Mrs. Day's Daughters

by Mary E. Mann

A Householder

When it was explained to her that a man was to be put into the shop to give her a holiday, Mrs. Day refused the indulgence. Her heart was broken, but she was not ill. To have had a little time to give to Franky—to take him for walks in the country, to read to him, to help him with his favourite occupation of painting old numbers of the Illustrated News and Punch would have been a joy. Often she had longed for the leisure to do these things. But now that Franky was gone, where was the use of leisure? She did not even want the leisure to cry. She who had wept so often in this latest sorrow could shed no tears.

Deleah cried, wetting the pillow nightly with her tears. When talking of matters quite unconnected with the lost child the tears would come welling up, drowning the beautiful hazel eyes; would tremble, as she tried to go on talking, on the thick black lashes; would roll, she pretending not to notice, down her cheeks.

Bessie cried—howled, even, lying with her face buried in the sofa cushion, calling in a smothered voice upon Franky's name.

Emily cried, cleaning with spirits of ammonia the shabby school suit whose odour had so offended the nostrils of the elder sister. Putting yet another patch in the hinder portions of the trousers, the only use of such labours being that it delayed the laying away of the little garments for ever.

But the mother was denied such easy expression of sorrow that was beyond words and beyond tears. "I am not ill. Mr. Pretty and I can manage," she said, and the substitute supplied by George Boult was sent back.

Mr. Pretty was very good to her, giving up, for the time being, his surreptitious smokes in the cellar, his skylarking with the youths of his own age who passed the door, giving his serious attention to duties he had consistently shirked hitherto.

Every one who came near the bereaved mother committed the common mistake of ignoring her loss. Even her daughters did this as much as possible; so that in the place where the child's name had been on every lip it was no longer heard.

Those who have endured such a loss know how the ear sickens for the sound of a name which yet the tongue refuses to utter; how the heart stirs to the music of it when at length it is pronounced.

Mr. Pretty did not understand this, but also he did not know the accepted creed that of the newly dead it is kindest not to speak. He had not seemed very fond of the child, had often complained of him as a hindrance when Franky had wished to help him to grind the coffee or to clean the currants, yet he had laid by a store of sayings and doings which he drew on now for his mother's ear. Stories of Franky's naughtiness, even: of his partiality for the neighbourhood of a certain drawer which contained preserved cherries. Of his cheek in daring to address the assistant as "Pretty" without the Mr., and, the youth objecting, his ready substitution of an adjective which certainly was more descriptive of his appearance. Of his riding on Mr. Pretty's back when he, in pursuit of his duty, must crawl on all fours under the counter; his clinging to his legs when duty again called him to mount the steps for the topmost shelf. Nothing was too absurd, no tiny record too trivial to be precious in the mother's ears.