Laddie, and Miss Toosey's mission

by Evelyn Whitaker

It was with a very haggard, anxious face that he came into the pretty drawing-room in Harley Street, where Violet sprang up from her low chair by the fire to meet him. How pretty she was! how sweet! how elegant and graceful every movement and look, every detail of her dress! His eyes took in every beauty lovingly, as one who looks his last on something dearer than life, and then lost all consciousness of any other beauty, in the surpassing beauty of the love for him in her eyes. She stretched out both her soft hands to him, with the ring he had given her the only ornament on them, and said, "Tell me about it."

Do not you know some voices that have a caress in every word and a comfort in every tone? Violet Meredith's was such a voice.

"I have come for that," he said; and he would not trust himself to take those hands in his, or to look any longer into her face; but he went to the fire and looked into the red caves among the glowing coals. "I have come to tell you about my mother. I have deceived you shamefully."

And then he told her of his mother, describing her as plainly and carefully as he could, trying to set aside everything fanciful and picturesque, and yet do justice to the kind, simple, old heart, trying to make Violet see the great difference between the old countrywoman and herself. And then he told of her having come to him, to end her days under her son's roof. "I could not ask you to live with her," he ended sadly.

She had clasped her hands round his arm shyly, for it was only a few days since she had had to hide away her love, like a stolen treasure, out of sight.

"It is too late to think of that," she said, with a little coaxing laugh; "too late, for you asked me to be your wife a week ago. Yes, John,"—the name came still with a little hesitation,—"a whole week ago, and I will not let you off. And then I have no mother of my own; she died before I can remember; and it will be so nice to have one, for she will like me for your sake, won't she? And what does it matter what she is like, you silly old John?—she is your mother, and that is quite enough for me. And don't you think I love you more ridiculously than ever because you are so good and noble and true to your old mother, and not ashamed of her because she is not just exactly like other people?" and she laid her soft cheek against his sleeve, by her clasped hands, as she spoke.

But he drew away with almost a shudder. "Love me less, then, Violet; hate me, for I was ashamed of her; I was base and cowardly and untrue, and I wanted to get her out of the way so that no one should know, not even you, and I hurt and wounded her,—her who would have done anything for her 'Laddie,' as she calls me,—and she went away disappointed and sad and sorry, and I cannot find her."

He had sunk down into Violet's low chair and covered up his face with his hands, and through the fingers forced their way the hot, burning tears, while he told of his ineffectual efforts to find her, and his shame and regret.

She stood listening, too pitiful and sorry for words, longing to comfort him; and at last she knelt down and pulled his hands gently away from his face, and whispered very softly, as if he might not like to hear her use his mother's name, "We will find her, never fear; your mother and mine, Laddie." And so she comforted him.

What an awful place London is. I do not mean awful in the sense in which the word is used by fashionable young ladies, or schoolboys, by whom it is applied indiscriminately to a "lark" or a "bore," into which two classes most events in life may, according to them, be divided, and considered equally descriptive of sudden death or a new bonnet. I use it in its real meaning, full of awe, inspiring fear and reverence, as Jacob said, "How dreadful is this place,"—this great London, with its millions of souls, with its strange contrasts of riches and poverty, business and pleasure, learning and ignorance, and the sin everywhere. Awful indeed! and the thought would be overwhelming in its awfulness if we could not say also as Jacob did, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not;" if we did not know that there is the ladder set up, reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ever ascending and descending; if we did not believe that the Lord stands above it. It seemed a very terrible place to the old countrywoman as she wandered about its streets and squares, its parks and alleys, that November day, too dazed and stupefied to form any plan for herself, only longing to get out of sight, that she might not shame her boy. She felt no bitterness against him; for it was not natural when he was a gentleman, and she a poor homely old body?