was told not to be troublesome with her wonder, but to see that the picture was carried up into the lumber garret to-morrow, and something put in its place to hide its marks on the wall; anything that would not stare down upon people as they lay in bed, as that child’s eyes did. By rousing the wearied maid, just as she was falling asleep, nurse obtained a muslin apron, which, when she stood on the table, she could hang over the picture: and two or three pins, judiciously applied below, obviated all danger of the veil rising with any breath of air, so as to disclose the features of the boy.
“You had better take warning, and look to your children in time, nurse, before they grow up to plague you as my boy has plagued me.”
She had drawn back the curtain, and now showed herself as much disposed for conversation as if she had taken a waking instead of a sleeping draught.
“And you lay it all to education, ma’am? You think the university to blame for it? Well! ’tis hard to say.”
“What put such a notion into your head? Who ever dreams of objecting to the university for gentlemen? You would not have my son brought up as ignorant as a ploughboy; would you? No, no. I have done my duty by him in that way. He had the best-recommended tutors I could get for him, and every advantage at the university that was to be had; and the best proof of what was done for him is the credit he got there, and the prizes, and the reputation. He is a very fine scholar. Nobody denies that.”
Nurse pondered the practicability of putting the question she would have liked to have had answered; whether learning had had the same effect upon Mr. Arruther that the lady had anticipated for Owen and Ambrose.
Nurse would fain know whether Mr. Arruther could wash his own face, and put himself to bed.
“Let us hope, ma’am, that the young gentleman will live and learn. If he is not able to do little things now, perhaps——” “Little things! What sort of little things?”
“Well, ma’am, I thought if your late house-maids could not polish the fire-irons, or make your bed to your liking, and if you fear that my boys should not keep themselves clean when I am gone, because of their learning, perhaps...But indeed, when I once saw the young gentleman, his gloves were as white as my apron, and the sunshine came back from the polish of his boots. I never saw a neater gentleman.”
“He is a puppy,” replied the tender mother. “I suppose it was that dandy show of his that caught the eyes of the low creature he has married. If I never get the better of this illness, she shall have none of my clothes to wear. No shopkeeper’s daughter shall be seen in the laces my mother left to me. I had rather give some of them to you, nurse, at once.”
“God forbid, ma’am! What should I do with laces? Such as I!”
“Very true. Now it is strange that a sensible woman like you, who knows what is proper, in her own case, should be so wrong about her children.
What have they to do with education any more than you have with laces?”
Nurse took refuge under the sanction of the clergyman and of Mr. Waugh; and protested that she had as little idea of sending Owen and Ambrose to the university, as of asking that Mildred should wear the lady’s family Valenciennes and Mechlin.
“Well; I wonder what it is that you would have! I can’t make out what it is that you would be at!”
“Ma’am, if I had all I wished for——but I may as well be setting on a cup-full of broth to warm, as I fancy you may take a liking to a little, by-and-by.”
The lady let nurse do this. When she was tired of wondering whether she could take any broth when it should be warm, she languidly said,— “Go on. What would you have for your children? Pray remember what I have heard you say yourself—that pride comes before a fall.”
“And a much greater one than I said that before me, ma’am. But I would not have my children made proud, because I should be sorry they should fall below what they are. If I had my wish, it would be that Owen should have work at the mill as long as he lives, so as to be pretty sure of eighteen shillings a week for a continuance; and that he should marry such a girl as Kate Jeffery, who would take as much care of his house as I would myself; and that they should never want for shoes and stockings for their children’s feet. And much the same for Ambrose.”
“Is that all? They might have all this without reading and writing.”
“Perhaps so, ma’am; but Kate reads to her grandfather of a Sunday evening, as I saw when I passed to-night; and the neighbours think, as well as I, that it is the boys that get on best with their learning that go straightest to their work; not swinging on the churchyard gate, nor swearing, to get a look that they may make game of from grave people passing by. As for Mildred, I don’t well know what to wish. ’Tis hard work for poor girls when they settle and have their families early: but then, I should be loth to leave her to live solitary in our cottage, spending her days all alone upon the hills. However, that will be as the Lord pleases. Meantime, I should best like that fifteen years hence, when the boys will be perhaps settled away, my girl should be keeping our place clean for me, and giving me her arm to church, and helping me with her little learning when, as often happens, I am at a loss to answer, for want of knowing. I have no wish to be idle, I am sure. I hope to knit her stockings and make her petticoats still, if she will clean the cupboard out, and entertain the clergyman better than I can do.”
The clergyman was not present to start the inquiry whether such were the sum total of the purposes for which spiritual beings were brought into a world teeming with spiritual influences. If he had been there, he might not, perhaps, have got a curtsey from nurse by telling her that her views were quite proper, and that she rightly understood what to desire for her young folks. Perhaps he might have thought little better of Mrs.
Arruther’s aspirations.
“My boy has cruelly disappointed me,” she declared: “and yet I wished for no more than I had a right to expect from him. I wished that he should be a good scholar; and so he is. I wished that he should have the looks and manners of a gentleman.”
“And sure, ma’am, so he has?”
“O yes: and I hoped to see him in parliament, if it was only for once; and I carried this point, and mean to carry it again, if I can. He is in parliament with my money, and he shall have enough for the next election. But there’s an end. Instead of marrying as I wished, he has taken up with a tradesman’s daughter; and he may make the best of his bargain. Not an acre of my land, nor a shilling of my money that I can leave away, shall he have. If I am disappointed in him, I will have my satisfaction. I will do what I can to show people that they should take care what they expect from their children. He sha’n’t have all the laugh on his side. He sha’n’t say for nothing that my behaviour to him is unpardonable.”
Nurse wondered whether at the university they taught to forgive and forget. If they did, perhaps the young gentleman would be bent upon making up matters, if be thought himself put upon; and then there might be a coming round on the other side.
“I don’t know what they do there about forgiving; but I am sure they teach the young men to forget. He never wrote to me above once, the last year he was there; and that was for money. And he never thought more of his cousin Ellen, though I told him to marry her, and requested him to send her down a lap-dog like mine. When I asked him what he meant by it, he said Ellen and all had entirely slipped his memory. I told him my mind, pretty plainly; so I suppose it will slip his memory that I live hereabouts, when he comes down to his election. If he tries the gate——” “O, ma’am! You will not turn him away?”
“No: it might cost him his election; and I don’t wish that. I should miss my own name from the newspapers then; and it would be hard to lose my pleasure in the newspapers. I will do nothing to hurt his election.
He shall be let in to see me; and then I will say to him, ‘All that lawn and those fields, and all this house and the plate would have been yours very soon, (for I can’t live long,) if you had married your cousin Ellen, as I bade you: but it is too late for that now; and Ellen’s husband shall have every ——’—What do you look in that way for, nurse? I am not going to leave it into another name. Ellen’s husband shall take my name before he touches a shilling.”
“And if a judgment should come upon us meantime, ma’am. If the heathen should——Did not you say there is to be a new election? Is not that the same as the government getting a new parliament?”
“To be sure.”
“And that is done when a danger is thought to be at hand, is not it?”
“Not always; and if it was, no harm can come to my property. The deeds are all in my lawyer’s hands,—in his strong-box,—safe enough.”
It was plain that Mrs. Arruther knew nothing about the approach of the Turks; and it would be cruel to tell her, when she might very likely die before they appeared in Arneside.
“What are you afraid of, nurse? I am sure you are in a panic about something. It is too soon for your boys to be marrying against your will, I suppose?”
“Yes, thank God. And they will never be able to marry so far below them as your young gentleman may do; for the reason that they will never stand so high as he. But yet I can fancy that if my Owen took to a giggling jade, with her hair hanging about her ears, and a sharp voice, it would weigh heavy on my heart.”
“And your money would weigh light in his pocket, hey?”
“I shall have no money to leave, ma’am; and as to——” “No money to leave! I dare say. You never will have money to leave while you throw away your services as you do. I did wonder at you last week, when you managed to find somebody else to sit up with old Mr. Barnes, that you might nurse Widow Wilks’s child. I saw beforehand what would come of it. The child died, just the same as if you had been with Mr.
Barnes; and you missed your chop, and brandy and water, and the handsome pay you would have had; and Mr. Barnes is a nice, mild old gentleman, that you might have been glad to nurse. I thought you knew your duty to your children better than to waste your services in any such way.”
Nurse was very sorry the lady was displeased with what she had done. She had acted for the best, thinking what an aggravation it would be of the weary widow’s grief for her child if she fancied, after its death, that it might have been saved by good nursing. Having acted for the best, she hoped her children would not remember these things against her when she was gone.
“You seem to be always thinking how things will be after you are gone.
What will all that signify when you are cold in your grave?”
“It seems natural, ma’am, when one has children to care for. I hardly think that God gives us children only that we may play with them while they sprawl about and amuse us, and make use of them while they are subject to our wills, having no steady one of their own. I think, by the yearning that mothers have after their sons and daughters when they are grown up into men and women, that it must be meant for us to keep a hold over their hearts when they have done acting by our wills. And so, when I talk of what is to happen when I am gone, it is with the feeling that I dare not go and appear before God without doing my best to have my children think of me as one that tried to do her duty by God and them.”
“But if Owen married as you said, how should he, for one, think pleasantly of you?”
“Indeed I am afraid the thought of his folly would rankle. But my endeavour would be to make the lightest and best of what could not be helped. I would tell him that there could be no offence to me in his judging for himself in a case where nobody has a right to judge for him; and I should make no difference between him and the rest. My father’s bible is, as they know, to go to the one that can read in it best when I am on my death-bed; and the other few things are to be equally divided.
My girl is to have my spinning-wheel; and the deal table will be Owen’s; and the chair and three stools——” “Those things are to your children, I suppose, much the same as my lawn and this house to my son?”
“I dare say they would be, ma’am; and, in some sense, all property that is left by the dying to the living seems to be much alike, whether it be great, or whether it be little. To my mind, it is not so much the use of a legacy to give pleasures to those that can enjoy little pleasure when a parent or other near friend is taken away, as to leave the comfort of feeling that the departed wished to be just and kind. It is all very well, you see, that my girl should have the use of my spinning-wheel; but if it was made of King Solomon’s cedar wood, Mildred’s chief pleasure would be to think, while she spun, that I remembered her kindly when I lay dying; and for this, a spinning-wheel does as well as a room full of pictures, or a mint of money. And when I see a family quarrelling and going to law about their father’s legacies, I cannot but think how much better it would be for them if each of the daughters had but a spinning-wheel, and each of the sons neither more nor less than a deal table, or the chair their father sat in.—But,” lowering her voice, “here am I chattering on without thinking, while you are just asleep, which I am glad to see.”
Whether from a disposition to sleep, or from some other cause, Mrs.
Arruther’s eyes were closed; and she did not move while nurse once more softly drew the curtain. When, in the silence, nurse began to consider what, in the fullness of her heart, she had been saying, she was thunderstruck at her own want of good manners in uttering what must have seemed intended for a reproof to the lady about her conduct to her son.
Her heart beat in her throat as one sentence after another of her discourse came back upon her memory. What was she that she should be lecturing Mrs. Arruther?—But perhaps the lady had been too drowsy to listen. It was to be hoped so, rather than that she should suppose that nurse was paying her off for her opposition to the children’s going to the school.
When sufficiently composed for the nightly duty which she never omitted, nurse added to her usual prayers the petition that this suffering lady might be spared till she could see clearly what it was just that she should do towards the son who had displeased her. Before she had finished, there was another movement, and a mutter of “O dear!” from within the curtain.
“I hoped you had been asleep, ma’am. Can’t you find rest?”
“No, nurse; but you cannot help that. I will see my lawyer to-morrow. It is too late to be thinking about wills to-night. But I don’t believe I shall sleep a wink to-night. Do you take that broth, nurse. I cannot bear the thought of it. It prevents my getting to sleep. I believe I shall never close my eyes all night.”
Nurse really thought she would, if she would only take the other draught, and settle her mind to trouble herself about nothing till to-morrow.
CHAPTER III.
LESSONS ON THE HILLS.
“Fetch down a plate from the cupboard, Ambrose, and cover up the beer, while I cut the cheese. I suppose we may have a quarter of the cheese, as mother said,” observed Mildred to Ambrose, as the early sun was peeping in through the upper panes of the cottage lattice the next morning.
“Yes; we may have the quarter. I was at the shop before the first shutter was down. Here—here’s a plate for Mr. Ryan’s cheese. We will carry ours in the paper I brought it in. How shall I keep puss from getting at the things? Is not that Mr. Ryan stirring?—Mr. Ryan! Mr.
Ryan!” (calling through the door.) “Please to look to your breakfast here, that the cat does not get it. We are going now; and Owen is gone to the mill; and mother is not home yet.”
“Off with you, lad!” answered Ryan from within. “Leave the cat to me.
And if you can pick up any rags for me among the briers, you know I always give honest coppers for them; and yet more for tarred ropes, if such an article comes in your way.”
“Tarred ropes! How should we get them? If tar by itself would do, I could help you to some of that. The shepherds always keep tar against the shearing. Would tar by itself do?”
The loud laugh from within showed Ambrose that he had said something foolish; and he hastily departed, supposing that Mr. Ryan had been making a joke of him.
Cool and moist as all had been in the valley as they passed, the children found that the dew was gone from the furze-bushes on the hills, and that the sun was very warm.
“What had we better do?” asked Mildred, contemplating the yellow cheese, which began to shine almost as soon as she opened the paper. “Shall we eat it directly? I think I am beginning to be very hungry; are not you?
And it will be half melted, and the bread dry, if we carry it about in the sun.”
“Mother said we were to keep the sheep for a couple of hours first,” was Ambrose’s reply. “And besides, I have some leaves to get for her; and they won’t be fit if I let them stay till the dew is off; and it is off already, except under the shady side of the bushes. Put the breakfast under the shady side of this bush; I’ll look to it.—Do you go about and get some rags, if you can find any. The briers and hedges are the most likely places.”
“There won’t be any Turks under the hedges, will there?” asked Mildred, lowering her voice.
“I don’t know. I don’t rightly know what Turks are; but if anything happens amiss, call out loud to me, and I’ll come. Go; make haste. The sheep are quiet enough.”
“And how are we to know when two hours are over?”
“We must each guess, I suppose; and if we don’t agree, we’ll draw lots with a long spike of grass and a short one. The long one for me, you know, because I’m the eldest.”
In forty minutes, both were agreed that two hours were over; and each complimented the other on the fruits of the morning’s work. Ambrose exhibited a handful of leaves, which he placed under a big stone, that they might not be blown away; and Mildred brought the foot of a worsted stocking, which she had found in a ditch; a corner of a blue cotton handkerchief with white spots, which had been impaled on a furze bush; and a bit of white linen as large as the palm of her little hand, with twenty holes in it. How many coppers would Ryan be likely to give her for this treasure?
Ambrose rejected the worsted article, to which his sister gave a sigh as she saw it thrown backwards among a group of sheep, who scampered away in their first terror, but soon gathered together to look at the fragment. The other two might be worth the third part of a farthing, if Mr. Ryan should be in a liberal mood, Ambrose thought.
“I wonder how much paper they will make,” Mildred observed. “Mr. Ryan says they are to go into his sack with the rest of his rags, for paper.
Mother did not tell you what she wanted the leaves for, I suppose?”
“No; and I sha’n’t ask her. Do you ever hear people talk about what mother makes?”
“Why, yes; I do. Molly at Mrs. Arruther’s was telling the gipsy woman one day about mother; and she said she had some strange secrets. And then they asked me what one thing meant, and another. But they did not mean me to hear all they said, any more than Mrs. Dowley when she winked at her husband, and glanced down at mother’s apron where some green was peeping out: but it was only cabbage that time. They all think her a very wise doctor.”
“How they do send after her when they are ill! Mr. Yapp said one day that she would be wise to bring up one of us to be a doctor after her: but Mrs. Dowley was there then, and she said it could not be, because mother’s was of the nature of a gift that could not be taught.—Here is your other bit of cheese. Will you have it now, or keep it till dinner?”
Mildred had intended to reserve part of her cheese for dinner; but having now nothing particular to do, and the sheep offering nothing which required her attention, the whole of the delicacy at length disappeared, crumb by crumb. Then she lay back, looking at a flight of birds that now met, now parted, now crossed each other in all directions, high in the air. Ambrose meanwhile stretched himself at length, with his face to the ground, watching a hairy brown caterpillar, which he took the liberty of bringing back with a gentle pinch by the tail, as often as it flattered itself that it was getting beyond his reach. He presently wished that they had a pair of scissors with them.
“Won’t the knife do as well?” Mildred languidly inquired.
“No. I want to cut off the creature’s hair.”
“What creature?” asked Mildred, starting up, but seeing no creature with hair, but a remote donkey and herself.
“Here: this young gentleman,” replied her brother, exhibiting the writhing caterpillar on the palm of his brown hand. Well might the creature feel uncomfortable; for this hand which had carried cheese must have been far from fragrant, in comparison with the thyme-bed on which the poor caterpillar had been disporting himself. What Ambrose wanted was to see whether it would come out a common green caterpillar, when stripped of its long sleek hairs. The process of plucking was tried in the absence of scissors: but the material was too fine. The knife was next applied, but the creature was destined never to be shaven and shorn. A slip of the knife cut it in two, and fetched blood on Mildred’s finger at the same time. The perturbation thus caused completely awakened her, and she was ready for the sport of shepherd and shepherd’s dog. For a very long time, Ambrose supported his dignity of shepherd. He strapped himself round with his sister’s pinafore and his own for a plaid; took long steps; wielded a thick stick, and made grand noises to the flock; while Mildred went on all fours till her back was almost broken, and barked all the while, like any dog. The sheep were silly enough to scud before her to the very last, as much alarmed as at first, till she was obliged to stop to laugh at them. All play must come to an end; and by-and-by the children were stretched, panting, on the very spot where they had breakfasted. To panting succeeded yawning; and it began to occur to both that they had yet a long day to pass before the sheep would be penned. It was against the rules of their employment that both should sleep at the same time; and, as Mildred could not keep awake, it was necessary for her brother to watch. She was not, as usual, wakened by his calling out so loud to some of his charge as to rouse her before her dream was done. She finished it, opened her eyes, sat up and stretched herself; and Ambrose was too busy to take notice.
“I had such a queer dream!” observed Mildred.—Her brother did not hear.
“I say, Ambrose, I dreamt that I was sorting rags at the mill, and there was a caterpillar upon every one of them; and—What have you got there, Ambrose? Did you hear what I said?”
“Come here,” replied her brother. “Here is a story! Help me to make it out.”
“A story! what, upon the very piece of paper that held the cheese! What is the story like? Tell me. You know I can’t read so well as you.”
“But you can help me with this part, perhaps. I will tell you what I have read when I know this word. The man would not go in somewhere; and this word tells where.”
Mildred pored over the soiled piece of print, and pronounced presently that the word in question signified something about a comb. In her spelling-book, c-o-m-b spelled comb. But of the rest of the word,— “inat,”—“in,”——“What could it be?
“It ends with ‘nation.’ ‘Comb’—‘nation.’ Well: I must let that alone.
There was a man that would not go into this place,—whatever it is,—and the people that were in it were angry because he went to his work.”
“Because he did not go to his work, I suppose you mean.”
“No; because he would go when they bade him not. And they watched for him one day when he was going to work, and his little boy with him. They call him a little boy, though he was eleven years old. They flew upon the man, and thumped him and kicked him as hard as ever they could. And when the boy cried, and begged they would not use his father so cruelly, one of them caught up a thick rope, and beat the boy till it was a shocking sight to see him.”
“They were cruel wretches. I wonder whether there was anybody near to go for the constable? Did they get a constable?”
“I suppose so, for the people were asked how they dared to beat people so.”
“And what did they say?”
“This that I can’t make out, about going in and not going in: but they got a good scolding,—and that is as far as I have got.”
“See what is to be done to them, and whether there is anything more about the boy.”
Another half-hour’s spelling and consultation revealed that the child had pulled one of the assailants down by the leg, and thus turned the fury of the man upon himself; that it was doubtful whether the boy would recover; and that, this being the case, the decision of the magistrates was that—— Here came the jagged edges of the torn newspaper, instead of the magistrates’ decision. This was very disagreeable indeed. Not to know what became of the aggressors, and whether the brave boy lived or died, was cruel. Ambrose threw away the paper, and grew cross. Mildred’s consolations,—that very likely the boy was well by this time, and she had no doubt the cruel people were put in prison,—were of no use. A better device than to imagine the issue suggested itself to Ambrose. He would go and ask Mr. Yapp. The paper having come from Mr. Yapp’s shop, he no doubt knew the end of the story. Could not Mildred look after the flock while he ran down now? No harm could come to the sheep during the little time that he should be gone.
Mildred did not like this plan,—was sure her mother would not like it.
Ambrose had better read the story over again, to try and understand it better; and she would go with him to Mr. Yapp’s when the flock was penned, in the evening. Never did the oriental scholar pore more diligently over a new tablet of hieroglyphics than these two children over the fragment of a police report which had fallen in their way. To no scholar can it be so important to ascertain a doubtful point of history, or to develope facts of the costume and manners of a remote people, as it was to these young creatures to learn the issue of a case in which rights like their own were invaded, and filial sympathies like their own were aggrieved.
Again, during the day, Ambrose called to his sister that he had something to say to her, and Mildred knew that it must relate to the story he had read, so complete was the possession it had taken of his mind. He thought the people round were great fools for not punishing the aggressors on the spot. If he had been there, he would not have waited to hear what the magistrates said; not he. He would have knocked down every one of them that he could get at, if it were by pulling by the leg as the poor boy had done.
“And then,” said Mildred, “they would have served you the same as the boy; and if anybody had taken your part, they would have served him the same. I don’t think that would do any good.”
“Nothing like a battle,” exclaimed Ambrose, waving his cap over his head. “I like a good battle better than all the justices and gentlemen in the world.”
“I don’t like battles,” Mildred observed. “I do not much mind seeing you and Sam Dobbs fight here on the heath, where you only throw one another down, and the grass is too soft to hurt you. But I saw the men fight before the Rose; and one of them lifted the other up high into the air, and dashed him down slap upon the pavement; and you might have heard the knock of his head as far as the pump, I’m sure. There was such a quantity of blood that I could not eat my supper! I should not like to see such a battle often!”
“O, only tell me when anybody does you any harm, and see how I will fight for you.”
“I am sure I shall not tell anything about it, if you go and fight in that manner. I would ask mother or Owen to go with me to Justice Gibson.
If you consider, there would be fighting all day long in our place, and much more in L——, if all people chose to battle it out instead of going to the Justice. And besides, I think the Justice can take much better care of this poor little boy than anybody that just fought a battle for him, and then went away.”
Ambrose saw this; and before dinner was over, both the children had learned, after their own fashion, how far superior law is to vengeance, and security to retaliation. Confined as their ideas were (the picture of their own little village and few associates alone being before their eyes), this was a most important notion to have acquired. There needed only the experience of life to enable them to extend their conceptions,— Justice Gibson standing for the magistracy at large, and the little village of Arneside for social life in general.
Evening came. The sheep were penned, and the children were standing before Mr. Yapp’s shop-door, pushing each other on to the feat of asking the grocer for the rest of the story. They saw Mr. Yapp’s eyes turned on them once or twice; but they could not get courage to make use of the opportunity. It was Mr. Yapp himself who at last brought on the crisis.
“Come, younkers,” said he, “make your way in or make your way off. Don’t stand in my door, preventing people coming in.”
Mildred moved off; Ambrose bolted in; and then his sister came up to reinforce him. As the grocer had nothing very particular to attend to at the moment, he did not crush the aspiration for knowledge. He directed the children to the package of paper from which their fragment had been taken, and looked over the story himself. It would have been too long a task for such poor scholars to seek for what they wanted by reading. To compare the jagged edges of the paper was a much readier method; and Mildred did this, while Mr. Yapp gave her brother some imperfect idea (for he was not learned on the subject) what a Combination was, and why a man was ill-treated for not entering into one. This was worth coming for; but it was all. Mildred’s search was unsuccessful. The rest of the story was irrecoverable. Many customers, some from distant farms and cottages, had been at the shop to-day; and it was impossible to say who had carried it off.
Ambrose begged for his paper back again. There was something on the other side that he wanted to show to Owen.
“Let’s see,” said Mr. Yapp. “Why, this looks like magic,—all these waves, and dashes, and dots, and signs. O, ho! it is short-hand, I see.
Somebody advertises to teach short-hand. There, take it to Owen, and see what he makes of it.”
Ambrose turned the paper about, but could see nothing like a hand. What could be meant by short-hand?
A way of writing short, he was told; and he remained as wise as he was before. But now Miss Selina Yapp, who stood smiling behind the counter, was desired to give the children half-a-dozen raisins apiece; and it was quite time to be going home.
Their mother was looking out for them from the door.
“Why, mother, are you going to be out again to-night? Sure the lady must be very bad!”
“I am not going to the lady till morning, dears. ’Tis poor neighbour Johns I am now going to. Sadly sunk he is; and his old woman is nigh worn out. So I’ve made my bit of a bed fit for her here; and it is full time she was in it. So, troop to bed, dears. Get your suppers while ye undress; and be as still as mice, sleeping or waking, when she comes in.
Put your learning away till to-morrow, Owen, my boy. Pussy won’t eat your paper before morning, I dare say, if you put it where it will be safe. You’ve had your supper; so now to bed, my boy. You’ll be fresh all the earlier in the morning. But be sure you put on your shoes the last thing, lest you should wake the old woman with your clatter.”
Owen’s eye had been completely caught by the mysterious figures of the short-hand specimen. He held it between his teeth while he undressed, and went on looking at it by the twilight, after he was in bed, till his brother and sister had done talking; and then he put it under his bolster. Ambrose, meantime, stuffed his mouth with his supper very indefatigably, and yet managed to get out his story of the little boy who had been beaten for defending his father. Following his mother about wherever she moved, he made her mistress of the whole before he had done.
Mrs. Ede was not disappointed at their saying nothing about her sitting up again to-night. To them, it was so much a matter of course that she should sit up professionally, and to her that she should do what she could for a needy and suffering neighbour, that the circumstance did not seem worthy of remark. All were more occupied with Mildred’s disappointment. It was feared that Mr. Ryan was gone from the village this evening, and that he would not come on his rounds again for half-a-year. He had himself bid Mildred look for rags; and now he was gone before she came home! Her bits of blue and white must stand over till he appeared again; for Owen did not think any money would be given for them at the mill. Nurse stayed yet five minutes longer, to comfort her little daughter under this mischance; and within that five minutes, all three were sound asleep.
“Bless their little faces, how pretty they all do look!” thought the mother. “’Tis almost a pity to leave such a pretty sight. I wonder which of them will stand so by me, when I am old and failing like neighbour Johns; if it should please God I should live till then. But, dear me, what a puckered old face mine will be then!—little like their smooth rosy cheeks. ’Tis a cheerless thing for two old folks to be left without children, unfit to take care of one another, like poor neighbour Johns and his dame; and yet worse it would be for me that have laid my husband in his grave so long ago. But if God spares me my little ones, and my girl stays near me, I need not care what else betides. Bless them! how sweetly they do breathe in their sleep! And now, I must go and send the dame to her bed. I trust she will be thoughtful not to wake the children; and I’m sure they will be thoughtful towards her in the morning.”
CHAPTER IV.
SIGNS IN THE SKY.
A few years passed away, and Mrs. Ede was in possession of the blessings she prayed for. Her children were all spared to her, in health, and, by her and their own industry, secured from want. Upon the whole, she had reason to be satisfied with them, though there was a wider difference in their characters and attainments than she could have wished to see. She did not grow restless about what, she supposed, came by nature. She concluded it to be God’s will that Owen should be “as sharp as a briar,” active in his business, ready about bringing home things pleasant and wonderful to hear, and looked upon by his employer and the village at large as a rising youth who would one day be a credit to his native place. Nurse concluded it to be God’s will that Owen should be thus, while his brother and sister were far from being like him. What had made them dull she scarcely knew; unless it was being out so much on the