CHAPTER V.

AN OLD STORY.

That Sat.u.r.day afternoon pa.s.sed very pleasantly for both the sisters.

Jacinth earned her aunt's commendation by her quick neat-handedness and accuracy, and a modic.u.m of praise from Miss Mildmay meant a good deal.

The little misunderstanding of the morning, ending as it had done in making the aunt, an essentially just woman, blame herself for hasty judgment, had drawn her and her elder niece closer together than had yet been the case. And no doubt there was a substratum of resemblance in their natures, deeper and more real than the curious capricious likeness which had struck Marmaduke so oddly--which was indeed perhaps but a casual coming to the surface of a real underlying similarity.

Things were turning out quite other than the young uncle in his anxiety had antic.i.p.ated.

'If fate had sent me Jacinth alone,' thought Miss Mildmay, 'I rather think we should have got on very well, and have fitted into each other's ways. There is so much more in her than in Frances. I strongly suspect, in spite of her looks, that Jacinth takes after our side of the house--she almost seems older than Eugenia in some ways--whereas Frances, I suppose, is her mother over again.'

But here she checked herself. Any implied disparagement of her sister-in-law she did not, even in her secret thoughts, intend or encourage, for Alison Mildmay was truly and firmly attached to her brother's wife, widely different though their characters were.

'Frances is really only a baby,' she went on thinking. 'There's no telling as yet what she will turn out.'

Jacinth on her side was conscious of a good deal of congeniality between herself and her aunt. It was not the congeniality of affection, often all the stronger for a certain amount of intellectual dissimilarity, or differences of temperament, thus leaving scope for complementary qualities which love welds together and cements; it was scarcely even that of friendliness. It consisted in a certain satisfaction and approval of Miss Mildmay's ways of seeing and doing things. The girl felt positive pleasure in her aunt's perfect 'method;' in the clear and well-considered manner in which her time was mapped out; in the quick discrimination with which she divined what would be the right place and treatment for each girl in her club; even in the beautiful order of the book-shelves and the neat clerk-like writing of the savings-bank entries. It was all so complete and accurate, with no loose ends left about--all so perfect in its way, thought Jacinth, as she cut and folded and manipulated the brown paper entrusted to her charge for the books'

new coats, rewarded by her aunt's 'Very nice--very nice indeed, my dear,' when it was time to go home, and she pointed out the neat little pile of clean tidy volumes.

Frances on her side had enjoyed herself greatly. She was the only outsider, otherwise day-scholar, at the garden tea, which fact in no way lessened her satisfaction while it increased her importance.

'I wish you were a boarder, Frances,' said Margaret Harper, the younger of her two friends, as they were walking up and down a shady path in the intervals of the games all the girls had joined in. 'Don't you? It would be so nice, and I am sure we should be great, _great_ friends--you and Bessie and I.'

'And not Ja.s.s?' said Frances. 'I shouldn't like to be a boarder unless Ja.s.s was too. Then, I daresay, I wouldn't mind.'

'We'd like to be friends with Jacinth too,' said Margaret, 'but Bessie and I don't think she cares very much about being great friends. She seems so much older, though she's only a year more than Bessie, isn't she?'

'She's fifteen,' said Frances. 'She is old in some ways, but still she and I do everything nearly together. She's very good to me. She's very nice about you, and I'm quite happy about having you and Bessie for my best friends, for Jacinth and Aunt Alison think you're the nicest girls here.'

Margaret coloured with pleasure, but with some shyness too.

'I'm glad they think we're nice,' she said; 'and I'm sure, if your aunt knew father and mother, they'd think we _should_ be far, far better than we are, at least than I am. I don't think Bessie _could_ be much better than she is. But a good many others of the girls are very nice indeed; they are none of them not nice, except that Prissy Beckingham talks too much and says rather rude things without meaning it, and Laura French certainly has a very bad temper. But she's always sorry for it afterwards. And who could be nicer than the Eves or Honor Falmouth.'

'I don't know them much; they're too big for me, you see,' said Frances.

'Of course I'd know them better if we were boarders. Do you like my gray frock, Margaret? It's the first day I've had on anything but black for such a time; it does feel so funny.'

'I think it's very pretty, and you've got such a beautiful sash!' said Margaret admiringly. 'But I always think you and Jacinth are so nicely dressed, even though you've been in black all the time. Bessie and I can't have anything but very plain frocks, you know. Mother couldn't afford it, for we're not _at all_ rich.'

'I don't fancy we are, either,' said Frances; 'I shouldn't think papa would stay out in India if we were. But at Stannesley, where we lived before, granny always got us very nice dresses: she used often to send to London for them. I don't believe Aunt Alison will care so much how we are dressed. Do you have an allowance for your gloves, Margaret? We do.

I got a new pair yesterday, but I'm afraid they're not very good; where are they, I wonder? Oh yes, here in my pocket; there are little whity marks in the black kid already, as if they were going to split.'

She drew the gloves out, as she spoke, but with them came something else--a doubled-up, rather soiled white card.

'What's this?' said Frances, as she unfolded it. 'Oh, I declare! Just look, Margaret--it's an old Christmas card of last year. I remember one of the children gave it me at the Sunday school, and I've never had this frock on since. Isn't it strange?'

She stood looking at the card--an ordinary enough little picture of a robin on a bough, with 'Merry Christmas' in one corner--a mixture of sadness and almost reverence in her young face. 'Last Christmas' seemed so very long ago to Frances. And indeed, so much had happened since then to change things for herself and her brother and sister, that it did naturally seem like looking back to the other side of a lifetime to recall the circ.u.mstances which then surrounded them. How well she remembered that very Sunday, the last of the old year; how they had chattered and laughed as they ran home over the frosty ground, and Uncle Marmaduke, who had just joined them, had predicted skating before the week was out! How tenderly granny had kissed them that night when they went to bed, with some little remark about the ending of the year, and how the next morning she was not well enough to get up, anxious though she was in no way to cloud or damp their enjoyment; and how the doctor had begun to come every day, and then--and then----The tears started to Frances's eyes as she seemed to live through it all again, and for a moment or two she did not speak; she forgot that Margaret was standing beside her with sympathising face.

'Dear Frances,' she said, 'does it remind you of something sad? Has it to do with when you went into mourning?'

'Yes,' said Frances, 'it was soon after last Christmas that granny--our grandmother that we lived with--got ill and died, you know, Margaret.

It's for her we are still in mourning.'

'And you were very fond of her, of course?' said Margaret.

'Very, _very_,' said Frances.

Then she almost seemed anxious to change the subject: she was afraid of beginning to cry, which 'before all the girls' would have certainly been ill-timed. And her glance fell on the card in her hand.

'Robin Redbreast,' she said consideringly. 'Margaret, have you ever pa.s.sed that lovely old house, down the lane on the Crickthorne Road, that's called "Robin Redbreast?" The bird on the card reminded me of it just now.'

'Oh yes,' said Margaret rather eagerly. 'I know it quite well. Once or twice Bessie and I have stood at the gate and looked in. Isn't it a delicious quaint old place?'

'It's perfectly beautiful,' said Frances. 'You can't think what it looks like from the inside.'

'Have you ever been inside?' questioned Margaret, evidently intensely interested. 'Do tell me about it.'

Frances glanced round, as if to make sure that no one was within hearing, partly perhaps from a feeling that Jacinth would not have liked her to go 'chattering' about their yesterday's adventure, partly from a childish love of importance and mystery.

'Is it anything you shouldn't tell me, perhaps?' said Margaret, with quick delicacy. 'Don't mind my having asked you; it wasn't--it wasn't exactly curiosity, Frances.'

And Frances, glancing at her friend, saw that her face had reddened all over. Margaret was not a pretty child, but she was very sweet-looking, with honest gray eyes and smooth brown hair. Her features were good, but the cheeks were less round than one likes to see at her age; there was a rather wistful expression about the whole face, almost suggesting premature cares and anxiety.

'Oh no, dear,' said Frances rea.s.suringly. 'It's not that. It _was_ rather queer, and you see we weren't quite sure at first how Aunt Alison was going to take it. And Jacinth is always rather down upon me for talking too much. But I know I may tell _you_, for it's quite fixed that you and Bessie are to be my best friends: it's the day-scholars that Aunt Alison doesn't want me to talk much to.'

'Yes,' agreed Margaret, 'I quite understand.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: And then Frances related the whole, Margaret listening intently till almost the end.]

She was in a fever, poor child, and from no selfish motive a.s.suredly, to hear more about the mysterious house. But she restrained herself, scrupulously careful in no way to force the other's confidence.

'When I said what Robin Redbreast looked like from the inside, I meant from inside the gates,' began Frances, after a moment or two's reflection. For she was scrupulously truthful. 'I've not been inside the house--not farther than the porch. But the porch is like a little room, it _is_ so pretty. I'll tell you how it all was; you may tell Bessie, but not any one else, because, you see, there's quite a story about it.'

And then Frances related the whole, Margaret listening intently till almost the end, when the little narrator, stopping for a moment to take breath, after 'So you see our grandmother was her very dearest friend, and she really seemed as if she could scarcely bear to let Jacinth go, and--_isn't_ it like a real story?' saw, to her surprise, that her hearer's face, instead of being rosier than usual, had now grown quite pale.

'Why, Margaret, what's the matter? You look as if I had been telling you a ghost-story, you're so white,' she exclaimed.

Margaret gave a little gasp.

'It is so strange,' she said. 'I'll tell you why it has made me feel so queer. Mine is a sort of a secret, Frances; at least when we came here to school mother told us not to talk about it. But I know I can trust you, and what you've told me makes it seem as if somehow--I don't know how to say what I mean--as if we must be a sort of relation to each other, from our people long ago having been such friends. For, do you know, Frances, Lady Myrtle Goodacre is our aunt--our great-aunt, that is to say--father's own aunt?'

Frances stopped short and _almost_ clapped her hands.

'There now,' she said, 'I had a feeling there was something like that. I _wish_ Jacinth hadn't stopped my speaking of you, when Lady Myrtle told us her name used to be Harper.'

'Were you going to speak of us?' asked Margaret.

'Yes, it was on the very tip of my tongue. Indeed I believe I did get as far as "There are some," when Jacinth stopped me. She said afterwards that it is "common," when any one mentions a name, to say immediately, "Oh, _I_ know somebody called that." I don't quite see why it should be common; it's rather interesting, I think. Still I daresay it's true that common people often do speak like that, when you come to think of it.

They've always got an aunt, or a cousin, or a friend's friend called so-and-so, or living somewhere, if you mention a place.'