Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood

by Charlotte M. Yonge

Carey argued that most of her guests were people who seldom had leisure to enjoy rest, conversation, and variety of pretty things, and that it would be mere Puritan crabbedness to deny them the pleasures of Popinjay Parlour on the only day they could be happy there. It was not easy to answer the argument, though the strong feeling remained that it was not keeping Sunday as the true Lord’s Day. While abstinence from such enjoyments created mere negative dulness, there must be something wrong.

Otherwise, Mary was on the happiest terms, made her own laws and duties, and was treated like a sister by Caroline, while the children were heartily fond of her, all except Elvira, who made a fierce struggle against her authority, and then, finding that it was all in vain, conformed as far as her innate idleness and excitability permitted.

She behaved better to Miss Ogilvie than to Janet, with whom she kept up a perpetual petty warfare, sometimes, Mary thought, with the pertinacity of a spiteful elf, making a noise when Janet wanted quiet, losing no opportunity of upsetting her books or papers, and laughing boisterously at any little mishap that befell her. The only reason she ever gave when pushed hard, was that “Janet was so ugly, she could not help it,” a reason so utterly ridiculous, that there was no going any further.

Janet, on the whole, behaved much better under the annoyance than could have been expected. She entered enough into the state of affairs to see that the troublesome child could hardly be expelled, and she was too happy and too much amused to care much about the annoyance. There was magnanimity enough about her not to mind midge bites, and certainly this summer was exceptionally delightful with all the pleasures of wealth, and very few of its drawbacks.

By the time the holidays were coming round, Belforest was not half habitable, and they had to return to the Pagoda. A tenant had been found for it, and such of the old furniture as was too precious to be parted with was to be removed to Belforest. Things were sufficiently advanced there for the rooms to be chosen, and orders given as to the decoration and furniture, and then, gathering up her sons, Caroline meant to start for the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy. Old nurse was settled in a small pair of rooms, with Emma to wait on her, and promises from Jessie to attend to her comforts; but the old woman had failed so much in their absence, and had fretted so much after “Mrs. Joseph” and the children, that it was hard to leave her again.

Everything that good taste and wealth could do to make a place delightful was at work. The “butcher’s shop” was relegated to a dim corner of the gallery, and its place supplied from the brushes of the artists whom Caroline viewed with loving respect; the drawing-room was renovated, a forlorn old library resuscitated into vigorous life, a museum fitted with shelves, drawers, and glass cases which Caroline said would be as dangerous to the vigorous spirit of natural history as new clothes to a Brownie, and a billiard and gun room were ceded to the representations of Allen, who comported himself as befitted the son and heir.

Caroline would not part with her room-mate, little Barbara, and was to have for herself a charming bedroom and dressing-room, with a balcony and parapet overlooking the garden and park, and a tiny room besides, for Babie to call her own.

Janet chose the apartments which had been Mr. Barnes’, and which being in the oldest part of the house, and wainscoted with dark oak, she could take possession of at once. There was one room down stairs with very ugly caryatides, supporting the wooden mantelpiece, and dividing the panels, one of which had a secret door leading by an odd little stair to the bedroom above—that in which Mr. Barnes had died.

It had of course another door opening into the corridor, and it was on these rooms that Janet set her affections. To the general surprise, Elvira declared that this was the very room she had chosen, with the red velvet curtains and gold crown, the day they went over the house, and that Mother Carey had promised it to her, and she would have it.

No one could remember any such promise, and the curtains of crimson moreen did not answer Elfie’s description; but she would not be denied, and actually put all her possessions into the room.