"I HOPE SHE WILL BE CHANGED!"
"Think of what it was to manage her in the summer months!" said dear old Madam Trimleston, looking wistfully at Nurse Nancy. "What could we do with her this winter weather? I do hope she will be changed. Don't you think it likely that school will have done something for her?"
"Of course I do, madam. What else did we break our hearts sendin' her there for? And little Turly, that would ha' been content to stay here peaceable if she would ha' let him alone! Sure it's often I say to myself that it's Terry ought to have been the boy."
"The same idea has occurred to me, Nancy. Not that we ought to criticise the arrangements of Providence."
"Well, madam," said Nurse Nancy, "I don't agree that Providence has anything to do with it. Providence doesn't make many mistakes, I'm thinkin'? It's ourselves mostly that steps behind His work an' puts things asthray on Him."
"You are right, and yet I do not perceive in what way we made mischief in the matter of poor Terry. Her mother and father and myself have always done our best for her."
"Except when you gave her an unnatural name, if I may make bold to say it to you, madam. She was born all right, God bless her; but when you put a man's name on her, somethin' got into her, poor lamb, somethin' that'll take a good while to work out of her."
"That's a very queer idea, Nancy. You know well that she was named after a brave ancestor. It was hoped she would have been a boy, and her father gave her the name he had intended for a boy; only we softened it, Nancy, softened and changed Terence into Terencia."
A smile lighted up Nurse Nancy's wrinkled face.
"Well now, madam, as if anybody couldn't see through that little thrick! To call her for a fightin' ould warrior that bet Cromwell an' held his own in spite of him! An' her havin' to grow up a young lady with nothin' but niceness in her! Ah, then now, madam, why didn't ye call her Mary, the same as her grandmother before her?"
"We did, Nancy; you forget that we did," urged Madam mildly. "We named her Terencia Mary."
"Then ye put the cart before the horse, madam," said Nancy, shaking her head grimly, "an' the ould warrior has got the foreway in her over the holy lady that has the best right in her, in regard of her sex. But don't fret now, madam, for it's my belief that the Mary is in her still, an' she'll be the gentlest yet that iver walked of the name. Only it's us that'll have a han'ful of her until the ould warrior has done with her."
Madam smiled indulgently. Nurse Nancy would occasionally put forth a fantastic notion like this, but in the main she was a patient, prudent, wise creature who had well earned her honours in the family by long and faithful friendship as well as service. During her latter lonely years old Madam had drawn Nurse Nancy very close to her. While she smiled now she said:
"We must remember that until a year ago Terry was brought up in Africa, was accustomed to perfect freedom, to long rides with her father, and all kinds of adventures."
"And so was little Turly, madam. Not that he isn't as brave as anything, little darlin'; he'd follow Terry through thick an' thin, if it was through the fire. But still an' all it never does be him that sets the mischief goin'."
"But Turlough is only eight years old. Terry is ten, and two years of a bush life at that age make a great deal more difference than the count of the days," said Madam musingly.
Madam Trimleston was a pretty old lady who had soft white hair and sweet blue eyes, and wore handsome lace caps with peachy ribbons in them; and she usually sat in a high-backed arm-chair either at the fire or the window in her own room with Nurse Nancy attending on her. For Madam was very delicate, and since she had been left alone in old Trimleston House she rarely went down into the great rooms below.
"It would make you cry," Nancy would say, "to see her sittin' there all by herself, afther the family she rared, an' them all scatthered about over the four corners of the earth; an' the rest o' them in heaven!"
It is true that Madam had sons holding posts in different lands, but her daughters had "all died on her", as Nancy lamented. However, though old Trimleston House stood in a lonely part of Ireland, between the hills and the sea, yet Madam was not so desolate as might have been supposed, for she was beloved by all the "neighbours" for twenty miles around, and poor and rich made their sympathy felt by her. And everyone was glad when her favourite son in Africa sent home his two children to her care; no one so glad as the dear old granny herself, unless it might be Nurse Nancy.
To tell how the grandmother and nurse, whose hands had once been so full and were now so long empty, went into the deserted nurseries and furbished them up till everything looked as good as new would require a chapter to itself. A handy man was sent for to come two miles and paint up the old rocking-horse which had been standing for years with its nose in a corner of a closet and its sides all blistered with damp; and nine-pins, tops, and marbles were hunted out of drawers and cupboards.
"Mercy me! Look here, madam! If this isn't the dog that Misther Jack broke the ear off knockin' its head against the wall one day and him in a passion!" said Nurse Nancy.
She was afraid to bring forth the dolls, with their associations, but the mother herself went to look for them.
"We are getting a little girl, Nancy," she said, "and we can't have nothing but boys' toys for her to play with."
Nancy nodded her head, but Madam went boldly to the drawer, looked at the dolls with their faded cheeks and glassy eyes, shook out their gay frocks, and laid them back in their place. Nancy said nothing, but when Madam remarked that evening:
"I am writing for one or two new ones. They will be fresher. And you might lock up the old ones and leave them where they are," Nancy knew exactly what her mistress was thinking of.
But that was more than a year ago. The story of how the girl and boy came, and how the two old women, who had many years ago been so clever in the management of children, failed utterly with the "young African savages", as a lady neighbour twenty miles distant described Terry and Turly, need not be told. There had been utter dismay in Trimleston House: and after much struggling with difficulties, Madam had been obliged to yield to the decision of their father and to send them to school.
There had been a summer vacation, the recollection of which made Madam and Nurse Nancy tremble; hence the serious expectation with which they are awaiting at the present moment the arrival of the children for the Christmas holidays.