EGLANTINE 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/eglantine01tabo
 
 EGLANTINE. 
 
 BY 
 
 THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 ST. OLAVE'S," " JANITA'S CROSS," 
 "THE BLUE RIBBON," 
 
 &c. &c. 
 
 To labour, and to be content with that a man hath, is a sweet life.'' 
 
 Ecclesiasticv.s, 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 HUKST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHEKS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1875. 
 
 .4 11 rights reserved.
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, 
 
 BLENHEIM HOUSE.
 
 £ v../ 
 
 i 
 
 Ga 
 
 EGLANTINE. 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 T is ten years ago to-day since John 
 
 Elphinston preached his first sermon 
 
 in our parish church of Cove Rossington. 
 
 How well I remember that Sunday, and 
 
 ^the sermon, and the preacher. I can shut 
 
 my eyes and look away over all the chasm 
 
 of years, and see him standing in the 
 
 (^ queer, ugly little pulpit, speaking with an 
 
 earnestness quite new and strange to us. 
 
 It was the earnestness of a man who has 
 
 fought for his faith through peril, through 
 
 scorn, through many a doubt and fear; 
 
 who has had to slay many a dear old 
 
 prejudice, and unclasp hands with many a 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 A EGLANTINE. 
 
 cherished opinion, on his way to freedom ; 
 the earnestness of a man who, having like 
 Spenser's Knight, seen in the dim grey 
 dawn the glorious face of his Faery Queen, 
 God's own truth, can rest no longer day 
 or night, but must wander, faint, weary, 
 yet pursuing, through the whole great forest 
 of life, until he stands face to face with her 
 again. 
 
 As I said before, it was very strange. 
 "We had never heard the like before. 
 No wonder that Cove Rossington went 
 home to its midday dinner that Sunday 
 morning full of speculation about this man, 
 who seemed a setter forth of strange 
 doctrines. No wonder that people asked 
 each other of his views, and questioned 
 to what " party " he belonged. For though 
 every sentence of his short sermon quiver- 
 ed with life, and though his whole manner, 
 from the first moment of his entering the 
 church, bore the stamp of the most
 
 EGLANTINE. 3 
 
 solemn reverence, still not a word, not a 
 gesture, not the cut of a vestment or the 
 expression of an attitude, hinted to us 
 whether we were to set him down as 
 " -High," " Low," or « Broad." And after all, 
 for the generality of hearers, is not the 
 settlement of that question of more import- 
 ance than what a man teaches of the truth 
 which he has been able to learn ? 
 
 For myself, I knew but little of parties 
 then — the vital importance of them, the 
 fierce strife which they engender ; and so 
 the question did not much trouble me. I 
 only felt that religion was being taught to 
 me as I had never heard it taught before, 
 in a way that upset a great many of my 
 old-established notions. Yet it was re- 
 ligion, my conscience told me that, and 
 therefore the notions must go their way, 
 dear as they had been to me. 
 
 And then something in the voice of the 
 preacher, a strong Northumbrian accent, 
 
 b 2
 
 4 EGLANTINE. 
 
 not often heard in the pulpit, but familiar 
 enough to some of us dwellers at Cove 
 Rossington now, from its use amongst the 
 coal and iron people of the district, took 
 me back to the old days when I did not even 
 know little, but better still, knew nothing, 
 of church parties ; back to the days of my 
 girhood, when I had sat by my father s side 
 in this same church, on just such a sunny 
 Easter day morning, and looked through 
 the open casement of one of the chancel 
 windows away to a white-sailed vessel, 
 slowly lessening and lessening in the blue 
 sea distance. For now, as then, that little 
 casement was open, and a vessel with 
 white sails spread was gliding out from 
 behind the headland of the next bay. 
 Only it was not the vessel I had gazed 
 after so wistfully in the old long ago days. 
 I might listen to the sermon quietly enough 
 now, as I had not been able to listen to it- 
 then.
 
 EGLANTINE. 5 
 
 I little thought that John Elphinston 
 would ever become so closely knitted up 
 with my own life, or that so much of its 
 sweetness should come to me through him. 
 I listened to him with that pleasant sur- 
 prise which freshness always brings. I 
 could not help seeing into myself more 
 than I had ever done before, by the vivid 
 lightning flashes which struck from his 
 words upon my life. But when we hear a 
 man for the first time, especially a man 
 whom we expect to hear often again, we 
 perhaps think more of how bright the 
 lightning is — supposing there is any at all 
 — than what it reveals to us of ourselves. 
 There will be time enough to consider that 
 afterwards. 
 
 I kept looking at my father to see how 
 he took it. I don't think my father gene- 
 rally listened with much attention to the 
 sermons in Cove Rossington church. He 
 worshipped reverently during the prayers,
 
 EGLANTINE. 
 
 joining in them with a childlike humility, 
 which, for a man of his keen, penetrating 
 intellect, was very beautiful. After the 
 text was announced, he usually folded his 
 arms, and a look of complete abstraction 
 came over his face, broken now and then 
 by a half-light of relief when he had worked 
 through, I suppose, to the end of some in- 
 tricate mental process. Once, when our 
 curate — not John Elphinston — was enlarg- 
 ing on the torments of the lost, unfolding 
 before us with terrible minuteness the 
 horrors of the bottomless pit, filled with 
 its struggling masses of men, women, and 
 children, — though how the children came 
 there he did not stop to explain, — I glanced 
 across to my father, and saw upon his face 
 the most perfect expression of victorious 
 tranquillity. As soon as we were out of 
 the church porch, he told me he had dis- 
 covered that the lines on an astronomical 
 problem, sent him by one of the Cambridge
 
 EGLANTINE. 7 
 
 professors, were hyperbolas. Of the pit 
 lie had heard nothing at all. Happy 
 man ! 
 
 But on this Sunday morning, after John 
 Elphinston had flung out upon us a few of 
 his fiery sentences, my father gathered him- 
 self up into an attitude of attention, and 
 his eyes never more wandered from the 
 keen young face in the pulpit. And all 
 through the afternoon, as we sat in the big 
 bow-window of our old parlour, watching 
 the little waves curling and breaking on the 
 beach below, he was talking about the new 
 curate — wondering by what paths he had 
 climbed to the height where he stood, and 
 what perils he had conquered to reach it. 
 
 Afterwards we had our walk by the sea. 
 Always on fine Sundays we walked there, 
 and saw the sun go down behind the dis- 
 tant headlands. Then my father came in 
 and settled down to his reading, or sat in 
 his easy-chair, with shut eyes and folded
 
 8 EGLANTINE. 
 
 hands, I speaking never a word to him, for 
 I knew his thoughts were great thoughts, 
 which I could not follow ; and the world 
 where his intellect found its home was a 
 world in which I could not dwell. 
 
 I have often said to myself that I would 
 write down the story of my earlier life, so 
 that if the days ever come when I am old 
 and lonely, I may, without any painful 
 effort of memory, recall it, living over again 
 the old times, remembering, as each re- 
 corded incident brings them back, the 
 hopes, joys, friends, sorrows, chances, and 
 changes of the days that are no more. I 
 think it is wise thus to keep the past in our 
 possession. Old in face and form we may 
 become, but old in heart we can never be, 
 whilst we lovingly remember our youth, 
 whilst what we did then, what we enjoy- 
 ed, what we suffered, what we won to and 
 what departed from us, is faithfully kept in 
 memory's records. 
 
 I treasure my past as a nation treasures
 
 EGLANTINE. 9 
 
 its archives. I like, in quiet, solitary even- 
 ings, to live my life again. Not, indeed, 
 that there was ever anything grand or 
 heroic about it. I think few women have 
 had a more hum-drum experience outward- 
 ly than myself. Few have made less noise 
 in the world, or have had less incident to 
 record. Yet a landscape, which, as we 
 walked through it, seemed tame and un- 
 interesting, looks beautiful enough some- 
 times, when from the upland to which we 
 were climbing we look back and see it in 
 sunset purple. For me now the past is 
 fair with the fairness which long distance 
 gives to years, which as they came and 
 went, seemed only full of a monotonous 
 calm. Now the very pain, the long waiting 
 and watching, the wastes of solitary toil and 
 endeavour, the mountainous peaks of some 
 sharp particular grief, the long level reaches 
 of common-place duty, make up for me a 
 picture which Autumn's after-glow turns 
 into a beauty of its own.
 
 10 EGLANTINE. 
 
 And so, whilst there is light enough, I 
 will write the story of that past, so that 
 when the evening comes, and the com- 
 panions of my life have dropped away 
 from me, and I wait alone till the time 
 comes for me to go to them, I may not be 
 quite alone, having them with me still in 
 what I can remember of them. There comes 
 to me now the last verse of an old song 
 which says just what I feel about the end- 
 ing of the day, and the sadness which 
 must always come with it. Which gives, 
 too, that touch of fireside warmth, making 
 one forget the sadness, nay, even long for 
 the night to come, that one may gather 
 home and be at rest. 
 
 11 When all the world is old, lad, 
 
 And all the trees are brown, 
 And all the sport is stale, lad, 
 
 And all the wheels run down, 
 Creep home and take your place then 
 
 The spent and maimed among ; 
 God send you find one face there 
 
 You loved when all was young !"
 
 EGLANTINE. 11 
 
 And because it is never likely now that 
 any early-loved friends of mine will be 
 ready for me at that fireside, I will begin 
 to make for myself this remembrance of 
 them and of the old times, to be a resting 
 place most sweet and pleasant when all 
 else is strange.
 
 12 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 p<OVE EOSSINGTON is now a popular 
 ^-^ watering-place, with a spa, a saloon, 
 a promenade, a band, gorgeously fronted 
 hotels with very dingy-looking back 
 premises, magnificent shops, which blossom 
 in all the colours of the rainbow during 
 three months of the year, and collapse for 
 the other nine, interminable lines of 
 terraces with apartments to let, rows of 
 bathing machines, dejected donkeys shuf- 
 fling uneasily about under their dirty 
 white saddle-cloths, a circulating library, 
 a croquet club, and all the other abomina- 
 tions of " a popular resort." 
 
 But well-nigh half a century ago, when
 
 EGLANTINE. 13 
 
 my childhood began there, it was as primi- 
 tive a little village as you might find all 
 along the Northern coast. Just where a 
 fissure in the cliffs widened gradually, its 
 sides fringed with gorse and stunted 
 foliage, down to the sea, a few cottages 
 had been built for the fishermen who plied 
 their craft in the quiet bay. Above these, 
 on a sort of plateau formed by some old 
 world landslip, stood about a dozen old» 
 fashioned houses, all stone-built and tho- 
 roughly respectable, with Avell-established 
 gardens and plenty of hardy trees around 
 them, and a general air of comfort which 
 only old-fashioned houses can have. They 
 were chiefly inhabited by widows and 
 daughters of church dignitaries, who had 
 retired hither from neighbouring cathedral 
 cities. 
 
 Half a mile away from us stood 
 Eossington castle, the pride and glory of 
 the place. The outer walls and keep dated
 
 14 EGLANTINE. 
 
 from the fourteenth century, or even 
 earlier. All the rest of the original build- 
 ing was gone, and the actual mansion was 
 rather a tumble-down place, quite good 
 enough however for its owner, Lord 
 Bossington, an atrocious old nobleman, 
 wealthy, wicked, and childless, who kept 
 the place shut up like a prison, never show- 
 ed himself at church or anywhere else, and 
 who might have been a mummy for any- 
 thing we knew to the contrary, except that 
 now and then some story of his meanness 
 or tyranny struggled out to light. 
 
 But still, whatever he might be, his 
 castle looked very picturesque up there on 
 the top of the cliff, standing out above 
 the stunted fir trees, its grey old keep 
 battered by five centuries of sea breeze, 
 and riddled by the cannon balls of Planta- 
 genet invaders. And if neither he nor his 
 agent took any notice of poor little Cove 
 Bossington, beyond receiving the rents
 
 EGLANTINE. 15 
 
 twice a year, never built new houses, never 
 repaired old ones, discouraged dissenters 
 and other public improvements, and, so 
 long as he got a certain royalty upon 
 haddocks and herrings, never asked himself 
 how the poor fishermen lived, — well, some- 
 how we managed to get along after our 
 own irregular fashion, and I don't think we 
 could have been very wicked after all ; for 
 nearly everyone went to a place of worship, 
 and we only had one policeman, who 
 never did anything but walk about and 
 look important. 
 
 We had a coast-guard too, but they, like 
 the policeman, only needed to walk about, 
 not even looking important ; for no smug- 
 glers ever vexed the calm of Cove Rossiug- 
 ton Bay now, whatever they might have 
 done in times past. Still we were rather 
 proud of our coast-guard. It was the one 
 outward and visible thing which linked us 
 with the Government of our country. We
 
 16 EGLANTINE. 
 
 felt that our little stretch of sea-beach was 
 of some importance in His Majesty's do- 
 minions, that we were worth taking care of 
 and looking after, that we were a part, if 
 only a small part, of that kingdom whose 
 absolute power and glory we never saw, 
 except now and then, when some splendid 
 war-vessel slowly crossed our bay in the 
 distance, with sails spread, and royal colours 
 proudly floating at the masthead. 
 
 Between us and the Castle stood Cove 
 Rossington church, an exquisite little gem, 
 though mouldering and crumbling, of early 
 English architecture ; and hard by was the 
 Eectory, occupied by Lord Rossington's 
 brother. Of course he was much too great 
 a man to mingle, except in a strictly pro- 
 fessional character, with us dwellers mid- 
 way down the cliff, and we rarely saw him, 
 save in the reading-desk and pulpit. Be- 
 sides, he lived away from the place as much 
 as he could, leaving his duties to a neigh-
 
 EGLANTINE. 17 
 
 bouring clergyman, who rode over to 
 preach on a Sunday morning, and after- 
 wards made a rapid tour of the village, to 
 see if anyone was sick or dying. We 
 scarcely ever had a funeral though, for in 
 those days the Cove Rossington people 
 seldom died, except of old age. 
 
 Ever since I could remember, we lived 
 in the same house, one of the best of the 
 old-fashioned places under the cliff. My 
 father, who was a Cambridge man, and had 
 been professor of mathematics in one of the 
 colleges, came there for my mother's health, 
 soon after they were married, supplement- 
 ing their little income by occasional literary 
 work. It was a comfortable, roomy old 
 house, one end fronting the valley and the 
 bit of beach, so that we could sit in our 
 parlour and see the fishermen dragging 
 up their boats and unloading them, or the 
 coast-guard gossiping with a stray captain 
 from the next harbour, or the lads mending 
 
 vol. i. c
 
 18 EGLANTINE. 
 
 the big brown nets that were spread out 
 on the sands. Always there was some- 
 thing to be done, something to be looked 
 at on that bit of beach. 
 
 Behind, an unkept wilderness of a garden 
 rambled away up the cliff, so shelving that 
 it could scarcely be cultivated, except in 
 one place. But it was splendid for a 
 child to play in, being full of pleasant 
 nooks and corners, with overhanging bits 
 of rock, under which caverns could be 
 scooped out, and hollows which caught the 
 water on rainy days, and made lakes for 
 the launching of paper boats. At the end 
 of the garden, almost half-way up the cliff, 
 was an old pear-tree stump, forming a de- 
 lightful seat, from which we commanded a 
 splendid prospect of the bay, and over the 
 south headland into the next harbour, 
 Shagmouth Port. If we climbed quite to 
 the top of the cliff, we could look north 
 and south along the whole deeply indented
 
 EGLANTINE. 19 
 
 coast-line, past bay after bay, headland 
 after headland, until, in the far distance, 
 only a fine clear line ran out to the hori- 
 zon, marking the extremest point of the 
 Northumbrian seaboard. 
 
 Our house must have been rather an 
 important one in its day, for there was a 
 big extinguisher nearly a foot long in a 
 niche by the front door, for the link-boy to 
 extinguish his torch when he brought my 
 lady home in her sedan-chair from balls or 
 card-parties. And we had a few bits of 
 good oak-carving left round the mantel- 
 pieces and doorways, and a square of stain- 
 ed glass, with a coat of arms in it, over the 
 staircase window. Perhaps some Rossing- 
 ton dowagers might have lived in it once, 
 and minuets might have been danced, and 
 many a game at cards played in our pleas- 
 ant old bow-windowed parlour. I cannot 
 tell. I only know that we lived a quiet 
 enough life there, my father and mother 
 
 c2
 
 20 EGLANTINE. 
 
 both being people given to retirement, and 
 loving each other too much to care for a 
 great deal of society outside. 
 
 I can only just remember my mother, 
 for she died when I was five years old. 
 Then Aunt Lois, my father's maiden sister, 
 came to live with us. She was a gene- 
 rous, practical, good-hearted woman, full 
 of housekeeping cares, unapproachable in 
 pickling and preserving, the best manager 
 of servants in all the country round, a 
 gentlewoman of the good old school, rigid 
 in her ideas of propriety, looking down 
 with righteous scorn on everything mo- 
 dern; particular to a nicety about laces 
 and linen, though upper clothing could not 
 be too plain for her. How I remember 
 being dressed by her from six to sixteen, in 
 Winter brown stuffs and Summer grey 
 hollands, which a huckster's daughter 
 now-a-days would laugh at, though my 
 crimped frills were of transparent, silken
 
 EGLANTINE. 21 
 
 fine cambric, and my handkerchiefs, all 
 duly hemmed and marked by myself, of the 
 daintiest lawn. That was my aunt's way 
 in everything — perfect neatness, expens- 
 ive quality, but no display; and all that 
 ought to be white, white as the driven 
 snow. 
 
 I often think that my father must have 
 tried her very much, though her fine old- 
 fashioned notions about the reverence due 
 to the master of a house from all its 
 women folk, never allowed her to betray in 
 word or gesture the least sign of impa- 
 tience. For, like most profound mathema- 
 ticians, he was very unpractical in domes- 
 tic matters, and never could remember the 
 exact hour for dinner, or the proper col- 
 lects to be read at morning and evening 
 prayers. My aunt had a little frame 
 made, like a day-of-the-month case, and a 
 card within it, with " Dinner at one " 
 written in large, bold letters. This card 
 she used to set before him when he was
 
 22 EaLANTINE. 
 
 reading or writing, and I have even known 
 her pin it to the right cuff of his coat when 
 he was going for a walk, or there would 
 have been no telling when he might come 
 back again. 
 
 Since my mother's death he had given 
 himself up almost entirely to literary and 
 scientific pursuits. He was one of those 
 men who never marry again, not being de- 
 pendent upon domestic companionship. 
 One love in a life was enough for him. 
 That love had been most tender, gentle, and 
 faithful. Years after her death, when I 
 was old enough to understand about such 
 things, I learned how my mother's little 
 possessions, the books she cared for, the 
 articles she had in daily use, even every 
 scrap of paper with her writing upon it, 
 had been treasured up by her husband, 
 though he seldom spoke of her, and never 
 used any words of endearment in mention- 
 ing her name.
 
 EGLANTINE. 23 
 
 I often wonder, as I look at the children 
 of the present day, with their endless toys, 
 books, dolls, pictures, pantomimes, fancy 
 balls, juvenile parties, and the rest of it, 
 how I managed to make such a happy 
 thing of my own solitary childhood. For I 
 never went to school, my father and aunt 
 between them managing my education ; and 
 I had no playmates, and picture-books 
 were not in those days, and dolls I never 
 cared for ; and I am sure very few luxur- 
 ies, except that of being let alone, ever 
 came into my life. Yet, looking back upon 
 it now, it shines for me in a golden morn- 
 ing light most fair to see. What a joy the 
 finding of the first lilac-streaked crocus in 
 my own special bit of garden round that old 
 pear-tree stump ! "What a perpetual wonder 
 the setting of the sun in a splendour of 
 crimson and gold behind the Shagmouth 
 headland ! What a world of delight in the 
 little rock pools on the beach, full of wav-
 
 24 EGLANTINE. 
 
 ing sea-weeds and purple sea-anemones ! 
 "What delicious danger to stand on the 
 extremest low-water mark and let the 
 waves come lapping up to my very toes, or 
 even rush past me, and leave me standing 
 like an island in the midst of what seemed, 
 until the wave came back, a limitless ex- 
 panse of ocean. 
 
 Then I used to scoop out caverns in the 
 garden, and inhabit them in the character 
 of a mermaid, pinning a long green petti- 
 coat round me, to make the semblance of 
 a tail, and decorating myself with bunches 
 of seaweed, that being the appearance of 
 the creature as described to me by Rolle- 
 kins, the coastguardsman, who had seen 
 plenty of them in his sailor-days. Occa- 
 sionally my amusements took a religious 
 turn. I remember spending three days in 
 building up a pillar of stones and mud, 
 and then I perched myself on the top of it, 
 after the manner of Simeon Stylites, of
 
 EGLANTINE. 25 
 
 whom I had read in a book of devotions 
 belonging to my aunt; but I fell down 
 and bruised my knees, and tried saintship 
 no more. 
 
 Did I say, though, that I had no com- 
 panionship? That was quite a mistake. 
 Kollekins, the coastguardsman, was my 
 guide, philosopher, and friend. Many and 
 many a chat have we had together on the 
 beach, I seated on a convenient bit of rock, 
 he smoking his pipe and raking up the 
 black seaweed, with which he used to 
 manure his little garden. And the stories 
 he could tell ! What need had I of pic- 
 ture-books whilst they lasted ? Stories of 
 flying fish and leaping porpoises ; of sharks 
 and whales and Portuguese men of war ; of 
 sea-serpents and mermaids ; of shores where 
 the rocks were coral and pearl, and the 
 shells purple and silver ; and caves where 
 tresses of seaweed hung, jewelled all over 
 with diamonds and rubies, and the sands
 
 26 EGLANTINE. 
 
 were of gold, and the walls of agate, — 
 huge, high walls, every inch of them as 
 beautiful as the lovely little pebbles I 
 picked up on the Cove Rossington beach, 
 dappled with crimson and green, and shin- 
 ing like the purest marble when the waves 
 rushed over them. That the stories were 
 not true, what matter ? How many are 
 that we listen to, with quite other than 
 childish wonder and delight ? They were 
 true for me, every word and picture of 
 them, and did their work in feeding my 
 young life, and fostering that sense of the 
 grandeur and mystery of Nature which 
 after-knowledge can never disappoint. 
 Eollekins told me nothing more wonderful 
 than I have since found out for myself. 
 
 Twice a year, when the gooseberries 
 were ripe, and again when the apples be- 
 gan to show their rosy cheeks to the Sum- 
 mer sun, I went to have tea with Eolle- 
 kins and his wife, in their little cottage at
 
 EGLANTINE. 27 
 
 the north end of the beach. On these 
 occasions I was dressed as particularly as 
 if I had been going to church or anywhere 
 with my aunt Lois, having my Sunday 
 frock on, and my best buckled shoes, and 
 a clean crimped frill. I was never asked 
 out to tea by anyone else, except Miss 
 Fidger, of whom more will be said here- 
 after. Mrs. Rollekins used to show me 
 the curious things which her husband had 
 brought from foreign parts, and regularly 
 every time I went — and I could not have 
 been fewer than a dozen times — I used to 
 have the same tumblerful of shells to play 
 with. I think I knew every one of them 
 by heart, with every streak and mark and 
 spot upon it ; but I loved them none the 
 less for that, and I looked them over with 
 grave, serious interest, and put them back 
 in the glass, and then turned to Mrs. 
 Eollekins for the piece of short-cake whicli 
 was always given me afterwards.
 
 28 EGLANTINE. 
 
 People don't like their children to be 
 asked out to tea by coastguardsmen's wives 
 now, and perhaps, if they did, would think 
 that a garden pinafore was good enough 
 for the children to go in. Yet I have seen 
 many a little girl come back in ribbons and 
 muslins and flowers from her pantomime 
 or fancy ball with a less smiling face than 
 I, in grey holland and crimped frill, used 
 to bring home from my bi-annual visits to 
 Eollekins' wife. And I say to myself, with 
 a smile, that there are no days like the old 
 days, and no joy like that which comes of 
 the simple life and the homely tastes and 
 the unspoiled child-heart.
 
 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 T\ WELLING now in the full light of 
 -*-^ modern civilization which has of 
 late years arisen upon Cove Rossington, I 
 look back with a sad, regretful smile to the 
 dear old village of my childhood. How 
 peaceful and primitive were the ways of 
 our life then ! What quiet content we found 
 in keeping that part of our baptismal vows 
 which enjoined upon us the renunciation of 
 the world, with its pomps and vanities. 
 Though really I don't see how we could 
 have done otherwise than keep it, seeing 
 that we were eight miles from the nearest 
 town ; that there was no means of convey- 
 ance to it, save a ricketty old coach once a
 
 30 EGLANTINE. 
 
 week, or a carrier's cart on market days ; 
 that we had only one draper's shop in the 
 village, and that nothing but the most 
 modest of carpet dances could ever take 
 place in the old-fashioned houses round 
 about us. 
 
 There were about a dozen respectable 
 families in the place, of which my father's 
 occupied perhaps as good a position as any. 
 There was something about the lofty sim- 
 plicity of his character, joined with his 
 known reputation for scientific learning, 
 which caused him to be more looked up to 
 than if he had been very wealthy, or able 
 to make a great show in society. And my 
 aunt Lois, though plain and straightforward 
 in the extreme, was yet every inch a lady 
 of the old school, with all the traditional 
 observances of good breeding about her, 
 and that fondness for soap and clean linen 
 which was then, as now, one of the distin- 
 guishing marks of a gentlewoman.
 
 EGLANTINE. 31 
 
 The Rector being nearly always away, 
 counted for nothing. Then there was the 
 doctor, a very stately old gentleman, with 
 ample private means. I am sure he needed 
 them too, for his patients were few and far 
 between. Next to him lived two maiden 
 ladies, daughters of a former judge in 
 India, then the widow of an archdeacon, 
 a pleasant, genial old lady, with heaps 
 of china and foreign curiosities in her 
 drawing-room ; then an old admiral and 
 his wife, both full of pleasant stories and 
 jokes ; then some officers' daughters. My 
 aunt's particular friend, Miss Fidger, com- 
 pleted the upper-class population of the 
 place. 
 
 Her proper name was Fitzgerald, but as 
 the fishermen and other poor people who 
 disliked long words always called her Miss 
 Fidger, I shall do the same. I wish every 
 one distinctly to understand, however, that 
 even in the closest, most familiar inter-
 
 32 EGLANTINE. 
 
 course, we never used such a freedom. 
 For if there was one thing we Cove Koss- 
 ington people prided ourselves upon more 
 than another, it was a due observance of 
 the courtesies of life in our daily inter- 
 course. The familiarity which breeds con- 
 tempt found no toleration amongst us. 
 
 Miss Fidger's father was an officer, but 
 as he died when she was very young, 
 she had been obliged to battle with the 
 world on her own account, and that had 
 given to her manners a piquant little touch 
 of independence which was quite charming. 
 She had never tried, either, to keep up her 
 youthful appearance, finding, I daresay, that 
 the aspect of middle age was more in her 
 favour when having to depend upon her- 
 self. Accordingly, though she could not 
 have been more than five and thirty when 
 I was a young girl, she received the 
 consideration of a person quite in middle 
 life, and used to wear caps and mittens
 
 BGLAKTINE. 33 
 
 and kerchiefs just like a woman of fifty. 
 
 She had been governess in some great 
 family until past thirty, when, a little pro- 
 perty falling to her, she was able to rent a 
 small house at Cove Eossington, and live 
 in peace and quietness for the rest of her 
 days. Her old pupils evidently respected 
 her very much, for they often came to see 
 her, lords and ladies though they were, 
 and I don't think even the Eossington 
 people themselves had finer game than 
 found its way into Miss Fidger's tiny 
 larder during the hunting and shooting 
 season. She was a comical little woman, 
 full of chattering vivacity and intelligence, 
 joined with a touch of that half -defiant 
 independence which sits so pleasantly 
 sometimes upon those who have spent 
 their earlier years amongst military peo- 
 ple. She had a great contempt for ap- 
 pearances when not backed up by anything 
 else. She never felt conscientious scruples 
 
 VOL. i. i>
 
 34 EGLANTINE. 
 
 about carrying brown paper parcels in our 
 one village street, when her maid was too 
 busy to carry them for her. And if she 
 caught sight of a welcome visitor coming 
 up her little garden path, she would rush 
 out and open her own front door with a 
 guileless freedom which in the present day 
 would be considered simply barbarous. 
 But then we all of us did the same. Do I 
 not know for certain — and now that they 
 are both dead there is no harm in saying 
 it of them — that the two Miss Mossvilles, 
 daughters of the late Indian judge, used 
 regularly to put on white linen aprons and 
 wash up their own breakfast things in an 
 old china bowl brought into the dining- 
 room for that purpose ? And I myself, in 
 later days, have many a time laid the cloth 
 for dinner without in any perceptible de- 
 gree losing my self-respect or the respect 
 of other people. But, as I said before, 
 times are changed now, and we are changed 
 with them.
 
 EGLANTINE. 35 
 
 I think my aunt and Miss Fidger must 
 have taken to each other because they 
 were so extremely unlike, the only point 
 on which their characters converged being- 
 honest, conscientious kind-heartedness. 
 Their outward appearances were as differ- 
 ent as anything could possibly be. My 
 aunt was tall, spare, and dark; Miss Fidger 
 was little, light, and plump. My aunt 
 wore her garments tightly reefed in about 
 her, like the sails of a cutter in a stiff 
 breeze ; Miss Fidger was a dancing mass 
 of curls and ribbons and frills, soft vapoury 
 clouds of lace, flowing outlines of kerchief 
 and sleeve, and had a general air of wavi- 
 ness and irregularity about her. My aunt 
 went straight to anything she had to do, 
 and straight back again ; Miss Fidger was 
 always dotting about and stooping to pick 
 up some little unforeseen duty. Miss 
 Fidger talked five and twenty to the 
 dozen, as the country people say ; my aunt 
 
 d2
 
 Q 
 
 6 EGLANTINE, 
 
 weighed out her words as a careful grocer 
 his goods, giving you as much as honesty 
 required, but not a fraction over. 
 
 Again, Miss Fidger dipped into every- 
 thing that was going — politics, poetry, 
 news of the day, religion, literature ; read 
 her Times like a man of business, and 
 could always tell you how Parliament was 
 getting on. My aunt scarcely ever read 
 anything except the Bible, the Prayer-book, 
 and the cookery-book. But these, I verily 
 believe, she knew by heart, only stumbling 
 a little, maybe, over the exact number of 
 eggs to be used in all the different varieties 
 of puddings ; or the order of the Thirty 
 Nine Articles, with the heading of each. 
 Miss Fidger was the most delightfully 
 loose-handed housekeeper that ever mud- 
 dled up baker's, butcher's, and washer- 
 women's bills in one indiscriminate mass. 
 My aunt guided her affairs with a discre- 
 tion that bordered upon severity, and
 
 EGLANTINE. 37 
 
 would search with patient perseverance up 
 and down innumerable items of expendi- 
 ture, to hunt out the lurking halfpenny or 
 farthing which prevented her weekly ac- 
 counts from balancing with mathematical 
 accuracy. Miss Fidger did her plain work 
 with bewitching untidiness, a stitch here, 
 a stitch there, and another somewhere 
 else, like the outposts in a carelessly- 
 guarded camp. My aunt — but do I not 
 remember still, with sentiments little short 
 of awe, the squares of darning in her best 
 linen sheets, masses of stitches close, even, 
 regular as a Macedonian phalanx ; and am 
 I not conscious now of visiting throes of 
 remorse whenever middle-aged laziness 
 beguiles me into cheating a shirt wrist- 
 band of its orthodox number of rows of 
 stitching, or carrying each separate stitch 
 over its proper number of threads ? 
 
 Between ourselves and the honest rough- 
 handed fishermen who formed what may be
 
 38 EGLANTINE. 
 
 called the lower classes of Cove Rossington, 
 both we and they frankly recognized the 
 existence of a gulf deep, impassable as that 
 which separated Dives from Lazarus ; only 
 with a difference, the fishermen having 
 crumbs enough on their own tables to save 
 them from the necessity of desiring those 
 which fell from ours. Of any painful effort 
 to keep them in their place we never 
 dreamed ; and they, on their part, as little 
 thought of making faces at us, or grudging 
 us the advantages which better education 
 and larger leisure afforded us. They 
 were independent in their way, perhaps 
 more so than ourselves, for the deep sea 
 was their funded property, and it yielded 
 them a per-centage limited only by their 
 own industry. There was a decent school 
 in the place, founded centuries ago by 
 some benevolent Rossington lord for the 
 education of their children, and a charity 
 for widows and orphans; and when a 
 fisherman's boat was lost at sea, we always
 
 EGLANTINE. 39 
 
 made a subscription to help to build him a 
 new one. 
 
 In politics we were mostly Conservative. 
 As for behaviour, I have said before 
 that our one policeman had nothing to do 
 but walk about. As for morals, we paid 
 our bills half yearly, never running into 
 debt or buying things that we could not 
 afford, simply for the sake of outshining 
 our neighbours. As for religion, we went 
 to church regularly every Sunday of our 
 lives, wind and weather permitting, said 
 our prayers in peace and quietness, listen- 
 ed with due reverence to the Rector's ex- 
 ceedingly short homily, and then cheerful- 
 ly dispersed to our one o'clock dinners or 
 five o'clock teas, with a sense of duty done 
 which was very comfortable. 
 
 Of course I do not say that this was the 
 noblest life possible for us. We might 
 have been wiser people, more looked up to, 
 more respected, if we had not limited our- 
 selves to the low content of doing our duty
 
 40 EGLANTINE. 
 
 in that station of life to which it had 
 pleased Providence to call us. We might 
 have made a better figure in the world if 
 we had given a little more attention to 
 outside show, if we had lived on borrowed 
 capital, run our tradesmen to ruin, and 
 spread our sails in approved modern fash- 
 ion upon the sea of credit. 
 
 All I can say is, that we were very 
 comfortable. If we did not live fast, we 
 lived long, and generally managed to keep 
 what few brains we had in proper order to 
 the last. Also we managed to live in love 
 and charity with our equals, in peace with 
 our superiors — said superiors being the 
 Rector and the Lord of the Manor — and in 
 complete good-will with those beneath us. 
 So that, though I smile over the old times, 
 with the smile we give to a child's innocent 
 and lofty ignorance of the world's ways, 
 still I wonder after all whether it was not 
 better with us then than now.
 
 41 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SO the years went on, until I was a girl 
 of eighteen, tall and well- grown, with 
 bright eyes and a wholesome colour and 
 plenty of tossing brown hair of my own. 
 But life was just the same in the old-fash- 
 ioned house under the cliff. My father, 
 grave, studious, simple, reserved, worked 
 on at his mathematical or scientific investi- 
 gations, sometimes spending whole days 
 in a laboratory at the top of the garden, 
 from which issued occasional odours and 
 explosions hard to be understood; some- 
 times sitting quietly for hours and hours 
 in his own special recess of the bow-win- 
 dowed parlour, working through some
 
 42 EGLANTINE. 
 
 intricate calculation or subtle train of 
 speculation, quite undisturbed by our femi- 
 nine pursuits or conversations ; for lie 
 possessed the rarest powers of abstraction 
 I have ever known, and could at any time, 
 in any place, make for himself his own 
 atmosphere of reflection, in which he 
 moved calmly through the winds and 
 storms of whatever might be passing 
 around him. 
 
 My aunt Lois, active, vigorous, matter- 
 of-fact, kept house, managed the servants 
 — of whom we had three, besides the man 
 who looked after the little pony-carriage, — 
 and sorted at due seasons her almost 
 unfathomable stores of fine linen; in which 
 last occupation, as also in cooking and 
 giving out of stores, I was allowed to help 
 her. But the reins of government Aunt 
 Lois never gave out of her own hands. I 
 never made a pudding without being 
 watched rigorously through every stage
 
 EGLAXTIXE. 43- 
 
 of its process, or weighed out the week's 
 supply of groceries without seeing every 
 single separate thing weighed again by 
 my aunt before it was allowed to go into 
 the kitchen ; and as for doing anything on 
 my own responsibility — buying a bonnet 
 or a dress, altering the position of a single 
 bit of furniture, or ordering the pony- 
 carriage for a drive, — I should no more 
 have thought of doing such a thing at 
 eighteen than in the days when I climbed 
 to the top of my Simeon Stylites pillar, or 
 perched on a bit of cliff to hear Joe Rolle- 
 kins' mermaid stories. 
 
 Not, I think, that I was wanting in in- 
 tellect. My powers of perception and ob- 
 servation were keen in proportion to the 
 narrowness of their scope. My own world 
 of thought I had — my own world of opin- 
 ion — my own world of literature (Aunt 
 Lois, being ignorant of books herself, never 
 interfered with my choice of them) — my
 
 44 EGLANTINE. 
 
 own world of imagination ; but in all things 
 outside of these I was governed by my 
 father and my aunt. What they said 
 seemed always best to me ; what they did 
 was done so simply and so dutifully that I 
 could not but respect, even where I did 
 not understand. It was not a life of re- 
 pression, nor want of sympathy ; it was 
 only a life so absolutely shielded from re- 
 sponsibility that, whilst in understanding 
 I was a woman, in experience of the world 
 I was a child. 
 
 I may say here, and I say it now, after a 
 close if not large observation of men and 
 women, that I have never seen anyone to 
 honour and reverence as I honoured and 
 reverenced my father. Of course it seemed 
 quite natural to me then that he should be 
 as he was. People who have only been 
 accustomed to see great things never won- 
 der at them. A mountain has no mystery 
 to the child who has slept under its shade,
 
 EGLANTINE. 4o 
 
 or been warmed by its shelter, all his life. 
 Only when he goes away for a little while, 
 and comes back to it, or when fate has 
 sent him forth to Hve his life in the plains, 
 does he begin to feel what an influence it was 
 to him — what a silent grandeur and protec- 
 tion there was about it. So, until I knew 
 the world a little, my father was no won- 
 der to me. But now, contrasting him 
 with other men, he stands apart from them 
 in a strange sort of solitude. 
 
 He was humble as a child, and quite un- 
 conscious of any great gifts. It was a 
 pleasure to him to think, to search into 
 things, to bring the light of his great, calm 
 intellect into a focus upon obscure subjects. 
 And the result of such light he freely gave 
 to those who cared to ask it of him. "With 
 research, speculation, induction, my father's 
 power ended. A singular want of execu- 
 tive force kept him from being what is 
 popularly called a "great man." Others
 
 46 EGLANTINE. 
 
 kindled their torches at his fire, and then 
 went forth to illuminate the world, which 
 thanked them loudly for their light ; and 
 when my father read their praises, he only 
 smiled. 
 
 I think his pride, which always lay side 
 by side with his humility, had something 
 to do with this extreme carelessness of 
 recognition. He despised all fame but the 
 very highest and purest, and that he knew 
 must come to a man, not be sought by him. 
 He would have felt it an insult to be pointed 
 out by ordinary people as a genius, a philo- 
 sopher, or anything of that sort. I have 
 known him, when we have been walking 
 in Limeport (our nearest town), turn down 
 a side street and go into a shop, to avoid 
 meeting men from whom he had received 
 flattering letters about his own investiga- 
 tions and discoveries. 
 
 Then, too, he valued science more for its 
 own sake than for any honour it could
 
 EGLANTINE. 47 
 
 bring. The successful working out of a 
 problem was a complete joy to him. What 
 might result from that working out he 
 left to others. He would spend days and 
 days oyer the work, trying calculation 
 after calculation, until a solution was 
 reached, which solution he would send to 
 the mathematician who had propounded 
 the problem, and then think no more about 
 it. I do not say that such men — men who 
 love knowledge in the abstract — are of the 
 most use in the world ; but I do say there 
 is a greatness of simplicity about them 
 which those cannot have who rush into the 
 world to tell it all they know, and then 
 come back fussing and panting with their 
 meed of praise. 
 
 During his quiet life in Cove Rossington, 
 apart from society or amusement, my father 
 built up for himself amongst men of science 
 a reputation which few have overpassed. I 
 have sat in that old bow- windowed parlour
 
 48 EGLANTINE. 
 
 and seen the leading savans of England 
 asking his help and counsel in their work. 
 Astronomers would bring their calculations 
 to him to be verified. Mathematical pro- 
 fessors, preparing books, would send him 
 their proof sheets to look over. He was 
 nearly always in correspondence with scien- 
 tific chemists about some experiment or 
 other. "What Cambridge and Oxford dons 
 had only talked about he had accomplished ; 
 and yet to the general public his name was 
 utterly unknown. 
 
 Unknown, simply because he did not 
 care to make it known. I have often 
 listened to him as he talked with brisk, 
 practical men of science, because, as I grew 
 up, I learned to understand more of their 
 conversation, and I have heard him sug- 
 gest new theories, propound ideas, plans, 
 experiments, which, if carried out, would 
 produce great results. The practical man 
 used to listen eagerly, make notes, ask 
 questions ; a correspondence followed, my
 
 EGLANTINE. 49 
 
 father shut himself up in his laboratory 
 for days, amidst smells and explosions on 
 a small scale. By-and-by the scientific 
 world was startled by some important dis- 
 covery — a new light, a new application of 
 motive power, a new colour in dyes, a 
 method of reducing labour in some manu- 
 facture, a suggestion for simplifying ma- 
 chinery. 
 
 " This is what you were talking about the 
 other day," I would say, " The idea is 
 yours. That professor has worked it out, 
 and all the praise is given to him." 
 
 " Never mind, child," my father would 
 say very quietly. " It matters little who 
 finds out a thing, so long as the world is 
 the better for the finding out." 
 
 And the gold medals, and the big diplo- 
 mas, and the laurels of fame were given 
 to the active, practical man, my father's 
 grand grey head left quite uncrowned. But 
 that never troubled him. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 EGLANTINE. 
 
 After I was grown up I became much 
 more a companion to him. Not, of course, 
 that I could go with him into his great 
 tracks of thought and analysis, but he took 
 pleasure in teaching me what little I 
 could learn of astronomy and rudimentary 
 science ; and I, in my turn, tried to help 
 him by copying manuscript for the press, 
 or sketching diagrams for the engravers to 
 copy. 1 had had lessons from a drawing- 
 master in Limeport, and could etch very 
 neatly, and make up pretty enough little 
 pictures of coast scenery. My master sug- 
 gested that I should try wood-engraving, 
 which I did with fair success, though I had 
 never yet made any practical use of it. It 
 was an amusement to me. I used to spend 
 many an hour sitting on the pear-tree 
 stump, making little sketches of the beach, 
 and the fishermen, and the coast-guard, 
 and the shipping in the bay ; and then at 
 night I used to copy these sketches on the
 
 EGLANTINE. 51 
 
 blocks, but that was the end of them. 
 
 Once, however, my father was preparing 
 an astronomical book for the press, and I 
 did the diagrams for him. They were to 
 be carefully copied, and given to a litho- 
 grapher. 
 
 My father seldom praised me. He was 
 so accustomed to give the very best he 
 could to everything he undertook, and even 
 that best appeared to him, in his great 
 humility, so far from what might have been 
 done, that the thought of merit in connec- 
 tion with it never entered his mind. But 
 when I brought him the copies which I 
 had prepared so carefully, he looked pleas- 
 ed, and said, 
 
 " Dora, these are well done. Why should 
 you not engrave them for me on wood, in- 
 stead of having them done by the litho- 
 grapher ? It will be a good employment 
 for you. At any rate, you can try." 
 
 I did, and succeeded, too. In due time 
 
 e 2
 
 52 EGLANTINE. 
 
 the book was published, and in one or two 
 of the reviews special credit was given to 
 the careful manner in which the diagrams 
 had been prepared. But I think it was 
 my fathers praise which pleased me most, 
 the feeling that I could be of use to him. 
 My first attempt encouraged me to go on. 
 I sent some of my other etchings to the 
 same publisher, and he bought them for 
 the illustration of a story-book which he 
 was bringing out. After that I frequent- 
 ly worked for him, and though I was never 
 paid very liberally, still the very fact of 
 being able to work, of having some way by 
 which I could express myself to the outer 
 world, was a possession to me better than 
 silver and gold. A girl who can work 
 need never be discontented, especially if 
 that work be in the smallest degree a re- 
 sult of the creative faculty within her. I 
 had established a sort of link between my- 
 self and those who could understand me,
 
 EGLANTINE. 53 
 
 and what I could not say in any other way 
 I said in those little coast pictures, which 
 were for me what the expression of their 
 thought in verse or music is to the poet 
 and artist. And I don't think any chry- 
 salis woman, with her wings yet folded 
 close around her, was ever happier than I, 
 with my father and Aunt Lois in that old 
 house under the cliff.
 
 54 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 rjlHE one upon whom Time had laid his 
 -*- hand most heavily during those years 
 was my old friend of the coastguard, Joe 
 Rollekins. He met with a severe accident 
 whilst exercising with his company. Mak- 
 ing a false stroke with his cutlass, the 
 weapon glanced aside, and wounded him 
 in the ankle. 
 
 The hurt proved more serious than was 
 expected. Perhaps, during his early days, 
 a more than average allowance of grog had 
 become incorporated with Joe's system, so 
 that his blood did not take kindly to 
 wounds and bruises ; or perhaps his sturdy 
 indifference to pain made him careless of
 
 EGLANTINE. 55 
 
 doing much to stop it. At any rate, the 
 wound festered and spread, and the end of it 
 was that Joe had to lose his foot. He was 
 then pensioned out of the company, joined 
 two other men in buying a boat, and earned 
 his living by fishing. 
 
 During the time he was laid up, more 
 than a year, we supplied him with all sorts 
 of books, some of them of a kind that sailors 
 do not generally care for. Joe had a great 
 deal of shrewdness and common sense, and 
 plenty of intelligence, though he had not 
 been in the way of feeding the latter upon 
 wholesome literature until this accident 
 gave him opportunity. Within that year, 
 whilst he was confined either to his bed or 
 a chair by the fire, he read through Gib- 
 bon's English History, his Decline and 
 Fall of the Eoman Empire, and Milner's 
 Church History, besides books of popular 
 science. For tales Joe cared nothing. 
 
 "Law! Miss Dora," he used to say,
 
 56 EGLANTINE. 
 
 when I took him the most exciting story I 
 could find, " you might as well give a baby 
 skim milk as had been used to cream all 
 its life. Why, I could better the best of 
 them there a thousand times over, and 
 have plenty more left when I'd done. An 
 old salt like me don't need go to a printed 
 book for his yarns. But the t'other sort, 
 Miss, does me good. I never heard tell of 
 such like goings on. Why, they beat the 
 lion and the unicorn all to bits, did them 
 old Roman chaps." 
 
 And Joe would give me an abstract of 
 his reading which showed how thoroughly 
 it had taken possession of him. 
 
 He came out of that illness quite a* dif- 
 ferent man. A fresh set of ideas had been 
 put into his mind ; his thoughts had a new 
 store of material to work upon. His de- 
 sire for knowledge became a real hunger 
 and thirst to him, and what he read and 
 what he heard was made his own by keen
 
 EGLANTINE. 57 
 
 attention ; and with it all he kept his broad 
 honest simplicity of nature, so that an 
 hour of his company was as refreshing as 
 it was original. 
 
 We still used to go to see him regularly 
 on a Sunday afternoon. These visits were 
 to my father what general society is to 
 most people. When he was tired of specu- 
 lating and theorising in his own province 
 of abstract thought, revolving in his mind 
 ideas to which no material shape could be 
 given, it was a relief to turn aside for a 
 while to the keen, racy realism of the old 
 sailor, and in his sharp criticisms upon 
 men and things, and his vivid stories of 
 sea-life and foreign sights and sounds, find 
 the recreation which social intercourse, to 
 a shy, reserved man like himself, could 
 never give. 
 
 " Not but what I could tell 'em a deal 
 queerer if it wasn't himself, Miss Dora," 
 Joe would say sometimes ; "but he's one
 
 58 EGLANTINE. 
 
 of them sort as it doesn't do to go a bit 
 farther than what you can stand to and 
 prove ; for he's down upon you like a shot, 
 if you start throwing the hatchet a bit 
 farther than you can fetch it back again ; 
 and I don't know but what it's the best 
 way, too. But law, Miss Dora, the stories 
 I have told to you when you've been set on 
 them rocks, and you looking at me as 
 innocent all the time. I wouldn't do it 
 again, for as pleasant as it was." 
 
 But if Joe was obliged to keep to facts 
 in my father's company, he had plenty of 
 them to keep to, so that the interest never 
 flagged. 
 
 One Sunday afternoon my father and I 
 went to the cottage as usual. It was in 
 the late Winter time, when Joe had few 
 visitors, but to our surprise we found a 
 gentleman there, a seafaring man apparent- 
 ly, with the weather-beaten look that even 
 young sailors have. But he was not very
 
 EGLANTINE. 59 
 
 young — over thirty, I should think, by the 
 dashes of grey in his beard, and the little 
 lines about his eyes when he smiled. Joe's 
 face was all over rejoiceful pride as he in- 
 troduced the stranger to us. 
 
 " To think, sir, of his coming all the way 
 from Bonnermouth to see me, because him 
 and me was abroad together when I served 
 under Captain Merry, and he was midship- 
 man. And he heard tell I was ashore here, 
 and nought would serve but he must come 
 right away, just like a gentleman as he is 7 
 and there isn't a better nowhere." 
 
 " Ay, Joe," put in Mrs. Rollekins. " And 
 the tobacco. Don't you go forgetting the 
 tobacco." 
 
 "As it isn't likely, Betsy; and it's as 
 good as gold — none of your twopenny mix- 
 tures, as haven't a bit of nature in them. 
 I never get none like it, let alone what you 
 bring me, Miss Dora, and has done ever 
 since you was a little bit of a thing no 
 higher nor your arm-chair."
 
 60 EGLANTINE. 
 
 The gentleman smiled. 
 
 li I see you know the way to a sailor's 
 heart," he said. And then he and my 
 father and Joe got into conversation, 
 whilst Mrs. Eollekins, who was rather a 
 chip in the porridge where conversation 
 was concerned, took me into the back gar- 
 den to show me her crocuses. 
 
 " He thinks a deal of my husband," she 
 began, when we were out of hearing. " It 
 stands to reason he must by his coming all 
 that way from Bonnermouth port just to 
 see him. But law, Miss Dora !" 
 
 And Mrs. Rollekins nudged me confi- 
 dentially, and nodded at me in a mysterious 
 manner, as if to hint that there were more 
 things in heaven and earth than I had 
 dreamt of in my philosophy. 
 
 " There's plenty thinks a vast of my 
 husband. He knows a deal, he does, and 
 such a scholard as you won't find in all 
 Cove Eossington. I declare, Miss Dora,
 
 EGLANTINE. 61 
 
 to hear him talking about the sun getting 
 round the epileptic, would go to your very 
 heart. Yet as simple as a child about his 
 vittles. You might put him off every 
 morning with a bit of dry bread and 
 bacon fat — only I'm not the woman to do 
 it." 
 
 And Mrs. Rollekins smoothed her apron 
 complacently. She knew what was due to 
 a " scholar d." 
 
 Poor Betsy ! I never saw a woman who 
 had a finer appreciation of the supreme 
 right of man, to be reverenced and cooked 
 for by his natural inferior. And to do her 
 husband justice, he never took advantage 
 of this amiable superstition. I don't think 
 two people had ever been happier all their 
 lives than Joe Rollekins and his believing 
 Betsy. 
 
 "When we came back the three men were 
 deep in a discussion as to the best methods 
 of rigging. There were few things my
 
 62 EGLANTINE. 
 
 father could not talk about, and with, the 
 correctness of knowledge and observation, 
 too. They were at issue upon the proper 
 position of the knots in sloop rigging, and 
 he asked the stranger to come to our house 
 next day to see an old, rather rare book on 
 seamanship, which would settle the ques- 
 tion. They exchanged cards. The gentle- 
 man's name was Eae Morrison. A good 
 Northumbrian name, I thought, full of 
 straightforwardness and purpose, like the 
 face of the man who owned it. 
 
 Next day he came and staid dinner with 
 us. It was very pleasant to hear him talk. 
 He was so different from the dryprofessors 
 who were always poking about amongst 
 mathematics and motive forces. I happen- 
 ed to be doing some woodcuts, from 
 sketches I had made on the beach. He 
 seemed rather amused to see me at such 
 work, and was very much interested when 
 I told him I was doing it for the publish-
 
 EGLANTINE. 63 
 
 ers. He knew nothing about wood-cut- 
 ting, he said, but he was evidently quite at 
 home in etching ; for with just a few bold, 
 masterly strokes he made quite a different 
 thing of one of my pictures, showing me 
 how to indicate the distance better, a thing 
 which had puzzled me very much, until, by 
 putting a boat midway, and a sea-gull in 
 the foreground, he made it come out beau- 
 tifully. 
 
 Having something of our own to talk 
 about, we got along very comfortably 
 together. It was pleasant to have my 
 work looked at and admired. As I said 
 before, my father very rarely praised me, 
 because his idea of excellence was so far 
 above anything I could generally reach. 
 And as for Aunt Lois, I believe she ab- 
 stained on conscientious grounds from tell- 
 ing young people they did anything well. 
 So that a little encouragement went a long 
 way with me.
 
 64 EGLANTINE. 
 
 He and my father had their talk about 
 sloop-rigging. My father was always at 
 home with anyone who dealt simply in 
 facts. The poorest, most illiterate man 
 who had something to tell of his own 
 actual experience, was sure of being listen- 
 ed to with respect. He was intolerant 
 of anything like display. With inimitable 
 quietness and humour he floored showy 
 people and exhibited their shallowness; but 
 he was always ready to pay attention to a 
 man who could tell him, however plainly, 
 any matter of personal observation. I 
 never saw him take so kindly to anyone 
 as to Mr. Morrison. There seemed to be 
 something in them which found each other 
 out, and put away all strangeness and 
 reserve. 
 
 Aunt Lois sat and knitted. She always 
 knitted scarlet wool petticoats in Winter 
 time, putting them away punctually, done 
 or undone, on the twenty-first of March,
 
 EGLANTINE. 65 
 
 and taking to little socks for the village 
 children, until we began fires on the first 
 of November, when the petticoats came out 
 again. Aunt Lois did everything by rule, 
 not expediency or convenience. 
 
 She spoke but little to Mr. Morrison. I 
 could tell she liked him, because she 
 knitted on so quietly. "When anyone came 
 whom she did not like, or if the visit 
 was extended so as to peril the punctuali- 
 ty of dinner, she would spend her dis- 
 pleasure upon the unconscious pins and 
 wool ; making desperate plunges and 
 dashes, but speaking never a word. Mr. 
 Morrison, however, left after an hour's 
 chat, and she remarked when he was gone 
 that he was a very decent sort of man. 
 
 He came again, to bring back the book 
 on seamanship which my father had lent 
 him, and again he spent an evening with 
 us. And once, which was better still, as I 
 was coming out of Joe Rollekins's cottage, 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 EGLANTINE. 
 
 I met him and lie walked home with me, 
 showing me pretty little bits of coast 
 scenery all the way, and making up pictures 
 for me. 
 
 What a quite new thing it was for any- 
 one to take so much notice of me ! If I 
 say that it was very pleasant, I suppose I 
 only say what most other girls would have 
 said who had lived as quiet a life as my- 
 self. For none of those musty old pro- 
 fessors or wide-awake men of science had 
 shown any interest in me. They had 
 thanked me when I brought them arm 
 chairs and slippers — I think University 
 life makes men keenly awake to their own 
 comfort — and they had graciously accepted 
 my services in handing them cups of tea 
 and replenishing the cigar stand on the 
 library mantel-piece; but as for looking 
 upon me in any other light than that of a 
 temporary waiting-maid, I don't think it 
 ever entered their minds. And for my
 
 EGLANTINE. 67 
 
 part I beheld them afar off as beings of 
 a superior order, and thought myself fortu- 
 nate in being permitted to minister to 
 the convenience of men who understood 
 the differential calculus and could predict 
 the coming of comets. 
 
 Mr. Morrison must have been at least 
 half-a-dozen times to our house, and we 
 had had many a pleasant chat, sometimes 
 by ourselves, sometimes with my father 
 and Aunt Lois, when, one Saturday after- 
 noon, he came to bid us good-bye. His 
 ship was sailing next day at sunrise. 
 
 " From Shagmouth Harbour, I suppose ?" 
 said my father. 
 
 " Yes ; Shagmouth is my port. You 
 will see our ship, the Diver, Miss Dora, if 
 you are awake early enough, coming out 
 at daybreak behind the south headland. 
 But I suppose you will not be awake early 
 enough." 
 
 Why had he said that to me, I wonder- 
 
 f2
 
 68 EGLANTINE. 
 
 ed, when he must have known that it was 
 my father — always my father — who took 
 his solitary walk in the garden before 
 breakfast, and watched the sunrise many a 
 morning from the top of the north cliff ? 
 And I felt then, for the first time, a con- 
 sciousness of something that I wished to 
 keep to myself. 
 
 I went on with my etching, not answer- 
 ing him at all. And did he think, then, 
 I cared so much for the Diver that I must 
 needs be up at daybreak to see it sail ? 
 Had I never watched a ship before creep 
 out at morning tide behind that sun- 
 lighted headland, that the watching of his 
 should be so much ? 
 
 I did not say this, but I must have 
 looked it, for he turned away to my father, 
 and went on telling him about this voyage ; 
 how, in twelve months' time, he should be 
 back again at Bonnermouth for a long 
 holiday, and should perhaps spend part of
 
 EGLANTINE. 69 
 
 the time at Cove Rossington, for lie did 
 not care to be smothered in the smoke and 
 stench of the great manufacturing town. 
 
 "We shall be very pleased," said my 
 father, cordially. " You must come to see 
 us whenever you like. If you care for our 
 quiet ways, we shall always have a welcome 
 for you." 
 
 My aunt Lois said the same, only in her 
 more abrupt fashion. I spoke no word. 
 It was not my place to offer the hospitali- 
 ties of my father's house. "We all said a 
 pleasant good-bye to him, and he went 
 away.
 
 70 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BUT I did see the Diver set sail, after 
 all. 
 
 Long before sunrise on that Easter day 
 I was awake, listening to the stroke of 
 hour after hour from the church clock ; 
 and as soon as it was light, I dressed my- 
 self, and sat at the window, to watch the 
 white sails coming out from behind the 
 headland. 
 
 How many and many a one I had seen 
 coming out before ! Always there seemed 
 to me something half sad in the sight of 
 the brave ship cutting its way through the 
 waves — whither ? For who could tell 
 what evil fortune might betide, or if she
 
 EGLANTINE. 71 
 
 would ever come back, her perils safely 
 overpast, into that quiet port ? Or if, in- 
 stead of colours gaily flying, and white 
 sails spread, she should return dismasted, 
 shattered, and bruised, with story of death 
 and danger to tell ? 
 
 Oh ! how I hoped it would not be so 
 with the vessel which came gliding forth 
 so silently now, with the morning lights 
 and shadows gleaming upon its canvas, its 
 wet bows flashing back the sunshine ! 
 How earnestly I watched it, and, half 
 ashamed, said a prayer that it might come 
 safely back. Mr. Morrison's ship — and 
 little more than a month ago I had not so 
 much as known that there was any Mr. 
 Morrison ! 
 
 And why should I care so much ? I said, 
 tossing back my brown hair. And what 
 was he to me that prayers of mine should 
 follow him ? 
 
 The breakfast bell rang, and I had to
 
 72 EGLANTINE. 
 
 come down, whilst yet the Diver seemed 
 close at hand, and I could see the sails 
 continually being shifted by the crew. 
 My father and Aunt Lois had apparently 
 forgotten all about it — at least, they said 
 nothing about it ; at which I was glad, 
 partly because I was beginning to have a 
 curious feeling of consciousness whenever 
 Mr. Morrison's name was mentioned, and 
 partly because it was rather pleasant to me 
 to find that his ship was going away 
 watched by no one but myself. 
 
 Life was never quite the same to me 
 after that. There was always the feeling 
 of something waited for, something com- 
 ing. I began to remember and to hope, 
 and to build castles in the air. I smile 
 to myself now, recalling them. They were 
 so exceedingly romantic and unsubstantial. 
 In the present day, when love generally 
 arises from the foam of a girl's fancy in 
 a neat one-horse brougham, surrounded
 
 EGLANTINE. 73 
 
 by visions of Brussels stair-carpets and 
 rosewood furniture from a leading London 
 warehouse, my dreams, which were entirely 
 of long rambles with Mr. Morrison up and 
 down the beach, or cosy chats with him in 
 the bow-windowed parlour, Aunt Lois 
 knitting away at those everlasting scarlet 
 wool petticoats, would appear so utterly 
 irrational, so without any sort of practical 
 point or purpose — at least, so far as an 
 eligible settlement in life was concerned. 
 But they were very sweet to me, for all 
 that. 
 
 I worked hard at my etchings, and was 
 tolerably well paid for them. Better than 
 that, I got an order from the same publisher 
 for some more, which were to be completed 
 by a given time. That was a fine thing for 
 me, because, if I had had nothing to do 
 — at least, nothing that I was obliged to 
 do, — I should most likely have spent half 
 my time mooning about on the beach, and
 
 74 EGLANTINE. 
 
 fancying things which might or might not 
 ever come to pass. 
 
 The little bit of romance which had 
 crept into my hitherto quiet life did, how- 
 ever, begin to produce its effect. For 
 the first time I was conscious of internal 
 murmurings of discontent at the way in 
 which Aunt Lois dressed me. It may 
 seem strange that I had arrived at the 
 mature age of eighteen without ever being 
 conscious of them before ; but whatever 
 latent ideas of beauty I might have had, 
 never expanded, until then, beyond the 
 drabs and browns of my Winter stuffs and 
 Summer hollands, and the unchangeable 
 while frill, beautiful exceedingly for its fine- 
 ness, but in no wise calculated to bring 
 out the colour of the cheeks which bloomed 
 rosily above it. 
 
 How astonished the good aunt was 
 when I asked her leave to buy some blue 
 ribbons to put in my hair and dress !
 
 EGLANTINE. 75 
 
 "Blue ribbons to put in your hair, 
 child ! Get away with you, do ! Why, it 
 was only this morning I was thinking of 
 getting a fresh web of linen for you for 
 aprons ; you do make your frocks so dirty 
 with paddling about in the pools. Ribbons 
 indeed ! Get you gone, and whisk those 
 eggs for the sponge-cake." 
 
 She was not vexed, though. I could see 
 that well enough. That very evening she 
 said to me — 
 
 " Dora, I've been speaking to your 
 father about those ribbons, and he doesn't 
 make any objection. Only they must be 
 paid for out of your own money. I haven't 
 lived fifty years in the world to let chits of 
 eighteen run up bills for finery. I never 
 wore anything of the sort myself when I 
 was a girl." 
 
 Dear Aunt Lois ! How she loved to put 
 a bit of severity into every little kindness 
 that she did, like the hard kernel of baked
 
 76 EGLANTINE. 
 
 candy in the middle of her own favourite 
 carraway biscuits. Of course I rushed oif 
 for my ribbons, and spent a full hour in 
 putting them on. How lovely the bit of 
 colour looked on the dead, quiet brown of 
 my merino dress, and the warmer brown of 
 my hair ! And if I could make pictures 
 that a London publisher would buy, was it 
 likely that I should not be able to put my 
 ribbons on with a little bit of artistic 
 taste ? 
 
 "Child, you don't look like yourself," 
 said Aunt Lois, when I came down in all 
 the blushing consciousness of my own im- 
 proved appearance. " To my thinking, 
 you did better before. You'd as well leave 
 blue ribbons for people who can't afford 
 decent cambric. A crimped frill asks for 
 nothing else." 
 
 " No ; but a young face does," said I, 
 not without a touch of sauciness. It is 
 astonishing how the least little feeling of
 
 EGLANTINE. 77 
 
 being pretty strengthens one's assurance. 
 " I wish I had begun to wear them long 
 ago." 
 
 My aunt looked astonished, and said she 
 wondered what had come to me. 
 
 At tea-time, she remarked to my father, 
 with the oddest, most grotesque mixture 
 of complacency and discontent in her 
 face: 
 
 " Well, brother, do you see what Dora 
 has been doing to herself ? For my part, 
 I think she had better go in front of one 
 of the shows next Limeport Fair ; she is 
 getting a little bit too fine for such plain 
 folk as you and me." 
 
 My father looked up dreamily. Was it 
 likely he should ever take any notice of 
 what I put on ? He had been taking out 
 spoonfuls of tea, and dropping them from 
 a height into his cup, watching how the 
 little bubbles were drawn by the big ones, 
 and how the side of the cup made an at-
 
 78 EGLANTINE. 
 
 traction of gravitation for them both. I 
 believe I might have been dressed like a 
 patomime fairy for anything he knew, un- 
 til Aunt Lois spoke, and he brought his 
 attention to bear on me. A strange, sad, 
 wistful look came over his face. 
 
 " She grows very like her mother." 
 And that was all he said. But Aunt 
 Lois never interfered with my blue ribbons 
 again.
 
 79 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 rpHAT year passed over very quietly. 
 -*- I think almost anyone else would 
 have laughed at such a life as we led. No 
 visitors, except now and then an angular 
 mathematical professor; no callers (Aunt 
 Lois abhorred them, because they were sure 
 to come when she was busy ; and then she 
 received them with such portentous aspect 
 that the offence was never repeated) ; no 
 amusements, save the long leisurely stroll 
 on the beach in morning prime, or when 
 the south headland showed one burning 
 mass of purple at sunset. A quiet man, 
 musing over his own subtle thoughts; a 
 bustling, practical woman, for ever knit-
 
 80 EGLANTINE. 
 
 ting, cooking, managing servants, or sort- 
 ing over piles of linen ; between them, a 
 girl with the freshness of her youth still 
 upon her, but loverless and companionless, 
 copying scientific manuscripts for her 
 father, or etching for a London publisher, 
 or learning how to whisk white of egg into 
 a solid froth for custard, or sitting at her 
 window, watching the vessels come and go 
 upon the blue sea. A monotonous life, 
 one might say, and yet how sweet it was ! 
 I think, if I might choose out any year of 
 my life to live over again, it would be that 
 year after Mr. Morrison went away. 
 
 It seems curious to me now that I should 
 have been so happy. That vague " per- 
 haps," which might be only a form of 
 politeness, was all the foundation I had for 
 my dreams and visions. And though the 
 fancy that he would come back was always 
 present with me, though everything I did 
 was tinged by it, and everything I planned
 
 EGLANTINE. 81 
 
 had some sort of reference to it ; though 
 our next meeting had been pictured a 
 thousand times, still I used to tell myself 
 that, after all, it was only " perhaps," and 
 I used to try to make myself feel that if it 
 never did come to pass, I could be quite 
 happy and contented, could go on with my 
 etching, and copying, and cooking, just as 
 if nothing had happened. How strong- 
 hope must be in a girl's heart ; how all- 
 conquering her faith in her own happiness. 
 With what sublime trust she takes a note- 
 of-hand for coming joy, never doubting 
 that the promise will be redeemed. It is 
 very beautiful, but one cannot keep it for 
 ever. 
 
 Mr. Morrison did come back, though. 
 It was one Sunday afternoon. Everything 
 seemed to happen on Sundays. I had 
 been for my walk alone that afternoon, and 
 returning, found him sitting with my father 
 by the fire. They were talking of a new 
 
 VOL. i. G
 
 82 EGLANTINE. 
 
 theory of tidal currents, a subject on which 
 my father was preparing a paper for some 
 journal; talking so earnestly that they never 
 heard me come in, and I had been standing 
 there for a minute or two, in what was 
 sweeter than any dream, because so real, 
 when Mr. Morrison turned. 
 
 Seeing me, he rose and stood quite still 
 for awhile ; then, with a flash of recogni- 
 tion lighting up his face, came and shook 
 hands with me. 
 
 " I beg your pardon. I did not know 
 you. You looked so different. I thought 
 at first it could scarcely be the Miss Dora 
 I left here a year ago. What have you 
 been doing ?" 
 
 " I don't know," I said, very quietly, 
 going to a chair by my father's side. I 
 meant him not to see that I was so glad. 
 And I had a pleasant sort of feeling that I 
 had improved since he saw me last, else he 
 would surely have known me again as
 
 EGLANTINE. 83 
 
 quickly and readily as I knew him. That 
 gave me just enough assurance not to feel 
 shy or embarrassed. I supposed it was 
 the blae ribbons, and the new way of doing 
 my hair, which had made the difference; 
 but I can understand now that when a girl 
 has for the first time awakened to what 
 life may be and hold for her, when through 
 twelve months all sweet and happy 
 thoughts have been brooding in her heart, 
 there may be a difference to those who see 
 her again, more than blue ribbons or 
 braided hair can give. 
 
 What a pleasant Sunday evening that 
 was ! It was enough for me to sit quietly 
 by my father's side, knowing no more than 
 that I was happier than I had ever been 
 before. But still it seemed quite natural 
 and proper that Mr. Morrison should have 
 come back to us. I took it — as I think 
 most young people take the great joys of 
 their lives — as a matter of course. Why 
 
 g2
 
 84 EGLANTINE. 
 
 should he not come ? Why should I not 
 be happy ? I had not learned then to mea- 
 sure gladness by its contrast with grief, to 
 welcome daylight because the long dark 
 night had gone before. 
 
 Just so quietly, too, I heard him say that 
 he should be at Cove Rossington for a 
 month or two. He was going to spend 
 his holiday there, instead of at Bonner- 
 mouth. It was such a good place for 
 sketching, and he had had no sketching for 
 years now. And then he asked me about 
 what I had been doing, and I found he 
 remembered the very block I had been 
 cutting when he came to see us before, and 
 the places where he put in the seagull and 
 the fishing-boat. That, too, gave me a 
 strange sort of gladness. How pleasant it 
 all was, and yet to think that I took it en- 
 tirely as a matter of course ! 
 
 My father was very pleased when he 
 found that Mr. Morrison would really stay 
 in the village.
 
 EGLAXTDs T E. 85 
 
 u Come to us whenever you like," he said. 
 11 1 should like to have an afternoon with 
 you over those tidal currents. I want to 
 talk with some one who has studied the 
 subject practically, and old Rollekins does 
 not know enough about it. You see sailors 
 are accustomed to do everything so me- 
 chanically. They never go into the reasons 
 of things, though Rollekins is far above the 
 average for intelligence and insight." 
 
 And then came the story of Joe's acci- 
 dent, and then another discussion on tidal 
 waves, my own thoughts making a plea- 
 sant undersong through it all. 
 
 Mr. Morrison came very often to see 
 us during that month. I suppose my 
 father thought he came for nothing else 
 but to talk over navigation, and theories of 
 the tides, and methods of rigging ships. I 
 suppose it never entered his mind that the 
 young girl who was growing " so like her 
 mother" could, as that mother once did,
 
 86 EGLANTINE. 
 
 dream dreams and see visions in which the 
 old home and the old life had no part ; or 
 that a sober, middle-aged man whose hair 
 was already dashed with grey, and whose 
 face was tanned and weatherbeaten, whose 
 home, too, was by no fireside, but on the 
 tossing sea, should think of falling in love 
 with a child like myself. Else he would 
 scarcely have left us together so often in 
 the half dark of early evening, or allowed us 
 to stroll by ourselves in the garden, as we 
 did many and many a time, picking out 
 subjects for pictures, and making water- 
 colour sketches of the different sunset 
 effects. 
 
 I have heard him say that he and my 
 mother were boy and girl together, and 
 never knew how they came to love each 
 other. He must have thought that love 
 grew up always in that slow, unconscious 
 way, that it could not flash into being 
 through a single glance, a touch, and once
 
 EGLANTINE. 87 
 
 beginning, go no more ont. Or perhaps, 
 if Mr. Morrison had been as full of foolish 
 flatteries as most men are when they think 
 themselves irresistible, my father might 
 have had his eyes opened. But Mr. Morri- 
 son was not a man who could make pretty 
 speeches, or commend himself to ladies' 
 notice by those solicitous, attentive ways 
 which leave no doubt as to their meaning. 
 He was rather a plain-spoken man, with 
 not even the indefinable charm about him 
 which a winning address gives. And then 
 he was grave and sedate, and very matter- 
 of-fact, and not like a man who very much 
 needed anything that a woman, still less a 
 child like me, could do for him. The 
 pleasure he had in my father's conversa- 
 tion was quite enough to explain his fre- 
 quent visits to our house. 
 
 I am writing this story to keep the past 
 in my possession, to preserve those little 
 bits of memory's mosaic work which might
 
 88 EGLANTINE. 
 
 slip out and leave the picture of my life 
 imperfect. But I can never forget that 
 month, and so I need not write about it. 
 I remember every day of it, from first to 
 last. I never watch the south headland 
 put on its purple glory without thinking 
 how once I watched it with Mr. Morrison. I 
 never rest on the old pear-tree stump with- 
 out recalling pleasant talks we have had 
 there in the old times. I never look up 
 and down the long coast line, north and 
 south, past the dark chasm of Cowan's 
 rift, and away to the soft blue haze of the 
 Northumbrian forelands, without feeling 
 again the touch of remembered hands, and 
 listening to the voice which makes my life 
 beautiful for me. 
 
 So I will say no more. For the first words 
 of love to which we care to listen, like the 
 first prayer we learned, or the last kiss 
 which we took from dying lips, never pass 
 out of our lives.
 
 89 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 npHE weeks of Mr. Morrison's stay at 
 -r- Cove Rossington were drawing to a 
 close. His vessel was to sail very soon, 
 but we did not quite know when. 
 
 I was doing some writing with my father, 
 the Saturday before Easter day, when he 
 came in to see us. He said then he was 
 going to sail next morning, or at latest the 
 morning after. Then he said something 
 about the pleasant time he had had at Cove 
 Rossington, and I felt, rather than saw, 
 that he was looking across to me, to know 
 that I had found it pleasant too. 
 
 A foolish pride came over me, and 
 I stooped over my writing, as though I did
 
 90 EGLANTINE. 
 
 not hear, I felt vexed with myself a mo- 
 ment afterwards, but then it was too late. 
 He had changed the conversation and was 
 talking with my father about the different 
 ports at which the Diver was to touch. 
 When I did look up, they were tracing the 
 ship's course on a chart, quite too busy, 
 apparently, to take any notice of me. 
 
 I would not speak. I would not try to 
 make him notice me. Just a little sort of 
 cross current had come between us. I 
 almost think I felt rather glad that I was 
 able to hurt him, and I knew he was hurt, 
 or he would not have changed the conver- 
 sation so quickly. 
 
 Never mind; he would come again in 
 the evening to say good-bye to us, and then 
 I would make it up by being very amiable. 
 He always had come in on a Saturday 
 evening before, and, this being the last 
 night, he would be sure to come. I sat 
 for a little while, pretending to go on with
 
 EGLANTINE. 91 
 
 my writing, and then, with rather a lofty 
 air, I went out of the room to help Aunt 
 Lois in the kitchen. 
 
 For Saturday was always a day much to 
 be remembered in our house. Great were the 
 performances in the domestic department. 
 Stores were to be weighed out separately 
 for the parlour and for the servants, ac- 
 counts were to be received and entered in 
 the housekeeping book. The clothes from 
 the wash were to be sorted and ranged in 
 their respective places. Every drawer was 
 to be tidied, every cupboard set to rights, 
 to say nothing of the scrubbing and purifi- 
 cation which each individual capable of such 
 a process, down to our dog Sweep and the 
 white cat, had to undergo. 
 
 Then, this being the day before Easter 
 Sunday, great culinary preparations were 
 to be made. My aunt was one of those 
 old-fashioned housekeepers who mark the 
 great festivals of the year by certain ap-
 
 92 EGLANTINE. 
 
 propriate dishes. On Christmas-day we 
 had plum-pudding, made from a family 
 recipe which was never allowed to be used 
 on any other occasion. On New Year's 
 Day, and on no other day, we had roast 
 turkey. Pancakes made their appearance 
 on Shrove Tuesday, fritters on Ash Wed- 
 nesday, so that they are always connected 
 in my mind with the Commination service. 
 On Good Friday we had salt fish, on Easter 
 Sunday veal, followed by a most elaborate 
 jelly, stuck all over with little dice of red 
 and gold. On Whit Sunday salmon and cu- 
 cumber, let the price be what it might, and 
 on Michaelmas day a goose. Thus, as I 
 always in my childhood had to repeat to 
 my aunt the proper prayers for those sea- 
 sons, my mind became a curious jumble of 
 collects and cookery. 
 
 So, on this Saturday, being Easter Eve, 
 the jelly had to be made, and I had to 
 make it, being watched carefully by Aunt
 
 EGLANTINE. 93 
 
 Lois. It never took less than three hours, 
 from beginning to end, which, seeing that 
 it was consumed in about as many minutes, 
 appeared to me a somewhat questionable in- 
 vestment of time. Indeed, I often wonder- 
 ed why my aunt, who was so economical 
 of everything else, measuring her soap by 
 inches, and weighing out the salt by ounces, 
 could bear to see that most precious of all 
 commodities swept away by whole hours in 
 the stirring of custards, the whisking of 
 eggs, or pounding of almonds. I think she 
 must have looked upon festival cookery in 
 the light of a religious duty. I remember 
 the look of indignation, tempered, however, 
 with pity, which she cast upon me one 
 Easter Eve, when I proposed giving the 
 suspended jelly -bag an occasional squeeze 
 or shake to make the contents strain 
 through a little quicker. She could scarcely 
 have been more horrified if I had suggested 
 giving the Rector himself a jerk when he
 
 '94 EGLANTINE. 
 
 almost went to sleep in the middle of his 
 own sermons. And yet, truth to tell, it 
 was tedious work standing over that jelly- 
 bag, watching the translucent drops fall 
 one by one, with exquisitely provoking 
 leisureliness, into the battlemented shape 
 beneath, whence they were to emerge next 
 dinner-time, a castellated mass, with tower 
 and keep complete, stuck all over with 
 the aforementioned little red and yellow 
 dice. 
 
 This morning, though, I watched them 
 patiently enough, for, by my devotion to 
 culinary duties then, I might measure my 
 freedom to do as I liked in the afternoon, 
 when, of course, Mr. Morrison would come 
 to say good-bye to us. Happy freedom ! 
 And I had some rose-coloured ribbons, 
 wrapped up in silver-paper, ready, and I 
 had lain awake nearly an hour the night 
 before, thinking over a new way of doing 
 my hair. I need not be ashamed to con-
 
 EGLANTINE. 95 
 
 fess it, for that was the [last time I ever 
 did anything so foolish. 
 
 It was done to no purpose. Mr. Morri- 
 son did not come in the afternoon. "We 
 finished tea, and settled down for the even- 
 ing. I asked no questions. Aunt Lois 
 sat very upright, knitting away most 
 vigorously. I fancied, when she spoke to 
 me, there was a little more deference than 
 usual in her manner, as if I were not quite 
 such a child, after all. But that might 
 only be because I had done my work so well 
 in the morning, and the jelly had turned 
 out a perfect marvel of transparency. A 
 girl who could make a jelly-castle like that, 
 with not a turret broken, or a battlement 
 defaced, was surely worthy of a little 
 respect. 
 
 The evening wore on, but nothing was 
 said about Mr. Morrison. I felt sure, 
 from that, that his ship had been detained, 
 and that he would spend Easter Day with
 
 96 EGLANTINE. 
 
 us, sailing on the Monday. Of course he 
 never could have gone away without bid- 
 ding me a regular good-bye. I fell to 
 thinking how pleasant it would be next 
 day. I would behave better, and not be 
 afraid of telling him that I had enjoyed 
 his visit too. For I still felt a little un- 
 comfortable sting when I remembered my 
 unconcerned manner in the morning, and 
 my feeling to him had begun to be touched 
 with that humility which is always so close 
 to love. 
 
 As the clock struck eight, my aunt Lois 
 rose and walked out of the room with a 
 deliberation quite different from her usual 
 manner when she remembered an order to 
 be given, or a rebuke to be administered in 
 the kitchen. I could almost have thought 
 she was offended, by her great air of 
 dignity. 
 
 My father sat by the fire, shading his 
 eyes with his hand. He might have been
 
 EGLANTINE. 97 
 
 busy over some intricate problem, only 
 that, now and then, he sighed ; and my 
 father never sighed when the problems 
 were only mathematical. For me the silence 
 was full of sweet and tender thoughts, 
 sweeter and tenderer because there was 
 now no pride in them. 
 
 " Dora, my child." 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
 "Mr. Morrison told me this morning 
 what he has been thinking about ever since 
 he came to Cove Rossington, a month 
 ago." 
 
 My heart did not beat at all faster 
 for these words. I thought it was most 
 likely some new theory of tidal currents 
 that they had been developing. Their 
 conversation had been mostly about that, 
 lately. That Mr. Morrison should talk to 
 my father about me, never entered my 
 mind. 
 
 "Well, father," I said, cheerfully, "was 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 EGLANTINE. 
 
 it anything very particular ? He seems to 
 have had so many things to talk to you 
 about." 
 
 My father looked relieved. There was 
 quite a change in his voice when he answer- 
 ed me. 
 
 "Well, Dora, I suppose it would be 
 thought rather particular, though I don't 
 suppose it will make any difference now. 
 Still I think you may as well know about 
 it, and so I asked your aunt to leave us 
 together for a little while. Come and sit 
 by me." 
 
 I drew my chair close to him, so that 
 my head almost touched his shoulder as I 
 sat, and I laid my hand on his knee. That 
 was the only caress, except our usual night 
 and morning kiss, that ever passed between 
 my father and myself. His love for me, 
 my reverence for him, were not such as 
 needed to tell themselves in outward shows. 
 But we often used to sit together in this
 
 EGLANTINE. 99 
 
 way by the firelight, when Aunt Lois was 
 out of the room. She did not like demon- 
 strations of any kind ; and if, when I was a 
 child, I happened to put my arms round 
 her, she always told me I was smothering 
 her. 
 
 My father cleared his throat and hesi- 
 tated a little. I went on thinking my own 
 sweet thoughts all the time. He would 
 tell me all about it by-and-by. 
 
 "Dora, Mr. Morrison wished to ask you 
 to become his wife. But I told him you 
 were far too young to enter upon any such 
 engagement yet. I should not like your 
 mind disturbed on that subject for years to 
 come ; and I told him I was quite sure you 
 had no thoughts of the kind." 
 
 I don't think I said anything for a long- 
 time. The words seemed not to carry 
 much meaning to me. And my father 
 scarcely expected that I should show great 
 interest. He said what he had to say with 
 
 h2
 
 100 EGLANTINE. 
 
 just a touch of annoyance. Evidently lie 
 was not pleased that such an overture had 
 been made, and yet he thought it right 
 that I should know about it. He just 
 laid his hand on my shoulder when he had 
 told me, and I put my cheek down to it — 
 that was all. 
 
 "We must not lose each other, Dora, 
 must we ?" 
 
 " No, father." 
 
 "And when my child does marry, I hope 
 she will marry some one who can stay at 
 home and take care of her. I like Mr. 
 Morrison very much, but I could not wil- 
 lingly give you to him." 
 
 "I don't think you will ever need to 
 give me to anyone, father," I said, very 
 quietly indeed. " I could like to stay with 
 you always now. Has Mr. Morrison 
 gone ?" 
 
 "Yes — his ship sails to-morrow morn- 
 mg.
 
 EGLANTINE. 101 
 
 " At daybreak again ?" 
 
 " Yes, at daybreak. I was to say good- 
 bye for him to you. I am glad that is 
 over." 
 
 And my father leaned back in his chair, 
 and gave a long sigh of relief. 
 
 All this takes little time to tell, but 
 there had been many a break and pause 
 between, and, for anything I knew, we 
 might have been sitting there a whole 
 month, when Aunt Lois came back. 
 
 "It has struck nine. Dear, dear," she 
 added, in her brisk, vigorous way, "and 
 you have never thought of lighting the 
 lamp ! How misty everything does look, to 
 be sure !" 
 
 And indeed it did, specially for me. 
 
 " I am sure it is time for you to go to 
 bed, Dora. You will have a lot of singing 
 to do at church to-morrow, and you were 
 on your feet a great deal this morning with 
 that jelly."
 
 102 EGLANTINE. 
 
 I made no opposition. Indeed, it seemed 
 the only thing left for me in the world to 
 go to sleep. 
 
 When my father kissed me and said 
 good night, there was a wistful, almost 
 searching look in his face — the look that I 
 remembered so well as a child, when any- 
 thing ailed me. A look of watchful, pro- 
 tecting love, that would let no evil come 
 near to hurt me. Whilst a daughter can 
 see that look in a parent's eyes, she need 
 ask no other blessing. 
 
 And I am quite sure my father could not 
 tell, from word or tone of mine that night, 
 that any evil had come near to hurt me.
 
 103 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 r DON'T think I quite realised it my self , 
 ■«■ either. It was quite too sudden and 
 too strange. I went up into my room, 
 taking no candle with me, for the moon 
 shone full into my window, and I tried to 
 think about it a little. 
 
 Mr. Morrison had asked my father to let 
 me be his wife, and my father had said no, 
 for I was too young to think about such 
 things. And I loved my father with a love 
 outside of which all other love must stand. 
 And I had a feeling that, as I had done no 
 harm to anybody, everything must come 
 right. 
 
 Nay, so little did I understand the full
 
 104 EGLANTINE. 
 
 meaning of what had come to me, that, 
 when I had said my prayers, I went to 
 sleep, and never woke until the grey dawn 
 of the morning, when I had a confused 
 idea about the sailing of Mr. Morrison's 
 ship, and that he had told me I must look 
 out for it behind the south headland. And 
 I jumped up and looked out over the sil- 
 ver-streaked ocean, above which the soft- 
 est, pearliest tints of morning twilight 
 were creeping. 
 
 Then slowly I remembered all. This 
 was not the going away to which any hope 
 of sweet return belonged. Mr. Morrison 
 would never come back to me again. 
 There was nothing to look forward to any 
 more. I belonged to him. I felt, by that 
 strange instinct which needs neither years 
 nor experience to teach it, that I belonged 
 to him ; but he had gone away, and there 
 was an end of everything. He had told 
 my father that he wished me for his wife.
 
 EGLANTINE. 105 
 
 And my father said I had no thought of 
 anything of the kind, for I was little more 
 than a child. 
 
 Little more than a child ! No one would 
 need to say that of me again. As I sat at 
 my window in the grey dawn of that April 
 morning, waiting for my lover's ship to 
 glide out from behind the south headland, 
 it seemed to me that moment by moment 
 I was changing into a calm, quiet, dignified 
 woman, with almost the sort of grandeur 
 in my face that St. Monica, purple-robed 
 in the lancet window opposite our pew at 
 church, had, — the sort of grandeur which 
 those win who have looked steadfastly into 
 the eyes of sorrow, and passed through the 
 baptism of tears. 
 
 And there was something not altogether 
 bitter in my pain. Almost there was a 
 sort of consecration in it. I trusted my 
 father absolutely. I had a simple convic- 
 tion that whatever he did must be the best
 
 106 EGLANTINE. 
 
 thing to do. My faith in my father was 
 as strong as the saint's faith in God ; and 
 it gave me just the same comfort which 
 I have since known experienced Christians 
 have when God has permitted almost every- 
 thing they loved to be taken from them. 
 That faith in my father I never lost — I 
 never needed to lose. 
 
 The sun arose, and golden flashes of 
 light sparkled all over the sea. I watched. 
 By-and-by the faint black line of a bow- 
 sprit came out beyond the headland, then 
 the gleam of white sails, then mast after 
 mast, until the whole of the good ship 
 rocked bravely forth upon the waves. I 
 could see the little ripples breaking into 
 foam upon her sides. I could see the 
 lights and shadows flecking the outspread 
 sails. I saw them bending and filling to 
 the breeze, and I knew that they were 
 taking away from me the very joy of my 
 life ; and I had not said good-bye to him.
 
 EGLANTINE. 107" 
 
 I had not told him 1 was sorry. The last 
 thing left for me to remember was the 
 little slight I had given him, and it seemed 
 so great now, and I felt so wretched 
 about it. 
 
 However I had only to be patient. I 
 never cried. It was something too utterly 
 solemn to be cried over. I came down- 
 stairs as usual, and my father read the 
 beautiful Eastertide psalms — how very 
 strangely they sounded to me that morn- 
 ing ! — and we went to church. 
 
 Easter fell late that year — as late as it 
 could fall. It was quite the end of April, 
 and so warm that some of the church win- 
 dows were set open ; and as I sat by my 
 father in our pew on the north side of the 
 chancel, I looked across, and instead of 
 purple-robed Monica in the lancet there, 
 saw far away beyond the headlands my 
 lover's ship riding proudly over the blue 
 sea. And I watched it with all my soul
 
 108 EGLANTINE. 
 
 in my eyes, for it was better to me than 
 kneeling saint ; and I listened to neither 
 prayer nor sermon that Easter day, for my 
 thoughts of Mr. Morrison were like pray- 
 ers ; and my poor little ignorant soul had 
 launched forth into deeps which the sound- 
 ing line of our Rector's theology could never 
 reach; and the only thing which seemed 
 real to me in all the world was that white- 
 sailed vessel slowly lessening in the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 In the afternoon I went by myself to the 
 very top of the cliff, and watched it until 
 it was quite out of sight. 
 
 For a while life was dreary, though I 
 tried to go on as if nothing had happened. 
 Fortunately, my father wanted a great deal 
 of writing doing just then, and I had an 
 order for some etchings, and that May 
 month was so gloriously beautiful, that 
 even Aunt Lois never chided me for spend- 
 ing all my spare time on the beach, spe-
 
 EGLANTINE. 109 
 
 cially as I brought in plenty of sketches. 
 I felt as if I must always be doing some- 
 thing. I did not want to think at all. 
 Aunt Lois rejoiced over the change. I 
 was beginning to know what life was worth, 
 she said, and to spend it like a reasonable 
 being. Poor Aunt Lois ! Her total want 
 of perception in all things that could not 
 be grasped by the five bodily senses was 
 often a great blessing to me. 
 
 A greater still came to me that Summer. 
 For some weeks we had been expecting a 
 visit from Mrs. Wear, an old school-friend 
 of my mother ; indeed, she had been my 
 mothers bridesmaid, and had nursed her 
 in her last illness. After that she married, 
 and went out to Canada, but my father 
 had always kept up a correspondence with 
 her for my mothers sake, and Mrs. Wear's 
 letters were always looked forward to by 
 us with great interest. Her husband had 
 been dead two or three years, and she had
 
 1 10 EGLANTINE. 
 
 decided to come home for the sake of her 
 one little girl Eglantine, who seemed to be 
 rather too fragile for the Canadian climate. 
 
 She wished to settle at Cove Rossington, 
 knowing the place so well. We had the 
 reputation, too, of splendid weather during 
 nine months of the year, and even the re- 
 maining three, when the east winds pre- 
 vailed, were tolerable enough for us, who 
 lived under the shelter of the cliff. She 
 was to come and stay with us for a few 
 weeks, until she either found comfortable 
 lodgings, or a house to suit her. And she 
 came early in June with the child Eglan- 
 tine, just as the roses, which were thrust- 
 ing out their brown buds when Mr. Morri- 
 son went away, had burst into Summer 
 glory all over our garden. 
 
 Eglantine was God's little messenger to 
 me. She was like a flower laid upon the 
 great wound in my life. From the very 
 first we loved each other. She was a shy,
 
 EGLANTINE. Ill 
 
 wilful little woman, with an imperious 
 temper, and an affectionate heart, and a 
 great capacity for getting into scrapes. I 
 was a refuge for her from the severity of 
 Aunt Lois, who had no notion of letting 
 children have their own way, and who 
 used to look unutterable things at poor 
 Eglantine when she left pieces of fat upon 
 her plate, or came in with her pretty white 
 socks greened with the seaweed, amongst 
 which she had been paddling for hours 
 with her mother and me. Aunt Lois 
 thought Mrs. Wear spoiled the child. It 
 was one of her convictions that children, 
 especially children of Tiny's impulsive 
 temperament, wanted scolding, and put- 
 ting down, and shaking from time to time, 
 just as they needed cooling medicines in 
 Spring, or a dose of rhubarb when they 
 had been eating too many good things. 
 And so Tiny used to be treated to solemn 
 warnings and expostulations when she
 
 112 EGLANTINE. 
 
 crumpled her pinafore or soiled her hands ; 
 and when she got into a passion, which 
 she often enough did, my aunt used to put 
 on an aspect of stony severity, which 
 would have frightened even a coastguard, 
 and resolutely turn away her face from the 
 soft little lips which, as soon as the thun- 
 der-storm had passed, would be lifted to 
 hers for kisses of forgiveness. For children 
 must learn to govern their little tempers, 
 she said, and amidst a rain of tears poor 
 Tiny was sent to bed. 
 
 Still she was very happy with us. If 
 Aunt Lois invariably put a bit of teeth- 
 breaking candy into the middle of her 
 carraway biscuits,, there was always a little 
 kernel of sweetness underneath the rough 
 rind of her reprimands, and Tiny was sure 
 to have an extra lump of sugar in her por- 
 ridge, or a thicker layer of marmalade on 
 her bread, the morning after she had been 
 sent to bed, repentant, but unkissed. And
 
 EGLANTINE. 113 
 
 then she and I were friends from the very 
 beginning. We used to spend whole days 
 amongst the rock pools, fishing for crabs 
 and shrimps, whilst I told her the wonder- 
 ful stories which old Rollekins had told to 
 me when I was a child, and her big won- 
 dering eyes were lifted to mine with the 
 same solemn delight which must have 
 amused him many a time when he was 
 telling me about the mermaids, and the 
 sea caves, and the agate walls, and the 
 golden sands. 
 
 It was very pleasant to be loved by her. 
 I think a child's love is a beautiful posses- 
 sion, and I had never had it before. It 
 made life seem fresh to me again. And 
 hope which can fight against such des- 
 perate odds whilst youth and health re- 
 main, came back to me, and I felt that 
 whilst my father and Eglantine cared for 
 me, I need never be quite unhappy. 
 
 VOL. I. i
 
 114 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 P)UT other changes in our once so 
 -■-^ changeless life were at hand. Before 
 Mrs. Wear had been with us a month my 
 aunt Lois fell ill. 
 
 It was the first time during my recollec- 
 tion that she had ever ailed anything. I 
 remember now, with a regretful pang, our 
 half-amusement at the irritable, indignant 
 way in which she fought against the moni- 
 tions of her illness. 
 
 " You're just trying to make me look 
 like a simpleton," she would say, as I 
 brought a shawl for her shivering shoulders, 
 or Eau de Cologne for her aching temples. 
 " You want Mrs. Wear to believe that I'm
 
 EGLANTINE. 115 
 
 an old good-for-nothing, when I can do as 
 good a day's work as any of you, see if I 
 can't." 
 
 And up Aunt Lois would start, and off 
 she would trot after some domestic busi- 
 ness or other, coming back very soon, and 
 dropping into her chair with a strangely 
 puzzled look on her hard old face. 
 
 "Well, upon my word, I cannot think 
 what is the matter with me. I never knew 
 the picking of a couple of pigeons tire me 
 so in my life." 
 
 " You have caught cold, Miss Leslie," 
 Mrs. Wear would say. " You know the 
 long passages are very draughty, when all 
 the doors are open in the Summer time. 
 And the wind draws up the valley so." 
 
 " Cold !" my aunt replied, with the air 
 of a woman who has been insulted in her 
 most sacred feelings. " Talk to me of 
 cold, indeed ! — such nonsense ! I was 
 born before colds and backaches, and all 
 
 i2
 
 116 EGLANTINE. 
 
 sucli ridiculous tilings came into fashion. 
 I never had a cold in my life, and I'm not 
 likely to begin now. No, you young people 
 may coddle yourselves up with your shawls, 
 and woollen socks, and spirits of camphor, 
 and the rest of it, you won't find me doing 
 anything so foolish." 
 
 And to show us that she was as sound 
 as a drum, she would post off again some- 
 where else. 
 
 But at last she was obliged to own that 
 there must be something wrong, and just 
 at the time that she made this acknow- 
 ledgment I fell ill too, and the doctor was 
 sent for. He said there was no mistake 
 about it. We had both taken the small- 
 pox. 
 
 We were banished to our separate rooms. 
 Tiny was sent, in charge of one of the ser- 
 vants, to stay with old Mrs. Eollekins on 
 the beach, and Mrs. Wear devoted herself 
 entirely to nursing Aunt Lois and myself.
 
 EGLANTINE. 117 
 
 I wonder what we should have done 
 without her. She was so quick, and active, 
 and lightfooted, so prompt and energetic 
 too, and so fearless in doing everything 
 that needed to be done. She must have 
 had a hard time of it. Aunt Lois would 
 not be an easy patient to manage. For 
 myself, I soon reached that condition in 
 which we neither care much for our own 
 sufferings, nor are capable of being greatly 
 distressed by the trouble we give to other 
 people. I was dimly conscious of faces 
 bending over me, of my father's eyes seek- 
 ing mine with sad, loving anxiety, of my 
 father's dry, trembling hand closing upon 
 mine, of Mrs. Wear's tender touch perform- 
 ing various offices about me ; but I was too 
 ill to thank anyone, or care very much for 
 any love that was given me. 
 
 After a long time I began to think and 
 remember. It was a pleasure to me to 
 have my father near, to see Mrs. "Wear's
 
 118 EGLANTINE. 
 
 kind, bright face. But where was Aunt 
 Lois ? "We had both been ill, and, as I was 
 better, she must be better too. "Why did 
 she not come to me, then ? She was gene- 
 rally first and foremost in a sick-room, 
 great in fomentations, decoctions, draughts, 
 and all the other mysteries of " Graham's 
 Domestic Medicine." And at last, with a 
 sort of peevish sense of being forgotten by 
 her, I asked — 
 
 " Why does not Aunt Lois come ?" 
 " Never mind, Dora," said Mrs. Wear. 
 " Just keep yourself quiet, and get well as 
 soon as you can. All that you have to do 
 now is to get well." 
 
 I turned away, too listless to give my- 
 self much trouble about it. I could not on ve 
 
 a 
 
 myself much trouble about anything then, 
 or I should have wondered what the small- 
 pox had done for me. But a day or two 
 afterwards the thought came to me again, 
 and again I asked,
 
 EGLANTINE. 119 
 
 "Is Aunt Lois better? Why does she 
 not come to see me ?" 
 
 "Aunt Lois is all right now," said Mrs. 
 Wear, turning her head away to get 
 through a sudden fit of coughing. 
 
 " Has she been as ill as I have ?" 
 
 " Yes, my dear, quite." 
 
 " And not ill now ?" 
 
 " No, not ill now. Do try to be quiet, 
 and not ask so many questions. The doc- 
 tor says you will get well so much sooner 
 if you don't worry yourself by talking so 
 much." 
 
 And Mrs. Wear began to tell me about 
 things that had happened since my illness, 
 and then about her life in Canada; and 
 then she brought books to read to me, on 
 condition that I never troubled myself by 
 asking questions. 
 
 But when I was able to bear it they told 
 me that Aunt Lois was dead. The disease 
 had run its course very rapidly, and only a
 
 120 EGLANTINE. 
 
 fortnight after she had taken to her bed 
 she was buried. 
 
 Dear Aunt Lois ! How we missed her 
 strong voice and hearty step, and vigorous, 
 practical ways in the house ! Physically 
 she was for us weaker ones 
 
 " A staff to lean and rest upon," 
 
 though her power of mental sympathy was 
 of the feeblest. And then she was a link 
 to the old times. She was bound up with 
 my memories of that one little year in 
 which I had been so happy. She had 
 been very kind to Mr. Morrison ; she had 
 never made a trouble of his coming in so 
 often to see my father. I think, so far as 
 she was capable of warming to fresh 
 people at all, she had warmed to him ; and 
 I loved her for it. 
 
 Besides, she had been very good to me 
 ever since I could remember ; though but 
 little of it had ever come out in the form 
 of caresses. I recalled, after she was gone
 
 EGLANTINE. 121 
 
 where I could not thank her for them, 
 many little kindnesses and acts of self- 
 denial, which, in her curious dislike to 
 thanks or recognition of any kind, she had 
 hidden away under an aspect of indiffer- 
 ence. She was always ashamed of her 
 goodness, and tried to cover it up as care- 
 fully as most people cover their wrong- 
 doing. 
 
 I shall never look upon her like again. 
 Such a woman, so rigid in her opinions, so 
 strong in her prejudices, so unwavering in 
 her pursuit of what she thought to be duty, 
 so intolerant of mere shows and appear- 
 ances, could scarcely be produced in these 
 days, when all that one thinks of is to 
 make the wheels of life run smoothly, what- 
 . ever they may have to run over. She was a 
 fine specimen of the original north-country 
 gentlewoman, who could stand alone, and 
 help herself, and help others too. She had 
 no imagination, and therefore little power
 
 122 EGLANTINE. 
 
 of sympathy. She clung with Conserva- 
 tive tenacity to the ways in which she had 
 been brought up, and what was right for 
 her she thought right for everyone else. 
 If she exacted from those who served her 
 the utmost stint of duty, she filled up the 
 measure of her own with equal rectitude. 
 She never let another do for her what it 
 was her place to do for herself, and she 
 never accepted for her own pleasure the 
 sacrifice of another person's convenience. 
 A keen sense of duty, and a fine natural 
 unselfishness, supplied to her the place of 
 imagination, in regard to the rights of 
 other people. Peace be to her memory ! 
 
 As soon as possible after my recovery, 
 we all — that is, my father, Mrs. Wear, and 
 myself — went to a cottage on the Bonner- 
 mouth Moors, whilst our house was tho- 
 roughly cleaned. 
 
 Good Miss Fidger, who feared neither 
 infection nor anything else when the wel-
 
 EGLANTINE. 123 
 
 fare of those she loved was concerned, super- 
 intended this cleaning, and she was ready 7 
 too, to receive us when, after two months' 
 absence, we came home. How busy she 
 had been ! How cheerful she had made 
 everything look ! It was near the end of 
 September, when the evenings were begin- 
 ning to be chill ; and she had a brisk little 
 fire in all the rooms, because, as she said, 
 it was the pleasantest welcome anyone 
 could have when coming back from a 
 journey. 
 
 " At any rate," she added, " it's the only 
 one I ever get when I come home from 
 wherever I've been to, and it's as good 
 as a smile any day, when you can't get the 
 real thing." 
 
 Kind soul ! Somebody, somewhere, had 
 lost a great blessing by not having Miss 
 Fidger for a wife, though she seemed 
 blessed enough in her own liberality and 
 great-heartedness ; perhaps also in that con-
 
 124 EGLANTINE. 
 
 tent which made the best of everything, 
 and accepted the smile of a blazing fire 
 as cheerfully as though it belonged to a 
 familiar face. 
 
 Only we missed Aunt Lois very much. 
 The house seemed so quiet without her. 
 When, once a year, she went to spend 
 a week with an old schoolmate down in 
 Lincolnshire, her coming home again used 
 to make such a commotion. How care- 
 fully every speck and spot was sought out 
 and removed from furniture, plate, or 
 china ! How I used to perambulate the 
 house with a watchfulness worthy of Argus, 
 to set straight anything which appeared 
 out of its place ! How nervously I wait- 
 ed next morning the result of her researches 
 into pantry, store-room, and linen-cup- 
 board, to know whether anything had gone 
 wrong ! 
 
 And how she used to poke about every- 
 where, with such an assured conviction that
 
 EGLANTINE. 125 
 
 something was wrong, and shake the cur- 
 tains to see if there was any dust in them, 
 and feel the white china cups and saucers, 
 to be sure that they had been washed up 
 properly, and peep into all the closets and 
 investigate all the drawers ; and she seemed 
 so heartily to enjoy being mistress of a 
 house again, with servants to scold and 
 manage and direct, after the enforced idle- 
 ness of her week with old Miss Bates in 
 Lincolnshire. 
 
 And now, for three months, she had been 
 lying cold and quiet under the churchyard 
 sod, and I had never known when I looked 
 my last upon her. No good-bye, no kindly 
 parting wish, no word to be remembered 
 through all the years until we met again. 
 
 Well, she was not the only friend who 
 had left me so. And the chasm which 
 death had made seemed less wide and im- 
 passable than that which parted now my- 
 self and Rae Morrison.
 
 126 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THAT coming home began a quite new 
 life. The October days, rapidly 
 shortening towards Winter, with their scant 
 sunlight and grey fogs, seemed a fore- 
 shadowing of the afternoon quietness into 
 which I must now be content to pass. A 
 quietness not unblest, though, by home and 
 fireside warmth, which are sometimes as 
 grateful in their season, and as profitable 
 too, as even Summer's wealth and sun- 
 shine. 
 
 Of course I must be mistress of the 
 house now. My father had no need to say 
 that I was too much of a child for that, or
 
 EGLANTINE. 127 
 
 for anything else. Not twenty yet, I had 
 left my girlhood far behind. I had made 
 acquaintance with love, and sorrow, and 
 pain, and death — the four great verities 
 which overshadow a woman's span of life. 
 The years might make me younger as they 
 went on — they would scarcely make me 
 any older now. 
 
 Mrs. Wear had taken a pretty little 
 house, called Holly cote, not far from ours, 
 but separated from it by a little gully in 
 the cliff, so that practically we were nearly 
 a quarter of an hour's walk from each 
 other. Tiny was still staying with Mrs. 
 Eollekins, until the new house was made 
 ready. It had been occupied by the two 
 Miss Mossvilles, but one of them had just 
 died of old age, and the other had gone to 
 live with a niece in the south. Else I 
 daresay at that time Mrs. Wear might 
 have waited long enough before she found 
 a suitable home at Cove Rossington, no
 
 128 EGLANTINE. 
 
 new houses ever being built in the place 
 then. 
 
 She took possession of it in November, 
 and my father and I were left quite to 
 ourselves. 
 
 "We shall just belong to each other, 
 and nobody else, now," I said to him, as 
 we drew to the fire on the first night of 
 this new state of things. " It will be my 
 father and I, now, to the end of the chap- 
 ter — will it not ?" 
 
 For answer, he drew me closer to him, 
 and kissed me, and I think I felt a tear 
 upon his face. Perhaps he knew how very 
 true it was that we should always be to- 
 gether now, until death parted us ; for no 
 one would care to love with other than 
 kindly, pitiful tenderness, the scarred, dis- 
 figured thing that was once his blooming 
 daughter. Never again would he have to 
 give answer, for good or ill, to anyone 
 coming on the same errand as Eae Morri- 
 son.
 
 EGLANTINE. 129 
 
 For the disease had left its cruellest 
 marks upon me. Scarce an inch of my 
 face and neck had escaped its dull, dead- 
 looking remains. My cheeks had quite 
 lost their colour ; indeed, the whole com- 
 plexion had changed to that opaque din- 
 giness which is one of the worst conse- 
 quences of smallpox. Even my very fea- 
 tures were changed. I seemed to myself 
 like another person. 
 
 Of course I knew this well enough when 
 I was staying on the Bonnermouth moor, 
 amongst people who, not having seen me 
 in my better days, failed to mark the 
 change, or pity me for it. But I did not 
 really feel it until I came home, and was 
 received by dear little Miss Fidger with a 
 momentary start of surprise, followed by a 
 rush of affectionate welcome. 
 
 " So glad to see you back again, dear, 
 and looking quite strong again, only a 
 little bit pale ; but perhaps that will go off. 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 EGLANTINE. 
 
 And really not so much altered, after all. 
 Why, you will be yourself again in no 
 time, if you take proper care." 
 
 But still I could not forget the involun- 
 tary change which had passed over the 
 good little woman's face when I put up my 
 thick veil to kiss her. 
 
 Then the servants too. They were so 
 very anxious to do something for me, and 
 waited upon me with that careful solicitude 
 which people only show to those upon 
 whom a great disaster has fallen. And of 
 course it was a disaster, for I had lost what 
 a young girl prizes most of all — that which 
 would make people care for me, and love 
 me. Only what was it now to me to be 
 loved ? 
 
 But most of all I felt it when the child 
 Tiny came to see me. I knew she was 
 coming, and, with a cowardly sort of fear, 
 I turned and stood close to the window, 
 looking out over the sea, so that, at first,
 
 EGLANTINE. 131 
 
 she could see nothing of me but my figure 
 and my hair, the only pretty things left me. 
 
 She came quietly in, with that sort of 
 solemnity which a child feels when first 
 allowed to speak to anyone who has been 
 very ill. I would not turn; I was too 
 much afraid. Tiny always said just what 
 she thought. What would she say to me ? 
 She stole up to me and kissed a little bit of 
 my hair, and then, creeping round, looked 
 shyly into my face. 
 
 With a look of intense disappointment, 
 and almost horror, she flung herself away 
 from me. Tiny did everything impetuous- 
 ly when she was vexed. 
 
 " They told me it was Auntie Dora, and 
 it isn't ; it is somebody else." 
 
 And, with a burst of tears, partly dis- 
 appointment, partly the result of the shock 
 felt by a sensitive child when she has made 
 a great mistake, Tiny was dashing out of 
 the room. 
 
 k2
 
 132 EGLANTINE. 
 
 " Oil ! Tiny," I said ; and that was all I 
 could say, for, indeed, I knew how the 
 child had but spoken the truth. The poor 
 white, scarred face might indeed be " some- 
 body else." 
 
 Tiny turned. She knew my voice again, 
 and came slowly to me, looking steadily 
 into my eyes. There was a great look of 
 bewilderment upon her face, but a sort of 
 trust dawning through it all. At last she 
 climbed upon my knee and laid her cheek 
 close to mine, and whispered softly — 
 
 " Somebody has made you very different, 
 but I know you are Auntie Dora still, by 
 your eyes. And I am so glad to have you 
 again." 
 
 And then she went and tugged down 
 the great Bible which my father used at 
 prayers, and after poking about a long 
 time amongst the Psalms, with a searching 
 intent look, she struggled up to me with 
 the book and laid her dimpled finger on 
 this verse —
 
 EGLANTINE. 133 
 
 "The King's daughter is all glorious 
 within. Her clothing is of wrought gold." 
 
 " That is you," she said, as if satisfied 
 that now she had made everything straight. 
 " You are not at all glorious outside now, 
 but I can see it coming through your eyes, 
 just the same. I shall never be afraid of 
 you again." 
 
 I kissed the earnest little face, and Tiny 
 was more than a child friend to me ever 
 after that. 
 
 So we settled down into the new life, 
 newer for me than for my father. I had 
 plenty to do, which was a good thing for 
 me. There were the servants to manage, 
 and the household affairs to direct. I 
 did both with much painstaking, for 
 I felt Aunt Lois would have been 
 disturbed in her blessedness if she had 
 known that the linen was not properly 
 sorted, and the groceries weighed out at 
 regular times. And my father began to
 
 134 EGLANTINE. 
 
 make much more a companion of me than 
 he had done before. Perhaps he felt how 
 much more important mental cultivation 
 was to me now, how little consideration I 
 should ever win, except what could be won 
 by that, and the character I might make for 
 myself. He used to choose the best books, 
 which we read aloud together, and he 
 made me write abstracts of them, to be 
 sure that I understood what I read. He 
 took pains to give me leisure and oppor- 
 tunity for my etching work, that being the 
 way in which any of my little originality 
 manifested itself ; and he showed great 
 interest in what I did, partly, I believe, to 
 encourage me, and make me feel that I had 
 something else to work for besides my 
 own amusement. 
 
 Then, for the first time, he took me into 
 his own life. He told me of his childhood, 
 his boyhood, the circumstances which made 
 him a man of science. He told me of his
 
 EGLANTINE. 135 
 
 thought life, too, the influences which had 
 moulded it, the steps by which he had 
 reached truth after truth — moral and re- 
 ligious truth, I mean ; the mistakes he had 
 made, the difficulties he had surmounted, 
 in a way that brought us very close to 
 each other. It was beautiful to me to 
 know him as a friend, when before I had 
 only loved and reverenced him afar off. 
 
 And still, as aforetime, the scientific men 
 used to come to our house, and I, as lady 
 of it, had to dispense its hospitalities to 
 them, and I began to be able to take a 
 modest part in the conversation which 
 went on, and found myself listened to with 
 an attention which was quite strange, but 
 rather pleasant. And so, little by little, I 
 grew to feel my own place and responsi- 
 bility, and to learn that a life in which one 
 can minister to the comfort of others, 
 whilst gaining stores of knowledge for 
 oneself, is not a life to be despised.
 
 136 EGLANTINE. 
 
 Curious as it may seem, I began to go 
 a great deal more into company. Mrs. 
 Wear was the window through which I 
 looked into society. Joined with the kind- 
 liness and fine perception which made her 
 so valuable in sickness or trouble, she pos- 
 sessed the graceful manners and ready wit 
 of a woman of the world. She had seen a 
 great deal of life, and could make herself 
 at home everywhere. She was soon a fa- 
 vourite in our little Cove Rossington circle, 
 which she varied pleasantly enough with 
 guests of her own from the neighbouring 
 cathedral towns. Once a week she had 
 little receptions, at which her intimate 
 friends were always welcome. These re- 
 ceptions were quite a new institution at 
 Cove Rossington, and I don't think anyone 
 else could have made them so delightful 
 as Mrs. "Wear did. She was so bright and 
 kind to everyone. Whilst keeping herself 
 in the background, she contrived to infuse
 
 EGLANTINE. 137 
 
 spirit and life into her guests, bringing out 
 the best qualities of each, making all feel 
 that they were helping towards the com- 
 mon amusement. Some of the best con- 
 versation I have ever heard has been in 
 that little drawing-room of hers, when her 
 friends, bright, intelligent men of the 
 world, and my father's friends, acute, pro- 
 found men of science, have joined issue on 
 some debated subject. 
 
 She insisted upon my coming regularly 
 to these receptions. She said it was very 
 important that I should learn to rub off 
 the shyness which, now that I had no more 
 any beauty to give me assurance, was be- 
 coming very painful to me. In her kind, 
 but yet imperative manner, she made me 
 take part in the conversation, and would 
 not let me subside, as I would fain have 
 done, into some comfortable corner, there 
 to look on, taking no part. I learned to 
 like it in a quiet sort of way, though I felt
 
 138 EGLANTINE. 
 
 that society would never be my place. 
 Aunt Wear only laughed at me. She 
 said I did not know what place I might be 
 called upon to fill, or what duties to per- 
 form. And, indeed, she was right there, 
 though in quite a different way from what 
 she had expected ; for after a year or two 
 of this sort of life had given a little ease 
 to my manners, another change swept over 
 us, and poverty was added to the rest of 
 my experiences.
 
 139 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1VTY father, unmindful of the old proverb 
 -k" about the danger of putting too 
 many eggs into one basket, had invested 
 most of his income in the Bonnermouth 
 bank. My mother's, amounting to a hun- 
 dred and fifty pounds a year, was secured 
 to myself, under trustees. 
 
 The interest yielded by the Bonnermouth 
 bank was not excessive, and so, when from 
 time to time whispers reached us of the 
 unsafe nature of such investments, and 
 the dangers arising from exceptionally 
 high dividends, we did not think it need- 
 ful to trouble ourselves. Besides, my 
 father was not a man of business. He
 
 140 EGLANTINE. 
 
 never inquired into the money markets — 
 never knew what Stocks were worth, or 
 whether a panic was likely to take place ; 
 and as long as his interest came in regu- 
 larly, he never troubled himself about any- 
 thing else. 
 
 But one morning, when we came in to 
 breakfast, he found upon the table a letter 
 which informed him that the Bonnermouth 
 Bank had failed. 
 
 Quite failed — not merely stopped pay- 
 ment for a while. The whole of our little 
 principal there was lost, and the sole sup- 
 port left to us, my mother's income, would 
 most likely be required, sooner or later, to 
 meet the calls which would from time to 
 time be made upon the holders of the bank 
 shares. 
 
 Such losses seem very disastrous when 
 one reads of them in books, or hears of 
 them in connection with one's friends. But 
 really, to us, that morning's announcement,
 
 EGLANTINE. 141 
 
 which brought terror and distress into many 
 a north-country home, caused comparative- 
 ly little trouble. I say comparatively. Of 
 course it spoiled our breakfast, and gave 
 us matter for much grave deliberation, but 
 it did not uproot our very life, or make us 
 feel as if a terrible catastrophe had hap- 
 pened to us. Beyond the simple neces- 
 saries of life, my father was singularly in- 
 dependent of what money can buy. As for 
 myself, excepting the almost boundless 
 extravagance which Aunt Lois had allowed 
 in the matter of clean linen, I am sure few 
 of the luxuries even of a moderate income 
 had fallen to my share. 
 
 We talked the matter over by ourselves, 
 and when Mrs. Wear and Miss Fidger 
 came in during the day, we talked it over 
 again with them. The idea of keeping it 
 secret, as some sort of disgrace to us, 
 never entered our minds. We made no 
 more mystery of it than if the north wind
 
 142 EGLANTINE. 
 
 had carried off a few of our tiles, or one of 
 our chimney-pots ; and as for feeling that 
 our position would be lowered by the loss 
 of our money, I think we should have 
 thought that a position which could be 
 knocked over in that way, had never been 
 good for much. 
 
 Two-thirds of our income had been 
 swept away. The question was how to 
 reduce our expenditure within the remain- 
 ing third. Of course the carriage and 
 ponies were to be sold. The coach-house 
 and stables, which had separate access 
 from the rest of the premises, were to be 
 let ; the out-door man and two out of our 
 three women-servants, sent away. That 
 was about all we could think of. Our 
 table would have to be provided rather 
 more sparingly ; and our wines, of whose 
 quality my father had hitherto been a little 
 proud, must be of a less generous sort, or 
 make their appearance in smaller quanti- 
 ties.
 
 EGLANTINE. 143 
 
 I think that matter of the wine touched 
 my father more closely than anything else 
 connected with our retrenchments. Though 
 he was a very abstemious man himself, he 
 had a great pride in giving the best he 
 could to his friends. He had far more en- 
 joyment in offering a glass of good old 
 port to a professor, and seeing it duly ap- 
 preciated, than in drinking it himself. And 
 as a rule I have found that professors can 
 appreciate good old port, as well as they 
 can appreciate the differential calculus, or 
 the direction of motive forces. 
 
 There was quite a discussion in the 
 kitchen as to who should leave us, the ser- 
 vants all declaring they would rather stop 
 for no wages than leave a place where 
 they had been so comfortable. However, 
 as even the board of an additional person 
 would now be a serious item in our ex- 
 penditure, it was decided that Mercy, the 
 housemaid, who had come to us twelve
 
 144 EGLANTINE. 
 
 years before, to be trained by my Aunt 
 Lois, should remain, and I arranged with 
 her what share of the work I would take 
 into my own hands. She let me arrange 
 it, faithful creature, but she never let me 
 do a single turn of it, except under protest. 
 For weeks after the two other women had 
 gone she kept watch over me like a cat 
 over a mouse, and would spring out upon 
 me from unexpected corners, if she caught 
 me engaged upon anything but the merest 
 little trifles, which I had been accustomed 
 to attend to for my own amusement. And 
 Judson, our old out-door man, insisted 
 upon coming regularly once a week to do 
 the garden work, scorning even the sight 
 of a sixpence from us. For he said my 
 father had been a good friend to him, and 
 all he asked was leave to give us the 
 strength of his hands every Wednesday, 
 whilst heaven spared any to him. 
 
 That was many a year ago, and the
 
 EGLANTINE. 145 
 
 world, they say, has grown better and 
 wiser since. It is so good and so wise 
 now, that only last Summer, in the London 
 streets, I saw a strong, bright-faced lad of 
 sixteen ask payment for letting a sick lady 
 rest her hand on his shoulder for a second, 
 in alighting from her carriage. And he 
 asked it, too, without a touch of shame in 
 his wide-open eyes, evidently thinking that 
 to be paid for doing a momentary kindness, 
 nay, even to ash to be paid for doing- 
 it, was a perfectly good and noble thing. 
 We were more honourable at Cove Ros- 
 sington in those primitive days. 
 
 Of course it was soon known that my 
 father had been a serious loser by the 
 failure of the Bonnermouth Bank. There 
 was not at that time, at least not in our 
 village, the shrinking sensitiveness about 
 money losses which people seem to be 
 troubled with now-a-days. Debt was very 
 much looked down upon, to be sure. Peo- 
 
 vql. I. l
 
 146 EGLANTINE. 
 
 pie who let their accounts run on for more 
 than a year, or failed to pay their bills 
 after twice sending in, were regarded with 
 coldness ; but the mere fact of one's in- 
 come having suddenly diminished to half 
 or a third, was considered no warrant for 
 loss of respect. 
 
 We were not at all afraid of Cove Ross- 
 ington knowing our poverty. Position did 
 not depend upon the number of servants 
 we kept. We could open our own front 
 doors to callers, and wash up our own 
 breakfast things, without any conscious- 
 ness ; and therefore we were spared what 
 now seems to be the bitterest sting attend- 
 ing loss of money, shame and disgrace. 
 People came to see us just as usual. The 
 only instance of vulgarity which I remem- 
 ber in connection with our misfortune, was 
 the behaviour of a coal agent at Shag- 
 mouth, who formerly had put Esquire on 
 my father's letters, but who, after the
 
 EGLANTINE. 147 
 
 failure of the Bonnermouth Bank, invari- 
 ably addressed them to Mr. Hamnet Leslie. 
 But even this we survived. 
 
 Shy as I was, sensitive to the least 
 change of feeling in those about me, I 
 never dreamed of turning down side streets 
 or by-lanes to avoid people who had known 
 me in my prosperity. We talked of our 
 reverse of fortune with as much audacity 
 as people talk of a change in the weather 
 or their health. Except that on busy days 
 I had to do a little more with my own 
 hands, and that somebody else's horses and 
 carriages occupied the coach-house instead 
 of our own, I do not think we were vitally 
 affected by the loss of our three hundred a 
 year. 
 
 That was the last of the upheavals which 
 had come in such quick succession into my 
 life. After it came a long quiet stretch of 
 years, of which I have no story to tell. 
 More and more my father and I grew to 
 
 l2
 
 148 EGLANTINE. 
 
 each, other, I reaching up to his humility 
 and wisdom, he leaning on my younger 
 strength for the help he needed. It was 
 very sweet to me to be able to do so much 
 for him. No one else now would ever 
 want anything from me. I should be 
 dearest, best, to no one but him ; but so 
 long as all that was left to me might be 
 given to him, I could not be unhappy. 
 
 I never thought now about Hae Morri- 
 son's coming home. It could make no 
 difference to me. I was glad that he had 
 never known of my love. My pride would 
 have made me cut myself away from him 
 when I had no longer any beauty, and then 
 perhaps I should have become a bitter, 
 hard-spirited woman. It was not so now. 
 My dead past was laid away in the lavender 
 of remembrance. I used to take it out 
 and look at it often, as one might look at 
 something belonging to the dead ; but 
 Aunt Lois was not farther from me now,
 
 EGLANTINE. 149 
 
 with marble headstone and churchyard 
 grass between us, than was Eae Morrison 
 in the good ship Diver. 
 
 Yet he had given me the key to my life, 
 and for that I was thankful. There is 
 nothing better than the power to love, 
 even though its fulfilled sweetness never 
 comes in this life. For it is the atmo- 
 sphere which makes the soul capable of 
 receiving light, it is the subtle ether which 
 forms the communication between the 
 human and the divine. In it everything 
 that is good may grow ; and giving, it asks 
 for nothing again. 
 
 When I look back now, from the after- 
 noon years of my life, along the chain of 
 influences which have made me what I 
 am, — when I search for the rooting and 
 cherishing of those pleasant plants under 
 whose shade I rest now with thankfulness, 
 I pause at that long stretch of years from 
 twenty to three and thirty, when I lived
 
 150 EGLANTINE. 
 
 alone with my father, very dear to none 
 but him and little Tiny, — that long stretch 
 of years when to all but a few friends I 
 was an insignificant, disfigured woman, 
 having neither beauty nor brightness that 
 I should be desired. And I know that I 
 should never have won to the beauty which 
 does not pass away with youth, nor the 
 brightness which years do not touch, nor 
 the peace which nothing earthly can break, 
 if it had not been for that Easter morning 
 when I sat by my father in the chancel- 
 pew, and looked away through the window 
 where Monica should have been, to the 
 blue rippling distance where Rae Morrison's 
 ship was slowly passing out of sight.
 
 151 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 rpHE first tiling of vital importance 
 -*- which happened to us, as a people, 
 during those years, was the death of old 
 Lord Rossington. 
 
 It made great changes in that part of 
 the country. "We had been as thoroughly 
 at a standstill for forty years as any place 
 could possibly be — not from our own fault, 
 but simply because we could not help our- 
 selves. If no new houses were built, no 
 new people could come to the place, except 
 as the old inhabitants died out ; and, as 
 the old inhabitants would not die out, ex- 
 cept at very distant intervals, why, we
 
 152 EGLANTINE. 
 
 stayed as we were. One or two fishermen 
 were drowned occasionally ; but that only 
 set cottages at liberty, it did not make 
 room for any new-comers who could im- 
 prove us in a social point of view. 
 
 Whispers had been heard for some time 
 of coal and iron upon Lord Kossington's 
 next estate, Coley-Orton, about five miles 
 away ; and people did say he might have 
 become a millionaire, if he had been dis- 
 posed to risk a little of his hard cash, and 
 speculate in mining operations. But he 
 would never do it. The estate yielded 
 revenue enough as it was ; and his avari- 
 cious ways enabled him to lay up year by 
 year great sums for those whom his evil 
 ways had made shamefully dependent upon 
 him. He would not have the place ploughed 
 up, he said, and perhaps lose money by it ; 
 though if the coal ivas there 
 
 I think a little persuasion would have 
 made him turn the first sod. But another
 
 EGLANTINE. 153 
 
 kind of sod-turning was in store for him, 
 and be had to be buried in his estate in- 
 stead of digging treasure out of it. He 
 died very suddenly. Everybody went into 
 mourning, but no one was sorry for him ; 
 only Cove Rossington knew what it ought 
 to do when the lord of the manor died ; and 
 in matters of real good breeding we were 
 as wise as most people. 
 
 The new lord was a different person 
 altogether, quite a young man, nephew to 
 the old one, with a large family, and any 
 quantity of public spirit. I don't know 
 what wasn't to be done to the village when 
 he came into possession. We were to be 
 re-roofed, re-floored, papered, painted, and 
 entirely refitted — in fact, made a new place 
 of altogether ; and a new agent had actu- 
 ally come round to give notice of these im- 
 provements, when a fresh note of the 
 hammer of change astounded us. Mineral 
 had been struck on the Coley-Orton estate.
 
 154 EGLANTINE. 
 
 Quietly, for Lord Rossington did not want 
 the tiling much talked about until he knew 
 whether it would be a success, mining 
 engineers had been sent for, the ground 
 had been surveyed, operations started, a 
 shaft sunk, and coal found, with promise 
 of such quantities as would well repay any 
 amount of speculation. 
 
 The village improvements were stopped 
 then, as all available property was required 
 for carrying on the new project. And 
 with a flourish of trumpets that great 
 mining enterprise was begun which has 
 since changed the face of the country far 
 more unmistakeably than the smallpox 
 ever changed mine, and, I think I may 
 say, without any good results to anyone, 
 except the getting of money. 
 
 I need not tell, for everybody knows 
 now, how this mining fever spread, and 
 how soon Coley-Orton was changed from 
 a peaceful, smiling pasture-land, dotted
 
 EGLANTINE. 155- 
 
 over with cottages, farmsteadings, and 
 corn-fields, into a Gehenna of cinder-heaps 
 and hovels, inhabited by smutty men and 
 dirty women, and ragged, pitiful-looking 
 children. We were told that we ought to 
 be very thankful, that we were in the midst 
 of a splendid development of industry, 
 that our little fag-end of country was be- 
 coming the centre of a magnificent com- 
 mercial enterprise, and so on. Well, per- 
 haps we ought to have been ; all I can say 
 is, we were not. 
 
 Of course the mineral resources of the 
 neighbourhood brought a great accession 
 of population to it. There must be men 
 to work the mines, and agents to superin- 
 tend them, and engineers and surveyors to 
 overlook them. Within five years from 
 the first sinking of the shafts, quite a 
 little town had sprung up at Coley-Orton ; 
 and, as people who can afford to live any- 
 where else don't generally live in the im-
 
 ] 56 EGLANTINE. 
 
 mediate vicinity of a coal-pit, the clerks, 
 managers, and upper people belonging to 
 the works, settled themselves at Cove Ros- 
 sington, as soon as houses could be built 
 for them. 
 
 On Sundays and half-holidays we got 
 the benefit of the lower mining population 
 in the shape of hordes of black-handed, 
 keen-visaged colliers, who walked over, or 
 came on the tops of the omnibuses which 
 plied two or three times daily between 
 Cove Eossington and Limeport, in place of 
 the rumbling old coach, which trundled 
 there and back once a week, with a quiet 
 old lady or two inside it, in the pre-mine- 
 ral times. TVhat unpleasant-looking men 
 they were, and how we had to turn back 
 in the middle of our prettiest walks, for 
 fear of meeting them ! For had we not 
 heard of terrible things that happened in 
 the midland coal districts ? — and were we 
 not rapidly becoming a coal district too,
 
 EGLANTINE. 157 
 
 and therefore liable to all the contingencies 
 connected with such an honourable dis- 
 tinction ? 
 
 Of course, when coal and iron had been 
 discovered on the Rossington estate, every 
 owner of a bit of freehold land within a 
 dozen miles of it was in a state of feverish 
 excitement until it had been surveyed and 
 bored and turned upside down and inside 
 out in search of the precious mineral. 
 Sometimes the attempt was successful, and 
 then great was the jubilation and dinner- 
 giving, followed by setting up of carriages, 
 building of new mansions, dropping of 
 poor acquaintances, and all the other 
 attendants of sudden prosperity. 
 
 Oftener the attempt was unsuccessful, 
 and then we heard of embarrassments, 
 meetings of creditors, sales of valuable 
 plant, breaking up and dispersion of old- 
 established families, who had dwelt for 
 generations back in their comfortable
 
 158 EGLANTINE. 
 
 country houses round about Coley-Orton, 
 until tempted into the race for wealth, and 
 down-trodden in it. Now and then, too, we 
 heard of suicide committed by some wretch- 
 ed, over-driven adventurer, who could not 
 face the ruin to which his speculations had 
 brought him; or of terrible brawls and 
 wife-beatings amongst the colliers; or of 
 pit accidents, and mangled bodies being 
 brought up to be recognised by widows ; 
 or of fights in which death-blows had been 
 dealt ; until the big black cloud which, 
 from our house, we could always see brood- 
 ing over that part of the country, seemed 
 to me like the smoke of its torment ascend- 
 ing for ever and ever. 
 
 But still we were in a most advanced 
 state of prosperity ; there was no denying 
 that. True, our dear old-fashioned houses 
 were allowed to remain unpapered and un- 
 repaired, because public improvement had, 
 priest and Levite-like, passed us by on the
 
 EGLANTINE. 159 
 
 other side of the cliff, where clusters of 
 magnificent villa residences were being 
 built for the coal and iron people, who 
 could afford to pay any amount of rent. 
 But then, what villas they were, and how 
 they improved Lord Rossington's property, 
 and what a splendid revenue they yielded, 
 and how the estate would be enriched as, 
 one by one, the leases fell in, until the 
 whole of the south cliff land, worth fifty 
 times its former value, should be in his 
 hands again ! Indeed, we were thankful 
 enough to be let alone, lest a worse fate 
 should happen to us ; for threats were held 
 over our heads by the agent that, if we 
 complained or waxed impatient over dilapi- 
 dations, the dear old houses would be swept 
 away entirely, and rows of terraces built in 
 their place, which would yield a much 
 better rental. After that we held our 
 peace. 
 
 And with what supreme contempt these
 
 160 EGLANTINE. 
 
 marine villa people — at least, the wives 
 and daughters of them — used to look down 
 upon the primitive ways of us original Cove 
 Eossingtonians ! What glances of satirical 
 amusement they cast upon our honest hol- 
 lands and merinos, made after the fashion 
 of half-a-dozen seasons back ! For, to tell 
 the truth, our one dressmaker, Miss Man- 
 tegan, was as conservative in her patterns 
 as her politics. She stuck to her bell 
 sleeves as persistently as Parliament ever 
 did to its corn laws, and never abrogated 
 a cape, or annulled a collar, until feminine 
 opinion had driven a Eeform bill through 
 it, and voted it into the museum of anti- 
 quities. How they observed with patron- 
 ising wonder our innocent little social sim- 
 plicities, the almost pagan ignorance of 
 propriety with which we used to trot down 
 the street, carrying brown paper parcels, 
 or even baskets of eggs, in our hands ! 
 They would not have done such a thing
 
 EGLANTINE. 161 
 
 for the world. And on washing-days we 
 actually dusted our own parlours, and laid 
 our own dinner-tables, in the outraged 
 face of broad daylight, to say nothing of 
 drinking common wine and eating bread 
 and scrape, rather than run up bills with 
 our tradesmen which we knew we should 
 never be able to pay. 
 
 Had we really come out of Noah's Ark, 
 then, to do such ridiculous things ? Had 
 we no sense of what was due to public 
 decency? Did it never occur to us how 
 miserably far we lagged behind the rest of 
 the world, which had quite got rid of the 
 old-fashioned notion of paying as it went ? 
 What children we were, " pottering" along 
 with our weekly accounts and our out-of- 
 date newspapers, and our dame-schools, 
 and our ridiculous notions of honour and 
 honesty, whilst the rest of the world, up- 
 grown and wise, had got far ahead of any 
 of these things ? 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 EGLANTINE. 
 
 All we could do was to fold our hands 
 and retire into our own respectability. 
 Somehow we felt we were right, though 
 everybody said we were wrong. And we 
 one and all resolutely refused anything 
 like familiar intercourse with the hordes 
 of barbarians who had overrun our once 
 peaceful territory. I call them barbarians, 
 not because they continually ran into debt, 
 and ruined their tradesmen — that is not 
 barbarous at all — but because we heard, in 
 a roundabout sort of way, that they had 
 stigmatised us dwellers under the north 
 cliff as " natives," and that term, applied 
 by enterprising British colonists to the 
 original inhabitants of any country of which 
 they have taken possession, has a signifi- 
 cation the reverse of complimentary. In- 
 deed, I believe these coal and iron people 
 did look upon us as entirely children of 
 nature, and would gladly have treated us 
 as the English people treated the abori-
 
 EGLANTINE. 163 
 
 gines of Tasmania — namely, shut us up in 
 a comfortable house, under suitable re- 
 straint, and exhibited us as ethnological 
 curiosities. 
 
 Finally, a bill was introduced into Par- 
 liament, and passed, for the making of a 
 railroad from Limeport to Cove Rossing- 
 ton, by way of Coley-Orton and Shag- 
 mouth, so as to make the coal district 
 accessible both for land and sea traffic. 
 After that, we gave ourselves up. Public 
 feeling had become too strong for us. The 
 wave of modern civilization was upon us, 
 and we must just go like helpless drift- 
 wood or seaweed, wherever it was pleased 
 to carry us. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 /"\NE of the first effects of this " unex- 
 ^-^ ampled development of internal re- 
 sources," as the newspapers called it, was 
 a general rise in the price of everything — 
 a rather embarrassing effect to us unfortu- 
 nate people, whose incomes did not rise 
 proportionately. Nay, instead of rising, 
 fell; for call after call was made upon 
 those Bonnermouth bank- shares, and we 
 had to take the interest of my mother's 
 little property to meet our demands. We 
 did meet them honestly one by one, as 
 they came upon us, but no one knew how 
 we had to pinch and contrive to make 
 ends meet.
 
 EGLANTINE. 165 
 
 My father made what he could by 
 literary work. That was not much. The 
 interest he could command for his abstruse 
 scientific researches was very limited. A 
 novel which cost its writer only three or 
 four weeks labour, would have brought in 
 a better harvest than the folios of close, 
 careful calculation to which my father gave 
 his time for a whole year. I did what 
 I could, by making illustrations for 
 children's books, but somehow the London 
 publishers, who had been most courteous 
 to me when I only etched for amusement, 
 soon found out that I needed money now, 
 and bargained with me accordingly, so 
 that I toiled hard and got but little for my 
 pains. 
 
 I don't complain of this, for I know that 
 my productions had not a spark of genius, 
 and only an average amount of talent in 
 them. They were just neat, moderate, and 
 creditable of their kind, and I have no
 
 166 EGLANTINE. 
 
 doubt I got as much for them as they were 
 worth. Still I could oftentimes have wish- 
 ed, for my father's sake more than my own, 
 that that little had been more. 
 
 For indeed we were put to great straits 
 sometimes. I smile now to think of them, 
 though indeed they were perplexing enough 
 when they occurred. No more Christmas 
 puddings for us, made after the generous 
 old recipes, with their unlimited allowance 
 of currants and raisins. No more salmon 
 and cucumber on Whit Sunday, " let the 
 price be what it might." No more castel- 
 lated Easter jelly, the result of a whole 
 decanter full of our best sherry, and three 
 hours of my undivided time and attention, to 
 say nothing of subordinate ingredients. 
 No; what time I could spare now from 
 keeping the house and copying manuscript 
 for my father, had to be given to wood- 
 cutting and composition of pictures ; and if, 
 as the result of a month's hard work, I
 
 EGLANTINE. 167 
 
 received a couple of pounds from my 
 publisher, I thought myself very fortunate. 
 
 Mercy stayed with us all through. She 
 could have got any quantity of wages else- 
 where, for she was one of those tough, 
 steady, respectable servants of the old 
 school, who give an air of good-breeding to 
 any family which is able to possess them. 
 And the newly rich people on the other 
 cliff, who could not, with all their wealth, 
 buy grand old elm trees like ours for their 
 gardens, or the comfortable moss of cen- 
 turies' growth for their gingerbread Gothic 
 gables and chimneys, would fain have had 
 a servant with the genuine old ring of 
 antiquity about her, to give a sort of tone 
 to the over-freshness of all the rest of their 
 things. But Mercy refused their overtures 
 with scorn. 
 
 " I wouldn't live maid, ma'am, with none 
 of them there dust and cinder folks, not for 
 all the wage they could give me, and my
 
 168 EGLANTINE. 
 
 Sundays out whenever I chose to have 
 'em. IVe never lived with any but quali- 
 ty yet, and don't intend to demean myself 
 to them as don't know who they are, nor 
 where they corned from." 
 
 What would the dust and cinder folks 
 have said if they could have heard her ? 
 
 Mercy and I had to lay our heads to- 
 gether to reduce the household expendi- 
 ture to the lowest possible figure. What 
 a pride she had in making everything go 
 as far as it would ! How triumphantly 
 she used to show me the rich soup she 
 made out of nothing but bones and pot- 
 herbs, which once were fetched away from 
 our back door by the poor people of the 
 village ; but which those who called them- 
 selves poor people now, the ragged, grimy 
 miners and colliers who had drifted down 
 to us from Coley-Orton, would have 
 scorned to thank us for ! Indeed I think 
 the parable of Dives and Lazarus was some-
 
 EGLANTINE. 169 
 
 what reversed in those poverty-stricken yet 
 honourable days ; for the beggar's table 
 was more richly spread than ours, and if 
 he did not have the purple and fine linen, 
 which would have sorted rather curiously 
 with his smutty, unwashed skin, he had 
 at least the sumptuous faring every day 
 which was more to his taste. I am not 
 going beyond the truth when I say that we 
 three people lived on less than is earned by 
 many an artificer who, when want or 
 scarcity of work comes, unblushingly 
 holds out his cap to the public for an 
 alms. 
 
 I do not know whether the necessity to 
 economise hardens one's heart, or only 
 intensifies one's common sense. But cer- 
 tainly now, when a big, brawny iron or 
 coal worker, who has earned his three or 
 four pounds a week, and eaten the primest 
 of beef, and drunk the best of beer, and 
 lounged the half of his time away in the
 
 170 EGLANTINE. 
 
 public-house, comes to me for charity, I 
 feel iuclined to say to him — 
 
 " Go and do as I once did — cut your 
 coat according to your cloth ; count your 
 coals and dole out your sixpences ; turn 
 away from the sweet because you cannot 
 afford it, and drink water because it is 
 the only thing that costs you nothing. 
 Plant your own potatoes, till your own 
 ground. Do what you can for yourself, 
 and then, and not till then, ask an alms of 
 people who have kept themselves con- 
 tentedly on what was insufficient for your 
 luxuries. 
 
 For indeed we did now till our own 
 ground, and eat the fruit of our own 
 labour. Poor old Judson was dead. As 
 long as that strong right hand of his had 
 any cunning in it, he gave us one day a 
 week of its working power ; but death had 
 smitten it at last, and left us our own 
 gardening to do. We could not afford to
 
 EGLANTINE. 171 
 
 buy bedding-out plants ; and if we could 
 have bought them, we could not have 
 afforded to pay a man for putting them in, 
 so Mercy and I sowed cabbage and lettuce 
 instead, and we dug over a square piece at 
 the back of the garden, and planted it with 
 potatoes, which, when they were big enough, 
 Tiny helped me to ridge. 
 
 Tiny, or Tyne, as we called her when 
 she was no longer a little girl, had been 
 the joy and delight of my life through all 
 these years. I lived my own childhood 
 again in hers, and then my girlhood, as 
 the years gave her that roundness and 
 bloom which they had long ago taken from 
 me. How bonnie she looked, ridging those 
 potatoes. She was a tall, strongly-made 
 girl, with fair round arms and large hands, 
 that could wield a spade with quite as 
 much skill as they could bring out the 
 tones of a piano. And her eyes shone and 
 her cheeks glowed with the exercise, and
 
 172 EGLANTINE. 
 
 one might have thought, to look at her, 
 that the days of Nausicaa had come back, 
 only that INTausicaa, with all her washing of 
 linen, was never clever enough to ridge 
 potatoes. 
 
 It is hard to believe in the dawning 
 womanhood of those who have said their 
 little prayers at our knee, and whom we 
 have hushed to sleep with nursery rhymes. 
 Eglantine was nineteen now, a most dear 
 and pleasant friend to me, one with whom 
 I could walk hand in hand through nearly 
 all my world of thought. Yet the wings 
 of her soul were quite unfolded yet, and so 
 she was to me as a child, unconsciously 
 penetrating as was her insight into charac- 
 ter sometimes, and keen as was her sym- 
 pathy with all that touched my life. There 
 were few things outside the range of my 
 own closest personal experience which I 
 could not talk over with Tyne, and be sure 
 of intelligent companionship. And yet I
 
 EGLANTINE. 173 
 
 liad never laid aside the petting ways, the 
 charitable allowance for impetuosity, mis- 
 take, and wilfulness, which we accord to 
 children ; for in all these things Tyne was 
 indeed a child still. 
 
 And a child in her love of fun. With 
 a depth and earnestness about her which 
 sometimes startled me, she was as full of 
 tricks as a kitten. Not that she ever 
 played any of them upon me, for I think 
 she stood a little in awe of my years and 
 gravity, and had a notion that Auntie Dora 
 must not be meddled with like other peo- 
 ple. But she was the plague, though 
 the very dearly-beloved plague, of our 
 poor old Mercy's life. She would heap 
 salt round the wicks of that excellent 
 woman's dip candles, so that the light they 
 gave only served to make darkness visible ; 
 and not until Mercy came to me in dis- 
 tress, thinking that surely something must 
 be the matter with her eyes, and asked me
 
 174 EGLANTINE. 
 
 for an order for the Limeport Infirmary, 
 did Tyne confess that the suspected cata- 
 ract was entirely of her own making. She 
 would fill empty preserve-pots with sand 
 and gravel, tie them neatly down with 
 brown paper, write damson, currant, or 
 rhubarb upon them, and put them in the 
 front of Mercy's shelves, so that the poor 
 woman had to untie half-a-dozen, perhaps, 
 before she found anything fit to line a 
 pudding with. But then she made it up 
 in other ways. How patiently she would 
 sit by that kitchen fire, night after night, 
 hearing Mercy repeat the hundred and 
 nineteenth Psalm, which she was very 
 anxious to learn through by heart, so that 
 when she came to be an old woman — for 
 those salted candles had made her mistrust 
 her eyesight — she might have something 
 to think about and be comforted by ! What 
 hours she would spend reading aloud the 
 " Pilgrim's Progress," whilst Mercy mended
 
 EGLANTINE. 175 
 
 her stockings, or darned lier dresses ; for 
 now that she was the only one kept, she 
 had scant time for the reading which, in 
 onr better days, nsed to occupy many an 
 hour in the well-filled, comfortably-lighted 
 kitchen. Mercy did not lose so very much 
 by the teasing, after all. 
 
 One day Tyne went to her with a mes- 
 sage from me, to the effect that all the 
 empty bottles in the house were to be col- 
 lected and set out upon the kitchen table. 
 It was a busy morning, but the instinct of 
 obedience was strong in Mercy's nature, 
 and out came all the bottles from holes 
 and corners, where they had lain undis- 
 turbed for years. When I, innocently 
 enough, went into the kitchen to make a 
 pudding, there they stood, a great army of 
 them, arranged in battalions on the dresser, 
 and Mercy standing over them with a 
 slightly injured look. 
 
 "Why, Mercy, what have you been doing?"
 
 176 EGLANTINE. 
 
 " Obliging you, ma'am," said Mercy, 
 emphatically, " as I've always considered 
 it's my duty to." 
 
 A cold shiver ran through me as the 
 conviction was borne in upon my mind 
 that Mercy intended to " give warning ;" 
 but at that very moment in came Miss 
 Fidger — she never waited to knock or ring 
 — with a bottle-brush, a wash-leather, and 
 a basin of tea-leaves. 
 
 " So sorry, my dear Miss Dora — so very 
 sorry I could not find any more, but Miss 
 Tyne told me you wanted them this very 
 minute, so I just ran off with what I could 
 find on the spur of the moment ; for, you 
 know, since things have been so dear, I've 
 had to economise with tea, like everything 
 else. But, as far as they go, they are very 
 good, and you can't wash your bottles with 
 anything better. And then, Mercy, if you 
 just put in this bottle-brash after you've 
 given them a rinse round "
 
 EGLANTINE. 177 
 
 •' Oh ! ma'am," said Mercy, with exceed- 
 ing dignity, " if I'm to be taught to clean 
 bottles at my time of life, I think it's time 
 you looked out for some one else." 
 
 Suddenly a peal of laughter echoed 
 through the old kitchen, and turning I 
 beheld Tyne, with a world of merriment in 
 her bright girl-face, peeping at us through 
 the banisters. Then I remembered that 
 it was the first of April. The child had 
 been making fools of us all. Miss Fidger 
 enjoyed it, and took back her wash-leather 
 and bottle-brush with the greatest equan- 
 imity ; but Mercy was rather slow in com- 
 ing round, and did not allow herself to be 
 quite propitiated until she saw that I had 
 been as much imposed upon as herself. 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 T OOKING upon Tyne, then, in the 
 -" light of a child to be petted and 
 made allowances for, how strange it seem- 
 ed to me when one day, soon after she 
 and her mother returned from a visit to 
 Bonnermouth, where some of their family 
 lived, Mrs. Wear told me that her daughter 
 had there received and declined an offer of 
 marriage. 
 
 It was simply absurd. If anyone had 
 told me that the child had set up a shop, 
 or entered upon the management of a 
 coal-mine, or taken to platform-speaking, 
 I could not have been more surprised. I 
 think I must have laughed outright, only
 
 EGLANTINE. 179 
 
 there was that touch of anxiety in Mrs. 
 Wear's face which a mother feels when the 
 shadow of coming separation first hovers 
 between herself and her child. 
 
 But afterwards, when she had left me, 
 and I sat alone by the fire, thinking it all 
 over, I could sooner have cried. For it 
 reminded me so strangely of my own past. 
 I thought of that Easter eve when my 
 father told me of my first offer. I thought 
 of the hope before, the quiet sadness after- 
 wards. I wondered if Tyne had cared for 
 this young curate, this Mr. Grimwade, who 
 had wanted to make her his wife. Would 
 the putting away of his suit make any 
 difference to her, as the putting away of 
 another suit had once made such a great 
 difference to me ? Mrs. Wear had said 
 nothing about that — only that the offer 
 had been made and declined. 
 
 They had been at Bonnermouth six 
 weeks, long enough for a passionate, im- 
 
 n2
 
 180 EGLANTINE. 
 
 pulsive girl like Tyne to lose her heart, or 
 have it deeply impressed. And I was not 
 quite sure that the mother understood 
 her daughter's nature. Mrs. Wear was 
 one of those bright, intelligent women of 
 society whose sympathies are large, but 
 not profound. She was quick to appre- 
 hend, but slow to comprehend. There 
 were heights and depths in Tyne's charac- 
 ter which she could not reach or fathom, 
 and perhaps she was coming upon some of 
 them now. 
 
 For a long time that night I sat and 
 thought about it all. I would fain have 
 the child shielded from trouble such as had 
 come into my own life. The years of my 
 solitariness had been good years, precious 
 years ; but I would not like Tyne to walk 
 alone, as I had walked, even to win the 
 peace which I had won. For the fire and 
 stroke which bring wrought iron to its full 
 strength, shiver the crystal vessel into
 
 EGLANTINE. 181 
 
 fragments. I was full of fears for the 
 child. 
 
 Or, if her heart had been untouched, 
 would her vanity be quickened into life ? 
 Would this new consciousness of power 
 to attract make her coquettish and self- 
 confident ? Some difference it must make, 
 I was sure. She could never again be 
 just the same to me as she had been be- 
 fore she went to Bonnermouth. I longed 
 to go and put my arms round her, and 
 look into her great deep, honest eyes, and 
 know what it all meant. 
 
 I soon had the chance of doing that. Tyne 
 came next day, to help me to plant some 
 cabbages. I was prepared to receive her 
 with a vague respect, consequent upon the 
 experience through which she had passed. 
 I expected to find some indefinable change 
 in voice or manner, some little touch of 
 the dignity of dawning womanhood, just a 
 flake or two of the silver light which love's
 
 182 EGLANTINE. 
 
 wing lets fall as it passes, even if un- 
 noticed, across a young girl's path. 
 
 But Tyne came with nothing like silver 
 flakes hovering about her — only her usual 
 gingham gardening-dress, with a pair of 
 wash-leather gloves sticking out of her 
 pocket. And the energetic industry with 
 which she began at once to make little 
 mud puddles for the cabbage-plants to be 
 put into, convinced me that her heart was 
 quite untouched. The mischief, if any, 
 was all on Mr. Grimwade's side. 
 
 Then she told me about her visit to 
 Bonnermouth, and how nice her new pink 
 tarlatan dress looked, and how she had 
 made her old black net prettier than ever 
 with loops and trimmings of blue ribbon, 
 and what a lot of light kid gloves she had 
 got through, for she had been to so many 
 balls, and almost everybody had asked her 
 to dance. At which I did not wonder, 
 though I had never been to a ball in my
 
 EGLANTINE. 183 
 
 life, and had not the least idea what it was 
 like. 
 
 Then she went on to tell me about the 
 suppers, and the creams, and the ices, and 
 all the rest of the things — for Tyne had a 
 genius for cooking, and used to delight in 
 copying or inventing new dishes. And, 
 after the suppers, came a description of 
 the people who had been to the parties, 
 amongst them Mr. Grimwade, at the men- 
 tion of whose name I preserved a judicious 
 silence. Tyne should tell me whatever 
 she had to tell in her own way. I would 
 not seem to know anything beforehand. 
 
 It came out in the simplest way. No 
 need for me to have vexed myself over it 
 the night before. Tyne's first offer had 
 not even stirred a ripple upon the clear 
 waters of her peace. 
 
 " Somehow he always turned up wher- 
 ever we went, and at last he said he should 
 like to marry me. Wasn't it curious, Aunt 
 Dora ? I told him I didn't know anything
 
 184 EGLANTINE. 
 
 about it, and so he had better speak to 
 mamma, and the next day we came away. 
 It was rather provoking, because there 
 was to have been such a nice dance in the 
 evening, and I had my dress all ready. If 
 it hadn't been for having you to come back 
 to, I think I should have been vexed ; but 
 you're as good as half-a-dozen parties any 
 day." 
 
 And Tyne, jumping over the cabbage- 
 bed to give me a kiss, very nearly upset 
 me into a row of little puddles which she 
 had been making for the young plants. I 
 was just regaining my balance, when, look- 
 ing round, we espied two ladies coming up 
 the garden path. 
 
 They were Mrs. Ullathorne and her 
 daughter, coming to return the call of 
 ceremony which I had made upon them 
 the week before. But as Mrs. Ullathorne 
 was destined to become an important 
 4 'quantity" in my story, I must account 
 for her appearance in a separate chapter.
 
 185 
 
 CHAPTEB XVI. 
 
 rriO do this properly I must go back a 
 -*■ little way. 
 
 As soon as Lord Rossington found that 
 the pits on his Coley-Orton estate were 
 likely to yield a large revenue, he deter- 
 mined to build a new mansion, in place of 
 the grey, moss-grown, picturesque castle, 
 beautiful for situation, but dreadfully in- 
 convenient for a wife and family, which 
 formed such an imposing object among 
 the fir- woods on the top of the cliff. 
 
 The old castle, however, was not to be 
 pulled down or disturbed in any way, for 
 its keep was a fine specimen of Norman 
 architecture, and there was much historic
 
 186 EGLANTINE. 
 
 interest connected with the place, which a 
 man of cultivation, like our new lord, was 
 well able to appreciate. An entirely new 
 mansion was to be built about half a mile 
 further inland, a marvel of luxury and 
 magnificence ; and when it was finished, 
 things were to be kept up once more in 
 the good old Rossington style — comings- 
 of-age celebrated properly, oxen roasted 
 whole at christenings and weddings, dances 
 for the tenantry, balls for the county fami- 
 lies. Lord Rossington would bring his 
 wife and children down to the place, and 
 we should once more have somebody to be 
 proud of at the castle. 
 
 The building was begun. When it had 
 been in progress about two years, the ar- 
 chitect who had charge of it appointed a 
 gentleman to superintend the works, and 
 this gentleman, for convenience, took a 
 furnished house at Cove Rossington. 
 
 His name was Surbiton. He was a
 
 EGLANTINE. 187 
 
 middle-aged, perhaps rather elderly, man, 
 who looked as if some one took a great 
 deal of care of him. At any rate, there 
 was that hesitancy and want of assurance 
 about his manners which people acquire 
 who are very much looked after. He was, 
 as we heard beforehand, a widower with 
 no family, and therefore we were rather 
 surprised when he took a large furnished 
 house in one of the new terraces. Such a 
 step was accounted for very soon, though, 
 by the fact that his widowed sister and her 
 two children lived with him. This widow- 
 ed sister was Mrs. Ullathorne. Her daugh- 
 ter was a grown-up young lady, and the 
 son, Ted, a lad of nineteen or twenty, was 
 studying at one of the universities. 
 
 Of course Mr. Surbiton, being, as one 
 might say, on Lord Rossington's own pri- 
 vate staff, and having no connection with 
 the obnoxious coal and iron which were 
 such an offence to our prejudices, we ladies
 
 188 EGLANTINE. 
 
 of the North Cliff called upon his sister, 
 whom we found to be an affable, brilliant 
 woman of the world — a woman who had 
 evidently seen a great deal of society, and 
 could make a considerable figure in it. 
 
 I suppose she would be what is called 
 fascinating. She was the sort of woman 
 that gentlemen like, and I have often 
 noticed that, in proportion as women are 
 liked by men, they are disliked by their 
 own sex. This, however, did not appear 
 to be the case with Mrs. Ullathorne, for 
 she at once became popular in our little 
 female community, and would make her- 
 self as agreeable at an afternoon tea, 
 composed entirely of women, as in the 
 most crowded evening assembly. To say 
 that her smiles were quite as brilliant, and 
 her manners quite as fascinating, would 
 perhaps be saying too much ; but still she 
 was always pleasant to women, and women 
 liked her accordingly.
 
 EGLANTINE. 189 
 
 I had met her two or three times — 
 once at Mrs. Wear's weekly receptions, 
 and again at an evening party, which Mrs. 
 Collinson, the wife of a solicitor, onr parish 
 churchwarden, gave. But on both occa- 
 sions there had been many people moving 
 about, and I had not obtained more than a 
 passing smile and glance from her when 
 introduced. I think her stylishness rather 
 awed me. I cannot help feeling subdued 
 by a dress that has the sign-manual of 
 Paris finish upon it ; and when the man- 
 ners which accompany the dress have the 
 Paris finish too, I give in directly, and 
 sink into the silent admiration which man- 
 ners and millinery produce in a well-regu- 
 lated mind. So that up to the time when, 
 turning round from my puddles and cab- 
 bage-plants, I beheld Mrs. Ullathorne and 
 her daughter, in all the gracefulness of 
 visiting costume, coming up our garden- 
 path, I had scarcely spoken half a dozen
 
 190 EGLANTINE. 
 
 words to her, having been unfortunate 
 enough to call upon her when she was 
 out. 
 
 But this was a pleasant visit, notwith- 
 standing. Of course we had to make our 
 appearance just as we were, having already 
 been seen in our gardening dress; but 
 Mrs. Ullathorne had that charming tact 
 which passes over such little contretemps 
 with grace, even taking advantage of them 
 for the establishing of a pleasanter, more 
 familiar intercourse. She expressed her- 
 self delighted with my homely ways, said 
 there was nothing she respected so much 
 as independence of conventionalities, and, 
 in fact, made me feel that I had raised my- 
 self rather than otherwise in her estima- 
 tion by having been found planting young 
 cabbage-plants in the back-garden. 
 
 The conversation flowed on without a 
 break. Mrs. Ullathorne was never at a 
 loss for anything to say. She made me
 
 EGLANTINE. 191 
 
 feel at home with her at once by giving 
 me to understand that my thoughts and 
 opinions were just the same as those at 
 which she had herself arrived — at least, if 
 they were not just the same, she could 
 very easily bring herself to receive them. 
 This sort of smoothness and adaptability 
 in a woman is very pleasant, at any rate in 
 morning calls. It oils the wheels of social 
 intercourse, and helps the orthodox quarter 
 of an hour to a successful ending. Of 
 course one may have too much of it, as of 
 everything else; but as Mrs. Ullathorne 
 possessed it, it was perfection. 
 
 I found myself talking to her as if I had 
 known her for years, and — which was 
 perhaps rather premature — giving my 
 opinion of people and ways in modern 
 Cove Kossington with equal freedom. I 
 believe one thing which led me to do this 
 was her own evident contempt for the coal 
 and iron people on the other side of the Clin 2 .
 
 192 EGLANTINE. 
 
 Considering that we had been stigmatised 
 by them as natives and aborigines, it was 
 scarcely in human nature to resist taking 
 up a stone to cast at them ; and one or two 
 disgraceful failures which had occurred 
 amongst them of late formed very conveni- 
 ent stones to cast. Because, whatever else 
 could be said of us old stagers on the 
 North Cliff, it certainly could not be said 
 that we shirked paying our debts. 
 
 Mrs. Ullathorne quite agreed with me. 
 There was nothing which she despised so 
 much as mushroom wealth, except the 
 coarseness of manners which invariably 
 accompanied it. She owned frankly that 
 she was not a rich woman herself, and 
 that she had never been brought up to 
 care for riches; which at once formed 
 another point of sympathy between us, 
 and gave additional sharpness to the little 
 arrows of spite which we shot at our oppo- 
 site neighbours.
 
 EGLANTINE. 193 
 
 Incidentally she told me a good deal 
 about herself. She had been a widow for 
 ten years, and during most of that time 
 had lived at Nice with her daughter, 
 whose name was Birdie, whilst her son 
 was at school in England. That accounted 
 for the pretty foreign air about her dress 
 and manners, and the almost childlike 
 frankness with which she at once made me 
 welcome to the events of her life. She 
 had got the English reserve rubbed off ; 
 and then the different people and places 
 she had seen during her husband's life — 
 he had been a surveyor of railroads on 
 the Continent — had given her the enviable 
 capacity of being at home anywhere. To 
 me, whose tastes had always been of the 
 hermit crab and oyster kind, as regards 
 locomotion, this cosmopolitan ease was 
 very delightful. 
 
 So that, upon the whole, I may say I 
 enjoyed the call, especially as Tyne took 
 
 vol. i. • o
 
 194 EGLANTINE. 
 
 Birdie off my hands, leaving me at liberty 
 to be charmed by Mrs. Ullathorne. I 
 don't think I should have made much out 
 of Birdie. She was gushing, and I can't 
 bear gushing girls ; and she had a little of 
 the blue-sash-and-pinafore style about her, 
 which did not accord with the crow's-feet 
 already beginning to show themselves at 
 the corners of her eyes. Sometimes she 
 looked almost as old as her mother, though 
 I had not yet the least idea how old that 
 might be. 
 
 When Mrs. Ullathorne had gone, I asked 
 myself whether I liked her, and was 
 scarcely able to answer the question. I 
 do not profess to be a judge of character, 
 but I generally have a sort of instinct 
 which tells me when I may trust people. 
 I have never found it fail me yet, though 
 many and many a time I have had to 
 change my opinion of acquaintances whom 
 at first I found very pleasant. When I
 
 EGLANTINE. 195 
 
 began to think over the very little I had 
 seen of Mrs. Ullathorne, I found just a 
 residuum of doubt lingering at the bottom 
 of my reflections, and I reserved judgment 
 until that should have had time to work 
 itself off. She was a different style of 
 woman from any I had ever met before. 
 She had something of Mrs. "Wear's bright- 
 ness and pleasantness about her ; but when 
 I tried to represent her to myself as what 
 Mrs. "Wear had been to us, a companion 
 for trouble and sickness, she seemed to 
 dissolve and pass off in graceful vapour. 
 I could not realise her as a nurse at all, 
 or as a friend to put on an apron and help 
 you. And she had said some very nice 
 things — things that indicated feeling and 
 aspiration ; but somehow they, too, had an 
 air of Paris millinery about them. They 
 seemed to belong to her as her exquisite 
 manners and her pretty morning dress did. 
 They could be put off and laid aside, with- 
 
 o2
 
 196 EGLANTINE. 
 
 out affecting the real woman. And yet 
 she was so very pleasant. 
 
 I think I received a rather uncomfortable 
 shake a few days after — a shake which 
 sent the residuum all up again, and made 
 my reflections very muddy indeed. Mrs. 
 Collinson had friends on the South Cliff, 
 amongst the newly-rich people, and these 
 friends happened to be calling upon her 
 one day when Tyne and I went in. They 
 were in raptures about Mrs. Ullathorne. 
 She was so bright, so charming. She had 
 taken them into her confidence at once. 
 She had expressed such a desire to be in- 
 timate with them, and had begged them 
 to go in and see her whenever they liked. 
 She was always so glad of a little pleasant, 
 sensible society. 
 
 " Which both my husband and me 
 thought was very good of her," said Mrs. 
 Guttridge, " and us not to call grand folks, 
 because I always say to him, Benjamin, I
 
 EGLANTINE. 197 
 
 say, thank goodness we've got plenty to do 
 with ; but I'll never trouble myself with 
 them stuck-up ways. If people like to 
 come and see us, they're welcome in a plain 
 way, except when we give a real party, and 
 then I always do it as good as it can be 
 done for money. And Mrs. Ullathorne 
 said that was just what she liked herself, 
 only those stuck-up people on the other 
 
 side " 
 
 And here Mrs. Guttridge came to a stand, 
 feeling that Mrs. Ullathorne's opinions 
 would scarcely bear to be repeated in pre- 
 sence of two of the North Cliff people, yet 
 not having that lady's exquisite tact in 
 retreating and covering a false position. 
 Of course we all rushed to the rescue, and 
 brought her out of her awkward position 
 with a battalion of smiles and well-bred 
 remarks, which showed, or seemed to show, 
 that we had noticed nothing at all. After 
 a little floundering she recovered her feet.
 
 198 EGLANTINE. 
 
 " I'm sure I meant no offence. It was 
 only her own words, and I told her that 
 she was to make herself welcome to come 
 in whenever she liked, because there's 
 always something in the pantry for a friend, 
 and I mean to ask her to the party when 
 we give it at Christmas. I'm not a person 
 that wants to keep myself to myself, not at 
 least since Benjamin had it to do with." 
 
 And then Mrs. Guttridge proceeded to 
 give Mrs. Collinson the names of the rest 
 of the people whom she intended to ask 
 to the party, quite unconscious that the 
 remarks might be embarrassing to Tyne 
 and myself, who did not happen to be on 
 her visiting list. Mrs. Collinson changed 
 the conversation as soon as possible, and 
 at a convenient season we came away. 
 
 But I felt very uncomfortable about Mrs. 
 Ullathorne.
 
 199 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 1 TISS FIDGER determined to ask the 
 ■*■*-*- new-comers to tea. 
 
 " Just muffins, you know, my dear, and 
 perhaps a glass of wine and a biscuit later 
 in the evening," she said, when she came to 
 bespeak my company on the occasion, 
 " and nobody but yourself. I told her it 
 was not in my way to make anything of a 
 fuss, and she replied directly that there was 
 nothing she enjoyed so much as a quiet 
 evening with any of us at this side. You 
 see, my dear, she knows what real good 
 
 manners are." 
 
 Mrs. Guttridge's quotation about the 
 " stuck-up people" was choking me very
 
 200 EGLANTINE. 
 
 much, but I determined to keep it down, 
 and I only said that, judging from Mrs. 
 Ullathorne's air of style and fashion, I 
 should not have thought very quiet even- 
 ings would be much to her taste. 
 
 " Oh ! but you misunderstand her, Dora, 
 my dear, you quite misunderstand her. I 
 assure you she is really a delightful woman. 
 I want you to become intimate with her, 
 for she falls so pleasantly into our funny 
 old-fashioned ways. And they are old- 
 fashioned, Dora, however much we may be 
 attached to them. I don't suppose there 
 is another place in England where people 
 live so much out of the world as we do." 
 
 "No ; nor where they pay their debts so 
 punctually, and mind their own business," 
 I replied, rather tartly ; for another family 
 had just disappeared from Cove Rossing- 
 ton, leaving half a dozen tradesmen in the 
 lurch. " It is better to live honestly out of 
 the world, than dishonestly in it."
 
 EGLANTINE. 201 
 
 " Yes/' said Miss Fidger ; " but the Ulla- 
 thornes are not that sort of people. You 
 know they have nothing to do with the 
 coal-pits, and don't make any pretensions 
 to wealth, though there is such a decidedly 
 upper-class air about them. I think we 
 shall find them quite an acquisition to the 
 place. And they are so exceedingly de- 
 sirous to be friendly. Six o'clock tea, my 
 dear, but do come a little earlier, if you 
 can. I should like to have you with me 
 when they arrive." 
 
 So I put on my visiting black silk, and 
 repaired to the muffin party, in time to 
 save Miss Fidger the trial of receiving the 
 strangers alone. 
 
 I could see she was a little bit nervous 
 at the prospect. She was, for a person of 
 her common sense and independence, un- 
 usually anxious to make a favourable im- 
 pression. She was wandering round the 
 cosy little drawing-room, altering the posi-
 
 202 EGLANTINE. 
 
 tion of almost everything in it, trying 
 where the four wax candles would produce 
 the best effect, bringing out her choice 
 little bits of china into view, putting the 
 Indian curiosities where they might assert 
 most unmistakably that she had connec- 
 tions in the Company's service. 
 
 " I'm so glad you are come, my dear. I 
 began to be quite afraid the Ullathornes 
 would get here first, and I just felt a little 
 bit uneasy. You know it makes such a 
 difference, being fresh people in the place. 
 And I thought you would help me to touch 
 up the room here and there. It really is 
 very old-fashioned, is it not, when one 
 comes to look at it ?" 
 
 " In the light of people who have lived 
 most of their lives on the Continent, per- 
 haps it is," I replied, " but in our light 
 everything that it ought to be. And I 
 suppose it is best to look at our own 
 things in the light that naturally belongs 
 to them."
 
 EGLANTINE. 203" 
 
 " Dora, my dear, you are becoming al- 
 most bitter. And they really are very nice 
 people. I only want to make the room 
 look a little bit more modern. Don't you 
 think if I put one candle on the top of 
 the corner cupboard, it would light up my 
 dear father's portrait nicely, besides making 
 the room look larger ; and if I put some 
 of this old china upon the centre table, and 
 if " 
 
 " And if you left everything exactly as it 
 is, Miss Fidger, it would be just as it ought 
 to be, and you would be a great deal more 
 comfortable." 
 
 "Well, my dear, I can't deny about 
 being more comfortable, for the centre 
 table is a dreadfully unsafe place for my 
 grandfather's lovely little cups, but Mrs. 
 Ullathorne told me she adored old china 
 so. I thought she would like to have a 
 few really good pieces in her sight." 
 
 Curious ; for at our house she had said
 
 204 EGLANTINE. 
 
 she did not care a fig for Dresden, mouse 
 or egg shell, hut she positively worshipped 
 splendid old brown leather folios, like those 
 on the bottom shelf of my father's book- 
 case. Well ; we should know her tastes 
 better by-and-by, and perhaps it would be 
 an advantage to have objects for adoration 
 and worship at the houses of her different 
 friends. 
 
 " At any rate," I said, "you will be 
 obliged to leave everything just as it is 
 now, for I am sure they are coming." 
 
 And so they were. There was a rustle 
 of silks in the narrow little entrance. Miss 
 Fidger snatched up her knitting. I began 
 counting the stitches of my lace work as if 
 I had been doing nothing else for an hour 
 past, and so we received the guests with 
 that composure which is the essence of 
 good breeding. 
 
 It was to be quite a friendly evening, yet 
 somehow Mrs. Ullathorne and her daugh-
 
 EGLANTINE. 205 
 
 ter brought an atmosphere of fashion 
 into Miss Fidger's modest drawing-room, 
 which rather smothered one's ideas of 
 friendliness. Perhaps Mr. Surbiton's 
 sister appeared every evening in the bosom 
 of her own family with pink roses in her 
 hair, a low cut dress with a long train, and 
 a quantity of black lace elegantly draped 
 about her. Also floating ball-room gauzes 
 and blue ribbons might be the proper 
 accompaniments of Birdie's blond pretti- 
 ness. But in the simple minds of my 
 hostess and myself, such splendours were 
 only associated with Court presentations or 
 dinner parties at Rossington Castle, and 
 we felt crushed under a sense of too much 
 honour put upon us. Zillah, Miss Fidger's 
 maid, when she brought in the tea 
 and muffins, could not help looking very 
 hard at both of the ladies, which I think 
 they noticed, for they exchanged smiles 
 with a pretty air of amusement, which I
 
 206 EGLANTINE. 
 
 am quite sure our conversation at that 
 moment was not calculated to produce. 
 Of course Miss Fidger and I both appeared 
 as much at home as if trains and blue 
 gauzes had been the daily belongings of 
 our lives. 
 
 But still, as I said before, they were de- 
 lightfully pleasant people. Mrs. Ullathorne 
 went into ecstasies over the egg shell 
 china, explaining to me that it was quite a 
 different kind she had meant when ex- 
 pressing her indifference a few days before. 
 Birdie went into equal ecstasies over some 
 ginger biscuits, which were brought in on a 
 dainty old willow-pattern plate with an 
 open work border. And when Miss Fidger, 
 in whose nature there was no concealment, 
 stated that she had made them herself that 
 very morning, and had put in an extra 
 quantity of butter, in order that she might 
 be quite sure of their turning out well, 
 Birdie's enthusiasm knew no bounds. She
 
 EGLANTINE. 207 
 
 insisted upon having the recipe copied for 
 her. She vowed that she would have a 
 holland apron and bib and make some 
 biscuits herself, the very next day. After 
 that she nestled up to Miss Fidger's side 
 with the most bewitching mixture of 
 timidity and confidence, whilst the delight- 
 ed little woman went into all the mysteries 
 of confectionery, diving into one old red- 
 covered recipe book after another, in search 
 of cakes, biscuits, jellies, creams, fairy 
 butter, and all sorts of nice things. 
 
 " Oh, how delicious !" said Birdie, clasp- 
 ing her hands. " I had no idea they were 
 made in that way. Do you know I am 
 such a dreadfully ignorant little thing? 
 Don't tell anyone," and she lowered her 
 voice to a pretty whisper, "but I didn't a 
 bit know what bread was made of, until I 
 asked cook the other day. Isn't it stupid 
 to be such a goose ? But you know, they 
 don't teach you anything about these
 
 208 EGLANTINE. 
 
 things at the French schools, and mamma 
 never mnch cared for me to learn." 
 
 " Oh, my dear," said Miss Eidger, who 
 had old-fashioned notions about female 
 education, " you ought to know, because if 
 you ever have a home of your own " 
 
 " Oh, yes !" and Birdie blushed and 
 tossed her head. " It's ever so stupid not 
 to know. I do wish you would teach me. 
 Now if I were to bring an apron and all 
 the rest of the things to-morrow, would you 
 show me how to make something, some- 
 thing not very hard, you know, and that 
 would soon get baked, so that I could 
 carry it home with me ? Now do say yes." 
 
 Of course Miss Fidger did say yes, with 
 all the good-will in the world. She was 
 a dear lover of housekeeping, and many a 
 confabulation had she and Aunt Lois had 
 in the good old days over creams and jellies. 
 Not that her housekeeping could ever be 
 compared with my aunt's, for it was like
 
 EGLANTINE. 209 
 
 everything else that Miss Fidger did, suc- 
 cessful more by good luck than good man- 
 agement ; but still she loved it, and a new 
 recipe was as precious to her as a new 
 pattern of wool-work to a school girl. So 
 a time was fixed, and Birdie clapped her 
 hands with delight, Mrs. Ullathorne beam- 
 ing upon her with maternal satisfaction. 
 
 I now saw Mrs. Ullathorne for the first 
 time, surrounded by the amenities of home 
 and social life. I was much puzzled what 
 to make of her. Her age was a problem 
 which completely baffled me. She was 
 one of those fair, slender, elegant women 
 who never grow legitimately old, retaining 
 at fifty the graceful juvenility which makes 
 one quite at a loss how to behave to them. 
 Compared with Miss Fidger, who, since I 
 remembered her, had rejoiced in the same 
 pretty little grey curls, peeping out from 
 under the same pretty little lace cap, Mrs. 
 TJllathorne seemed a mere girl, and yet 
 
 VOL. i. p
 
 210 EGLANTINE. 
 
 there could not have been much difference 
 between them, for Birdie, who was her 
 very own daughter, had seen at least five 
 and twenty Summers, and might probably 
 have seen several more, judging from the 
 occasional touches of experienced worldli- 
 ness which I began to discover under her 
 pretty childish ways. 
 
 Mrs. Ullathorne engaged me in quite a 
 different style of conversation. She cer- 
 tainly was a woman of great intelligence 
 and tact. I felt like a child in her pre- 
 sence, and yet she took such a lively 
 interest in my remarks, and evidently 
 wished me to feel that she was enjoying 
 what I said. Perhaps knowing my father 
 by repute as a man of distinguished scien- 
 tific attainments, and myself as a plain, 
 elderly young person, old-fashionedly 
 dressed, and deeply pitted with the small- 
 pox, she inferred that a due mixture of 
 the intellectual and benevolent in our
 
 EGLANTINE. 211 
 
 social intercourse would be likely to suit 
 me best. Accordingly we touched upon 
 books, politics, literature, extended our 
 finger-tips to marine botany, enlarged upon 
 the advantages of a well -stored mind, then 
 talked about tract districts, and mentioned 
 cases of distress, of which, alas ! there 
 were plenty now in Cove Rossington. 
 Finally we came to religious subjects. 
 
 By religious subjects, I mean things 
 connected with church-going, and the per- 
 formance of outward observances. Little 
 as I knew her, I felt already that it would 
 be as impossible to talk to Mrs. Ulla- 
 thorne about religion, in its true meaning, 
 as to talk of colours to a blind man, or 
 music to one whose experience had been 
 confined to a penny trumpet. She was a 
 woman who seemed to be made entirely 
 for this world, and would always be a 
 foreigner among things that could not be 
 
 seen and heard by one's outward senses. 
 
 p2
 
 212 EGLANTINE. 
 
 I soon found, however, that she considered 
 herself to have very decided religious 
 views. As I said before, we at Cove Ross- 
 ington then knew little of church parties. 
 We had never been blessed with a rector 
 that belonged to any party at all, except 
 in politics, or who did anything for us 
 beyond reading the prayers through at 
 proper times, and performing the offices 
 connected with his calling. Of religious 
 teaching, I think I may safely say we 
 never got any, except what we gathered up 
 from our own experience. Mrs. Ulla- 
 thorne had evidently been much more for- 
 tunate. 
 
 "You know, dear Miss Leslie, I am 
 positively shocked at the way that lovely 
 old church of yours is managed. Of 
 course where a clergyman is non-resident, 
 one does not look for perfection, but 
 common decency should always be ob- 
 served."
 
 EGLANTINE. 213 
 
 "Indeed it should," I replied; "and 1 
 thought the sexton was always very par- 
 ticular in dusting it. He is a remarkably 
 clean man." 
 
 " Oh ! yes, it is clean enough, so far as 
 that goes ; but you do not catch my mean- 
 ing. You know, I have always been 
 accustomed to see things done so different- 
 ly. At Nice we used to take such pains 
 with our service — it used to be a perfect 
 model. Now here I am positively dis- 
 tressed — it is so wretchedly bald." 
 
 " Oh ! Mrs. Ullathorne, we don't bawl, 
 I assure you," I said, shocked at such an 
 imputation upon our good manners, not to 
 say reverence. "I am sure we repeat the 
 responses as quietly as possible. I never 
 saw or heard anything in the church that 
 was not perfectly proper." 
 
 Mrs. Ullathorne looked at me with pity. 
 Surely we of the North Cliff were a feeble 
 folk, needing any quantity of allowance to
 
 214 EGLANTINE. 
 
 be made for us. She explained to me, as 
 clearly as she could, that what she referred 
 to was not anything connected with the 
 undue raising of our voices, but what she 
 might term an almost indecorous want of 
 pomp and ceremony in the conducting of 
 the service. 
 
 " JSTot a syllable intoned, one might think 
 we were in a conventicle or a meeting- 
 house. You know, my dear Miss Leslie, 
 there is a degree of respect with which 
 public worship ought always to be con- 
 ducted." 
 
 I was happy to be able to agree with 
 her there ; but impertinent enough to add 
 that I thought we had attained to it. 
 
 " I am sorry I cannot think the same," 
 she said, with the air of a woman who 
 knows a great deal more of what she is 
 talking about than the one on the other 
 side of the discussion. " I have always 
 been accustomed to a form of worship
 
 EGLANTINE. 215 
 
 which met my artistic tastes — and, you 
 know, where the taste is cultivated, public 
 worship must be developed to suit those 
 tastes. And never a vestige of decora- 
 tion, though that delicious old rood screen 
 seems made for the very purpose of being 
 covered with flowers or evergreens. I never 
 saw such a want of proper feeling !" 
 
 " Oh ! but we do decorate," I said. " The 
 Church is just one bower of holly at Christ- 
 mas time ; and then at Easter we have 
 moss and flowers, and I help to do it my- 
 self." 
 
 That was true enough. Every Easter 
 Eve, for the last thirteen years, I had laid 
 a wreath of primroses on the ledge of that 
 lancet window, through which, so long ago, 
 I had watched Rae Morrison's ship slowly 
 lessening in the distance. It was a simple 
 little act of worship, of which none knew 
 the meaning but myself. 
 
 " Ah, well, if you decorate at Christmas
 
 216 EGLANTINE. 
 
 and Easter, I suppose that is as much as 
 can be expected of you. But the harvest 
 has been gathered in all over the country, 
 and I have never heard a word about 
 thanksgiving services or decorations here. 
 If I had not been such a stranger in the 
 place, I would have suggested them myself 
 to Mr. Collinson or the curate. 
 
 " Why should we have harvest thanks- 
 giving ?" I said, — " at least, why should we 
 decorate the church with wheat and barley 
 ears ? Our harvest is when the haddock 
 and herring hauls come in — about the end 
 of September. Should we have festoons of 
 them hung about the church ? It would be 
 very appropriate, you know, if not agree- 
 able to one's sense of the beautiful." 
 
 I don't know how I found courage 
 enough to say this, with Mrs. Ullathorne's 
 pink roses and self-possession so close to 
 me. But I began to feel a sort of unreality 
 about her ; and I had a pride in knocking
 
 EGLANTINE. 217 
 
 at it, even though I could not knock it 
 down. She evidently thought I was trifling 
 with sacred subjects, for she looked at me, 
 not with pity, but reproof. 
 
 " Thanksgiving should never be out of 
 place," she said, as sternly as a fascinating 
 woman could say anything. " People may 
 throw ridicule upon it, but they cannot 
 make it ridiculous. Cove Rossington does 
 not consist entirely of a fishing population ; 
 there are other interests represented in the 
 place. Everybody does not live by had- 
 dock and herring." 
 
 " No ; the rest of them live by coal and 
 iron. There used to be plenty of yellow 
 corn-fields all up and down the coun- 
 try side, and we might have spared 
 sheaves from them to make our church 
 look beautiful enough; but you have 
 ploughed them up to make your pit shafts 
 and your cinder heaps, and your rows of 
 filthy hovels ; and now, if you want to give
 
 218 EGLANTINE. 
 
 a wave offering of the fruit of your increase, 
 you had better put a great lump of coal on 
 one side of the rood screen door, and a 
 clog of smelted ore on the other, and heap up 
 cinders round your altar, since the days are 
 past when you can take live coals from off 
 it. If we live by such things, why should 
 we be ashamed of them ?" 
 
 I said it bitterly, for, indeed, I mourned 
 over the pleasant cornfields, and the sweet 
 country lanes, and the fair bright faces of 
 the cottage children, which had all been 
 swept away, that men might dig wealth 
 out of the heart of their mother earth, in- 
 stead of resting peacefully upon her bosom. 
 But I believe Mrs. Ullathorne thought I 
 was a person of atheistic tendencies, for 
 with a look almost of pain, she dropped 
 the conversation. 
 
 It must have been dropped, however, 
 anyhow, for just as I had delivered my 
 soul of this burst of indignation, Mr. Gil-
 
 EGLANTINE. 219 
 
 bert Jennet, Miss Fidger's nephew, who 
 was captain of a vessel trading between 
 Hull and Antwerp, came in.
 
 220 
 
 M 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 .ISS FIDGEB, had not expected him, 
 ■^■"-^ and he, on his part, looked as sur- 
 prised as we did when, coming into his 
 aunt's cosy little drawing-room, he found 
 it occupied by beauty and fashion. I speak 
 not of myself. 
 
 Very soon after Gilbert Jennet's arrival, 
 Mr. Surbiton came to escort his ladies 
 home ; Miss Fidger went across to have a 
 little chat with Mrs. Ullathorne ; Birdie 
 took possession of the young captain, and 
 I found myself in a corner with Mr. Sur- 
 biton. 
 
 He was a pleasant man, with no parti- 
 cular views or tendencies in any direction
 
 EGLANTINE. 221 
 
 — a useful member, I should say, of what 
 people call in satire the mob of mediocrity, 
 the only mob which never needs the Riot 
 Act reading over it. For nearly half an 
 hour we managed to keep up an agreeable 
 conversation, without, I hope, knocking 
 against each other's prejudices in any way. 
 I found him very affable, only he had a 
 little too much of the hesitancy of a man 
 who never knows whether what he is doing 
 or saying is exactly the right thing to be 
 done or said under the circumstances. I 
 daresay Mrs. Ullathorne did a great deal 
 of his thinking for him. 
 
 Once or twice, when I happened to look 
 across in her direction, I found her look- 
 ing at us rather uncomfortably, as if she 
 thought we were more at home with each 
 other than was necessary. Was she afraid, 
 I wonder, lest I should insinuate into her 
 worthy brother any of my dangerous prin- 
 ciples ? Or did another thought vex her
 
 222 EGLANTINE. 
 
 mind — that I had designs upon his domes- 
 tic arrangements ? In either case she was 
 quite mistaken, for we talked about no- 
 thing more dangerous than the price of 
 fish ; and as for the other possibility, I 
 don't believe anyone in Cove Rossington 
 had ever laid at my door the feeblest accu- 
 sation of flirting. No, my face effectually 
 kept me from anything so humiliating as 
 that. 
 
 Still I could see Mrs. Ullathorne was 
 not content, and by-and-by she found 
 means for getting us both across to her 
 side of the room, and mixing us up in a 
 general conversation. 
 
 But she did not attempt to disturb 
 Birdie and young Gilbert, who appeared to 
 be getting on very comfortably under old 
 Major Fidger's portrait. Birdie had quite 
 deserted Miss Fidger and the cookery- 
 book, and was alternately clasping and 
 clapping her hands in delight at Gilbert's 
 seafaring stories.
 
 EGLANTINE. 223 
 
 " Oh ! Mr. Jennet, how very funny ! 
 Now did it really happen, or are you only 
 making fun of me ? " And Birdie glanced 
 up appealingly. "Because, if you are 
 only making fun of me, it is so naughty ! 
 Now do tell me. Are you making fun of 
 me?" 
 
 "Not the least bit in the world, I assure 
 you. I wouldn't do anything so wicked. 
 I am quite sure you are clever enough to 
 find me out if I tried to do anything of the 
 kind." 
 
 " Oh, no, Mr. Jennet, I'm not ; I'm 
 dreadfully stupid. I never do know when 
 people are making fun of me, and I say it 
 is so cruel. But do tell me another story, 
 please, and let it be about something you 
 have really done yourself. I think you 
 must be such a very brave man, and I do 
 like men to be brave, and not be afraid of 
 anything." 
 
 And again Birdie looked shyly up into
 
 224 EGLANTINE. 
 
 the handsome, honest, sunburnt face of 
 the young Captain. How could he — 
 how could anyone not much accustomed 
 to the wiles of feminine society — resist the 
 temptation to go on telling still more won- 
 derful stories ? 
 
 "Captain, did you say?" asked Mrs. 
 Ullathorne, in an under tone, — "and your 
 own nephew. How very interesting ! 
 And a good ship, I suppose, to be trading 
 between such important ports." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Miss Fidger, innocently, 
 "it is a very responsible position indeed, 
 and considered very creditable to such a 
 young man." 
 
 "Yes, and lucrative too," added Mrs. 
 Ullathorne, suggestively. 
 
 Miss Fidger gave a confidential little 
 nod, as much as to indicate that things 
 were quite satisfactory in that direction. 
 Indeed, she was very proud of her 
 nephew.
 
 EGLANTINE. 225 
 
 When the wine and biscuits had been 
 handed round, and the wax candles began 
 to give signs of dwindling, we rose to 
 depart. Birdie, with a coquettish little 
 blue hood tied over her curls, peeped out 
 into the moonlight. 
 
 " Oh, what a delicious evening ! — how 
 lovely ! — how charming ! Mr. Jennet, 
 would you not like to have a walk too ? 
 Oh, but I forgot — you will have to go 
 home with Miss Leslie." 
 
 And Birdie looked up appealingly to 
 me. She was always looking up appeal- 
 ingly to some one. 
 
 " How very naughty of me ! Do forgive 
 me, Miss Leslie, but I am such a stupid 
 little thing for saying just what comes 
 into my head. I really did not mean to 
 be so naughty." 
 
 "We will set that straight," said Mr. 
 Surbiton. " I will walk home with Miss 
 Leslie, and perhaps Mr. Jennet will be 
 
 vol. i. Q
 
 226 EGLANTINE. 
 
 kind enough to take care of you and your 
 mamma." 
 
 He said it hesitatingly, not at all sure 
 that he ought to have said it, and Mrs. 
 Ullathorne gave him a sharp look, after 
 which I would not have let him walk home 
 with me if it had been midnight fifty times 
 over. It must have been what I said 
 about the festoons of fish and the cinder 
 decorations. However, I set her mind at 
 rest by telling her that my maid was wait- 
 ing for me (what a grand sound it had !), 
 and then, taking her brother's arm, she set 
 off, leaving Birdie and the captain to 
 follow. 
 
 " Don't go yet," said Miss Fidger, as she 
 extinguished three out of the four candles, 
 and then, drawing her chair to the fire, 
 put her feet on the fender and just raised 
 her silk dress a little above her neat quilt- 
 ed petticoat, as she generally did when 
 making ready for a chat ; "do stay a bit
 
 EGLANTINE. 227 
 
 longer, and let us talk it all over. I think 
 it has passed off very nicely indeed — don't 
 you ? — on the whole." 
 
 "Yes, a great deal better than if you 
 had changed all the things about, until 
 you didn't feel at home in your own room. 
 Everything looked as pretty and cosy as 
 could be." 
 
 "Yes, only, you see, being strangers in 
 the place, one naturally wished to show 
 them a little more attention — though of 
 course they wouldn't know that I had been 
 pulling the things about, if I had done it 
 ever so. And such nice people ! Now 
 really, Dora, my dear, don't you think they 
 are very nice people? I am afraid you 
 don't quite do them justice." 
 
 " Well, you see, we know only a little of 
 them yet. Mr. Surbiton seems a kindly, 
 unaffected sort of man." 
 
 "Yes, but the ladies. I really took 
 very little notice of him at all ; he is not a 
 
 Q2
 
 228 EGLANTINE. 
 
 man to make much of an impression upon 
 you. But Mrs. Ullathorne is so pleasant 
 and brilliant. And that dear little Birdie ! 
 What do you think ? She begged me to 
 begin to call her by her name at once ; 
 she said it made her feel so dreadfully stiff 
 to be called Miss Ullathorne. I asked her 
 what her real name was, and she hesitated 
 a little, but told me that it was Bridget. 
 She was named after a godmother who 
 was to have left her ever so much money ; 
 but, instead of that, she died, and left her 
 nothing at all." 
 
 " Except the name." 
 
 " Exactly ; which was not worth having, 
 especially for such a nice, simple little 
 thing. I felt as if I could have wrapped 
 her up in my arms and kissed her when she 
 asked me. It looked so pretty and child- 
 like. Didn't it?" 
 
 " Very indeed." 
 
 " And then she likes the place so much,
 
 EGLANTINE. 229 
 
 and all our ways, and says she enjoys going 
 to church here, because the service is so 
 reverent. I think that sort of thing shows 
 a sweet disposition in a young girl." 
 
 Now Mrs. Ullathorne had told me, when 
 on the decoration question, that her daugh- 
 ter positively disliked Cove Eossington 
 Church, because the service was gone 
 through in such a slipshod manner, and 
 said she would never go into it again if 
 there was another at a convenient distance. 
 And Mrs. Ullathorne had appealed to 
 Birdie to give her own evidence on the sub- 
 ject, but Birdie had been too much engross- 
 ed in hearing about the ingredients for fairy 
 butter to take any notice. 
 
 However, I did not say anything about 
 that, Miss Fidger having more experience 
 than myself, and she went on. 
 
 " And what do you think the dear little 
 thing actually asked me, just before she 
 went away ?"
 
 230 EGLANTINE. 
 
 Of course I could not think. 
 
 " Why, she wanted to know if she might 
 bring the materials, 'stuff,' she called it, 
 and be taught how to make almond biscuits 
 to-morrow morning. It was to have been 
 some day next week, but she asked me to 
 let it be to-morrow morning, because she 
 did not want to wait so long. Did you 
 not see her put her little hands on my 
 shoulder, and whisper to me in that confi- 
 dential way, just as she was going away ? 
 Well, that was to ask me if she might come 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 " After Mr. Jennet's appearance on the 
 scene," I thought to myself, rather un- 
 charitably, perhaps; but really I was be- 
 coming rather sceptical about the sincerity 
 of the Ullathornes. For Mrs. Ullathorne 
 had said to me that Birdie was going to 
 Limeport to-morrow morning, for Winter 
 shopping, when I had asked, during the 
 benevolent and intellectual part of our
 
 EGLANTINE. 231 
 
 conversation, if she would like to come in 
 then and look at my collection of dried 
 sea- weeds. But if, she had reason to sup- 
 pose that Mr. Jennet was going to be Miss 
 Fidger's guest for a day or two, I could 
 quite understand a change in the arrange- 
 ment, for I had already seen enough of 
 Birdie to convince me that almond biscuits 
 were a secondary consideration in her sud- 
 den attachment to Miss Fidger. 
 
 " So nice of her, wasn't it ?" that dear, 
 unsuspecting lady continued. ■ ' Poor little 
 pet ! I daresay she hardly understands 
 anything at all about housekeeping. You 
 know she has had very little opportunity 
 of learning. Why, what do you think she 
 asked me, when we were going through my 
 cookery-book ?" 
 
 Again I was obliged to say I could not 
 think. 
 
 " No, I'm sure you couldn't. She asked 
 me how many pounds of eggs ought to be
 
 232 EGLANTINE. 
 
 put into a pudding for six people ; and 
 when I laughed, for really I couldn't help 
 laughing at her then, she put up her hands 
 so prettily, and said she knew she was a 
 little goose. I could have taken her up in 
 my arms and kissed her. Such a thing, 
 wasn't it ? But then, you see, Mrs. Ulla- 
 thorne is not a woman, I should think, 
 who knows a great deal about domestic 
 matters herself." 
 
 Now, for my own part, I could not see 
 why ignorance in blue gauze and blond 
 ringlets should be at all prettier than the 
 same quality in merino and common-place- 
 ness. If Miss Collinson, a sober brown- 
 papery girl, who never gushed or clapped 
 her hands, had asked if eggs were sold by 
 the pound, I am sure Miss Fidger would 
 not have wanted to kiss her for her sim- 
 plicity. Why, then, should Birdie, with 
 more years, and a great deal more know- 
 ledge of the world, be kissed ? I should
 
 EGLANTINE. 233 
 
 like to have given her a box on the ear 
 instead, and specially because Miss Fidger 
 thought her so fascinating. If one thing 
 vexes me more than another, it is to see 
 pretty manners doing duty for common 
 sense, or the appearance of innocence made 
 to excuse intolerable stupidity. But still 
 I did not say anything ; and Miss Fidger, 
 who really appeared quite thrown off her 
 balance by the attractions of the new- 
 comers, went on. 
 
 " Mrs. Ullathorne told me, when she 
 went away, that she had not enjoyed an 
 evening so much for ever so long, so I am 
 very glad that I summoned up courage 
 enough to ask them ; for really, you know, 
 it was an effort at first. And the black 
 lace and pink roses made me feel rather 
 uncomfortable, particularly as we were 
 both of us dressed so very quietly. My 
 dear, that black silk of yours does strike 
 me as being just a little bit shabby."
 
 234 EGLANTINE. 
 
 "It has struck me in the same way for 
 a long time," I said, rather tartly, " but I 
 am of such a Christian spirit that I never 
 take any notice of the blow. You know 
 we are told not to return evil for evil, and 
 therefore if even a dress strikes you, it is 
 wise not to return the unkindness by buy- 
 ing a new one. Besides, you know, we 
 served to bring out the glories of the pink 
 roses and the blue gauze." 
 
 " Exactly so," said Miss Fidger, not per- 
 ceiving the drift of my remarks. " Indeed, 
 I think Mrs. Ullathorne was a little bit un- 
 comfortable about it at first, for she made 
 a sort of apology to me. She said they 
 were always accustomed to make a change 
 for the evening, even when they were quite 
 by themselves, which shows, you know, 
 that they live in very good style, quite 
 different from ourselves. Most likely they 
 dine late." 
 
 "Yes, they do. Mrs. Ullathorne told
 
 EGLANTINE. 23 5 
 
 Hie so. It is a singular fact that people 
 who have not been accustomed to dine 
 late all their lives, invariably tell you when 
 they begin to do it, though why it should 
 be a mark of good style, I cannot tell. 
 Both Mrs. Ullathorne and Birdie informed 
 me of the fact, and I told them, with what 
 must have seemed the simplicity of bar- 
 barism, that one o'clock was our hour. 
 They will think we are Goths and Vandals,, 
 that is all." 
 
 " Oh ! no, my dear. Mrs. Ullathorne 
 says she quite adores our simple primitive 
 ways. She wishes she could do just the 
 same herself." 
 
 "Then why doesn't she?" 
 
 "Because when people are in society, 
 they must conform to its regulations. But 
 I do like a woman who can appreciate 
 good breeding, without the adventitious 
 associations of wealth." 
 
 " Yes ; and who can worship simplicity
 
 236 EGLANTINE. 
 
 and old china. Mrs. Ullathorne may be 
 religions enough amongst ns North Cliff 
 people, for I am snre we have plenty of 
 both." 
 
 " Perhaps almost a little too mnch of the 
 former," said Miss Fidger, who, I regret 
 to say, seemed almost in danger of being 
 rnn away with by the fascinations of the 
 new people. Our friends, in a general 
 way, did not think it necessary to tell ns 
 so often and so emphatically that they were 
 enchanted with us. "Do you know, my 
 dear, I could not help thinking to myself, 
 when Mrs. Ullathorne was making herself 
 so agreeable, that just a trifle more atten- 
 tion to appearances on our part might " 
 
 "Might make us more popular and less 
 deserving. Yes, I quite agree with you, it 
 might. For instance, if you began to dine 
 late, and cut up poor old Joan's quiet 
 evening, which is now the joy and delight 
 of her life. Or supposing "
 
 EGLANTINE. 237" 
 
 But just then Mercy, who was not in a 
 waiting frame that night, sent in a mes- 
 sage to know if I was ready to go, next 
 day being our fortnightly wash. Catch 
 Mercy letting me dine at five or six for the 
 sake of appearances. So I had to bid Miss 
 Fidger good night, promising, however, to 
 look in some time the following day, to 
 see how the cooking operations had gone 
 on.
 
 238 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 T WAS busy all day, and did not get 
 -"■- across to Cliff Cottage until evening, 
 when I left my father busy with his 
 reading. To my surprise I found that 
 Miss Fidger had gone out to dinner. 
 
 " To Mrs. Ullathorne's, ma'am," said 
 Joan, who, being alone in the house, seem- 
 ed disposed for a little chat — and we of 
 the old school were never ashamed of being 
 seen talking to a respectable servant. 
 " And Mr. Jennet has gone along with her. 
 Miss Fidger thought, as you hadn't corned 
 in, you was busy, and so she didn't send 
 a message. Both the ladies come again 
 this morning, and wouldn't take no denial,
 
 EGLANTINE. 239 
 
 though Missis said it was a thing she 
 hadn't done for years and years, except 
 yourself and one or two of the families 
 about. But they gave her no peace until 
 they got her promised to go. Some folks 
 has a way with them, ma'am, as others 
 hasn't." 
 
 I could see that Joan was not altogether 
 pleased. Perhaps she did not care for 
 having Birdie performing in the kitchen 
 with eggs and blanched almonds. 
 
 " Well, never mind, Joan. My love to 
 Miss Fidger, and I came across to see how 
 the cooking got on this morning." 
 
 " Oh, ma'am, such a carrying on as you 
 wouldn't believe, if you hadn't been here 
 to see ! I told Missis if that was to be 
 the way, I'd better look out for something 
 else. I'm not one, ma'am, as ever goes 
 against a young person learning what's 
 proper ; and many and many's the time 
 I've had Miss Wear up to her elbows
 
 240 EGLANTINE. 
 
 in my kitchen, and both of us as pleased 
 as Punch, because she give her mind to it, 
 and there was something to see when you'd 
 done. But yon miss — why, it was just 
 for nothing but a bit of a lark, and never 
 no seriousness in it at all, after she'd once 
 got Mr. Jennet in to set herself out at 
 him, and hopping and skipping like a 
 Merry- andrew." 
 
 " What ! Mr. Jennet in your kitchen, 
 Joan?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, Mr. Jennet in my kitchen, if 
 you please ; and she running up to him like a 
 born idiot, to have her fingers blown upon 
 when she'd burnt 'em with taking hold of 
 the oven door, as I say her mother might 
 be ashamed of herself to let her grow up 
 so ignorant as not to know when you're 
 baking it stands to reason the oven door 
 must be a bit hot. I thought we was 
 going to have a faint afore we'd done. 
 However, she got straightened up, and
 
 EGLANTINE. 241 
 
 then she and her ma and Mr. Jennet went 
 away, when they'd got Missis promised to 
 come to-night." 
 
 I did not wish to encourage Joan to talk, 
 even though I was wicked enough to be 
 glad that she could understand Miss 
 Birdie's ways, and I came away. Miss 
 Fidger, finding I had been to call, came 
 oyer to see me the next morning, and had 
 a long chat with me whilst I was doing my 
 fortnight's ironing. Mercy had been oblig- 
 ed to give in and accept my help to that 
 extent. 
 
 She was very fond of the Ullathornes . 
 They had been so kind. Birdie had had 
 her cooking lesson the morning before, and 
 she was so proud of being able to do 
 something useful that she would have Mr. 
 Jennet come into the kitchen and see her 
 in her holland apron and bib. And then 
 she had told him how much she should like 
 to see a real ship — she had never seen one 
 
 vol. I. R
 
 242 EGLANTINE. 
 
 in her life, and she had not the least idea 
 what it was like. 
 
 " So, as he knew plenty of captains at 
 Shagmouth, I proposed that he should take 
 her there and let her see over one of the 
 great merchant ships ; and they went away 
 directly, but not until Mrs. Ullathorne had 
 insisted upon my going there to dinner in 
 the evening, and Gilbert too. Indeed, 
 Gilbert was to go straight there with Birdie 
 from Shagmouth. And such a pleasant 
 evening !" 
 
 " And Birdie enjoyed the ship very 
 much, did she ?" 
 
 "Oh, yes — was delighted. You know 
 she had never seen anything of the kind 
 before." 
 
 " Not even when she came over from 
 France P" 
 
 " Oh ! dear, I had quite forgotten that. 
 Well, I suppose she must have been in a 
 ship of some sort then, but you know the
 
 EGLANTINE. 243 
 
 merchant-service is so different. However, 
 she enjoyed the morning very much, and 
 we had a very pleasant little dinner, and 
 did not get home until nearly eleven — 
 wonderfully late for me. Gilbert went 
 away first thing after breakfast this morn- 
 ing, so I have seen very little of him." 
 
 11 Perhaps he will come again soon," I 
 remarked, rather pointedly, " as he enjoyed 
 it so much this time." 
 
 " I am not so sure of that. "What do 
 you think he came to tell me ?" 
 
 " That be is looking out for a wife ?" 
 
 " No, that he has found one." 
 
 " I hope he did not find her the night 
 before last ?" 
 
 " No, dear — what do you mean ?" 
 
 " I mean when he walked home with 
 Mrs. Ullathorne and Birdie." 
 
 " Why, that never entered into my head. 
 And really, when you mention it, it does 
 not seem such a very unlikely thing, and 
 
 r2
 
 244 EGLANTINE. 
 
 she so pretty and engaging. No, it is a 
 young lady near Hull, the grand-daughter 
 of one of the officers in my poor dear 
 father's regiment, so I feel quite an inter- 
 est in her already. Gilbert, dear fellow, is 
 so happy about it. I was sure, from his 
 bright manner ever since he came, there 
 must be something, but I did not think it 
 was all so nicely settled. Three-and- 
 twenty, and very pretty, and plenty of 
 good sense. Not much money, but you 
 know our family never did look out for 
 that sort of thing. I am so glad for him." 
 
 So was I ; but what about Birdie's sud- 
 den fondness for naval architecture ? 
 
 We were silent for a few minutes, whilst 
 I gave my whole mind to the setting of 
 some of poor Aunt Lois's fine lace round a 
 collar. 
 
 "You will ask them to a friendly cup of 
 tea some time, will you not?" said Miss 
 Fidger at last.
 
 EGLANTINE. 245 
 
 " Whom ? — Mr. Jennet and his wife when 
 they are married ?" 
 
 " My dear, what nonsense !" 
 
 ""Well, we were talking about them just 
 now." 
 
 "Were we? Yes, so we were, but I 
 had been thinking of the little dinner last 
 night. I meant the Ullathornes. Just a 
 nice, quiet little affair, you know, like 
 mine." 
 
 "Well, yes, I suppose we must, though 
 I don't fancy they are the sort of people 
 my father would get on with. He likes 
 Mr. Surbiton very well, but he has never 
 seen the ladies yet." 
 
 " Then the sooner he sees them the bet- 
 ter. I am sure he cannot help liking dear 
 little Birdie. I can fancy her becoming 
 quite a pet of his. She has such pretty 
 ways, you know." 
 
 I believe I felt a sort of shiver at the 
 bare idea of Birdie playing off her pretty
 
 246 EGLANTINE. 
 
 ways upon a man like my father. How- 
 ever, goo d manners dictated the propriety 
 of giving the invitation, and, whatever else 
 we North Cliff people neglected, we always 
 paid proper attention to our manners. 
 
 Accordingly, I walked over to Prospect 
 Lodge one fine morning, with my seldom- 
 used card-case, and did my duty like a 
 woman. 
 
 I should have mentioned that before this 
 call Mr. Surbiton had twice been to see us ; 
 and once, finding Miss Fidger with us, had 
 stayed to play a rubber at whist. My 
 father got on very nicely with him ; my 
 father always did get on with simple, un- 
 affected people, however moderate their 
 talents might be. And there was some- 
 thing about Mr. Surbiton which made you 
 feel a little bit sorry for him. I am sure 
 I cannot tell what it was. He seemed to 
 enjoy very good health, and his social 
 position was unexceptionable, but he had
 
 EGLANTINE. 247 
 
 a subdued manner, especially in the pre- 
 sence of his sister, which always excited 
 my sympathy. I felt he had not room to 
 expand. "When he came to see us by him- 
 self he was different. He expressed his 
 opinions then a little more with the air 
 of a man who has a right to them, but 
 there was a touch, even then, of the con- 
 straint which seemed to have become a 
 habit with him. I wondered sometimes 
 why he voluntarily lived with such a lot 
 of relations. I am sure he must have been 
 half smothered amongst them, and all of 
 them so different from himself. 
 
 My call, however, was to no purpose. 
 Mrs. Ullathorne and Birdie — shall I say to 
 my satisfaction ? — were not able to favour 
 us with their company on the evening pro- 
 posed. They had so many engagements, 
 and the poor dear child was positively 
 wearing herself out, so her mother said, 
 by trying to fulfil them all. She had com-
 
 248 EGLANTINE. 
 
 pletely knocked herself up, only the other 
 day, by going with Mr. Jennet to Shag- 
 mouth, to see one of the merchant vessels 
 lying in the harbour. But the poor young 
 man had been so excessively anxious to 
 take her, and seemed so dreadfully disap- 
 pointed when she even suggested the 
 possibility of being tired, that she had been 
 obliged to give in, and let him have the 
 pleasure of taking her. Dear child ! she 
 felt it would be cruel not to oblige him, 
 and she was always ready to give up her 
 own convenience for the pleasure of an- 
 other. That was the worst of Birdie, she 
 was too good-natured to say No to any- 
 one. 
 
 To all of which I listened with due con- 
 sent, having my own opinions nevertheless. 
 It was very curious that what Mrs. Ulla- 
 thorne said to me about anything never 
 exactly coincided with the light in which 
 other people represented it ; and what she
 
 EGLANTINE. 249 
 
 said to me about it was never quite the 
 same, either, as what she said to other 
 people about it. So that I was beginning 
 to have a downright distrust of the woman, 
 even whilst she beamed upon me with her 
 sweetest smiles. I did not want to be 
 beamed upon, but I did want her to tell 
 me the truth. 
 
 She was dreadfully sorry not to be able 
 to come. Still she hoped that by-and-by, 
 when they had got through a few of their 
 engagements, she and Birdie should be 
 able to spend a quiet evening with me, and 
 look over those delightful old portfolios of 
 dear Mr. Leslie's. And then she so en- 
 joyed the mental atmosphere of our house. 
 It was so intellectual and refining. She 
 felt, as soon as she entered that delicious 
 room of ours, that we were a cultivated 
 family, that she, though not absolutely in- 
 tellectual herself, should find sympathy and 
 companionship with us. She instinctively
 
 250 EGLANTINE. 
 
 felt the influence of a house as soon as she 
 entered it. Some impressed you with 
 
 nothing but upholstery. Ours " 
 
 And Mrs. Ullathorne smiled me graceful- 
 ly out into the hall. I am sure there never 
 was such a charming woman in Cove 
 Rossington, albeit I never knew whether 
 she meant a single word that she said to 
 me.
 
 251 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 SHOULD have mentioned before the 
 **■ changes which, during all these years, 
 had taken place at our Rectory. 
 
 Old Mr. Beltravers, the present Lord 
 Rossington's uncle, was long since dead. 
 After him came one like unto him in easy,. 
 unconscious neglect of duty. We got 
 perfunctory prayers, prosy sermons, an 
 occasional visit when anyone was at the 
 point of death, and a friendly nod always 
 when we met in the street. That was Mr. 
 Melcome's idea of the whole duty of a 
 clergyman — to nod to everyone whom he 
 met, taking for granted it was a parishion- 
 er. He was removed to a better living,
 
 252 EGLANTINE. 
 
 and then a Mr. Dewtrie was presented to 
 Cove Rossington — a middle-aged man, 
 with a ladylike wife and no children. I 
 think, shortly after he came to us, there 
 was some disagreement between him and 
 Lord Rossington about tithes or some other 
 parish matters ; at any rate, their coldness 
 with each other became matter of public 
 observation, and finally Lord Rossington 
 gave over coming to church. 
 
 Next, Mr. Dewtrie's health failed, and 
 his wife died. The place did not suit him, 
 but still he did not want to give up the 
 living ; so he went abroad, and we had a 
 curate, who occupied two rooms of the 
 Rectory, and was waited upon by the old 
 woman who took care of the house. In 
 the Summer, Mr. Dewtrie generally came 
 home for a few weeks, called upon us all 
 round, got a little information about the 
 state of the parish, and then left us again 
 with his blessing. He was a good man,
 
 EGLANTINE. 253 
 
 but no great influence amongst us. In- 
 deed, since I could remember, we had 
 never bad a clergyman of wbom it could 
 be said tbat he was any influence amongst 
 us, apart from that time-honoured respect 
 which belongs to the sacred office, and 
 which Cove Rossington, spite of its young 
 Radicalism and coal and iron-grown inde- 
 pendence, had not yet quite forgotten to 
 pay. 
 
 It was soon after my ineffectual offer of 
 hospitality to Mrs. Ullathorne, that I took 
 up Miss Fidger's daily paper (our own had 
 been dropped, with many another luxury, 
 since the breaking of the bank), and read 
 in the list of deaths : 
 
 " At Bonnermouth, on the 16th inst., aged twenty-eight, 
 Jessie, wife of Kae Morrison, and daughter of the late Cap- 
 tain Forrester, E.N., of Abbot Storford, in this county." 
 
 Of course it could make no difference to 
 me. That Rae Morrison had been mar- 
 ried, and that his wife had died, were
 
 254 EGLANTINE. 
 
 matters that could never affect me now. 
 I told myself that I had nothing to do 
 with it — that no strongest-winged bird of 
 hope could cross the great deep which time 
 and circumstance, sickness, poverty and 
 change, had made between us. I might 
 only remember. The past was my own. 
 But my hands turned cold, and for a long 
 time Miss Fidger had most of the conver- 
 sation to herself. She never complained 
 of that. 
 
 Aged twenty-eight. She must have 
 been married very young, or her wifehood 
 must have lasted but a very little time. I 
 had never heard of the wedding. But 
 then there were plenty of things we never 
 heard of, and Abbot Storford was many 
 miles away. Captain Forrester's name I 
 did not know at all. 
 
 How strangely it brought back one's 
 past life ! I could not help thinking to 
 myself of another wedding that might
 
 EGLAXTIXE. 255 
 
 have been. And then I wondered who 
 this Jessie was, and whether they had 
 loved each other very much, and whether 
 the wound that death had made for him 
 would strike as deep and last as long as 
 that which only a few words had made for 
 me. It was very strange, but still I kept 
 saying it could make no difference at all to 
 me now. 
 
 At last Miss Fidger took up the paper, 
 and looked through the births, marriages, 
 and deaths. 
 
 "Rae Morrison," she said, — " I seem to 
 remember that name. Did he not come 
 to your house, a long time ago ? — a very 
 long time ago, before your poor aunt Lois 
 died ?" 
 
 " Yes. My father and he used to talk 
 about navigation, and theories of the tides, 
 and all that sort of thing. He was a very 
 intelligent man. I am sorry that such a 
 trouble should have happened to him. He
 
 256 EGLANTINE. 
 
 would be very good, I should think, to any- 
 one whom he loved." 
 
 Yes ; and, poor thing ! she could not 
 have been married very long. Abbot Stor- 
 ford — that is up in the north. Do you 
 know, Dora, I once thought he would not 
 go so far away for a wife. I had an idea 
 he had something else on his mind, besides 
 talking to your father about navigation and 
 tides, when he used to come so often to 
 your house. Only you were quite a child 
 then, and very early marriages are such 
 foolish things — at least, sometimes. And 
 then fancy never having one's husband at 
 home !" 
 
 " What is the use of fancying anything 
 about it ?" I said, quietly. " My husband 
 will never be either at home or anywhere 
 else." 
 
 16 1 don't know that, Dora, my dear." 
 
 " But I do." 
 
 "Yes, you have settled down wonder-
 
 EGLANTINE. 257 
 
 fully since that smallpox affair ; and yet I 
 really can't see now that it has made such a 
 great difference to you, for you've been 
 growing out of it every year, and by the 
 time you are five-and-forty, I shouldn't 
 wonder if you are quite a handsome 
 woman again. But it's just as well for 
 your father. Dear me ! what would he 
 have done without you all these years ? 
 And beginning to fail just a little now in 
 his walk. He doesn't hold himself as he 
 used to do ; though, indeed, who can expect 
 it ? "We can't be always young." 
 
 And there the subject dropped. 
 
 I saw very little of Mrs. Ullathorne for 
 some time after my polite invitation. Our 
 acquaintance dwindled to an occasional 
 call, which one of us generally happened 
 to make when the other was not at home. 
 "When we did meet, we were quite pleasant 
 with each other, though there was always 
 just a little reserve of doubt on my part, 
 
 vol. i. s
 
 258 EGLANTINE. 
 
 and a slight appearance of constraint on 
 hers. It might be my decoration opinions, 
 or she might be jealous of Mr. Surbiton's 
 visits to our house, which were not so 
 occasional as her own, and as he made 
 them in an evening, we were scarcely ever 
 out. Whatever else a woman of the world 
 can conceal (and she can conceal most 
 things), jealousy is sure to crop up in some 
 way, if it is there at all. The merest look 
 or tone is enough to indicate it, and I was 
 quite sure that, for some reason or other, 
 Mrs. Ullathorne had an uncomfortable feel- 
 ing about me. 
 
 She cultivated Mrs. Wear's acquaintance 
 much more industriously, that being an 
 open door to the best society in Cove Ros- 
 sington. I think she was rather an acqui- 
 sition to the Wednesday evening recep- 
 tions ; she was always elegantly dressed, 
 and she had a way of making the most of 
 herself. She could nearly always make
 
 EGLANTINE. 259 
 
 people like her, by giving them the im- 
 pression that she was pleased with them. 
 Of course, nine times out of ten, she was 
 not pleased with them — she was simply 
 putting on an appearance of interest for 
 the sake of popularity ; still the effect was 
 the same. Everyone said Mrs. Ullathorne 
 was one of the most fascinating women in 
 Cove Rossington. 
 
 But I could not give in to her fascina- 
 tions. I found that there was generally a 
 purpose in her pleasantness. Either she 
 wanted a subscription from some one — she 
 was always collecting subscriptions — or she 
 found that you knew some one whose ac- 
 quaintance she wished to make, or you 
 could give her an order for something she 
 wanted to see, or she was inserting the 
 thin end of the wedge for a contribution to 
 her stall at a bazaar ; always when she 
 smiled upon you more sweetly than usual, 
 you might expect a request, and after such 
 
 s2
 
 260 EGLANTINE. 
 
 smiles it would have been worse than 
 malevolent to refuse. I had much rather 
 have been asked straight out, because when 
 I was caught by guile in this way, I was be- 
 trayed into saying more spiteful things to 
 Mrs. Ullathorne than I ever said to anyone 
 else. 
 
 I don't think I was more agreeable to 
 her, after I had been to an astronomical 
 lecture with my father, in our new public 
 room. I sat, unobserved, a couple of 
 seats behind her, and had the pleasure of 
 hearing her discuss with her companion, 
 Mr. Collinson, those " stuffy old folks on 
 the North Cliff." 
 
 " Such a very funny set, one would 
 really think they had come out of the ark. 
 And so ridiculously jealous of anything 
 like trade, as if trade had not been the 
 making of the place. Why, where would 
 they all have been now if Lord Eossington 
 had not opened those coal pits ? The place
 
 EGLANTINE. 261 
 
 would have died of inanition, and not before 
 its time, too." 
 
 Mr. Collinson quite agreed. He had 
 come to Cove Rossington about five years 
 after the coal and iron fever set in. In- 
 deed we had no work for a solicitor before. 
 
 " You know the Leslies, I think," Mrs. 
 Ullathorne continued. 
 
 " Well, yes. I suppose I may say I do. 
 At least, Mrs. Collinson calls upon them." 
 
 " Ah, yes, that is all right. But if you 
 are very particular about the opinions of 
 your daughters in religious matters, I 
 should not advise you to cultivate the in- 
 timacy. Miss Leslie is a person of very 
 peculiar views, and she is not at all careful 
 in expressing them." 
 
 "Indeed! You don't say so. I am 
 glad you have mentioned the matter to me, 
 for I am very particular about the influ- 
 ences of that sort under which I allow 
 my daughters to come."
 
 262 EGLANTINE. 
 
 " I thought you would be. And that is 
 the reason I wished to give you a hint. 
 Not of course, you know, that I imply 
 anything discreditable to Miss Leslie, only 
 it is as well sometimes to be careful. 
 She called upon us and seemed anxious to 
 be intimate, but as soon as I found what 
 her opinions were, I felt it my duty to be 
 on my guard. I would not for the world 
 have my darling Birdie corrupted in the 
 simplicity of her faith ; and my boy, you 
 know, though he is not with me now, is 
 just at such an impressionable age." 
 
 Mr. Collinson assented. He said error 
 was very insidious. It could not be too 
 carefully watched. "With that, the lecturer 
 came in, made his bow, was introduced to 
 us by a few remarks from the chairman, 
 and we all listened with suitable interest to 
 what he had to tell us about the motions of 
 of the heavenly bodies. 
 
 Coming out, I got mixed up with Mrs.
 
 EGLANTINE. 263 
 
 Ullathorne, who smiled upon me as if I had 
 been her dearest friend, and asked me, in a 
 playfully scolding manner, when I intended 
 to call upon her, because I had been in her 
 debt for a whole month. 
 
 To my credit be it said, I replied as 
 pleasantly as she had spoken, and did not 
 even give her a vicious nip when she sbook 
 hands with me.
 
 264 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 /^OYE KOSSINGTON went on enlarging 
 ^-^ its borders, as shaft after shaft was 
 sunk, and furnace after furnace poured 
 forth its fiery breath over the once so 
 peaceful country. There was a constant 
 eruption of bricks and mortar around us. 
 New shops, new terraces, new gin-palaces, 
 new lodging-houses, kept starting up, and 
 a low population settled in the place, 
 strangely unlike the honest, clear-eyed 
 fishermen, whom we feared not day or 
 night to meet in the loneliest paths of the 
 old village. 
 
 As the coal and iron works crept
 
 EGLANTINE. 265 
 
 nearer and nearer to us, so did the miners 
 and colliers who worked them, and so did 
 the villas of the agents who superintended, 
 and of the men who were made rich by them; 
 until a shout of triumph — sad triumph, 
 alas ! for us — announced the fact that Cove 
 Rossington and Coley-Orton had clasped 
 hands across the parish boundary, which 
 was once a good two miles from the heart 
 of either village. 
 
 No more walks for solitary girls or 
 women now, along the ridge of those far- 
 stretching cliffs where, fifteen years be- 
 fore, I had spent many and many a peaceful 
 hour, watching the little white-sailed vessels 
 come and go behind the south headland. 
 No more long spells of quiet reading or 
 quieter musing on the sands beneath, lis- 
 tening: to the babbling; of the breakers 
 upon the shingle, or the murmur of the 
 surf as it rolled away back into the deep 
 sea. For always now, not far off, were
 
 266 EGLANTINE. 
 
 the rude voices of some party of roughs 
 out for a holiday, or, not so clamorous, but 
 scarcely less annoying, the inane chatter 
 of groups of idlers watching the people 
 round the bathing-machines, or amusing 
 themselves by throwing stones at the poor 
 sea-gulls which happened to rest for 
 awhile upon the waves. And whereas our 
 one policeman in former days had nothing 
 to do but air his blue coat in the sunshine, 
 half a dozen of them now could scarcely 
 save us from being run over by drunken 
 brawlers, or frightened out of our midnight 
 slumbers by fights and disturbances in the 
 streets. 
 
 Yet the public papers kept congratulat- 
 ing us on our unparalleled prosperity, on 
 the splendid development of our internal 
 resources. Never a lecturer came to the 
 place without calling us " a magnificent 
 centre of industry," pointing with one hand 
 in the direction of Shagmouth Harbour,
 
 EGLANTINE. 267 
 
 and with the other to the railway-station, 
 and telling us that we had chained both 
 land and sea to the car of commercial en- 
 terprise ; that, westward, steeds of iron did 
 our bidding, and eastward the mighty 
 ocean crouched at our feet to carry the- 
 fruit of our industry to the remotest 
 bounds of the earth — a sentiment which 
 was always received with immense cheer- 
 ing. But we who remembered the quiet 
 and the pleasantness of the old times held 
 our peace. 
 
 Finally a gentle rain of printed circulars 
 descended amongst us on the North Cliff, 
 signed by half a dozen county names of 
 reputation. In an eloquent and earnest 
 address we were reminded — we in our un- 
 repaired and rather dilapidated houses — of 
 the great advantages we had reaped from 
 the rapid prosperity of the place during 
 the last fifteen years, and of the duty which 
 was therefore incumbent upon us of show-
 
 268 EGLANTINE. 
 
 ing our gratitude iu some substantial man- 
 ner for those advantages. We were told 
 of the festering mass of poverty and vice 
 which surged up to our very doors. We 
 were told of the vast responsibility which 
 the increasing population devolved upon 
 us. We were told that not five per cent. 
 of the working-classes in Coley-Orton and 
 Cove Eossington ever went to a place of 
 worship ; that ignorance, dense as that of 
 heathendom, was shaming us at our very 
 doors ; that, whilst gin-palaces were rising 
 at the corner of every street, and public- 
 houses hiding their heads in every corner, 
 no extra provision had been made for the 
 spiritual necessities of the place ; and we 
 were called upon, as we valued our own 
 peace and the peace of those who should 
 come after us, to bestir ourselves to our 
 duty, and do something to stem this tor- 
 rent of vice and ignorance before it swept 
 everything before it.
 
 EGLANTINE. 269 
 
 Indeed it was all true enough. We did 
 want new churches. We wanted still more 
 earnest, fearless men and women to per- 
 suade people to come to them, and truth- 
 speaking teachers to tell them their duty 
 when they got there. The circular con- 
 cluded with an intimation that we should 
 be called upon at a suitable interval by 
 persons appointed to receive our sub- 
 scriptions for the above purposes. 
 
 Now I had a misty sense of injustice 
 about this matter of the subscriptions. All 
 that the unexampled prosperity of the 
 neighbourhood had done for us, was to 
 raise our rents, rates, and expenses year 
 by year, whilst our beloved houses were 
 dropping to pieces over our heads, and any 
 appeal for repairs was met by the threat 
 of having them swept away entirely, to 
 make room for gingerbread Gothic villas, 
 which, as the agent said, would yield a 
 much more handsome per-centage to Lord
 
 270 EGLANTINE. 
 
 Hossington. It also seemed to me a little 
 inconsistent that we, who had kept our 
 own frontage clean and decent for many a 
 generation past, without asking anybody 
 to help us, but simply from a sense of duty, 
 should be called upon now to provide funds 
 for the scouring of our neighbours' door- 
 steps ; nay, scarcely so much called upon 
 as commanded, under pains and penalties, 
 to do it. I thought that the millionaires 
 who swept up these festering masses into 
 what were politely called " centres of in- 
 dustry," and fattened upon the toil of 
 their hands and the sweat of their brows, 
 ought to build churches for them, and 
 supply the need which themselves had 
 created. 
 
 I could not represent this in a proper 
 shape to myself, still less make it look like 
 common sense to any one else. I talked 
 it over with my father, but I think he felt 
 more than he expressed about it. He said
 
 EGLAXTIXE. 271 
 
 common sense pointed out the millionaires 
 as the proper people to build churches and 
 chapels for those whom they had demoral- 
 ized by ignorance and drink ; but common 
 humanity demanded that we also should 
 not stand afar off. "We did not refuse to 
 build hospitals because the accidents which 
 filled them happened through no fault of 
 ours. We should not refuse to build 
 churches because the vice and ignorance 
 which needed them had been wrought by 
 the greed of others than ourselves. 
 
 So we managed to have a little sub- 
 scription ready when the collector came, 
 who happened to be Mr. Collinson, the 
 gentleman who had been so kindly warned 
 off from me by Mrs. Ullathorne. Our 
 opinions might be dangerous, but our 
 guineas were not, for he took them very 
 pleasantly, never suspecting, I am sure, 
 the trouble we had had in sparing them 
 for him, nor the items we had knocked off
 
 272 EGLANTINE. 
 
 from our housekeeping expenses to meet 
 the expenses of conscience. 
 
 If I could not express my own convic- 
 tions, however, on this subject, I had them 
 expressed for me very pointedly by old Joe 
 Rollekins, not many days after. 
 
 I had gone to have a chat with him 
 about this circular. We often used to 
 have fine talks together, his wife sitting by, 
 meanwhile, and gazing up into his face 
 with an expression of reverent wonder. 
 People might well think a deal of her hus- 
 band, for indeed he was gifted beyond the 
 average with common sense and acuteness. 
 
 We had scarcely entered upon the sub- 
 ject of the circular, when Mrs. Ullathorne, 
 graceful, mellifluous as usual, appeared in 
 sight, coming towards the cottage. I did 
 not wish to encounter her, for she always 
 made me feel spiteful, a bad state of mind 
 for a woman ; and I did not want to lose 
 my chat with Joe Eollekins when we both
 
 EGLANTINE. 273 
 
 of us seemed in the mood for it, so I 
 retired with Mrs. Rollekins into the back 
 kitchen, and whilst she mended one of her 
 husband's blue jerseys, I was privileged by 
 hearing a deliverance of his sentiments to 
 Mrs. Ullathorne, Joe's voice being neither 
 soft, sweet, nor low, as indeed no voice 
 need be when it has such things to say as 
 he said then. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 274 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " VTTELL, Rollekins," Mrs. Ullathorne 
 * * said, as she entered, enveloped 
 in an atmosphere of scent which penetrated 
 to the back kitchen, " you see, I have found 
 my way to you again. I always like to 
 come to this little gem of a cottage of 
 yours. It is so exquisitely romantic and 
 picturesque." 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, letting alone the smoke, 
 which drives down so as you can't see your 
 hand afore you when the wind's wrong 
 way, else I've nought to say again' it." 
 
 " He's right about the smoke, is my 
 husband," whispered Mrs. Rollekins, con-
 
 EGLANTINE. 275 
 
 fidentially ; " it do conie down so as Lord 
 Rossington hisself might be ashamed of it, 
 and nothing wanted but a bit higher chim- 
 ney, and that we shan't get, while every- 
 thing's done for Coley-Orton." 
 
 " Well, yes," and I could hear the gentle 
 rustle of Mrs. Ullathorne's silken garments. 
 " The walls look as if you had been trou- 
 bled with smoke sometimes ; but then, 
 such a prospect as you have ! Why, Rol- 
 lekins, I wonder that magnificent sea does 
 not make a poet of you. Do you never 
 get odes and sonnets out of it? Now, 
 confess." 
 
 "No, ma'am," said Joe, simply, "nothing 
 but herring and haddock, and not many of 
 them this season past, the wind being 
 mostly contrary, and they don't come up 
 well, only when it lies a certain way. 
 We've been a bit hard put to it of late, 
 has us poor fishermen here down at the 
 beach." 
 
 t2
 
 276 EGLANTINE. 
 
 " Indeed ! — I am sorry for that, for I 
 came this morning to see if you could do 
 something for me. You know we are try- 
 ing to build a new church in the place." 
 
 "Yes, ma'am, so I hear tell, and not 
 before it's wanted. There's a vast of people 
 in Cove Rossington now stands good need 
 of knowing a little bit more of their 
 Bibles." 
 
 "Oh! Rollekins, we are in a dreadful 
 state ! The ignorance of the masses is 
 positively distressing. I am quite sure a 
 man of your intelligence must be deeply 
 concerned about it." 
 
 Of course I could not see Mrs. Ulla- 
 thorne's face, but I could quite imagine 
 how she looked as she said this — the way 
 in which those large round eyelids would 
 be dropped, and the graceful head swayed 
 to and fro, and the delicately-gloved hands 
 clasped. Because ignorance was really 
 such a very dreadful thing. I wonder if
 
 EC4LANTINE. 277 
 
 Mrs. Ullatliorne ever thought that insin- 
 cerity might be quite as dreadful. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," said Joe. " A man can't 
 walk down the streets of Cove Rossington 
 now without seeing what might make him 
 turn his face away for shame, and all for 
 as quiet as the place used to be when I 
 was a boy in it. One might be a set of 
 wild beasts and do no worse." 
 
 " Indeed, you are quite right, and I am 
 sure you will think it is a very necessary 
 thing that we are called upon to do what 
 we can towards remedying the disorder. 
 I have undertaken to canvass this district, 
 and see what our worthy friends of the 
 lower classes are willing to do towards the 
 erection of the new church. You know, 
 it is a work in which we should all feel 
 ourselves bound to take part." 
 
 " Saving your presence, ma'am, I am 
 not so sure of that. Them as made the 
 mischief is the right ones to mend it, and
 
 278 EGLANTINE. 
 
 I think my lord, with, his coal-pits, had 
 best look after the church." 
 
 " Oh ! but, Rollekins, you know, we 
 must have coal. What should we do with- 
 out it? — although," added Mrs. Ullathorne, 
 with pretty raillery, "our chimneys do smoke 
 terribly sometimes." 
 
 " What, indeed, ma'am ? — but we'd as 
 much as ever we wanted before, and I 
 don't see why they need break up the 
 country-side, and turn us all to rack and 
 ruin, unless it was to put money into their 
 own pockets." 
 
 " Yes, but, my good man, consider how 
 much cheaper we get the coal now. Why, 
 you must know yourself that twenty years 
 ago it was two pounds a ton, and look now, 
 you can get as good as any poor man need 
 wish to burn for ten and sixpence. What a 
 wonderful saving !" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, if it wasn't for the extra 
 police and poor-rates coming in to make
 
 EGLANTINE. 279 
 
 up the difference, as I don't think there's a 
 deal of saying when you come to reckon 
 them, and our rents riz for us every year, 
 and prices pushed up while you can't see 
 to the top of 'em. I don't find much saving 
 in it." 
 
 "Certainly there is common sense in 
 what you urge," said Mrs. Ullathorne ; 
 " but let us take a loftier position. I am 
 sure you must be proud of the commercial 
 prosperity of your country. Look at the 
 trade returns. Not that I have anything 
 to do with them, but still one must know." 
 
 " Commercial prosperity, ma'am !" And 
 I could just fancy the look that would come 
 over Joe's face as he said this. " Com- 
 mercial prosperity, ma'am ! — and who's the 
 better for your commercial prosperity, ex- 
 cept a pack of purse-proud fellows who had 
 more than they knew what to do with be- 
 fore ? What's the use of commercial pros- 
 perity, when your souls and minds and
 
 280 EGLANTINE. 
 
 bodies is going to ruin ? You turn men 
 into machines to make money for you, and 
 then you build a church to try to light up 
 a bit o' fire inside of 'em, to do instead of 
 the spirit that you've crushed out, and you 
 call that commercial prosperity !" 
 
 u Law ! but he's a wonderful man, is my 
 husband," said Mrs. Eollekins, looking up 
 from the blue jersey. " Not as I understand 
 a deal, but it's good to hear him talk. It's 
 every bit as good as a sermon !" 
 
 " Ah ! Rollekins, you are dangerous, I 
 am afraid. You have got those terrible 
 notions about equality and rights, and all 
 the rest of it. I don't know what to say 
 to you." 
 
 " I daresay you don't, ma'am. There's 
 wiser than you that don't know what to 
 say, when they come to look into things. 
 If making plenty of money is commercial 
 prosperity, why, then I don't doubt but 
 the coal and iron people is doing pretty
 
 EGLANTINE. 281 
 
 fair ; but if it's peace and comfort, and a 
 good conscience, and to do your duty to 
 God and your neighbour, why I can't see 
 as were so much as coming nigh-hand the 
 way for it. Look at this here place. I 
 can tell you the time when there wasn't a 
 man of us didn't go to church reg'lar, let 
 alone when we was laid up, or out with the 
 boats, and no drunkenness in the place, as 
 I've walked it day and night, and never set 
 eyes on a man who wasn't as steady on his 
 pins as myself; and for as cheap as the fish 
 was sold in them days, we never wanted 
 bit nor sup, nor a drop of good beer to 
 our dinners, nor a decent shirt to our 
 backs. And the quality, bless 'em ! with 
 always a kind look for us, and no bad 
 debts, nor aught dishonest in the village. 
 And now if you want to see you've only to 
 look." 
 
 And through the half-open doorway I 
 saw Joe point to a drunken group of
 
 282 EGLANTINE. 
 
 miners, who were playing at pitch and toss 
 under the shelter of the cliff, a hundred 
 yards away, dealing each other a good 
 heavy blow now and then, seasoned with 
 curses, if something went wrong in the 
 game. 
 
 "Yes, my good man," said Mrs. Ulla- 
 thorne, who seemed anxious to get through 
 with her visit now, "it is all very true. 
 These festering masses of vice and wicked- 
 ness are appalling. They fill every right- 
 minded person with the deepest anxiety. 
 But you know I have come to you this 
 morning to ask you to give your mite to- 
 wards remedying such a distressing state 
 of things." 
 
 " Then, ma'am, I think you'd best have 
 gone to them that made it, for they're the 
 fittest to mend it, and that's all I've got to 
 say." 
 
 " Oh ! Rollekins, I am sure you do not 
 mean that," said Mrs. Ullathorne, in her
 
 BGLASTItfE. 283 
 
 sweetest tones. " You have far too much 
 good sense and intelligence to turn a deaf 
 ear to the voice of distress, when it conies 
 from your fellow-men. Think what Cove 
 Rossington has been made by these people 
 who need your help now." 
 
 61 I've been thinking that, ma'am, a great 
 while past, but it isn't the people as needs 
 the help that has made it what it is ; it is 
 them as fills their pockets out of the sin 
 and misery of the men as toils and slaves 
 for them. And all that they've done for 
 Cove Rossington is to starve us out, while, 
 pinch as we will, we can scarce keep body 
 and soul inside the same coat. I can tell 
 the time, ma'am, when we used to set our- 
 selves down to a bit of beef reg'lar every 
 day of our lives, and always a good string 
 of dried fish hanging up, and never no 
 want at all, nor no complainings ; and now 
 it's as much as we can do to set eyes on it 
 twice a week, and that as coarse as I
 
 284 EGLANTINE. 
 
 wouldn't have looked at it when times was 
 different." 
 
 "Ay, he's right there," said Mrs. Eolle- 
 kins, sententionsly. "I give tenpence a 
 pound for nought but lean and scrag this 
 very blessed morning. I wonder what 
 missis has got to say to that ? If it wasn't 
 for me being a woman, and not my place 
 to talk, I could tell her a deal more about the 
 prices than what he knows." 
 
 But Joe had not finished yet ; his words 
 began to come thicker and louder. I 
 could see him straightening himself up, 
 squaring his broad shoulders, and thrust- 
 ing his pipe out every now and then in the 
 direction of Mrs. Ullathorne, who, I think, 
 must have begun to feel rather out of 
 place. 
 
 " Yes, butcher meat twice a week, 
 ma'am, and fish at such a price, while you 
 can't keep a bit for yourself was it ever 
 so; and the dealers beating you down
 
 EGLANTINE. 285 
 
 until I'd sooner put it back in the sea 
 than let 'em make their profit on it. And 
 all the while there's your coal gentlemen 
 and your iron gentlemen rolling in their 
 carriages, and their missises as thick with 
 velvets and satins as they can lay 'em on 
 their backs, and nought in the shops good 
 enough for them; and looking at you, if 
 they meet you on the beach, as if you was 
 nought but rubbish. I think they'd best 
 build your new church, ma'am, and give 
 your festering masses a lift." 
 
 11 Then am I to understand, Rollekins," 
 said Mrs. TJllathorne, with a perceptible 
 diminution of sweetness, " that you refuse 
 to contribute to this great enterprise ?" 
 
 " Yes, ma'am ; and if I could make you 
 understand it any clearer, I would. I'm 
 an ignorant and unlearned man, but if it's 
 looking through a milestone, I can see as 
 far to the other side as anybody; and I 
 say, let them as raises the sin and wretch-
 
 286 EGLANTINE. 
 
 eclness make a place for it to go to of a 
 Sunday, and build decent houses for it to 
 live in of a week day too, for that matter. 
 Your great folks have come and raked up 
 a lot of muck heaps in this here quiet 
 place, and I don't know who's so proper to 
 scatter it off again as theirselves." 
 
 " Rollekins," said Mrs. Ullathorne, with 
 dignity, " I beg you will remember that 
 you are speaking to a lady." 
 
 " I ask your pardon, ma'am, if I've said 
 aught unbecoming for anybody to hear, be 
 she lady, or be she what she may; but 
 you're the first that ever told me I didn't 
 know my place to the quality. I've lived 
 in Rossington, man and boy, this more 
 than seventy years, and no one ever cast it 
 up against me that I behaved myself im- 
 proper to them as had the right to expect 
 something different." 
 
 " Oh, I pass it over, Rollekins. It is of 
 no consequence. Your temper is a little
 
 EGLANTINE. 287 
 
 heated. I can make excuse for you." 
 " Thank you, ma'am, but I don't want 
 no excuses made for speaking the truth. 
 I respect the quality, and I never go again 
 'em, but it isn't quality that's brought the 
 mischief among us now, and it isn't us 
 poor fishermen neither ; and if them that 
 boiled the broth is the best to sup it, I 
 think your coal and iron folks has a right 
 to the first taste. That's my opinion, 
 ma'am." 
 
 " Well, Rollekins, I think you might let 
 me put your name down for a trifle. This 
 is the first place at which I have not been 
 received with proper courtesy. I shall 
 not be offended at a very small amount." 
 
 " No, ma'am, nor hadn't need to, if it's 
 the courtesy you mean; for a poor man 
 has a right to speak his mind as well as a 
 prince ; and I told you civilly enough I 
 hadn't the money to spare, when you asked 
 me for it first. And now, ma'am, I've no-
 
 288 EGLANTINE. 
 
 thing more to say, and I don't see that you 
 have, neither." 
 
 And with that Joe stood up and set the 
 door wide open, and waited for Mrs. Ulla- 
 thorne to take the hint. 
 
 I heard a great rustle of silk, but no 
 "good day," as she swept magnificently 
 out. I am afraid the sincerity she had ex- 
 perienced that day was not of a kind which 
 would lead her to imitate it.
 
 289 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " T GIVE her it hot and strong this time, 
 -■- I did," said Joe Rollekins, as his 
 wife and I came out from the back-kitchen 
 into the atmosphere of scent which the 
 Ullathorne presence had left behind. " I've 
 had it on my mind a good bit past to tell 
 her a few things like what she don't often 
 hear, for she's that sort as thinks a deal of 
 herself." 
 
 "More than she will ever think of yon, 
 Joe, again, I am afraid," said I ; for I had 
 my fears that Mrs. Ullathorne might work 
 her way into the agent's good graces, and 
 induce him to make things uncomfortable 
 
 VOL. I. IT
 
 290 EGLANTINE. 
 
 for the tenant of that cottage on the 
 beach. 
 
 " Never mind that, Miss Dora. I know 
 what I think about myself, and so it don't 
 matter a deal what other folks thinks about 
 me. She'll none come here again in a 
 hurry, with her chatter about sixpences 
 and responsibilities ; as if I hadn't lived 
 here long enough to know that them as 
 carts rubbish has the best right to keep it 
 decently covered where they've shot it 
 down. Let every man look after his own 
 patch of ground — that's what I say." 
 
 " Yes, and telling us we'd ought to set 
 an example," added his wife, who had 
 scarcely been restrained from coming to 
 the front while the battle was waging. 
 " Such rubbish ! I could have telled her 
 well enough, if it had been my place to 
 talk, that a clean-kept cottage and a good 
 name in the place for fifty year or more, is 
 better than as many sixpences as you could
 
 EGLANTINE. 291 
 
 cover jour floor with. But when you get 
 agate, Joe, there's no need for anybody 
 else to put their spoke in the wheel." 
 
 Joe accepted this tribute to his superi- 
 ority. 
 
 " You're a decent woman, Betsy," he said, 
 with a kindly glance at the somewhat care- 
 lined face of the woman who had been his 
 companion during the married years of his 
 pilgrimage; "but the housekeeping does 
 best for you. Stick to that, honey, and 
 your old man will always have a good 
 word for you." 
 
 I think these two were happy together. 
 No Prime Minister's wife could have been 
 prouder of him than was Betsy of the 
 rough old salt who had earned her living 
 for her, and kept her warm and content 
 and comfortable ever since their wedding- 
 day. Only times had pressed hardly upon 
 them since the rise in prices, and Betsy's 
 cheeks looked a trifle hollower, and her 
 
 u2
 
 292 EGLANTINE. 
 
 husband's square shoulders had begun to 
 stoop a little — not so much from age, for 
 he was as tough as ever; but because 
 " butcher meat twice a week " was scarcely 
 enough to keep the fire of life burning 
 bright and strong within him. Still they 
 never complained. I think they were as 
 proud of their poverty as my father and I 
 were of ours ; and as for the parish, Joe 
 would almost have felled anybody who had 
 dared to hint such a thing to him, and so 
 would his comrades in the Bay. It was 
 not the fishermen of Cove Eossington, let 
 food and lodging be as dear as they might, 
 who swelled the poor-rates to such distress- 
 ful proportions. 
 
 I went home and told my father all 
 about it. He was very much amused. I 
 think that conversation would have been 
 as interesting to him as the astronomical 
 lecture, if he could only have heard Mrs. 
 Ullathorne's mellifluous tones flowing so
 
 EGLANTINE. 293 
 
 ineffectually round the rugged rocks of 
 Joe's rude common sense, splashing up now 
 and then in dainty indignation, but power- 
 less to move, even to the extent of one 
 solitary sixpence, the old fellow's notions 
 of what was due to himself. 
 
 The church was needed, however, and 
 in due time the church was built ; at least, 
 a temporary iron structure was put up on 
 the Coley-Orton side of the parish bound- 
 ary, until such time as land and funds were 
 forthcoming for a permanent one ; and a 
 good useful hard-working clergyman was 
 appointed to the new district. I am afraid 
 Mrs. Ullathorne would not find him after 
 her own heart, for his service was even 
 simpler than ours at Cove Eossington, as 
 beseemed the hard-headed but uncultured 
 men who for the most part attended it. 
 And as for decorations and intoning, I 
 don't think they would have cared for 
 them. Miners and colliers who wanted
 
 294 EGLANTINE. 
 
 religion at all, wanted it as plain as it 
 conld be made for them. 
 
 Our Rector still lived at Nice, coming 
 over to see how we were getting on about 
 once a year. The curate, Mr. Esliton, 
 began to look overworked and anxious — 
 the place was growing out of his reach. 
 He was just such a man as we should 
 have been thankful for in our early, peace- 
 ful days, when simple goodness and quiet 
 doing of not very arduous duty was all 
 that Cove Rossington needed. He could 
 deal well enough with the honest fishermen 
 who received with unquestioning faith the 
 amount of truth he was able to give them, 
 who never reasoned, never debated, but 
 took for granted all that they had heard 
 from men who were better instructed than 
 themselves. And he had a tender heart 
 and a ready sympathy for trouble where- 
 ever he found it, and affectionate winning 
 ways which made him much beloved.
 
 EGLANTINE. 295 
 
 But he could not cope with the new 
 times. The eager, questioning, cavilling 
 spirit of the quick-witted artificers puzzled 
 him. They wanted more than affection 
 and kindheartedness ; they wanted an in- 
 tellect which could grapple with their own ; 
 they wanted a man to teach them, who had 
 fought the battle of life himself, who had 
 gone down deep into the questions which 
 vexed them, and who could sympathise, 
 not merely with poverty and pain, but with 
 doubt and hardness, and even unbelief, in- 
 stead of smiting them with the weapons of 
 righteous anger. When they found, as 
 they did sometimes, that their sharpness 
 got the better of his goodness, they set him 
 at naught, and declared that church-going 
 was a delusion. 
 
 That grieved him. He felt there were 
 needs in his parish for which he had no 
 supply. These hard-handed, harder-head- 
 ed men of toil wanted something which he,
 
 296 EGLANTINE. 
 
 their authorized spiritual guide, could not 
 give them. He gave them the best he 
 could, but he felt, even as he gave it, that 
 it did not meet their demands. He was too 
 honest to hide the truth from himself, that 
 these men were perishing from lack of 
 knowledge, and he, their pastor, could not 
 supply that lack. He became a sad, di- 
 spirited man, as one should be indeed who 
 cannot feed his flock with food convenient 
 for them. 
 
 Much as we loved him, the most thought- 
 ful amongst us were not sorry when we 
 heard that he had been presented to a 
 quiet living in the country, a rural parish 
 among a simple folk, who would not vex 
 him with their subtle questionings, but 
 would feed thankfully upon teaching which 
 was always backed by a consistent godly 
 life. 
 
 We did not know who was to succeed 
 him. Mrs. Ullathorne had friends in Nice,
 
 EGLANTINE. 297 
 
 and she was much in communication with 
 them about this time. Perhaps she re- 
 presented to them, and they might repre- 
 sent to Mr. Dewtrie, what sort of man 
 Cove Eossington needed ; and a memorial 
 was got up, chiefly through her influence 
 — for she could do almost anything she 
 liked with the people — asking him to take 
 into consideration the requirements of the 
 times, and appoint a curate who would 
 give more interest to the services of the 
 church, and so fill it better. I don't know 
 whether the memorial did any good. We 
 had a polite reply to it, stating that 
 Mr. Dewtrie's warmest efforts would be 
 used in the selection of a suitable succes- 
 sor, and that he was deeply alive to the 
 spiritual necessities of the place. Perhaps 
 he would have come to us himself, but 
 March, the month in which poor Mr. Esli- 
 ton left us, was the most trying of the 
 whole year to people with bronchial affec-
 
 298 EGLAXTIXE. 
 
 tions, and so Mr. Dewtrie was obliged to 
 choose for us at a distance. 
 
 Finally, we heard that our new curate 
 was to be a Mr. Elphinston, but who or 
 what Mr. Elphinston might be, was a mys- 
 tery. We also heard that he was not to 
 occupy the customary couple of rooms at 
 the Eectory, for Lord Rossington had 
 rented the whole of the house, furnished, 
 for a couple of years, the castle being in 
 such a ruinous condition that his family 
 could not all be conveniently accommo- 
 dated in it, and he was going to provide 
 an additional hundred a year for the curate 
 to find his own rooms in the village. 
 
 The duty was done for a few Sundays 
 by strangers, until Mr. Elphinston should 
 be ready to enter upon the parish. He 
 was somewhere in the midland counties. 
 I don't think his acquaintance with that 
 part of the country prepossessed us much 
 in his favour. We had been so impreg-
 
 EGLANTINE. 299 
 
 nated with mineral influences that as a 
 change we should have preferred some- 
 thing intelligent and gentlemanly from a 
 cathedral town. At least, in a social 
 sense, that would have been desirable, 
 though perhaps the mining population 
 would then have been no better off than 
 before. Others, Mrs. Ullathorne amongst 
 them, wanted a man of high views, who 
 would surround the sacerdotal function 
 with more pomp and circumstance than 
 we had been accustomed to. Others, Mr. 
 Collinson at their head, hoped that the 
 new curate would be a plain, hard-work- 
 ing, not very cultured man, like the clergy- 
 man at the Coley-Orton new church — one 
 who would go about amongst the people, 
 and win their confidence, and give them 
 plenty of simple, wholesome doctrine. But 
 to what purpose did we speculate, and to 
 what purpose did we talk ? Mr. Elphin- 
 ston, late curate in one of the most crowd-
 
 300 EGLANTINE. 
 
 ed parishes of the midland iron and coal 
 district, was appointed to be our spiritual 
 guide, and, whether the path through which 
 he led us w^ere narrow, high, or broad, our 
 duty was simply to follow.
 
 301 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 r SAID there was no difference in Eglan- 
 ■*■ tine "Wear when she returned with 
 her mother from Bonnermouth. But there 
 was a great difference, which I only felt as 
 the weeks passed on. To me she was al- 
 ways the same — impetuous, eager, affec- 
 tionate ; showing sometimes depths of 
 affection which astonished me by their 
 clearness ; sometimes mists of prejudice, 
 which as much perplexed me by their 
 brooding obstinacy ; sometimes little shift- 
 ing lights and shadows of wilfulness ; 
 sometimes even a dash of coquetry — as 
 much of it as could come out to a quiet 
 middle-aged woman like myself. But,
 
 302 EGLANTINE. 
 
 whatever tlie passing mood might be, I 
 had only to wait, and by-and-by Tyne was 
 herself again, a companion for almost as 
 much of my life as anyone could be a com- 
 panion for now. 
 
 But the visit to Bonnermouth was her 
 introduction into society, and that always 
 makes a difference to a girl. I felt, though 
 I could scarcely express it, even in my own 
 thoughts, that she had slipped just a little 
 away from me ; that my grave, old-fashion- 
 ed ways could never quite content her any 
 more. She had passed over the boundary 
 which kept me out of the gay world. 
 There was one part of her life from which 
 I must always stand aside. 
 
 I often wondered how Tyne would get 
 on in that world of society. She had 
 brightness enough to love it very much, and 
 beauty enough, of an intense flashing kind, 
 to make her popular in it ; but she was too 
 sensitive to be happy, and she had not the
 
 EGLANTINE. 303 
 
 easy confidence, not to call it complacency, 
 which bore her mother so pleasantly over 
 the surface of social life. To be very 
 successful, a woman must think well of 
 herself. If she is conscious of her own 
 defects, she will never be what is called 
 charming. Tyne was not over-conscious 
 of them, except with those whom she wish- 
 ed to please, and then she became so humble 
 that she could not do herself justice. 
 
 There were such curious ups and downs in 
 her nature. Those who knew her, loved 
 her for them. Those who did not, had 
 many a vexing stumble and fall over them. 
 In general society, amongst people whom 
 she only cared for in a pleasant, surface sort 
 of way, she was so bright and merry and 
 attractive, that a young party amongst 
 Mrs. Wear's set was never considered 
 complete without her. She had just enough 
 coquetry about her to make her perilously 
 fond of attention, but not enough self-
 
 304 EGLANTINE. 
 
 possession always to command it. Some 
 people, even dear good Miss Fidger 
 amongst them, called Tyne a bit of a flirt, 
 but I knew her better than that. It was 
 only the innocent independence of her cha- 
 racter, which blossomed out sometimes into 
 such a careless freedom of manner that 
 people were fascinated by her, whether 
 they would or not. And as poor Tyne was 
 never perfectly careless and independent, 
 except with those for whom she cared 
 nothing at all, it was rather awkward for 
 her when their preference began to mani- 
 fest itself. 
 
 "Where Tyne's heart was interested, she 
 shut up like a flower that is ashamed of its 
 own perfume. I never saw anyone who 
 did herself so little justice with those whom 
 she wished to love. She became shy, em- 
 barrassed, and awkward. She would drop 
 into a fitful silence, or rattle on in a way 
 that gave the impression of over-conn-
 
 EGIAXTIXE. 305 
 
 dence, but was really put on to hide a 
 humility which dare not show itself. I 
 could always tell whether Tyne cared for 
 people or wished for their good opinions, 
 by the change which passed over her in 
 their company. If she was easy, pleasant, 
 and agreeable, I made up my mind at once 
 that she was indifferent to them; and 
 generally found myself correct. If she shut 
 herself up, or came out only in dashes and 
 flashes, I knew that her interest was 
 touched, though it manifested itself in such 
 a way as rather to repel the people she 
 cared for than to attract them. To me 
 this was one of Tyne's chief points of 
 attraction, though I knew it must sooner or 
 later cost her trouble. 
 
 I suppose her perfect indifference to 
 young Ted Ullathorne gave her manner 
 that touch of ease and freedom which 
 caused the young man to think himself a 
 favourite. He was sure to find his way 
 
 vol. i. x
 
 306 EGLANTINE. 
 
 to her at a promenade, or a walking party, 
 or a sketching excursion, or an archery 
 gathering, and she was too much of a girl 
 not to be pleased by his manifest prefer- 
 ence. I had it on my mind once or twice 
 to caution her againsfc attentions which 
 might have a purpose in them, but again I 
 decided that the young people were best 
 left to manage their own affairs. I was 
 quite sure, from Tyne's manner, that she 
 did not care for him ; and if Mr. Ted 
 were building castles in the air on the 
 foundation of his own irresistible fascina- 
 tions, why, the sooner they came down the 
 better, and their fall might be a wholesome 
 lesson to him. 
 
 For Ted was very like his mamma in 
 easy assurance and complacency, and he 
 had that fine confidence of manner which 
 arises from a liberal answer to the Scotch- 
 man's prayer. I don't think this confidence 
 had any connection with intellectual gifts,
 
 EGLANTINE. 307 
 
 for it was impossible to talk to hhn about 
 any but the merest common-places, and 
 there were whispers, which I could quite 
 credit, of his having been more than once 
 plucked in his examinations. Some people's 
 self-esteem, however, prospers upon such 
 experiences, and young Mr. Ullathorne 
 tided over his successive disappointments 
 with an ease and grace which were posi- 
 tively admirable. 
 
 Mrs. Ullathorne still came to Mrs. Wear's 
 little evening gatherings, and, when it was 
 possible, brought her son ; but not until 
 she had ascertained the nature and amount 
 of the property which Tyne would inherit 
 from her mother. Because, for anything 
 she knew to the contrary at first, the in- 
 come which enabled Mrs. Wear to keep up 
 such a pretty establishment, and sustain 
 such a position in Cove Rossington, might 
 only have been a pension, similar to that 
 
 which Mrs. Dashthorpe, the Indian officer's 
 
 x2
 
 308 EGLANTINE. 
 
 widow, enjoyed. And a pension which 
 ceased upon the mother's death, or only 
 descended in a very diminished form to the 
 daughter, was an unsatisfactory thing to 
 marry into. When she found out, how- 
 ever, that Mrs. Wear's property from this 
 source was only a trifling item in an 
 otherwise solid and substantial income, 
 duly secured to her only child, Ted was 
 introduced at the receptions, and did his 
 best to make himself welcome there. 
 
 Another thing which kept me from 
 speaking to Tyne was that slight veil of 
 separation which, as I have said before, her 
 entrance into that life where I could never 
 follow her, had raised between us. Out- 
 side of her mother, I had hitherto been 
 Tyne's world ; now she had got a step for- 
 ward, and was learning to look at things 
 for herself. My opinion was no longer 
 final. What I thought upon any subject 
 was no longer the measure of her thoughts
 
 EGLANTINE. 309 
 
 upon it. This grieved me a little at first, 
 but it soon took its right place amongst 
 the inevitable things of life, and I became 
 content. She had not by any purpose of 
 her own put me aside. I was simply learn- 
 ing what most women have to learn many 
 times, and learn patiently, too, that in 
 friendship we must take what is given us, 
 be as much as we can to those we love, 
 and drop quietly away when the time comes 
 for others to take our place. 
 
 There was only one now to whom I was 
 quite necessary, and that was ray father. 
 He would say sometimes, as I waited upon 
 him, or helped him in his literary work — 
 
 "Dora, you have been a good daughter 
 to me." 
 
 I had no greater joy than to hear him 
 say that. I used to think that perhaps it 
 was better than any husband's love could 
 ever have been. Back, back, through all 
 the long years of my life, he had been my
 
 310 EGLANTINE. 
 
 other name for goodness and nobleness 
 and truth. I did not dare to think of the 
 days, surely not far off now, when it would 
 no longer be "my father and I," when I 
 should sit in our pleasant old room alone, 
 and listen to the plash of the waves on the 
 shingle below, and think of my dead lying 
 in the quiet churchyard. 
 
 And my other dead, not lying under 
 churchyard grass, much further from me 
 than that, the dead whom just a word 
 had put away from me. I used to look 
 sometimes at the little slip which I had 
 cut out of Miss Fidger's paper, that short, 
 pathetic record of the ending of a life which 
 must have been very happy, being lived 
 with Rae Morrison ; but I always said to 
 myself that it could make no difference to 
 me. That sweet past of mine could never 
 arise and come out of its grave, any more 
 than my faded and aging face could have 
 any beauty, excejDt for those to whom I
 
 EGLANTINE. 311 
 
 daily ministered, and whose comfort was 
 dependent upon me. To do what good I 
 could, and die when my time came, was all 
 that was left for me now. 
 
 And so the days went on until that 
 Easter Sunday when John Elphinston 
 preached his first sermon in our parish 
 church. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY MACDONALD AND TUGWELL, BLENHEIM HOUSE.