Mildred Arkell. Vol. 1 (of 3). Henry Wood

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СКАЧАТЬ stitch. The parlour faced the street, and some one else was seated at the window, peeping out, between the staves of the Venetian blind.

      This was Martha Ann, a young girl of twenty, pretty, modest, and delicate looking; so entirely different was she in person from her sisters, that people might have suspected the relationship. Perhaps it was from the great contrast she presented to themselves that the Miss Hughes's had reared her in a superior manner. How they had loved the pretty little child, so many years younger than themselves, they alone knew. They had sent her to school, working hard to keep her there; and when they brought her home it was, to use their own phrase, "to be a lady"—not to work. The plan was not a wise one, and they might yet live to learn it.

      "I wish to goodness you could have put Mrs. Dewsbury off for to-morrow, Mary!" exclaimed the elder sister.

      "But I couldn't," replied Mary. "The lady's-maid said I must go to-morrow, whether or not. In two days Mrs. Dewsbury starts on her visit."

      "Well, all I know is, we shall never get these dresses home in time."

      "I must sit up to-night—that's all," said Mary Hughes, with equanimity.

      "I must sit up, too, for the matter of that," rejoined the elder sister. "The worst is, after no bed, one is so languid the next day; one can't get through half the work."

      Martha Ann rose from her seat, and came to the table.

      "I wish you would let me try to help you, Sophia. I'm sure I could do seams, and such-like straightforward work."

      "You'd pucker them, child. No; we are not going to let your eyes be tried over close sewing."

      "I'll tell you what you can do, Martha Ann," said the younger of the two. "You can go in the kitchen, and make me a cup of coffee. I feel dead tired, and it will waken me up."

      "There now, Mary!" cried the young girl. "I knew you were not in bed last night, and you are talking of sitting up this! I shall tell Edward."

      "Yes, I was in bed. I went to bed at three, and slept till six. Go and make the coffee, child."

      Martha Ann quitted the room. Mary Hughes watched the door close, and then turned to her sister, and began to speak eagerly, dropping her voice to a half whisper.

      "I say, Sophia, I met Mrs. Pycroft to-day, and she began upon me like anything. What do you think she said?"

      "How do I know what she said?" returned Miss Sophia, indifferently, and speaking with her mouth full of pins, for she was deep in the intricacies of fitting one pattern to another. "Where did you meet her?"

      "Just by the market-house. It was at dinner-time. I had run out for some more wadding, for me and the lady's-maid found we had made a miscalculation, and hadn't got enough to complete the cloak, and I met her as I was running back again. She never said, 'How be you?' or 'How bain't you?' but she begins upon me all sharp—'What be you doing with Martha Ann?' It took me so aback that for a moment I couldn't answer her, and she didn't give time for it, either. 'Is young Mr. Carr going to marry her?' she goes on. So of course I said he wasn't going to marry her that I knew of; and then–"

      "And more idiot you for saying anything of the sort!" indignantly interrupted Sophia Hughes, dropping all the pins in a heap out of her mouth that she might speak freely. "It's no business of Mother Pycroft's, or of anybody else's."

      The meeker younger sister—and as a very reed had she always been in the strong hands of the elder—paused for an instant, and then spoke deprecatingly.

      "But Mr. Robert Carr is not going to marry her that we know of, Sophia. Where was the harm of my saying the truth?"

      "A great deal of harm in saying it to that gabbling, interfering Mother Pycroft. She has wanted to put her nose into everything all these years and years since poor mother died. What do you say?" proceeded Miss Sophia, drowning her sister's feeble attempt to speak. "'A good heart—been kind to us?' That doesn't compensate for the worry she has been. She's a mischief-making old cat."

      "She went on like anything to-day," resumed Mary Hughes, when she thought she might venture to speak again; "saying that young Mr. Carr ought not to come to the house unless he came all open and honourable, and had got a marriage-ring at his fingers' ends; and if we didn't mind, we should have Martha Ann a town's talk."

      Sophia Hughes flung down her work, her eyes ablaze with anger.

      "If you were not my sister, and the poorest, weakest mortal that ever stepped, I'd strike you for daring to repeat such words to me! A town's talk! Martha Ann!"

      "Well, Sophia, you need not snap me up so," was the deprecating answer. "She says that folks are talking already of you and me, blaming us for allowing the acquaintance with young Mr. Carr. And I think they are," candidly added the young woman.

      "Where's the harm? Martha Ann is as good as Robert Carr any day."

      "But if people don't think so? If his folks don't think so? All the Carrs are as proud as Lucifer."

      "And a fine lot Robert Carr has got to be proud of!" retorted Sophia. "Look at the scrapes he has been in, and the money he has spent! A good, wholesome, respectable attachment might be the salvation of him."

      "Perhaps so. But then—but then—I wish you'd not be cross with me, Sophia—there'd be more chance of it if the young lady were in his own condition of life. Sophia, we are naturally fond of Martha Ann, and think there's nobody like her—and there's not, for the matter of that; but we can't expect other people to think so. I wouldn't let Martha Ann be spoken of disparagingly in the town for the world. I'd lay my life down first."

      Sophia Hughes had taken up her work again. She put in a few pins in silence. Her anger was subsiding.

      "I'll take care of Martha Ann. The town knows me, I hope, and knows that it might trust me. If I saw so much as the faintest look of disrespect offered by Robert Carr to Martha Ann, I should tell him he must drop the acquaintance. Until I do, he's free to come here. And the next time I come across old Mother Pycroft she'll hear the length of my tongue."

      Mary Hughes dared say no more. But in the days to come, when the blight of scandal had tarnished the fair name of her young sister, she was wont to whisper, with many tears, that she had warned Sophia what might be the ending, and had not been listened to.

      "Here he is!" exclaimed Sophia, as the form of some one outside darkened the window.

      And once more putting down her work, but not in anger this time, she went to open the front door, at which Robert Carr was knocking.

      CHAPTER III.

      THE ADVENT OF CHARLOTTE TRAVICE

      Mrs. George Arkell sat near her breakfast-table, deeply intent on a letter recently delivered. The apartment was a rather spacious one, handsomely fitted up. It was the general sitting-room of the family; the fine drawing-room on the other side of the hall being very much kept, as must be confessed, for state occasions. A comfortable room, this; its walls hung with paintings in water-colours, many of them William's doings, and its pleasant window looking across the wide yard, to the iron railings and the street beyond it. The room was as yet in the shade, for it faced due south; but the street yonder lay basking in the bright sun of the September morning; and Mrs. Arkell looked through the open window, and felt almost glad at the excuse the letter afforded her for going abroad in it.

      Letters were not then hourly matters, as they are now; no, nor daily ones. Perhaps a quiet СКАЧАТЬ