Hildegarde's Home

by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

She looked from one to the other, till the fixed gaze of the pictured eyes grew really uncomfortable, and she fancied that she saw a look of impatience in those of the Scottish chieftain. Then she looked again at the space above the mantel-piece, and, after measuring it carefully with her eyes, came to a new resolution.

"You see," she said, taking up a third picture, a beautiful photograph of the Sistine Madonna, "I put her in the middle, and you on each side, and then neither of you can say a word."

This arrangement gave great satisfaction; and the other pictures, the Correggio cherubs, Kaulbach's "Lili," the Raphael "violin-player," and "St. Cecilia," were easily disposed of on the various panels, while over the dressing-table, where she could see it from her bed, was a fine print of Murillo's lovely "Guardian Angel."

Hildegarde drew a long breath of satisfaction as she looked round on her favourites in their new home. "So dear they are!" she said fondly. "I wish Hester could see them. Don't you suppose she had any pictures? There are no marks of any on the wall. Well, and now for the books!"

Hammer and screwdriver were brought, and soon the box was opened and the books in their places. Would any girls like to know what Hildegarde's books are? Let us take a glance at them, as they stand in neat rows on the plain, smooth shelves. Those big volumes on the lowest shelf are Scudder's "Butterflies," a highly valued work, full of coloured plates, over which Hildegarde sighs with longing rapture; for, from collecting moths and butterflies for her friend, Bubble Chirk, she has become an ardent collector herself, and in one of the unopened cases downstairs is an oak cabinet with glass-covered drawers, very precious, containing several hundred "specimens."

Here is "Robin Hood," and Gray's Botany, and Percy's "Reliques," and a set of George Eliot, and one of Charles Kingsley, and the "Ingoldsby Legends," and Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," which looks as if it had been read almost to pieces, as indeed it has. (There is a mark laid in at the "Burial March of Dundee," which Hildegarde is learning by heart. This young woman has a habit of keeping a book of poetry open on her dressing-table when she is doing her hair, and learning verses while she brushes out her long locks. It is a pleasant habit, though it does not tend to accelerate the toilet.)

On the next shelf is "Cranford," also well thumbed, and everything that Mrs. Ewing ever wrote, and "Betty Leicester," and Miss Yonge's historical stories, and the "Tales of a Grandfather," and "Lorna Doone," and the dear old "Days of Bruce," and "Scottish Chiefs," side by side with the "Last of the Barons," and the "Queens of England," and the beloved Homer, in Derby's noble translation, also in brown leather. Here, too, is "Sesame and Lilies," and Carlyle on Hero-Worship.

The upper shelf is entirely devoted to poetry, and here are Longfellow and Tennyson, of course, and Milton (not "of course"), and Scott (in tatters, worse off than Aytoun), and Shelley and Keats, and the Jacobite Ballads, and Allingham's Ballad Book, and Mrs. Browning, and "Sir Launfal," and the "Golden Treasury," and "Children's Garland." There is no room for the handy volume Shakespeare, so he and his box must live on top of the bookcase, with his own bust on one side and Beethoven's on the other. These are flanked in turn by photographs of Sir Walter, with Maida at his feet, and Edwin Booth as Hamlet, both in those pretty glass frames which are almost as good as no frame at all.

"And if you are not a pleasant sight," said Hildegarde, falling back to survey her work, and addressing the collection comprehensively, "then I never saw one, that's all. Isn't it nice, dear persons?" she continued, turning to the portraits, which from their places over the mantel-piece had a full view of the bookcase.

But the persons expressed no opinion. Indeed, I am not sure that William the Silent could read English; and Dundee's knowledge of literature was slight, if we may judge from his spelling. I should not, however, wish Hildegarde to hear me say this.