'Petting her! spoiling her!' scoffed the Captain. 'Why, Susan and Bessie were full of the contrast with your little girl.'
'Health,' began Phyllis.
'An Indian child too!' he went on. 'Just showing what a little good sense in the training can do! No, indeed! Since I am to be her guardian, I have no notion of swerving from my duty, and letting poor Hal's child be bred up to Sisterhoods and all that flummery.'
'It will just break Angela's heart,' cried Valetta, with tears in her eyes, at which the Captain looked contemptuous.
'I must say,' added Bernard, 'that I should think it little short of murderous to take that unlucky child from the one woman who understands her up into the bleak north at this time of year.'
'Decidedly!' added Sir Jasper. 'Miss Underwood deserves every consideration in dealing with the child who has been always her sole charge.'
Wherewith he changed the conversation by a question about Stokesley; but he held to his dictum when alone with his nephew, and as he was the only person for whose opinion Captain Sam had any respect, it had its effect, though there was a sense that he might be biassed by his son-in-law and his herd of womanfolk, and that he did not partake Mrs. Samuel Merrifield's dislike to the very name of Sister or of anything not commonplace.
Angela obtained Dr. Dagger's opinion to reinforce her own and Lady Merrifield's, and the Captain was obliged to give way so far as to consent to Magdalen, as he insisted on calling her, being allowed to remain at Arnscombe till after Easter, when her aunts were to fetch her to Coalham, there to send her to the kindergarten.
After Angela's period of raging against law and lawyers and all the Stokesley family, and being on the verge of impertinence to Captain Merrifield, she submitted to the prospect more quietly than her friends had dared to hope. Lance had almost expected her to deport her charge, parrot and all, suddenly and secretly by an Australian liner, and had advised Bernard, on a fleeting meeting at Bexley, to be on his guard if she hinted at anything so preposterous; but Bernard shook his head, and said Angel was more to be trusted than her elders thought. 'Waves and storms don't go over us for nothing, I hope,' he said.
And he found himself right on his return. Angela had bowed her head to the inevitable, and was quietly trying to prepare her little charge for the change, accustoming her to more discipline and less petting. When Angela proposed to walk over to Clipstone with her brother on his return, and the whine was set up, 'Let me go, Sister,' it was answered, 'No, my dear, it is too far for you. You must stay and walk with Paula.'
'I want to go with Sister.'
'You must be a good child, and do as Sister tells you. No, I can't have any fretting. Paula will show you how to drive your hoop. Keep her moving fast, Paula, don't let her fret and get cold.'
And Angela actually detached the clinging hand, and put it into Paulina's, and, holding up her finger, silenced the burst of weeping, though tears sprang to her own eyes as she resolutely turned away, and, after running out and shutting the back gate after her, put her arm with a clinging gesture into Bernard's.
'That's right!' he said, pressing her hand.
'Cruel,' she said, 'but better by and by for her. Oh, Bear, if one could but learn to lie still and say, 'Thou didst it,' when it is human agency that takes away the desire of one's eyes with a stroke.'
'The desire of thine eyes!' repeated Bernard. 'How often I thought of that last February.'
It was the only time he had referred to the loss of his little boy. His wife had told her mother that he could not bear to mention it, and had poured out all her own feelings of sorrow and her struggle for cheerfulness and resignation alone with her or with Mysie; but he had shrunk from the least allusion to the little two year old Felix, who slept beneath a palm tree at Colombo.
Now, however, still holding his sister's hand, he drifted into all the particulars of the little ways, the baby language, the dawning understanding, and the very sudden sharp illness carrying the beautiful boy away almost before they were aware of danger; and he took out the photograph from his breast, and showed her the little face, so recalling old fond remembrances. 'Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead,' he repeated. 'Yes, the boy is saved the wear and tear and heat and burthen of the day, but it is very hard to be thankful.'
'Ah, and it is all the harder if you have to leave your Lily.'
'If-yes; but Travis
'That would be jolly. Yes, I think it will clench the matter, for I believe I am of more good at Carriga than anywhere else, though the heart of it is taken out of it for me; but one lives on and gets on somehow without a heart, or a heart set where I suppose it ought not to be entirely at least! And, indeed, I think that little one taught me better than ever before how to love.'
'That's what the creatures are sent us for,' said Bernard, in a low voice. 'And here are, looming in the distance, all the posse of girls to meet us.'
'Ah-h!' breathed Angela, withdrawing her arm. 'Well, Bear, you have given me something to look forward to, whether it comes to anything or not. It will help me to be thankful. I know they are good people, and the child will do well when once the pining and bracing are over. They are her own people, and it is right.'
'Right you are, Angel!' said Bernard, with a fresh squeeze of the hand, as he resumed his own cheerful, resolute voice ere joining his sisters-in-law.
'What! Angela without her satellite!' cried Primrose.
'Too far,' murmured Angela; but Mysie tried to hush her sister, perceiving the weaning process, and respecting Angela for it.
And the next moment Angela was challenging Bernard to a game at golf.
CHAPTER XXV-BEAR AS ADVISER
'Weary soul and burthened sore
Labouring with thy secret load.'
- KEBLE.
The early spring brought a new development. Thekla, who attended classes at the High School, came home with unmistakable tokens of measles, and Primrose did the same, in common with most of their contemporaries at Rockstone. Nor was there any chance that either Lily Underwood at Clipstone or Lena Merrifield at the Goyle would escape; indeed, they both showed an amount of discomfort that made it safer to keep them where they were, than to try to escape in the sharp east wind and frost.
No one was much dismayed at what all regarded as a trifling ailment, even if dignified as German. Angela owned that she regarded it as a relief, since infection might last till the summer, and the only person who was-as he owned-trying to laugh at himself with Angela, was Bernard, who could not keep out of his mind's eye a little grave at Colombo. As he walked home, at the turning he saw a figure wearily toiling upwards, which proved to be Wilfred. 'Holloa! you are at home early!'
'I had an intolerable headache!'
'Measles, eh?'
'No such thing! Once when I was a kid in Malta. But I say, Bear,' he added, coming up with quickened pace, 'you could do me no end of a favour if you would advance me twenty pounds.'
'Whew!' Bernard whistled.
'There is Lady Day coming, and I can pay you then-most assuredly.' And an asseveration or two was beginning.
'Twenty pounds don't fly promiscuously about the country,' muttered Bernard, chiefly for the sake of giving himself time.
'But I tell you I shall have a quarter from the works, and a quarter from my father (with his hand to his head). That's-that's-. Awful skinflints both of them! How is a man to do, so cramped up as that?'
'Oh! and how is a man to do if he spends it all beforehand?'
'I tell you, Bernard, I must have it, or-or it will break my mother's heart! And as to my father, I'd-I'd cut my throat-I'd go to sea before he knew! Advance it to me, Bear! You know what it is to be in an awful scrape. Get me through this once and I'll never-'
Bernard did not observe that the scrape of his boyhood over the drowned Stingo had hardly been of the magnitude that besought for twenty pounds. He waived the personal appeal, and asked, 'What is the scrape?'
'Why, that intolerable swindler and ruffian, Hart, deceived me about Racket, and-'
