GENERAL SIR EDWARD FULFORD, K.G.C., TO HIS SISTER MISS FULFORD UNITED SERVICE CLUB, 29TH JUNE.

My Dear Charlotte, ­I find I shall need at least a month to get through the necessary business; so that I shall only have a week at last for my dear mother and the party collected at New Cove.  You will have ample time to decide which of the nieces shall be asked to accompany us, but you had better give no hint of the plan till you have studied them thoroughly.  After all the years that you have accompanied me on all my stations, you know how much depends on the young lady of our house being one able to make things pleasant to the strange varieties who will claim our hospitality in a place like Malta, yet not likely to flag if left in solitude with you.  She must be used enough to society to do the honours genially and gracefully, and not have her head turned by being the chief young lady in the place.  She ought to be well bred, if not high bred, enough to give a tone to the society of her contemporaries, and above all she must not flirt.  If I found flirtation going on with the officers, I should send her home on the spot.  Of course, all this means that she must have the only real spring of good breeding, and be a thoroughly good, religious, unselfish, right-minded girl; otherwise we should have to rue our scheme.  In spite of all you would do towards moulding and training a young maiden, there will be so many distractions and unavoidable counter-influences that the experiment would be too hazardous, unless there were a character and manners ready formed.  There ought likewise to be cultivation and intelligence to profit by the opportunities she will have.  I should not like Greece and Italy, to say nothing of Egypt and Palestine, to be only so much gape seed.  You must have an eye likewise to good temper, equal to cope with the various emergencies of travelling.  N.B.  You should have more than one in your eye, for probably the first choice will be of some one too precious to be attainable. ­ Your affectionate brother,

Edward Fulford.

Miss Fulford to sir Edward Fulford
1 shingle cottages, new cove, S. Clements, 30th June.

My Dear Edward, ­When Sydney Smith led Perfection to the Pea because the Pea would not come to Perfection, he could hardly have had such an ideal as yours.  Your intended niece is much like the ’not impossible she’ of a youth under twenty.  One comfort is that such is the blindness of your kind that you will imagine all these charms in whatever good, ladylike, simple-hearted girl I pitch upon, and such I am sure I shall find all my nieces.  The only difficulty will be in deciding, and that will be fixed by details of style, and the parents’ willingness to spare their child.

This is an excellent plan of yours for bringing the whole family together round our dear old mother and her home daughter.  This is the end house of three on a little promontory, and has a charming view ­of the sea in the first place, and then on the one side of what is called by courtesy the parade, on the top of the sea wall where there is a broad walk leading to S. Clements, nearly two miles off.  There are not above a dozen houses altogether, and the hotel is taken for the two families from London and Oxford, while the Druces are to be in the house but one next to us, the middle one being unluckily let off to various inhabitants.  We have one bedroom free where we may lodge some of the overflowings, and I believe the whole party are to take their chief meals together in the large room at the hotel.  The houses are mostly scattered, being such as fortunate skippers build as an investment, and that their wives may amuse themselves with lodgers in their absence.  The church is the weakest point in this otherwise charming place.  The nearest, and actually the parish church, is a hideous compo structure, built in the worst of times as a chapel of ease to S. Clements.  I am afraid my mother’s loyalty to the parochial system will make her secure a pew there, though at the farther end of the town there is a new church which is all that can be wished, and about a mile and a half inland there is a village church called Hollyford, held, I believe, by a former fellow-curate of Horace Druce.  Perhaps they will exchange duties, if Horace can be persuaded to take a longer holiday than merely for the three weeks he has provided for at Bourne Parva.  They cannot come till Monday week, but our Oxford professor and his party come on Thursday, and Edith will bring her girls the next day.  Her husband, our Q.C., cannot come till his circuit is over, but of course you know more about his movements than I do.  I wonder you have never said anything about those girls of his, but I suppose you class them as unattainable.  I have said nothing to my mother or Emily of our plans, as I wish to be perfectly unbiased, and as I have seen none of the nieces for five years, and am prepared to delight in them all, I may be reckoned as a blank sheet as to their merits. ­Your affectionate sister,

Charlotte Fulford.

July 4. ­By noon to-day arrived Martyn, with Mary his wife, Margaret and Avice their daughters, Uchtred their second son, and poor Harry Fulford’s orphan, Isabel, who has had a home with them ever since she left school.  Though she is only a cousin once removed, she seems to fall into the category of eligible nieces, and indeed she seems the obvious companion for us, as she has no home, and seems to me rather set aside among the others.  I hope there is no jealousy, for she is much better looking than her cousins, with gentle, liquid eyes, a pretty complexion, and a wistful expression.  Moreover, she is dressed in a quiet ladylike way, whereas grandmamma looked out just now in the twilight and said, “My dear Martyn, have you brought three boys down?” It was a showery, chilly evening, and they were all out admiring the waves.  Ulsters and sailor hats were appropriate enough then, but the genders were not easy to distinguish, especially as the elder girl wears her hair short ­no improvement to a keen face which needs softening.  She is much too like a callow undergraduate altogether, and her sister follows suit, though perhaps with more refinement of feature ­indeed she looks delicate, and was soon called in.  They are in slight mourning, and appear in gray serges.  They left a strap of books on the sofa, of somewhat alarming light literature for the seaside.  Bacon’s essays and elements of logic were the first Emily beheld, and while she stood regarding them with mingled horror and respect, in ran Avice to fetch them, as the two sisters are reading up for the Oxford exam ­’ination’ she added when she saw her two feeble-minded aunts looking for the rest of the word.  However, she says it is only Pica who is going up for it this time.  She herself was not considered strong enough.  Yet there have those two set themselves down with their books under the rocks, blind to all the glory of sea and shore, deaf to the dash and ripple of the waves!  I long to go and shout Wordsworth’s warning about ‘growing double’ to them.  I am glad to say that Uchtred has come and fetched Avice away.  I can hardly believe Martyn and Mary parents to this grown-up family.  They look as youthful as ever, and are as active and vigorous, and full of their jokes with one another and their children.  They are now gone out to the point of the rocks at the end of our promontory, fishing for microscopical monsters, and comporting themselves boy and girl fashion.

Isabel has meantime been chatting very pleasantly with grandmamma, and trying to extricate us from our bewilderment as to names and nicknames.  My poor mother, after strenuously preventing abbreviations in her own family, has to endure them in her descendants, and as every one names a daughter after her, there is some excuse!  This Oxford Margaret goes by the name of Pie or Pica, apparently because it is the remotest portion of Magpie, and her London cousin is universally known as Metelill ­the Danish form, I believe; but in the Bourne Parva family the young Margaret Druce is nothing worse than Meg, and her elder sister remains Jane.  “Nobody would dare to call her anything else,” says Isa.  Avice cannot but be sometimes translated into the Bird; while my poor name, in my second London niece, has become the masculine Charley.  “I shall know why when I see her,” says Isa laughing.  This good-natured damsel is coming out walking with us old folks, and will walk on with me, when grandmamma turns back with Emily.  Her great desire is to find the whereabouts of a convalescent home in which she and her cousins have subscribed to place a poor young dressmaker for a six weeks’ rest; but I am afraid it is on the opposite side of S. Clements, too far for a walk.

July 5. ­Why did you never tell me how charming Metelill is?  I never supposed the Fulford features capable of so much beauty, and the whole manner and address are so delightful that I do not wonder that all her cousins are devoted to her; Uchtred, or Butts, as they are pleased to name him, has brightened into another creature since she came, and she seems like sunshine to us all.  As to my namesake, I am sorry to say that I perceive the appropriateness of Charley; but I suppose it is style, for the masculine dress which in Pica and Avice has an air of being worn for mere convenience’ sake, and is quite ladylike, especially on Avice, has in her an appearance of defiance and coquetry.  Her fox-terrier always shares her room, which therefore is eschewed by her sister, and this has made a change in our arrangements.  We had thought the room in our house, which it seems is an object of competition, would suit best for Jane Druce and one of her little sisters; but a hint was given by either Pica or her mother that it would be a great boon to let Jane and Avice share it, as they are very great friends, and we had the latter there installed.  However, this fox-terrier made Metelill protest against sleeping at the hotel with her sister, and her mother begged us to take her in.  Thereupon, Emily saw Isa looking annoyed, and on inquiry she replied sweetly, “Oh, never mind, aunty dear; I daresay Wasp won’t be so bad as he looks; and I’ll try not to be silly, and then I daresay Charley will not tease me!  Only I had hoped to be with dear Metelill; but no doubt she will prefer her Bird ­people always do.”  So they were going to make that poor child the victim!  For it seems Pica has a room to herself, and will not give it up or take in any one.  Emily went at once to Avice and asked whether she would mind going to the hotel, and letting Isa be with Metelill, and this she agreed to at once.  I don’t know why I tell you all these details, except that they are straws to show the way of the wind, and you will see how Isabel is always the sacrifice, unless some one stands up for her.  Here comes Martyn to beguile me out to the beach.

July 6 (Sunday). ­My mother drove to church and took Edith, who was glad neither to walk nor to have to skirmish for a seat.  Isa walked with Emily and me, and so we made up our five for our seat, which, to our dismay, is in the gallery, but, happily for my mother, the stairs are easy.  The pews there are not quite so close to one’s nose as those in the body of the church; they are a little wider, and are furnished with hassocks instead of traps to prevent kneeling, so that we think ourselves well off, and we were agreeably surprised at the service.  There is a new incumbent who is striving to modify things as well as his people and their architecture permit, and who preached an excellent sermon.  So we triumph over the young folk, who try to persuade us that the gallery is a judgment on us for giving in to the hired pew system.  They may banter me as much as they like, but I don’t like to see them jest with grandmamma about it, as if they were on equal terms, and she does not understand it either.  “My dear,” she gravely says, “your grandpapa always said it was a duty to support the parish church.”  “Nothing will do but the Congregational system in these days; don’t you think so?” began Pica dogmatically, when her father called her off.  Martyn cannot bear to see his mother teased.  He and his wife, with the young ones, made their way to Hollyford, where they found a primitive old church and a service to match, but were terribly late, and had to sit in worm-eaten pews near the door, amid scents of peppermint and southernwood.  On the way back, Martyn fraternised with a Mr. Methuen, a Cambridge tutor with a reading party, who has, I am sorry to say, arrived at the house Vis-A-Vis to ours, on the other side of the cove.  Our Oxford young ladies turn up their noses at the light blue, and say the men have not the finish of the dark; but Charley is in wild spirits.  I heard her announcing the arrival thus:  “I say, Isa, what a stunning lark!  Not but that I was up to it all the time, or else I should have skedaddled; for this place was bound to be as dull as ditchwater.”  “But how did you know?” asked Isa.  “Why, Bertie Elwood tipped me a line that he was coming down here with his coach, or else I should have told the mater I couldn’t stand it and gone to stay with some one.”  This Bertie Elwood is, it seems, one of the many London acquaintance.  He looks inoffensive, and so do the others, but I wish they had chosen some other spot for their studies, and so perhaps does their tutor, though he is now smoking very happily under a rock with Martyn.

July 7. ­Such a delightful evening walk with Metelill and Isa as Emily and I had last night, going to evensong in our despised church!  The others said they could stand no more walking and heat, and yet we met Martyn and Mary out upon the rocks when we were coming home, after being, I must confess, nearly fried to death by the gas and bad air.  They laughed at us and our exertions, all in the way of good humour, but it was not wholesome from parents.  Mary tried to make me confess that we were coming home in a self-complacent fakir state of triumph in our headaches, much inferior to her humble revelling in cool sea, sky, and moonlight.  It was like the difference between the benedicite and the Te DEUM, I could not help thinking; while Emily said a few words to Martyn as to how mamma would be disappointed at his absenting himself from Church, and was answered, “Ah!  Emily, you are still the good home child of the primitive era,” which she did not understand; but I faced about and asked if it were not what we all should be.  He answered rather sadly, “If we could’; and his wife shrugged her shoulders.  Alas!  I fear the nineteenth century tone has penetrated them, and do not wonder that this poor Isabel does not seem happy in her home.

9. ­What a delightful sight is a large family of young things together!  The party is complete, for the Druces arrived yesterday evening in full force, torn from their bucolic life, as Martyn tells them.  My poor dear old Margaret!  She does indeed look worn and aged, dragged by cares like a colonist’s wife, and her husband is quite bald, and as spare as a hermit.  It is hard to believe him younger than Martyn; but then his whole soul is set on Bourne Parva, and hers on him, on the children, on the work, and on making both ends meet; and they toil five times more severely in one month than the professor and his lady in a year, besides having just twice as many children, all of whom are here except the schoolboys.  Margaret declares that the entire rest, and the talking to something not entirely rural, will wind her husband up for the year; and it is good to see her sitting in a basket-chair by my mother, knitting indeed, but they both do that like breathing, while they purr away to one another in a state of perfect repose and felicity.  Meantime her husband talks Oxford with Martyn and Mary.  Their daughter Jane seems to be a most valuable helper to both, but she too has a worn, anxious countenance, and I fear she may be getting less rest than her parents, as they have brought only one young nursemaid with them, and seem to depend on her and Meg for keeping the middle-sized children in order.  She seems to have all the cares of the world on her young brow, and is much exercised about one of the boxes which has gone astray on the railway.  What do you think she did this morning?  She started off with Avice at eight o’clock for the S. Clements station to see if the telegram was answered, and they went on to the Convalescent Home and saw the Oxford dressmaker.  It seems that Avice had taken Uchtred with her on Sunday evening, made out the place, and gone to church at S. Clements close by ­a very long walk; but it seems that those foolish girls thought me too fine a lady to like to be seen with her in her round hat on a Sunday.  I wish they could understand what it is that I dislike.  If I objected to appearances, I am afraid the poor Druces would fare ill.  Margaret’s girls cannot help being essentially ladies, but they have not much beauty to begin with ­and their dress!  It was chiefly made by their own sewing machine, with the assistance of the Bourne Parva mantua-maker, superintended by Jane, ’to prevent her from making it foolish’; and the effect, I grieve to say, is ill-fitting dowdiness, which becomes grotesque from their self-complacent belief that it displays the only graceful and sensible fashion in the place.  It was laughable to hear them criticising every hat or costume they have seen, quite unaware that they were stared at themselves, till Charley told them people thought they had come fresh out of Lady Bountiful’s goody-box, which piece of impertinence they took as a great compliment to their wisdom and excellence.  To be sure, the fashions are distressing enough, but Metelill shows that they can be treated gracefully and becomingly, and even Avice makes her serge and hat look fresh and ladylike.  Spite of contrast, Avice and Jane seem to be much devoted to each other.  Pica and Charley are another pair, and Isa and Metelill ­though Metelill is the universal favourite, and there is always competition for her.  In early morning I see the brown heads and blue bathing-dresses, a-mermaiding, as they call it, in the cove below, and they come in all glowing, with the floating tresses that make Metelill look so charming, and full of merry adventures at breakfast.  We all meet in the great room at the hotel for a substantial meal at half-past one, and again (most of us at least) at eight; but it is a moot point which of these meals we call dinner.  Very merry both of them are; Martyn and Horace Druce are like boys together, and the girls scream with laughter, rather too much so sometimes.  Charley is very noisy, and so is Meg Druce, when not overpowered by shyness.  She will not exchange a sentence with any of the elders, but in the general laugh she chuckles and shrieks like a young Cochin-Chinese chicken learning to crow; and I hear her squealing like a maniac while she is shrimping with the younger ones and Charley.  I must except those two young ladies from the unconscious competition, for one has no manners at all, and the other affects those of a man; but as to the rest, they are all as nice as possible, and I can only say, “How happy could I be with either.”  Isa, poor girl, seems to need our care most, and would be the most obliging and attentive.  Metelill would be the prettiest and sweetest ornament of our drawing-room, and would amuse you the most; Pica, with her scholarly tastes, would be the best and most appreciative fellow-traveller; and Jane, if she could or would go, would perhaps benefit the most by being freed from a heavy strain, and having her views enlarged.

10. ­A worthy girl is Jane Druce, but I fear the Vicarage is no school of manners.  Her mother is sitting with us, and has been discoursing to grandmamma on her Jane’s wonderful helpfulness and activity in house and parish, and how everything hinged on her last winter when they had whooping-cough everywhere in and out of doors; indeed she doubts whether the girl has ever quite thrown off the effects of all her exertions then.  Suddenly comes a trampling, a bounce and a rush, and in dashes Miss Jane, fiercely demanding whether the children had leave to go to the cove.  Poor Margaret meekly responds that she had consented.  “And didn’t you know,” exclaims the damsel, “that all their everyday boots are in that unlucky trunk?” There is a humble murmur that Chattie had promised to be very careful, but it produces a hotter reply.  “As if Chattie’s promises of that kind could be trusted!  And I had TOLD them that they were to keep with baby on the cliff!” Then came a real apology for interfering with Jane’s plans, to which we listened aghast, and Margaret was actually getting up to go and look after her amphibious offspring herself, when her daughter cut her off short with, “Nonsense, mamma, you know you are not to do any such thing!  I must go, that’s all, or they won’t have a decent boot or stocking left among them.”  Off she went with another bang, while her mother began blaming herself for having yielded in haste to the persuasions of the little ones, oblivious of the boots, thus sacrificing Jane’s happy morning with Avice.  My mother showed herself shocked by the tone in which Margaret had let herself be hectored, and this brought a torrent of almost tearful apologies from the poor dear thing, knowing she did not keep up her authority or make herself respected as would be good for her girl, but if we only knew how devoted Jane was, and how much there was to grind and try her temper, we should not wonder that it gave way sometimes.  Indeed it was needful to turn away the subject, as Margaret was the last person we wished to distress.

Jane could have shown no temper to the children, for at dinner a roly-poly person of five years old, who seems to absorb all the fat in the family, made known that he had had a very jolly day, and he loved cousin Avice very much indeed, and sister Janie very much indeeder, and he could with difficulty be restrained from an expedition to kiss them both then and there.

The lost box was announced while we were at dinner, and Jane is gone with her faithful Avice to unpack it.  Her mother would have done it and sent her boating with the rest, but submitted as usual when commanded to adhere to the former plan of driving with grandmamma.  These Druce children must be excellent, according to their mother, but they are terribly brusque and bearish.  They are either seen and not heard, or not seen and heard a great deal too much.  Even Jane and Meg, who ought to know better, keep up a perpetual undercurrent of chatter and giggle, whatever is going on, with any one who will share it with them.

10. ­I am more and more puzzled about the new reading of the Fifth Commandment.  None seem to understand it as we used to do.  The parents are content to be used as equals, and to be called by all sorts of absurd names; and though grandmamma is always kindly and attentively treated, there is no reverence for the relationship.  I heard Charley call her ‘a jolly old party,’ and Metelill respond that she was ‘a sweet old thing.’  Why, we should have thought such expressions about our grandmother a sort of sacrilege, but when I ventured to hint as much Charley flippantly answered, “Gracious me, we are not going back to buckram”; and Metelill, with her caressing way, declared that she loved dear granny too much to be so stiff and formal.  I quoted ­

“If I be a Father, where is My honour?”

And one of them taking it, I am sorry to say, for a line of secular poetry, exclaimed at the stiffness and coldness.  Pica then put in her oar, and began to argue that honour must be earned, and that it was absurd and illogical to claim it for the mere accident of seniority or relationship.  Jane, not at all conscious of being an offender, howled at her that this was her horrible liberalism and neology, while Metelill asked what was become of loyalty.  “That depends on what you mean by it,” returned our girl graduate.  “Loi-AUTE, steadfastness to principle, is noble, but personal loyalty, to some mere puppet or the bush the crown hangs on, is a pernicious figment.”  Charley shouted that this was the N letter A point in Pie’s prize essay, and there the discussion ended, Isa only sighing to herself, “Ah, if I had any one to be loyal to!”

“How you would jockey them!” cried Charley, turning upon her so roughly that the tears came into her eyes; and I must have put on what you call my Government-house look, for Charley subsided instantly.

11. ­Here was a test as to this same obedience.  The pupils, who are by this time familiars of the party, had devised a boating and fishing expedition for all the enterprising, which was satisfactory to the elders because it was to include both the fathers.  Unluckily, however, this morning’s post brought a summons to Martyn and Mary to fulfil an engagement they have long made to meet an American professor at –­, and they had to start off at eleven o’clock; and at the same time the Hollyford clergyman, an old fellow-curate of Horace Druce, sent a note imploring him to take a funeral.  So the voice of the seniors was for putting off the expedition, but the voice of the juniors was quite the other way.  The three families took different lines.  The Druces show obedience though not respect; they growled and grumbled horribly, but submitted, though with ill grace, to the explicit prohibition.  Non-interference is professedly Mary’s principle, but even she said, with entreaty veiled beneath the playfulness, when it was pleaded that two of the youths had oars at Cambridge, “Freshwater fish, my dears.  I wish you would wait for us!  I don’t want you to attend the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis.”  To which Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them.  Her father then chimed in, saying, “You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land unless you can secure the ancient mariner who was with us yesterday.”

“Come, come, most illustrious,” said Pica good-humouredly, “I’m not going to encourage you to set up for nerves.  You are much better without them, and I must get some medusae.”

It ended with, “I beg you will not go without that old man,” the most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who maintains her right to judge for herself.  The ancient mariner had been voted an encumbrance and exchanged for a jolly young waterman.

Our other mother, Edith, implored, and was laughed down by Charley, who declared she could swim, and that she did not think Uncle Martyn would have been so old-womanish.  Metelill was so tender and caressing with her frightened mother that I thought here at last was submission, and with a good grace.  But after a turn on the esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say, “Dear mother, will you very much MIND if I go?  They will be so disappointed, and there will be such a fuss if I don’t; and Charley really ought to have some one with her besides Pie, who will heed nothing but magnifying medusae.”  I am afraid it is true, as Isa says, that it was all owing to the walk with that young Mr Horne.

Poor Edith fell into such a state of nervous anxiety that I could not leave her, and she confided to me how Charley had caught her foolish masculine affectations in the family of this very Bertie Elwood, and told me of the danger of an attachment between Metelill and a young government clerk who is always on the look-out for her.  “And dear Metelill is so gentle and gracious that she cannot bear to repel any one,” says the mother, who would, I see, be thankful to part with either daughter to our keeping in hopes of breaking off perilous habits.  I was saved, however, from committing myself by the coming in of Isabel.  That child follows me about like a tame cat, and seems so to need mothering that I cannot bear to snub her.

She came to propound to me a notion that has risen among these Oxford girls, namely, that I should take out their convalescent dressmaker as my maid instead of poor Amelie.  She is quite well now, and going back next week; but a few years in a warm climate might be the saving of her health.  So I agreed to go with Isa to look at her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all youthful enthusiasm.  Edith went out driving with my mother, and we began our tete-A-tete walk, in which I heard a great deal of the difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper, instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good-natured mockery.  The treatment may suit Mary’s own daughters, but ‘Just as you please, my dear,’ is not good for sensitive, anxious spirits.  We passed Jane and Avice reading together under a rock; I was much inclined to ask them to join us, but Isa was sure they were much happier undisturbed, and she was so unwilling to share me with any one that I let them alone.  I was much pleased with the dressmaker, Maude Harris, who is a nice, modest, refined girl, and if the accounts I get from her employers bear out what I hear of her, I shall engage her; I shall be glad, for the niece’s sake, to have that sort of young woman about the place.  She speaks most warmly of what the Misses Fulford have done for her.

Jane will be disappointed if I cannot have her rival candidate ­a pet schoolgirl who works under the Bourne Parva dressmaker.  “What a recommendation!” cries Pica, and there is a burst of mirth, at which Jane looks round and says, “What is there to laugh at?  Miss Dadworthy is a real good woman, and a real old Bourne Parva person, so that you may be quite sure Martha will have learnt no nonsense to begin with.”

“No,” says Pica, “from all such pomps and vanities as style, she will be quite clear.”

While Avice’s friendship goes as far as to say that if Aunt Charlotte cannot have Maude, perhaps Martha could get a little more training.  Whereupon Jane runs off by the yard explanations of the admirable training ­religious, moral, and intellectual ­of Bourne Parva, illustrated by the best answers of her favourite scholars, anecdotes of them, and the reports of the inspectors, religious and secular; and Avice listens with patience, nay, with respectful sympathy.

12. ­We miss Mary and Martyn more than I expected.  Careless and easy-going as they seem, they made a difference in the ways of the young people; they were always about with them, not as dragons, but for their own pleasure.  The presence of a professor must needs impose upon young men, and Mary, with her brilliant wit and charming manners, was a check without knowing it.  The boating party came back gay and triumphant, and the young men joined in our late meal; and oh, what a noise there was! though I must confess that it was not they who made the most.  Metelill was not guilty of the noise, but she was ­I fear I must say it ­flirting with all her might with a youth on each side of her, and teasing a third; I am afraid she is one of those girls who are charming to all, and doubly charming to your sex, and that it will never do to have her among the staff.  I don’t think it is old-maidish in us to be scandalised at her walking up and down the esplanade with young Horne till ten o’clock last night; Charley was behind with Bertie Elwood, and, I grieve to say, was smoking.  It lasted till Horace Druce went out to tell them that Metelill must come in at once, as it was time to shut up the house.

The Oxford girls were safe indoors; Isa working chess problems with another of the lads, Avice keeping Jane company over the putting the little ones to sleep ­in Mount Lebanon, as they call the Druce lodging ­and Pica preserving microscopic objects.  “Isn’t she awful?” said one of those pupils.  “She’s worse than all the dons in Cambridge.  She wants to be at it all day long, and all through the vacation.”

They perfectly flee from her.  They say she is always whipping out a microscope and lecturing upon protoplasms ­and there is some truth in the accusation.  She is almost as bad on the emancipation of women, on which there is a standing battle, in earnest with Jane ­in joke with Metelill; but it has, by special orders, to be hushed at dinner, because it almost terrifies grandmamma.  I fear Pica tries to despise her!

This morning the girls are all out on the beach in pairs and threes, the pupils being all happily shut up with their tutor.  I see the invalid lady creep out with her beach-rest from the intermediate house, and come down to her usual morning station in the shade of a rock, unaware, poor thing, that it has been monopolised by Isa and Metelill.  Oh, girls! why don’t you get up and make room for her?  No; she moves on to the next shady place, but there Pica has a perfect fortification of books spread on her rug, and Charley is sketching on the outskirts, and the fox-terrier barks loudly.  Will she go on to the third seat? where I can see, though she cannot, Jane and Avice sitting together, and Freddy shovelling sand at their feet.  Ah! at last she is made welcome.  Good girls!  They have seated her and her things, planted a parasol to shelter her from the wind, and lingered long enough not to make her feel herself turning them out before making another settlement out of my sight.

Three o’clock. ­I am sorry to say Charley’s sketch turned into a caricature of the unprotected female wandering in vain in search of a bit of shelter, with a torn parasol, a limp dress, and dragging rug, and altogether unspeakably forlorn.  It was exhibited at the dinner-table, and elicited peals of merriment, so that we elders begged to see the cause of the young people’s amusement.  My blood was up, and when I saw what it was, I said ­

“I wonder you like to record your own discourtesy, to call it nothing worse.”

“But, Aunt Charlotte,” said Metelill in her pretty pleading way, “we did not know her.”

“Well, what of that?” I said.

“Oh, you know it is only abroad that people expect that sort of things from strangers.”

“One of the worst imputations on English manners I ever heard,” I said.

“But she was such a guy!” cried Charley.  “Mother said she was sure she was not a lady.”

“And therefore you did not show yourself one,” I could not but return.

There her mother put in a gentle entreaty that Charley would not distress grandmamma with these loud arguments with her aunt, and I added, seeing that Horace Druce’s attention was attracted, that I should like to have added another drawing called ‘Courtesy,’ and shown that there was SOME hospitality EVEN to strangers, and then I asked the two girls about her.  They had joined company again, and carried her beach-rest home for her, finding out by the way that she was a poor homeless governess who had come down to stay in cheap lodgings with an old nurse to try to recruit herself till she could go out again.  My mother became immediately interested, and has sent Emily to call on her, and to try and find out whether she is properly taken care of.

Isa was very much upset at my displeasure.  She came to me afterwards and said she was greatly grieved; but Metelill would not move, and she had always supposed it wrong to make acquaintance with strangers in that chance way.  I represented that making room was not picking up acquaintance, and she owned it, and was really grateful for the reproof; but, as I told her, no doubt such a rule must be necessary in a place like Oxford.

How curiously Christian courtesy and polished manners sometimes separate themselves! and how conceit interferes with both!  I acquit Metelill and Isa of all but thoughtless habit, and Pica was absorbed.  She can be well mannered enough when she is not defending the rights of woman, or hotly dogmatical on the crude theories she has caught ­and suppose she has thought out, poor child!  And Jane, though high-principled, kind, and self-sacrificing, is too narrow and ­not exactly conceited ­but exclusive and Bourne Parvaish, not to be as bad in her way, though it is the sound one.  The wars of the Druces and Maronites, as Martyn calls them, sometimes rage beyond the bounds of good humour.

Ten P.M. ­I am vexed too on another score.  I must tell you that this hotel does not shine in puddings and sweets, and Charley has not been ashamed to grumble beyond the bounds of good manners.  I heard some laughing and joking going on between the girls and the pupils, Metelill with her “Oh no!  You won’t!  Nonsense!” in just that tone which means “I wish, I would, but I cannot bid you,” ­the tone I do not like to hear in a maiden of any degree.

And behold three of those foolish lads have brought her gilt and painted boxes of bon-bons, over which there was a prodigious giggling and semi-refusing and bantering among the young folks, worrying Emily and me excessively, though we knew it would not do to interfere.

There is a sea-fog this evening unfavourable to the usual promenades, and we elders, including the tutor, were sitting with my mother, when, in her whirlwind fashion, in burst Jane, dragging her little sister Chattie with her, and breathlessly exclaiming, “Father, father, come and help!  They are gambling, and I can’t get Meg away!”

When the nervous ones had been convinced that no one had been caught by the tide or fallen off the rocks, Jane explained that Metelill had given one box of bon-bons to the children, who were to be served with one apiece all round every day.  And the others were put up by Metelill to serve as prizes in the ‘racing game,’ which some one had routed out, left behind in the lodging, and which was now spread on the dining-table, with all the young people playing in high glee, and with immense noise.

“Betting too!” said Jane in horror.  “Mr. Elwood betted three chocolate creams upon Charley, and Pica took it!  Father!  Come and call Meg away.”

She spoke exactly as if she were summoning him to snatch her sister from Rouge et NOIR at Monaco; and her face was indescribable when her aunt Edith set us all off laughing by saying, “Fearful depravity, my dear.”

“Won’t you come, father?” continued Jane; “Mr. Methuen, won’t you come and stop those young men?”

Mr. Methuen smiled a little and looked at Horace, who said ­

“Hush, Janie; these are not things in which to interfere.”

“Then,” quoth Jane sententiously, “I am not astonished at the dissipation of the university.”

And away she flounced in tears of wrath.  Her mother went after her, and we laughed a little, it was impossible to help it, at the bathos of the chocolate creams; but, as Mr. Methuen said, she was really right, the amusement was undesirable, as savouring of evil.  Edith, to my vexation, saw no harm in it; but Horace said very decidedly he hoped it would not happen again; and Margaret presently returned, saying she hoped that she had pacified Jane, and shown her that to descend as if there were an uproar in the school would only do much more harm than was likely to happen in that one evening; and she said to me afterwards, “I see what has been wanting in our training.  We have let children’s loyalty run into intolerance and rudeness.”  But Meg was quite innocent of there being any harm in it, and only needed reproof for being too much charmed by the pleasure for once to obey her dictatorial sister.

13, Ten A.M. ­Horace has had it out with sundry of the young ladies, so as to prevent any more betting.  Several had regretted it.  “Only they did so want to get rid of the bon-bons!  And Jane did make such an uproar.”  After all, nobody did really bet but Charley and the young Elwood, and Pica only that once.  Jane candidly owns that a little gentleness would have made a difference.

Again I see this obtuseness to courtesy towards strangers.  Our despised church has become popular, and so many of the young folks choose to accompany us that they overflowed into the free seats in the aisle, where I had a full view of them from above.  These benches are long, and I was sorry to see the girls planting themselves fast at the outer end, and making themselves square, so as to hinder any one else from getting in, till the verger came and spoke to them, when Charley giggled offensively; and even then they did not make room, but forced the people to squeeze past.  Isa could not help herself, not being the outermost; but she was much distressed, and does not shelter herself under Charley’s plea that it was so hot that the verger should have been indicted for cruelty to animals.  Certainly they all did come home very hot from walking back with the pupils.

Pica and Avice were not among them, having joined the Druces in going to Hollyford, where Horace preached this morning.  Their gray serges and sailor hats were, as they said, “not adapted to the town congregation.”

“It is the congregation you dress for?” said their uncle dryly, whereupon Pica upbraided him with inconsistency in telling his poor people not to use the excuse of ‘no clothes,’ and that the heart, not the dress, is regarded.  He said it was true, but that he should still advocate the poor man’s coming in his cleanest and best.  “There are manners towards God as well as towards man,” he said.

I was too much tired by the heat to go to church again this evening, and am sitting with my mother, who is dozing.  Where the young people are I do not know exactly, but I am afraid I hear Charley’s shrill laugh on the beach.

14. ­Who do you think has found us out?  Our dear old Governor-General, “in all his laurels,” as enthusiastic little Avice was heard saying, which made Freddy stare hard and vainly in search of them.  He is staying at Hollybridge Park, and seeing our name in the S. Clements’ list of visitors, he made Lady Hollybridge drive him over to call, and was much disappointed to find that you could not be here during his visit.  He was as kind and warm-hearted as ever, and paid our dear mother such compliments on her son, that we tell her the bows on her cap are starting upright with pride.

Lady Hollybridge already knew Edith.  She made herself very pleasant, and insisted on our coming en Masse to a great garden party which they are giving to-morrow.  Hollybridge is the S. Clements’ lion, with splendid grounds and gardens, and some fine old pictures, so it is a fine chance for the young people; and we are going to hire one of the large excursion waggonettes, which will hold all who have age, dress, and will for gaieties.  The pupils, as Mr. Methuen is a friend of the Hollybridge people, will attend us as outriders on their bicycles.  I am rather delighted at thus catching out the young ladies who did not think it worth while to bring a Sunday bonnet.  They have all rushed into S. Clements to furbish themselves for the occasion, and we are left to the company of the small Druces.  Neither Margaret nor Emily chooses to go, and will keep my mother company.

I ventured on administering a sovereign apiece to Isa and Jane Druce.  The first blushed and owned that it was very welcome, as her wardrobe had never recovered a great thunderstorm at Oxford.  Jane’s awkwardness made her seem as if it were an offence on my part, but her mother tells me it made her very happy.  Her father says that she tells him he was hard on Avice, a great favourite of his, and that I must ask Jane to explain, for it is beyond him.  It is all right about the Oxford girl.  I have engaged her, and she goes home to-morrow to prepare herself.  This afternoon she is delighted to assist her young ladies in their preparations.  I liked her much in the private interview.  I was rather surprised to find that it was ‘Miss Avice,’ of whom she spoke with the greatest fervour, as having first made friends with her, and then having constantly lent her books and read to her in her illness.

15. ­S.  Swithun is evidently going to be merciful to us to-day, and the damsels have been indefatigable ­all, that is to say, but the two Londoners, who have lawn tennis dresses, and their mother’s maid to turn them out complete.  Isa brought home some tulle and white jessamine with which she is deftly freshening the pretty compromise between a bonnet and a hat which she wears on Sunday; also a charming parasol, with a china knob and a wreath of roses at the side.  She hopes I shall not think her extravagant, but she had a little money of her own.

Jane Druce displays two pairs of gloves and two neckties for herself and her sister; and after all Meg will not go; she is so uncouth that her mother does not like her to go without her own supervision; and she with true Bourne Parva self-appreciation and exclusiveness says ­

“I’m sure I don’t want to go among a lot of stupid people, who care for nothing but fine clothes and lawn tennis.”

There was a light till one o’clock last night in the room where Avice sleeps with Charley and the dog; and I scarcely saw either of the Oxford sisters or Jane all this morning till dinner-time, when Pica appeared very appropriately to her name, turned out in an old black silk dress left behind by her mother, and adorned with white tulle in all sorts of folds, also a pretty white bonnet made up by Avice’s clever fingers, and adorned with some soft gray sea-birds’ feathers and white down.  Isa and Metelill were very well got up and nice.  Metelill looks charming, but I am afraid her bouquet is from one of those foolish pupils.  She, as usual, has shared it with Isa, who has taken half to prevent her cousin being remarkable.  And, after all, poor Avice is to be left behind.  There was no time to make up things for two, and being in mourning, she could not borrow, though Metelill would have been too happy to lend.  She says she shall be very happy with the children, but I can’t help thinking there was a tear in her eye when she ran to fetch her dress cloak for Jane, whom, by the bye, Avice has made wonderfully more like other people.  Here is the waggonette, and I must finish to-morrow.

16. ­We have had a successful day.  The drive each way was a treat in itself, and the moon rising over the sea on our way home was a sight never to be forgotten.  Hollybridge is charming in itself.  Those grounds with their sea-board are unique, and I never saw such Spanish chestnuts in England.  Then the gardens and the turf!  One must have lived as long in foreign parts as we have to appreciate the perfect finish and well-tended look of such places.  Your dear old chief does not quite agree.  He says he wants space, and is oppressed with the sense of hedges and fences, except when he looks to the sea, and even there the rocks look polished off, and treated by landscape gardeners!  He walked me about to see the show places, and look at the pictures, saying he had been so well lionised that he wanted some one to discharge his information upon.  It was great fun to hear him criticising the impossibilities of a battle-piece ­ Blenheim, I think ­the anachronisms of the firearms and uniforms, and the want of discipline around Marlborough, who would never have won a battle at that rate.  You know how his hawk’s eye takes note of everything.  He looked at Metelill and said, “Uncommonly pretty girl that, and knows it,” but when I asked what he thought of Isabel’s looks, he said, “Pretty, yes; but are you sure she is quite aboveboard?  There’s something I don’t like about her eyes.”  I wish he had not said so.  I know there is a kind of unfriendly feeling towards her among some of the girls, especially the Druces and Charley.  I have heard Charley openly call her a humbug, but I have thought much of this was dislike to the softer manners, and perhaps jealousy of my notice, and the expression that the old lord noticed is often the consequence of living in an uncongenial home.

Of course my monopoly of the hero soon ended, and as I had no acquaintances there, and the young ones had been absorbed into games, or had fraternised with some one, I betook myself to explorations in company with Jane, who had likewise been left out.  After we had wandered along a dazzling stand of calceolarias, she said, “Aunt Charlotte, papa says I ought to tell you something; I mean, why Avice could not come to-day, and why she has nothing to wear but her round hat.  It is because she and Pica spent all they had in paying for that Maude Harris at the Convalescent Home.  They had some kind of flimsy gauzy bonnets that were faded and utterly done for after Commemoration week; and as Uncle Martyn is always growling about ladies’ luggage, they thought it would be a capital plan to go without all the time they are down here, till another quarter is due.  Avice never thought of its not being right to go to Church such a figure, and now she finds that papa thinks the command to “have power on her head” really may apply to that sort of fashion, we are going to contrive something for Sunday, but it could not be done in time for to-day.  Besides, she had no dress but a serge.”

“She preferred dressing her sister to dressing herself,” I answered; and Jane began assuring me that no one knew how unselfish that dear old Bird is.  The little money she had, she added to Pica’s small remnant, and thus enough had been provided to fit the elder sister out.

“I suppose,” I said, “that Isa manages better, for she does not seem to be reduced to the same extremities, though I suppose she has less allowance than her cousins.”

“She has exactly the same.  I know it.”  And Jane caught herself up, evidently checking something I might have thought ill-natured, which made me respond something intended to be moralising, but which was perhaps foolish, about good habits of economy, and how this disappointment, taken so good-humouredly, would be a lesson to Avice.  “A lesson?  I should think so,” said Jane bluntly.  “A lesson not to lend her money to Isa”; and then, when I asked what she meant, she blurted out that all Isa’s so-called share of the subscription for Maude Harris had been advanced by Avice ­Pica had told her so, with comments on her sister’s folly in lending what she well knew would never be repaid; and Alice could not deny it, only defending herself by saying, she could not sacrifice the girl.  It was a very uncomfortable revelation, considering that Isa might have given her cousin my sovereign, but no doubt she did not think that proper, as I had meant it to be spent for this outing.

I will at least give her the benefit of the doubt, and I would not encourage Jane to say any more about her.  Indeed, the girl herself did not seem so desirous of dwelling on Isa as of doing justice to Avice, whom, she told me very truly, I did not know.  “She is always the one to give way and be put aside for Pie and Isa,” said Jane.  And now I think over the time we have had together, I believe it has often been so.  “You are very fond of her,” I said; and Jane answered, “I should THINK so!  Why, she spent eight months with us once at Bourne Parva, just after the great row with Miss Hurlstone.  Oh, didn’t you know?  They had a bad governess, who used to meet a lover ­a German musician, I think he was ­when they were out walking, and bullied Avice because she was honest.  When it all came to light, Pica came out and Isa was sent to school, but Avice had got into a low state of health, and they said Oxford was not good for her, so she came to us.  And papa prepared her for Confirmation, and she did everything with us, and she really is just like one of ourselves,” said Jane, as the highest praise imaginable, though any one who contrasted poor Jane’s stiff Pique (Miss Dadsworth’s turn-out) with the grace even of the gray serge, might not think it a compliment.  Jane was just beginning to tell me that Avice always wrote to her to lay before her father the difficulties about right and wrong faith and practice that their way of life and habits of society bring before the poor child, when Isa descended upon us with “Oh!  Aunt Charlotte, I could not think what had become of you, when I saw the great man without you.”

I begin to wonder whether she is really so very fond of me, or whether she does not like to see me with one of the others.

However, I shall be able to take Jane’s hint, and cultivate Avice, for, as my mother did not come yesterday, Lady Hollybridge has most kindly insisted on her going over to-day.  The carriage is taking some one to the station, and is to call for her and me to bring us to luncheon, the kind people promising likewise to send us back.  So I asked whether I might bring a niece who had not been able to come yesterday, and as the young people had, as usual, become enamoured of Metelill, they begged for her likewise.  Avice looks very well in the dress she made up for Pica, and being sisters and in mourning, the identity will only be natural.  She is very much pleased and very grateful, and declares that she shall see everything she cares about much more pleasantly than in the larger party, and perhaps ‘really hear the hero talk.’  And Uncle Horace says, “True, you Bird, you are not like some young folk, who had rather hear themselves talk than Socrates and S. Ambrose both at once.”  “Oh!” said saucy Pica, “now we know what Uncle Horace thinks of his own conversations with father!” By the bye, Martyn and Mary come home to-morrow, and I am very glad of it, for those evening diversions on the beach go on in full force, and though there is nothing tangible, except Charley’s smoke, to object to, and it is the present way of young people, there is something unsatisfactory in it.  Edith does not seem to mind what her daughters do.  Margaret has no occasion to be uneasy about Jane, who always stays with the little ones while the maids are at supper, and generally takes with her the devoted Avice, who has some delicacy of throat forbidding these evening excursions.  Meg gets more boisterous and noisy every day, Uchtred being her chief companion; but as she is merely a tomboy, I believe her parents think it inexpedient to give her hints that might only put fancies in her head.  So they have only prohibited learning to smoke, staying out later than nine o’clock, and shrieking louder than a steam whistle!

17. ­Yesterday was a great success.  Avice was silent at first, but Metelill drew her out, and she had become quite at her ease before we arrived.  You would have been enchanted to see how much was made of our dear mother.  Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall.  The good old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice’s eyes shone all the time.  After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that dear mother should have half an hour’s perfect rest, in a charming little room fitted like a tent, and then had a low chair with two little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its way.  Avice, who has seen scores of Fêtes in college grounds, much preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of strangers.  The young people took possession of the two girls, and when we all met for the five o’clock tea, before going home, Lady Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the subject of ‘that picture.’  It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite, of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers ­irises, anémones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy.  A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an expert.  Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante’s purgatorio, with the mystic griffin car in the distance.  Our hosts were very much delighted; we all repaired to the picture, where she very quietly and modestly pointed out the details.  A Dante was hunted up, but Lady Hollybridge and I were the only elders who knew any Italian, and when the catalogue was brought, Avice knew all the names of the translators, but as none were to be found, Lord Hollybridge asked if she would make him understand the passage, which she did, blushing a little, but rendering it in very good fluent English, so that he thanked her, and complimented her so much that she was obliged to answer that she had got it up when they were hearing some lectures on Dante; and besides it was mentioned by Ruskin; whereupon she was also made to find the reference, and mark both it and Dante.

“I like that girl,” said the old Governor-General, “she is intelligent and modest both.  There is something fine about the shape of her head.”

When we went home, Metelill was as proud and delighted as possible at what she called the Bird’s triumph; but Avice did not seem at all elated, but to take her knowledge as a mere outcome of her ordinary Oxford life, where allusions, especially Ruskinese and Dantesque, came naturally.  And then, as grandmamma went to sleep in her corner, the two girls and I fell into a conversation on that whole question of Action and Contemplation.  At least Metelill asked the explanation, but I doubt whether she listened much while Avice and I talked out the matter, and I felt myself a girl again, holding the old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made her my sister for those two happy years, and ­Well, it is no use paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of companionship before you came on the scene.  And to think what a jewel I have missed all this time!

18. ­I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have to tell you.  I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice ­

“I tell you it was no joke.  It’s no use saying so,” and I beheld Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel.  “I’ve looked on at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my sister I will speak out.”

By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley’s very improper tone, and asking what was the matter.  Isa sprang to me, declaring that it was all Charley’s absurd suspicion and misconstruction.  At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.

Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until she could return it.  Charley broke out.  “As if I did not know better than that!  Didn’t you make him give you that parasol and promise him your photo?  Ay, and give it him in return?  You thought he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun over him.  And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts.  I’m not strait-laced.  I wouldn’t mind having the photos of a hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is ­is ­well ­a regular old maid about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on purpose to upset Metelill’s chances.”

Isa clung to me in floods of tears, desiring me not to believe anything so cruel and false.  Every one always was so hard upon her, she said, and she had only put the thing inadvertently there, to get it out of sight, into the first book she saw, but unfortunately she did not know I had heard her trying to pass it off to Charley as a jest.  However, as there was no proof there, I asked about the parasol.  While the shopping was going on, she and young Horne had been in another street, and this was the consequence!  I was perfectly confounded.  Receive presents from young men!  It seemed to me quite impossible.  “Oh, Isa thinks nothing of that!” said Charley.  “Ask her where she got those bangles, and that bouquet which she told you was half Metelill’s.  You think me awful, I know, Aunt Charlotte, but I do draw a line, though I would never have said one word about it if she had not played this nasty trick on Metelill.”  Isa would have begun some imploring excuse, but our two gentlemen were seen coming up towards the window, and she fled, gasping out an entreaty that I would not tell Uncle Martyn.

Nor did I then and there, for I needed to understand the matter and look into it, so I told Martyn and Horace not to wait for me, and heard Charley’s story more coolly.  I had thought that Mr. Horne was Metelill’s friend.  “So he was at first,” Charley said, “but he is an uncommon goose, and Isa is no end of a hand at doing the pathetic poverty-stricken orphan!  That’s the way she gets so many presents!” Then she explained, in her select slang, that young Horne’s love affairs were the great amusement of his fellow-pupils, and that she, being sure that the parasol was no present from me, as Isa had given the cousins to understand, had set Bertie Elwood to extract the truth by teasing his friend.  “But I never meant to have told,” said Charley, “if you had not come in upon us, when I was in the midst of such a wax that I did not know what I was saying”; and on my demanding what she meant by the elegant expression she had used about Isa and me, she explained that it was the schoolboy’s word for currying favour.  Every one but we stupid elders perceived the game, nay, even the Druces, living in full confidence with their children, knew what was going on.  I have never spoken, but somehow people must read through one’s brains, for there was a general conviction that I was going to choose a niece to accompany us.  I wonder if you, my wise brother, let out anything to Edith.  It is what men always do, they bind women to silence and then disclose the secret themselves, and say, “Nothing is safe with these women.”

Any way, these girls have been generous, or else true to their esprit de corps, I do not know which to call it; for though they looked on at Isa’s manoeuvres and my blindness with indignant contempt, they never attempted to interfere.  Jane Druce was seized with a fit of passionate wrath and pity for me, but her father withheld her from disclosures, assuring her that I should probably find out the girl’s true disposition, and that it would be wrong to deprive Isa of a chance of coming under a fresh influence.

Poor girl, she must be very clever, for she kept up her constant wooing of me while she also coquetted with Mr. Horne, being really, as her contemporaries declare, a much worse flirt than Metelill, but the temptation of the parasol threw her off her guard, and she was very jealous of my taking out Metelill and Avice.  I see now that it has been her effort to keep the others away from me.  This spiteful trick, if it be true that she meant it, seems to have been done on Metelill, as being supposed to be her only real rival.  Avice always yields to her, and besides, is too inoffensive to afford her any such opportunity.

When I talked to Mary, she said, “Oh yes, I always knew she was a horrid little treacherous puss.  Nature began it, and that governess worked on a ready soil.  We sent her to school, and hoped she was cured, but I have long seen that it has only shown her how to be more plausible.  But what can one do?  One could not turn out an orphan, and I did not see that she was doing our own girls any harm.  I’m sure I gave her every chance of marrying, for there was nothing I wished for so much, and I never told Martyn of her little manoeuvres, knowing he would not stand them; and now what he will do, I can’t think, unless you and Edward will take her off our hands.  I believe you might do her good.  She is an unfathomable mixture of sham and earnest, and she really likes you, and thinks much of you, as having a certain prestige, and being a woman of the world” (fancy that).  “Besides, she is really religious in a sort of a way; much good you’ll say it does her, but, as you know, there’s a certain sort of devotion which makes no difference to people’s conduct.”

It seems to be the general desire of the family that we should take this unfortunate Isabel off their hands.  Shall we?  Cruelly as I have been disappointed in the girl, I can’t help liking her; she is obliging, pleasant, ladylike in manners, very affectionate, and I can’t help thinking that with the respect and fear for you she would feel she might be restrained, and that we could be the saving of her, though at the same time I know that my having been so egregiously deceived may be a sign that I am not fit to deal with her.  I leave it to your decision altogether, and will say no more till I hear.  Metelill is a charming girl, and I fancy you prefer her, and that her mother knows it, and would send her for at least a winter; but she gets so entirely off her balance whenever a young man of any sort comes near, that I should not like to take charge of her.  It might be good for the worthy Jane, but as she would take a great deal of toning down and licking into shape, and as she would despise it all, refer everything to the Bourne Parva standard, and pine for home and village school, I don’t think she need be considered, especially as I am sure she would not go, and could not be spared.  Pica would absorb herself in languages and antiquities, and maintain the rights of women by insisting on having full time to study her protoplasms, snubbing and deriding all the officers who did not talk like Oxford dons.  Probably the E. E. would be the only people she would think fit to speak to.  Avice is the one to whom I feel the most drawn.  She is thoroughly thoughtful, and her religion is not of the uninfluential kind Mary describes.  Those distresses and perplexities which poor Isa affected were chiefly borrowed from her genuine ones; but she has obtained the high cultivation and intelligence that her Oxford life can give in full measure, and without conceit or pretension, and it is her unselfish, yielding spirit that has prevented me from knowing her sooner, though when not suppressed she can be thoroughly agreeable, and take her part in society with something of her mother’s brilliancy.  I think, too, that she would be spared, as Oxford does not agree with her, and a southern winter or two would be very good for her.  Besides, the others might come and see her in vacation time.  Could we not take both her and Isabel at least for the first winter?

19. ­A stormy wet day, the first we have had.  Poor Isa has made an attempt at explanation and apology, but lost herself in a mist of words and tears.  I suppose I was severe, for she shrinks from me, and clings to Avice, who has stood her friend in many a storm before, and, as Jane indignantly tells me, persists in believing that she is really sorry and wishes to be good.  She is very attentive and obliging, and my dear mother, who is in happy ignorance of all this uproar, really likes her the best of all the girls.

21. ­We have had a great alarm.  Last evening we went to the parish church; Horace Druce had been asked to preach, and the rain, which had fallen all the morning, cleared off just in time for the walk.  Emily, Margaret, two of her children, and I sat in the gallery, and Avice and Isa in the free seats below.  Avice had been kept at home by the rain in the morning, but had begged leave to go later.  Darkness came on just as the first hymn was given out, and the verger went round with his long wand lighting the gas.  In the gallery we saw plainly how, at the east end, something went wrong with his match, one which he thought had failed, and threw aside.  It fell on a strip of straw matting in the aisle, which, being very dry, caught fire and blazed up for a few seconds before it was trampled out.  Some foolish person, however, set the cry of ‘Fire!’ going, and you know what that is in a crowded church.  The vicar, in his high old-fashioned desk with a back to it, could not see.  Horace in a chair, in the narrow, shallow sanctuary, did see that it was nothing, but between the cries of ‘Fire!’ and the dying peal of the organ, could not make his voice heard.  All he could do was to get to the rear of the crowd, together with the other few who had seen the real state of things, and turn back all those whom they could, getting them out through the vestry.  But the main body were quite out of their reach, and everybody tried to rush scrambling into the narrow centre aisle, choking up the door, which was a complicated trap meant to keep out draughts.  We in the gallery tried vainly to assure them that the only danger was in the crowd, and the clergyman in his desk, sure that was the chief peril, at any rate, went on waving and calling to them to wait; but the cries and shrieks drowned everything, and there was a most terrible time, as some 600 people jammed themselves in that narrow space, fighting, struggling, fainting.

You may suppose how we watched our girls.  They had let themselves be thrust up to the end of the seat by later comers:  Avice the innermost.  We saw them look up to us, with white faces.  To our joy, Avice seemed to understand our signs and to try to withhold Isa, but she was too wild with fright not to try to push on to the end of the pew.  Avice held her dress, and kept her back.  Then, as the crowd swayed, the two girls stood on the seat, and presently I saw Avice bend down, and take from some one’s arms a little child, which she seated on the edge of the pew, holding it in her arms, and soothing it.  I don’t know how long it all lasted, Horace says it was not ten minutes before he had got men and tools to break down the obstruction at the door, and pull out the crowded, crushed people, but to us it seemed hours.  They were getting calmer too in the rear, for many had followed the lead through the vestry door, and others had found out that there was no fire at all.

Wonderful to tell, no one was killed.  There were some broken arms, three I think, and some bad bruises.  Many people were fainting, and much hurt by the horrible heat and crush, but when at last the way was free, we saw Horace come into the church, looking about in great anxiety for the two girls, whom he had failed to find in the trampled multitude.  Then Avice came up to him, with the child in her arms, and Isa followed, quite safe!  How thankful we all were!  Avice says she remembered at once that she had been told of the American fireman’s orders to his little girl always to keep still in such an alarm, for the crowd was a worse peril than the fire.  By the time we had come down the stairs and joined them, the child’s father had come for it in great anxiety, for its sister had been trampled down fainting, and had just only revived enough to miss it!  I shall never forget what it was to see people sucked down in that surging mass, and the thankful thrill of seeing our girls standing there quietly with the child between them, its little fair head on Avice’s breast.  We went home quietly and thankfully.  Horace took Avice to the hotel that he might explain all to her parents, and let them know how well she had behaved; Isabel was shaken and tearful, and her voice sounded weak and nervous as she bade her cousin good-night and embraced her with much agitation.  So I went to her room to see whether she needed any doctoring, but I found Metelill soothing her nicely, so I only kissed her (as I had not done these two nights).  “Ah, dear aunt, you forgive me!” she said.  The tone threw me back, as if she were making capital of her adventure, and I said, “You have not offended ME.”  “Ah! you are still angry, and yet you DO love me still a little,” she said, not letting me go.  “The more love, the more grief for your having done wrong,” I said; and she returned, “Ah! if I always had you.”  That chilled me, and I went away.  She does not know the difference between pardon and remission of consequences.  One must have something of the spirit of the fifty-first Psalm before that perception comes.  Poor dear child, how one longs for power to breathe into her some such penitence!

Avice is quite knocked up to-day, and her mother has kept her in bed, where she is very happy with her Jane.  I have been to see her, and she has been thanking me for having suggested the making way for fresh comers in a pew.  Otherwise, she says, she could not have withstood the rush.

Sir Edward Fulford to miss Fulford
22D July.

My Dear Charlotte, ­I decidedly object to the company of a young lady with such a genius for intrigue as Isabel Fulford seems to possess.  If we had only ourselves to consider, no doubt it would be well for you to take her in hand, but in the sort of house ours will be, there must be no one we cannot depend upon in our own family.

I suppose I am guilty of having betrayed my thoughts to Edith.  I had certainly wished for Metelill.  She is an engaging creature, and I am sorry you take so adverse a view of her demeanour; but I promised to abide by your judgment and I will not question it.  We will ask Arthur and Edith to bring her to visit us, and then perhaps you may be better satisfied with her.

The learned young lady is out of the question, and as Avice is my dear wife’s godchild as well as mine, I am very glad she has deserved that your choice should fall upon her.  It seems as if you would find in her just the companionship you wish, and if her health needs the southern climate, it is well to give her the opportunity.  You had better propose the scheme at once, and provide what she will need for an outfit.  The last touches might be given at Paris.  I hope to get time to run down to New Cove next week, and if you and the niece can be ready to start by the middle of August, we will take Switzerland by the way, and arrive at Malta by the end of September.

I shall be curious to hear the result of your throwing the handkerchief. ­Your affectionate brother,

E. F.

MISS FULFORD TO SIR EDWARD FULFORD

July 24. ­I threw the handkerchief by asking Martyn and Mary to spare their daughter.  Tears came into Mary’s eyes, the first I ever saw there, and she tried in vain to say something ridiculous.  Martyn walked to the window and said huskily, “Dr. A –­ said it would confirm her health to spend a few winters in the South.  Thank you, Charlotte!” They did not doubt a moment, but Martyn feels the parting more than I ever thought he would, and Pica and Uchtred go about howling and bewailing, and declaring that they never shall know where to find anything again.

Avice herself is much more sorrowful than glad, though she is too courteous and grateful not to show herself gracious to me.  She did entreat me to take Isa instead, so earnestly that I was obliged to read her your decided objections.  It was a blow to her at first, but she is rapidly consoling herself over the wonderful commissions she accepts.  She is to observe Mediterranean zoophytes, and send them home on glass slides for the family benefit.  She is to send her father photographs and drawings to illustrate his lectures, and Jane has begged for a pebble or rock from S. Paul’s Bay, to show to her class at school.  Indeed, I believe Avice is to write a special journal, to be published in the Bourne parva parish magazine; Charley begs for a sea-horse, and Freddy has been instructed by one of the pupils to bargain for nothing less than the Colossus of Rhodes; Metelill is quite as cordial in her rejoicing, and Edith owns that, now it has come to the point, she is very glad to keep her daughter.

And Isa?  Well, she is mortified, poor child.  I think she must have cried bitterly over the disappointment, for she looked very wretched when we met at dinner.

Meanwhile, Martyn had a walk with Emily, who found that he was very sorry not to be relieved from Isabel, though he knew you were quite right not to take her.  He thought Oxford not a good place for such a girl, and the absence of the trustworthy Avice would make things worse.  Then Emily proposed to take Isabel back to the Birchwood with her.  Grandmamma really likes the girl, who is kind and attentive.  There are no young people to whom she could do harm, Emily can look after her, and will be glad of help and companionship.  The whole family council agreed that it will be a really charitable work, and that if any one can do her good, it will be the mother and Aunt Emily.

Isa has acquiesced with an overflow of gratitude and affection to them for taking pity on her.  It sounds a little fulsome, but I believe some of it is genuine.  She is really glad that some one wishes for her, and I can quite believe that she will lose in Avice all that made life congenial to her under Mary’s brisk uncompromising rule.  If she can only learn to be true ­true to herself and to others ­she will yet be a woman to love and esteem, and at Birchwood they will do their best to show that religious sentiment must be connected with Truth.

And so ends my study of the manners of my nieces, convincing me the more that as the manners are, so is the man or woman.  The heart, or rather the soul, forms the manners, and they ARE the man.

C. F.