There was the school tea, and magic-lantern, when Mr. Pollock acted as exhibitor, and Harry as spokesman, and worked them up gradually from grave and beautiful scenes like the cedars of Lebanon, the Parthenon and Colosseum, with full explanations, through dissolving views of cottage and bridge by day and night, summer and winter, of life-boat rescue, and the siege of Sevastopol, with shells flying, on to Jack and the Beanstalk and the New Tale of a Tub, the sea-serpent, and the nose-grinding! Lady Phyllis’s ecstacy was surpassing, more especially as she found her beloved little maid-of-all-work, and was introduced to all that small person’s younger brothers and sisters.
Here they met Miss Hacket, who was in charge of a class. She comported herself just as usual, and Gillian’s dignity and displeasure gave way before her homely cordiality. Constance had not come, as indeed nothing but childhood, sympathy with responsibility for childhood, could make the darkness, stuffiness, and noise of the exhibition tolerable. Even Lady Merrifield trusted her flock to its two elders, and enjoyed a tete-a-tete evening with her brother, who profited by it to advise her strongly to send Dolores to their sister Jane before harm was done to her own children.
‘I would not see that little Mysie of yours spoilt for all the world,’ said he.
‘Nor I; but I don’t think it likely to happen.’
‘Do you know that they are always after each other, chattering in their bedrooms at night. I hear them through the floor.’
‘Only one night—Mysie told me all about it—I believe Mysie will do more for that poor child than any of us.’
Uncle Regie shrugged his shoulders a little.
‘Yes, I know I was wrong before, when I wouldn’t take Jane’s warning; but that was not about one of my own, and, besides, poor Dolores is very much altered.’
‘I’ll tell you what, Lily, when any one, I don’t care who, man, or woman, or child, once is given up to that sort of humbug and deceit, carrying it on a that girl, Dolores, had done, I would never trust again an inch beyond what I could see. It eats into the very marrow of the bones—everything is acting afterwards.’
‘That would be saying no repentance was possible—that Jacob never could become Israel.’