“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 anyone 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 lace-makers, 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—ominous money-letters, all with the same address, and no detection remember. You don’t know who will answer and who will not.”
“I never thought of that,” said Rachel; “but risks must be run when any great purpose is in hand.”
“The corruption of one postman versus the rescue of—how many children make a postman?” asked Captain Keith, with his grave, considering look.
“The postman would be corrupt already,” said Grace, as Rachel thought the last speech too mocking to be worthy of reply, and went on picking up her letters.
“There is another objection,” added Captain Keith, as he watched her busy fingers. “Have you considered how you are frightening people out of the society? It is enough to make one only subscribe as Michael Miserly or as Simon Skinflint, or something equally uninviting to applications.”
“I shall ask you to subscribe by both names!” said Rachel, readily. “How much for Simon Skinflint?”
“Ten pounds. Stop—when Mr. Mauleverer gives him a reference.”
“That’s ungenerous. Will Michael Miserly make up for it?”
“Yes, when the first year’s accounts have been audited.”
“Ah! those who have no faith to make a venture can never effect any good.”
“You evidently build on a great amount of faith from the public. How do you induce them to believe—do you write in your own name?”
“No, it makes mamma unhappy. I was going to put R.C., but Grace said people would think it meant Roman Catholic. Your sister thought I had better put the initials of Female Union for Lacemaker’s Employment.”
“You don’t mean that Bessie persuaded you to put that?” exclaimed Alick Keith, more nearly starting up than Rachel had ever seen him.
“Yes. There is no objection, is there?”
“Oh, Rachel, Rachel, how could we have helped thinking of it?” cried Grace, nearly in a state of suffocation.
Rachel held up
