Swiss girl whom some reckless people brought home and then turned adrift. It will be a real kindness to help her home, and you shall pick her up when you come up to me on your way, and see my child! Oh, didn't I tell you? We had a housemaid once who was demented enough to marry a scamp of a stoker on one of the Thames steamers. He deserted her, and I found her living, or rather dying, in an awful place at Rotherhithe, surrounded by tipsy women, raging in opposite corners. I got her into a decent room, but too late to save her life-and a good thing too; so I solaced her last moments with a promise to look after her child, such a jolly little mortal, in spite of her name- Boadicea Ethelind Davidina Jones. She is two years old, and quite delicious-the darling of all the house!'
'I hope you will have no trouble with the father,' said Frank.
'I trust he has gone to his own locker, or, if not, he is only too glad to be rid of her. I can tackle him,' said Bertha confidently. 'The child is really a little duck!'
She spoke as if the little one filled an empty space in her heart; and, even though there might be trouble in store, it was impossible not to be glad of her present gladness, and her invitation was willingly accepted. Moreover, her recommendations were generally trustworthy, and Mary only hesitated because, she said-
'I thought, if I could do without a maid, we might take Constance. She is doing so very well, and likely to pass so well in her examinations, that it would be very nice to give her this pleasure.'
'Good little girl! So it would. I should like nothing better; but I am afraid that if you took her without a maid, Emma would misunderstand it, and say you wanted to save the expense.'
'Would it make much difference?'
'Not more than we could bear now that we are in for it, but I fear it would excite jealousies.'
'Is that worse than leaving the poor child to Westhaven society all the holidays?'
'Perhaps not; and Conny is old enough now to be more injured by it than when she was younger.'
'You know I have always hoped to make her like a child of our own when her school education is finished.'
Frank smiled, for he was likewise very fond of little Constance.
There was a public distribution of prizes, at which all the grandees of the neighbourhood were expected to assist, and it was some consolation to the Northmoors, for the dowager duchess being absent, that the pleasure of taking the prize from her uncle would be all the greater-if-
The whole party went-Lady Adela, Miss Morton, and all-and were installed in chairs of state on the platform, with the bright array of books before them-the head-mistress telling Lady Northmoor beforehand that her niece would have her full share of honours. No one could be a better or more diligent girl.
It quite nerved Lord Northmoor when he looked forth upon the sea of waving tresses of all shades of brown, while his wife watched in nervousness, both as to how he would acquit himself and how the exertion would affect him; and Bertha, as usual, was anxious for the credit of the name.
He did what was needed. Nobody wanted anything but the sensible commonplace, kindly spoken, about the advantages of good opportunities, the conscientiousness of doing one's best. And after all, the inferiority of mere attainments in themselves to the discipline and dutifulness of responding to training,-it was slowly but not stammeringly spoken, and Bertha did not feel critical or ashamed, but squeezed Mary's hand, and said, 'Just the right thing.'
One by one the girls were summoned for their prizes, the little ones first. Lord Northmoor had not the gift of inventing a pretty speech for each, he could do no more than smile as he presented the book, and read its name; but the smile was a very decided one when, in the class next to the highest, three out of the seven prizes were awarded to Constance Elizabeth Morton, and it might be a question which had the redder cheeks, the uncle or the niece, as he handed them to her. It was one of the few happinesses that he had derived from his brother's family!
After such achievements on Constance's part, it was impossible to withhold-as they drove back to Northmoor- the proposal to take her with them, and the effect was magical. Constance opened her eyes, bounded up, as if she were going to fly out of the carriage, and then launched herself, first on her uncle, then on her aunt, for an ecstatic kiss.
'Take care, take care, we shall have the servants thinking you a little lunatic!'
'I am almost! Oh, I am so glad! To be with you and Aunt Mary all the holidays! That would be enough! But to go and see all the places,' she added, somehow perceiving that the desire to escape from home was, at least ought not to be approved of, and yet there was some exultation, when she hazarded a supposition that there was no time to go home.
CHAPTER XVIII. DESDICHADO
Home-that is to say, Westhaven-was in some commotion when Herbert came back and grimly growled out his intelligence as to his own personal affairs. Mrs. Morton had been already apprized, in one of Lord Northmoor's well- considered letters, of his intentions of removing his nephew to a tutor more calculated to prepare for the army, and she had accepted this as promotion such as was his due. However, when the pride of her heart, the tall gentlemanly son, made his appearance in a savage mood, her feelings were all on the other side, and those of Ida exaggerated hers.
'So I'm to go to some disgusting hole where they grind the fellows no end,' was Herbert's account of the matter.
'But surely with your connection there's no need for grinding?' said his mother.
Herbert laughed, 'Much you know about it! Nobody cares a rap for connections nowadays, even if old Frank were a connection to do a man any good.'
'But you'll not go and study hard and hurt yourself, my dear,' said his mother, though Herbert's looks by no means suggested any such danger, while Ida added, 'It is not as if he had nothing else to look to, you know. He can't keep you out of the peerage.'
'Can't he then? Why, he can and will too, for thirty or forty years more at least.'
'I thought his health was failing,' said Ida, putting into words a hope her mother had a little too much sense of propriety to utter.
'Bosh, it's only neuralgia, just because he is such a stick he can't take things easy, and lark about and do every one's work-he hasn't the least notion what a gentleman ought to do.'
'It is bred in the bone,' said his mother; 'he always was a shabby poor creature! I always said he would not know how to spend his money.'
'He is a regular screw!' responded Herbert. 'What do you think now! He was in no end of a rage with me just because I went with some of the other fellows to the Colbeam races; and one can't help a bet or two, you know. So I lost twelve pound or so, and what must he do but stop it out of my allowance two pound at a time!'
There was a regular outcry at this, and Mrs. Morton declared her poor dear boy should not suffer, but she would make it up to him, and Herbert added that 'it had been unlucky, half of it was that they were riled with him, first because he had shot a ridiculous rook with white wings that my lady made no end of a fuss about.'
'Ah, then it is her spite,' said Ida. 'She's a sly cat, with all her meek ways.'
Herbert was not displeased with this evening's sympathy, as he lay outspread on the sofa, with the admiring and pitying eyes of his mother and sister upon him; but he soon began to feel-when he had had his grumble out, and could take his swing at home-that there could be too much of it.
It was all very well to ease his own mind by complaining, but when he heard of Ida announcing that he had been shamefully treated, all out of spite for killing a white rook, his sense of justice made him declare that the notion was nothing but girl's folly, such as no person with a grain of sense could believe.
The more his mother and her friends persisted in treating him as an ill-used individual, the victim of his uncle's avarice and his aunt's spite, the more his better nature revolted and acknowledged inwardly and sometimes outwardly the kindness and justice he had met with. It was really provoking that any attempt to defend them, or explain the facts, were only treated as proofs of his own generous feeling. Ida's partisanship really did him more good than half a dozen lectures would have done, and he steadily adhered to his promise not to bet, though on the regatta day Ida and her friend Sibyl derided him for not choosing to risk even a pair of gloves; and while one pitied him, the other declared that he was growing a skinflint like his uncle.
He talked and laughed noisily enough to Ida's friends, but he had seen enough at Northmoor to feel the difference, and he told his sister that there was not a lady amongst the whole kit of them, except Rose Rollstone, who was coming down for her holiday.
