"What is it? The breakfast bell?"

"Yes. You must go. I would not be understood as inviting you here; for it is not, except upon sufferance, my room; and I have no inducement to offer. But I may just say, that you will always be welcome."

"Always?" said Margaret. "In and out of school hours?"

"In and out of school hours, unless your presence should chance to turn my pupils' heads. In that case, you will not be offended if I ask you to go away."

Mary and f.a.n.n.y had just reported in the breakfast-parlour, that the Miss Ibbotsons had been "such a time with Miss Young!" when Hester and Margaret entered. The testimony there was all in favour of Miss Young.

Mr Grey called her a most estimable young woman; and Mrs Grey declared that, though she could not agree with her on all points, and decidedly thought that she overrated Matilda Rowland's talents, she was convinced that her children enjoyed great advantages under her care. Sophia added, that she was very superior,--quite learned. Mrs Grey further explained that, though now so much at ease on the subject of her daughters' education, no one could have an idea of the trouble she had had in getting the plan arranged. It had seemed a pity that the Rowlands and her children should not learn together: it was such an advantage for children to learn together! But Mrs Rowland had made a thousand difficulties. After breakfast, she would show her young friends the room which she had proposed should be the schoolroom,--as airy and advantageous in every way as could be imagined: but Mrs Rowland had objected that she could not have Matilda and George come out in all weathers,--as if they would have had to walk a mile, instead of just the sweep of the gravel-walk! Mrs Rowland had proposed that her back-parlour should be the schoolroom: but really it was not to be thought of--so small and close, and such a dull room for Miss Young!

The gentlemen had been obliged to take it up at last. n.o.body could ever find out which of them it was that had thought of the summerhouse, though she was satisfied in her own mind that Mr Rowland was not in the habit of having such clever ideas; but, however, it was soon settled.

The summer-house was so exactly on the boundary-line between the two gardens, that really no objection had been left for Mrs Rowland to make. She came as near to it as she could, however; for she had had the walk covered in at great expense from her garden door to the summer-house, when everybody knew she did not mind her children getting wet at other times on the gra.s.s before the dew was off.

"And the covered way is quite an eyesore from the drawing-room windows,"

added Sophia.

"Quite," said Mrs Grey; "and it can be seen from ours, as I dare say you observed last night. But I have no doubt that entered into her calculations when she had it made."

Mr Grey inquired about the arrangements for the morning, and whether he could be of any service. It happened to be a leisure morning with him, and he did not know when he might have another at command. Sophia reminded her father that it would be impossible for the ladies of the family to go out, when they were expecting the neighbours to call: and this brought on another speculation as to who would call,--and especially when the Rowlands might be looked for. Hester and Margaret believed they could have settled this matter; but they forbore to speak of what they had overheard. They began to wonder whether the subject of Mrs Rowland was to be served up with every meal, for a continuance; and Hester found her antic.i.p.ations of delight in a country life somewhat damped, by the idea of the frowning ghost of the obnoxious lady being for ever present.

CHAPTER FOUR.

MORNING CALLS.

The little girls had been dismissed to the schoolroom before Mr Grey had finally pushed away his tea-cup. Not being wanted by the ladies, he walked off to his timber-yard, and his wife followed to ask him some question not intended for the general ear. Sophia was struck with a sudden panic at being left alone with the strangers, and escaped by another door into the store-room. As the last traces of the breakfast things vanished, Hester exclaimed--

"So we may please ourselves, it seems, as to what we are to do with our morning!"

"I hope so," said Margaret. "Do let us get down to the meadow we see from our window--the meadow that looks so flat and green! We may very well take two hours' grace before we need sit down here in form and order."

Hester was willing, and the bonnets were soon on. As Margaret was pa.s.sing down stairs again, she saw Mrs Grey and Sophia whispering in a room, the door of which stood open. She heard it shut instantly, and the result of the consultation soon appeared. Just as the sisters were turning out of the house, Sophia ran after them to say that mamma wished they would be so good as to defer their walk; mamma was afraid that if they were seen abroad in the village, it would be supposed that they did not wish to receive visitors: mamma would rather that they should stay within this morning. There was nothing for it but to turn back; and Hester threw down her bonnet with no very good grace, as she observed to her sister that, to all appearance, a town life was more free than a country one, after all.

"Let us do our duty fully this first morning," said Margaret. "Look, I am going to carry down my work-bag; and you shall see me sit on the same chair from this hour till dinner-time, unless I receive directions to the contrary."

The restraint did not amount to this. Hester's chair was placed opposite to Mrs Grey, who seemed to have pleasure in gazing at her, and in indulging in audible hints and visible winks and nods about her beauty, to every lady visitor who eat near her. Margaret might place herself where she pleased. In the intervals of the visits of the morning, she was treated with a diversity of entertainments by Sophia, who occasionally summoned her to the window to see how Matilda Rowland was allowed to run across the road to her grandmamma's, without so much as a hat upon her head,--to see Jim Bird, the oldest man in the parish (believed to be near a hundred), who was resting himself on the bank of the hedge,--to see the peac.o.c.k which had been sent as a present from Sir William Hunter to Mr James, the lawyer, and which was a great nuisance from its screaming,--to say whether the two little Reeves, dropping their curtseys as they went home from school, were not little beauties,--and, in short, to witness all the village spectacles which present themselves before the windows of an acute observer on a fine spring morning. The young ladies had to return to their seats as often as wheels were heard, or the approach of parasols was discerned.

Among the earliest visitors were Mrs Enderby and her redoubtable son, Mr Philip. Mrs Enderby was a bright-eyed, brisk, little old lady, who was rather apt to talk herself quite out of breath, but who had evidently a stronger tendency still; and that was, to look on the bright side of everything and everybody. She smiled smiles full of meaning and a.s.sent in return for Mrs Grey's winks about Hester's beauty; and really cheered Hester with accounts of how good everybody was at Deerbrook.

She was thankful that her maid Phoebe was better; she knew that Mrs Grey would not fail to inquire; really Phoebe was very much better; the influenza had left sad effects, but they were dispersing. It would be a pity the girl should not quite recover, for she was a most invaluable servant--such a servant as is very rarely to be met with. The credit of restoring her belonged to Mr Hope, who indeed had done everything. She supposed the ladies would soon be seeing Mr Hope. He was extremely busy, as everybody knew--had very large practice now; but he always contrived to find time for everything. It was exceedingly difficult to find time for everything. There was her dear daughter, Priscilla (Mrs Rowland, whose husband was Mr Grey's partner); Priscilla devoted her life to her children (and dear children they were); and no one who knew what she did for her children would expect anything more from her; but, indeed, those who knew best, she herself, for instance, were fully satisfied that her dear Priscilla did wonders. The apology for Mrs Rowland, in case she should not call, was made not without ingenuity.

Hester fully understood it; and Mrs Grey showed by her bridling that it was not lost upon her either.

Mr Enderby, meanwhile, was behaving civilly to Margaret and Sophia; that is to say, he was somewhat more than merely civil to Margaret, and somewhat less to Sophia. It was obviously not without reason that Sophia had complained of his hauteur. He could not, as Sydney had pleaded, help being tall; but he might have helped the excessive frigidity with which he stood upright till invited to sit down. The fact was, that he had reason to believe that the ladies of Mr Grey's family made very free with his sister's name and affairs; and though he would have been sorry to have been obliged to defend all she said and did, he felt some very natural emotions of dislike towards those who were always putting the worst construction upon the whole of her conduct. He believed that Mr Grey's influence was exerted on behalf of peace and good understanding, and he thought he perceived that Sydney, with the shrewdness which some boys show very early, was more or less sensible of the absurdity of the feud between the partners' wives and daughters; and towards these members of the Grey family, Mr Enderby felt nothing but good-will; he talked politics with Mr Grey in the shrubbery after church on Sunday, executed commissions for him in London, and sent him game: and Sydney was under obligations to him for many a morning of sport, and many a service such as gentlemen who are not above five-and-twenty and its freaks can render to boys entering their teens. Whatever might be his opinion of women generally, from the particular specimens which had come in his way, he had too much sense and gentlemanly feeling to include Mrs Grey's guests in the dislike he felt towards herself, or to suppose that they must necessarily share her disposition towards his relations. Perhaps he felt, unknown to himself some inclination to prepossess them in favour of his connections; to stretch his complaisance a little, as a precaution against the prejudices with which he knew Mrs Grey would attempt to occupy their minds. However this might be, he was as amicable with Margaret as his mother was with her sister.

He soon found out that the strangers were more interested about the natural features of Deerbrook than about its gossip. He was amused at the earnestness of Margaret's inquiries about the scenery of the neighbourhood, and he laughingly promised that she should see every nook within twenty miles.

"People always care least about what they have just at hand," said he.

"I dare say, if I were to ask you, you have never seen a gla.s.s-bottle blown, or a tea-tray painted?"

"If I have," said Margaret, "I know many ladies in Birmingham who have not."

"You will not be surprised, then, if you find some ladies in Deerbrook who do not ride, and who can tell you no more of the pretty places near than if they had been brought up in Whitechapel. They keep their best sights for strangers, and not for common use. I am, in reality, only a visitor at Deerbrook. I do not live here, and never did; yet I am better able to be your guide than almost any resident. The ladies, especially, are extremely domestic: they are far too busy to have ever looked about them. But I will speak to Mr Grey, and--"

"Oh, pray, do not trouble Mr Grey! He has too much business on his hands already; and he is so kind, he will be putting himself out of his way for us; and all we want is to be in the open air in the fields."

"'All you want!' very like starlings in a cage;" and he looked as if he was smiling at the well-known speech of the starling; but he did not quote it. "My mother is now saying that Mr Hope finds time for everything: and she is right. He will help us. You must see Hope, and you must like him. He is the great boast of the place, next to the new sign."

"Is the sign remarkable, or only new?"

"Very remarkable for ingenuity, if not for beauty. It is 'The Bonnet so Blue:'--a lady's bonnet of blue satin, with brown bows, or whatever you may call the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g when you see it; and we are favoured besides with a portrait of the milliner, holding the bonnet so blue. We talk nearly as much of this sign as of Mr Hope; but you must see them both, and tell us which you like best."

"We have seen Mr Hope. He was here yesterday evening."

"Well, then, you must see him again; and you must not think the worse of him for his being praised by everybody you meet. It is no ordinary case of a village apothecary."

Margaret laughed; so little did Mr Hope look like the village apothecary of her imagination.

"Ah, I see you know something of the predilection of villagers for their apothecary,--how the young people wonder that he always cures everybody; and how the old people could not live without him; and how the poor folks take him for a sort of magician; and how he obtains more knowledge of human affairs than any other kind of man. But Hope is, though a very happy man, not this sort of privileged person. His friends are so attached to him that they confide to him all their own affairs; but they respect him too much to gossip at large to him of other people's. I see you do not know how to credit this; but I a.s.sure you, though the inhabitants of Deerbrook are as accomplished in the arts of gossip as any villagers in England, Hope knows little more than you do at this moment about who are upon terms and who are not."

"My sister and I must learn his art of ignorance," said Margaret. "If it be really true that the place is full of quarrels, we shall be afraid to stay, unless we can contrive to know nothing about them."

"Oh, do not suppose we are worse than others who live in villages.

Since our present rector came, we have risen somewhat above the rural average of peace and quiet."

"And the country has always been identical with the idea of peace and quiet to us town-bred people!" said Margaret.

"And very properly, in one sense. But if you leave behind the din of streets for the sake of stepping forth from your work-table upon a soft lawn, or of looking out upon the old church steeple among the trees, while you hear nothing but bleating and chirping, you must expect some set-off against such advantages: and that set-off is the being among a small number of people, who are always busy looking into one another's small concerns."

"But this is not a necessary evil," said Margaret. "From what you were saying just now, it appears that it may be avoided."

"From what I was saying about Hope. Yes; such an one as Hope may get all the good out of every situation, without its evils; but--"

"But n.o.body else," said Margaret, smiling. "Well, Hester and I must try whether we cannot have to do with lawns and sheep for a few months, without quarrelling or having to do with quarrels."

"And what if you are made the subject of quarrels?" asked Mr Enderby.

"How are you to help yourselves, in that case?"

"How does Mr Hope help himself in that case?"

"It remains to be seen. As far as I know, the whole place is agreed about him at present. Every one will tell you that never was society so blessed in a medical man before;--from the rector and my mother, who never quarrel with anybody, down to the village scold. I am not going to prepossess you against even our village scold, by telling her name.

You will know it in time, though your first acquaintance will probably be with her voice."

"So we are to hear something besides bleating and chirping?"

A tremendous knock at the door occurred, as if in answer to this. All the conversation in the room suddenly stopped, and Mr and Mrs Rowland walked in.

"This is my sister, Mrs Rowland," observed Mr Enderby to Margaret.

"This is my daughter Priscilla, Mrs Rowland," said Mrs Enderby to Hester.