AN EXCURSION.
TWO years had gone by since Mary Browne came to us,—Maimie, the friendless and homeless girl, for a while unwelcome to my heart and reluctantly accepted, yet now completely one of us. I doubt if even my beloved Jack, even our good self-forgetting Cherry, would have been more missed from among our circle than flaxen-haired, black-eyed Maimie Browne.
Reluctantly accepted, for at first I would have done almost anything to be rid of the burden, anything short of sending Maimie to a workhouse. I could not resolve on that. Perhaps even from the first I was more under the sway of Maimie’s attractions than I at all guessed. At all events, not many months passed from the day of Maimie’s arrival, before we should have been grieved indeed to part with her. Poor as we were, Aunt Briscoe’s offer to give her a home was at once put aside.
I think it would have half-broken the child’s heart to leave us. Yet sometimes the wonder did cross me whether we were quite right. A home at “The Gables” meant ease and plenty. A home with us meant hard work and scanty fare.
But Maimie did not see things so. She said she loved us all more than anybody else in the world. She liked Aunt Briscoe and was grateful to her, but she counted me as a second mother. She said often that she knew she could be useful to us, and this was true indeed. But for her teaching, the two youngest boys must have gone to school months before; and though we now talked of sending them, she had them still in hand. Jack, too, had become quite studious through her influence. And though Maimie never was a good darner or mender, she had shown lately a new gift in the way of dressmaking and bonnet-trimming, which we found very serviceable.
Between all these employments and her own studies, it was no wonder that Maimie looked worn sometimes. She was taller and thinner than of old, with the same soft outline of features, the same pale skin and crimson lips. And the abundant flaxen hair was not a shade darker, and the black eyes were just as loving. I never saw a girl quite like Maimie anywhere—so very pretty, yet seeming to think so little about her own looks. She had a quiet, self-possessed manner, beyond her years. Many people took her at first sight for older than Cherry.
All through these two years, we had not heard a word of Maimie’s stepfather, my brother-in-law Churton Hazel. He had sent only the one cheque for twenty-five pounds, a few months after Maimie’s first coming to us; and that, I suppose, eased his conscience. No second cheque came; and we had not the very least idea where he was, or what he might be doing.
Early in June, Maimie’s seventeenth birthday would come. Jack was very anxious to make it a gala-day.
I ought to say here that my boys were doing well. Jack, at nineteen, was a fine broad-shouldered fellow, getting on capitally at his work, giving satisfaction, and really quite shaking off his old blundering ways, thanks chiefly to Maimie. Jack would never be brilliant, and we all knew that, but he was fast becoming as steady and dependable in his office as he had always been in his home.
He had never lost sight of his sudden resolution to “be a man,” and to conquer his faults. I am sure also that he had never forgotten Maimie’s suggestion that he must pray for help. I feel convinced that Jack did indeed pray, and that we saw the answer to his prayers in his life. We were all so fond and proud of Jack—Maimie as much as anybody.