“Yes, she does exceed my expectations. There is something curiously winning in that quaint, quick, decisive manner of hers. There is so much soul in the least thing she does, as if she could not be indifferent for a moment.”
“Exactly—exactly so,” said Margaret, delighted. “It is really doing everything with all her might. Little, simple, everyday matters did not come naturally to her as to other people, and the having had to make them duties has taught her to do them with that earnest manner, as if there were a right and a wrong to her in each little mechanical household office.”
“Harry described her to me thus,” said Mrs. Arnott, smiling: “‘As to Ethel, she is an odd fish; but Cocksmoor will make a woman of her after all.’”
“Quite true!” cried Margaret. “I should not have thought Harry had so much discernment in those days. Cocksmoor gave the stimulus, and made Ethel what she is. Look there—over the mantelpiece, are the designs for the painted glass, all gifts, except the east window. That one of St. Andrew introducing the lad with the loaves and fishes is Ethel’s window. It is the produce of the hoard she began this time seven years, when she had but one sovereign in the world. She kept steadily on with it, spending nothing on herself that she could avoid, always intending it for the church, and it was just enough to pay for this window.”
“Most suitable,” said Mrs. Arnott.
“Yes; Mr. Wilmot and I persuaded her into it; but I do not think she would have allowed it, if she had seen the application we made of it—the gift of her girlhood blessed and extended. Dear King Etheldred, it is the only time I ever cheated her.”
“This is a beautiful east window. And this little one—St. Margaret I see.”
“Ah! papa would not be denied choosing that for his subject. We reproached him with legendary saints, and overwhelmed him with antiquarianism, to show that the Margaret of the dragon was not the Margaret of the daisy; but he would have it; and said we might thank him for not setting his heart on St. Etheldreda.”
“This one?”
“That is mine,” said Margaret, very low; and her aunt abstained from remark, though unable to look, without tears, at the ship of the Apostles, the calming of the storm, and the scroll, with the verse: