"I suppose I am: but it had not occurred to me--the daylight went away so softly. Six o'clock, I declare! The days _are_ lengthening, as we say every year. But we will have something better than firelight, if you will be so kind as to set those candles on the table."

The time was long put when Maria thought of apologising for asking her friend to do what her lameness rendered painful to herself. Margaret laid aside her bonnet and cloak behind the screen, lighted the candles, put more coals on the fire, and took her seat--not beside Maria, but in a goodly armchair, which she drew forward from its recess.

"Now," said she, "we only want a cat to be purring on the rug to make us a complete winter picture. The kettle will be coming soon to sing on the hob: and that will do nearly as well. But, Maria, I wonder _you_ have no cat. We have set up a cat. I think I will send you a kitten, some day, as a token of neighbourly affection."

"Thank you. Do you know, I was positively a.s.sured lately that I had a cat? I said all I could in proof that I had none; but Mrs Tucker persisted in her inquiries after its health, notwithstanding."

"What did she mean?"

"She said she saw a kitten run into the pa.s.sage, and that it never came out again: so that it followed of course that it must be here still.

One day, when I was in school, she came over to satisfy herself; and true enough, there had been a kitten. The poor thing jumped from the pa.s.sage window into the yard, and went to see what they were about at the forge. A hot horse-shoe fell upon its back, and it mewed so dolefully that the people drowned it. So there you have the story of my cat, as it was told to me."

"Thank you, it is a good thing to know. But what does Mrs Grey say to your setting up a cat?"

"When she heard Mrs Tucker's first inquiries, she took them for an imputation, and was vexed accordingly. 'Miss Young!' said she, 'You must be mistaken, Mrs Tucker. Miss Young cannot afford to keep a kitten!'"

"Oh, for shame!" said Margaret, laughing. "But what is the annual expense of a kitten--can you tell us? I am afraid we never considered that."

"Why, there is the breast of a fowl, once a year or so, when your cook forgets to shut the larder-door behind her. Cats never take the drumsticks when there is a breast, you are aware. You know best how Mr Hope looks, when the drumsticks and side bones come to table, with an empty s.p.a.ce in the middle of the dish where the breast ought to have been."

"I will tell you, the first time it happens." And Margaret sank into an absent fit, brought on by the bare suggestion of discontent at home.

Hester had made her uncomfortable, the last thing before she left the house, by speaking sharply of Maria, without any fresh provocation.

Undisciplined still by what had happened so lately, she had wished Maria Young a hundred miles off. Margaret meditated and sighed. It was some time before Maria spoke. When she did, she said:

"Margaret, do not you think people had better not persuade themselves and their very intimate friends that they are happy when they are not?"

"They had better not think, even in their own innermost minds, whether they are happy or not, if they can help it."

"True: but there are times when that is impossible--when it is far better to avoid the effort. Come--I suspect we may relieve each other just now, by allowing the truth. I will own, if you will, that I am very unhappy to-night. Never mind what it is about."

"I will, if you will," replied Margaret, faintly smiling.

"There now, that's right! We shall be all the better for it. We have quite enough of seeming happy, G.o.d knows, beyond these doors. We can talk there about kittens and cold fowl. Here we will not talk at all, unless we like; and we will each groan as much as we please."

"I am sorry to hear you speak so," said Margaret, tenderly. "Not that I do not agree with you. I think it is a terrible mistake to fancy that it is religious to charm away grief, which, after all, is rejecting it before it has done its work; and, as for concealing it, there must be very good reasons indeed for that, to save it from being hypocrisy. But the more I agree with you, the more sorry I am to hear you say just what I was thinking. I am afraid you must be very unhappy, Maria."

"I'm in great pain to-night; and I do not find that pain becomes less of an evil by one's being used to it. Indeed, I think the reverse happens; for the future comes into the consideration."

"Do you expect to go on to suffer this same pain? Can nothing cure it?

Is there no help?"

"None, but in patience. There are intermissions, happily, and pretty long ones. I get through the summer very well; but the end of the winter--this same month of February--is a sad aching time; and so it must be for as many winters as I may have to live. But I am better off than I was. Last February I did not know you. Oh, Margaret, if they had not brought you up from under the ice, the other day, how different would all have been to-night!"

"How strange it seems to think of the difference that hung on that one act!" said Margaret, shivering again at the remembrance of her icy prison. "What, and where, should I have been now? And what would have been the change in this little world of ours? You would have missed me, I know; and on that account I am glad it ended as it did."

"And on no other?" asked Maria, looking earnestly at her friend.

"My sister would have grieved sadly at first--you do not know what care she takes of me--how often she is thinking of my comfort. And Edward is fond of me too: I know he is; but they live for each other, and could spare every one else. You and Morris would have been my mourners, and you two are enough to live for."

"To say nothing of others who may arise."

"I hope nothing more will arise in my life, Maria. I want no change. I have had enough of it."

"You think so now. I understand your feeling very well. But yet I can fancy that when you are twice as old as you are--when a few grey hairs peep out among all that brown--when this plump little hand grows thin, and that girlish figure of yours looks dignified and middle-aged, and people say that n.o.body thought when you were young that you would turn out a handsome woman--I can fancy that when all this has happened, you may be more disposed to look forward, and less disinclined to change, than you feel at this moment. But there is no use in saying so now.

You shake your head, and I nod mine. You say, 'No,' and I say, 'Yes,'

and there is an end of it."

"Where will you be then, I wonder?"

"I do not wish to know, nor even to inquire of my own judgment. My health is very bad--worse than you are aware of. I cannot expect to be able to work always; some of my present pupils are growing very tall; and no strangers will take me if I do not get much better; which is, I believe, impossible. The future, therefore, is all a mystery; and so let it remain. I am not anxious about that."

"But I am."

"Here comes tea. Now you will be doing a finer thing in making us a good cup of tea, than in settling my future ever so satisfactorily-- seeing that you cannot touch it with so much as your little finger. The tea is wholly in your power."

"You look forward to other people's grey hair and sedateness of face, though you will not to your own."

"Mere grey hair is as certain as futurity itself; and I will allow you to prophesy that much for me or for anybody."

"Why should we not prophesy about your pupils too? They seem to be improving very much."

"They certainly are; and I am glad you have lighted upon the pleasantest subject I ever think about. Oh, Margaret, you do not know what encouragement I have about some of those children! Their lot is and will be a hard one, in many respects. It will be difficult for them to grow kindly, and liberal, and truthful, with such examples as they have before their eyes. They advance like the snail on the wall, creeping three inches on in the day, and falling back two at night. They get out of a pretty mood of mind in the morning, and expand and grow interested in things out of Deerbrook; and then, in the evening, the greater part of this is undone, and they go to bed with their heads full of small, vile notions about their neighbours."

"And when they grow too wise to have their heads so filled, their hearts will be heavy for those who are not rising like themselves."

"That is unavoidable, and they must bear the sorrow. We must hope that they will disperse from Deerbrook, and find their way into a more genial society than they can ever know here. I must keep the confidence of my children sacred even from you, Margaret: but you may believe me when I tell you, that if you knew all that we have to say to one another, you would find some of these children animated with really n.o.ble thoughts, and capable of really generous acts."

"'Some of them.' Mary, in particular, I venture to conjecture to be in your thoughts."

"Yes: Mary in particular; but she had always a more gentle and generous temper than her sisters. f.a.n.n.y, however, is improving remarkably."

"I am delighted to hear it, and I had begun to suspect it. f.a.n.n.y, I observe, lays fewer informations than she did; and there is more of thought, and less of a prying expression, in her face. She is really growing more like Mary in countenance. The little Rowlands--the younger ones--seem simple enough; but Matilda, what a disagreeable child she is!"

"The most that can be done with her is to leave her only a poor creature--to strip her of the conceit and malice with which her mother would overlay her feeble intellect. This sounds deplorably enough; but, as parents will not speak the plain truth to themselves about their charge, governesses must. There is, perhaps, little better material in f.a.n.n.y: but I trust we may one day see her more lowly than she can at present relish the idea of being, and with energy enough to improve under the discipline of life, when she can no longer have that of school. She and Mary have been acknowledging to-day a fine piece of experience. Mr Grey is pleased with their great Improvement in Latin.

He finds they can read, with ease and pleasure, some favourite cla.s.sical sc.r.a.ps which he used to talk about without exciting any interest in them. They honestly denied having devoted any more time to Latin than before, or having taken any more pains; and no new methods have been tried. Here was a mystery. To-day they have solved it. They find that all is owing to their getting up earlier in the morning to teach those little orphans, the Woods, to read and sew."

"Not a very circuitous process," said Margaret; "love and kind interest, energy and improvement--whether in Latin or anything else. But what did you mean just now about truth? What should make the Greys otherwise than truthful?"

"Oh, not the Greys! I was thinking of the other family when I said that. But that is a large subject: let us leave it till after tea.

Will you give me another cup?"

"Now; shall we begin upon our large subject?" said she, as the door closed behind the tea-tray and kettle, and Margaret handed her her work-bag.

"I am aware that I asked for it," replied Margaret; "but it is a disagreeable topic, and perhaps we had better avoid it."

"You will take me for a Deerbrook person, if I say we will go into it, will not you?"

"Oh, no: you have a reason, I see. So, why should not the little Rowlands be truthful?"