'WHOSE DRAWER IS THIS?'
"Mine," said Sylvia.
"Sylvia's," answered Molly in the same breath, but growing very red as she saw grandmother's hand and eyes turning in the direction of the neighbour drawer to the one she had opened.
"I am so sorry, grandmother dear," she exclaimed; "I wish you wouldn't look at mine to-day. I was going to put it tidy, but I hadn't time."
It was too late. Grandmother had already opened the drawer. Ah, dear! what a revelation! Gloves, handkerchiefs, scarfs, ribbons, collars; collars ribbons, scarfs, handkerchiefs, gloves, in a sort of pot-pourri all together, or as if waiting to be beaten up into some wonderful new kind of pudding! Molly grew redder and redder.
"Dear me!" said grandmother. "This is your drawer, I suppose, Molly. How is it it is so much smaller than Sylvia's?"
"It isn't, grandmother dear," said Molly, rather surprised at the turn of the conversation. "It is just the same size exactly."
"Then how is it you have so many more things to keep in it than Sylvia?"
"I haven't, grandmother dear," said Molly. "We have just exactly the same of everything."
"And yet yours looks crowded to the last degree—far too full—and in hers there seems plenty of room for everything."
"Because, grandmother dear," said Molly, opening wide her eyes, "hers is neat and mine isn't."
"Ah," said grandmother. "See what comes of order. Suppose you try a little of it with that mind of yours, Molly, which you say seems always too full. Do you know I strongly suspect that if everything in it were very neatly arranged, you would find a very great deal of room in it; you would be surprised to find how little, not how much, it contains."
"Would I, grandmother dear?" said Molly, looking rather mystified. "I don't quite understand."
"Think about it a little, and then I fancy you will understand," said grandmother. "But we really must go now, or I shall be too late for what I wanted to do. There is that collar of yours loose again, Molly. A little brooch would be the proper thing to fasten it with. You have several."
Poor Molly—her unlucky star was in the ascendant this afternoon surely! She grew very red again, as she answered confusedly,
"Yes, grandmother dear."
"Well then, quick, my dear. Put on the brooch with the bit of coral in the middle, like the one that Sylvia has on now."
"Please, grandmother dear, that one's pin's broken."
"The pin's broken! Ah, well, we'll take it to have it mended then. Where is it, my dear? Give it to me."
Molly opened the unlucky drawer, and after a minute or two's fumbling extracted from its depths a little brooch which she handed to grandmother. Grandmother looked at it.
"This is not the one, Molly. This is the one Aunty sent you on your last birthday, with the little turquoises round it."
Molly turned quickly.
"Oh yes. It isn't the coral one. It must be in the drawer."
Another rummage brought forth the coral one.
"But the turquoise one has no pin either!"
"No, grandmother dear. It broke last week."
"Then it too must go to be mended," said grandmother with decision. "See, here is another one that will do for to-day."
She, in turn, drew forth another brooch. A little silver one this time, in the shape of a bird flying. But as she was handing it to Molly, "Why, this one also has no pin!" she exclaimed.
"No, grandmother dear. I broke it the day before yesterday."
Grandmother laid the three brooches down in a row.
"How many brooches in all have you, Molly?" she said.
"Six, grandmother dear. They are just the same as Sylvia has. We have each six."
"And where are the three others?"
Molly opened a little box that stood on the top of the chest of drawers.
"They're here," she said, and so they were, poor things. A little mosaic brooch set in silver, a mother-of-pearl with steel border, and a tortoise-shell one in the shape of a crescent; these made up her possessions.
"I meant," she added naïvely, "I meant to have put them all in this box as I broke them, but I left the coral one, and the turquoise one, and the bird in the drawer by mistake."
"As you broke them?" repeated grandmother. "How many are broken then?"
"All," said Molly. "I mean the pins are."
It was quite true. There lay the six brooches—brooches indeed no longer—for not a pin was there to boast of among them!
"Six pinless brooches!" said grandmother drily, taking them up one after another. "Six pinless brooches—the property of one careless little girl. Little girls are changed from the days when I was young! I shall take these six brooches to be mended at once, Molly, but what I shall do with them when they are mended I cannot as yet say."
She put them all in the little box from which three of them had been taken, and with it in her hand went quietly out of the room. Molly, by this time almost in tears, remained behind for a moment to whisper to Sylvia,
"Is grandmother dreadfully angry, do you think, Sylvia? I am so frightened, I wish I wasn't going out with her."
"Then you should not have been so horribly careless. I never knew any one so careless," said Sylvia, in rather a Job's comforter tone of voice. "Of course you must tell grandmother how sorry you are, and how ashamed of yourself, and ask her to forgive you."
"Grandmother dear," said Molly, her irrepressible spirits rising again when she found herself out in the pleasant fresh air, sitting opposite grandmother in the carriage, bowling along so smoothly—grandmother having made no further allusion to the unfortunate brooches—"Grandmother dear, I am so sorry and so ashamed of myself. Will you please forgive me?"
"And what then, my dear?" said grandmother.
"I will try to be careful; indeed I will. I will tell you how it is I break them so, grandmother dear. I am always in such a hurry, and brooches are so provoking sometimes. They won't go in, and I give them a push, and then they just squock across in a moment."
"They just what?" said grandmother.
"Squock across, grandmother dear," said Molly serenely. "It's a word of my own. I have a good many words of my own like that. But I won't say them if you'd rather not. I've got a plan in my head—it's just come there—of teaching myself to be more careful with brooches, so please, grandmother dear, do try me again when the brooches are mended. Of course I'll pay them out of my own money."
"Well, we'll see," said grandmother, as the carriage stopped at the jeweller's shop where the poor brooches were to be doctored.
During the next two days there was a decided improvement in Molly. She spent a great part of them in putting her drawers and other possessions in order, and was actually discovered in a quiet corner mending a pair of gloves. She was not once late for breakfast or dinner, and, notwithstanding the want of the brooches, her collars retained their position with unusual docility. All these symptoms were not lost on grandmother, and to Molly's great satisfaction, on the evening of the third day she slipped into her hand a little box which had just been left at the door.
"The brooches, Molly," said grandmother. "They have cost just three francs. I think I may trust you with them, may I not?"
"Oh yes, grandmother dear. I'm sure you may," said Molly, radiant. "And do you know my drawers are just beautiful. I wish you could see them."
"Never fear, my dear. I shall be sure to take a look at them some day soon. Shall I pay them an unexpected visit—eh, Molly?"
"If you like," replied the little girl complacently. "I've quite left off being careless and untidy; it's so much nicer to be careful and neat. Good-night, grandmother dear, and thank you so much for teaching me so nicely."
"Good-night, grand-daughter dear. But remember, my little Molly, that Rome was not built in a day."
"Of course not—how could a big town be built in a day? Grandmother dear, what funny things you do say," said Molly, opening wide her eyes.
"The better to make you think, my dear," said grandmother, in a gruff voice that made Molly jump.
"Oh dear! how you do frighten me when you speak like that, grandmother dear," she said in such a piteous tone that they all burst out laughing at her.
"My poor little girl, it is a shame to tease you," said grandmother, drawing her towards her. "To speak plainly, my dear, what I want you to remember is this: Faults are not cured, any more than big towns are built, in a day."
"No, I know they are not. I'm not forgetting that. I've been making a lot of plans for making myself remember about being careful," said Molly, nodding her head sagaciously. "You'll see, grandmother dear."
And off to bed she went.
The children went out early the next morning for a long walk in the country. It was nearly luncheon time when they returned, and they were met in the hall by aunty, who told them to run upstairs and take off their things quickly, as a friend of their grandmother's had come to spend the day with her.
"And make yourselves neat, my dears," she said. "Miss Wren is a particular old lady."
Sylvia was down in the drawing-room in five minutes, hair brushed, hands washed, collar straight. She went up to Miss Wren to be introduced to her, and then sat down in a corner by the window with a book. Miss Wren was very deaf, and her deafness had the effect, as she could not in the least hear her own voice, of making her shout out her observations in a very loud tone, sometimes rather embarrassing for those to whom they were addressed, or, still worse, for those concerning whom they were made.
"Nice little girl," she remarked to grandmother, "very nice, pretty-behaved little girl. Rather like poor Mary, is she not? Not so pretty! Dear me, what a pretty girl Mary was the first winter you were here, twelve, no, let me see, fourteen years ago! Never could think what made her take a fancy to that solemn-looking husband of hers."
Grandmother laid her hand warningly on Miss Wren's arm, and glanced in Sylvia's direction, and greatly to her relief just then, there came a diversion in the shape of Molly. Grandmother happened to be asked a question at this moment by a servant who just came into the room, and had therefore turned aside for an instant as Molly came up to speak to Miss Wren. Her attention was quickly caught again, however, by the old lady's remarks, delivered as usual in a very loud voice.
"How do you do, my dear? And what is your name? Dear me, is this a new fashion? Laura," to aunty, who was writing a note at the side-table and had not noticed Molly's entrance, "Laura, my dear, I wonder your mother allows the child to wear so much jewellery. In my young days such a thing was never heard of."
Aunty got up from her writing at this, and grandmother turned round quickly. What could Miss Wren be talking about? Was her sight, as well as her hearing, failing her? Was grandmother's own sight, hitherto quite to be depended upon, playing her some queer trick? There stood Molly, serene as usual, with—it took grandmother quite a little while to count them—one, two, three, yes, six brooches fastened on to the front of her dress! All the six invalid brooches, just restored to health, that is to say pins, were there in their glory. The turquoise one in the middle, the coral and the tortoise-shell ones at each side of it, the three others, the silver bird, the mosaic and the mother-of-pearl arranged in a half-moon below them, in the front of the child's dress. They were placed with the greatest neatness and precision; it must have cost Molly both time and trouble to put each in the right spot.
Grandmother stared, aunty stared, Miss Wren looked at Molly curiously.
"Odd little girl," she remarked, in what she honestly believed to be a perfectly inaudible whisper, to grandmother. "She is not so nice as the other, not so like poor Mary. But I wonder, my dear, I really do wonder at your allowing her to wear so much jewellery. In our young days——"
For once in her life grandmother was almost rude to Miss Wren. She interrupted her reminiscences of "our young days" by turning sharply to Molly.
"Molly," she said, "go up to your room at once and take off that nonsense. What is the meaning of it? Do you intend to make a joke of what you should be so ashamed of, your own carelessness?"
Molly stared up in blank surprise and distress.
"Grandmother dear," she said confusedly. "It was my plan. It was to make me careful."
Grandmother felt much annoyed, and Molly's self-defence vexed her more.
"Go up to your room," she repeated. "You have vexed me very much. Either you intend to make a joke of what I hoped would have been a lesson to you for all your life, or else, Molly, it is as if you had not all your wits. Go up to your room at once."
Molly said no more. Never before had grandmother and aunty looked at her "like that." She turned and ran out of the room and up to her own, and throwing herself down on the bed burst into tears.
"I thought it was such a good plan," she sobbed. "I wanted to please grandmother. And I do believe she thinks I meant to mock her. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!"
Downstairs the luncheon bell rang, and they all seated themselves at table, but no Molly appeared.
"Shall I run up and tell her to come down?" suggested Sylvia, but "no," said grandmother, "it is better not."
But grandmother's heart was sore.
"I shall be so sorry if there is anything of sulkiness or resentfulness in Molly," she said to herself. "What could the child have had in her head?"