Breakfast was half over before Miss Sefton made her appearance; but her graceful apology for her tardiness was received by Dr. Lambert in the most indulgent manner. In spite of his love of punctuality, and his stringent rules for his household in this respect, he could not have found it in his heart to rebuke the pretty, smiling creature who told him so naÏvely that early rising disagreed with her and put her out for the day.

“I tell mamma that I require a good deal of sleep, and, fortunately, she believes me,” finished Edna complacently.

Well, it was not like the doctor to hold his peace at this glaring opposition to his favorite theory, and yet, to Tom’s astonishment, he forebore to quote that threadbare and detestable adage, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”—proverbial and uncomfortable philosophy that Tom hated with all his foolish young heart. Tom, in his budding manhood, often thought fit to set this domestic tyranny at defiance, and would argue at some length that his father was wrong in laying down rules for the younger generation.

“If my father likes to get up early, no one can find any fault with him for doing it,” Tom would say; “but he need not impose his venerable and benighted opinions upon us. Great men are not always wise; even intellectual veterans like Dr. Johnson, and others I can mention, if you only give me time, have their hallucinations, fads, fancies, and flummeries. For example, every one speaks of Dr. Johnson with respect; no one hints that he had a bee in his bonnet, and yet a man who could make a big hole for a cat and a little one for a kitten—was it Johnson or Newton who did that?—must have had a screw loose somewhere. And so it is with my father; early rising is his hobby—his pet theory—the keystone that binds the structure of health together. Well, it is a respectable theory, but my father need not expect an enlightened and progressive generation to subscribe to it. The early hours of the morning are not good for men and mice, only for birds and bricklayers, and worms weary of existence.”

Tom looked on, secretly amused, as his father smiled indulgently at Miss Sefton’s confession of indolence. He asked her how she had slept, and made room for her beside him, and then questioned her about her intended journey, and finally arranged to drive her to the station before he went on his usual round.

An hour afterward the whole family collected in the hall to see Miss Sefton off. Edna bid them good-bye in her easy, friendly fashion, but as she took Bessie’s hand, she said:

“Good-bye, dear. I have an idea that we shall soon meet again. I shall not let you forget me;” and then she put up her face to be kissed.

“I am not likely to forget you,” thought Bessie, as Edna waved her little gloved hand to them all; “one could soon get fond of her.”

“How nice it must be to be rich,” sighed Christine, who was standing beside Bessie. “Miss Sefton is very little older than we are, and yet she has lovely diamond and emerald rings. Did you see her dressing bag? It was filled up so beautifully; its bottles silver mounted; it must have cost thirty guineas, at least. And then her furs; I should like to be in her place.”

“I should not envy Miss Sefton because she is rich,” retorted Hatty disdainfully. “I would rather change places with her because she is so strong and so pretty. I did like looking at her so much, and so did Tom. Didn’t you, Tom?”“I say, I wish you girls would shut up or clear off,” responded Tom crossly; for things felt a little flat this morning. “How is a fellow to work with all this chattering going on round him?”

“Why, you haven’t opened your books yet,” replied Hatty, in an aggrieved voice; but Bessie hastily interposed:

“Tom is quite right to want the room to himself. Come along, girls, let us go to mother in the morning-room; we might do some of our plain sewing, and then I can tell you about Aunt Charlotte. It is so long since we have been cosy together, and our needles will fly while we talk—eh, Hatty?”

“There are those night shirts to finish,” said Christine disconsolately; “they ought to have been done long ago, but Hatty was always saying her back ached when I wanted her help, and I could not get on with them by myself.”

“Never mind, we will all set to work vigorously,” and Bessie tripped away to find her work basket. The morning-room, as they called it, was a small room leading out of the drawing-room, with an old-fashioned bay window looking out on the garden.

There was a circular cushioned seat running round the bay, with a small table in the middle, and this was the place where the girls loved to sit and sew, while their tongues kept pace with their needles. When Hatty’s back ached, or the light made her head throb with pain, she used to bring her low chair and leave the recess to Bessie and Christine.

The two younger girls went to school.

As Hatty brought her work (she was very skilful with the needle, and neither of her sisters could vie with her in delicate embroidery), she slipped a cold little hand into Bessie’s.

“It is so lovely to have you back, Betty, dear,” she whispered. “I woke quite happy this morning to know I should see you downstairs.”

“I think it is lovely to be home,” returned Bessie, with a beaming smile. “I am sure that is half the pleasure of going away—the coming back again. I don’t know how I should feel if I went to stay at any grand place; but it always seems to me now that home is the most delicious place in the world; it never looks shabby to me as it does to Tom; it is just homelike.”

Mrs. Lambert, who was sitting apart from the girls, busy with her weekly accounts, looked up at hearing her daughter’s speech.

“That is right, dear,” she said gently, “that is just how I like to hear you speak; it would grieve me if my girls were to grow discontented with their home, as some young ladies do.”

“Bessie is not like that, mother,” interposed Hatty eagerly.

“No, Hatty, we know that, do we not? What do you think father said the other day, Bessie? He said, ‘I shall be glad when we get Bessie back, for the place does not seem like itself when she is away.’ That was a high compliment from father.”

“Indeed it was,” returned Bessie; and she blushed with pleasure. “Every one likes to be missed; but I hope you didn’t want me too much, mother.”

“No, dear; but, like father, I am glad to get you back again.” And the mother’s eyes rested fondly on the girl’s face. “Now you must not make me idle, for I have all these accounts to do, and some notes to write. Go on with your talking; it will not interrupt me.”

It spoke well for the Lambert girls that their mother’s presence never interfered with them; they talked as freely before her as other girls do in their parent’s absence. From children they had never been repressed nor unnaturally subdued; their childish preferences and tastes had been known and respected; no thoughtless criticism had wounded their susceptibility; imperceptibly and gently maternal advice had guided and restrained them.

“We tell mother everything, and she likes to hear it,” Ella and Katie would say to their school-fellows.

“We never have secrets from her,” Ella added. “Katie did once, and mother was so hurt that she cried about it. Don’t you recollect, Katie?”

“Yes, and it is horrid of you to remind me,” returned Katie wrathfully, and she walked away in high dudgeon; the recollection was not a pleasant one. Katie’s soft heart had been pierced by her mother’s unfeigned grief and tender reproaches.

“You are the only one of all my little girls who ever hid anything from me. No, I am not angry with you, Katie, and I will kiss you as much as you like,” for Katie’s arms were round her neck in a moment; “but you have made mother cry, because you do not love her as she does you.”

“Mother shall never cry again on my account,” thought Katie; and, strange to say, the tendency to secretiveness in the child’s nature seemed cured from that day. Katie ever afterward confessed her misdemeanors and the accidents that happen to the best-regulated children with a frankness that bordered on bluntness.

“I have done it, mother,” she would say, “but somehow I don’t feel a bit sorry. I rather liked hurting Ella’s feelings; it seemed to serve her right.”

“Perhaps when we have talked about it a little you will feel sorry,” her mother would reply quietly; “but I have no time for talking just now.”

Mrs. Lambert was always very busy; on these occasions she never found time for a heated and angry discussion. When Katie’s hot cheeks had cooled a little, and her childish wrath had evaporated, she would quietly argue the point with her. It was an odd thing that Katie generally apologized of her own accord afterward—generally owned herself the offender.

“Somehow you make things look different, mother,” she would say, “I can’t think why they all seem topsy-turvy to me.”

“When you are older I will lend you my spectacles,” her mother returned, smiling. “Now run and kiss Ella, and pray don’t forget next time that she is two years older; it can’t possibly be a younger sister’s duty to contradict her on every occasion.”

It was in this way that Mrs. Lambert had influenced her children, and she had reaped a rich harvest for her painstaking, patient labors with them, in the freely bestowed love and confidence with which her grown-up daughters regarded her. Now, as she sat apart, the sound of their fresh young voices was the sweetest music to her; not for worlds would she have allowed her own inward sadness to damp their spirits, but more than once the pen rested in her hand, and her attention wandered.

Outside the wintry sun was streaming on the leafless trees and snowy lawns; some thrushes and sparrows were bathing in the pan of water that Katie had placed there that morning.

“Let us go for a long walk this afternoon,” Christine was saying, “through the Coombe Woods, and round by Summerford, and down by the quarry.”

“Even Bessie forgets that it will be Frank’s birthday to-morrow,” thought Mrs. Lambert. “My darling boy, I wonder if he remembers it there; if the angels tell him that his mother is thinking of him. That is just what one longs to know—if they remember;” and then she sighed, and pushed her papers aside, and no one saw the sadness of her face as she went out. Meanwhile Bessie was relating how she had spent the last three weeks.

“I can’t think how you could endure it,” observed Christine, as soon as she had finished. “Aunt Charlotte is very nice, of course; she is father’s sister, and we ought to think so; but she leads such a dull life, and then Cronyhurst is such an ugly village.”

“It is not dull to her, but then you see it is her life. People look on their own lives with such different eyes. Yes, it was very quiet at Cronyhurst; the roads were too bad for walking, and we had a great deal of snow; but we worked and talked, and sometimes I read aloud, and so the days were not so long after all.”

“I should have come home at the end of a week,” returned Christine; “three weeks at Cronyhurst in the winter is too dreadful. It was real self-sacrifice on your part, Bessie; even father said so; he declared it was too bad of Aunt Charlotte to ask you at such a season of the year.”

“I don’t see that. Aunt Charlotte liked having me, and I was very willing to stay with her, and we had such nice talks. I don’t see that she is to be pitied at all. She has never married, and she lives alone, but she is perfectly contented with her life. She has her garden and her chickens, and her poor people. We used to go into some of the cottages when the weather allowed us to go out, and all the people seemed so pleased to see her. Aunt Charlotte is a good woman, and good people are generally happy. I know what Tom says about old maids,” continued Bessie presently, “but that is all nonsense. Aunt Charlotte says she is far better off as she is than many married people she knows. ‘Married people may double their pleasures,’ as folks say, ‘but they treble their cares, too,’ I have heard her remark; ‘and there is a great deal to be said in favor of freedom. When there is no one to praise there is no one to blame, and if there is no one to love there is no one to lose, and I have always been content myself with single blessedness.’ Do you remember poor Uncle Joe’s saying, ‘The mare that goes in single harness does not get so many kicks?’”

“Yes, I know Aunt Charlotte’s way of talking; but I dare say no one wanted to marry her, so she makes the best of her circumstances.”

Bessie could not help laughing at Christine’s bluntness.

“Well, you are right, Chrissy; but Aunt Charlotte is not the least ashamed of the fact. She told me once that no one had ever fallen in love with her, ‘I could not expect them to do so,’ she remarked candidly. ‘As a girl I was plain featured, and so shy and awkward that your Uncle Joe used to tell me that I was the only ugly duckling that would never turn into a swan.’”

“What a shame of Uncle Joe!”

“I don’t think Aunt Charlotte took it much to heart. She says her hard life and many troubles drove all nonsense thoughts out of her head. Why, grandmamma was ill eight years, you know, and Aunt Charlotte nursed her all that time. I am sure when she used to come to my bedside of a night, and tuck me up with a motherly kiss, I used to think her face looked almost beautiful, it was so full of kindness. Somehow I fancy when I am old,” added Bessie pensively, “I shall not care so much about my looks nor my wrinkles, if people will only think I am a comfortable, kind-hearted sort of a person.”

“You will be the dearest old lady in the world,” returned Hatty, dropping her work with an adoring look at her Betty. “You are cosier than other people now, so you are sure to be nicer than ever when you are old. No wonder Aunt Charlotte loved to have you.”

“What a little flatterer you are, Hatty! It is a comfort that I don’t grow vain. Do you know, I think Aunt Charlotte taught me a great deal. When you get over her little mannerisms and odd ways, you soon find out what a good woman she really is. She is always thinking of other people; what she can do to lighten their burdens; and little things give her so much pleasure. She says the first violet she picks in the hedgerow, or the sight of a pair of thrushes building their nest in the acacia tree, makes her feel as happy as a child; ‘for in spring,’ she said once, ‘all the world is full of young life, and the buds are bursting into flowers, and they remind me that one day I shall be young and beautiful too.’”

“I think I should like to go and stay with Aunt Charlotte,” observed Hatty, “if you think she would care to have me.”

“I am sure she would, dear. Aunt Charlotte loves to take care of people. You most go in the summer, Hatty; the cottage is so pretty then, and you could be out in the garden or in the lanes all day. June is the best month, for they will be making hay in the meadows, and you could sit on the porch and smell the roses, and watch Aunt Charlotte’s bees filling their honey bags. It is just the place for you, Hatty—so still and quiet.”

This sort of talk lasted most of the morning, until Ella and Katie returned from school, and Tom sauntered into the room, flushed with his mental labors, and ready to seek relaxation in his sisters’ company.

Bessie left the room and went in search of her mother; when she returned, a quarter of an hour later, she found Tom sulky and Hatty in tears.

“It is no use trying to keep the peace,” observed Christine, in a vexed tone. “Tom will tease Hatty, and then she gets cross, and there is no silencing either of them.”

“Come with me, Hatty dear, and help me put my room in order. I have to finish my unpacking,” said Bessie soothingly. “You have been working too long, and so has Tom. I shall leave him to you, Chrissy.” And as Hatty only moaned a little in her handkerchief, Bessie took the work forcibly away, and then coaxed her out of the room.

“Why is Tom so horrid to me?” sobbed Hatty “I don’t believe he loves me a bit. I was having such a happy morning, and he came in and spoiled all.”

“Never mind about Tom. No one cares for his teasing, except you, Hatty. I would not let him see you mind everything he chooses to say. He will only think you a baby for crying. Now, do help me arrange this drawer, for dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour, and the floor is just strewn with clothes. If it makes your head ache to stoop, I will just hand you the things; but no one else can put them away so tidily.”

The artful little bait took. Of all things Hatty loved to be of use to any one. In another moment she had dried her eyes and set to work, her miserable little face grew cheerful, and Tom’s sneering speeches were forgotten.

“Why, I do believe that is Hatty laughing!” exclaimed Christine, as the dinner-bell sounded, and she passed the door with her mother. “It is splendid, the way Bessie manages Hatty. I wish some of us could learn the art, for all this wrangling with Tom is so tiresome.”

“Bessie never loses patience with her,” returned her mother; “never lets her feel that she is a trouble. I think you will find that is the secret of Bessie’s influence. Your father and I are often grateful to her. ‘What would that poor child do without her?’ as your father often says; and I do believe her health would often suffer if Bessie did not turn her thoughts away from the things that were fretting her.”

Back to contents