Hopes and Fears

beast.'

'Yes, and some persons have a curious affinity with the gentle and good in creation-who can watch and even handle a bird's nest without making it be deserted, whom bees do not sting, and horses, dogs, and cats love so as to reveal their best instincts in a way that seems fabulous. In spite of the Lyra Innocentium, I think this is less often the case with children than with such grown people as-like your guardian, Phoebe-have kept something of the majesty and calmness of innocence.'

Phoebe was all in a glow with the pleasure of hearing him so called, but bashful under that very delight, she said, 'Perhaps part of Solomon's wisdom was in loving these things, since he knew the plants from the cedar to the hyssop.'

'And spoke of Nature so beautifully in his Song, but I am afraid as he grew old he must have lost his healthful pleasure in them when he was lifted up.'

'Or did he only make them learning and ornament, instead of a joy and devotion?' said Phoebe, thinking of the difference between Bertha's love and Miss Charlecote's.

'Nor does he say that he found vanity in them, though he did in his own gardens and pools of water. No, the longer I live, the more sure I am that these things are meant for our solace and minor help through the trials of life. I assure you, Phoebe, that the crimson leaf of a Herb-Robert in the hedge has broken a strain of fretful repining, and it is one great blessing in these pleasures that one never can exhaust them.'

Phoebe saw that Miss Charlecote was right in her own case, when on coming in, the grasshopper's name and history were sought, and there followed an exhibition of the 'puss' for whom the willow had been gathered, namely a grass-green caterpillar, with a kitten's face, a curious upright head and shoulders, and two purple tails, whence on irritation two pink filaments protruded,-lashes for the ichneumons, as Honora explained. The lonely woman's interest in her quaint pet showed how thickly are strewn round us many a calm and innocent mode of solace and cheerfulness if we knew but how to avail ourselves of it.

Honora had allowed the conversation to be thus desultory and indifferent, thinking that it gave greater rest to Phoebe, and it was not till the evening was advancing, that she began to discharge herself of an urgent commission from Robert, by saying, 'Phoebe, I want you to do something for me. There is that little dame's school in your hamlet. It is too far off for me to look after, I wish you would.'

'Robin has been writing to me about parish work,' said Phoebe, sadly. 'Perhaps I ought, but I don't know how, and I can't bear that any change in our ways should be observed;' and the tears came more speedily than Honor had expected.

'Dear child,' she said, 'there is no need for that feeling. Parish work, at least in a lay family, must depend on the amount of home duty. In the last years of my dear mother's life I had to let everything go, and I know it is not easy to resume, still less to begin, but you will be glad to have done so, and will find it a great comfort.'

'If it be my duty, I must try,' said Phoebe, dejectedly, 'and I suppose it is. Will you come and show me what to do? I never went into a cottage in my life.'

I have spoken too soon! thought Honor; yet Robert urged me, and besides the evil of neglecting the poor, the work will do her good; but it breaks one's heart to see this meek, mournful obedience.

'While we are alone,' continued Phoebe, 'I can fix times, and do as I please, but I cannot tell what Mervyn may want me to do when he is at home.'

'Do you expect that he will wish you to go out with him?' asked Honora.

'Not this autumn,' she answered; 'but he finds it so dull at home, that I fully expect he will have his friends to stay with him.'

'Phoebe, let me strongly advise you to keep aloof from your brother's friends. When they are in the house, live entirely in the schoolroom. If you begin at once as a matter of course, he will see the propriety, and acquiesce. You are not vexed?'

'Thank you, I believe it is all right. Robert will be the more at ease about us. I only do not like to act as if I distrusted Mervyn.'

'It would not be discreet for any girl so young as you are to be entertaining her brother's sporting friends. You could hardly do so without acquiring the same kind of reputation as my poor Lucy's Rashe, which he would not wish.'

'Thank you,' said Phoebe more heartily. 'You have shown me the way out of a difficulty. I need not go into company at all this winter, and after that, only with our old country neighbours.'

Honora was infinitely relieved at having bestowed this piece of advice, on which she had agreed with Robert as the only means of insuring Phoebe's being sheltered from society that Mervyn might not esteem so bad for his sister as they did.

The quietness of Mervyn's absence did much for the restoration of Phoebe's spirits. The dame's school was not delightful to her; she had not begun early enough in life for ease, but she did her tasks there as a duty, and was amply rewarded by the new enjoyment thus afforded to Maria. The importance of being surrounded by a ring of infants, teaching the alphabet, guiding them round the gooseberry bush, or leading their songs and hymns, was felicity indescribable to Maria. She learnt each name, and, with the reiteration that no one could endure save Phoebe and faithful Lieschen, rehearsed the individual alphabetical acquirements of every one; she painted pictures for them, hemmed pinafores, and was happier than she had ever been in her life, as well as less fretful and more manageable, and she even began to develop more sense and intelligence in this direction than she had seemed capable of under the dreary round of lessons past her comprehension.

It was a great stimulus to Phoebe, and spurred her to personal parish work, going beyond the soup and subscriptions that might have bounded her charities for want of knowing better. Of course the worst and most plausible people took her in, and Miss Charlecote sometimes scolded, sometimes laughed at her, but the beginning was made, and Robert was pleased.

Mervyn did bring home some shooting friends, but he made no difficulties as to the seclusion that Miss Charlecote had recommended for his sister; accepting it so easily that Phoebe thought he must have intended it from the first. From that time he was seldom at home without one or more guests-an arrangement that kept the young ladies chiefly to the west wing, and always, when in the garden, forced them to be on their guard against stumbling upon smoking gentlemen. It was a late-houred, noisy company, and the sounds that reached the sisters made the younger girls curious, and the governess anxious. Perhaps it was impossible that girls of seventeen and fifteen should not be excited by the vicinity of moustaches and beards whom they were bidden to avoid; and even the alternate French and German which Miss Fennimore enforced on Bertha more strongly than ever, merely produced the variety of her descanting on their knebelbarten, or on l'heure a guelle les voix de ces messieurs-la entonnaient sur le grand escalier, till Miss Fennimore declared that she would have Latin and Greek talked if there were no word for a gentleman in either! There were always stories to be told of Bertha's narrow escapes of being overtaken by them in garden or corridor, till Maria, infected by the panic, used to flounder away as if from a beast of prey, and being as tall as, and considerably stouter than, Phoebe, with the shuffling gait of the imbecile, would produce a volume of sound that her sister always feared might attract notice, and irritate Mervyn.

Honora Charlecote tried to give pleasure to the sisters by having them at the Holt, and would fain have treated Bertha as one of the inherited godchildren. But Bertha proved by reference to the brass tablet that she could not be godchild to a man who died three years before her birth, and it was then perceived that his sponsorship had been to an elder Bertha, who had died in infancy, of water on the head, and whom her parents, in their impatience of sorrow, had absolutely caused to be forgotten. Such a delusion in the exact Phoebe could only be accounted for by her tenderness to Mr. Charlecote, and it gave Bertha a subject of triumph of which she availed herself to the utmost. She had imbibed a sovereign contempt for Miss Charlecote's capacity, and considered her as embodying the passive individual who is to be instructed or confuted in a scientific dialogue. So she lost no occasion of triumphantly denouncing all 'cataclysms' of the globe, past or future, of resolving all nature into gases, or arguing upon duality-a subject that fortunately usually brought on her hesitation of speech, a misfortune of which Miss Fennimore and Phoebe would unscrupulously avail themselves to change the conversation. The bad taste and impertinence were quite as apparent to the governess as to the sister, and though Bertha never admitted a doubt of having carried the day against the old world prejudices, yet Miss Fennimore perceived, not only that Miss Charlecote's notions were not of the contracted and unreasonable order that had been ascribed to her, but that liberality in her pupil was more uncandid, narrow, and self-sufficient than was 'credulity' in Miss Charlecote. Honor was more amused than annoyed at these discussions; she was sorry for the silly, conceited