11.—Here was a test as to this same obedience. The pupils, who are by this time familiars of the party, had devised a boating and fishing expedition for all the enterprising, which was satisfactory to the elders because it was to include both the fathers. Unluckily, however, this morning’s post brought a summons to Martyn and Mary to fulfil an engagement they have long made to meet an American professor at ---, and they had to start off at eleven o’clock; and at the same time the Hollyford clergyman, an old fellow-curate of Horace Druce, sent a note imploring him to take a funeral. So the voice of the seniors was for putting off the expedition, but the voice of the juniors was quite the other way. The three families took different lines. The Druces show obedience though not respect; they growled and grumbled horribly, but submitted, though with ill grace, to the explicit prohibition. Non-interference is professedly Mary’s principle, but even she said, with entreaty veiled beneath the playfulness, when it was pleaded that two of the youths had oars at Cambridge, “Freshwater fish, my dears. I wish you would wait for us! I don’t want you to attend the submarine wedding of our old friends Tame and Isis.” To which Pica rejoined, likewise talking out of Spenser, that Proteus would provide a nice ancient nymph to tend on them. Her father then chimed in, saying, “You will spare our nerves by keeping to dry land unless you can secure the ancient mariner who was with us yesterday.”
“Come, come, most illustrious,” said Pica good-humouredly, “I’m not going to encourage you to set up for nerves. You are much better without them, and I must get some medusæ.”
It ended with, “I beg you will not go without that old man,” the most authoritative speech I have heard either Martyn or Mary make to their daughters; but it was so much breath wasted on Pica, who maintains her right to judge for herself. The ancient mariner had been voted an encumbrance and exchanged for a jolly young waterman.
Our other mother, Edith, implored, and was laughed down by Charley, who declared she could swim, and that she did not think Uncle Martyn would have been so old-womanish. Metelill was so tender and caressing with her frightened mother that I thought here at last was submission, and with a good grace. But after a turn on the esplanade among the pupils, back came Metelill in a hurry to say, “Dear mother, will you very much mind if I go? They will be so disappointed, and there will be such a fuss if I don’t; and Charley really ought to have some one with her besides Pie, who will heed nothing but magnifying medusæ.” I am afraid it is true, as Isa says, that it was all owing to the walk with that young Mr Horne.
Poor Edith fell into such a state of nervous anxiety that I could not leave her, and she confided to me how Charley had caught her foolish masculine affectations in the family of this very Bertie Elwood, and told me of the danger of an attachment between Metelill and a young government clerk who is always on the look-out for her. “And dear Metelill is so gentle and gracious that she cannot bear to repel any one,” says the mother, who would, I see, be thankful to part with either daughter to our keeping in hopes of breaking off perilous habits. I was saved, however, from committing myself by the coming in of Isabel. That child follows me about like a tame cat, and seems so to need mothering that I cannot bear to snub her.
She came to propound to me a notion that has risen among these Oxford girls, namely, that I should take out their convalescent dressmaker as my maid instead of poor Amélie. She is quite well now, and going back next week; but a few years in a warm climate might be the saving of her health. So I agreed to go with Isa to look at her, and judge whether the charming account I heard was all youthful enthusiasm. Edith went out driving with my mother, and we began our tête-à-tête walk, in which I heard a great deal of the difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper, instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good-natured mockery. The treatment may suit Mary’s own daughters, but ‘Just as you please, my dear,’ is not good for sensitive, anxious spirits. We passed Jane and Avice reading together under a rock; I was much inclined to ask them to join us, but Isa was sure they were much happier undisturbed, and she was so unwilling to share me with any one that I let them alone. I was much pleased with the dressmaker, Maude Harris, who is a nice, modest, refined girl, and if the accounts I get from her employers bear out what I hear of her, I shall engage her; I shall be glad, for the niece’s sake, to have that sort of young woman about the place. She speaks most warmly of what the Misses Fulford have done for her.
Jane will be disappointed if I cannot have her rival candidate—a pet schoolgirl who works under the Bourne Parva dressmaker. “What a recommendation!” cries Pica, and there is a burst of mirth, at which Jane looks round and says, “What is there to laugh at? Miss Dadworthy is a real good woman, and a real old Bourne Parva person, so that you may be quite sure Martha will have learnt no nonsense to begin with.”
“No,” says Pica, “from all such pomps and vanities as style, she will be quite clear.”
While Avice’s friendship goes as far as to say that if Aunt Charlotte cannot have Maude, perhaps Martha could get a little more training. Whereupon Jane runs off by the yard explanations of the admirable training—religious, moral, and intellectual—of Bourne Parva, illustrated by the best answers of her favourite scholars, anecdotes of them, and the reports of the inspectors, religious and secular; and Avice listens with patience, nay, with respectful sympathy.
12.—We miss Mary and Martyn more than I expected. Careless and easy-going as they seem, they made a difference in the ways of the young people; they were always about with them, not as dragons, but for their own pleasure. The presence of a professor must needs impose upon young men, and Mary, with her brilliant wit and charming manners, was a check without knowing it. The boating party came back gay and triumphant, and the young men joined in our late meal; and oh, what a noise there was! though I must confess that it was not they who made the most. Metelill was not guilty of the noise, but she was—I fear I must say it—flirting with all her might with a youth on each side of her, and teasing a third; I am afraid she is one of those girls who are charming to all, and doubly charming to your sex, and that it will never do to have her among the staff. I don’t think it is old-maidish in us to be scandalised at her walking up and down the esplanade with young Horne till ten o’clock last night; Charley was behind with Bertie Elwood, and, I grieve to say, was smoking. It lasted till Horace Druce went out to tell them that Metelill must come in at once, as it was time to shut up the house.