July 24.—I threw the handkerchief by asking Martyn and Mary to spare their daughter. Tears came into Mary’s eyes, the first I ever saw there, and she tried in vain to say something ridiculous. Martyn walked to the window and said huskily, “Dr. A--- said it would confirm her health to spend a few winters in the South. Thank you, Charlotte!” They did not doubt a moment, but Martyn feels the parting more than I ever thought he would, and Pica and Uchtred go about howling and bewailing, and declaring that they never shall know where to find anything again.
Avice herself is much more sorrowful than glad, though she is too courteous and grateful not to show herself gracious to me. She did entreat me to take Isa instead, so earnestly that I was obliged to read her your decided objections. It was a blow to her at first, but she is rapidly consoling herself over the wonderful commissions she accepts. She is to observe Mediterranean zoophytes, and send them home on glass slides for the family benefit. She is to send her father photographs and drawings to illustrate his lectures, and Jane has begged for a pebble or rock from S. Paul’s Bay, to show to her class at school. Indeed, I believe Avice is to write a special journal, to be published in the Bourne Parva Parish Magazine; Charley begs for a sea-horse, and Freddy has been instructed by one of the pupils to bargain for nothing less than the Colossus of Rhodes; Metelill is quite as cordial in her rejoicing, and Edith owns that, now it has come to the point, she is very glad to keep her daughter.
And Isa? Well, she is mortified, poor child. I think she must have cried bitterly over the disappointment, for she looked very wretched when we met at dinner.
Meanwhile, Martyn had a walk with Emily, who found that he was very sorry not to be relieved from Isabel, though he knew you were quite right not to take her. He thought Oxford not a good place for such a girl, and the absence of the trustworthy Avice would make things worse. Then Emily proposed to take Isabel back to the Birchwood with her. Grandmamma really likes the girl, who is kind and attentive. There are no young people to whom she could do harm, Emily can look after her, and will be glad of help and companionship. The whole family council agreed that it will be a really charitable work, and that if any one can do her good, it will be the mother and Aunt Emily.
Isa has acquiesced with an overflow of gratitude and affection to them for taking pity on her. It sounds a little fulsome, but I believe some of it is genuine. She is really glad that some one wishes for her, and I can quite believe that she will lose in Avice all that made life congenial to her under Mary’s brisk uncompromising rule. If she can only learn to be true—true to herself and to others—she will yet be a woman to love and esteem, and at Birchwood they will do their best to show that religious sentiment must be connected with Truth.
And so ends my study of the manners of my nieces, convincing me the more that as the manners are, so is the man or woman. The heart, or rather the soul, forms the manners, and they are the man.
C. F.
COME TO HER KINGDOM
‘Take care! Oh, take care!’
Whisk, swish, click, click, through the little crowd at Stokesley on a fine April afternoon, of jocund children just let loose from school, and mothers emerging from their meeting, collecting their progeny after the fashion of old ewes with their lambs; Susan Merrifield in a huge, carefully preserved brown mushroom hat, with a big basket under one arm, and a roll of calico under the other; her sister Elizabeth with a book in one hand, and a packet of ambulance illustrations; the Vicar, Mr. Doyle, and his sister likewise loaded, talking to them about the farmer’s wedding of the morning, for which the bells had been ringing fitfully all day, and had just burst out again. Such was the scene, through which, like a flash, spun a tricycle, from which a tiny curly-haired being in knickerbockers was barely saved by his mother’s seizing him by one arm.