Chapter 2

You know Jane had told me all that was going to happen. Indeed, she talked always very fast, and didn't mind filling my little head with her opinions of my betters which was certainly a mistake. It was a shame, she said, that my uncle, "the Reverend," should send all his children here, while he and his wife went taking their travels and their pleasure all about to those gay foreign places!

Grandmamma talked about it in quite a different way. She told me how ill my aunt had been, so ill that my uncle had been obliged to take her away from England for the whole winter. And she said that now they had left the place on the beautiful Swiss lake, and were going to try some German baths. Only they could not take the children there, so they were to come and stay at the Park for a month or too, the while.

I thought this would be very nice, and I began to ask all sorts of questions about Harry and Lottie, and Alick and Murray, and Bertie and the baby. How funny it would seem when the nursery was so full! I thought the day would never come. But it did. The carriage was sent off to the station, and in due time it came back, quite full to overflowing with children!

There was a good deal of shyness at first, when we all stood in a row, and looked at each other, answering grandmamma's questions seriously, and feeling very odd. But that was only the first evening. Next day we were quite happy and comfortable, had a very merry breakfast, and then a delightful ramble about the gardens and orchards. Of course, I was only one of the little ones, coming in between Alick and Murray, feeling very small beside Lottie and Harry. Yet we were all very good friends, and Lottie soon told me that she thought it would be very nice to have a girl to talk to, and not only boys. This remark pleased me, though when I thought of Bobbie, it sounded rather strange. Indeed, I am not sure that I was not a little too fond of boys' play.

I remember feeling rather disappointed one day when she said to me in the garden--

"Sissy, let's come and have a nice quiet walk together, and leave the boys to play by themselves."

Now, three of the boys were just preparing for a military march, one with a bright flag, another with a trumpet, and another with a sword-stick, so-called; and there was a most refreshing prospect of shouting, stamping, and huzzahs! Do you wonder that I turned away rather unwillingly?

However, Lottie's confidences soon made up for it all. Such beautiful stories Lottie could tell! When she began to talk about the Alps, and the blue lake and the mountain flowers, I thought it seemed almost as good as my hymns and verses. I know I looked up at her with eyes full of admiration, and when she put her arms round me, and gave me a loving kiss, I thought I had never been so happy before.

And then she listened to all I had to tell her about Bobbie, and baby Willie, and Rosalinda, and gave me her advice about dressing Rosalinda like the Queen.

My letters, too, she read, and said they were very nice, which made me love mamma for writing them all the more. And she showed me her own letter that had just come across the sea, with its foreign stamps and thin paper. Quite a nice talk it was altogether, and we were ever so sorry when we were called in to dinner.

My boy-cousins were very polite to me at first, and hardly seemed to know what to make of me. Harry was a little too patronizing, called me "a mite of a thing," and played tricks upon me in a gentle way. But then he was not often with us. He had not been a night in the house before he had quite determined to be a sailor like Uncle Hugh, so it followed, as a matter of course, that he must be always with him.

Force of habit, however, made him confide all his plans and thoughts to Lottie, so that our private talks in the shrubbery were often interrupted by his merry voice. Then he would throw himself down among the grass and periwinkles, and tell us all about his future ship. This usually ended in Lottie's being carried off to make sails or flags for his new craft. Then, being left to myself, I soon ran off to my other cousins, nothing loath to have a game of romps with them.

Alick seemed likely to be my special friend. What a funny little fellow he must have been, though I did not think so then! Jane called him a little dandy, much to his displeasure; yet I am afraid his friendship was likely to increase my childish vanity. He was so fond of decking me with flowers, making wreaths for me, and then looking at me, and sometimes comparing my hair or eyes with Lottie's; and his look of vexation if my face was dirty or my pinafore torn, often comes back to me even now when I feel untidy in any way.

One afternoon, when Alick and I and one of the other boys were alone, it suddenly came into our wise little heads that we would play at going to a party. What vast preparations we made! What pains the boys took to tie up my sleeves with some bright ribbon meant for Harry's flags! How cleverly we succeeded in carrying off a hair-brush, and what a long time it took to decide how the boys' hair and ties should be arranged! And then came the flowers, my wreath, and the bouquet to be carried for me by one of my gentlemen.

We were all ready, I remember, and I was just taking Alick's arm, and we had all put on our best airs and graces for a solemn entrance to the supposed ball-room, when, all of a sudden, who should come round the corner but Uncle Hugh and Harry!

Oh, those bursts of laughter pealing out again and again! Oh, the writhings and twistings of Uncle Hugh in his excessive mirth! Would they _ever_ stop laughing? Even now my cheeks almost tingle with those painful blushes, and my heart beats with that frightened shame!

And yet it was for Alick that I was chiefly troubled, as I saw him fling down the flowers and run, while Harry, shouting "conceited young jackanapes," pursued him at full speed. I had never seen such rough play or heard such mocking laughter, and I burst into tears, sobbing out my trouble on my uncle's shoulder as he carried me off and laughingly soothed me, pressing the prickly wreath all the while against my head.

It was a long time before our adventure was forgotten. Harry's merry jokes brought the colour over and over again to my face, and the angry words to Alick's lips. But we were both cured, certainly, for the time, of any love of display or dandyism!

VI.

_WHAT ABOUT LESSONS?_

And now, little reader, I know quite well what thought has been popping in and out of your head all this time. You have been wanting to ask me what had become of lessons all these weeks, and how a number of little boys and girls could be allowed to run wild, doing just what they liked all day long.

Well, it does seem very shocking, and there is no denying that, for a whole month, we did not often see the inside of a book. Yet, I had learnt to read, and had been in the habit of learning to spell and to count every day of my life at home. I don't quite know how it came about that we were not all of us a very untamed set after a month's idleness at the Park. Perhaps, it was a good thing for us that grandmamma was what she was. The very perfection of tender kindness we all felt her, and yet there was a certain dignity about her, that made it a simple impossibility to be rough or rude before her. And on the whole we were a great deal with her. When not with her, we were supposed to be picking up a great deal of French from my cousin's Swiss nurse. And so, in our way, we did, although I think Susette learned English a great deal faster than we learned French. Yet, when we wished to coax her, the French words came fast enough, such as they were.

But I am afraid grandmamma did not think that we were learning quite enough, for one day she called Lottie and me, and told us that she had just seen such a nice young lady, and that she had promised to come and be our governess. What an excitement this news caused us all! How we talked it over all day long. We had many different ideas as to what she was to be like; in fact, the elder boys made pictures of her, which, as it turned out, were anything but good portraits.

How we did look at her that first evening! She was very young, very fair and in deep mourning. That is my earliest impression of her. We had a kind of unconfessed idea that she did not take half pains enough to make us like her. She did not seem to care whether we did or not--hardly, I fancy, to think about the matter. It was just the very end of April, almost the bright May-time, and grandmamma went round the garden with her, Lottie and I making our remarks from a distance. I think we were a little surprised to see our new governess so much at her ease, laughing merrily and talking away to grandmamma, just as if there were no little critics taking note of all. By and by, she came in and sat down in "the schoolroom"--such a new word that seemed!--to write a letter. Lottie and I pretended to be very busy with our dolls in one corner, but we were keeping up our watch, and every now and then we met her eye with a merry twinkle in it, looking greatly amused at us.

"She looks so young, only a girl! she will never be able to manage us, Jane says," Lottie remarked very softly to me; "but then, I daresay, she can be cross enough when she likes, governesses always are!"

All of a sudden, a merry laugh startled us both, and in another minute Lottie found herself flat on the floor, being tickled and kissed and laughed over all at once. I don't think she quite liked it, though she couldn't help laughing, too, but her cheeks were very red, when Miss Grant raised her own head. She kept Lottie flat on her back, and looked down at her, the most thorough amusement all over her face.

"Cross enough, do you think? Oh, yes, to be sure I can! Cross enough to eat you up at one mouthful, and little Sissy after you!"

How funny it sounded! Lottie laughed and so did I, only very nervously. Then all at once Miss Grant grew very comically grave, and asked us whether we thought we should soon make her cross? And then followed such a funny talk, I think I shall never forget it. Miss Grant was half lying on the sofa now, Lottie and I were bobbing up and down beside her, sometimes looking right into her blue laughing eyes, sometimes hiding our own rosy faces, that she mightn't see how queer she made us feel.

"You don't much like the idea of having a governess, I see," she said; "you fancy it will be lessons, lessons all day long now, a great deal of crying, and punishments, very hard things to learn, and no fun any more. If that's what it really is going to be, I shall get so unhappy that I shall soon run away home again! And then you think I shall have to grow cross and ill-tempered, too--that is the worst part of it all."

She pretended to be ready to cry, and Lottie, who didn't quite like to give up her own opinion, muttered something about "She thought they always were!"

"Are they?" asked Miss Grant, just as if she really wanted to know, and, when we laughed and hid our faces, she went on: "I think I know how it is. This is what you will do to me: You will begin by getting into all the mischief you can think of, and that will give me a headache; and then you will be cross and rude, and that will give me great, deep lines in the forehead; and last of all, you will do vulgar things, that will make my mouth get into the 'don't' shape, which is so ugly, you know; and, by and by, when I look at myself in the glass, I shall find myself turned into a grey-headed old woman, and I shall say, 'Sissy gave me those wrinkles between my eyes, I always had to frown at her so;' and then, 'Those ugly lines by my mouth came when Lottie vexed me so.' What a funny thing it will be to have to remember you in that way when you are grown-up people!"

Of course, we did not like this way of taking it for granted that we were rude, troublesome children, yet there was a funny look in Miss Grant's eyes that seemed as if she didn't really mean what she said. And the end of it all was that we made a compact, as she called it, that we would be ever so good-tempered, and then she and we would have the happiest time together that you can fancy.

And I think it all came true. Thanks to our papas and mammas, we were not quite the rude children we might have been. They had saved us ever so much trouble, and ever so many tears, by teaching us that hardest lesson "do as you are told," before we were old enough to understand its difficulty. And Miss Grant was always so bright and happy that she scarcely ever let us suspect, even in the naughtiest times, that we were "making the lines come." Out of doors she was the merriest among us, and grandmamma would often say to Lottie that she was ever so much older than Miss Grant, because she would walk soberly about with a book, while Miss Grant was having all sorts of fun with the boys. At last she, too, caught the infection, and then we all had the merriest romps together! How well I remember those early summer days, and the luxury of flowers everywhere. Is there anything so happy-looking, so full of overflowing delight, as the long grass, and the buttercups and daisies, hawthorn and bluebells? We thought ourselves very wise about flowers then, and had very decided opinions on the proper blending of colours. Miss Grant was teaching us this, and even now, when I see any one making a nosegay of wild-flowers, I fancy myself running up to her with a handful of bright things, to watch in my eagerness how they were in a minute turned into the beautiful bouquet that nobody could equal or copy.

She had been with us some time, when one morning we had a visitor come to spend the day at Beecham. This lady was not old, yet she had the most wrinkled, aged face I ever saw. When she was gone, Harry, who never minded what he said, asked grandmamma about her, and cried out in surprise when he heard that she had been his own father's playfellow.

"You think Mrs. Mowbray looks double as old as papa, do you?" said grandmamma. "Ah, it is trouble that has aged her. You would not wonder at all those lines and wrinkles if you knew all the sorrow and grief her own poor boys have given her through their sin and wilfulness!"

Lottie and I looked at each other, and then glanced slily at Miss Grant, but I don't think she noticed us. When we were alone again, we resolved that we would try ever so hard to be good.

"Because, you know, Sissy, it wouldn't be nice if Miss Grant were to get her face all puckered and creasy like that, just as if it wanted ironing out, as Susette did with my frock when Murray scrunched it all up under his pillow to hide it. But I suppose you couldn't iron out your face!"

Anyhow, I agreed with Lottie not to run any risks, and I do not think we did. At least, all my memories of that happy year at Beecham are mingled with the bright, merry, gentle friend who made easy all the lessons that could be easy, and gave me courage for those that _had_ to be hard; and against whose shoulder I loved to nestle, and listen to Bible-stories with those little hints in them which always set me thinking of my own faults and duties, and made me long to do right, and be the good little Christian girl she wished me to be.

Little reader, dear, are you making lines on anybody's forehead?

VII.

_HURRAH FOR THE HOLIDAYS!_

And yet, however pleasant lessons might be, there is no doubt that holidays were pleasant things, too. Saturday afternoons were always welcome, and all the weeks through we were planning what we would do when they came. Of course these plans were sometimes upset by a rainy day; but, even then, what with battledore and shuttlecock, painting and spinning tops, we contrived to make out the time very happily.

And before us all the while was the bright, pleasant prospect of the long summer holidays.

Every now and then during these happy months the thought of home came across me, and sometimes one of mamma's letters would have in it so much about Bobby and his play, and his prattle about Sissy's coming back, that I grew a little home-sick and looked wistfully into grandmamma's face as she read the letter. This would always make her say: "You don't want to go home, little one? Aren't you very happy here with Lottie and the boys? And you are getting on so nicely with your books, too; mamma is so pleased to have you with so many little schoolfellows, and kind Miss Grant to teach you! And we are going to have all kinds of pleasant treats in the holidays. No, no, we must keep you another month or two! Perhaps we will send you home when the cold weather comes!" So I ran away again to make plans with Lottie about all the many things that must be done the very first day of no lessons.

Then came the last time of history, and the last dreadful sums, and the last copy written, and the last hard French words learnt, and then, happiest of all, the last putting away of books and cleaning of slates! It almost makes me take that long breath for joy even now only to remember that happy day.

"And don't you think I'm the happiest of us all?" said Miss Grant; "I am the only one really going home for the holidays!"

Which remark was a great relief to my little mind, for I had been afraid we must seem a great deal too glad that she was going. Now I could venture on my very loudest "hurrah," which, after all, was but a feeble imitation of the boys' loud cheers.

You know, anticipation is the best part of every pleasure; in easier words, everything looks brighter before it comes than when it _is_ come. I think that was very nearly the happiest day of my whole year at Beecham, when I sat on the floor watching the last things put into Miss Grant's box, and chattering away about the happy days coming. You see, for a long time I had got up every morning with the thought of how many good marks I should get, and of how those hard letters and figures were to be made, and though I had made many a brave fight and won many a delightful victory over the books, yet it _was_ very nice to think that to-morrow I should awake with the holiday feeling instead.

And the next morning did really come, though we thought it never would, and we made a very long meal of breakfast, being not quite sure what was to come next.

It was a funny day, that first day! Grandmamma and Uncle Hugh went away early for a long drive, and all sorts of business at the end of it; and we knew they would not be home till ever so late. It was very hot--oh, so _very_ hot! We could not go into the sun at all, but Susette and Jane sent us out of the nursery very soon, that we might not disturb baby's midday sleep by our holiday fun. The school-room, of course, we avoided; so, after a little hesitation, we went out into the shade to play.

And, first of all, we thought of the swing as the best thing to be done, and for half an hour it _was_ most delightful! Don't you know the pleasant feeling it is, just up at the very highest point, when you are not _quite_ sure whether you are frightened or not? Don't you know? And you laugh a little anxiously, and are very glad to find yourself safely down again. Oh, it was very good fun for _a little while_! Only Harry came to swing us, and he was so fond of seeing your feet up into the branches, that you never could be quite sure that he would not send you head-over-heels. Lottie was very brave, but I could not quite stand it, so I stood by and watched; and when they asked me to have another try, I said, "No, thank you." I think Alick saw that I was a little red and uncomfortable, for he asked me to come and play on the lawn. We ran away, taking a last look at the two elder ones. It was not such boisterous play that we had, we two together, yet I think we enjoyed it very much, half-talking, half-playing. We were very good friends, and the morning went very quickly. When the dinner-bell rang, we agreed that we would start off together as soon as we could for the apple-orchard at the top of the hill, where we were not likely to be disturbed.

That hot July afternoon, how well I remember it! All among the long grass we lay, looking up at the little, young apples overhead, and now and then setting our teeth in the sour middles of those that had fallen. But we were a little afraid of the effects of these unripe, bullet things, so we did no more than taste them. Then my eight-year-old cousin began to say me long pages of poetry, and when he had exhausted his stores, he astonished me by the funny, learned sound of his Latin declensions.

"You know, Sissy," he said, "I mean to be a very learned man some day, and know twelve or fourteen languages, I think. I shall not be content till I know more than anybody else. It will be nice to be wiser than papa. He's ever so clever, you see; but then, of course, new things will be found out every year, and sons must always get a-head of their fathers, or else the world would stand still, you see."

I didn't quite see, but I pretended to. Alick had been very confidential lately, and I knew what a sore spot there was in his heart making him talk like this. Hadn't he confided to me with a fierce, red heat on his forehead how his father had told him he wasn't "half a boy," because he had turned giddy climbing a high tree? "But papa always says when Harry bangs his head about, that he doesn't believe there can be any brains behind such a skull as his. I dare say that is the difference between us."

So said the young scholar with all the satisfaction possible, and I believed in him with all my heart.

However, even he grew tired of wise talk, and proposed a game with the fallen apples. How we pelted each other, how we laughed, and, oh, how hot we did get at last! Then off came hats and jackets, and were left behind under the trees while we went to rest ourselves in a piece of open shade, thrown by that large barn where, by and by, the apples would be stored away; and this was the moment which I seized to get his advice as to a new toy I had lately bought to send to Bobbie. It was one of those wooden soldiers whose arms and legs are to go by means of a string; but the string, you know, is always getting hitched. This was the case now, and it tasked all Alick's wonderful brains to set it right. How my back and arm did ache as I held it up for him, lying flat on the grass, to twitch, and pull, and contrive, and, at last, to conquer! That happy moment had just come when there was a sound of wheels in the road near us. One minute more, and Uncle Hugh's voice was heard calling us, and the carriage stopped to take us up. What grand, glorious news we were told as we drove home, two hatless, jacketless, sun-burnt children, I must not tell you this time.

VIII.

_THE COTTAGE ON THE CLIFF._

"Well, my dearie," said grandmamma, "uncle and I have just taken such a pretty little cottage for you all, high up on the cliff, looking right over the blue sea. And you are to go off and try if the fresh wind up there will put a little more colour into those cheeks of yours!"

My dear little friends, I had just nestled down snugly enough on grandmamma's silk dress and black lace shawl, never having the least idea of the dear, kind purpose of that long sixteen miles' drive, so you won't be surprised to hear that the news gave me such a start that I very nearly jumped out of the carriage. And Alick--well, I don't know whether he was really half a boy or three quarters, but his shout certainly made you fancy him quite a _whole_ boy at that minute!