This alarm, being less reasonable, was even more difficult to talk down than Mrs. Kelland’s, and Rachel felt as if there were a general conspiracy to drive her distracted, when on going home she found the drawing-room occupied by a pair of plump, paddy-looking old friends, who had evidently talked her mother into a state of nervous alarm. On her entrance, Mrs. Curtis begged the gentleman to tell dear Rachel what he had been saying, but this he contrived to avoid, and only on his departure was Rachel made aware that he and his wife had come, fraught with tidings that she was fostering a Jesuit in disguise, that Mrs. Rawlins was a lady abbess of a new order, Rachel herself in danger of being entrapped, and the whole family likely to be entangled in the mysterious meshes, which, as good Mrs. Curtis more than once repeated, would be “such a dreadful thing for poor Fanny and the boys.”
Her daughters, by soothing and argument, allayed the alarm, though the impression was not easily done away with, and they feared that it might yet cost her a night’s rest. These attacks—absurd as they were—induced Rachel to take measures for their confutation, by writing to Mr. Mauleverer, that she thought it would be well to allow the pupils to pay a short visit to their homes, so as to satisfy their friends.
She did not receive an immediate answer, and was beginning to feel vexed and anxious, though not doubtful, when Mr. Mauleverer arrived, bringing two beautiful little woodcuts, as illustrations for the “Journal of Female Industry.” They were entitled The Free Maids That Weave Their Thread with Bones, and one called The Ideal, represented a latticed cottage window, with roses, honeysuckles, cat, beehives, and all conventional rural delights, around a pretty maiden singing at her lace-pillow; while the other yclept the Real, showed a den of thin, wizened, half-starved girls, cramped over their cushions in a lace-school. The design was Mr. Mauleverer’s, the execution the children’s; and neatly mounted on cards, the performance did them great credit, and there was great justice in Mr. Manleverer’s view that while they were making such progress, it would be a great pity to interrupt the preparation of the first number by sending the children home even for a few hours. Rachel consented the more readily to the postponement of the holiday, as she had now something to show in evidence of the reality of their doings, and she laid hands upon the cuts, in spite of Mr. Mauleverer’s unwillingness that such mere essays should be displayed as specimens of the art of the F.U.E.E. When the twenty pounds which she advanced should have been laid out in blocks, ink, and paper, there was little doubt that the illustrations of the journal would be a triumphant instance of female energy well directed.
Meantime she repaired to Ermine Williams to persuade her to write an article upon the two pictures, a paper in the lively style in which Rachel herself could not excel, pointing out the selfishness of wilfully sentimental illusions. She found Ermine alone, but her usual fate pursued her in the shape of, first, Lady Temple, then both Colonel and Captain Keith, and little Rose, who all came in before she had had time to do more than explain her intentions. Rose had had another fright, and again the Colonel had been vainly trying to distinguish the bugbear of her fancy, and she was clinging all the more closely to him because he was the only person of her aquaintance who did not treat her alarms as absolutely imaginary.
Rachel held her ground, well pleased to have so many spectators of this triumphant specimen of the skill of her asylum, and Lady Temple gave much admiration, declaring that no one ought to wear lace again without being sure that no one was tortured in making it, and that when she ordered her new black lace shawl of Mrs. Kelland, it should be on condition that the poor girls were not kept so very hard at work.
“You will think me looking for another Sepoy likeness,” said the Colonel, “but I am sure I have met this young lady or her twin sister somewhere in my travels.”
“It is a satire on conventional pictures,” said Rachel.
“Now, I remember,” he continued. “It was when I was laid up with my wound at a Dutch boer’s till I could get to Cape Town. My sole reading was one number of the Illustrated News, and I made too good acquaintance with that lady’s head, to forget her easily.”
“Of course,” said Rachel, “it is a reminiscence of the painting there represented.”
“What was the date?” asked Alick Keith.
The Colonel was able to give it with some precision.
“You are all against me,” said Rachel; “I see you are perfectly determined that there shall be something wrong about every performance of the F.U.E.E.”
“No, don’t say so,” began Fanny, with gentle argument, but Alick Keith put in with a smile, “It is a satisfaction to Miss Curtis.”
“Athanasius against the world,” she answered.
“Athanasius should take care that his own foot is firm, his position incontrovertible,” said Ermine.
“Well!”
“Then,” said Ermine, “will you allow these little pictures to be examined into?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Look here,” and the Colonel lifted on the table a scrapbook that Rose had been quietly opening on his knee, and which contained an etching of a child playing with a dog, much resembling the style of the drawing.
“Who did that, my dear?” he asked.
“Mamma had it,” was Rose’s reply; “it was always in my old nursery scrapbook.”
“Everyone knows,” said Rachel, “that a woodcut is often like an etching, and an etching like a woodcut. I do not know what you are driving at.”
“The little dogs and all,” muttered Alick, as Rachel glanced rather indignantly at Rose and her book so attentively examined by the Colonel.
“I know,” repeated Rachel, “that there is a strong prejudice
