# .^ m ^IF L I E> RARY OF THE U N I V ER5 ITY or ILLINOIS M468p V.I & SON'S LIBRARY .ONDON, ' A YBOOK STALLS, FROM SUBSCRIBERS IN SETS ONI > k^> <> FOR SUBSCRIBERS OBTAINiNb THEIR BOOKS FROM A ^^^^l^l^^S'^^^^'lilionihB. Fcr ONE Volume at a time ..'-.. .. £0 12 .. 110 ^!v "" m morrr^HOH, yolumc .ir, ;. / a»a<.'abie Jor this ciass of SubscrtpUon,) •er\y T"TO^ Volumes ' •• ... 17 6 •• 1 11 6 * or iJ»*N%"*,^,, y.^^ Volumes are no! avmUxbUfor (his class cj Subscnpiton.) ^ :iE Volumes „ 1 3 .. 2 2 ^ nuiJU^ 1 S .. 2 10 JJgTx ' " " 1 15 .. 8 3 .^cr TWELVE I I •• •• •• 3 .. 5 5 The clerks in charge of Messrs. W, H. Smith & So»'s bookstalls arc required to sec that book. wiiL irustrXns and Maps are issued to and reccteU frpn. ihc subscribers to the i.yoks»iu.» Library perfect ill nmnber.wilcoiKiitio)). D>^ >./-ik4 . ^(5 PATIENCE HOLT VOL. I. PATIENCE HOLT BY GEORGIANA M. CRAIK (Mrs. a. W. May) AUTHOR OF DIANA," "A DAUGHTER OF THE PEOPLE," "GODFREY HELSTOxNE, IN THREE VOLUMES VOL. I. LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON Publbljcrs in Orbin-aro ia t)n pajcsiii. il^e (0««« 1891 [All rights reserved'^ Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay. I PATIENCE HOLT. CHAPTER I. '' "PRITZ ! " shouted Patience. '' What d'you want ? " growled a boy's sleepy voice. '' I want to know what you're doing. I ■^* can't see you. You're in the dark." ^ ** Well, let me be. I wan^ to be in the ^l^dark." " But that's nonsense," said Patience with V decision ; and she ran forward into the "^ gloom. ^ The boy was lying on a heap of hay, at ^ full length, in a state of lazy enjoyment. ^ The place was a big old barn ; the time was 4 '■°^- '■ PATIENCE HOLT. nearly an hour after sunset ; the shadows all round him were very deep, so that even Patience's sharp eyes for a few moments could scarcely discover him in his luxurious retirement. When after a brief space, how- ever, those keen organs detected his recum- bent figure, she paused in her advance, and addressed him again, with indignation. " Well, of all the idle boys I ever knew ! — of all the horrible lazy boys ! — " she cried. *' Now — come, shut up," said Fred com- posedly. But Patience had no intention of obeying this injunction, and she continued her address with undiminished force. "You're lazier than any one else I ever knew. You're like a pig. You're not like a boy at all." "Well, all right," said Fred, with coolness. " Voicre like one, at any rate." *' I believe you've been fast asleep," said Patience. PATIENCE HOLT. '' You're taking good care, anyway, that I shan't sleep now," retorted Fred ; and he gave a great yawn, and stretched his arms out over his head. " But, Fritz," said Patience, in rather a more alluring and pathetic tone, " I think it's so nasty of you. I think it's horrid, — when Fve nobody else to play with." '* Oh, bother ! " remarked Fred succinctly. " Of course, if there was anybody else it wouldn't matter." Fred gave a chuckle. '' No, I know that well enough. You're a little beast," he said with cutting coolness. '' You only care for people for what you can get out of them." And then all at once Patience fell upon him. She made a rushing, hissing sound, and swooped down on him, and hit him on the chest blindly, with both her doubled fists, like a young fury. This attack, however, if fierce, was brief. PATIENCE HOLT. for she was a very little person, and before she had been striking out for two or three seconds, her brother lifted himself up, and seized her by the wrists. *' Well, you're a pretty spitfire ! " he said. " You're a nice sister to have ! " '' Oh, Fritz ! " cried poor Patience, with swift contrition, " don't say that ! " *' You get worse every day you live, — worse and nastier," said Fred, unmoved. " Oh, no — no, I don't," quavered Patience. " It's only when you say — such — horrid — things. But, Fritz, I'm — very — sorry." '' Much any one would care for yoicr sorrow ! " retorted Fritz, contemptuously. And then, being by this time on his feet, he marched out of the barn without another word ; and poor Patience in her turn dropped down upon the hay, with the tears running down her cheeks. The tears ran down her cheeks for about half a minute, but after the half-minute had PATIENCE HOLT. expired she took out her pocket-handkerchief and wiped them away. *'Well, it's no use crying," she said, with sudden philosophy ; " and if I did hit him I'm sure he was aggravating. One can't help hitting people sometimes ; I don't know how anybody can. One must either hit, or do something worse. I think it's ever so much worse to say things. When one says things it's so horrid afterwards. I don't think I said — much now." And then she sat pensively for a little while, trying rather vainly to recollect what words had dropped from her lips ; after which unproductive exercise she jumped at last rather suddenly to her feet. " Oh, dear, it's getting quite dark even out there," she all at once exclaimed, gazing towards the open door ; '' and for anything I know," she prudently added, " there may be ghosts about." With which reflection she sped across the PATIENCE HOLT. barn floor with remarkable haste, and bolted into the yard. She was not in a general way- afraid of ghosts ; still, in an unfamiliar place, she felt it was best to err on the side of circumspection. And this was an entirely unfamiliar place : it was a farm in one of the southern counties, and Patience's natural home was in London, where she lived for ten months and a half out of every year. She lived in London, and she never thought of wanting to live anywhere else ; but yet, when her father and mother and she and Fred made their yearly migration for six summer weeks to some country or seaside quarters, that period to Patience was a period of the utmost interest and delight. Fred did not care for it as she did, — but then, " Fritz was so odd," as she continually remarked to herself. He would loll about all day. If you let him, doing nothing. Indifferent to all those exquisite privileges of boyhood which, had he cared to PATIENCE HOLT. avail himself of them, would have permitted him a freedom that, as compared with the freedom attainable by herself, seemed to Patience's imaginative mind as wide almost as a bird's. '' To think that he might do anything, and that he does — nothing!" she would reflect day after day with an immeasurable wonder, and, to tell the truth, occasionally with an immeasurable scorn. '' I think that Patience ought to have been the boy," her mother sometimes said of her ; but she never said this in her husband's hearing, for Dr. Holt would have regarded such an expression of opinion as indicating a desire to interfere with the acts of Providence, and savouring of spiritual presumption, and other heinous sins. He himself drew no contrast between the characters of his children. To his calmly receptive mind they simply were as God had made them — two gifts bestowed upon him, in wrath or PATIENCE HOLT. mercy, to be dealt with according to his lights ; and according to his lights he did consequently deal with them, not without a painful sense that one of them, at any rate, presented herself at times, to such imagination as he possessed, almost in the light of an instrument of Satan sent to buffet him. For Dr. H olt had come of Quaker blood, and Patience, in spite of her name, was not Quaker- like. She had been christened Patience after her paternal grandmother, but from her earliest infancy it must be confessed that she had begun sadly to dishonour her appellation, nor up to the present time, when she was eleven years old, had her habit in this respect become amended in the least. Her grand- mother had been a gentle, sweet-voiced, sweet-faced, placid woman, the incarnation of Quaker virtues and Quaker limitations ; but the young Patience was as a creature made all of blood and fire, un-Quakerlike in every fibre of her nature. She could not PATIENCE HOLT. take her vigorous life quietly ; she seemed impervious to the meaning of composure and self-restraint. She was not an ill-intentioned child, but there was that in her composition that sent her grave father often to his knees, with a bewildered prayer that Heaven in its mercy would cast the evil spirits out of her. Dr. and Mrs. Holt had only these two children, Patience and Fred, — or Fritz, as his sister preferred, from some one of her many fancies, to call him. Fred was a handsome, fair, stolid-looking boy, with a fine physique and a slow brain, and a certain Quaker phlegm about him that his sister found peculiarly exasperating. But though she found him exasperating, and though in their intercourse together she made a fine show at times of lording it over him, in reality it was he who was her master, and she his slave ; for the dark, spare, bright- eyed little sprite in her heart admired this fair, big, cool young lord of the creation, lO PATIENCE HOLT. in these early years, with an immense, if a frequently provoked, admiration, and as an inevitable consequence of such admiration, laid her small being at his feet with a devotion that, stolid as he seemed, was very evident to Master Fred, and that won from him a deep if silent approval. Fred was two years older than Patience. He was thirteen at this time, and a Rugby boy. He was slow and lazy, with no in- convenient fire about him, and his father looked upon him with thankfulness, and felt that he was a creature he could under- stand. Not like Patience, whom no man could understand. '' But they are both our children ; we must be content with what God has given us," the good man always piously thought ; and indeed he never treated his little daughter with severity, though her ways were at times almost ter- rifying to him, like the ways of some being from another world. PATIENCE HOLT. I I It was lovely, Patience thought, in this quiet, old-world, southern farm, with its quaint interior, and its solid, multitudinous farm buildings. It was an old place that had been connected with a monastery once, and there were some remains of ruins still adjoining it, which were in fact not very ancient ruins, but which Patience liked to consider ancient, and to people in imagin- ation with the spirits of departed monks — who had certainly never had any living habitation there. ''Just think of them sitting in this very spot, and looking out on those actual hills, and eating, — and drinking, — and saying their prayers ! " she would exclaim to Fred, with enthusiasm. But Fred, who held the monkish theory In supreme contempt, would seldom to such an outburst make any sympathetic response. *' It's all bosh ! " he exclaimed one day. " I don't believe there was ever a monk in 12 PATIENCE HOLT. the place. And as for these ruins — they're no more fifteenth century ruins than I am." " But, Fritz," she cried eagerly, " everybody says " Oh, bother what everybody says ! " inter- rupted Fred, with a lordly scorn for popular tradition. '' ' Everybody,' I know, doesn't say that these are fifteenth century ruins. You just ask father. They're last century ruins. Father has been reading all about them." '* And were there never any monks here ? " asked Patience solemnly. "Well, not in these ruins — not a man Jack of them," said Fred. " Oh, dear ! " murmured Patience sorrow- fully, and subsided into a grave and thoughtful silence. But after she had meditated on Fred's state- ment for a little while, to tell the truth her spirits rose again, for after all, she began to reflect, old monks, even if once extant, were after their decease rather dull subjects for PATIENCE HOLT. 1 3 continued contemplation ; and when one had some dozen times or so endeavoured in imagination to picture them within their ancient walls, " eating, and drinking, and saying their prayers," as she had comprehen- sively put it, there did not seem — well, there did not seem to be very much more to think of about them ; whereas, if this had been an ordinary house, and other people had lived in it — ladies and gentlemen, and boys and girls ! — Patience's eyes suddenly bright- ened ; her imagination took fire. Here all at once was food for endless fancy — food of a decidedly more exciting sort than any that the defunct monks were likely to afford her. '' Then who did live here ? " she abruptly demanded, shooting out her question at Fred like an arrow. But Fred was whittling a stick, and, not desiring in any sense to raise the dead, took no interest in responding to his sister's question. 14 PATIENCE HOLT. " Oh, / don't know," he merely said con- temptuously. '' Some big old gun. Father can tell you." And with that he closed his lips and walked off, leaving Patience all alive with curiosity. " Papa, who built that old house that used to be here ? " she asked her father on the first opportunity ; and Dr. Holt, who liked to see signs of a rational spirit of inquiry in his daughter, placed forthwith in her hands a quarto volume of the history of the county, and pointed out the pages in it from which she could derive all the Information she desired. So Patience set herself forthwith to read them, and her eyes began presently to dance in her head. For this ruined house, she found, had been built by a noble lady, and lords and ladies had lived in it — some of them with the loveliest names. Patience thought. There was a Lady Adelberta, and a Lady Elfrida, and a Lady Rosamond. They did PATIENCE HOLT. I 5 not belong to the middle ages, and yet they almost sounded as if they did. They ap- pealed to Patience's active imagination in the liveliest way ; and she took mental possession of them, one and all, straightway, and began so swiftly to weave their person- ality into stories that, within a few hours of her having first heard of their existence, she recounted to Fred so thrilling a tale about the Lady Elfrida that, told as it was in the great barn at twilight, with a rainy wind sighing outside, it gave Fred a distinct sense of feeling creepy. She was always telling Fred stories, to which he listened with mingled curiosity and reluctance, half-interested in them, half- resenting them — for she made them out of her head, as he was well aware, and he did not like things that were made out of people's heads ; and yet he could not keep himself from feeling an unprofitable sort of interest in them. He used to let her 1 6 PATIENCE HOLT. begin her recitations, whistling to himself perhaps, and affecting entire inattention to them, but in reality, before more than two or three minutes had passed, he would be listening with both his ears ; and some- times, before she had reached the middle of her tale, he would even betray himself by some sudden question or remark that showed an interest in her silly narration such as he naturally felt was unworthy either of his years or of his sex. For of course it was all rubbish, and she was nothing but a chit of a girl ; and besides, what business had she to be telling lies ? What were all her tales except a pack of lies ? " You'd catch it if father knew ! " he said to her on the occasion on which she had been making the departed Lady Elfrida live again for his entertainment (which was in- deed an ungracious return for the interest that the poor lady's apocryphal adventures PATIENCE HOLT. I7 had afforded him). '' I'd like to see you telling such a cock-and-bull story to himr " Oh, but then I shouldn't," replied Patience prudently. '' No, because you wouldn't dare." '* I don't know that I shouldn't dareT Patience sat with her hands upon her knees, and her eyes, with a half-puzzled expression in them, gazing out through the great barn- doors. ''I think I might dare, but — it wouldn't come," she said after a little pause. "' You see, Fritz, papa wouldn't believe." '* I should think he wouldn't ! " cried Fred, with a loud guffaw. '' But, you little goose, do you suppose anybody else would } Do you suppose / do ? " And then Patience turned her strange eyes upon him, and looked through him, as Fred suddenly and uncomfortably felt, and — *' Oh, yes, jj/6>^ do — in a way," she said with composure. "You don't want to, but VOL. L 2 I 8 PATIENCE HOLT. you do it — quite as much as one cares about. You see," she added explanatorily, *' you're young." ''I'm not so young as to be the fool you take me for," retorted Fred. But he spoke dubiously — not quite resolved whether to be offended by her last remark or the reverse. " Yes ; but poor papa isrit young," said Patience. " It's very nice, of course, to be like papa " (this was a salvo to her con- science), " but it's best of all to be young. It's lovely to be young. Isn't it, Fritz ? One seems to think of so many things." *' Oh, bosh ! " said Fred. '' / don't think of many things." '' Don't you ? " asked Patience ; and she looked at him regretfully. She used to look at him a great deal, and Fred never liked it. *' Well, I often think you don't seem as if you did ; but then one never knows — and some great people even, I believe, have looked stupid. But I'll tell you of one old person PATIENCE HOLT. 1 9 who thinks of a great many things, Fritz. Mamma does." "Why, how do you know that?" asked Fred sharply. '* Oh," returned Patience with composure, '* I can't help knowing it. I know it by the way she understands. She's awfully good at understanding. Papa's nothing to her." ** I say. Miss Impudence, you'd better shut up," cried Fred at this, and turned on her belligerently ; for Fred felt a great instinctive sympathy with his father's make of intellect, so that a disparaging remark concerning it affected him, unconsciously, almost like a disparaging remark about his own. The colour was in his fair face now ; he looked at Patience with contempt. '' But I only mean they're different," explained Patience, hastily. " Of course papa's the cleverest." " I should think he was ! " exclaimed Fred. *' Well, men always are, I suppose," said 20 PATIENCE HOLT. Patience simply. " But still, women are quickest. That's all I meant. And I think mamma is very quick ; she sees in a moment. She is always able to understand. It's so nice. One can say anything to her. It's — different with papa. ''Well, I should hope it was! It would be a rum thing if father were to care about your trumpery stories and things," retorted Fred, scornfully. And then Patience meekly acknowledged that it would. ''I suppose fathers never do?" she suggested dubiously ; and Fred nodded his head with confidence. *' If they did, they'd be queer old muffs," he said. But it was so nice that mothers could do these things, and yet escape being old muffs ! Patience made this reflection to herself, and sighed with satisfaction as she made it. She had always had such a rare amount of comfort in her mother. And indeed Mrs. PATIENCE HOLT. 2 1 Holt was one of those pillowy women whose gentle breasts seem made for daughters' heads and hearts to rest on. Not that she was like Patience : she was an ordinary woman enough ; there was little even that was clever in her. Perhaps in reality, when Patience gave her so much credit for com- prehension, she often did not comprehend more than very vaguely ; but she was gifted with a wide and tender sympathy that stood her in stead of a keener understanding. She could always listen and smile as her little daughter talked to her, and look with her light gentle eyes into Patience's bright dark ones. Possibly sometimes, as that melodiously intelligent regard rested on her child, she was not, as Patience thought, paying much heed to the fanciful talk that flowed from the girl's lips, but was thinking, it may be, of quite other things — of Patience's new frocks perhaps, or the amount of wear left in Fred's last pair of trousers ; but 2 2 PATIENCE HOLT. Patience always saw her look of attention, and met her tender smile, and believed that her fantastic talk was being followed in the minutest particulars, — and was content. *' You let her talk too much, Agatha. I fear you encourage her in her strange, un- practical fancies," Dr. Holt would at times say to his wife. But when he did so his wife would smile upon him too, and soothe him, and continue quietly to go her own way. She was a woman who never opposed any one, but yet in her own house she went her own way always, and ruled, though she never seemed to rule. It was summer-time, and dry weather, and the children were out of doors all day. Fred did a good deal of his outing alone, putting Patience frequently down when she offered to accompany him, as if his pedes- trian exploits were of a sort too great for accomplishment by a girl, — though in truth, as Patience well knew, he performed no PATIENCE HOLT. pedestrian exploits at all, but for the most part contented himself with lying on his back in the sun, or sitting and whistling on a gate — occupations that often fulfilled his ideas of enjoyment far more completely than Patience's sometimes exhausting companion- ship and conversation. Yet, though Patience was quite aware of this, her restless Imagin- ation excited her, whenever he was out of her sight, to weave tales about his doings of the wildest and most improbable, and sometimes even of the most alarming and tragic, sort, all which she would recount to him afterwards with the liveliest Interest. '' I never saw anything like you ; I believe if something did really happen to me, you'd be off your head with joy ! " Fred was goaded into exclaiming to her one day when, with certainly peculiar zest, she had been detailing to him a most doleful story, of which himself and his imaginary misadventures had formed the theme. It had been a peculiarly :4 PATIENCE HOLT. harrowing tale, but she had told it with surprising gusto, and perhaps Fred's ejacu- lation at the end of it was not unnatural, though it struck her to the heart. " Oh, Fritz ! " she gasped, and for a moment or two could say no more, but the tears sprang to her eyes. '' Fritz, it was all make-believe ! " " Well, I should hope it was," retorted Fred, indignantly. " But if it hadn't been — if it had really happened, — I believe you'd dance. I don't know what it is that comes into you sometimes. It's something horrid. It makes your eyes like live coals. I believe there are times when, if you were left alone with me in the dark, you'd do something to me — if you could. You're like a demon ; you know you are." And with this bitter speech he left her ; and poor Patience when he was gone literally bowed her head in the dust. It was quite true — she did feel like a PATIENCE HOLT. 25 demon sometimes. She did not think that she had felt so just now, but there were times — awful times — when — yes, when she believed she could almost come behind some one who had offended her, and — and do something to him. It was dreadful ! She must be one of the devil's own children ; it was no wonder Fritz hated her, she thought. And so she rolled herself on the ground, with such curious consequence to her dark hair (for it was very dry, dusty weather) that, meeting her mother presently as she was creeping indoors after having terminated this act of humiliation, Mrs. Holt looked at her with astonishment, and called to her to stop. *' My dear, what in the world have you been doing to yourself ? " she said. " Come here — let me look at you. Why, you are perfectly covered with dust ! " And then poor Patience's lips quivered, and she looked up piteously, and — ''Yes, I rolled myself on the ground," she 26 PATIENCE HOLT. whispered. '' I lay down in the dust, and rubbed it all over me. It's because — it's because — " she said, and threw herself suddenly into her mother's arms, and burst out sobbing. What better could she do than sob on that tender bosom ? And after she had sobbed for a little while, and had tried pretty confusedly to pour out her woes, what better could Mrs. Holt do than take her up-stairs (as she did) and wash her head ? It would cool her, — and clean her too, the sensible woman thought. So, amidst gentle, consoling words, Patience had her head washed, and her raiment changed, and was calmed and comforted. ** And you won't say anything to papa, will you, mother dear ? " she inquired plead- ingly, when the refreshing work had been accomplished. " Nor to Fritz ?" Whereupon Mrs. Holt promised that she would preserve the strictest silence in both PATIENCE HOLT. 27 these quarters, and Patience gave a sigh of rehef. " It's so horrid when they know things," she said simply. ** I Hke yo2t to know everything, because you understand ; but other people don't understand." And then Mrs. Holt smiled one of her tender smiles. Perhaps she too understood less than Patience thought ; but if Patience mistook love for comprehension, was she, after all, any the worse for that ? ^^Al^Oi^^^^V. CHAPTER II. TIERED never learnt how his sister had put dust upon her head ; In fact, the incident that had led her to that act of self- humiliation probably never again crossed his mind, for there was a certain unimpression- able sweetness of nature about the boy that (to Patience's secret envy and admir- ation) made most unpleasant things slide off his memory in the easiest and most rapid way. Patience took her own small troubles pretty seriously and keenly, but Fred never took his seriously at all. "Why, what would be the good?" he demanded of her one day. '' If a thing's done, you can't help it. If fellows were to PATIENCE HOLT. 29 mind all the nasty things that happened to them at school, I wonder where you suppose they'd be ! " '' But I thought it was so nice at school — at least at Rugby ? " cried Patience, sur- prised at this speech. And then Fred pulled himself together, and feeling that his last remark had been rather a slip of the tongue, stood up for his school manfully. *' Why, 0/ course, it's nice ! Who said it wasn't ? " he exclaimed in a challenging tone. *' It's the jolliest school in England. But if you imagine that with such a lot of fellows all together, and some beasts of masters too, there's nothing to put up with, then you are a simpleton ! Why, there's lots to put up with. I don't know how ever you would get on there. You'd think it awful." ** Well, I don't know," said Patience dubiously, and with her small heart full of unlawful longing. 30 PATIENCE HOLT. "Ah, but / know," responded Fred con- fidently. '' The idea of any girl getting on at Rugby ! Good gracious ! Why, girls haven't a notion " And then Fred all at once stopped, with a sudden air of '' I could an if I would," that, naturally. Patience found extraordinarily exasperating. Was Rugby really so much better than her own school in London ? She was a High School girl, and High Schools were great and beautiful Institutions, she thought. She did not see why they should not be quite as good as Rugby ; indeed she be- lieved they probably were quite as good (If not even a little better), only Fritz would never let her say so. Fritz was so horrid always about /ler school — never caring to hear a word about it, though she had tried hard to enlarge upon its excellences to him many a time. " I believe we work twice as hard as you PATIENCE HOLT. 3 1 do," she all at once blurted out explosively now. But Fred only looked at her, and smiled benignly, and made the simple response — "Well, what's that got to do with it?" *'What has work to do with it?" asked Patience disdainfully. " I know lots of fellows at Rugby who never work at all," said Fred with serenity. "Yes; and what becomes of them in the end ? " demanded Patience with scorn. " Oh, they're all right," said Fred. " It isn't only work that counts at a great school like ours. That's where your trumpery High Schools make such a mistake. I've told you that before, but you never believe me. You're so pig-headed. Girls are all so pig- headed. That High School lot make ,me sick." " Oh, Fritz ! " cried Patience, flushing crimson. "Well, they do. They're a parcel of PATIENCE HOLT. prigs. And you'll get to be one too if you don't look out. You're going hard for it now — and it's a sort of thing I hate. And you know I hate it," said Fred, with the indignation of a young moral censor. " Oh dear ! " murmured Patience, half in jest. Fritz was provoking sometimes. There was a cabbage-stalk lying in the path before them, and she took it up and threw it at him. She knew indeed that she had that unlawful longing for a personal acquaintance with Fritz's life at Rugby, and yet with half her mind did she not almost despise Rugby, and long — metaphorically — to throw cabbage-stalks at it too ? " I don't believe you learn anything at school but how to play games," she broke out almost with venom. ''/ shouldn't like to go to a school where I learnt nothing but games. But boys are lazy creatures." "You shut up!" growled Fred threateningly. ''And even though they're always at them. PATIENCE HOLT. 33 I can play some games better than you. And I can run better than you ! " cried Patience, with her eyes sparkling. '' That's gammon ! " said Fred. Whereupon Patience Instantly took to her heels, and, spurred on by his righteous In- dignation, Fred unwisely took to his heels too, and pursued her. But she outran him In half a minute, and when, with a laugh of feigned Indifference, he had wheeled aside and given up the contest, she turned and jeered him. *' I told you so! I told you so! Rugby boy ! Rugby boy ! " she shouted ; and then suddenly fled again, for Fred In his wrath had put on a fresh spurt, and was after her. She was an agile little person, but she came to grief at times In some of her scam- perlngs ; and when Patience came to grief and Injured any of her members, or even to any serious extent mutilated her garments, she shook In her shoes. For she had a great VOL. I. 3 34 PATIENCE HOLT. awe of her father, and a great dread of any consequences of her escapades reaching his ears. Dr. Holt would have liked to see his daughter always correctly attired, and to find her taking her exercise with propriety upon the high roads by her mother's side ; but Patience's raiment in the country had an irreclaimable habit of getting disarranged and rent ; and as for the high roads, she abhorred them, and never so much as volun- tarily set her foot upon them, except on Sundays when she went to church. At all other times she used to steal away like a wild creature to the woods and streams, and loved nothing so much as to disport herself there, regardless of all those small proprieties that her father's soul loved. It was true that even amongst the woods and streams no liberty was hers like the liberty that was permitted to Fred ; the circuit allowed to her wandering steps was small — a circuit marked out by her mother, PATIENCE HOLT. 35 and, except at a few rare moments, when temptation assailed and conquered her, ac- quiesced in by Patience very meekly and obediently ; but at least within this small circumference she was permitted to ramble freely, and (at any rate with her mother's approval) to throw off some portion of the restraints of civilization. Here then every day she used to spend blessed hours of freedom — sometimes, if she were in a mood for repose, reading or making stories to herself ; sometimes playing games with Fred, when Fred was conde- scending enough to lend himself to such entertainment ; but sometimes too making use of her liberty to indulge in lawless and unholy occupations, such as surreptitious climbing of trees, digging into wasps' nests, paddling knee-deep in the streams with shoes and stockings off — delights that gave a glory to her days, but that also occasionally had consequences to be regretted. 36 PATIENCE HOLT. Poor Patience used to pay now and then pretty dearly for these enjoyments ; she had to endure at times some mauvais quarts dhetires ; only happily for herself she pos- sessed an indomitable spirit, and no disaster of to-day ever withheld her from risking a similar disaster on the morrow. If one would enjoy, must one not also run the risk of suffering ? Patience did not use this argu- ment in words, but she acted on it, and on the whole lived her small life joyously. And yet the bad quarters of an hour were now and then very bad indeed. There was one in particular on a certain afternoon, when Dr. Holt, taking a meditative walk along a retired portion of the river-side, all at once perceived a figure before him in the water, so largely clad after the fashion of our first parents that he modestly turned his eyes aside, and was hastily directing his steps in some contrary direction, when suddenly the Eve-like object ducked with PATIENCE HOLT. 2il such Strange and convulsive splashlngs, that, embarrassed though he was, the good man could not but hurriedly turn his head and look again, and after a moment — for the creature was rapidly disappearing — rush in alarm to the rescue, in the belief that a fellow-creature was drowning. But it was only Patience, who, in all simplicity of heart, and trusting to the seclusion of the place, had been disporting herself by enacting a naiad, and who now, in an agony of shame, as she had caught sight of her father bearing down upon her, and at the imminent risk of suffocation, had thrown herself prostrate, and with infinite difficulty was struggling to hold her head beneath the water. How she was rescued from her ignominious position and brought back to land, and to her discarded garments, and finally led home, she never afterwards knew. A horror of unutterable humiliation was over her that ^S PATIENCE HOLT. made her all dazed and giddy. She could only rush to her mother when she had reached the house, and throw herself on her bosom in a passion of hysterical tears. '* Oh, mother," she broke out wildly, *' tell me what to do ! Oh, he'll never forget it ! He'll never forgive me ! He saw me almost n — n — n — naked ! " '* Dear me, child ! " exclaimed Mrs. Holt, opening her eyes at this rather peculiar con- fession, — '' w/io saw you naked ?" " F — father did," walled Patience. " Oh, If It was only your father, that doesn't much matter," said Mrs. Holt, half laughing. " But why should you have Seen naked at this time of day ? " And then poor Patience began to tell her story. " I had only been enjoying myself, you know, down in that little hollow by the river where nobody ever comes, — and making believe. I was thinking of naiads, and the PATIENCE HOLT. 39 lovely life they must have led ; and then I thought / would pretend to be a naiad, and I took off some of my clothes, — not all, you know, but — but 7iearly all, — and I went into the water, and flopped about, and — oh, I was enjoying it so, when — when — all in a moment — Oh, mother," cried the poor child, breaking off, ''you never saw anything like his face! It was awful! He'll never forgive me ! I don't believe he'll ever for- give me any more as long as I live ! " "You foolish child!" said Mrs. Holt, trying not to laugh. But for a long time even her mother could not comfort Patience ; her shame was too overwhelming. For days afterwards she fled from her father's sight as if he had been a pestilence ; she could not look him in the face ; and to tell the truth, he on his side was almost equally embarrassed in her presence. For her escapade had been taken by him with a seriousness far beyond its worth. 40 PATIENCE HOLT. " She must be without all ordinary instincts — without all natural sense of modesty," he had said, with grave distress, to his wife. '' To think that a child of ours should stand there in the water — in a public place, — with- out — without almost a shred of clothing on her ! " '' Oh, but she is such a child," said her mother; ''and she did not look on it as a public place. Poor little thing, she was thinking of nothing but that nonsense of being a naiad." ''And is it fitting that a Christian child should strip herself, and find amusement in enacting a heathen myth ? " said Dr. Holt sternly. " Oh, my dear," interrupted his wife, " some heathen myths are very innocent. If poor Patience should never do anything worse than try to imagine herself a naiad she won't come to much harm." And then Dr. Holt groaned. What else PATIENCE HOLT. 4 I could he do but groan and hold his peace, when even the wife of his bosom could not understand him ? For more than a week Patience, more or less, was oppressed by the shadow of this water exploit of hers, so that during that time she went about far more demurely than usual, and — in her father's presence — with a shamefaced expression of countenance of which Fred took note. '* You've been up to something, I know," he said to her bluntly one day. ''I've been up to nothing that concerns you'' returned Patience in a fiery tone. And then Fred, who was of a peaceful disposition, began to whistle, and went his way, declining to rouse the tigress in his sister. She was such a spitfire ; he held his tongue often just for peace' sake, though not perhaps without a certain consciousness that by doing so he not unfrequently gained his reward ; for if Patience was hasty she was 42 PATIENCE HOLT. generous too, and she rarely snubbed Fred without being moved afterwards to humble herself before him, and acknowledge her fault. So Fred on this occasion went off whist- ling, and half an hour afterwards Patience came in search of him. She came to the door of the barn where he was seated, and mutely sat down near him. For a space of five minutes, after the fashion of Eastern potentates, they both preserved a strict silence ; then she looked at him, and meekly spoke. '' I didn't mean to be nasty just now, Fritz, — when you said that." " Oh, all right," replied Fred indifferently, sucking a straw. ''And I'm sorry I can't tell you what's been bothering me ; I would if I could, — but I can't. It's only been something about — father." '' Oh, I say ! " cried Fred at this an- PATIENCE HOLT. 43 nouncement, looking more interested than Patience at all desired. ''Yes, but you wouldn't care if you knew," she proceeded hastily, the blood mounting hotly to her face. *' It isn't anything you would care about at all — nobody would." "" Then why do you ? " asked Fred, not unreasonably. '' Oh, only because papa didn't like it — didn't like something I did, I mean : that was all. Please don't ask me any ques- tions about it, Fritz." And she looked so frightened that Fred naturally stared at her with astonishment. '' I know you wouldn't care, because — because — " precipitately, " it was only something — mythological." " Something mythological ! " echoed Fred, astounded. "What on earth do you mean by that?" ''Well — don't you know what mythology is ? " cried Patience sharply, unable to restrain a gibe. 44 PATIENCE HOLT. '* I certainly don't know what mythology has to do with yott. You're not a goddess, are you ? " asked Fred. And then poor Patience flushed crimson, and felt that if this were to go on her wretched little secret In half a minute more would be torn from her lips. So she roused herself and fell upon him. '' I don't believe you do know one bit about mythology ! " she exclaimed. " Your fine Rugby, I suppose, never thinks of teaching it to you ! Who was Pluto ? Who was Melpomene ? Who was Minerva ? I declare you don't know one of them ! " and she began jeerlngly to clap her hands. ''You little goose!" said Fred, with im- measurable scorn. But Patience was still laughing insultingly. '* I should like to hear some one ask you who could make you answer. Oh, Rugby boy ! Rugby boy ! " and with that customary PATIENCE HOLT. 45 scornful war-cry she leapt to her feet and fled, leaving Fred, of course, indignant. " I never knew such an imp as you are ! " he broke out furiously ; but the day was hot, and Fred's feet had less quicksilver in them than his sister's, and after a momentary hesitation he did — not pursue her. " When the holidays end it will be awful," Patience began to think sorrowfully, when four out of their six country weeks had passed. She was happy enough at home, in her ordinary town-life, but yet this sweet, un- trammelled country life in a way intoxicated her. There was a wild strain in her that only found something approaching to satis- faction here under the open skies. '' I don't know what it will seem like when we go back," she said to Fred dejectedly one day, " with nothing to look at any more but the opposite houses. Oh dear, I wish I could climb over the house-tops, like a cat." "Well, that's a nice thing to wish!" re- 46 PATIENCE HOLT. sponded Fred with scorn. '' But you are like a cat ; I often think so." And then (naturally enough perhaps), in spite of her own speech, Patience was wroth. "I'm not like a cat!" she exclaimed in- dignantly ; '* but if ever anybody said spite- ful, ill-natured things, you do. Oh dear, I wish I had somebody else for a brother." '' I wish you had," said Fred coolly. Upon which poor, hot-tempered Patience, quite taken aback by this ready assent, simply stared at him till the hurt tears came to her eyes. "What — what makes you say that .^ " she asked after a few moments, in a tragic tone. '' What made you say the other thing ? " retorted Fred. '* Oh, you know I often say things that — I don't mean," she whimpered. ''That's a pretty habit to confess to!" cried Fred. PATIENCE HOLT. 47 ''Yes, I know it's a bad habit," answered Patience, with abject meekness. " I'd like to see how father looked if you made a speech like that to /iwz ! " "Oh, but, Fritz, I — wouldn't!" and with the liveliest naivety she lifted up her eyes to his face. " Tell father ! oh, goodness ! Why, he — he'd never understand ! " " I should think he wouldn't," chuckled Fred. "Not as you mean understanding, at least ; but he would understand enough to give you a good hiding." And then Patience looked at him wistfully, and held her peace. She was sitting on the hay in the big barn, — sitting there very luxuriously, and looking out through the great open door towards the pond where two swans and a brood of cygnets were sailing lazily, and across which the tall old elms at its edge threw their summer shade. At a little distance Fred, extended at full length, lay with his eyes 48 PATIENCE HOLT. resting peacefully on the rafters of the roof. Fred had a great power of lying contentedly gazing at next to nothing ; he had a remark- able talent for repose. " Fritz," she said all at once In a solemn tone, '' what sort of a boy do you think father could have been ? " Fred grunted at this inquiry, perhaps to give himself time for reflection, and made no other answer for some moments. Then, his imagination apparently proving too feeble to meet the demand made on it — " Oh, / don't know ; just like other boys, I sup- pose," he answered vaguely. Patience had been looking at him expect- antly with her bright eager eyes, but after this response she turned them again towards the pond, on which she gazed meditatively for some little time. "/ don't think he was like other boys," she remarked gravely after this pause. *' I don't suppose Quakers ever are." PATIENCE HOLT. 49 " But he wasn't a Quaker," exclaimed Fred hastily. ''Well, but grandmamma was," said Patience. '' It's almost the same. You see, he has Quaker blood in him. That's what mamma says — Quaker blood. It — it sounds rather awful, doesn't it ? " " Awful, you silly ! What in the world do you mean by that ? " cried Fred. "Why, I mean — " Patience paused and looked embarrassed. " I don't quite under- stand ; but, Fritz — " she hesitated, '' they're not — exactly — Christians, are they ? " Fred burst into a sudden roar of laughter. *' Oh, you baby ! Oh, you ignoramus ! High School girl! High School girl!" he suddenly shouted, kicking up his heels in the air with delight. And then Patience leapt to her feet ; the colour was flaming in her face ; she set her teeth, and while Fred was still mockingly roaring, '* High School girl!" a great armful VOL. I. A 50 PATIENCE HOLT. of hay descended suddenly on him, and in the same moment half burled and choked him. It was rather dusty hay, and the dust flew into his wide-open mouth, and down his throat, and set him coughing so violently that poor passionate, repentant Patience stared at him in terror. " Oh, Fritz, I didn't mean to hurt you. Is it — is it the hay that is choking you ? Oh, I am so sorry ! " she almost sobbed. But Fred was still gasping (he possibly gasped a little more than he strictly need have done), and for full two minutes longer he remained apparently incapable of speech. " Perhaps some of it has gone into his lungs," Patience thought, with her customary diseased fertility of imagination. *' And if it has gone into his lungs he may get consumption, and — and people who get consumption die ! " And she continued to gaze at him in a sort of luxury of terror, and was already actively picturing to herself the advancing stages of PATIENCE HOLT. 5 I his mortal illness, and her own tragic re- morse and despair, when suddenly the ex- pectant moribund rose to his feet, with a fine colour in his cheeks, and his eyes ablaze with indignation. *' Well, I should think — ugh ! ugh ! — I should think you were ashamed of yourself now ! " he broke out. " Oh yes ; I am. Oh yes, Fritz, I am ! " poor Patience precipitately answered, brought back to the realities of the situation in a moment ; and she tried to paw him, but he threw off her hand. " Don't come near me again ! You're — ugh ! ugh ! — you're a nasty thing," he splut- tered. " Oh, Fritz!" she cried, pitifully, '' I didn't mean to hurt you. How could I suppose that such a thing as hay could hurt you ? If you hadn't had your mouth wide open — " *' Well, but I /lad my mouth wide open," retorted Fred; ''and it was — ugh! — it was LIBRARY 52 PATIENCE HOLT. enough to choke me. You spitfire ! You'll do something some day In one of your rages that you won't forget." And then he began to shake himself; and, quite awed and overcome by this final shaft that he had hurled at her, Patience melted Into silent tears. Fred shook himself for a minute, still, for effect, coughing at Intervals ; then all at once a thought came Into Patience's mind, and, wet though they still were with weep- ing, she lifted up her eyes eagerly. ''Fritz," she exclaimed, "would — would you like some lemonade ? " '' Who's got any lemonade ? " asked Fred. But though he put the question In a tone of scorn It was evident that he Inclined his ear. " Mrs. Peter has," cried Patience. (Mrs. Peter was their landlady.) " I saw her bring in some this morning, and I've got two- pence." PATIENCE HOLT. 53 '' W — well," said Fred, in an accent of half-dubious consent. And then Patience waited to hear no more, but in another moment had bolted out of the barn, and was in full tilt for the house. ''Oh, I'm so glad I thought of it!" she exclaimed to herself as she ran ; and indeed the idea proved a most happy one, for, laden with a tray, and tumblers, and two bottles of lemonade, and even a small supply of biscuits, she returned to the sufferer within five minutes ; and as Fred, luxuriously couched again amongst the hay, proceeded to dispose of the grateful refreshment, of necessity by- gones became bygones, and the brother and sister were soon chatting away again without the shadow of a cloud between them, or so much as one lingering grain of dust remaining to irritate Fred's throat. " Only — he might have died, I suppose," Patience thought to herself afterwards, not liking to lose hold of a tragic situation too 54 PATIENCE HOLT. quickly. ''If the hay had been a little dustier, — or if he hadn't cared for lemonade — " And then the fanciful child shivered to herself, and when she said her prayers at bedtime put into them a pair of fervent ex- tempore clauses — the one a thanksgiving for Fred s delivery from peril, the other a humble confession of her own wickedness. " For I a7u wicked," she laid her head on her pillow saying to herself sorrowfully. '' I always used to think it was perhaps from our having once been Quakers, — if Quakers weren't quite Christians ; but I suppose if they are Christians it can't be that, — and Fritz seemed quite to think that they are ; only, to be sure," reflected Patience, half asleep, '' Fritz may be making a mistake." -^^^^0^ CHAPTER III. pATIENCE sighed when the holidays came to an end ; but, in point of fact, when they were well behind her, and Fred was back at Rugby, and she herself once again at her High School, she did very well w^ithout them. Her mind was of a very active order, and she enjoyed her school work amazingly. Fred had no par- ticular delight in his, and in fact by no means exhausted himself in doing more of it than was strictly necessary ; but Patience, when she had once got in harness, loved nothing better than to be allowed to labour away — as Fred put it disgustedly — like a young cart-horse, poring over her books 56 PATIENCE HOLT. late and early, and talking and thinking of little but teachers and classes the whole day long. It was little wonder that, with his better regulated mind, Fred felt that such absorption in one subject sickened him. In fact Patience was a creature of ex- tremes — full of passion and Impulse, and addicted always to immoderate pursuit of the thing that was most Immediately before her. Even If It should be a thing possess- ing no especial interest or attraction, still proximity, in Patience's eyes, gave value to It. She had an Illimitable power of be- coming Interested — of giving herself out — of taking up enthusiasms. She worshipped certain teachers and certain school com- panions, and, In spite of Fred's contempt, was superlatively happy In her devotion to them. She had a faculty for boundless ad- miration that Mrs. Holt used half-amusedly to smile at. On the whole, Mrs. Holt was an excellent PATIENCE HOLT. 57 mother for a child so ardent, mercurial, and impulsive. She was neither ardent nor im- pulsive for her own part ; she was equable, harmonious, unexcitable — made up to a large extent of the very elements that Patience's own nature lacked — of gentle- ness, graciousness, and good sense. " Do all people get to be like you when they have children, mother ? " Patience asked her once, with a certain awe, ad- miring her mother devotedly, yet thinking with something not altogether unlike dread of the transformation in herself that might be required of her should she ever wish to attain to the honours of maternity ; and she was secretly relieved when Mrs. Holt laughed at her question. '' Are all children like yourself ? " she answered. " Why, there is just as much difference in mothers as in daughters, Patience. It would be very dull, don't you think, if we were all alike ? " 8 PATIENCE HOLT. And then Patience meditated for a little, but after that pause looked up happily into her mother's face. '' I don't think it would be di^/C she said, '' but it would make it so difficult. That was what I meant. I was thinking that / could never be anybody's mother, you know. Not that I want to be — particularly," she added, in an explanatory way. '' Well, probably not — as yet," returned Mrs. Holt. " I don't know, indeed, that I should care about it, ever," said Patience. ''Ah," replied her mother, "that is a question about which at this moment you need hardly perhaps make up your mind." Dr. Holt was a physician who had been settled in London for many years. He was not a young man ; he had married pretty late in life, and hence probably it was that his paternal duties weighed rather heavily upon him, and that he did not in a general PATIENCE HOLT. 59 way regard the possession of a son and daughter as blessings calculated to arouse unmixed enthusiasm In his breast. After his grave fashion he was Indeed a tender parent, yet his affection for his children was at all times so much mixed with an anxious perplexity about them, verging almost on alarm, that It could hardly be considered as an emotion that added much to his general stock of happiness. In fact, he took his son and daughter — his daughter especially — too seriously ; they encumbered his life ; his consideration for their physical and Intellectual and moral well-being weighed upon him like a constant burden. His wife regarded them with composure — indeed, with more than composure, being in fact immensely amused by them ; but there were many moments when, wife of his bosom though she was, her easy and light-hearted enjoyment of their pranks, and forgetfulness of the dangers, spiritual and temporal, that 6o PATIENCE HOLT. surrounded them, made the good man almost groan aloud. He was a genuinely good man — one who walked steadily and seriously through every waking hour of his grave and blameless life. Patience used to wonder sometimes secretly if he was not dull ; only, as time went on, she came to the conclusion that grown-up people as old as her father pro- bably did not mind dullness. Her father's hair was gray ; he must be very old, she was afraid. She used to look at him some- times with an alarmed speculation, wonder- ing if he could live much longer. It was a terrible thought to her that he might some day die and leave them ; and yet her too active imagination drove her at times to contemplate this event, and even minutely (to her horror) to picture the details of it. One day she went so far as to approach the matter with Fred, and to lay these details PATIENCE HOLT. 6 I before him, in order that his duller fancy might be stirred by them ; but it was an experiment of which she afterwards repented sorely, for the indignation and almost terror that her effort aroused in Fred's breast knew no bounds. ''Well, of all the little cold-blooded wretches I ever came across — ! " he broke out, entirely failing (not unnaturally) to ap- preciate his sister's artistic interest in her subject. ''Why — why, I do believe you're a ghoul ! " "But, Fritz!" she cried, — the colour had flown to her face, — " Fritz, I only wanted to make you creep." " Then make me creep about something else," said Fred, still all on fire. " How can you let yourself even — even think of such a thing as that ? It's awful ! It's horrid ! " " I know it's horrid ! But that's just what I wanted to make you feel," ejaculated 62 PATIENCE HOLT. Patience in bewildered distress. " Fritz, you don't understand! It was just because it was so horrid — because I think that sometimes we — we aren't quite fond enough of father ; and I wanted to pretend that he was dead just to make you feel that you'd like to die yourself too. Oh, Fritz ! I thought you'd be glad to feel so awfully sorry — I mean that you'd be glad that you could feel so awfully sorry for him — ^just as if everything in the world had come to an end, and you might as well break your heart at once. I thought if I made a story of it, it would make you fonder of him." "Well, I do believe you're cracked," said Fred, in blank amazement. And, quite unmoved by Patience's peculiar explanation, he took himself out of her uncanny presence without any more delay, leaving her ex- tremely dejected. She had laid her little plan with so much PATIENCE HOLT. 63 care, expecting to soften both their hearts by her narration, and the result had so completely confounded her expectations. For a little while she sat staring after Fred, and then all at once, with the sort of humility that, daring as she was, not unfrequently took sudden possession of her, she broke into a pitiful flood of tears, weep- ing partly at Fred's anger, partly over her half-told story, partly in simple nervous uncontrol. Perhaps Dr. Holt showed more wisdom than his wife in being anxious over the bringing up of such a child. His anxiety, however, poor man, was of small service to Patience, who, as the years went on, passed gradually out of childhood, as little influenced by his precepts or his example as any girl could well be by the precepts or example of a parent. They were never friends ; they were never more than almost strangers to one another. In Fred, though Fred troubled him by his 64 PATIENCE HOLT. indolence, Dr. Holt had a certain half- acknowledged pride and satisfaction ; but Patience he had always found incompre- hensible — a creature whom he almost feared — whose ways were all in antagonism to him. '* Agatha," he said once solemnly to his wife, *' she makes me think of a lost soul — of one given over by some mysterious dis- pensation to the powers of darkness." But in justice to poor Patience, it must be al- lowed that he was ill when he said this, and that Mrs. Holt treated his speech only as the utterance of a disordered fancy. At the time when he made it, indeed, he was lying on his death-bed, with the end that his daughter in her reckless ima- gination had prematurely pictured years before very near to him. He had been struck down suddenly by a fatal illness, and amongst the last words that he tried to utter to his wife were these words about PATIENCE HOLT. 65 Patience ; though certainly at this special time, at any rate, she did not deserve that he should say them of her, for at the very moment when he uttered them, the poor child was kneeling at her bedside try- ing to pray for him, in a very passion and agony of grief. She was praying, it must be allowed, in a sort of experimental way, not feeling very clear if any good would come of it, but yet feverishly eager to give her father at least the benefit of the doubt. He was dying (unless her prayers should save him), and her mother had no thought or heart to give to her, and Fred was away ; there seemed nobody to turn to except God ; and so in her anguish and helpless- ness she fell upon her knees, feeling that He was a last resource, and poured out her petitions and her remorseful and terrified little heart to Him. She had never really loved her father ; he had perhaps never loved her ; she had been nothing but a VOL. L 5 66 patiencp: holt. trouble to him throughout her Hfe ; and the poor child, knowing all this, lay with her face hidden on her counterpane, making useless vows, and uttering passionate repentances, and weeping wild tears ; till, with her arms thrown across her bed, and her head with its rumpled hair bowed down over them, she was at last after dark found by her mother fast asleep, and — all unconscious of what had happened, and that the end against which she had prayed had actually come — was gently raised and laid by that tender mother on her pillow, — to rest until the new and desolate day should dawn. CHAPTER IV. TDATIENCE was sixteen when her father died, and at sixteen most girls have fully emerged from childhood ; but she was slight, and she appeared younger than she was, and even Mrs. Holt had hardly come yet to recognize that two or three more years would make a woman of her. Fred in his nineteenth year looked almost manly, but Patience in her mother's sight was hardly more yet than a little girl. Perhaps, however, she only seemed so childish because her father had always kept her a child. He had never himself treated her as if he believed her to have 68 PATIENCE HOLT. any common-sense ; she had only been to him a fantastic, Irresponsible, weird creature, into whom he prayed that God in His mercy would some day put a soul, but who as yet, it sorrowfully seemed to him, entirely lacked that essential attribute. " I don't know what it will be possible for you to make of her ; she will be a thorn in your side," the poor man had said to his wife with a groan In his last hours. But, as it turned out, Patience by no means proved herself to be a thorn In her mother s side ; she possessed capabilities for which Dr. Holt had not given her credit. " Oh, Fritz, it's awful ! " she broke out to Fred, when the boy came hurriedly up from school a few hours after the blinds had been drawn down in the silent house ; and as she fell upon him, and twined her arms about his neck, he thought in his outraged soul that she looked '' awful " herself — as In truth she did, with her wild hair, and her dis- PATIENCE HOLT. 69 arranged, slept-in frock, and her swollen, red-lidded eyes ; but, though her appearance was not attractive, yet some sense of re- sponsibility had already begun to dawn within her, and, when she had once well hugged Fred, she struggled to keep back her tears with a hitherto unknown self-restraint. '' Come to mother ; oh, mother is so dear and good ! " she said, and caught his hand, and hauled him to her mother's presence, and, bringing him in in triumph, " Here he is ! Now we're both here ! Darling mother, you've got us two, — you've got us two," she cried out excitedly, half sobbing, half keep- ing back her sobs, as she dropped down on the floor at Mrs. Holt's feet, and laid her tear-smeared face upon her knees. But as for Fred, he only grew very red and kissed his mother, and then nearly turned his back upon her, and could not say a word. Yet Fred too bore himself well and kindly during the days that came after this ; for yo PATIENCE HOLT. he might be silent and slow, but he was a good boy in his way, and he had loved his father more than it had ever been possible for Patience to do. '* He was so much fonder of you than he was of me. Oh, Fritz, I wish he had been fond of me too ! " Patience said to him on one of these sad days, crying bitterly, and hoping, perhaps, for some sort of consolation from her brother, — which, however, it is to be feared, she did not get, for Fred at first only gave a sort of grunt, and then, after reflection, curtly added — " Well, you see, you were often nasty to him," a remark that made her eyes open wide with a piteous look. " Was I nasty to him ? I never meant to be," she said. " I — I was never — rzcdcy was I ? You don't mean that ? " " No, you weren't rude ; that wasn't it," re- turned Fred, meditatively. " But — you went the wrong way with him somehow. You PATIENCE HOLT. 7 I bothered him. Oh, I don't suppose you meant it — there's nothing to cry about ; but you did rub him the wrong way, you know." " But, Fritz," she murmured, ''it was only, I think — that he didn't — understand." ''That he didn't understand — yotc?'' ex- claimed Fred, scornfully. ''Now, that is a thing to say ! Upon my word, you think pretty well of yourself! The idea of father not understanding you when he could under- stand — a hundred times as much as you'll ever do ! " " Oh, Fritz, I know that ; that isn't what I mean," cried Patience, eagerly. " He understood all sorts of great things ; but — but — perhaps it was that he never thought of me," said the girl suddenly, in a low voice, — " that I seemed of so little consequence to him — " Fred glanced at her, and felt uncomfortable. " I don't know what you're going on about," he said, half angrily; "people can't 72 PATIENCE HOLT. get on with everybody alike, and father — father thought you were nasty sometimes, perhaps. You are nasty sometimes, you know ; but as for supposing that he didn't think about you, or care for you," cried Fred, with a rude attempt at consolation, ''that's rubbish ; of course he cared for you. And I say. Patience, if I were you, I wouldn't go on fancying things. It's such rot to fancy things ; you'd far better do — something use- ful, or — or talk to mother," ended Fred, with a sudden inspiration and sense of relief. But Patience had already sought consola- tion from her mother, not perhaps with any very great success, for, tender and sympathetic though Mrs. Holt was, she was not in reality a woman whose role it was to smooth diffi- culties away and make perplexed things clear. She was a very lovable woman, and one who was gifted also with a certain sense of humour ; but Patience, as her life went on, got gradually to learn that though it might PATIENCE HOLT. J 7> be comforting to herself to pour out her troubles, whether real or fantastic, into her mother's ear, in point of fact at such times her mother's counsel was not of pre-eminent service to her. In fact, there was always a pleasant, harmonious want of energy about Mrs. Holt that made the giving of counsel a thing but little in her line. She had been very sweet just now to Patience in the midst of her own heavy sorrow, when the girl had thrown herself weeping on her bosom, and sobbed out her passionate remorse that she had never made her father love her ; but even while Patience sobbed, and while her mother's hands were Instinctively and tenderly caressing and strok- ing her, her mother's heart was thinking of her own sorrow, and not of that slighter and less pressing grief. Patience thought she was listening to her, while. In fact, she was scarcely listening at all, but only smiling on her with a sad and tender sweetness, and 74 PATIENXE HOLT. mechanically soothing her as she might have done if she had only been a twelvemonth old. Ever since her children had come into the world, indeed, this system of passive sympathy had been the system that Mrs. Holt had adopted with them, and it had answered ex- cellently on the whole ; for it had given herself little trouble, and it had inspired her daughter, at any rate, with a boundless love for and belief in her. ** Mamma is so quick to understand ; she understands everything," she had said to Fred long ago ; and probably she would still have said the same to-day, even in spite of the occasional little shocks that of late, as she had grown older, reason had given to her once unquestioning faith. Up to this time the Holts had always lived in London ; Mrs. Holt had been married there, and Fred and Patience had been born there. PATIENCE HOLT. 75 *' But you'll be giving up this house, of course, now ? " some one said to Fred on the day of his father's funeral ; and though the boy stared and answered quickly, " Give it up ? No, I don't suppose we shall give it up ; /'m going to be a doctor too, you know," yet, in point of fact, within a fortnight of Mr. Holt's death it was decided that their tenancy of the big house in Harley Street should cease as soon as Mrs. Holt could get the lease of it off her hands. Fred, indeed, with a strong sense of self- importance, objected to this arrangement, but his objections, as may be supposed, were pretty summarily over-ruled. " My boy, you couldn't step into your father's shoes for at any rate the next half- dozen years," one of the executors said to him ; '* and as for your mother burdening herself, for no purpose, all that time with the rent of such a house as this, why the thing would be absurd. You seem to forget what 76 PATIENCE HOLT. I am sorry to remind you of, that she will have a very much diminished income, and that, such as it is, the expenses of your education will cut off a very considerable slice from it." And then Fred held his peace, though in his heart he was still disposed to be wroth. " Other people settle things for you, mother," he said hotly to Mrs. Holt, '*as if they weren't your own affairs." "And who would you propose should settle them, except the persons your father commissioned to do so ? " inquired Mrs. Holt, with her customary good sense. And then — " If Mr. RIdgway and Mr. Summers were to wash their hands of our business, whether do you think that would be the better or the worse for us, my boy ? " she said. Whereupon Fred knitted his brows, and only made some inaudible response ; but PATIENCE HOLT. ']^ after this he said nothing more about retain- ing possession of the house in Harley Street. In fact, Dr. Holt had died by no means a rich man, and the keeping-up by Mrs. Holt of anything like the establishment that had been kept up in his lifetime had become an altogether impossible thing. When all was settled, it was found that she would have an income of not much more than ^500 a year. ** And is that very little ? " Patience asked her anxiously, having vague ideas as yet as to the costs of housekeeping. But Mrs. Holt replied at once cheerfully — '' No, it is not little ; it is more than your grandfather Hilliard ever had, and he brought up six children on it. But to be sure," she added, after a moment, " he did not live in London." ** Then why should we live in London either ? " asked Patience, with her bright eyes kindling. '' How could Fred get to his classes if we 78 PATIENCE HOLT. didn't?" Mrs. Holt asked. "And what would you do without your school ? " And then Patience, taken aback, could find no answers to these questions, and held her peace. Finally they removed from Harley Street to a small house near the Harrow Road. It was not a very attractive house, and it was in a neighbourhood that was entirely unfamiliar to them ; but the rent was low. "And it really is more cheerful than Harley Street," Mrs. Holt said, in her pleasant way of making the best of things. To this Patience assented. " Oh, yes, it is more open, and these bow-windows let in more sun," she said. But Fred only looked rather sullen, and held his peace. In fact, they all in reality felt pretty strange and dreary in their new abode. The house was still all in disorder, and to Fred and Patience it seemed such a mean, small place. PATIENCE PIOLT. 79 " I shall never feel at home here as long as I live. It's what I call beastly," Fred said in confidence to his sister after a few days. However, when we are young we soon accustom ourselves to new conditions, and, perhaps, by the time they had lived near the Harrow Road for a year, it was Mrs. Holt who missed the old house in Harley Street more than either Fred or Patience did. Fred and Patience had grown to their fresh surroundings, and had found various compensations in their present existence to console them for what they had given up. Did it not, for Instance, add a certain dignity to life to be possessors of season railway tickets, and go daily to college and school by underground ? Just before his father's death Fred had passed his medical matricu- lation at University College ; Patience still maintained her connection with her High School. Though they might not have con- fessed it, to both the boy and girl there was So PATIENCE HOLT. something of pleasurable excitement in their daily start to catch the special train in which they should meet this or that favourite fellow- student of Fred's, this or that school friend of Patience's. To look out for familiar faces at the station — to be whirled through tunnels to their respective destinations — was not this a thing to give zest to the day's work ? Fred continued to grumble at the new house, yet in reality he was reconciled to it ; he had a little study in it to himself, in which he felt manly, and almost like his father ; and Patience had a tiny garden, in which she reared flowers for the first time in her life, and, minute though it was, took an extreme delight. And if, as time went on, both boy and girl grew vaguely conscious that their lives had become wider and freer since the poor father, who had tried so painfully to do his duty by them, had passed away, that con- sciousness, sad as it was, was almost in- PATIENCE HOLT. 8l evitable. Between Fred and his father, it is true, there had always been a considerable amount of mutual sympathy and under- standing, and the boy occasionally still genuinely missed him ; but Patience, it must sorrowfully be confessed, never missed him — in the sense, that is, of feeling that, if he could return, his presence would add anything to her happiness. For he had never brought her any happiness, nor any brightness, but only constraint, and a distressed sense of her own shortcomings. " If I hadn't been bad it would have been all different," she would often think humbly and remorsefully. "If I weren't bad I should be so sorry now." But the worst was that she knew she was not sorry — not, at least, in any vital way ; and in spite of her general happiness this hardness of heart used often to oppress her, and at times even almost to overwhelm her with a sense of its enormity. '' Do you think there are many wicked VOL. I. 6 82 PATIENCE HOLT. people going about, Fritz ? " she asked her brother abruptly one day. '' Really ^N\ckQ.d, I mean, without — without natural affection ? " And as she put these questions she looked at him with a frightened wistfulness that perhaps he found irritating, for it prompted him to make a sharp reply. '* What silly things you do ask ! " he said. " Many wicked people ? Why, of course there are — heaps of them. As for them all being without natural affection, I know nothing about that. I don't know what you mean by natural affection." "Why, it's in the Bible!" exclaimed Patience. *' Well," retorted Fred, '' I dare say it is. But you must be a lot cleverer than I think you are if you understand everything that's in the Bible." And then, not being fond of getting himself involved in theological disquisitions, he affected to be buried in his book. PATIENCE HOLT. 83 " But," exclaimed Patience, surprised, " it doesn't need any cleverness to explain that. Natural affection is love of one's own people — of brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers, and all that sort of thing. I never thought of asking you what it meant. I only want to know whether you think there are many people without it, and if — it is very dreadful to be without it ? Do you suppose it is ? " '' Why, of course it is," said Fred scornfully. And then Patience looked sadly at him, and gave a sigh from the depths of her heart. '' Then I think I may as well give up at once," she ejaculated after a mournful silence. " For it isn't as if father were still here ; if he were, then one might repent, and try to be different ; but, you see, he's gone, and all the repentance in the world can't make any difference. That's so dreadful ! Just think of it, Fritz ! Let one be as sorry as ever 84 PATIENCE HOLT. one likes, it can't make any difference now." "Well, of course it can't," said Fred uneasily. '' Only, there's one thing," remarked Patience, after a little mournful silence ; "it isn't so bad as murder — is it ? " "What on earth do you mean by that .^ " asked Fred, suspiciously. " I was only thinking of the different hopeless things," said Patience, in the same sad voice. "There seem so many of them. I was thinking what an awful thing it would be to murder some one, even only by accident, and to feel that never — never any more in all the world, though you might live to be a hundred — " "Well, of all the people that I ever knew for imagining uncomfortable things, you're the worst ! " cried Fred with indignation. " But, Fritz, one can't help fancying," she said wistfully. " I'm always doing it, and PATIENCE HOLT. 85 thinking how one would feel in different sorts of circumstances, you know." " Then you'd better stop," retorted Fred with decision. '' Why — what's the good of it ? You had far better just look at things that are before you, and do what you've got to do, and not bother yourself with such rubbish. At any rate if you don't you'll never get on : I can tell you that," said the lad with decision. And he planted his elbows on the table, and gripped his hair with his hands, and began to study the book that lay before him, with such an air of profound absorption that Patience restrained her tongue, and after a little silence, crept away almost on tiptoe, lest any further foolish talk of hers should keep him, at any rate, from getting on, and mar the brilliancy of the career that lay before him. But the girl was full of thoughts, though Fred would not let her air them in his hearing ; she was full of all kinds of fancies, 86 PATIENCE HOLT. perplexities, questionings ; hardly anything seemed plain to her, as almost all things seemed to be to Fred ; the whole world was full of things to wonder at, and ponder over, and weave theories about. *' Mother, I wish I were as w^ise as you," she had often said to Mrs. Holt when she was a little child ; but now — though she still perhaps did not doubt her mother's wisdom — she had left off apostrophizing it quite in the old way. She still poured out her fancies to her mother, and found in her the sweetest and most patient of listeners ; but almost unconsciously by this time she had come to keep many of her perplexities to herself, to ask Mrs. Holt fewer questions, to expect less help from her. ** Of course, it is so long since mamma was a girl that I dare say she forgets," she had sometimes shyly thought, shrinking from acknowledging that the comprehending sympathy in which she had believed once so implicitly was failing her, and yet driven PATIENCE HOLT. 87 by her consciousness of its insufficiency to seek for some plausible reason for that failure. It was so long since she had been a girl herself, she said, and perhaps so many questions bothered her. And so gradually Patience grew to keep her many wonderings to herself, speaking indeed still of some of them, but often restraining her lips, and holding a kind silence, lest she should weary the oracle in whose wisdom she had trusted unquestioningly for so long. Yet one day she took courage to say to her brother hesitatively — '* Fritz, do you ever think that mother is a little — changed ? I mean, changed rather from what she used to be long ago ? " And as she put this enquiry she looked anxiously in his face, with a sort of expression that always tried Fred. He was at work, and he raised his head and stared at her in silence for a moment or two ; then — 88 PATIENXE HOLT. " She can't walk as far as she used to do, if that's what you mean," he suggested, as the only suitable response that occurred to him. But this did not seem to meet Patience's difficulty at all. " Oh, I don't mind about her walking," she exclaimed quickly. " It's something quite different. I meant," — half fearfully, — '' that she doesn't seem to me to — to help one quite as much as she used to do." ''Why, of course she doesn't!" cried Fred. " It isn't likely that she would. When people are grown up you don't suppose, do you," said the boy with scorn, " that they need as much help as they did w^hen they were little '^. " Patience's eyes were fixed upon his face ; she considered this question gravely. '' I think / do," she said all at once. '' Then you're a queer specimen ! " ex- claimed Fred, with a lordly laugh. "You're PATIENCE HOLT. 89 very unlike other people, — that's all I can say." " But, Fritz — ! " she ejaculated. Her face was very eager ; she was looking at him with bright, disturbing eyes. " Fritz, I think you're wTong ; because when you're only a child you don't want much from anybody, except food and clothes, and pleasant things, and somebody to take care of you ; but when you begin to grow up you want to know so many things." " Well, you can learn them," said Fred. '' That's what you go to school for." " Ye — s." But it was evident that Patience did not find that this response met her difficulty. '' Oh yes, of course you go to school to learn things, — and the mistresses are delightful ; I love them ! But, Fritz, they haven't time to answer questions." "Then don't ask questions," said Fred serenely. 90 PATIENCE HOLT. " But one must ask questions sometimes. That's what I meant about mother. There are so many things I want to ask her, but I get — I get afraid of bothering her." '* Then let her alone," said Fred. And he said this with such an air of closing the argument that Patience's remain- ing words died away on her lips, and she dropped her eyes, and sat playing a little vague tune upon the table-cloth in an en- tirely helpless and baffled way. There was something in Fred's make of mind that sometimes affected his sister like the coming straight up to a stone wall. And yet, — for she still entertained a laud- able if not invariable respect for the young head of the house, — as she sat playing her wandering tune, she was questioning with herself whether Fred, in the general view he took of the many perplexing things in life, might not on the whole be wiser and more in the right than herself. He PATIENCE HOLT. 9 1 was so comfortable always, and it was so nice to be comfortable. And when one didn't aggravate him, he had such an easy temper ; he never bothered himself about anything, and never bothered anybody else. "It must be delightful to be made like that," Patience thought, and sighed, and looked at Fred's rumpled head as he bent it over his book with an envying admiration. But though at this moment, as well as at many other moments, she envied Fred his placid temperament, and the calm re- gard with which he looked alike on all that was simple and all that was complex in human life, it must be allowed that envy was not invariably the feeling his stolid in- difference aroused in her. She was a fiery little creature, and there were times when his stolidity seemed little better to her than death — times when she lost all patience with him ; and, if she had not been ashamed, could almost, in her desire to rouse him, 92 PATIENCE HOLT. have fallen on him like a young tigress. His coolness, his indolence, his want of interest in a thousand things that to her- self seemed supremely interesting, all pro- voked her at moments almost beyond en- durance, making her pretty nigh furiously indignant with him, and disloyal to him. '* It's awful to have such a brother ! It's perfectly awful ! " she would break out to her mother, with immeasurable contempt. " I don't know what he'll grow into. He cares no more for things," she exclaimed one day, " than if he had been born a snail, or — or a tortoise." Upon which Mrs. Holt laughed, and merely answered quietly — *' I don't see that he's much like a snail or a tortoise ; but, at any rate, if he is, he complains just as much of you in another way. He says you are like a wild cat." And then Patience, taken aback, felt the tears spring suddenly to her eyes. PATIENCE HOLT. '' Oh, that's a shame of him ! I'm not ! " she faltered. " Mother, am I ? " And she looked piteously into Mrs. Holt's eyes. But Mrs. Holt merely shook her head and laughed again. ** My dear," she said, " there is just about as much truth in the one accusation as in the other. In 77iy eyes neither are you like a wild cat, nor is Fred like a snail. He is too indifferent, and you are too eager, that is all. You might have made a nice pair of people, I often think, if you had been mixed together." '' Oh, mother, I know I am too eager — I am too fierce — I am too impatient ; I am horrid in all kinds of ways. What can I do to make myself better ? Mother dear, what can I do?" Patience cried, and launched herself suddenly into her mother's arms, and clung to her, listening with painful eager- ness for the words of wisdom that — failed to fall from Mrs. Holt's lips. 94 PATIENCE HOLT. For Mrs. Holt only kissed her tenderly, and gave her a few sensible words of general advice, such as any one might have given, and then replaced her smilingly on her feet, and dexterously made her own escape, — as from a cataract, or any other embarrassing natural force. It was quite true, as Patience had herself suggested, that Mrs. Holt in these days was less young than she had been, and that her tumultuous daughter was at times too much for her. What could she do better than try to take her quietly, and smile softly upon her, and slip away from her, when she felt herself unable to cope with her crude and over-developed activity ? CHAPTER V. ^y^/HEN Patience was almost eighteen her school-Hfe came to an end, and she was very sorry for this, — and so, in truth, was her mother. She had done very well during her school career, mounting gradu- ally through all her forms, from lowest to highest, and taking a foremost place in each of them ; but the close of it all had come now, and she awoke one morning with a blank sense of her last lesson having been learnt, and one important period of her life having reached its end. This im- pressed her very much. *' I wonder what I am to do next!" she 96 PATIENCE HOLT. thought, in rather a lost way ; and she asked Mrs. HoU what she was to do next, but Mrs. Holt could not — at any rate with any precision — tell her. "You will find plenty to do, my dear," she, however, said to her. "You will soon find your hands full enough, I have not the least doubt. Education does not end for us when we leave school, you know. You have to begin to learn life now ; and you have also many things to keep up — ^ your music, and your French and German and history — in fact, all your school work." " I am afraid that half of it will go straight out of my head," said Patience with a sigh. " I wonder if any people ever remember all their school work ! Do you remember all yours, mother ? Or — or, at least, I mean, did you ever remember it all after you had once left school ? " And then Mrs. Holt could not but allow, with a laugh, that some of that ancient learn- PATIENCE HOLT. 97 ing had slipped from her recollection very rapidly. " But then in those days we were not taught as you are now, my dear," she hastened to impress upon her daughter. *' We learnt things very superficially. There were no High Schools for girls in those days." " It must have been a miserable time," said Patience. '' Well, you would be surprised how little it depressed us," replied Mrs. Holt demurely, but with a twinkle in her eye. '' However, all you girls undoubtedly have great ad- vantages now. You ozc£-/i^ to turn out very superior creatures to your mothers." But next moment she laughed as Patience swooped down on her and hugged her ; for though of course in her conceited young heart the girl did not entertain the shadow of a doubt as to the superiority of her own generation, it roused her loyalty to hear her mother depreciate herself, even in jest. VOL. L 7 98 PATIENCE HOLT. Would it really be difficult for Patience to find sufficient occupation ^for her days, now that her school life was ended ? She had supposed it would be ; but yet the days found occupation for themselves with wonderful celerity. And she enjoyed her freedom too ; she felt amazed in a little while to find how keenly she enjoyed it, though perhaps the content it gave her was hardly due to the vigour with which she set about continuing the practice of her music, or the study of her French and German ; for these things, to tell the truth, became considerably neglected, as the girl sunned herself in her new liberty, and made her first attempts at spreading her wings, and began to feel her dawning power. For she was now on the verge of woman- hood, and though she was far from a beauty, she was at any rate bright enough and pretty enough to be noticeable, and people conse- quently began to notice her. In her child- PATIENCE HOLT. 99 hood she had never been flattered, for she had been thought odd rather than attractive ; but now her acquaintances began to look at her, and to say that she was really grow- ing pretty after all — not regularly pretty, perhaps, but yet certainly attractive, — and amusing undoubtedly too, in her way. Possibly some chance person at first found her amusing, and said so, and then other persons followed suit ; and so she gradually acquired the beginning of a reputation for being quaint and entertaining. But Patience herself, perhaps, was quite unconscious that she was considered entertaining, and not improbably would have become indignant if she had come to know that she was being looked on as a creature to create amusement. She regarded herself at this time with too much seriousness to have been content to submit to a distinction of that sort. In point of fact, however, she did amuse IOC PATIENCE HOLT. people, and she could not help it. She could not help standing out from the ordinary mass of girls as something rather original and peculiar. Her very aspect — she was slight and eager-looking, with a clear, pale colouring — made her noticeable. People who had seen her once remembered her, or if they saw her without knowing who she was they asked her name. '' She looks clever," they would say. Sometimes, it is true, they still said, " She looks odd," as many a one had done in her childish days ; only, if that remark were ever made now, it was generally supplemented by something kinder. *' But she is pretty," they would add ; or, " She looks as if there were a good deal in her," — supplements that robbed the old criticism of its sting. And in truth she did look as if there were a good deal in her — she looked at times like a creature made of fire. "Are those two brother and sister?" an PATIENCE HOLT. lOI old gentleman asked one evening, looking at Fred and Patience as, at a party to which they had gone together, they happened for a minute to be standing side by side. " Upon my word ! I should call them Matter and Spirit." i\nd he got his hostess to introduce him to Patience presently, and kept her chatting to him for half the night. She was a little flattered, and thought that he was very kind and pleasant ; and she pleased him too on her part without being conscious of it. For she was very simple in those days, and had not yet mastered the fact that people had begun to seek her out because she w^as attractive. She thought they only sought her because they were good-natured. " Are you a Quaker ? You don't look like one," her old friend said to her to- night, in reply to some remark she had made ; and Patience laughed at this enquiry. " Oh no, I am not a Quaker," she replied. T02 PATIENCE HOLT. "It is only my father's people who were Quakers — once ; and I was christened after his mother." ''What did they christen you ?" he asked upon this ; and when she said, " Patience," his eyes lit up with amusement. " Well, they chose a curious nomenclature for you certainly!" he said. "Do you find yourself much in harmony with your name ? Are you very patient ? " But when he asked this question she began to blush. She was still little more than a school-girl, and she blushed very much. " Oh no, I am not patient ! I wish I were," she exclaimed. " Well, if you try very hard, perhaps you may get to be," he said with much seriousness. " Only — are you quite sure you want to try ? " And then, as she looked up at him doubt- fully, she saw a twinkle in his eye that made PATIENCE HOLT. IO3 her very much ashamed. For indeed she was conscious that her longing to bring herself into harmony with her name was by no means a longing that swayed her constantly, nor, in spite of the profession she had just made, even very frequently. " I want to try — sometimes — when I'm good," she said after a moment, letting her eyelids drop. *'And are you not good always?" he asked in feigned surprise. But at this she took a fresh grip of her courage, and raised her eyes again, and — " No ; I am sure you know I am not ! " she said, looking him full in the face, half- slyly, half-confidently. '* I am sure you know people are never good always. I mean — young people," she added, in a tone of hasty explanation. " Ah — no doubt ; we only grow perfect as years increase," he assented gravely. "I know that some people don't — even 104 PATIENCE HOLT. then," she ventured to say after a moment's thought. "That remark, I am sure," he replied, " is not intended to be personal ? " *'0h, no!" she exclaimed hurriedly, in a fright. But the next moment she was laughing, though with the colour still in her face. She was not perhaps especially fond of the company of antiquated people, but this old gentleman entertained her very much. She told her mother about him when she returned home. *' He looked like a piece of yellow ivory," she said, **or like the parchment cover of an old book, and he had bright brown eyes, and such a curfous voice, mother ; I don't know how to describe it — a clear, remote sort of voice, like an old bell. I liked him ; he was nice ; he said such odd things." "And did you say odd things to him?" Mrs. Holt asked. PATIENCE HOLT. IO5 But at this inquiry Patience in all innocence shook her head. '' Oh no, I did hardly anything but answer his questions," she replied. ''He asked me so many questions. He seemed so amused because I was called ' Patience,' and because papa's people had been Quakers. But then so many people seem amused at that," said the girl suddenly. " I can't think how they seem to know just by looking at me that I am so little like my name." " My dear, you must forgive them," replied Mrs. Holt with gravity, "for I assure you that even / am quite unable to associate you with the idea of any of the cardinal virtues." And then Patience for a moment looked at her severely, but after that moment felt a laugh quivering round the corners of her lips. Patience had inherited — possibly from some one of these Quaker ancestors of I06 PATIENCE HOLT. hers — a pretty, flexible, bird-like voice, with which it was her pleasure to go trilling lightly about the house, — to the satisfaction of some people, but often to the indignation of Fred. For she was so happy that she frequently sang unconsciously, as if she had been an irresponsible blackbird, and the sound of her singing used to penetrate to the sanctum in which Fred sat studying anatomy, and mingled confusedly with the sentences he was poring over, to his great wrath. He was not musical himself, any more than his father had been before him, and he could not conceive how Patience in her idleness could forget that he, the head of the house, was toiling within his closed doors to acquire the knowledge that should give him future fame and name, and the thought that she could possibly forget it aggravated him exceedingly. " I say — stop that ! " he would shout out at the top of his own not very melodious PATIENCE HOLT. lOJ voice, without rising from his seat — for the young man was rather indolent — as he heard her pass warbling outside his door ; and sometimes the shout would reach her ears, and she would stop abashed ; but sometimes also — if she was much self-absorbed, or if she was singing vigorously — it did not reach her ears at all ; and then Fred would be reduced to the necessity of getting on his legs, and marching forth, and confronting her with an injured and irate face ; upon which, struck suddenly silent with a shock. Patience would usually take to her guilty heels, and keep dumb for the remainder of that morning. But — when it was as natural to her to sing as for the larks that soared into the skies — how in a general way could she remain dumb, or always keep in mind whether or not Fred was at work ? *' You see, one sings without thinking of it," she would say deprecatingly. " I never mean to disturb you, Fritz ; I wouldn't do Io8 PATIENCE HOLT. it for anything, if I knew ; but then you may be in the house or you mayn't ; one can never tell." And sometimes Fred would take this apology graciously, but sometimes he was not in the humour to be gracious. '' I can't imagine why you can't sit down in the drawing-room, and sing properly at the piano, like other girls," he broke out one day. " I hate to hear people singing all over a house ; it's — it's so disorderly. If you sang at proper times, and in a proper place, it would be all right." Upon which Patience murmured softly — "Oh dear!" — and without any further re- sponse allowed her brother to retreat ; but when he was gone she lifted up her eye- brows, and, *' He's growing exactly like papa!" she ejaculated to herself. "I don't know how it makes me feel to listen to him! In a few years more, if he goes on like this, he will be so like him that when PATIENCE HOLT. I 09 he sets me down I shall shake in my shoes." But that period, at any rate, had hardly arrived yet, and, if the truth must be told, Patience's awe of Fred was still quite in its infancy. She was a very daring young person, and awe of any one except her deceased father was a sort of emotion to which, up to this time, she had been very little subject. CHAPTER VI. TDATIENCE spent on the whole a very happy time for the first two years after her school life was ended. She was rather idle, but then she felt that idleness was very pleasant ; she had few duties to perform, but she had not yet begun to feel that the performance of many duties was a thing essential to content. She led happy, careless days ; she was so young and healthy that she knew no weariness. Her mother had some anxieties, which she dutifully tried to share with her, but somehow they did not in reality touch her much — they did not take away in any serious degree from her gaiety of heart. Some money losses, PATIENCE HOLT. I I I when Patience was twenty years old, still farther reduced Mrs. Holt's income from what it had been at first after her husband's death, and Mrs. Holt troubled herself a good deal over this diminution ; but Patience, for her part, took it lightly. *' If we can't make both ends quite meet, we must take a little from our capital," she said one day — making this speech with the utmost cheerfulness. " But, good gracious, child, where would that land us in a few years ? " asked her mother. And then Patience exclaimed hopefully — " Oh, something will turn up : something is sure to turn up. The worst thing in all the world is to let oneself get bothered about money." And with that she went her way placidly, hardly giving the matter another thought, till the next time her eyes fell on her mother's puckered brow. I I 2 PATIENCE HOLT. "It Is a blessed but a wonderfully silly thing to be young!" Mrs. Holt thought. And yet her daughter's happy indifference did her good ; she felt that it helped to keep her from taking things too seriously. "In reality I ought not to be troubled, I know," she told herself. "If we can't manage to go on living in London we can live somewhere else ; we are not really poor ; it is no use fretting oneself about it. When Fred goes to Edinburgh " (for Fred was going to Edinburgh to complete his medical studies very soon) " I think we had better decide to leave this house at once, and go to Eldon." For there had been already a question about their moving to Eldon, which was a place in Hampshire where a brother of Mrs. Holt's lived. But still she was reluctant to give up her London house and settle down in the country, her reluctance arising mainly from the fact PATIENCE HOLT. II3 that settling down in the country meant separating themselves from Fred for good. And as for Patience, she shrank from parting from Fred too. New relations at Eldon might be very nice, she thought, but Fritz was Fritz (though of course he was sometimes horrid), and to leave him to live presently all by himself seemed to her a dreadful thing. *' If we move at all, we had better move to Edinburgh," she said. '' But Edinburgh is expensive," her mother answered; ''and besides, Fred will only be there for a year or two." '' Well, we might let this house furnished till he comes back." "But t/ie7i he would probably set up for himself, and he would want to be in a better position than this." ** Oh dear, in that case we had better leave him alone, I suppose," and the girl shrugged her shoulders. '' If he is to be too VOL. L 8 114 PATIENCE HOLT. fine to live with us, we had better get out of his way altogether." " Now you are foolish, Patience," said Mrs. Holt. '' Fred may very well aspire to have as good a position as his father had ; but if he is to have a position like his father's he must not settle down in the Harrow Road. I should like us to have been within reach of him — that is all." '* Oh, as to that — " said Patience a little sharply, and then broke suddenly off. Well, if Fritz was to go his own way, and to be so soon parted from them, might it not be best that they should take the initiative, and remove themselves to Eldon, before the removal to Eldon came to wear the aspect of a forlorn resource ? But on the present occasion she did not express herself to this effect. She was not quite sure as to what her own wishes in the matter were ; she had lived so long in London that she was fond of it. PATIENCE HOLT. II5 "If we were to go to Eldon," she said to her mother, '' I can't imagine what we should do there. I don't mean that it wouldn't be nice for a time, especially in summer, but — for altogether ! Just think of it ! No society, no books, no concerts, no parties ! " '' I never heard before that people in the country live without all these things," re- marked Mrs. Holt. '' But they must, mother — comparatively. They get used to it, I suppose ; I dare say / might get used to it ; but I don't think I should like it at all — at first. However, we can try it, of course, if you think we had better." '' If we were to part from Fred I should like to be settled near your uncle," Mrs. Holt said. '' Your Uncle James and I were always great friends in our young days, you know." '' Oh yes, I know," assented Patience. I I 6 PATIENXE HOLT. " Only when a man has spent most of his Hfe out of his own country, and has married a West Indian wife, and got West Indian children — " " My dear Patience," interrupted her mother, ** you speak as if his wife and his children were black ! They are just as much English as he is himself." "Well, but that isn't saying much," contended Patience. '' However, of course they can't help it." "And the fact is, my dear," laughed Mrs. Holt, "that you know you like them very much." " I like my uncle," corrected the girl. " I never said I didn't. And as for the rest — oh, they are well enough. I don't suppose I should mind living near them. If w^e must give up London, I dare say I would as soon live near to them as anywhere else. I dare say on the whole it would be nice to have a houseful of relations close at hand." PATIENCE HOLT. I I 7 *' And the place is pretty," said Mrs. Holt. *' Yes ; I suppose it is pretty. I wish it were nearer London." " We can't have everything, child." '' No, we can't have everything ; but it is a great deal not to have London," said Patience with a little sigh. The question of their removal hung in the balance for six months. They would discuss it for a little, and then, unable to make up her mind about it, Mrs. Holt would put it aside, and then they would discuss it again. Fred, wrapped up in his own more important affairs, did not take much part in these weighings and hesitations. The matter was of no vital moment to him. '' I think you should do what you like best," he would say to his mother in his young lordly way ; and this was about the sum of his advice. *' I want to do what is best, not what I like best," she said to him once almost sharply ; but Fred at this response merely Il8 PATIENCE HOLT. bent his handsome head, and serenely agreed with her. '' Of course: I know that perfectly," he said. " Well, it's not a very complex question." " Then if it's not complex, decide it for me, my dear," retorted his mother. But Fred did not respond to this appeal. The young man was not impulsive, and he prudently declined to permit the onus of decision to be laid upon his shoulders. "You understand the whole case better than I do," he said. " I shouldn't like to settle it for you. Besides, there's Patience. Patience is such a spitfire." *' What has that to do with it ? " asked Mrs. Holt. " Well — I mean, she mightn't like it, you know. She's awfully jealous of people — " " Fred, don't be a goose ! " exclaimed Mrs. Holt, losing her temper for a second, though in the next moment she went away laughing to herself. PATIENCE HOLT. II9 '' But of course Fritz would say nothing. Fritz never does say anything," remarked Patience, hearing presently of this little effort that had been made to force an opinion from her brother. '' Mother, in all your life did you ever know anybody who committed himself so little as Fritz ? " Whereupon a little gleam of fun came into Mrs. Holt's eyes ; but at the same time she took a leaf out of her son's book, and did not commit herself to make any answer to her daughter's question. In the end it was settled that they should go to Eldon. Patience, meditating upon the matter as the months went on, came finally very clearly to the conclusion that they had better go. " Fritz will be spreading his wings im- mediately, and then — we should be rather a lonely pair of people left here together," she thought. "It will make an awful difference when Fritz is gone. A house without either I20 PATIENCE HOLT. a man or a boy in it seems so unnatural. At Eldon there would always be somebody to fall back upon." And then it gradually got to seem to Patience that to have a houseful of relations to fall back upon might be rather nice. " And mother would like to be near them," she thought ; and this really weighed with her a good deal. So at last they resolved that they would give up their London house, and try if they could take root in new soil. CHAPTER VII. AylT'HEN the move had been made, Patience found herself and her mother one very early spring evening estab- lished for the time in the house of her uncle, James Meredith, at Eldon, in Hampshire. Mrs. Holt had as yet taken no house for herself. It had been considered best that she and Patience should stay at first for a time with the Merediths, and look about them. ''And in fact," said Mrs. Meredith, as they sat talking during the first hours, '' I don't quite know where a house to suit you will be found. There is one, indeed, that I 122 PATIENCE HOLT. think you might hke, but the people who are in it now don't seem quite to have made up their minds that they will leave it." ''Well, Agatha has nothing to do but to stay here till they have made up their minds," replied Mr. Meredith. '' That is very simple. She can stop with us for a year or two — " But of course at this every one laughed, though Patience through her laughter looked at her uncle gratefully. This was a nice cordial sort of uncle to have, she thought. They were rich people, these relations of hers, and they lived in a large house called the Cliff. Patience had never lived in any- thing like so large a place before, nor in so imposing a style, for they kept horses and carriages, and men-servants and maid- servants, and they fared sumptuously every day. It was a luxurious establishment, and for a few days she was much impressed by it. *' How delightful it must be to have money PATIENCE HOLT. I 23 enough to keep up such a place!" she thought. But after a Httle while (for she was at heart rather a Bohemian) she began to wonder whether, if she herself were rich, she should care to keep up such a place. For it was all so handsome, so well appointed, so complete ; but its very completeness, that left nothing to wish for, began very soon to pall upon her. And then her cousins were a little too much in harmony with the monotonous perfection of their establishment. Celia and Lily Meredith were two admir- able girls, pretty, and ladylike, and kind ; but they were, to tell the truth, or at least Patience thought they were, rather dull company. Perhaps she only thought this because they were country girls and she was a town girl. " I dare say that may be it," she said to herself, conscious that she found their simple talk a little flavourless, and not taking much note, perhaps, of the other rather observable fact, that Celia's and Lily's 124 PATIENCE HOLT. opinion of her talk was evidently something altogether different. For Indeed the two Meredith girls, having never yet in the course of their lives been thrown into the company of any one at all re- sembling Patience, had found her Irresistible, and had fallen head over ears In love with her. She was so much brighter than they were, so much quainter, so much more amus- ing. They, for their own part, were not quaint at all ; they were prosaic, unimagin- ative, perfectly good and commonplace. They had seen a little of their erratic cousin once in London, a couple of years ago, when they had newly returned from the West Indies, and before they had settled themselves at Eldon, and even at that time she had produced a great impression on them. But now this Impression became profound. They listened to her talk with unwearied surprise and admiration ; they watched her in all she did ; they constituted themselves her body- PATIE^XE HOLT. I 25 guard, and marched with her everywhere, one on each side of her, Hke two heraldic supporters. *' They are a pair of very nice, amiable, simple girls," Mrs. Holt would say of them, hardly able often to restrain her laughter at the sight of their unfailing devotion ; but sometimes it tired Patience a little ; she was not accustomed to such active admiration, and it puzzled more than it charmed her. '* They stick to one like a pair of burrs," she said to her mother. " Well, my dear," replied her mother, " it is very nice of them." But Patience at this raised her eyebrows. '* I don't see," she said, " that it is par- ticularly nice of them ; I think it is rather stupid. But I suppose girls who have never been to school do generally make a good deal of a chance companion when they catch her. It must be wretched never to have been to school ! " 126 PATIENCE HOLT. And, In fact, Patience had already poured into her cousins' ears so many tales about the joys of her own school days, that Celia and Lily, in their simple hearts, had almost got to believe that life at a High School must be a sort of earthly paradise. " We never had anything but a governess in Barbadoes," they had told her mournfully, " and she wasn't even young. Mamma liked her, and she was — oh, she was very nice, but we never had any fun with her. You see, except when we were quite little, we hadn't even Marwood with us, for he went to England when he was thirteen." *' And a good thing too," thought Patience upon this to herself ; for, to tell the truth, she had not so far conceived a high opinion of her cousin Marwood, whose acquaintance she had only made for the first time on her arrival at Eldon. He was an unattractive young man, with a very small amount of brains, she thought. PATIENCE HOLT. 12/ He was at Cambridge, he told her on the evening on which they first met, and had merely come home for Easter. *' Then you will be going away again soon ? How nice ! " Patience said, in reply to this information, meaning merely, '* How nice for you to be going back to Cam- bridge ! " But her words had an ambiguous sound, of which she became aware, with some confusion, as soon as she had uttered them. She need not, however, have felt any uneasiness, for Mr. Marwood Meredith did not misunderstand her for a moment. "Well, I don't know about that," he said complacently, *' but it's better than stopping in this hole, at any rate. I can't think what made the governor ever settle down in such a place. You'll find it awfully dull." " Oh, I hope not," said Patience. '' Why, there's not a mortal thing to do," 128 PATIENCE HOLT. exclaimed Marwood, "and there's no society worth speaking of. I should cut my throat if I lived here." ''Dear me!" said Patience. "What a good thing you don't, then ! " " It is indeed," chuckled Marwood, pleased at the interest she took in his well-being. " Oh, I wouldn't do it. My father's been fool enough to buy the place, but it'll have to go to the hammer when viy time comes." And then Patience suddenly turned away her head, and began to say something to Celia. She had restrained her tongue ; but she felt that she could not endure her cousin Marwood. And indeed the young man was not es- timable ; he was a very poor, low-minded, worthless specimen of his class. He was at college, but he cared nothing for learn- ing. He was strong and in good health, but he had no manly tastes ; he was no sportsman ; he could not ride well, nor row PATIENCE HOLT. I 29 well, nor run well ; he cared for nothing particularly except to smoke and play billiards ; and he was rough to his mother and sisters. They, on their side, served him, as mothers and sisters do ; but though they served him, Celia and Lily, at any rate, were not very submissive slaves. " Marwood expects the best of everything, just as if he was a Bashaw," Celia said to Patience, with a little bitterness, one day ; and Patience considered for a moment, and then — •'Well, brothers always expect the best of everything, I suppose," she answered composedly; "but what I find fault with in Marwood is that he takes it all so — so unpleasantly. He isn't nice to you. Our Fred is pretty selfish ; he riles me awfully at times ; but he isn't like that." "Oh, no!" exclaimed Celia with anima- tion. " Fred is delightful. Oh, if Marwood were only like /iim — / " VOL. I. 9 PATIENCE HOLT. *' Well, of course, / like Fred best," re- sponded Patience mildly ; and then out of delicacy she turned the conversation, though she would dearly have liked to utter a few words more if she could have felt it to be consistent with the courtesy due to Celia to do so. But Patience, with all her impulsiveness, was not often a hasty speaker. '' I can't bear him ; but I suppose they love him," she thought ; and then some- times she would look at him, and listen a little in silence to his talk, and wonder how any one could find it possible to love him. And still more, perhaps, she would wonder how he could possibly be her uncle's son. For of all the new people whom she had come amongst, it was her uncle whom as yet she liked the best. She liked his nature, and she liked his company. He was a big, handsome, genial man, in whom life in a hot climate had perhaps engendered PATIENCE HOLT. I31 a certain indolence, but yet who was neither selfish nor slothful, and whose cultured tastes kept his mind fresh and active. He had come home after spending twenty years in Barbadoes, " to grow old," as he put it himself, on his native soil ; and if by grow- ing old he meant living to take an interest in all within his reach that his native land could offer for his enjoyment or contem- plation, he was carrying out his declared intention admirably. He cared for books, and art, and nature, and men and women ; he could talk more interestingly, Patience thought, than any one she had ever hitherto known, and he won her heart from the beginning by talk- ing a great deal to herself. In fact, Mr. Meredith liked his niece, and made no secret of it ; he found her more entertain- ing by a good deal than he found his own daughters, and felt no scruple in telling her so. PATIENCE HOLT. •' You have stirred us all up, my dear," he said to her one day, after she had been with them for a week or two. " Stirred you up ? " echoed Patience, dubiously, when he told her this ; for, ac- customed as she had been to a moderately lively life in London, she could hardly con- ceive how, with less movement than she found about her now, life could go on at all. And then — " I don't think I can have done that," she quite sincerely said. '' Except that, of course," she added after a moment, " more people in a house naturally make more talking." ''And you are a great talker," said her uncle. Whereupon she blushed, and — " I ? Am I ? " she asked a little consciously. " Yes ; but I like it," he said. '' I would by no means have you talk less. I don't, by the way, find you like any of your family." PATIENCE HOLT. *' No ? " inquired Patience, rather in a tone of disappointment. '' I thought — I had half hoped — you might find me a Httle like mother." ''Not in the least, my dear. Like your mother!" exclaimed Mr. Meredith. ''No, not a bit of it. If you are like anybody, it's your grandmother." " What ! my grandmother — Patience ? " cried the girl, in alarm. " Your grandmother Patience ? Who was she ? " said Mr. Meredith. " No ; I don't mean any grandmother Patience ; I mean my mother." "Oh!" — in a tone of relief. "She was a bright little person of your sort — very lively — rather a handful in some ways, I've heard." " But, uncle," — and Patience looked anxious, — ''/'m not a handful!" And then she paused. " You don't mean to say, do you, that you think I am ? " 134 PATIENCE HOLT. " My dear," replied Mr. Meredith, judi- ciously, '* I dare say you are everything that is most docile and reasonable. As / remember my mother, she was most reason- able too. She mainly formed my own character, so you may believe that I say this from conviction. When I spoke of her just now — as you seem to think I did — without due respect, I referred to a period before I came into the world — before she had grown her wisdom teeth probably." " Oh ! " commented Patience in a thought- ful tone, and paused. " I haven't got all my wisdom teeth yet myself," she said demurely, after a moment or two. '' Did you think that I suspected you had ? " inquired her uncle, with courtesy. And then all at once Patience's eyes began to laugh. She liked her uncle, but with all her liking for him, and in spite of his marked PATIENCE HOLT. 1 35 kindness to herself, it struck her sometimes irresistibly that he was not of a specially- tender nature ; it seemed to her at times that he regarded his own immediate belongings — his wife, and his son and daughters — rather more with a sort of amused curiosity than with any very vital affection. He had a way of, as it were, standing aloof and observing them, almost as a stranger might have done, which at times amazed Patience very much. Patience herself was instinctively very shy of pointing out defects in persons that she lived with to those most nearly connected with her ; but her uncle, she soon found with much astonishment, had no shyness of this sort at all. He conversed to her freely, with a twinkle in his eye, of Celia and Lily ; and freely too, though for the most part without the ocular twinkle, of Marwood. "He is the sort of son to make a father proud ; don't you think so. Patience ? " he asked his niece drily, before she had been 136 PATIENCE HOLT. more than a couple of days at the CHff, bringing the embarrassed colour by his inquiry into her face. But he himself did not at all mean his question to be em- barrassing. "You don't approve of him? No ; of course you don't," he merely said, when she hesitated how to answer. *' Do you think I approve of him either myself ? He is a thorn in the flesh to me, my dear. I sent him off to England, you know, when he was thirteen, and I look at him some- times, and wonder if by chance he can have got changed on board ship. But his mother says it isn't possible. He's got some sort of a birth-mark on his right leg, and she pins her faith on that. I think if any claimant for his place were to come forward, I'd almost give up the birth-mark ; but we can't have these things all our own way. So he doesn't strike you as quite the sort of son a man, if he had his choice, would like to have ? " PATIENCE HOLT. 1 37 " Oh — I dare say he is very nice," mur- mured Patience guiltily ; but her uncle interrupted her with a laugh. " My dear," he said, '' he isn't nice. That is about the last term you can apply to him. He has an excellent appetite, and a powerful pair of legs, and I am told he possesses a remarkable facility in the use of strong language ; but when you have said this you have said about all. I wish I could ship him off to New Zealand. I would do it to-morrow, if I could only guarantee his staying there." '' But you couldn't," said Patience, ven- turing on a little laugh. " No ; that is the mischief of it. I couldn't — unless I should bribe him more heavily than I could afford to do. And even then I should have his mother down upon me, and she would never rest till she got him back again. Mothers are very peculiar people, Patience." I ;8 PATIENCE HOLT. But at this moment Patience felt more inclined to remark that fathers were occa- sionally very peculiar people. And indeed, in spite both of her admiration and her liking for her uncle, his conversation at times astonished her a good deal. There was neither a village nor a railway station within two miles of the Cliff; but the Meredith girls were good walkers, and loved nothing better than to tramp daily over the two miles of road that separated them from the half-dozen village shops. Or at least they had loved nothing better than this before Patience came. But Patience walked with them twice to the village, on two consecutive days after her arrival, and then made a stand, and refused to repeat that particular exercise any more. "Why in the world should we?" she said. "It isn't a pretty road, and when you get to Eldon there is nothing whatever to see." PATIENCE HOLT. I 39 " N — o, there isn't much to see, but we thought you would Hke it," murmured CeHa. "Well, but I've seen it twice now," Patience objected, "and I certainly don't want to see it again for another week, at any rate. I would much rather go into the woods. The woods are lovely." So then — for even already they never dreamt of opposing their cousin — they all went to the woods, and presently the three girls sat down upon a primrose bed, and, hemmed in on one side by Lily, and on the other by Celia, Patience began to tell them stories ; and from that day forward Lily and Celia found nothing else so pleasant as to ramble in the woods, and sit on primrose beds, and listen while Patience recounted strange histories to them. For Patience had lost nothing of that old gift for story-telling, which had enabled her in their childish days to hold Fred's attention absorbed, half against his will ; and she could 140 PATIENCE HOLT. Still weave fabulous narratives by the hour together, such as filled the simple minds of Celia and Lily brimful of admiration and delight. ''It's so wonderful how you can do it, all out of your head ! " they would say to her, with their round eyes raying out unlimited amazement. But Patience herself only laughed when they said this, for to her the telling of stories seemed a thing that one did by nature, without thinking. Entranced, however, though her cousins were in general by her tales, it happened one morning, almost at a crisis in her narra- tive, that their usual attention suddenly went from her. They had been sitting one on either hand of her, in their ordinary absorbed way, when all at once Celia glanced at Lily, and Lily glanced at Celia, and both of them dug their elbows into Patience's sides, and then the next moment a young man emerged PATIENCE HOLT. 141 from the trees, and hurriedly raised his cap as he passed by. Patience had paused in her story, instinc- tively conscious that the ears of her audience had gone from her. In the faces of her two cousins there was a fine school-girl colour. ** That's the young squire!" they whispered in an eager breath, the moment he was out of hearing. *' Is it ?" replied Patience coolly. "Well, he isn't much to look at." '' N — o. At least — do you think not ? He's tall, you know," said Celia apologetically. " Oh, yes, he's tall enough ; but he seemed to me to look rather loutish," explained Patience. *' He's shy," said Lily. " He's very nice and kind ; but I think young ladies frighten him." '' Oh dear ! " ejaculated Patience, and she gave a little half-contemptuous laugh. Young men of that sort did not interest her ; she had met a good many of them during the T42 PATIENCE HOLT. last year or two In London, at small dances and tennis parties, and such-like entertain- ments, and had found them duller company than she liked. ''Yes; but he is nice, indeed," repeated Lily with emphasis. " Everybody likes him ; he's so good-natured." '* Oh, It's easy to be good-natured," said Patience, " particularly when you're a young squire. Indeed, I should say," she added, thoughtfully, '' that It's always easy for people to be good-natured when they're rich and prosperous. / should be, I know, in such circumstances ; or, at least, I think I should. I suppose one can't be certain. People who are much pampered often, I dare say, get cross and nasty." ''Well, I don't think Mr. Ralph is often cross or nasty," said Cella, quite warmly. "Oh, Mr. Ralph is evidently a paragon!" exclaimed Patience with a laugh. " But am I to go on with my story ? After this ex- PATIENCE HOLT. 1 43 citing interruption I don't believe you want to hear any more of it." Of course, however, the girls did want to hear more of it, and said so with effusion ; and so Patience resumed her tale. ^m^ CHAPTER VIII. " npHE Merediths seem to have somebody staying with them," Ralph Wharton said the same day to his father. '' I came upon the girls just now in the Red Wood, sitting under a tree with another girl." *'Ay?" inquired the Squire with interest. " And who is she ? Didn't they introduce her?" " Oh, I didn't stop," exclaimed Ralph. " I only bowed as I passed." " You should have spoken to them," said the Squire. ** No, no," replied Ralph hastily — he had knitted his brows ; — " I didn't want to speak PATIENCE HOLT. 1 45 to them. I had nothing to say — if it comes to that." The Squire looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. '* Upon my word," he said abruptly, '' I don't know how you ever mean to get your- self a wife, my boy ! " '' There's time enough to think of that," replied Ralph ; and then all at once he gave a cheery and almost boisterous laugh. ** There'll be time enough to think of that twenty years after this," he added, and laid his hand on his father's shoulder with a sudden tender look in his blue eyes. The Squire and his son had lived together during all Ralph's life, except for a brief, and to the father dreary, period, which, between the ages of fifteen and seventeen, the lad had spent at a public school. Before that time the Rector of the parish had been his tutor — a good, easy man, who did his work swiftly, VOL. L 10 146 PATIENCE HOLT. and left his pupil ample time to devote to riding, shooting, hunting, rowing, and all the other various pursuits that were more to his youthful taste than the acquisition of book- learning ; but under this lax discipline the boy acquired so little knowledge that at last the Squire, with a heavy heart, yielded to the representations of his friends, and packed him off to a field in which education was made at least, to some extent, compulsory, and kept him there (though his absence took the joy out of his own heart) till, in fact, Ralph, at the expiration of two years, rebelled, and declined to pursue that course of life any farther. '' It's all rubbish," he said with brevity. '* What's rubbish, my boy ? " asked his father, conscientiously anxious to understand the merits of the case. "Well, the way we go on at school," ex- plained Ralph. '' You think we're obliged to learn certain things. That's bosh. We PATIENCE HOLT. 1 47 needn't learn anything that we don't like. / haven't learnt anything for these last six months." '' But, my dear," said the Squire, — he was a little shocked, and spoke anxiously, — '' if you've learnt nothing, that's to your discredit, you know." The lad had a pair of wistful, simple, honest eyes, and at these words he fixed them on his father's face. "But, dad," he said, ''you don't see. I've not got the head for it. I can't compete with those fellows ; they're so awfully clever, some of them. They'd floor anybody I know — you, or the parson, or any one — in five minutes. I'd far better give it up ; I give you my word I had." " But still, Ralph," said the Squire in- sinuatingly, '' I think, in spite of what you say — I think, my boy, you'd better keep on — ^just keep on, you know, and be steady, and learn what you can. It'll do you good. '148 PATIENCE HOLT. I don't expect, you know, that you'll ever turn out a student — " At this point, however, Ralph broke into a laugh that drowned his father's voice. *' No," he said, '' you might just about as soon expect me to turn out a cherub." And then the Squire chuckled too. He could remember the time, perhaps, when the fair-faced lad before him had been very like a cherub, at least in his eyes, and the memory made his heart tender. " Then — then what is it, my boy, that you would propose we should do ? " he asked after a little, hesitatingly. ''Well — I'll stay at home," replied Ralph, promptly. '' Oh ! — ahem ! " said the Squire. '' I can only say that there's no sort of good in my going back again," explained Ralph in a tone of irresistible frankness ; '' and we'd have a jolly time together now — if I stopped here." PATIENCE HOLT. 1 49 ''Ah, yes — yes, my boy; but we mustn't think of that," cried the Squire (feeHng indeed honestly that the temptation was too great for him). "We must think of what it is our duty to do — of what will be best for you, Ralph." '' Oh, as for that, I know perfectly well what will be best for me," said Ralph. "It would be no sort of use for me to go back. Why, Dr. said himself I should be only wasting my time." " God bless me ! did he ? " exclaimed the Squire, much impressed. " Yes, he said so — unless I turned over a new leaf," added Ralph, too honest to suppress this explanation. " Ah ! but then, supposing you were to turn over a new leaf, my boy ? " said Mr. Wharton with eagerness. " Well, but, father, I couldn't do it," cried the lad. " I might say I'd try, to please you ; and if I said it I would try ; 150 PATIENCE HOLT. but it would all come to the same in the end. You see, it's only games, and those sort of things, that I'm any good at ; and of course the other fellows know that, and — and I've got my own set, you know, and a fellow can't turn tail, and take up with other fellow^s." The Squire tried to sigh, but in truth, as he sighed, his eyes shone with a suspicious light. *' Well, well, my dear, I must — I must think about it," he said dubiously, after a little pause. At this response, however, young Ralph's face broke into a radiant smile, and — " Oh, I don't see that you need think much about it. I'll just stop at home now, dad, if you please," he said. And, in fact, the subject was hardly dis- cussed again ; and Ralph did stop at home henceforward, to his father's unmixed delight. As a salvo to his conscience, however, PATIENCE HOLT. I5I JMr. Wharton after this enhsted the services of the Rector again, and for the next year or two the clergyman came up once more to the Manor House several times a week, and read with Ralph for an hour or two. Though the boy could not master Greek and Latin he was not wanting in intelligence, and books — especially books of history — had a very fair amount of interest for him. He used to read them with his tutor in the mornings (when nothing more attractive in any other direction called him elsewhere), and often in winter evenin^rs he read them aloud to his father, and the two simple fellows — the Squire, who had almost forgotten all his old school knowledge, and the lad, to whom the world was still fresh and unknown — would sit sometimes for hours together, talking of the great events and the great characters of bygone times, with all the freshness, if also the crudeness, of a pair of boys. 152 PATIENCE HOLT. It was always Ralph who read, and his father who smoked his pipe and listened. Ralph did not read well ; he spluttered very much over his sentences, and made strange misconstructions of their meaning, but yet there was a certain eagerness in his method of delivering them that removed his performance from the dull level ; the very trick that his w^ords had of tumbling head over heels kept the Squire's interest awake and on the outlook. " I didn't quite catch that, my boy," he would abruptly exclaim with uplifted hand now and then. " I didn't catch it. Read it again." And then sometimes Ralph would read it again with improved effect, but sometimes, after this second recital, the Squire would only mildly shake his head, and sign to his son to pass on. He was half reluctantly conscious that the boy's performances as a reader left a good deal to be desired, but he PATIENCE HOLT. I 53 was too tender-hearted to make that con- sciousness evident. " It — it doesn't seem to go quite right, does it, father ? " Ralph himself would some- times remark, staring at the lines before him with knitted and perplexed brows ; but the Squire would mostly at such times give the matter the go-by. *'Ah, some little misprint — a printer's error, I dare say. Never mind, my dear, never mind," he would gently murmur. And Ralph would take a new breath, and, metaphorically sweeping the incomprehensible sentence behind him, make a bold dash at the next. After all, complete understanding of every expression of a writer Is not necessary to the enjoyment of historical narrative. Their usual habit was to read for an hour or two, and then to relax their minds (for after the strain of the lecture had continued for some time they were both generally a little exhausted), and to talk over what they 154 PATIENCE HOLT. had read. Like many simple people, they had the power of seizing facts very vividly : these dead men and women whose stories they read were no mere shadows to them ; they talked of them as they might talk of people whom they had met in the flesh yesterday, or whom they might meet and clasp hands with to-morrow. They had a childlike faith too In every fact set down in black on white. It was conceivable to them that a man might lie with his lips — that was an experience indeed that life had inevitably taught them ; but that men should set down what was untrue, or even what was subject to doubt, in printed books, they barely recognized as a credible thing at all. So they read, and accepted the truth of everything they read implicitly. Indeed, even in regard to avowed fiction they pursued the identically same course ; for being induced, as time went on, to combine with their strictly historical studies a course PATIENCE HOLT. 155 of Sir Walter Scott's historical novels, they impartially extended their simple faith to every fact and delineation contained in those entrancing pages, and, with an enthusiasm quite delightful in its boyish freshness and fire, believed in the characters he drew, and in each particular of the stories that he told, as vividly and unquestioningly as they be- lieved in the accession of Queen Victoria, or the Franco-German War, or any other indisputable fact of contemporary history. As Ralph in his stumbling way read the exploits recorded in these great romances, the Squire, with his eyes fixed in breathless attention on his face, would often forget his very pipe in the extremity of his interest and astonishment, till the fire within it had gone out. "God bless me!" he would murmur to himself at intervals. " D'you take it in, Ralph ? D'you take it in ? " he shouted out one night, bringing his 156 PATIENCE HOLT. clenched hand down upon the table In his excitement. "Why, If the fellow had had a tussle like that you'd say every bone In his body must have been broken; and yet — d'you see ?— he's never turned a hair! God bless my heart ! What men they were in those days! Ah, I'd like to have seen them;" and he gave a sigh of longing. '' It's astonishing ! " responded Ralph, thoughtfully ; and he sat staring at the page, and slowly re-reading the description to him- self that he had just read aloud. *' One can't but think the chap must at any rate have been bruised a bit. I wonder now, dad — I wonder If he didn't feel It afterwards ? " " Not he ! " cried the Squire, quite carried away by his enthusiasm. " Never a bit. They were such fellows you couldn't hurt them. But upon my word, I'd no Idea — Why, it beats everything ! Get on, Ralph, and let's hear what they did next." And then Ralph fell to again, and the PATIENCE HOLT. I 57 Squire sat listening, with his face intent, and beaming like a full moon. Mr. Wharton had lost his wife many years ago, so long ago that perhaps he had by this time pretty well forgotten her. In fact, she had been a gentle, rather colourless little woman, who, though he had loved her, had left no very deep mark upon his life. It was Ralph towards whom all the strongest feelings of the Squire's nature had gone out — the little lad, to whom he had been both father and mother in one, from the time that he could first toddle by his side. The boy had never had playfellow or companion who was so dear to him as his father ; between the two there had always been a wonderful sympathy. In childhood Ralph had looked upon the Squire as the source of all his keenest delights, and when childhood was past he chose him instinctively to be his closest friend. And yet, in spite of their mutual affection 158 PATIENCE HOLT. and their happy companionship, Mr. Wharton would sigh sometimes, and wish that he could give his boy a little polish. For in truth (and his father knew it) Ralph was in manners a boor, whereas the Squire, though without much education, showed himself at all times a gentleman in breeding to his fingers' ends. Ralph suffered, in fact, from a terrible shyness — an unconquerable shy- ness — that did not attack him at all times, nor with all persons, but that attacked him almost invariably in the presence of strangers, and especially in the presence of girls, who were as hornets, or some other alarming and malign insects, to the bashful young man. His father would argue with him about this peculiarity, himself entirely confounded by it, for women young and old had delighted in him, as he in them, all through his life ; but his arguments had little effect upon his son. '' I dare say they oughtn't to frighten me, PATIENCE HOLT. I 59 but they do — or, at least, I mean, they make me so that I'd sooner run a mile than face them," the poor fellow would confess. '' It isn't that I don't think them pretty : they're pretty enough — and nice too, I dare say, in a way ; but I'd rather meet a lion than I would some of them." And nothing that his father could say would induce him to speak or feel in any other fashion. So, as Ralph grew up from boyhood into manhood, the Squire had had to bestir him- self more and more to keep up the character of pleasant and courteous sociability that the Manor House had won for itself long ago, but that Ralph by his persistent bash- fulness w^as in these days so seriously en- dangering. '' I must get the lad married somehow, by hook or by crook," Mr. Wharton was constantly thinking, with a sort of half-con- fessed sense of the humour of the situation, '* I must find him a wife before I go off the l6o PATIENCE HOLT. boards, or it will be all up with the old place." And, in fact, for the last three or four years he had been trying to carry out this design, with a patient but impotent perseverance that had been almost pathetic. "You won't help me a bit, Ralph," he would say sometimes, reproachfully, to his son. *' I don't want to help you, father," the young man answered one day. ''Why can't you leave things alone ? We're as comfort- able as we can be." '' Ay, but, my boy," argued the Squire, ''one must look ahead; and unless I help you a bit now, and start the thing, I don't know how you'll ever bring yourself to set about it when I'm gone. You see, Ralph, you've got no mother ; I've always to con- sider that. I've got to try always to be father and mother both to you." "Yes; and so you are, by Jove!" cried Ralph, warmly. " But yet you — you can't PATIENCE HOLT. l6l be hammering away always at those sort of things, you know. I can't tell what mothers do in general, I'm sure ; but if they are always trying to get their sons married, they — they must be rather nuisances, I should think," said blunt Ralph. Whereupon the Squire felt a sudden twinge of pain, and — " Well, my boy, I don't want to become a nuisance," he said, a little sadly. But the young man at this broke into an honest laugh, and — " You'd have to get up early the* day jk