For a few moments Mrs. Carroll sat considering. One by one all her relations and friends were pa.s.sed in review before her mind's eye.

"There seems," she said at last in a musing tone, "no one but Cousin Charlotte. I wonder--"

There was not much doubt as to what Mrs. Carroll was wondering. Her face lightened, determination shone in her eye.

"Cousin Charlotte," or Miss Charlotte Ashe, was a cousin of Mrs. Carroll's mother. In her earlier years she had kept a girls' school in London, but when she found herself growing old she sold it, and retired to a little house in her native village in Devonshire. Schoolmistresses do not, as a rule, grow rich, and Miss Ashe was the last person to save money for herself while there was any one else wanting it; she managed, however, to save enough to keep herself, and Anna, her former cook, in their little house in comfort, and put a trifle by for an emergency.

It was to this quiet, modest little home that Mrs. Carroll's thoughts now flew, without the slightest feeling of compunction at invading it, as she meant it to be invaded. Her letter to Miss Ashe was a masterpiece of pathetic pleading. Miss Charlotte read it with tears of pity for the poor mother, reduced from affluence and luxury to poverty and the position of an emigrant's wife torn from her children by stress of circ.u.mstance.

Then she read it again to Anna, and Anna's eyes filled too; but it was for the children that Anna wept. Both kind hearts agreed, though, that they could not refuse to give the homeless ones a home; and a letter was despatched at once, full of warm hospitality and affection, and almost before it was posted a perfect fury of cleaning, planning, rearranging burst over Moor Cottage, in preparation for the four new inhabitants.

"Children," cried Mrs. Carroll delightedly, when the letter arrived, "your dear Cousin Charlotte is quite anxious to have you in her charming little home in Devonshire. I know you will be happy there, she is so sweet and kind. I was always very fond of her, and so will you be, I know; and you must do all you can to help her, and not be too troublesome.

She says she can have you at any time, so I think you really had better go as soon as I can get you ready. I shall be able to see to things better, and pay a few farewell visits, when I am quite free. It will be a great relief to know you are comfortably settled."

Esther listened in silence. She was terribly sensitive. She was interested, but troubled. Did Cousin Charlotte really want them, she wondered, "or had mother forced them on her?"

Penelope knew no qualms; she simply danced with delight at the thought of going to Devonshire, and to live on a moor. "I always wanted to go there," she cried. "I know I shall love it."

Angela wept quietly at the thought of leaving Framley, and her mother, and the house and the woods. Poppy stood gazing eagerly from one to the other, prepared to do whatever her sisters did, but puzzled to know which to copy.

"Cousin Charlotte will want a big house," she remarked gravely, "if she has all of us to live with her. I wonder if she is glad we are coming--or sorry," she added as an afterthought.

"What about our clothes and food, and everything," asked Esther presently, nervously summoning up courage to put the great question that had troubled her most ever since the move was first mooted. She knew from bitter experience that the very last person to trouble about such details was her mother.

"Really, Esther, you are very inquisitive and interfering," said Mrs.

Carroll, deeply annoyed because the question was one of the most embarra.s.sing that could have been put to her. "Who do you consider is the right person to attend to such matters, myself or yourself?"

Esther sighed, but made no answer. She had no doubt as to who was the right person, her doubt was as to the right person's doing it.

The matter, though, was too important for her to be easily daunted.

She felt she _must_ know, or she could not go.

"And--and what about our education?" she asked. She meant so well, but she spoke in that sullen, aggressive tone that always put her in the wrong and made her mother angry. It was purely the result of nervousness.

She did so hate to have to be disagreeable and say these things, making herself seem so forward and important, when she really felt just the reverse. There was no one else though to do it, so she had to.

"Is there a school there? We all ought to go to school now, even Poppy.

I am thirteen, and--and I don't know as much as the village children, and I--I'm ashamed to go anywhere or meet any one. Every one sees how stupid and ignorant we are." A great sob clutched her throat and choked the rest of her words, tears of mortification and bitterness filled her eyes. She was painfully conscious of her own ignorance, and had an exaggerated idea of the contempt others must feel for her. "And some day the others would come to feel the same," she told herself resentfully, "if nothing was done for them. It was cruel. No one seemed to care for them, or how they grew up."

And then again, she would hate herself for her bad temper, and the nasty things she said. She knew she was making herself unlovable, and she did so long for love.

Mrs. Carroll looked somewhat taken aback at this new question.

"Oh," she stammered, "I suppose I must arrange something. I must talk to your father about it when I get out to him. In the meantime I daresay Cousin Charlotte will be able to help you a little with a few lessons.

She has been a schoolmistress all her life; she had a splendid school-- such nice girls, too. She must miss them so. She will probably be quite glad to do a little teaching."

"I wonder what she will think of us," said Esther, "if she has been accustomed to well-brought-up girls."

"Well," cried Mrs. Carroll, turning on her sharply, "surely if you are so anxious to learn, you might have been studying by yourself all this time.

I am sure there are books enough in the house, and you knew there was no money to spare for education."

"Yes, there are books," said Esther quietly. "Father's books that he brought from Oxford, but I can't understand them. It is books for quite little children that I want," her face flushing hotly.

"Well, I daresay Cousin Charlotte will have loads of old school-books, and--and well, at any rate, Esther," reproachfully, "you know how to read and write, and you might have been teaching Angela and Poppy to do so, you really might have done that."

"I have," said Esther.

"Oh, well, that is something. When one can read there is no excuse for ignorance in a place where there are books. There are lots of people who have set to work and taught themselves when they have been too poor to go to school, and have done--oh, marvels!" responded Mrs. Carroll, relieving herself of any feeling of self-reproach. Because a few rare geniuses had done so, by facing difficulties and self-sacrifices such as she could not even imagine, she felt there was nothing to prevent every ordinary child from pursuing the same course.

Esther said no more; a sense of hopelessness and helplessness seized her-- a feeling common to most who had to do with Mrs. Carroll, but Esther, as yet, did not know that. She walked away out of the room and the house-- she felt she must get away somewhere by herself.

She hurried on quickly till she came to the woods. There, at any rate, there was peace and rest, and no bickerings. "But oh," she thought, as she flung herself down on the soft, springy pine-needles which lay so thickly everywhere, "what shall I do when I haven't the woods to come to?"

and she put out her hand and patted tenderly the rough trunk of the nearest pine-tree.

Half an hour later she rose as bewildered and vexed as ever. Her thoughts had led her nowhere; instead of finding some way to surmount her troubles, she had just brooded and brooded, and nursed her grievances until they were larger than ever. She could not go home yet, she felt too depressed and miserable, so she wandered on and on.

In one little hollow in the woods was a spot they called their 'house,'

where they spent long days playing all sorts of lovely games, and very often, when their mother or Lydia wanted to have a free day, they had their dinner and tea there too. Making for this place now, Esther came upon Penelope perched in the forked trunk of an old tree, a book in her hand. She was so absorbed she gave quite a start when Esther called to her, "What are you doing, Pen?"

Penelope had a deep pucker in her forehead and a very grave face.

"I am trying to educate myself," she said soberly. "I thought if I could learn even only a little before I went to Cousin Charlotte's it would not seem _so_ bad. But I don't seem able to get on _very_ well. I can't quite make out what it is all about, and the words are very long.

I thought I'd try though. I only wish I'd thought of it sooner."

Esther felt a twinge of shame. She had thought of it, but she had done nothing, and her inmost conscience told her she might have spent her time more profitably than she had. "If we were not going away, Pen," she said enthusiastically, "we would have lessons here every day. P'r'aps if we kept on at it we might get to understand better, and we might get some nice books in time. But," hopelessly, "it is too late now."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Penelope encouragingly. "It can never be _too_ late to learn things, and p'r'aps we can make up for lost time.

At any rate, let's try."

"Very well, we'll begin now. Shall we start together? What book are you reading?"

"It is called _The Invasion of the Crimea_" said Penelope slowly.

"I think it will be very interesting--further on."

"I wonder what the Crimea was," mused Esther.

"If we read very carefully perhaps we shall find out. There seems to be a lot about soldiers and battles."

"I wonder," said Esther, after a moment's thought, "if it will be any good our reading all this. Don't you think we ought to learn something that people talk about every day?"

Penelope looked a little disappointed. "I don't know," she said slowly.

"I don't know how to--or what books to get, and--and p'r'aps some people do talk about the Crimea. Cousin Charlotte may, and then won't she be surprised if we know all about it!"

"Is it long?" asked Esther, still dubiously. Esther wanted to find the royal road to knowledge, which is easy and short and smooth--so they say, but no one knows, for no one has found it yet.

"Eight more volumes," said Penelope, almost apologetically. She was beginning to feel her zest for self-education considerably damped.

"But," brightening up a little, "we can go on with this, at any rate, until we find out what we _ought_ to learn. It can't do any harm.

It looks like history, and I am sure we ought to know history."

"Yes," agreed Esther. So they began taking it in turns to read; but the words were long, and the names difficult to p.r.o.nounce, and Esther's mind was in such a state of turmoil she could not fix it on anything, and line after line, as Penelope read, fell on deaf ears. "I think I shall go home now," she said at last. "Penelope, do you think we shall have some new clothes before we go away? We ought, we are dreadfully shabby."

Penelope looked up with doubt in her face. "I don't know. I don't expect so; you see it would cost such a lot to get things for the four of us, and there will be the tickets too, and it must be a very long journey."

Esther sighed. "Well, we are disgracefully shabby. I don't know what we are going to do. Cousin Charlotte will think we are a tramp's children."

The next day, when the study hour came, Esther took a large basket of stockings out into the woods with her to darn. "I must try and mend these again," she said. "We don't seem to be going to have any new ones," and while Penelope with some trouble made her way through a chapter of the _Invasion of the Crimea_, and the younger ones collected fir-cones to take home for the kitchen fire, Esther sorted out and darned a motley collection of stockings of various sizes and every variety of shade of washed-out black and brown. She darned them quickly and thoroughly; but the great excrescences of blue, brown, grey, or black darning-wool would have brought terror to the heart of any one who suffered from tender feet.