Melchior's Dream and Other Tales Part 23

I think my G.o.dmother's courtesy to us, and her thoughtful kindness, had fixed her repeated hints about self-control and good manners rather firmly in my head. I distinctly remember making an effort to forget my toys and think of Maud Mary's comfort.

I said, "Will you come and take off your things, darling?" and she said, "Yes, darling;" and then we had tea.

But next day, when she was quite rested, and had really nothing to complain of, I did think she might have praised the Dutch fair.

She said it "seemed such a funny thing" to have to play in an old garret; but she need not have wanted to alter the arrangement of all the shops, and have everything her own way, as she always had at home, because, if her dolls' house was hers, my Dutch fair was mine. I did think, for a moment, of getting my G.o.dmother to speak to her, but I knew it would be of no use to complain unless I had something to ask for. When I came to think of it, I found that what I wanted was that Maud Mary should let me manage my own toys and direct the game, and I resolved to ask her myself.

"Look here, darling," said I, "when I come and play with you, I always play dolls as you like, because the dolls' house is yours; I wish you would play my game to-day, as the Dutch fair is mine."

Maud Mary flounced to her feet, and bridled with her wavy head, and said she was sure she did not want to play if I didn't like her way of playing; and as to my Dutch fair, her papa could buy her one any day for her very own.

I was nettled, for Maud Mary was a little apt to flourish Mr.

Ibbetson's money in my face; but if her father was rich, my G.o.dmother was a lady of rank, and I said that "my G.o.dmother, Lady Elizabeth, said it was very vulgar to flounce and toss one's head if one was put out."

Maud Mary crimsoned, and, exclaiming that she did not care what Lady Elizabeth or Lady Anybody Else said, she whisked over three shops with the ends of her sash, and kicked the wax off Josephine Esmeralda's nose with the heel of her Balmoral boot.

I don't like confessing it, but I did push Maud Mary, and Maud Mary slapped me.

And when we both looked up, my G.o.dmother was standing before us, with her gold spectacles on her nose.

Lady Elizabeth was very kind, and even then I knew that she was very right.

When she said, "I have asked your friend for a week, and for that week, my dear, she is your guest, and you must try to please, and _make the best of it_," I not only did not dispute it; I felt a spirit of self-suppression and hospitable pride awake within me to do as she had said.

I think the hardest part of it was that, whatever I did and whatever I gave up, Maud Mary recognized no effort on my part. What she got she took as her due, and what she did not get she grumbled about.

I sometimes think that it was partly because, in all that long week, she never ceased grumbling, that I did; I hope for life.

Only once I said, "O G.o.dmamma! how glad I shall be when I am alone with Joseph again!" And with sudden remorse, I added, "But I beg your pardon, that's grumbling; and you _have_ been so kind!"

Lady Elizabeth took off her eye-gla.s.ses, and held out her hands for mine.

"Is it grumbling, little woman?" she said. "Well, I'm not sure."

"_I'm_ not sure," I said, smiling; "for you know I only said I should be so _glad_ to be alone with Joseph, and to try to be good to him; for he is a very kind boy, and if he is a little awkward with the dolls, I mean to make the best of it. _One can't have everything_," I added, laughing.

Lady Elizabeth drew my head towards her, and stroked and kissed it.

"G.o.d bless you, child," she said. "You _have_ inherited your father's smile."

"But, I say, Selina," whispered Joseph, when I went to look at his fortress in the bay-window. "Do you suppose it's because he's dead that she cried behind her spectacles when she said you had got his smile?"

A HAPPY FAMILY.

CHAPTER I.

"If solid happiness we prize, Within our breast this jewel lies.

From our own selves our joys must flow, And peace begins at home."

COTTON.

The family--our family, not the Happy Family--consisted of me and my brothers and sisters. I have a father and mother, of course.

I am the eldest, as I remind my brothers; and of the more worthy gender, which my sisters sometimes forget. Though we live in the village, my father is a gentleman, as I shall be when I am grown up. I have told the village boys so more than once. One feels mean in boasting that one is better born than they are; but if I did not tell them, I am not sure that they would always know.

Our house is old, and we have a ghost--the ghost of my great-great-great-great-great-aunt.

She "crossed her father's will," nurse says, and he threatened to flog her with his dog-whip, and she ran away, and was never heard of more.

He would not let the pond be dragged, but he never went near it again; and the villagers do not like to go near it now. They say you may meet her there, after sunset, flying along the path among the trees, with her hair half down, and a knot of ribbon fluttering from it, and parted lips, and terror in her eyes.

The men of our family (my father's family, my mother is Irish) have always had strong wills. I have a strong will myself.

People say I am like the picture of my great-grandfather (the great-great-great-nephew of the ghost). He must have been a wonderful old gentleman by all accounts. Sometimes nurse says to us, "Have your own way, and you'll live the longer," and it always makes me think of great-grandfather, who had so much of his own way, and lived to be nearly a hundred.

I remember my father telling us how his sisters had to visit their old granny for months at a time, and how he shut the shutters at three o'clock on summer afternoons, and made them play dummy whist by candle light.

"Didn't you and your brothers go?" asked Uncle Patrick, across the dinner-table. My father laughed.

"Not we! My mother got us there once--but never again."

"And did your sisters like it?"

"Like it? They used to cry their hearts out. I really believe it killed poor Jane. She was consumptive and chilly, but always craving for fresh air; and granny never would have open windows, for fear of draughts on his bald head; and yet the girls had no fires in their room, because young people shouldn't be pampered."

"And ye never-r offer-r-ed--neither of ye--to go in the stead of them?"

When Uncle Patrick rolls his R's in a discussion, my mother becomes nervous.

"One can't expect boys to consider things," she said. "Boys will be boys, you know."

"And what would you have 'em be?" said my father. Uncle Patrick turned to my mother.

"Too true, Geraldine. Ye don't expect it. Worse luck! I a.s.sure ye, I'd be aghast at the brutes we men can be, if I wasn't more amazed that we're as good as we are, when the best and gentlest of your s.e.x--the moulders of our childhood, the desire of our manhood--demand so little for all that you alone can give. There were conceivable uses in women preferring the biggest brutes of barbarous times, but it's not so now; and boys will be civilised boys, and men will be civilised men, sweet sister, when you _do_ expect it, and when your grace and favours are the rewards of n.o.bleness, and not the easy prize of selfishness and savagery."

My father spoke fairly.

"There's some truth in what you say, Pat."