Without looking round, Mrs. Crabtree hurried out of the nursery and closed the door, leaving Harry and Laura perfectly bewildered with astonishment at this sudden event, which seemed more like a dream than a reality. They both felt exceedingly melancholy, hardly able to believe that she had formerly been at all cross, while they stood at the window with tears in their eyes, watching the departure of her well-known blue chest, on a wheel-barrow, and taking a [207] ]last look of her red gown and scarlet shawl as she hastily followed it.

For several weeks to come, whenever the door opened, Harry and Laura almost expected her to enter, but month after month elapsed, and Mrs. Crabtree appeared no more, till one day, at their earnest entreaty, Lady Harriet took them a drive of some miles into the country, to see the neat little lodging by the sea-side where she lived, and maintained herself by sewing, and by going out occasionally as a sick-nurse. A more delightful surprise certainly never could have been given than when Harry and Laura tapped at the cottage door, which was opened by Mrs. Crabtree herself, who started back with an exclamation of joyful amazement, and looked as if she could scarcely believe her eyes on beholding them, while they laughed at the joke till tears were running down their cheeks. “Is Mrs. Crabtree at home?” said Harry, trying to look very grave.

“Grandmama says we may stay here for an hour, while she drives along the shore,” added Laura, stepping into the house with a very merry face. “And how do you do, Mrs. Crabtree?”

“Very well, Miss Laura, and very happy to see you. What a tall girl you are become! and Master Harry too! looking quite over his own shoulders!”

After sitting some time, Mrs. Crabtree insisted on their having some dinner in her cottage; so making Harry and Laura sit down on each side of a large blazing fire, she cooked some most delicious pancakes for them in rapid succession, as fast as they could eat, tossing them high in the air first, and then rolling up each as it was fried, with a large spoonful of jam in the centre, till Harry and Laura at last said, that unless Mrs. Crabtree supplied fresh appetites, she need make no more pancakes, for they thought even Peter Grey himself could scarcely have finished all she provided.

[208]
]Harry had now been several months constantly attending school, where he became a great favourite with the boys, and a great torment to the masters, while, for his own part, he liked it twenty times better than he had expected, because the lessons were tolerably easy to a clever boy, as he really was, and the games at cricket and foot-ball in the play-ground put him perfectly wild with joy. Every boy at school seemed to be his particular friend, and many called him “the holiday-maker,” because, if ever a holiday was wished for, Harry always became leader in the scheme. The last morning of Peter Grey’s appearing at school, he got the name of “the copper captain,” because Mr. Lexicon having fined him half-a-crown, for not knowing one of his lessons, he brought the whole sum in half-pence, carrying them in his hat, and gravely counting them all out, with such a pains-taking, good-boy look, that any one, to see him, would have supposed he was quite penitent and sorry for his misconduct; but no sooner had he finished the task and ranged all the half-pence neatly in rows along Mr. Lexicon’s desk, than he was desired, in a voice of thunder, to leave the room instantly, and never to return, which accordingly he never did, having started next day on the top of the coach for Portsmouth, and the last peep Harry got of him, he was buying a perfect mountain of gingerbread out of an old man’s basket, to eat by the way.

Meantime Laura had lessons from a regular day-governess, who came every morning at seven, and never disappeared till four in the afternoon, so, as Mrs. Crabtree remarked, “the puir thing was perfectly deaved wi’ edication,” but she made such rapid progress, that uncle David said it would be difficult to decide whether she was growing fastest in body or in mind. Laura seemed born to be under the tuition of none but ill-tempered people, and Madame Pirouette appeared in a constant state of irritability. During the music-lessons, she sat close to the piano, with a pair of sharp-pointed [209] ]scissors in her hand, and whenever Laura played a wrong note, she stuck their points into the offending finger, saying sometimes in an angry foreign accent, “put your toe upon ’dis note! I tell you, put your toe upon ’dis note!”

“My finger, I suppose you mean?” asked Laura, trying not to laugh.

“Ah! fingare and toe! dat is all one! Speak not a word! take hold of your tongue.”

“Laura!” said Major Graham, one day, “I would as soon hear a gong sounded at my ear for half an hour, as most of the fine pieces you perform now. Taste and expression are quite out of date, but the chief object of ambition is, to seem as if you had four hands instead of two, from the torrent of notes produced at once. If ever you wish to please my old-fashioned ears, give me melody,—something that touches the heart and dwells in the memory,—then years afterwards, when we hear it again, the language seems familiar to our feelings, and we listen with deep delight to sounds recalling a thousand recollections of former days, which are brought back by music (real music) with distinctness and interest which nothing else can equal.”