My father, holding these ideas, did not feel at liberty to seek safety himself and leave his poor people as sheep without a shepherd. He would gladly have sent my mother and myself to a place of safety, but my mother would not hear of leaving him, nor did they see their way clear to part with me. So we remained together till I was fourteen years old. My mother instructed me in all sorts of womanly accomplishments, and from Mrs. Grace, I learned to do wonderful feats of needlework, especially in darning, cut work, and satin stitch, which in my turn, I taught to Lucille, with my mother's full approbation, for she said I learned in teaching. And besides, in these days of flight and exile, it behoved every one to practise those arts by which they might earn their bread in a strange land.
These lessons were sometimes very pleasant to both of us; at others they were disturbed by that spirit of jealousy which had always been Lucille's bane, and which, as she did not strive to conquer it, increased upon her. She was always vexed that I should do anything which she could not, and if she could not almost directly equal or excel the pattern I set before her, she would abandon the work in disgust, sometimes with expressions of contempt, sometimes with an outburst of temper which made me fairly afraid of her for the time.
But we always made up our quarrels again, for she was really anxious to learn, and besides that I think she truly loved me at that time. Poor Lucille! David I seldom saw. He had gone, with the full approbation of his father and mine, to learn the trade of a ship-carpenter at Dieppe, where he soon distinguished himself by his skill. His holidays, which were few and far between, he always spent at home, and he never came without bringing presents to his family, and some little product of his skill and ingenuity—a reel, a little casket inlaid with ivory or precious woods, or a small frame for my embroidery. I have one or two of these things still.
My own temptations did not lie toward jealousy, which was one reason perhaps that I had so much patience with Lucille; for I have observed that people usually have the least toleration for the faults most resembling their own. I was always, from my earliest years, a dreamy, imaginative child. I heard but little of the world—that world in which my uncle and aunt lived at court. But now and then I got a peep at it through the medium of the plays and tales which my other uncle would persist in sending—for I am sorry to say that I had more than once repeated the offence of stealing and studying some of these books—and this same world had great charms for me.
I had been less with my mother than usual for some months, for she and my father had many private consultations from which I was excluded. I used to take my work to the top of the old tower or out in the orchard, and while my fingers were busy with my stocking or my pattern, my fancy was making me a grand demoiselle, and leading me to balls and gardens and all the scenes of the English court.
Of the English court, I say, for my wildest dreams at that time never led me to the court of Louis XIV. That was too closely associated with the dangers and inconveniences of our condition for me to think of it with anything but horror. Thus I spent many hours worse than unprofitably. Then my conscience would be aroused by some Bible reading with my mother or some tale of suffering heroism from my father, and I would cast aside my dreams and return to those religious duties which at other times were utterly distasteful to me. In short, I was double-minded, and as such was unstable in all my ways.
[CHAPTER IV.]
TRUST AND DISTRUST.