Mr. Sumner was not so easy to please. A disappointed artist, who hated teaching, and only gave lessons from absolute necessity, this gentleman had but little patience with the natural inexperience of an untrained girl.

But Edith had made up her mind to overcome all difficulties, and it was not very long before she began to make progress with the pencil too, and to enjoy the drawing-lesson almost as well as the pleasant hours with Monsieur Delorme.

These were almost the only things she did enjoy, however. It was hard work to read for two hours every morning with Miss Rachel, who made her plod wearily through dreary histories and works of science that are reduced to compendiums and abridgements for the favoured students of the present day.

But even that was better than the needlework, the hemming and st.i.tching and darning, over which Stimson presided, and which, good and useful as it is, is apt to become terribly irksome when it is compulsory, and a poor girl must get through her allotted task before she can turn to any other pursuit.

Every day, too, Edith went into the kitchen and learned pastry-making and other mysteries from the good-natured cook, who, with Stimson, and the boy who came daily to look after the garden and pony made up Aunt Rachel's household.

What with these occupations, and the daily walk or drive, the girl found her time pretty well taken up, and had little to spare for the rambles in the garden she loved so much, and for writing letters home.

To write and to receive letters from home were her greatest pleasures, for the separation tried her terribly.

It was difficult, too, for one who had lived a free, careless life, to have to do everything by rule, and submit to restraint in even the smallest matters.

In spite of her efforts to be cheerful and to keep from all complaining, Edith grew paler and thinner, and so quiet, that Aunt Rachel was quite pleased with what she called her niece's "becoming demeanour."

The girl was growing fast; she was undoubtedly learning much that was useful and good, but no one knew what it cost her to go quietly on from day to day and never send one pa.s.sionate word to the distant home, imploring her father to let her return to the beloved circle again.

[Sidenote: A Welcome Letter]

But the six months, though they had seemed such a long time to look forward to, flew quickly by when there were so many things to be done and learned in them. Edith began to wonder very much in the last few weeks whether she had really been able to please her aunt or not.

It was not Miss Harley's way to praise or commend her niece at all.

Young people required setting down and keeping in their proper places, she thought, rather than having their vanity flattered. Yet she could not be blind to Edith's honest and earnest efforts to please and to learn, and at the end of the six months a letter went to Winchcomb, which made both Dr. and Mrs. Harley proud of their child.

"Edith has her faults, as all girls have," wrote Miss Rachel; "but I may tell you that ever since she came I have been pleased with her conduct.

She makes the best use of the advantages I am able to give her, and I think you will find her much improved both in knowledge and deportment.

You had better have her home for a week or two, to see you and her brothers and sisters, and then she can return, and consider my house her home always. I make no doubt that you will be glad to yield her to me permanently, but be good enough not to tell her how much I have said in her favour. I don't want the child's head turned."

"It is very kind of Rachel," said Mrs. Harley, after reading this letter for the third or fourth time. "I must say I never expected Edith to get to the end of her six months, still less that she should gain so much approval. She was always such a wild, harem-scarem girl at home."

"She only wanted looking after, my dear, and putting in a right way,"

said the doctor, in a true masculine spirit; and Mrs. Harley answered, with her usual gentle little sigh:

"I don't think that was quite all. Maude and Jessie, who have been brought up at home, have done well, you must admit. But I sometimes think there is more in Edith--more strength of character and real patience than we ever gave her credit for. You must excuse my saying so, but she could never have borne with your sister so long if she had not made a very great effort."

"And now she is to go back to this tyrant of a maiden aunt," laughed the doctor. "But by all means let her come home first, as Rachel suggests, and then we shall see for ourselves, and hear how she likes the prospect too."

That week or two at home seemed like a delightful dream to Edith. It is true the fields and woods had lost all their sweet summer beauty; but the mild late autumn, which lasted far into November that year, had a charm of its own; and then it was so pleasant to be back again in the dear old room which she had always shared with Jessie, to have the boys and Francie laughing and clinging about her, and to find that they had not forgotten her "one bit," as Johnnie said, and that to have their dear Edith back was the most charming thing that could possibly have happened to them.

"You must make much of your sister while she is here," said the doctor.

"It will not be long before you have to say 'Goodbye' again."

"Oh, papa, can't she stay till Christmas?" cried a chorus of voices.

"No, no, children. We must do as Aunt Rachel says, and she wants Edith back in a fortnight at the outside."

Both father and mother, though they would not repeat Miss Harley's words, could not help telling their daughter how pleased they were with her.

"You have been a real help to your father, Edith," said Mrs. Harley.

"Now you have done so well with Aunt Rachel, we may feel that you are provided for, and I am sure you will be glad to think that your little brothers and sisters will have many things they must have gone without if you had had to be considered too."

[Sidenote: A Trying Time]

Edith felt rewarded then for all it had cost her to please her aunt and work quietly on at Silchester, and she went back to Ivy House with all her good resolutions strengthened, and her love for the dear ones at home stronger than ever.

For a while things went on without much change. The wild, country girl was fast growing into a graceful accomplished young woman, when two events happened which caused her a great deal of thought and anxiety.

First, Aunt Rachel, who had all her life enjoyed excellent health, fell rather seriously ill. She had a sharp attack of bronchitis, and instead of terminating in two or three weeks, as she confidently expected, the disease lingered about her, and at last settled into a chronic form, and made her quite an invalid.

Both Edith and Stimson had a hard time while Miss Harley was at the worst. Unaccustomed to illness, she proved a very difficult patient, and kept niece and maid continually running up and downstairs, and ministering to her real and fancied wants.

The warm, shut-up room where she now spent so many hours tried Edith greatly, and she longed inexpressibly sometimes for the free air of her dear Winchcomb fields, and the open doors and windows of the old house at home. Life at Silchester had always been trying to her; it became much more so when she had to devote herself constantly to an exacting invalid, who never seemed to think that young minds and eyes and hands needed rest and recreation--something over and above continued work and study.

Even when she was almost too ill to listen, Aunt Rachel insisted on the hours of daily reading; she made Edith get through long tasks of household needlework, and, to use her own expression, "kept her niece to her duties" quite as rigidly in sickness as in health.

Then, when it seemed to Edith that she really must give up, and pet.i.tion for at least a few weeks at home, came a letter from her father, containing some very surprising news. A distant relative had died, and quite unexpectedly had left Dr. Harley a considerable legacy.

"I am very glad to tell you," wrote her father, "that I shall now be relieved from all the pecuniary anxieties that have pressed upon me so heavily for the last few years. Your mother and I would now be very glad to have you home again, unless you feel that you are better and happier where you are. We owe your Aunt Rachel very many thanks for all her kindness, but we think she will agree that, now the chief reason for your absence from home is removed, your right place is with your brothers and sisters."

To go home! How delightful it would be! That was Edith's first thought; but others quickly followed. What would Aunt Rachel say? Would she really be sorry to lose her niece, or would she perhaps feel relieved of a troublesome charge, and glad to be left alone with her faithful Stimson, as she had been before?

"I must speak to my aunt about it at once," thought Edith. "And no doubt papa will write to her too."

But when she went into the garden, where her aunt was venturing to court the sunshine, she found her actually in tears.

"Your father has written me a most unfeeling letter," said the poor lady, sitting on a seat, and before Edith could utter a word. "Because he is better off he wants to take you away. He seems not to think in the least of my lonely state, or that I may have grown attached to you, but suggests that you should return home as soon as we can arrange it, without the least regard for my feelings."

"Papa would never think you cared so much, Aunt Rachel. Would you really rather I should stay, then?"

"Child, I could never go back to my old solitary life again. I did not mean to tell you, and perhaps I am not wise to do so now, but I will say it, Edith--I have grown to love you, my dear, and if you love me, you will not think of going away and leaving me to illness and solitude.

Your father and mother have all their other children--I have nothing and no one but you. Promise that you will stay with me?"

[Sidenote: "I have Grown to Love you!"]

"I must think about it, aunt," said Edith, much moved by her aunt's words. "Oh, do not think me ungrateful, but it will be very hard for me to decide; and perhaps papa will not let me decide for myself."

But when Edith, in her own room, came to consider all her aunt's claim, it really seemed that she had no right, at least if her parents would consent to her remaining, to abandon one who had done so much for her.

It was, indeed, as she had said, a very difficult choice; there was the old, happy, tempting life at Winchcomb, the pleasant home where she might now return, and live with the dear brothers and sisters without feeling herself a burden upon her father's strained resources; and there was the quiet monotonous daily round at Ivy House, the exacting invalid, the uncongenial work, the lack of all young companionship, that already seemed so hard to bear.

And yet, Edith thought, she really ought to stay. Wonderful as it seemed, Aunt Rachel had grown to love her. How could she say to the lonely, stricken woman, "I will go, and leave you alone"?

"Well, Edith?" said Miss Harley eagerly, when her niece came in again after a prolonged absence.

"I will stay, Aunt Rachel, if my father will let me. I feel that I cannot--ought not--to leave you after all that you have done for me."

So it was settled, after some demur on Dr. Harley's part, and the quiet humdrum days went on again, and Edith found out how, as the poet says--