beautiful garden,” said Jessie: “papa is very particular about it, and we always get the prize for our flowers. We had the first prizes for hyacinths and forced roses last week, and we should have had the first for forced cucumbers if the gardener at Belforest had not had a spite against Spencer, because he left him for us. Everybody said there was no comparison between the cucumbers, and Mr. Ellis said—”
Janet had found the day before how Jessie could prattle on in an endless quiet stream without heeding whether any one entered into it or replied to it; but she was surprised at Allen’s toleration of it, though he changed the current by saying, “Belforest seems a jolly, place.”
“But you’ve only seen the wood, not the gardens,” said Jessie.
“I went down to the lake with Mr. Ogilvie,” said Allen, “and saw something splendiferous looking on the other side.”
“Oh! they are beautiful!” cried Janet, “all laid out in ribbon gardens and with the most beautiful terrace, and a fountain—only that doesn’t play except when you give the gardener half-a-crown, and mamma says, that is exorbitant—and statues standing all round—real marble statues.”
“Like the groves of Blarney,” muttered Janet:
“Heathen goddesses most rare,
Homer, Venus, and Nebuchadnezzar,
All standing naked in the open air.”
Allen, seeing Jessie scandalised, diverted her attention by asking, “Whom does it belong to?”
“Mr. Barnes,” said Jessie; “but he is hardly ever there. He is an old miser, you know—what they call a millionaire, or mill-owner; which is it?”
“One is generally the French for the other,” put in Janet.
“Never mind her, Jessie,” said Allen, with a look of infinite displeasure at his sister. “What does he do which keeps him away?”
“I believe he is a great merchant, and is always in Liverpool,” said Jessie. “Any way, he is a very cross old man, and won’t let anybody go into his park and gardens when he comes down here; and he is very cruel too, for he disinherited his own nephew and niece for marrying. Only think Mrs. Watson at the grocer’s told our Susan that there’s a little girl, who is his own great-niece, living down at River Hollow Farm with Mr. and Mrs. Gould, just brought up by common farmers, you know, and he won’t take any notice of her, nor give one farthing for bringing her up. Isn’t it shocking? And even when he is at home, he only has two chops or two steaks, or just a bit of kidney, and that when he is literally rolling in gold.”
Jessie opened her large brown eyes to mark her horror, and Allen, made a gesture of exaggerated sympathy, which his sister took for more earnest than it was, and she said, scornfully, “I should like to see him literally rolling in gold. It must be like Midas. Do you mean that he sleeps on it, Jessie? How hard and cold!”
“Nonsense,” said Jessie; “you know what I mean.”
“I know what literally rolling in gold means, but I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t bully her, Janet,” said Allen; “we are not so stupid, are we, Jessie? Come and show me the walnut-tree you were telling me about.”
“What’s the matter, Janet?” said her mother, coming in a moment or two after, and finding her staring blankly out of the window, where the two had made their exit.
“O mother, Jessie has been talking such gossip, and Allen likes it, and won’t have it stopped! I can’t think what makes Allen and Bobus both so foolish whenever she is here.”
“She is a very pretty creature,” said Carey, smiling a little.
“Pretty!” repeated Janet. “What has that to do with it?”
“A great deal, as you will have to find out in the course of your life, my dear.”
“I thought only foolish people cared about beauty.”
“It is very convenient for us to think so,” said Carey, smiling.
“But mother—surely everybody cares for you just as much or more than if you were a great handsome, stupid creature! How I hate that word handsome!”
“Except for a cab,” said Carey.
“Ah! when shall I see a Hansom again?” said Janet in a slightly sentimental tone. But she returned to the charge, “Don’t go, mother, I want you to answer.”
“Beauty versus brains! My dear, you had better open your eyes to the truth. You must make up your mind to it. It is only very exceptional people who, even in the long run, care most for feminine brains.”
“But, mother, every one did.”
“Every one in our world, Janet; but your father made our home set of those exceptional people, and we are cast out of it now!” she added, with a gasp and a gesture of irrepressible desolateness.
“Yes, that comes of this horrid move,” said the girl, in quite another tone. “Well, some day—” and she stopped.
“Some day?” said her mother.
“Some day we’ll go back again, and show what we are,” she said, proudly.
“Ah, Janet! and that’s nothing now without him.”
“Mother, how can you say so, when—?” Jane just checked herself, as she was coming to the great secret.
“When we have his four boys,” said her mother. “Ah! yes, Janet—if—and when—But that’s a long way off, and, to come back to our former subject,” she added, recalling herself with a sigh, “it will be wise in us owlets to make up our minds that owlets we are, and to give the place to the eaglets.”
“But eaglets are very ugly, and owlets very pretty,” quoth Janet.
Carey laughed. “That does not seem to have been the opinion of the Beast Epic,” said she, and the entrance of Babie prevented them from going further.
Janet turned away with one of her grim sighs at the unappreciative world to which she was banished. She had once or twice been on the point of mentioning the Magnum Bonum to her mother, but the reserve at first made it seem as if an avowal would be a confession, and to this she could not bend her pride, while the secrecy made a strange barrier between her and her mother. In truth, Janet had never been so devoted to Mother Carey as to either granny or her father, and now she missed them sorely, and felt it almost an injury to have no one but her mother to turn to.
Her character was not set in the same mould, and though both could meet on the common ground of intellect, she could neither enter into the recesses of her mother’s grief, nor understand those flashes of brightness and playfulness which nothing could destroy. If Carey had chosen to unveil the truth to herself, she would have owned that Allen, who was always ready, tender and sympathetic to her, was a much greater comfort than his sister; nay, that even little Babie gave her more rest and peace than did Janet, who always rubbed against her whenever they found themselves tete-a-tete or in consultation.
Meantime Babie had been out with her two little cousins, and came home immensely impressed with the Belforest gardens. The house was shut up, but the gardens were really kept up to perfection, and the little one could not declare her full delight in the wonderful blaze she had seen of banks of red, and flame coloured, and white, flowering trees. “They said they would show me the Americans,” she said. “Why was it, mother? I thought Americans were like the gentleman who dined with you one day, and told me about the snow birds. But there were only these flower-trees, and a pond, and statues standing round it, and I don’t think they were Americans,