Elsie's scholarship

by Emma Leslie

"Yes, I know she is. But you have not told me why you brought them here now," said his mother, impatiently.

"Oh, well, I told her you would do anything you could to help her; and then I asked if I should bring the bag here for you to look over. You know, mother, you are not like Mrs. Ramsay a bit. You don't sit down and cry over things, and so I thought—"

"But, Herbert, you had no right to think that I should like to go through Mr. Ramsay's private papers."

"But you could do it better than Mrs. Ramsay I am sure; and you wouldn't cry over it, as she would," protested Herbert.

Mrs. Milner was very vexed that her son should have put such a literal construction upon her offer to help her friend; and she thought Mrs. Ramsay ought to have known better, than to send her such a task. And so she resolved not to touch the bag this evening, but to call and see the widow the next day, and see if she could not rectify what she considered must be Herbert's blunder in the matter.

So the bag was put away, and mother and son spent a pleasant evening together, which was only once disturbed, and that was by a question that had been talked of occasionally between them lately, concerning an unknown aunt of Herbert's.

Mrs. Milner was a widow, and Herbert was her only son; and until lately, he thought he had no other relative, for his father was an only child. And somehow, without a word having been said about the matter, he had come to the conclusion that his mother also had neither brother nor sister. When, all at once, his mother told him that he had an aunt and cousins somewhere, and she would now like to know where they could be found, but it was so many years since she had heard anything of her younger sister, that she sometimes thought she must be dead.

It almost took the boy's breath away at first to hear that somewhere in the world were people who could claim relationship with him. And every now and again he would ask some question or other about these unknown friends. But his mother could tell him very little, beyond the fact that her sister had offended everybody who knew her, by marrying a man they considered beneath her; and as she refused to take anybody's advice, she was allowed to drift away from all who knew her.

"But the thought of my poor sister Elsie troubled your father before he died, for he thought he had perhaps been hard upon her. And so I promised I would try and find her; and he left some money for her if ever she needed it," she added, when telling her son of this sister.

Mrs. Milner thought she had better speak thus plainly to her son, when she put a carefully worded advertisement into some of the London newspapers; for there was no telling what might come of it. The unknown sister, or her despised husband, might appear at the door of their fashionable house at any time, and Herbert was not one to keep such a matter to himself. And so, to prevent him talking to other people about it, if such a thing should happen, Mrs. Milner told him beforehand.