The Pillars of the House, V1

'Oh, everybody laughs at Aunt Mary, and she hardly ever finds it out, and when she does, she does not mind! Even old Mrs. Kedge, her mother, does nothing but laugh at her for trying to be fine. Old Granny is not a bit by way of being a lady, you know; she lives in a little house in the city with one maid, and I believe she rubs her own tables. I am sure she goes about in omnibuses, though she has lots of money; and Marilda is so fond of her, and so like her, only not so clever and shrewd.'

'But why does she live in such a small way?'

'Because she never was used to anything else, and does not like it. She hates grand servants, and never will come to Kensington Palace Gardens; but she really is good-natured. She told Clement to drop in on her whenever he likes, and bring any of his friends; and she always gives them a superb piece of plum-cake, and once she took them to the Tower, and once to the Zoological Gardens, for she thinks that she cannot do enough to make up to them for being bred up to be little monks, with cords and sandals, and everything popish.'

'You don't let her think so?'

'Well, really when she has got a thing into her head nothing will uproot it; and, after all, they do carry things very far there, and Clement goes on so that I don't wonder.'

'Goes on how?'

'Why, just fancy, the other day when Uncle Thomas fetched him in his brougham because I was coming home, there he sat at luncheon and would not eat a scrap of meat.'

'Ah! it was a Wednesday in Lent,' said Cherry.

'Only a Wednesday, you know; and there, with four or five strange people, too. One of them asked if he was a Catholic, and of course Clement looked very wise, and greatly pleased, and said, 'Yes, he was;' and that brought down Aunt Mary with her heavy artillery. 'Bless me, Clement, you don't say so. Is Mr. Fulmort really gone over?' 'Yes,' said Clem. (I know he did it on purpose.) 'He is gone over to preach at St. Peter's.' And then one of the gentlemen asked if Clem meant Mr. Fulmort of St. Matthew's, Whittingtonia, and when he said 'Yes, he lived in the clergy house,' he began regularly to play him off, asking the most absurd questions about fasts and feasts and vigils and decorations, and Clem answered them all in his prim little self-sufficient way, just as if he thought he was on the high- road to be St. Clement the Martyr, till I was ready to run away.'

'Couldn't you have given him a hint?' asked Wilmet.

'My dear, have you lived twelve years with Clem without knowing that hints are lost on him?'

'Dear Clem, he is a very good steady-hearted little fellow,' said Cherry. 'It was very nice of him.'

'Well, I only hope he'll never come to luncheon again in Lent. There are times and seasons for everything, and certainly not for display! And to make it worse, Marilda is the most literal-minded girl. Fasting was quite a new mind to her, for she never realises what she does not see; and she got Clem into a corner, where I heard him going on, nothing loth, about days of abstinence, out of Mr. Fulmort's last catechising, I should think; and ended by asking what Cousin Edward did, so that I fully expected that I should find her eating nothing, and that I should be called to account.'

'And what did you tell her then?'

'Oh, you know I could say quite truly that he did not.'

'I don't think that was quite fair,' said Wilmet gravely. 'You know it was only because he really could not.'

'You don't know how glad I was to have an answer that would hinder the horrid commotion we should have had if Marilda had taken to fasting. And, after all, you know, Papa would have said minding her mother was her first duty.'

'Why did not you tell her that?'

'I have, dozens of times; but you know there are mothers and mothers, and nobody can always mind Aunt Mary, good soul! Marilda has just made herself, with her own good rough plain sense. I wish she was a man; she would be a capital merchant like her father; but it is hard to be a great heiress, with nothing she really likes to do. She is always longing to come down to Centry, and tramp about the lanes among the cottages.'

'Oh! I wish they would!'

'I don't think Aunt Mary will ever let them, she hates the country; and though she likes to have a place for the name of the thing, she does not want to live there, especially where there are so many of us; and then, Felix's situation!'

'For shame, Alda!'

'Well, I did not say anything myself. It is only Aunt Mary-it is very foolish of people, but, you see, they will. As to Marilda, I believe she would like to stand behind the counter with him this minute.'

'Marilda is the oddest and best girl I ever heard of!'

'You may say that. And so ignorant she was! She had a great velvet- and-gold Church Service, and hardly guessed there was any Bible or Prayer-Book besides. I am sure Felix cannot have had more work to teach that youth than I have had with Marilda. Such a jumble as she had picked up! She really had only little baby prayers to say, till she saw my book.'

'What a blessing you must be to her!' said Wilmet, fondly looking at her sister.

'Well, I do hope so. You must know she was regularly struck with dear Papa. I am sure he is the first saint in her calendar, and everything is-'What did Cousin Edward say?' And when once she has made up her mind that a thing is right, she will blunder on through fire and water, but she will do it.'

'Then,' said Cherry, 'she ought to try and learn, and not to be awkward because of obedience.'

Alda burst out laughing. 'People can only do what they can. Marilda trying to be graceful would be worse than Marilda floundering her own way. But she really is the best and kindest girl living, and she gets on much better for having me to keep her out of scrapes.'

Wilmet went to bed that night thankful to have Alda's head on the pillow beside her, and most thankful for the tokens that she watched among her brothers and sisters, which showed how much her father's influence was extending beyond his short life.

CHAPTER IX. THE THIRTEEN

'They closed around the fire,

And all in turn essayed to paint

The rival merits of their saint;

A theme that ne'er can tire

A holy maid, for be it known

That their saint's honour is their own.'

SCOTT.

The thirteen Underwoods did not meet again in the same house for many a long day, and when they did, it was on a grey misty morning in the Christmas week of the year following; and the blinds were down, and the notes of the knell clashing out overhead, as the door was opened to Edgar, Alda, and Clement, as they arrived together, having been summoned late on the previous night by a telegram with tidings that their mother had been struck by a paralysis. They knew what to expect when Felix, with one of the little ones on his arm, came quietly down the stairs and admitted them. All they had to ask, was 'when,' and 'how,' and to hear, that the long living death had ended in peaceful insensibility at last. Then they followed him upstairs to the room where the others sat, hushed, over their pen or their books, where Wilmet, her eyes gushing with quiet tears, held Alda in her embrace, and Geraldine, after her first eager kiss, gazed wistfully at Edgar as though there must be comfort in the very sight of him, if she could only feel it; while the very little ones opened their puzzled eyes on the newcomers as strangers.

And so they were: Clement had indeed been at home in September, but Alda not for a year and three-quarters, nor Edgar since he first left it three years before. The absence of the two latter was not by their own choice, a doctor who had ordered Mrs. Thomas Underwood to spend the summer months, year after year, at Spa was partly the cause, and moreover, during the autumn and winter of 1856 Bexley had been a perfect field of epidemics. Measles and hooping-cough had run riot in the schools, and lingered in the streets and alleys of the potteries, fastening on many who thought themselves secured by former attacks, and there had been a good many deaths, in especial Clement's chief friend, Harry Lamb. Nobody, excepting the invalid mother, throughout the Underwood household, had escaped one or other disorder, and both fell to the lot of the four little ones, and likewise of Mr. Audley, who was infinitely disgusted at himself, and at the guarded childhood for which he thus paid the penalty