A Plucky Girl

by L. T. Meade

At dinner that day Mrs. Fanning and Mrs. Armstrong sat side by side. Mrs. Fanning had taken a great fancy to Mrs. Armstrong, and they usually during the meal sat with their heads bent towards one another, talking eagerly, and often glancing in the direction of Albert Fanning and Miss Armstrong and me. Mrs. Fanning had an emphatic way of bobbing her head whenever she looked at me, and after giving me a steady glance, her eyes involuntarily rolled round in the direction of Mr. Fanning.

I was so well aware of these glances that I now never pretended to see them, but not one of them really escaped my notice. After dinner that evening the good lady came up to my side.

"Well, my dear, well," she said, "and how are you bearing up?"

"Bearing up?" I answered, "I don't quite understand."

Now of course no one in the boarding-house was supposed to know anything whatever with regard to mother's health. The consultation of the doctors had been so contrived that the principal boarders had been out when it took place, therefore I knew that Mrs. Fanning was not alluding to the doctors. She sat down near me.

"Ah," she said, "I thought, and I told my dear son Albert, that a man of that sort would not stay very long. You are bearing up, for you are a plucky sort of girl, but you must be feeling it a good bit. I am sorry for you, you have been a silly girl, casting your eyes at places too high for you, and never seeing those good things which are laid so to speak at your very feet. You are like all the rest of the world, but if you think that my Albert will put up with other people's leavings, you are finely mistaken."

"Really, Mrs. Fanning," I answered, "I am completely at a loss to know what you are talking about."

Here I heard Mrs. Armstrong's hearty and coarse laugh in my ear.

"Ha! ha!" said Mrs. Armstrong, "so she says she doesn't know. Well now then, we won't allude any further to the subject. Of course it ain't likely that she would give herself away. Few young ladies of the Miss Westenra Wickham type do. Whatever else they don't hold with, they hold on to their sinful pride, they quite forget that they are worms of the dust, that their fall will come, and when it comes it's bitter, that's what I say; that's what I have said to Marion, when Marion has been a little put out, poor dear, with the marked and silly attentions of one who never meant anything at all. It was only before dinner I said to Marion, 'You wouldn't like to be in Miss Wickham's shoes to-night, would you, Marion? You wouldn't like to be wearing the willow, would you, my girl?' And she said no, she wouldn't, but then she added, 'With my soul full of Art, mother, I always can have my resources,' and that is where Marion believes, that if she were so unlucky as to be crossed in love, she would have the advantage of you, Miss Wickham, for you have plainly said that you have no soul for h'Art."

"All that talk of Art makes me downright sick," here interrupted Mrs. Fanning. "That's where I admire you, Miss Wickham. You are very nice to look at, and you have no nonsense about you, and it's my belief that you never cared twopence about that high-falutin' young man, and that now he has gone, you'll just know where your bread is buttered. Sit along side of me, dear, and we will have a little discourse about Albert, it's some time since we had a good round talk about my dear and godly son."