'You will have parted with the dear girls by this time, and be feeling very sad and solitary; but it is altogether a good connection, and a great advantage. I have just addressed to Gillian, at Vale Leston, a coroneted envelope, which must be an invitation from Lady Liddesdale.

I am very glad of it. Nothing is so likely as such society to raise her above the tone of these Whites.--Your loving A. M.'

'10.30 P.M.--These Whites! Really I don't think it as bad as Ada supposes, so don't be uneasy, though it is a pity she has told you so much of the gossip respecting them. I do not believe any harm of that girl Kalliope; she has such an honest, modest pair of eyes. I dare say she is persecuted by that young Stebbing, for she is very handsome, and he is an odious puppy. But as to her a.s.signations in the garden, if they are with any one, it is with Gillian, and I see no harm in them, except that we might have been told--only that would have robbed the entire story of its flavour, I suppose. Besides, I greatly disbelieve the entire story, so don't be worried about it! There--as if we had not been doing our best to worry you! But come home, dearest old Lily. Gather your chicks under your wing, and when you cluck them together again, all will be well. I don't think you will find Valetta disimproved by her crisis. It is curious to hear how she and Gillian both declare that Mysie would have prevented it, as if naughtiness or deceit shrank from that child's very face.

'It has been a very happy, successful Christmas Day, full of rejoicing.

May you be feeling the same; that joy has made us one in many a time of separation.--Your faithful old Brownie,

J. MOHUN.'

(GILLIAN AGAIN.)

'ROWTHORPE, 20th January.

'DEAREST MAMMA--This is a Sunday letter. I am writing it in a beautiful place, more like a drawing-room than a bed-room, and it is all very grand; such long galleries, such quant.i.ties of servants, so many people staying in the house, that I should feel quite lost but for Geraldine.

We came so late last night that there was only just time to dress for dinner at eight o'clock. I never dined with so many people before, and they are all staying in the house. I have not learnt half of them yet, though Lady Liddesdale, who is a nice, merry old lady, with gray hair, called her eldest granddaughter, Kitty Somerville, and told her to take care of me, and tell me who they all were. One of them is that Lord Ormersfield, whom Mysie ran against at Rotherwood, and, do you know, I very nearly did the same; for there is early Celebration at the little church just across the garden. Kitty talked of calling for me, but I did not make sure, because I heard some one say she was not to go if she had a cold; and, when I heard the bell, I grew anxious and started off, and I lost my way, and thought I should never get to the stairs; but just as I was turning back, out came Lord and Lady Ormersfield. He looks quite young, though he is rather lame--I shall like all lame people, for the sake of Geraldine--and Lady Ormersfield has such a motherly face. He laughed, and said I was not the first person who had lost my way in the labyrinths of pa.s.sages, so I went on with them, and after all Kitty was hunting for me! I sat next him at breakfast, and, do you know, he asked me whether I was the sister of a little downright damsel he met at Rotherwood two years ago, and said he had used her truthfulness about the umbrella for a favourite example to his small youngest!

'When I hear of truthfulness I feel a sort of shock. "Oh, if you knew!"

I am ready to say, and I grow quite hot. That is what I am really writing about to-day. I never had time after that Christmas Day at Vale Leston to do more than keep you up to all the doings; but I did think: and there were Mr. Harewood's sermons, which had a real sting in them, and a great sweetness besides. I have tried to set some down for you, and that is one reason I did not say more. But to-day, after luncheon, it is very quiet, for Kitty and Constance are gone to their Sunday cla.s.ses, and the gentlemen and boys are out walking, except Lord Somerville, who has a men's cla.s.s of his own, and all the old ladies are either in their rooms, or talking in pairs. So I can tell you that I see now that I did not go on in a right spirit with Aunt Jane, and that I did poor Val harm by my example, and went very near deception, for I did not choose to believe that when you said "If Aunt J. approves," you meant about Alexis White's lessons; so I never told her or Kalliope, and I perceive now that it was not right towards either; for Kally was very unhappy about her not knowing. I am very sorry; I see that I was wrong all round, and that I should have understood it before, if I had examined myself in the way Mr. Harewood dwelt upon in his last Sunday in Advent sermon, and never gone on in such a way.

'I am not going to wait for you now, but shall confess it all to Aunt Jane as soon as I go home, and try to take it as my punishment if she asks a terrible number of questions. Perhaps I shall write it, but it would take such a quant.i.ty of explanation, and I don't want Aunt Ada to open the letter, as she does any that come while Aunt Jane is out.

'Please kiss my words and forgive me, as you read this, dear mamma; I never guessed I was going to be so like Dolores.

'Kitty has come to my door to ask if I should like to come and read something nice and Sundayish with them in her grandmamma's dressing-room.--So no more from your loving GILL.'

CHAPTER XII. -- TRANSFORMATION

'Well, now for the second stage of our guardianship!' said Aunt Ada, as the two sisters sat over the fire after Valetta had gone to bed. 'Fergus comes back to-morrow, and Gillian--when?'

'She does not seem quite certain, for there is to be a day or two at Brompton with this delightful Geraldine, so that she may see her grandmother--also Mr. Clement Underwood's church, and the Merchant of Venice--an odd mixture of ecclesiastics and dissipations.'

'I wonder whether she will be set up by it.'

'So do I! They are all remarkably good people; but then good people do sometimes spoil the most of all, for they are too unselfish to snub. And on the other hand, seeing the world sometimes has the wholesome effect of making one feel small--'

'My dear Jenny!'

'Oh! I did not mean you, who are never easily effaced; but I was thinking of youthful b.u.mptiousness, fostered by country life and elder sistership.'

'Certainly, though Valetta is really much improved, Gillian has not been as pleasant as I expected, especially during the latter part of the time.'

'Query, was it her fault or mine, or the worry of the examination, or all three?'

'Perhaps you did superintend a little too much at first. More than modern independence was prepared for, though I should not have expected recalcitration in a young Lily; but I think there was more ruffling of temper and more reserve than I can quite understand.'

'It has not been a success. As dear old Lily would have said, "My dream has vanished," of a friend in the younger generation, and now it remains to do the best I can for her in the few weeks that are left, before we have her dear mother again.'

'At any rate, you have no cause to be troubled about the other two.

Valetta is really the better for her experience, and you have always got on well with the boy.'

Fergus was the first of the travellers to appear at Rockstone. Miss Mohun, who went to meet him at the station, beheld a small figure l.u.s.tily pulling at a great canvas bag, which came b.u.mping down the step, a.s.sisted by a shove from the other pa.s.sengers, and threatening for a moment to drag him down between platform and carriages.

'Fergus, Fergus, what have you got there? Give it to me. How heavy!'

'It's a few of my mineralogical specimens,' replied Fergus. 'Harry wouldn't let me put any more into my portmanteau--but the peac.o.c.k and the dendrum are there.'

Already, without special regard to peac.o.c.k or dendrum, whatever that article might be, Miss Mohun was claiming the little old military portmanteau, with a great M and 110th painted on it, that held Fergus's garments.

He would scarcely endure to deposit the precious bag in the omnibus, and as he walked home his talk was all of tertiary formations, and coal measures, and limestones, as he extracted a hammer from his pocket, and looked perilously disposed to use it on the vein of crystals in a great pink stone in a garden wall. His aunt was obliged to begin by insisting that the walls should be safe from geological investigations.

'But it is such waste, Aunt Jane. Only think of building up such beautiful specimens in a stupid old wall.'

Aunt Jane did not debate the question of waste, but a.s.sured him that equally precious specimens could be honestly come by; while she felt renewed amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure at anything so like the brother Maurice of thirty odd years ago being beside her.

It made her endure the contents of the bag being turned out like a miniature rockery for her inspection on the floor of the glazed verandah outside the drawing-room, and also try to pacify Mrs. Mount's indignation at finding the more valuable specimens, or, as she called them, 'nasty stones' and bits of dirty coal, within his socks.

Much more information as to mines, coal, or copper, was to be gained from him than as to Cousin David, or Harry, or Jasper, who had spent the last ten days of his holidays at Coalham, which had procured for Fergus the felicity of a second underground expedition. It was left to his maturer judgment and the next move to decide how many of his specimens were absolutely worthless; it was only stipulated that he and Valetta should carry them, all and sundry, up to the lumber-room, and there arrange them as he chose;--Aunt Jane routing out for him a very dull little manual of mineralogy, and likewise a book of Maria Hack's, long since out of print, but wherein 'Harry Beaufoy' is instructed in the chief outlines of geology in a manner only perhaps inferior to that of "Madame How and Lady Why," which she reserved for a birthday present.

Meantime Rockstone and its quarries were almost as excellent a field of research as the mines of Coalham, and in a different line.

'How much nicer it is to be a boy than a girl!' sighed Valetta, as she beheld her junior marching off with all the dignity of hammer and knapsack to look up Alexis White and obtain access to the heaps of rubbish, which in his eyes held as infinite possibilities as the diamond fields of Kimberley. And Alexis was only delighted to bestow on him any s.p.a.ce of daylight when both were free from school or from work, and kept a look-out for the treasures he desired. Of course, out of grat.i.tude to his parents--or was it out of grat.i.tude to his sister? Perhaps Fergus could have told, if he had paid the slightest attention to such a trifle, how anxiously Alexis inquired when Miss Gillian was expected to return. Moreover, he might have told that his other model, Stebbing, p.r.o.nounced old d.i.c.k White a beast and a screw, with whom his brother Frank was not going to stop.

Gillian came back a fortnight later, having been kept at Rowthorpe, together with Mrs. Grinstead, for a family festival over the double marriage in Ceylon, after which she spent a few days in London, so as to see her grandmother, Mrs. Merrifield, who was too infirm for an actual visit to be welcome, since her attendant grandchild, Bessie Merrifield, was so entirely occupied with her as to have no time to bestow upon a guest of more than an hour or two. Gillian was met at the station by her aunt, and when all her belongings had been duly extracted, proving a good deal larger in bulk than when she had left Rockstone, and both were seated in the fly to drive home through a dismal February Fill-d.y.k.e day, the first words that were spoken were,

'Aunt Jane, I ought to tell you something.'

Hastily revolving conjectures as to the subject of the coming confession, Miss Mohun put herself at her niece's service.

'Aunt Jane, I know I ought to have told you how much I was seeing of the Whites last autumn.'

'Indeed, I know you wished to do what you could for them.'

'Yes,' said Gillian, finding it easier than she expected. 'You know Alexis wants very much to be prepared for Holy Orders, and he could not get on by himself, so I have been running down to Kalliope's office after reading to Lily Giles, to look over his Greek exercises.'

'Meeting him?'

'Only sometimes. But Kally did not like it. She said you ought to know, and that was the reason she would not come into the G.F.S. She is so good and honourable, Aunt Jane.'

'I am sure she is a very excellent girl,' said Aunt Jane warmly. 'But certainly it would have been better to have these lessons in our house.

Does your mother know?'

'Yes,' said Gillian, 'I wrote to her all I was doing, and how I have been talking to Kally on Sunday afternoons through the rails of Mr.