She gathered her lean figure up from the hillock, and took up her pail.

As for the girl Winifred, a terrible feeling of fear had come over her.

All the bright world of sun and flowers seemed suddenly overshadowed by the lowering cloud of an awful possibility. She would no more have allowed herself to be left alone in that sunny corner of the glad spring morning than she would have remained alone where visible danger beset her. Her face bathed in the sudden tears that came so easily to her girlish eyes, she sprang like a fawn after her companion and grasped her skirt as she followed.

"How you take on!" sighed the woman, turning. "Do you mean to say you ain't, glad?"

"I'm frightened," gasped the girl.

"And you been confirmed this spring! What did it mean to you if you ain't glad there's ever such a little chance of perhaps seeing Him before the year's out."

They both climbed the fence, handing over the milk-pail between them.

When they had got on to the road and must part, the housekeeper spoke.

"I tell you what it is, Winifred Rexford; we've not one of us much to bring Him in the way of service. If there's one thing more than another I'm fond of it's to have my kitchen places to myself, but I've often thought I ought to ask yer ma to send one of you over every day to learn from me how a house ought to be kept and dinner cooked. Ye'd learn more watching me in a month, you know, than ye'd learn with yer ma a fussin'

round in six years. Don't tell yer ma it's a trial to me, but just ask her if she'll send you over for an hour or two every morning."

"Thank you," said Winifred, reluctantly. "Do you think I _ought_ to come?"

"Well, I'd want to be a bit more use to my ma if I was you."

"It's very kind of you," acknowledged Winifred; "but--but--Mrs. Martha, if it was true about this--_this August,_ you know--what would be the use of learning?"

"Child," said the woman, and if her voice was sad it was also vehement, "them as are mad in religion are them as thinks doing the duty of each day for _His_ sake ain't enough without seeing where's the _use_ of doing what He puts to our hand."

"Mrs. Martha," besought Winifred, timidly, "I--don't like cooking; but do you think if I did this I should perhaps get to be glad to think--be glad to think our Saviour might be coming again so soon?"

"To love Him is of His grace, and you must get it direct from Him; but it's wonderful how doing the best we can puts heart into our prayers."

The scarlet tanager rose and flew from tree to tree like a darting flame, but Winifred had forgotten him.

CHAPTER XIII.

Midsummer came with its culmination of heat and verdure; and a great epoch it was in the Ch.e.l.laston year, for it brought the annual influx of fashionable life from Quebec and Montreal. To tell the plain truth, this influx only consisted of one or two families who had chosen this as a place in which to build summer residences, and some hundred other people who, singly or in parties, took rooms in the hotel for the hot season; but it made a vast difference in the appearance of the quiet place to have several smart phaetons, and one carriage and pair, parading its roads, and to have its main street enlivened by the sight of the gay crowd on the hotel verandahs.

"Now," said Miss Bennett, calling upon Miss Rexford, "there will be a few people to talk to, and we shall see a little life. These people are really a very good sort; you'll begin to have some enjoyment."

The Rexfords had indeed been advertised more than once of the advantage that would accrue to them from the coming of the town-folks, and this chiefly by Trenholme himself.

"The place will seem far different," he had said, "when you have pa.s.sed one of our summers. We really have some delightful pleasure parties here in summer." And another time he had said, "When Mrs. Brown and her daughters come to their house on the hill I want you to know them. They are such true-hearted people. All our visitors are genuine Canadians, not immigrants as we and our neighbours are; and yet, do you know, they are so nice you would _hardly_ know them from English people. Oh, they add to our social life very much when they come!"

He had said so many things of this sort, ostensibly to Mrs. Rexford, really to Sophia, who was usually a party to his calls on her mother, that he had inspired in them some of his own pleasurable antic.i.p.ation.

It was not until the summer visitors were come that they realised how great was the contrast between their own bare manner of living and the easy-going expenditure of these people, who were supposed to be such choice acquaintances for them. Everything is relative. They had not been mortified by any comparison of their own circ.u.mstances and those of Ch.e.l.laston families, because, on one account and another, there had always appeared to be something to equalise the difference. Either their neighbours, if better off, had not long ago begun as meagrely, or else they lacked those advantages of culture or social standing which the Rexfords could boast. Such are the half conscious refuges of our egotism. But with the introduction of this new element it was different.

Not that they drew any definite comparison between themselves and their new neighbours--for things that are different cannot be compared, and the difference on all points was great; but part of Trenholme's prophecy took place; the life in that pleasant land did appear more and more desirable as they witnessed the keen enjoyment that these people, who were not workers, took in it--only (Trenholme and Miss Bennett seemed to have overlooked this) the leisure and means for such enjoyment were not theirs.

"Oh, mamma," said Blue and Red, "we saw the Miss Browns driving on the road, and they had such pretty silver-grey frocks, with feathers in their hats to match. We wish we could have feathers to match our frocks."

And later Sophia, seeking her step-mother, found her in her own room, privately weeping. The rare sight rent her heart.

"If I am their mother" (she began her explanation hurriedly, wiping her tears) "I can say truthfully they're as pretty a pair of girls as may be seen on a summer day. You had your turn, Sophia; it's very n.o.ble of you to give up so much for us now, but it can't be said that you didn't have your turn of gaiety."

Now Blue and Red were not in need of frocks, for before they left England their mother had stocked their boxes as though she was never to see a draper's shop again. But then, she had been in a severely utilitarian mood, and when she cut out the garments it had not occurred to her that Fashion would ever come across the fields of a Canadian farm.

Sophia rallied her on this mistake now, but resolutely abstracted certain moneys from the family purse and purchased for the girls white frocks. She did not omit blue and red ribbons to distinguish between the frocks and between the wearers. Trenholme had remarked of the girls lately that neither would know which was herself and which the other if the badge of colour were removed, and Sophia had fallen into the way of thinking a good deal of all he said. She was busy weighing him in the scales of her approval and disapproval, and the scales, she hardly knew why, continued to balance with annoying nicety.

For the making up of the frocks, she was obliged to apply for advice to Eliza, who was the only patron of dressmakers with whom she was intimate.

"I think, on the whole, she is satisfactory," said Eliza of one whom she had employed. "She made the dress I have on, for instance; it fits pretty well, you see."

Sophia did not resent this. Eliza had had a rocket-like career of success in the hotel which pleased and amused her; but she felt that to forgive the Brown family for having a carriage and pair required large-mindedness while her father's carriage still stood in the unfurnished drawing-room, and even Mrs. Rexford had given up hopes of finding horses to draw it.

Very soon after, their annual arrival, Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their two daughters came kindly to call on the new English family. Princ.i.p.al Trenholme found time to run over by appointment and introduce his friends. The visitors were evidently generous-minded, wholesome sort of people, with no high development of the critical faculty, travelled, well-read, merry, and kind. Sophia confessed to herself after the first interview that, had it not been for their faulty degree of wealth and prosperity, she would have liked them very much. Mrs. Bennett, whose uncle had been an admiral, considered them desirable friends for her daughter, and this was another reason why, out of pure contrariness, Sophia found liking difficult; but she determined for Trenholme's sake to try--a good resolution which lasted until she had taken Blue and Red to return the call, but no longer.

"And Miss Rexford," said good Mrs. Brown, "we hear you have had the privilege of knowing Princ.i.p.al Trenholme for a long time before he came out here. He is a very _good_ man; for so comparatively young a man, and one, as you might say, with so many worldly advantages, I think it is perhaps remarkable that he is so spiritually-minded. I count it a blessing that we have the opportunity of attending his church during the summer months." Simple sense and perfect sincerity were written on every line of Mrs. Brown's motherly face.

"He really is very good," said one of the daughters. "Do you know, Miss Rexford, we have a friend who has a son at the college. He really went to the college a _very_ naughty boy, no one could manage him; and he's so changed--such a nice fellow, and doing so well. His mother says she could thank Princ.i.p.al Trenholme on her knees, if it was only the conventional thing to do."

"He is a most devoted Christian," added Mrs. Brown, using the religious terms to which she was accustomed, "and I believe he makes it a matter of prayer that no young man should leave his college without deepened religious life. I believe in prayer as a power; don't you, Miss Rexford?"

"Yes," replied Sophia, tersely. She did not feel at that moment as if she wanted to discuss the point.

"And then he's so jolly," put in the youngest Miss Brown, who was a hearty girl. "That's the sort of religion for me, the kind that can rollick--of course I mean _out of church_," she added navely.

Blue and Red sat shyly upon their chairs and listened to this discourse.

It might have been Greek for all the interest they took in it.

As for Sophia, it could not be said to lack interest for her--it was very plain, she thought, why Robert Trenholme thought so highly of the Browns.

There was a youth belonging to this family who was a year or two older than Blue and Red. His mother, sent for him to come into the room, and introduced him to them. He was a nice youth, but precocious; he said to them:

"I suppose you think Ch.e.l.laston is a very pretty place, but I'll tell you what our natural beauties lack as yet. It is such a literature as you have in England, which has done so much to endear the wildflowers and birds and all natural objects there to the heart of the people. Our Canadian flora and fauna are at present unsung, and therefore, to a large extent, un.o.bserved by the people, for I think the chief use of the poet is to interpret nature to the people--don't you?"

Blue ventured "yes," and Red lisped in confusion, "Do you think so, really?" but as for any opinion on the subject they had none. Sophia, fearing that her sisters would be cast aside as hopeless dunces, was obliged to turn partially from the praise that was being lavished on Trenholme to make some pithy remark upon the uses of the poet.

Sophia, although half conscious of her own unreasonableness, decided now that the Browns might go one way and she another; but she was indebted to this visit for a clue in a.n.a.lysing the impression Trenholme made upon her. His new friends had called him n.o.ble; she knew now that when she knew him ten years before he had seemed to her a more n.o.ble character.

In the next few weeks she observed that in every picnic, every pleasure party, by land or water, Princ.i.p.al Trenholme was the most honoured guest, and, indeed, the most acceptable cavalier. His holidays had come, and he was enjoying them in spite of much work that he still exacted from himself. She wondered at the manner in which he seemed to enjoy them, and excused herself from partic.i.p.ation. It was her own doing that she stayed at home, yet, perversely, she felt neglected. She hardly knew whether it was low spite or a heaven-born solicitude that made her feel bitter regret at the degeneracy she began to think she saw in him.

In due time there came a pleasure party of which Trenholme was to be the host. It was to take place in a lovely bit of wilderness ground by the river side, at the hour of sunset and moonrise, in order that, if the usual brilliancy attended these phenomena, the softest glories of light might be part of the entertainment. Music was also promised. Princ.i.p.al Trenholme came himself to solicit the attendance of the Miss Rexfords; but Sophia, promising for Blue and Red, pleaded lack of time for herself. "And I wish your scheme success," cried she, "but I need not wish you pleasure since, as on all such occasions, you will 'sit attentive to your own applause.'"

She felt a little vexed that he did not seem hurt by her quotation, but only laughed. She did not know that, although the adulation he received was sweet to him, it was only sweet that summer because he thought it must enhance his value in her eyes. Some one tells of a lover who gained his point by putting an extra lace on his servants' liveries; and the savage sticks his cap with feathers: but these artifices do not always succeed.

CHAPTER XIV.