My boy-cousins were very polite to me at first, and hardly seemed to know what to make of me. Harry was a little too patronizing, called me "a mite of a thing," and played tricks upon me in a gentle way. But then he was not often with us. He had not been a night in the house before he had quite determined to be a sailor like Uncle Hugh, so it followed, as a matter of course, that he must be always with him.
Force of habit, however, made him confide all his plans and thoughts to Lottie, so that our private talks in the shrubbery were often interrupted by his merry voice. Then he would throw himself down among the grass and periwinkles, and tell us all about his future ship. This usually ended in Lottie's being carried off to make sails or flags for his new craft. Then, being left to myself, I soon ran off to my other cousins, nothing loath to have a game of romps with them.
Alick seemed likely to be my special friend. What a funny little fellow he must have been, though I did not think so then! Jane called him a little dandy, much to his displeasure; yet I am afraid his friendship was likely to increase my childish vanity. He was so fond of decking me with flowers, making wreaths for me, and then looking at me, and sometimes comparing my hair or eyes with Lottie's; and his look of vexation if my face was dirty or my pinafore torn, often comes back to me even now when I feel untidy in any way.
One afternoon, when Alick and I and one of the other boys were alone, it suddenly came into our wise little heads that we would play at going to a party. What vast preparations we made! What pains the boys took to tie up my sleeves with some bright ribbon meant for Harry's flags! How cleverly we succeeded in carrying off a hair-brush, and what a long time it took to decide how the boys' hair and ties should be arranged! And then came the flowers, my wreath, and the bouquet to be carried for me by one of my gentlemen.
We were all ready, I remember, and I was just taking Alick's arm, and we had all put on our best airs and graces for a solemn entrance to the supposed ball-room, when, all of a sudden, who should come round the corner but Uncle Hugh and Harry!
[Illustration: GOING TO A PARTY.]
Oh, those bursts of laughter pealing out again and again! Oh, the writhings and twistings of Uncle Hugh in his excessive mirth! Would they _ever_ stop laughing? Even now my cheeks almost tingle with those painful blushes, and my heart beats with that frightened shame!
And yet it was for Alick that I was chiefly troubled, as I saw him fling down the flowers and run, while Harry, shouting "conceited young jackanapes," pursued him at full speed. I had never seen such rough play or heard such mocking laughter, and I burst into tears, sobbing out my trouble on my uncle's shoulder as he carried me off and laughingly soothed me, pressing the prickly wreath all the while against my head.
It was a long time before our adventure was forgotten. Harry's merry jokes brought the colour over and over again to my face, and the angry words to Alick's lips. But we were both cured, certainly, for the time, of any love of display or dandyism!
VI.
_WHAT ABOUT LESSONS?_
And now, little reader, I know quite well what thought has been popping in and out of your head all this time. You have been wanting to ask me what had become of lessons all these weeks, and how a number of little boys and girls could be allowed to run wild, doing just what they liked all day long.
[Illustration: BABY, DEAR!]
Well, it does seem very shocking, and there is no denying that, for a whole month, we did not often see the inside of a book. Yet, I had learnt to read, and had been in the habit of learning to spell and to count every day of my life at home. I don't quite know how it came about that we were not all of us a very untamed set after a month's idleness at the Park. Perhaps, it was a good thing for us that grandmamma was what she was. The very perfection of tender kindness we all felt her, and yet there was a certain dignity about her, that made it a simple impossibility to be rough or rude before her. And on the whole we were a great deal with her. When not with her, we were supposed to be picking up a great deal of French from my cousin's Swiss nurse. And so, in our way, we did, although I think Susette learned English a great deal faster than we learned French. Yet, when we wished to coax her, the French words came fast enough, such as they were.
But I am afraid grandmamma did not think that we were learning quite enough, for one day she called Lottie and me, and told us that she had just seen such a nice young lady, and that she had promised to come and be our governess. What an excitement this news caused us all! How we talked it over all day long. We had many different ideas as to what she was to be like; in fact, the elder boys made pictures of her, which, as it turned out, were anything but good portraits.
How we did look at her that first evening! She was very young, very fair and in deep mourning. That is my earliest impression of her. We had a kind of unconfessed idea that she did not take half pains enough to make us like her. She did not seem to care whether we did or not--hardly, I fancy, to think about the matter. It was just the very end of April, almost the bright May-time, and grandmamma went round the garden with her, Lottie and I making our remarks from a distance. I think we were a little surprised to see our new governess so much at her ease, laughing merrily and talking away to grandmamma, just as if there were no little critics taking note of all. By and by, she came in and sat down in "the schoolroom"--such a new word that seemed!--to write a letter. Lottie and I pretended to be very busy with our dolls in one corner, but we were keeping up our watch, and every now and then we met her eye with a merry twinkle in it, looking greatly amused at us.
"She looks so young, only a girl! she will never be able to manage us, Jane says," Lottie remarked very softly to me; "but then, I daresay, she can be cross enough when she likes, governesses always are!"
All of a sudden, a merry laugh startled us both, and in another minute Lottie found herself flat on the floor, being tickled and kissed and laughed over all at once. I don't think she quite liked it, though she couldn't help laughing, too, but her cheeks were very red, when Miss Grant raised her own head. She kept Lottie flat on her back, and looked down at her, the most thorough amusement all over her face.
"Cross enough, do you think? Oh, yes, to be sure I can! Cross enough to eat you up at one mouthful, and little Sissy after you!"
How funny it sounded! Lottie laughed and so did I, only very nervously.
Then all at once Miss Grant grew very comically grave, and asked us whether we thought we should soon make her cross? And then followed such a funny talk, I think I shall never forget it. Miss Grant was half lying on the sofa now, Lottie and I were bobbing up and down beside her, sometimes looking right into her blue laughing eyes, sometimes hiding our own rosy faces, that she mightn't see how queer she made us feel.
"You don't much like the idea of having a governess, I see," she said; "you fancy it will be lessons, lessons all day long now, a great deal of crying, and punishments, very hard things to learn, and no fun any more.
If that's what it really is going to be, I shall get so unhappy that I shall soon run away home again! And then you think I shall have to grow cross and ill-tempered, too--that is the worst part of it all."
She pretended to be ready to cry, and Lottie, who didn't quite like to give up her own opinion, muttered something about "She thought they always were!"
"Are they?" asked Miss Grant, just as if she really wanted to know, and, when we laughed and hid our faces, she went on: "I think I know how it is. This is what you will do to me: You will begin by getting into all the mischief you can think of, and that will give me a headache; and then you will be cross and rude, and that will give me great, deep lines in the forehead; and last of all, you will do vulgar things, that will make my mouth get into the 'don't' shape, which is so ugly, you know; and, by and by, when I look at myself in the glass, I shall find myself turned into a grey-headed old woman, and I shall say, 'Sissy gave me those wrinkles between my eyes, I always had to frown at her so;' and then, 'Those ugly lines by my mouth came when Lottie vexed me so.' What a funny thing it will be to have to remember you in that way when you are grown-up people!"
Of course, we did not like this way of taking it for granted that we were rude, troublesome children, yet there was a funny look in Miss Grant's eyes that seemed as if she didn't really mean what she said. And the end of it all was that we made a compact, as she called it, that we would be ever so good-tempered, and then she and we would have the happiest time together that you can fancy.
And I think it all came true. Thanks to our papas and mammas, we were not quite the rude children we might have been. They had saved us ever so much trouble, and ever so many tears, by teaching us that hardest lesson "do as you are told," before we were old enough to understand its difficulty. And Miss Grant was always so bright and happy that she scarcely ever let us suspect, even in the naughtiest times, that we were "making the lines come." Out of doors she was the merriest among us, and grandmamma would often say to Lottie that she was ever so much older than Miss Grant, because she would walk soberly about with a book, while Miss Grant was having all sorts of fun with the boys. At last she, too, caught the infection, and then we all had the merriest romps together!
How well I remember those early summer days, and the luxury of flowers everywhere. Is there anything so happy-looking, so full of overflowing delight, as the long grass, and the buttercups and daisies, hawthorn and bluebells? We thought ourselves very wise about flowers then, and had very decided opinions on the proper blending of colours. Miss Grant was teaching us this, and even now, when I see any one making a nosegay of wild-flowers, I fancy myself running up to her with a handful of bright things, to watch in my eagerness how they were in a minute turned into the beautiful bouquet that nobody could equal or copy.
She had been with us some time, when one morning we had a visitor come to spend the day at Beecham. This lady was not old, yet she had the most wrinkled, aged face I ever saw. When she was gone, Harry, who never minded what he said, asked grandmamma about her, and cried out in surprise when he heard that she had been his own father's playfellow.
"You think Mrs. Mowbray looks double as old as papa, do you?" said grandmamma. "Ah, it is trouble that has aged her. You would not wonder at all those lines and wrinkles if you knew all the sorrow and grief her own poor boys have given her through their sin and wilfulness!"
Lottie and I looked at each other, and then glanced slily at Miss Grant, but I don't think she noticed us. When we were alone again, we resolved that we would try ever so hard to be good.
"Because, you know, Sissy, it wouldn't be nice if Miss Grant were to get her face all puckered and creasy like that, just as if it wanted ironing out, as Susette did with my frock when Murray scrunched it all up under his pillow to hide it. But I suppose you couldn't iron out your face!"
Anyhow, I agreed with Lottie not to run any risks, and I do not think we did. At least, all my memories of that happy year at Beecham are mingled with the bright, merry, gentle friend who made easy all the lessons that could be easy, and gave me courage for those that _had_ to be hard; and against whose shoulder I loved to nestle, and listen to Bible-stories with those little hints in them which always set me thinking of my own faults and duties, and made me long to do right, and be the good little Christian girl she wished me to be.
Little reader, dear, are you making lines on anybody's forehead?
VII.
_HURRAH FOR THE HOLIDAYS!_
And yet, however pleasant lessons might be, there is no doubt that holidays were pleasant things, too. Saturday afternoons were always welcome, and all the weeks through we were planning what we would do when they came. Of course these plans were sometimes upset by a rainy day; but, even then, what with battledore and shuttlecock, painting and spinning tops, we contrived to make out the time very happily.
And before us all the while was the bright, pleasant prospect of the long summer holidays.
Every now and then during these happy months the thought of home came across me, and sometimes one of mamma's letters would have in it so much about Bobby and his play, and his prattle about Sissy's coming back, that I grew a little home-sick and looked wistfully into grandmamma's face as she read the letter. This would always make her say: "You don't want to go home, little one? Aren't you very happy here with Lottie and the boys? And you are getting on so nicely with your books, too; mamma is so pleased to have you with so many little schoolfellows, and kind Miss Grant to teach you! And we are going to have all kinds of pleasant treats in the holidays. No, no, we must keep you another month or two!
Perhaps we will send you home when the cold weather comes!" So I ran away again to make plans with Lottie about all the many things that must be done the very first day of no lessons.
Then came the last time of history, and the last dreadful sums, and the last copy written, and the last hard French words learnt, and then, happiest of all, the last putting away of books and cleaning of slates!
It almost makes me take that long breath for joy even now only to remember that happy day.
"And don't you think I'm the happiest of us all?" said Miss Grant; "I am the only one really going home for the holidays!"
Which remark was a great relief to my little mind, for I had been afraid we must seem a great deal too glad that she was going. Now I could venture on my very loudest "hurrah," which, after all, was but a feeble imitation of the boys' loud cheers.
You know, anticipation is the best part of every pleasure; in easier words, everything looks brighter before it comes than when it _is_ come.
I think that was very nearly the happiest day of my whole year at Beecham, when I sat on the floor watching the last things put into Miss Grant's box, and chattering away about the happy days coming. You see, for a long time I had got up every morning with the thought of how many good marks I should get, and of how those hard letters and figures were to be made, and though I had made many a brave fight and won many a delightful victory over the books, yet it _was_ very nice to think that to-morrow I should awake with the holiday feeling instead.
And the next morning did really come, though we thought it never would, and we made a very long meal of breakfast, being not quite sure what was to come next.
It was a funny day, that first day! Grandmamma and Uncle Hugh went away early for a long drive, and all sorts of business at the end of it; and we knew they would not be home till ever so late. It was very hot--oh, so _very_ hot! We could not go into the sun at all, but Susette and Jane sent us out of the nursery very soon, that we might not disturb baby's midday sleep by our holiday fun. The school-room, of course, we avoided; so, after a little hesitation, we went out into the shade to play.
[Illustration: UP TO THE MOON!]