Mildred Arkell Volume I Part 26

"Is she in pain? Does she walk out?"

"She is not in pain when she lies, but it comes on if she exerts herself. Sometimes she walks out, but not often. She is so patient--so anxious to make the best of things; lying there, as she is often obliged to do, for hours, and going without any little thing she may want, because she will not disturb the servant from her work to get it.

I don't think anyone was ever blessed with so patient and sweet a temper."

And when Mildred entered and saw the bright expectancy of the well-remembered face, the eager hands held out to welcome her, she knew that they were true sisters from that hour. The invalid drew down her face to her own flushed one.

"I am so grieved," she whispered, the tears rising in her earnest eyes; "this is one of my worst days, and I am unable to rise to welcome you."

"Do not think of it," answered Mildred; "I am glad to be here to wait upon you, I am used to nursing; I think it is my _specialite_," she added, with one of her old sunny smiles. "I will try and nurse you into health before I go back again."

"You shall make the tea, and do all those things, now you are here, Mildred," interposed Peter. "I am as awkward as an owl when I have to attempt anything, and Lucy lies and laughs at me."

"Which is to be my room?" asked Mildred. "I will go and take my things off, and come down to hear all the news of the old place."

"The blue room," said Mrs. Peter. "You will find little Lucy----"

"Your own old room, Mildred," interposed Peter. "Lucy, my dear, when Mildred left home the room was not blue, but a sort of dirty yellow."

Mildred went and came down again, bringing the children with her, little orderly things; steady Lucy quite like a mother to her baby brother.

Mildred made acquaintance with them, and she and Peter gossiped away to their hearts' content; the one telling the news of the "old place," and its changes, the other listening.

"We think Lucy so much like you," Peter observed in the course of the evening, alluding to his little daughter.

"Like me!" repeated Mildred.

"It strikes us all. William never sees her but he thinks of you. He says we ought to have named her 'Mildred.'"

"_His_ daughters are not named Mildred, either of them," she answered, hastily--an old sore sensation, that she had been striving so long to bury, becoming very rife within her.

"His wife chose their names--not he. She has a will of her own, and likes to exercise it."

"How do you get on with William's wife?"

"Not very well. She and Lucy did not take to each other at first, and I suppose never will. She is quite a fine lady now; and, indeed, always was, to my thinking; and William's wealth enables them to live in a style very different from what we can do. So Mrs. Arkell looks down upon us. We are invited to a grand, formal dinner there once a year, and that is about all our intercourse."

"A grand, formal dinner!" echoed Mildred. "For you!"

Peter nodded. "She makes it so on purpose, no doubt; a hint that we are not to be every-day visitors. She invites little Lucy there sometimes to play with Charlotte and Sophy; but I am sure the two girls despise the child just as their mother despises us."

"And does William despise you?" inquired Mildred, a touch of resentment in her usually gentle tone.

"How can you ask it, Mildred?" returned Peter, warmly. "I thought you knew William Arkell better than that. He grows so like his father--good, kindly, honourable. There's not a man in all Westerbury liked and respected as he is. He comes in sometimes in an evening; glad, I fancy, of a little peace and quietness. Between ourselves, Mildred, I fancy that in marrying Charlotte Travice, William found he had caught a Tartar."

"And so they are grand!" observed Mildred, waking out of a fit of musing, and perhaps hardly conscious of what she said.

"Terribly grand. _She_ is. They keep their close carriage now. It strikes me--I may be wrong--but it strikes me that he lives up to every farthing of his income."

"My Uncle George did not."

"No, indeed! Or there'd not have been the fortune that there was to leave to William."

"But, Peter, I gather a good deal now and then from the local papers of the distress that exists in Westerbury, of the depressed state that the trade is falling into; more depressed even than it was when I left, and that need not be. Does not this state of things affect William Arkell?"

"It must affect him; though not, I conclude, to any great extent. You see, Mildred, he has what so many of the other manufacturers want--plenty of money, independent of his business. William has not to force his goods into the market at unfavourable moments; be his stock ever so large, he can hold it until the demand quickens. It is the being obliged to send their goods into the market at low prices, that swamps the others."

"Will the prosperity of the town ever come back to it, think you?"

"Never. And I am not sure that the worst has come yet."

Mildred sighed. She called Lucy to her and held her before her, pus.h.i.+ng the hair from her brow as she looked attentively into her face. It was not a beautiful or a handsome face; but it was fair and gentle, the features pale, the eyes dark brown, with a sweet, sad, earnest expression: just such a face as Mildred's.

"Do you like your cousins, Charlotte and Sophia, Lucy?" asked Mildred.

"I like Travice best," was the little lady's unblus.h.i.+ng answer.

"Charlotte and Sophy tease me; they are not kind; but Travice won't let them tease me when he is there. He is a big boy, but he plays with _me_; and he says he loves me better than he does them."

"I really believe he does," said Peter, amused at the answer. "Travice is just like his father, as this child is like you--the same open, generous, n.o.ble boy that William himself was. When I see Travice playing with Lucy, I could fancy it was you and William over again--as I used to see you play in the old days."

"Heaven grant that the ending of it may not be as mine was!" was the inward prayer that went up from Mildred's heart.

"Travice is in the college school, I suppose, Peter?"

"Oh, yes. With a private evening tutor at home. The girls have a resident governess. William spares no money on their education."

"Would it not be a nice thing for Lucy if she could go daily and share their lessons?"

"Hush, Mildred! Treason!" exclaimed Peter, while Mrs. Peter Arkell burst into a laugh, her husband's manner was so quaint. "I have reason to know that William was hardy enough to say something of the same sort to his wife, _and he got his answer_. I and my wife, between us, teach Lucy. It is better so; for the child could not be spared from her mother. You don't know the use she is of, already."

"I am of use to mamma too, I am!" broke in a bold baby voice at Mildred's side.

She caught the little fellow on her knee: he thought no doubt he had been too long neglected. Mildred began stroking the auburn curls from his face, as she had stroked Lucy's.

"And I am like mamma," added the young gentleman. "Everybody says so.

Mamma says so."

Indeed "everybody" might well say it. As the mother's was, so was the child's, the loveliest possible type of face. The same, the exquisite features, the refined, delicate look, the l.u.s.trous brown eyes and hair, the rose-flush on the cheeks. "No, I never did see two faces so much alike, allowing for the difference in age," cried Mildred, looking from the mother on the sofa to the child on her knee. "Tell me again what your name is."

"It's Harry Cheveley Arkell."

"Do you know," exclaimed Mildred, looking up at Mrs. Peter, "it strikes me this child speaks remarkably plain for his age."

"He does," was the answer. "Lucy did not speak so well when she was double his age. He is unusually forward and sensible in all respects. I fear it sometimes," she added in a lower tone.

"By why do you fear it?" quickly asked Mildred.

"Oh--you know the old saying, or superst.i.tion," concluded Mrs. Arkell, unable further to allude to it, for the boy's earnest eyes were bent upon her with profound interest.

"Those whom the G.o.ds love, die young," muttered Peter. "But the saying is all nonsense, Mildred."