Two Maiden Aunts

by Mary H. Debenham

'And I'll go home and learn my spelling,' said Godfrey.

And, indeed, he was back in the parlour and at work before Betty came to look for him, on which she gave herself one of her indignant scoldings, telling herself that Godfrey was ten times more fit to be her bachelor uncle than she was to be his maiden aunt.

And so the little household at the cottage went back to the quiet life in which Christmas had made such a pleasant break. Angel and Betty read French and history together, and helped Penny in the kitchen, and taught Godfrey, and walked with him, and mended for him and built castles in the air for him when he was in bed and asleep; and Godfrey learnt his lessons and played with Nancy, and spent all the time he could with Kiah, and in the twilight sat crushed up between his aunts in the great arm-chair and talked about what he would do when he was big and a sailor. Cousin Crayshaw came down every other Saturday and stayed till Monday, and Betty asked herself, as she watched him reading his paper in the evening, whether he could be indeed the same Cousin Crayshaw who had climbed over the school gate, and had danced 'hands across and back again' with Patty for his partner. But, though Cousin Crayshaw did not tell school stories or indulge in country dances at the cottage, still the remembrance of that evening was a link between himself and his young cousins which none of them could forget. The girls did not seem to respect him less because they were less afraid of him and because they ventured to talk about their own pleasures and interests in his presence, and indeed now and then he would ask questions himself, would even call Godfrey to him and want to know about his lessons and how he managed to amuse himself. And as the days got longer the three would coax him into the garden to look at their flowers coming up, and one day Betty boldly offered him an auricula for his button-hole. And though he seemed a little doubtful at first as to whether such an ornament would become a grave and sober person like himself, yet he let her put it in for him, and after that there was never a Sunday that some flower did not appear on his plate at breakfast, placed there by each of the three in turn. One evening, while he was reading the paper, he looked up to see Angel standing by his chair.

'Please, Cousin Crayshaw,' she said, with the colour coming into her cheeks, 'might I read to you for a little while, if you think I could read well enough?'

'It wouldn't interest you, Angelica,' said her cousin in surprise.

'Oh yes, it would,' pleaded Angel, 'especially if—if you would explain about it to us a little. We think, Betty and Godfrey and I, that we know so dreadfully little about the affairs of the country, and every one ought to care about their country, oughtn't they? and we want to understand about the war, because, you see, we must care about our soldiers and sailors, and Captain Maitland is there, you know.'

And so Mr. Crayshaw, with a half-amused smile, let her try, and positively found Betty's eager questions very interesting, and really enjoyed explaining difficulties with Angelica's earnest eyes looking up at him, so that the little household at the cottage became quite politicians, and followed the army and the fleet on the map with the deepest interest. And Pete's prediction was fulfilled, for Captain Maitland actually found time to write Godfrey a most interesting letter, which lived in Godfrey's pocket and slept under his pillow at night, till it tore to pieces in the folds, after which Angel mended it with paste, and it was locked into a box upstairs of which Godfrey kept the key, lest thieves should get into the house and steal it. They were stirring times, those first years of our nineteenth century, when the news from abroad was of fierce struggles by land and sea, when the talk by the fireside and in the village streets was of an invasion that might be, when Englishmen would have to stand shoulder to shoulder, and fight on their own thresholds for country and home. All these things, the battles and the sieges, the plans and counter-plans, the great names of men who helped to change the fate of Europe, we read in our history books.

The shadow of the war, the anxiety about the present and fear about the future, must have hung like a cloud over our country in those years, and yet, notwithstanding, life went on quietly in the homes which the great danger was threatening, and people worked and played and laughed, and cared more on the whole about their own small affairs than about the big affairs of Europe. And so, though those years when England's enemies were watching her across the narrow seas, and wise men were planning and brave men fighting for her liberties, are so interesting in the history books, there is not very much to tell about the good folks at Oakfield. In those days, when no one had begun to think about railways, country people left home very little, and the changes of the seasons, sowing and reaping, hay-time and harvest, made the chief events of their lives; and though it seemed very important to Oakfield, it wouldn't be very interesting to any one else to hear of the wonderful apple crop in the orchard at the Place, or of how the miller's pony strayed away on the common and was lost for two days, or of how Godfrey and Nancy missed their way when out blackberrying, and came home after dark to find the aunts half distracted and Rogers and Pete searching, all over the country.

'The slow, sweet hours that bring us all things good.'

Those words always seem to me to describe the quiet years when nothing particular happens, when we are growing and learning almost without knowing it, getting, as Captain Maitland had said, something to steer by in harder, busier days to come. Godfrey, when he looked back afterwards, couldn't remember any very big events in his Oakfield life—just daily lessons and daily games, stories from Betty, twilight talks with Angel, hours spent by old Kiah's bench at the Place—and yet those 'slow sweet hours,' more than the stirring days afterwards, were to influence his whole life and make a man of him.