would be a more esteemed lady patroness than Miss Rachel Curtis, though the Curtises had been lords of the soil for many generations, and Colonel Keith was a mere soldier of fortune.
One disappointment Rachel had, namely, that Mr. Mauleverer announced that he was about to return to St. Herbert's, the very large and fashionable watering-place in the next indentation of the coast. He had duties there, he said, and he had only come to Avonmouth for a brief holiday, a holiday that was to result in such happy effects. He lived in an exceedingly retired way, he said, being desirous of saving his small private means for his great object, and he gave Rachel his address at the chief printseller's of the place, where his letters were left for him, while he made excursions from time to time to study the picturesque, and to give lectures on behalf of philanthropical subjects. He offered such a lecture at Avonmouth, but Mr. Touchett would not lend either school-room, and space was nowhere else available. In the meantime a prospectus was drawn up, which Rachel undertook to get printed at Villars's, and to send about to all her friends, since a subscription in hand was the first desideratum.
Never since she had grown up to be a thinking woman had Rachel been so happy as with this outlet to her activity and powers of managing, 'the good time coming at last.' Eagerly she claimed sympathy, names and subscriptions. Her own immediate circle was always easily under her influence, and Lady Temple, and Mrs. Curtis supplied the dignity of lady patronesses; Bessie Keith was immensely diverted at the development of 'that landscape painter,' and took every opportunity of impressing on Rachel that all was the result of her summons to the rescue. Ermine wished Rachel had found out who was the bishop's chaplain who rejected him, but allowed that it would have been an awkward question to ask, and also she wondered if he were a university man; but Mr. Touchett had been at a Hall, and never knew anybody, besides being so firmly convinced that Mr. Mauleverer was a pestiferous heretic, that no one, except Lady Temple, could have obtained a patient answer from him on that head--and even with her he went the length of a regret that she had given the sanction of her name to an undertaking by a person of whose history and principles nothing satisfactory was known. 'Oh!' said Fanny, with her sweet look of asking pardon, 'I am so sorry you think so; Rachel wished it so much, and it seems such a nice thing for the poor children.'
'Indeed,' said Mr. Touchett, well nigh disarmed by the look, 'I am quite sensible of the kindness of all you do, I only ventured to wish there had been a little more delay, that we were more certain about this person.'
'When Colonel Keith comes back he will find out all about him, I am sure,' said Fanny, and Mr. Touchett, to whom seemed to have been transferred Rachel's dislike to the constant quoting of Colonel Keith, said no more.
The immediate neighbourhood did not very readily respond to the appeal to it in behalf of the lace-makers. People who did not look into the circumstances of their neighbours thought lace furnished a good trade, and by no means wished to enhance its price; people who did care for the poor had charities of their own, nor was Rachel Curtis popular enough to obtain support for her own sake; a few five- pound notes, and a scanty supply of guineas and half-guineas from people who were ready at any cost to buy off her vehement eyes and voice was all she could obtain, and with a subscription of twenty pounds each from her mother, Lady Temple, and Grace, and all that she could scrape together of her own, hardly seemed sufficient to meet the first expenses, and how would the future be provided for? She calculated how much she could spare out of her yearly income, and actually, to the great horror of her mother and the coachman, sold her horse.
Bessie Keith was the purchaser. It was an expense that she could quite afford, for she and her brother had been left very well off by their father--a prudent man, who, having been a widower during his Indian service, had been able to live inexpensively, besides having had a large amount of prize money. She had always had her own horse at Littleworthy, and now when Rachel was one day lamenting to her the difficulty of raising money for the Industrial Asylum, and declaring that she would part with her horse if she was sure of its falling into good hands, Bessie volunteered to buy it, it was exactly what would suit her, and she should delight in it as a reminder of dear Avonmouth. It was a pang, Rachel loved the pretty spirited creature, and thought of her rides with the Colonel; but how weigh the pleasure of riding against the welfare of one of those hard-worked, half- stifled little girls, and besides, it might be best to have done with Colonel Keith now that her mission had come to find her. So the coachman set a purposely unreasonable value upon poor Meg, and Rachel reduced the sum to what had been given for it three years before; but Bessie begged her brother to look at the animal and give his opinion.
'Is that what you are after?' he exclaimed.
'Indeed, Alick, I thought it was the greatest kindness I could do her; she is so very eager about this plan, and so anxious to find poor Meg a good home.'
'Purely to oblige her?'
'Of course, Alick, it was much more convenient to her than if she had had to send about to horse-dealers or to advertise. I doubt if she could have done it at all; and it is for her asylum, you know.'
'Then give the coachman's sixty guineas at once.'
'Ah, Alick, that's your infatuation!' and she put on a droll gesture of pity. 'But excuse me, where would be the fine edge of delicacy in giving a manifestly fancy price? Come and look at her.'
'I never meddle with horse-dealing.'
'Stuff, as if you weren't the best-mounted man in the regiment. I shall send a note to Captain Sykes if you won't; he knows how to drive a bargain.'
'And give a fancy price the other way. Well, Bessie, on one condition I'll go, and that is, that Meg goes to Bishopsworthy the day she is yours. I won't have her eating Lady Temple's corn, and giving her servants trouble.'
'As if I should think of such a thing.'
Captain Keith's estimate of the value of the steed precisely agreed with Rachel's demand of the original price. Bessie laughed, and said there was collusion.
'Now seriously, Alick, do you think her worth so much? Isn't it a pity, when you know what a humbug poor Rachel is going to give it to?' and she looked half comical, half saucy.
'If she were going to throw it into the sea, I don't see what difference that would make.'
'Ah! you are far too much interested. Nothing belonging to her can bear a vulgar price.'
'Nothing belonging to me is to gain profit by her self-denial,' said Alick, gravely. 'You cannot do less than give her what she gave for it, if you enter on the transaction at all.'
'You mean that it would look shabby. You see we womankind never quite know the code of the world on such matters,' she said, candidly.
'There is something that makes codes unnecessary, Bessie,' he said.
'Ah! I can make allowances. It is a cruel stroke. I don't wonder you can't bear to see any one else on her palfrey; above all as a sacrifice to the landscape painter.'
'Then spare my feelings, and send the mare to Bishopsworthy,' said Alick, as usual too careless of the imputation to take the trouble to rebut it or to be disconcerted.
Bessie was much tickled at his acceptance, and laughed heartily.
'To be sure,' she said, 'it is past concealment now. You must have been very far gone, indeed, to have been taken in to suppose me to be making capital of her 'charitable purposes.''
'Your acting is too like life,' he said, not yet induced to laugh, and she rattled on with her droll, sham sentimental air. 'Is it the long words, Alick, or is it 'the great eyes, my dear;' or is it--oh, yes, I know what is the great attraction--that the Homestead doesn't possess a single spot where one could play at croquet!'
'Quite irresistible!' replied Alick, and Bessie retreated from the colloquy still not laughing at but with him; that is, if the odd, quaint, inward mirth which only visibly lengthened his sleepy eyes, could be called a laugh.
Next time Captain Keith rode to Avonmouth he met the riding party on the road, Bessie upon Rachel's mare, and it appeared that Lady Temple had considered it so dreadful that Meg should not share her hospitality, that it had been quite impossible to send her away. 'So, Alick, your feelings must endure the dreadful spectacle.'
Meanwhile Rachel was hard at work with the subscribers to the 'Christian Knowledge Society.' Beginning with the A's, and working down a page a day, she sent every member a statement of the wrongs of the lacemakers, and the plans of the industrial establishment, at a vast expense of stamps; but then, as she calculated, one pound thus gained paid for two hundred and forty fruitless letters.
'And pray,' said Alick, who had ridden on to call at the Homestead, 'how do you reconcile yourself to the temptation to the postmen?'
'They don't see what my letters are about?'
'They must be dull postmen if they don't remark on the shower of envelopes that pass through their hands--
