'I want you,' Betty said, 'and if trouble is coming, and the stock sold, and that dreadful young Squire comes here, I shall be frightened without you.'
'He won't come here any more, Bet; he has made up his mind, and he will stick to it, and I want to hear what Mr Lambert says about it all. I suppose it is lawful, if the paper was signed by grandfather, but I should like to tell the whole story to a man who knows about such things. Now, I am going to write my letter to Madam Lambert, and I shall be off to Bristol before the end of the week.'
There was in Bryda's determination a dash of romance as well as of keen desire to do something to help her grandfather in his sore strait.
Of course it may be questioned whether Betty, pursuing the even tenor of her way, and letting nothing interfere with her household work, was not more in the line of duty than her beautiful sister. But the two sisters were, as often happens, so entirely different in character that one cannot be judged by the same rules as the other. The impulsive enthusiast and the matter-of-fact, practical labourer in the field see things from a different standpoint.
In this case there was no division of heart between the two.
Betty believed in Bryda, and had for the whole of her short life looked on her as superior to herself, and to any of the few acquaintances of their own age whom the sisters knew, and she was quite content to take the subordinate place and sit at the feet of her beautiful sister.
Betty fetched an inkhorn and two quills from a cupboard by their bed, and placed them on a somewhat rickety table, where Bryda's few books lay—books well worn and studied, books which fed her romance—two volumes of the Rambler and Spectator, Pope's verses, and last, but not least, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.
On the style of these English classics Bryda had formed hers, and thus her expressions were somewhat quaint, and yet she was free from the stilted and flowery mannerism of the women of her time who had received a superficial education.
Bryda might be said to be self-educated. Her schooling had been of the narrow type afforded by a 'decayed gentlewoman' in a neighbouring large village, who had undertaken to instruct her pupils in reading, writing, and arithmetic, with fine needlework and the rudiments of French.
These rudiments seldom advanced beyond the auxiliary verbs and the pronouns, but Miss Darcy still kept school at Pensford, and spoke with pride of her late talented pupil Miss Palmer.