Sarah's School Friend Part 7

I shall go melancholy mad in this hole of a place!' cried Sarah.

''Ole!--w'en it's on the top o' a 'ill! W'at silly nonsense you do talk, child! 'Ole, indeed!' said Mrs Clay.

'It is rather rough luck to leave you in your holidays; but c.o.c.kburn has asked me so often. Couldn't you ask some one to stay with you--one of your schoolfellows, perhaps?' George suggested.

'Nice, comfortable house this is to ask any one to stay in!' said Sarah sarcastically.

'It's as comfortable as any o' theirs, if it isn't a great deal better,'

cried her mother.

'I'd sooner live in Naomi's home if I'd my choice,' said Sarah gloomily.

'Sarah is right in one way, mother,' said George before Mrs Clay could say anything. 'It is not very comfortable to have constant disturbances in one's home; and the governor is very easily angered.'

'Yes, dear, I know,' agreed Mrs Clay, who adored her son, and thought everything he did or said perfection. 'An' it's 'ard for you an' Sarah, for you don't understan' your father, nor ain't used to 'im as I am. But that's not a bad idea o' yours that Sarah should ask one o' the young ladies at 'er school to come an' stay 'ere for a bit.--There's that Miss Cunning'am that you've got the photograph o' in your room. She's got a nice, 'omely face.'

'She's a duke's granddaughter, whether her face is homely or not. No, I couldn't ask her,' declared Sarah.

'Why not? She'd be the very one. Your father likes people o' 'igh cla.s.s, though 'e was only a mill-'and 'isself. An' she's got such a nice smile on 'er photo,' persisted the mother.

'I couldn't possibly ask her; she'd never come and stay with a manufacturer,' declared Sarah again.

'I'd be bound she'd jump at it. She'd not get a better dinner at 'ome or anyw'ere, nor a better room to sleep in,' said Mrs Clay.

This remark grated upon both her children, as so many of poor Mrs Clay's sayings did; but George, tactful as usual, remarked, 'Suppose you write and ask Miss Cunningham, Sarah; and if she is too proud to visit a maker of blankets, why, she will refuse, and there will be the end of it; and if she accepts, it will show that her friends.h.i.+p for you is stronger than cla.s.s prejudices.'

Sarah looked at her brother for a minute as if she wanted to say something, but did not do so, and only drummed with her crimson-dyed fingers on the white table-cloth, taking apparently great delight in their appearance.

'Yes; you do as your brother tells you, instead of sittin' there smilin'

at them dreadful 'ands o' yours. I'm sure they're nothin' to be proud o'.

Now, if you lived in Howroyd's Mill, w'ere your uncle Bill lives, you might be ashamed to ask the young lady to stay wi' you; but 'ere it's quite different,' said Mrs Clay.

The brother and sister, it will have been noticed, always called their father's step-brother Uncle Howroyd, whereas their mother and father called him Bill or 'your uncle Bill.' The fact was that the younger people did not like 'Bill,' and George said he was thankful for one thing, and that was that his name could not be shortened; while Sarah had made violent protests against being called Sally or Sal, and would not allow any one except her father, whom she could not control, to call her anything but Sarah; and, indeed, the latter name suited her best.

Sarah followed her brother into his smoking-den. 'Pshaw! What a stuffy room!' she exclaimed, as she threw herself upon the cus.h.i.+oned window-seat.

'If it does not please you I fail to see why you have come into it; and as for being stuffy'----Instead of completing his sentence George shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say the accusation was too absurd to be argued about.

'It _is_ stuffy, with all those cus.h.i.+ons and carpets about, and pictures and gimcracks, for all its big windows. I can't think how you like to stuff it up with all this rubbish,' persisted Sarah.

'This rubbish, as you call it, is worth a pretty penny,' he remarked, lighting a cigarette.

'You're as bad as father, counting everything by what it costs. But, I say, George, why did you go and suggest my inviting Horatia Cunningham to come and stay here? I don't want her; and now you've started mother on it she'll give me no peace till I do ask her, and very likely say something to father, and he'll begin worrying about it, especially if he hears she's a duke's granddaughter. Besides, she wouldn't come if I did ask her,' Sarah remarked.

'In that case there'll be no harm done if you do ask her. But I can't imagine why you shouldn't; she looks a very nice girl, and you are great friends, aren't you? And what has her grandfather to do with it?' asked George.

'At school we are; but whether we should be after she'd been up here isn't so certain. And as for why I shouldn't ask her, the reason is pretty plain--father,' replied Sarah.

'You mean he might make himself unpleasant?' suggested George.

'There's no need for him to _make_ himself; Nature has made him unpleasant,' exclaimed Sarah.

'You need not see much of him. You can go for picnics or drives, and arrange to have lunch earlier or later; and you never breakfast and have tea with him, so it's only at dinner-time that they will meet. I should not think he will get into a rage before a stranger, especially a young girl.'

Sarah seemed to be considering something, and suddenly she blurted out, 'It isn't only that. I don't want her to come here; can't you see why not? They don't know what my people are. Oh, they know we're manufacturers; but that's nothing to be ashamed of. Lots of manufacturers are gentlemen, but we are not gentlefolks, and they--they don't guess it from me,' she wound up half-shamefacedly.

'Then I wouldn't sail under false colours. We are risen from the people, and our parents have not had the education they have been good enough to give us; but it would be contemptible to be ashamed of the fact or of them.'

'That's very fine and high-flown; but I am ashamed of my father, at any rate. I'd rather not have Horatia Cunningham come here and laugh at my mother behind her back,' said Sarah.

'I should like to see any one dare to do that,' said George, with an angrier look than his sister had ever seen him give.

'She wouldn't mean it nastily; but it's no good pretending that mother does not say the wrong thing sometimes,' said Sarah.

'The wrong thing has been sending you to that school,' said George, his loyalty and love for his mother preventing his acknowledging the truth of this remark; and then he said more kindly, for he sympathised more with his sister than he chose to say, 'I don't believe Miss Cunningham would be nasty in any way. I know her brother slightly at college, and he is "Hail, fellow! well met," with every chap he meets. You take my advice, and write and ask her to come here. You can tell her, if you like, that--well, that we are _nouveaux riches_, and have no pretensions of being gentlefolks; but that she will have a hearty Yorks.h.i.+re welcome, and that's not a thing to be despised, let me tell you. Here, sit down and write the letter at once. I shall enjoy myself much more in Scotland if I know you have a companion.'

'I shouldn't mind so much if you were going to be at home,' said Sarah, only half-won over.

George ignored the implied compliment, and said, 'You will get on much better alone. Sit down and write the invitation here. I'll help you.'

'No, thank you; I'd rather write my own way,' remarked Sarah, as she rose from the window-seat. When she got to the door, she turned back to say, 'I have a presentiment that she'll accept, and it will be all your fault, remember. Whatever the consequences, they will be on your head.'

George only laughed, and sat down himself to accept his shooting invitation.

CHAPTER VI.

AN EXTRAORDINARY LETTER.

It did not take George Clay five minutes to write his acceptance of his friend's invitation; but his sister did not find her letter quite so easy to write, and she sat at the pretty Chippendale table biting the end of her pen for more than that length of time before she began to write in desperation, only to tear up the letter in despair.

'It's all very well for George to talk; but it's not so easy to sit down and tell a girl you are not a lady, and, what's more, that your parents are not gentlefolks,' said Sarah aloud to herself.

Then she started again, and wrote a friendly invitation, without any embarra.s.sing explanations or apologies.

'George may be able to say that kind of thing in a gentlemanly way--he always does say the right sort of thing--but I shall just chance it,' she muttered to herself, as she sealed up the letter and sent it off by Naomi, without showing it to any one or taking any one's advice upon it.

To have done so would have been quite contrary to Sarah's habits, for she was of a very independent character, and the circ.u.mstances of her whole life no doubt fostered this characteristic.

'So we've got a grand young lady from London coming up to stay with us plain folk,' said Mr Mark Clay when he saw his daughter at dinner that evening.

'I've asked one of my schoolfellows to come to stay with me; but I don't know that she will come, and I don't know that you will think her grand.

She dresses very plainly,' replied Sarah.

'Then she'll be all the more willing to come if she's poor,' said Mr Clay.

'She's not in the least poor. It's not the fas.h.i.+on for schoolgirls to dress very grandly,' said Sarah hastily.