"I think it will be good for Penelope, too, to have a few housekeeping duties," said Cousin Charlotte, smiling as she laid her gentle hand on Pen's shoulder. "It will help to balance the dreamy side of her—at any rate until Angela grows older; while Angela—well, Angela is a born housekeeper and farmer combined, and I prophesy that within a year or so she will be keeping the house and all of you in such order and comfort as to be a pattern to the country round."
Angela's face grew radiant. "I'd love to," she said joyously; "but I wish—the only thing I wish is that we could all live together. I don't want to leave you, Cousin Charlotte, yet I want to be with—you understand, don't you?"
Yes, Cousin Charlotte understood. They all felt the same; but when the three had left their old home for the new one it was only, as one might say, to live in two houses instead of one, for never a day passed but what they were down at Miss Charlotte's, and so the change was not such a wrench as all had feared. Miss Charlotte insisted on continuing to teach them all—at any rate, she said, until they were obliged to go away to school.
Mademoiselle Leperier, who actually went to call on Mrs. Carroll, declared her health and spirits were so much improved by the new interest the children had provided her with that she begged to be allowed to give them all lessons in French, and singing, too.
"I foresee that I shall have no housekeeper after all," said Mrs. Carroll with a sigh, "but I suppose I shall manage somehow, and the children are being educated, which is something. One must think of them first, I suppose."
Esther felt a pang of doubt when she heard the words. Ought she not, after all, to give up her happy home with Cousin Charlotte, where by this time she had completely settled down, and come up to take care of her mother? She would see but little of Mademoiselle if she did, she saw that plainly, and there would be very little time for study, but there was her father to think of, and his comfort.
But when she laid her doubts before her father and Cousin Charlotte, they bade her put them out of her head. She tried to, though she doubted their advice; and it was only years later, when she was a well-educated, cultured woman, full of interests and good aims, that she understood the wisdom of Cousin Charlotte's plan in taking her away, at least until her education was complete, from where she would have become little but a household drudge, worked beyond her strength, her talents, her greatest interests undeveloped, her temper irritated and ruined as it was when first she came to Dorsham; and she felt deeply grateful for the understanding and loving care which had surrounded her at so critical a time.
CHAPTER XIX.
Five years have gone by since Mr. and Mrs. Carroll returned from Canada to the little house on the moor which they have never left, or desired to leave, since.