"Oh yes, I am not tired. I have put in all my old things. The rest are your presents. Oh, Cousin Sophy!" said the girl, coming quickly to her and stealing two arms round her, "you have been so good to me! as if it was not enough to give me this holiday, the most delightful I ever had in my life--to send me home loaded with all these beautiful things! I shall never forget it, never, never, if I were to live a hundred years!"

"My dear!" cried Sophy, startled by the sudden energy of this embrace.

Sophy was not emotional, but her eyes moistened and her voice softened in spite of herself. "But you must let me send Seton to you," she said, hurrying away. She was excited by the day's events, and did not trust herself to make any further response; for if she "gave way" at all, who could tell how far the giving way might go? Her brother John had been married at the time when Sophy too ought to have been married, had all gone well--and, perhaps, some keen-piercing thought that she too might have had little children belonging to her, had given force and sharpness to her objections to the pale little distrustful Indian children who had shrunk from her overtures of affection. She went to her room and bathed her eyes, which were hot and painful, and then she went back to Anne in the sitting-room, who had opened the window to reduce the temperature, and was resting in an easy chair, and pondering what she could do to make the children love her, and to be a mother to them in the absence of Mrs. John.

"I have been talking to Ursula, who is always refres.h.i.+ng," said Sophy.

"I wonder whom that child will marry. She gave me to understand, in her awkward, innocent way, that she preferred papa. A laugh does one good,"

Sophy added, slightly rubbing her eyes. Anne made no immediate answer.

She scarcely heard indeed what her sister said.

"I think we shall get on after a while," she said, softly. "They said their prayers very prettily, poor darlings, and let me kiss them without crying. After a while we shall get on, I don't fear."

"Anne!" cried Sophy, "you are too much for mere human nature: you are too bad or too good for anything. I begin to hate these little wretches when I hear you speak of them so."

"Hus.h.!.+" said Anne, "I know you don't mean it. Easton will be very strange to them at first. I could not go to India for my part. A crust of bread at home would be better. Think of parting with your children just when they come to an age to understand?"

"John, I suppose, did not take children into consideration when he went away. You speak as if children were all one's life."

"A great part of it," said Anne, gently. "No, dear, I am not clever like you, and perhaps it is what you will call a low view; but after all it runs through everything. The flowers are used for the seed, and everything in the world is intended to keep the world going. Yes, even I, that is the good of me. I shall never be a mother, but what does that matter? There are so many children left on the world whom somebody must bring up."

"And who are brought to you when they need you, and taken from you when they need you no longer," said Sophy, indignantly; "you are left to bear the trouble--others have the recompense."

"It is so in this world, my dear, all the way down, from G.o.d himself.

Always looking for reward is mean and mercenary. When we do nothing, when we are of no use, what a poor thing life is," said Anne, with a little colour rising in her cheeks, "not worth having. I think we have only a right to our existence when we are doing something. And I have my wages; I like to be of a little consequence," she said, laughing.

"n.o.body is of any consequence who does not do something."

"In that case, the ayah, the housemaid is of more consequence than you."

"So be it--I don't object," said Anne; "but I don't think so, for they have to be directed and guided. To be without a housemaid is dreadful.

The moment you think of that, you see how important the people who work are; everything comes to a stand-still without Mary, whereas there are ladies whose absence would make no difference."

"I, for instance."

"You are very unkind to say so, Sophy; all the same, if you were to do more, you would be happier, my dear."

"To do what? go on my knees to those wax dolls, and entreat them to let me pet them and make idols of them--as you will do?"

"Well, how are you getting on now?" said Sir Robert, coming in. "Ah! I see, you have the window open; but the room is still very warm. When they get to Easton they will have their own rooms of course. I don't want to reflect upon John, but it is rather a burden this he has saddled us with. Mrs. John's mother is living, isn't she? I think something might have been _said_ at least, on her part, some offer to take her share."

Sophy gave her sister a malicious glance, but promptly changed her tone, and took up her position in defence of the arrangement, with that ease which is natural in a family question.

"Of course," she said, "your grandchildren, Dorsets, and the heir, probably, as Robert has no boy, could go nowhere, papa, but to us. It may be a bore, but at least John showed so much sense; for nothing else could be----"

"John does not show very much sense in an ordinary way. What did he want with a wife and children at his age? The boy is five, isn't he? and the father only thirty--absurd! I did not marry till I was thirty, though I had succeeded before that time, and was the only son and the head of the family. John was always an a.s.s," said Sir Robert, with a crossness which sprang chiefly from the fact that the temperature of the room was higher than usual, and the habits of his evening interfered with. He was capable of sacrificing something of much more importance to his family, but scarcely of sacrificing his comfort, which is the last and most painful of efforts.

"That may be very true," said Sophy, "but all the same, it is only right that the children should be with us. Mrs. John's people are not well off. Her mother has a large family of her own. The little things would have been spoiled, or they would have been neglected; and after all, they are Dorsets, though they are not like John."

"Well, well, I suppose you are right," said Sir Robert, grumbling, "and, thank Heaven, to-morrow we shall be at home."

Anne had scarcely said a word, though it was she who was most deeply concerned about the children. She gave her sister a hug when Sir Robert relapsed into the evening paper, and then stole upstairs to look at the poor babies as they lay asleep. She was not a mother, and never would be. People, indeed, called her an old maid, and with reason enough, though she was little over thirty; for had she been seventy, she could not have been more unlikely to marry. It was not her vocation. She had plenty to do in the world without that, and was satisfied with her life.

The sad reflection that the children whom she tended were not her own, did not visit her mind, as, perhaps, it had visited Sophy's, making her angry through the very yearning of nature. Anne was of a different temperament, she said a little prayer softly in her heart for the children and for her sister as she stooped over the small beds. "G.o.d bless the children--and, oh, make my Sophy happy!" she said. She had never asked for nor thought of happiness to herself. It had come to her unconsciously, in her occupations, in her duties, as natural as the soft daylight, and as little sought after. But Sophy was different. Sophy wanted material for happiness--something to make her glad; she did not possess it, like her sister, in the quiet of her own heart. And from the children's room Anne went to Ursula's, where the girl, tired with her packing, was brus.h.i.+ng her pretty hair out before she went to bed.

Everything was ready, the drawers all empty, the box full to overflowing, and supplemented by a large parcel in brown paper; and what with the fatigue and the tumult of feeling in her simple soul, Ursula was ready to cry when her cousin came in and sat down beside her.

"I have been so happy, Cousin Anne. You have been so good to me," she said.

"My dear, everybody will be good to you," said Miss Dorset, "so long as you trust everybody, Ursula. People are more good than bad. I hope when you come to Easton you will be still happier."

Ursula demurred a little to this, though she was too shy to say much.

"Town is so cheerful," she said. It was not Sir Robert's way of looking at affairs.

"There is very little difference in places," said Anne, "when your heart is light you are happy everywhere." Ursula felt that it was somewhat derogatory to her dignity to have her enjoyment set down to the score of a light heart. But against such an a.s.sertion what could she say?

CHAPTER IX.

COMING HOME.

The party which set out from Suffolk Street next morning was a mighty one; there were the children, the ayah, the new nurse whom Anne had engaged in town, to take charge of her little nephews as soon as they got accustomed to their new life; and Seton, the ancient serving-woman, whom the sisters shared between them; and Sir Robert's man, not to speak of Sir Robert himself and the Miss Dorsets and Ursula. Easton was within a dozen miles of Carlingford, so that they all travelled together as far as that town. The Dorset party went farther on to the next station, from which they had still six miles to travel by carriage. They set down Ursula on the platform with her box and her parcel, and took leave of her, and swept out of the station again, leaving her rather forlorn and solitary among the crowd. "Disgraceful of May not to send some one to meet the child. I suppose he knew she was coming," said Sir Robert. And Ursula had something of the same feeling, as she stood looking wistfully about her. But as soon as the train was gone, her name was called in a somewhat high-pitched voice, and turning round she found herself hugged by Janey, while Johnnie, fresh from school, seized her bag out of her hand by way of showing his satisfaction.

"We didn't come up till we could make sure that the Dorsets were out of the way," said Janey, "and, oh, is it really you? I am so glad to get you home."

"Why didn't you want to see the Dorsets? They are the kindest friends we have in the world," said Ursula. "How is papa? Is he in a good humour?

And the rest? Why did not some more come to meet me? I made sure there would be four at least."

"Amy and Robin have gone out to tea--they didn't want to go; but papa insisted. Oh, he is very well on the whole. And Reginald is at home, of course, but I thought you would like me best. Johnnie came to carry the bag," said Janey with a natural contempt for her younger brother. "What a big parcel! You must have been getting quant.i.ties of presents, or else you must have packed very badly, for I am sure there was lots of room in the trunk when you went away."

"Oh, Janey, if you only knew what I have got there!"

"What?" said Janey, with quiet but composed interest. It never occurred to her that she could have any individual concern in the contents of the parcels. She was a tall girl who had outgrown all her frocks, or rather did outgrow them periodically, with dark elf locks about her shoulders, which would not curl or _creper_, or do anything that hair ought to do.

She had her thoughts always in the clouds, forming all sorts of impossible plans, as was natural to her age, and was just the kind of angular, jerky school-girl, very well intentioned, but very maladroit, who is a greater nuisance to herself and everybody else than even a school-boy, which is saying a good deal. Things broke in her hands as they never broke in anybody else's; stuffs tore, furniture fell to the ground as she pa.s.sed by. Ursula carefully kept her off the parcel and gave it to Johnnie. One of the railway porters, when all the rest of the pa.s.sengers were disposed of, condescended to carry her trunk, and thus they set out on their way home. The parsonage was close to St. Roque, at the other end of Grange Lane. They had to walk all the way down that genteel and quiet suburban road, by the garden walls over which, at this season, no scent of flowers came, or blossomed branches hung forth.

There were red holly-berries visible, and upon one mossy old tree a gray bunch of mistletoe could be seen on the other side of the street. But how quiet it was! They scarcely met a dozen people between the station and St. Roque.

"Oh, Janey, is everybody dead?" said Ursula. "How dull it is! You should see London----"

"Ursula," said Janey firmly, "once for all, I am not going to stand this London! A nasty, smoky, muddy place, no more like Carlingford than--I am like you. You forget I have been in London; you are not speaking to ignorant ears," said Janey, drawing herself up, "and your letters were quite bad enough. You are not going to talk of nothing but your disagreeable London here. Talk to people who have never seen it!" said the girl, elevating her shoulders with the contempt of knowledge.

"That time you were at the dentist's--" said Ursula, "and call that seeing London! Cousin Anne and Cousin Sophy took me everywhere. We went to drive in the Park. We went to the Museum and the National Gallery.

And, oh! Janey, listen! we went to the theatre: think of that!"

"Well, I should like to go to the theatre," said Janey, with a sigh.

"But you told me in your letter. That's what comes of being the eldest.

Unless you get married, or something, n.o.body will ever think of taking _me_."

"You are five years younger than I am," said Ursula, with dignity.

"Naturally, people don't think of a girl at your age. You must wait till you are older, as I have had to do. Janey! guess what is in _that_?"

"Your new dress--your ball-dress. If it isn't crumpled as you said, you can't have danced very much. I know my dress will be in tatters if I ever go to a ball."