"The clock struck when you dropped off, dear. I did not speak for fear of waking you."

She did not add that she, too, had been kept awake about money matters, and wondering whether her husband would consent to live in a more simple style in a smaller house.

"There, good-bye," he said, kissing her. "It is all coming right.

Don't talk to your father or mother about my affairs."

"Of course I should not, love," she replied; "such things are sacred."

"Yes, of course," he said hastily. "There, don't take any notice of what I have said. I am worried--very much worried just now, but all will come right soon." He kissed her hastily and hurried away, leaving Millicent standing thoughtful and troubled till she heard another step on the rough stones, when a calm expression seemed to come over her troubled face, but only to be chased away by one more anxious as the step halted at the door and the bell rang.

Meanwhile Julia had run upstairs to her own room, where, facing the door, five very battered dolls sat in a row upon the drawers, at which she dashed full of childish excitement, as if to continue some interrupted game.

She stopped short, looked round, and then gave her little foot a stamp.

"How tiresome!" she cried pettishly. "It's that nasty, tiresome, disagreeable old Thibs. I hate her, that I do, and--"

"Oh, you hate me, do you?" cried the object of her anger appearing in the doorway. "Very well, it don't matter. I don't mind. You don't care for anybody now but Mr Bayle."

The child rushed across the room to leap up and fling her arms round Thisbe's neck, as that oddity stood there, quite unchanged: the same obstinate, hard woman who had opposed Mrs Luttrell seven years before.

"Don't, don't, don't say such things, Thibs," cried the child, all eagerness and excitement now, the very opposite of the timid, shrinking girl in the breakfast-room a short time before; and as she spoke she covered the hard face before her with kisses. "You know, you dear, darling old Thibs, I love you. Oh, I do love you so very, very much."

"I know it's all shim-sham and pea-shucks," said Thisbe, grimly; but, without moving her face, rather bending down to meet the kisses.

"No, you don't think anything of the kind, Thibs, and I won't have you looking cross at me like papa."

"It's all sham, I tell you," said Thisbe again. "You never love me only when you want anything."

"Oh! Thibs!" cried the girl with the tears gathering in her eyes; "how can you say that?"

"Because I'm a nasty, hard, cankery, ugly, disagreeable old woman," said Thisbe, clasping the child to her breast; "and it isn't true, and you're my own precious sweet, that you are."

"And you took away my box out of the room, when I had to go down to papa."

"But you can't have a nasty, great, dirty candle-box in your bedroom, my dear."

"But I want it for a doll's house, and I'm going to line it with paper, and--do, Thibs, do, do let me have it, please?"

"Oh, very well, I shall have to be getting the moon for you next. I never see such a spoiled child."

"Make haste then, before Mr Bayle comes, to go on with my lessons.

Quick! quick! where is it?"

"In the lumber-room, of course. Where do you suppose it is?"

Thisbe led the way along a broad pa.s.sage and up three or four stairs to an old oak door, which creaked mournfully on its hinges as it was thrown back, showing a long, sloped, ceiled room, half filled with packing-cases and old fixtures that had been taken down when Hallam hired the house, and had it somewhat modernised for their use.

It was a roomy place with a large fireplace that had apparently been partially built up to allow of a small grate being set, while walls and ceiling were covered with a small patterned paper, a few odd rolls and pieces of which lay in a corner.

"I see it," cried Julia excitedly.

"No, no, no; let me get it," cried Thisbe. "Bless the bairn! why, she's like a young goat. There, now, just see what you've done!"

The child had darted at the hinged deal box, stood up on one end against the wall in the angle made by the great projecting fireplace, and in dragging it away torn down a large piece of the wall paper.

"Oh, I couldn't help it, Thibs," cried the child panting. "I am so sorry."

"So sorry, indeed!" cried Thisbe; "so sorry, indeed, won't mend walls.

Why, how wet it is!" she continued, kneeling down and smoothing out the paper, and dabbing it back against the end of the great fireplace from which it had been torn. "There's one of them old gutters got stopped up and the rain soaks in through the roof, and wets this wall; it ought to be seen to at once."

All this while making a ball of her ap.r.o.n, Thisbe, who was the perfection of neatness, had been putting back the torn down corner of paper, moistening it here and there, and ending by making it stick so closely that the tear was only visible on a close inspection. This done she rose and carried the box out, and into the child's bedroom, when before the slightest advance had been made towards turning it into a doll's house, there was the ring at the door, and Thisbe descended to admit the curate, to whom Julia came bounding down.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWO.

MISS HEATHERY'S OFFERING.

Nature, or rather the adaptation from Nature which we call civilisation, deals very hardly with unmarried ladies of twenty-five for the next ten or a dozen years. Then it seems to give them up, and we have arrived at what is politely known as the uncertain age. Very uncertain it is, for, from thirty-five to forty-five some ladies seem to stand still.

Miss Heathery was one of these, and the mid-life stage seemed to have made her evergreen, for seven years' lapse found her much the same, scarcely in any manner changed.

Poor Miss Heathery! For twenty years she had been longing with all the intensity of a true woman to become somebody's squaw. Her heart was an urn full of sweetness. Perhaps it was of rather a sickly cloying kind that many men would have turned from with disgust, but it was sweetness all the same, and for these long, long years she had been waiting to pour this honey of her nature like a blessing upon some one's head, while only one man had been ready to say, "Pour on," and held his head ready.

That one would-be suitor was old Gemp, and when he said it, poor Miss Heathery recoiled, clasping her hands tightly upon the mouth of the urn and closing it. She could not pour it there, and the love of Gemp had turned into a bitter hate.

If the curate in his disappointment would only have turned to her, she sighed to herself!

"Ah!"

And she went on thinking and working. What comforting fleecy undergarments she could have woven for him! What ornamental braces he should have worn; and, in the sanguine hopes of that swelling urn of sweets, she designed--she never began them--a set of slippers, a set of seven, all beautifully worked in wool and silks, and lined with velvet.

Sunday: white with a gold sun; Monday: dominating with a pale lambent golden green, for it was moon's day; Tuesday puzzled her, for it took her into the Scandinavian mythology, and there she was lost hopelessly for a time, but she waded out with an idea that Tuisco was Mars, so the slippers should be red. The Wednesday slippers brought in Mercury, so they were silvery. Thursday was another puzzle till the happy idea came of crossing Thor's hammer, which would give the slippers quite a college look, black hammers on a red ground. Friday--Frega, Venus--she would work a beauteous woman with golden hair on each. She felt rather doubtful about the woman's face; but love would find out the way. Then there was Sat.u.r.day.

Just as she reached Sat.u.r.day, she remembered having once heard that Sir Gordon had a set of razors for every day in the week, and the design halted.

Ah! if Sir Gordon would only have looked at her with that sad melancholy air of tenderness, how happy she could have been! How she would have prompted him to keep on that fight of his against time! But he never smiled upon her; and though she paid in all her little sums of money at the bank herself, and changed all her cheques, Mr James Thickens--as he was always called, to distinguish him from a Mr Thickens of whom some one had once heard somewhere--made no step in advance. The bank counter was always between them, and it was very broad.

"What could she do more to show her affection?" she asked herself. She had pet.i.tioned him to give her a "teeny weeny gold-fish, and a teeny weeny silver fish," and he had responded at once; but he was close in his ways: he was not generous. He did not purchase a gla.s.s globe of iridescent tints and goodly form; he borrowed a small milk tin at the dairy and sent them in that, with his compliments.

But there were the fish, and she purchased a beautiful globe herself, placed three Venus's ear-sh.e.l.ls in the bottom, filled it with clear water from the river carefully strained through three thicknesses of flannel, and there the fish lived till they died.

Why they died so soon may have been from over-petting and too much food.

For Miss Heathery secretly called the gold-fish James, and the silver fish Let.i.tia, her own name, and she was never so happy as when feeding James and coaxing him to kiss the tips of her thin little fingers.

Perhaps it was from over-feeding, perhaps from too much salt, for as Miss Heathery, after long waiting, had to content herself with the chaste salutes of the gold-fish, dissolved pearls distilled from her sad eyes, and fell in the water like sporadic drops of rain.

Miss Heathery's spirit was low, and yet it kept leaping up strangely, for she had been at the bank one morning to change a cheque, and with the full intention of asking Mr James Thickens to present her with a couple more fish from the store of which she had heard so much, but which she had never seen.

That morning, as she noted how broad the pathway had grown from the forehead upwards, and had seen when he turned his back that it expanded into a circular walk round a bed of grizzle in the back of his crown, and was then continued to the nape, Mr James Thickens seemed to be extremely hard and cold. He looked certainly older too than he used; of that she was sure.

He seemed extremely abrupt and impatient with her when she wished him a sweet and pensive good-morning, which was as near a blessing upon his getting-bald head as the words would allow.