Beechcroft at Rockstone. Yonge Charlotte Mary

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СКАЧАТЬ up at the bare notion of seeing Mysie, you would know how grateful we shall be for her.’

      Mysie herself heard her destiny without much elation, though she was very fond of Lady Phyllis, and the tears came into her eyes at the thought of her being unwell and wanting her.

      ‘Mamma said we must not grumble,’ she said to Gillian; ‘but I shall feel so lost without you and Val. It is so unhomish, and there’s that dreadful German Fraulein, who was not at home last time.’

      ‘If you told mamma, perhaps she would let you stay,’ returned Gillian. ‘I know I should hate it, worse than I do going to Rockstone and without you.’

      ‘That would be unkind to poor Fly,’ said Mysie. ‘Besides, mamma said she could not have settling and unsettling for ever. And I shall see Primrose sometimes; besides, I do love Fly. It’s marching orders, you know.’

      It was Valetta who made the most objection. She declared that it was not fair that Mysie, who had been to the ball at Rotherwood, should go again to live with lords and ladies, while she went to a nasty day-school with butchers’ and bakers’ daughters. She hoped she should grow horridly vulgar, and if mamma did not like it, it would be her own fault!

      Mrs. Halfpenny, who did not like to have to separate Mysie’s clothes from the rest after they were packed, rather favoured this naughtiness by observing: ‘The old blue merino might stay at home. Miss Mysie would be too set up to wear that among her fine folk. Set her up, that she should have all the treats, while her own Miss Gillian was turned over to the auld aunties!’

      ‘Nonsense, nurse,’ said Gillian. ‘I’m much better pleased to go and be of some use! Val, you naughty child, how dare you make such a fuss?’ for Valetta was crying again.

      ‘I hate school, and I hate Rockstone, and I don’t see why Mysie should always go everywhere, and wear new frocks, and I go to the butchers and bakers and wear horrid old ones.’

      ‘I wish you could come too,’ said Mysie; ‘but indeed old frocks are the nicest, because one is not bothered to take so much care of them; and lords and ladies aren’t a bit better to play with than, other people. In fact, Ivy is what Japs calls a muff and a stick.’

      Valetta, however, cried on, and Mysie went the length of repairing to her mother, in the midst of her last notes and packings, to entreat to change with Val, who followed on tip-toe.

      ‘Certainly not,’ was the answer from Lady Merrifield, who was being worried on all sides, ‘Valetta is not asked, and she is not behaving so that I could accept for her if she were.’

      And Val had to turn away in floods of tears, which redoubled on being told by the united voices of her brothers and sisters that they were ashamed of her for being so selfish as to cry for herself when all were in so much trouble about papa.

      Lady Merrifield caught some of the last words. ‘No, my dear,’ she said. ‘That is not quite just or kind. It is being unhappy that makes poor Val so ready to cry about her own grievances. Only, Val, come here, and remember that fretting is not the way to meet such things. There is a better way, my child, and I think you know what I mean. Now, to help you through the time in an outer way, suppose you each set yourself some one thing to improve in while I am away. Don’t tell me what it is, but let me find out when I come home.’ With that she obeyed an urgent summons to speak to the gardener.

      ‘I shall! I shall,’ cried little Primrose, ‘write a whole copy-book in single lines! And won’t mamma be pleased? What shall you do, Fergus? and Val? and Mysie?’

      ‘I shall get to spin my peg-top so as it will never tumble down, and will turn an engine for drawing water,’ was the prompt answer of Fergus.

      ‘What nonsense!’ said Val; ‘you’d better settle to get your long division sums right.’

      ‘That s girls’ stuff,’ replied Fergus; ‘you’d better settle to leave off crying for nothing.’

      ‘That you had!’ said several voices, and Val very nearly cried again as she exclaimed: ‘Don’t be all so tiresome. I shall make mamma a beautiful crewel cushion, with all the battles in history on it. And won’t she be surprised!’

      ‘I think mamma meant more than that,’ said Mysie.

      ‘Oh, Mysie, what shall you do?’ asked Primrose.

      ‘I did think of getting to translate one of mamma’s favourite German stories quite through to her without wanting the dictionary or stumbling one bit,’ said Mysie; ‘but I am sure she meant something better and better, and I’m thinking what it is—Perhaps it is making all little Flossie Maddin’s clothes, a whole suit all oneself—Or perhaps it is manners. What do you think, Gill?’

      ‘I should say most likely it was manners for you,’ volunteered Harry, ‘and the extra you are most likely to acquire at Rotherwood.’

      ‘I’m so glad,’ said Mysie.

      ‘And you, Gill,’ inquired Primrose, ‘what will you do? Mine is a copy-book, and Fergus’s is the spinning-top-engines, and rule of three; and Val’s is a crewel battle cushion and not crying; and Mysie’s is German stories and manners; and what’s yours, Gill?’

      ‘Gill is so grown up, she is too good to want an inside thing’ announced Primrose.

      ‘Oh, Prim, you dear little thing,’ cried both elder brother and sister, as they thought with a sort of pang of the child’s opinion of grown-up impeccability.

      ‘Harry is grown up more,’ put in Fergus; ‘why don’t you ask him?’

      ‘Because I know,’ said Primrose, with a pretty shyness, and as they pressed her, she whispered, ‘He is going to be a clergyman.’

      There was a call for Mysie and Val from upstairs, and as the younger population scampered off, Gillian said to her brother—

      ‘Is not it like “occupy till I come”?’

      ‘So I was thinking,’ said Harry gravely. ‘But one must be as young as Mysie to throw one’s “inside things” into the general stock of resolutions.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Gillian, with uplifted eyes. ‘I do—I do hope to do something.’

      Some great thing was her unspoken thought—some great and excellent achievement to be laid before her mother on her return. There was a tale begun in imitation of Bessie Merrifield, called “Hilda’s Experiences”. Suppose that was finished, printed, published, splendidly reviewed. Would not that be a great thing? But alas, she was under a tacit engagement never to touch it in the hours of study.

      CHAPTER II. – ROCKQUAY

      The actual moment of a parting is often softened by the confusion of departure. That of the Merrifield family took place at the junction, where Lady Merrifield with her brother remained in the train, to be carried on to London.

      Gillian, Valetta, and Fergus, with their aunt, changed into a train for Rockstone, and Harry was to return to his theological college, after seeing Mysie and Primrose off with nurse on their way to the ancestral Beechcroft, whence Mysie was to be fetched to Rotherwood. The last thing that met Lady Merrifield’s eyes was Mrs. Halfpenny gesticulating wildly, under the impression that Mysie’s box was going off to London.

      And Gillian’s tears were choked in the scurry to avoid a smoking-carriage, while Harry СКАЧАТЬ