“Better keep family matters in the family, and not go to Mrs. Johnson, who knows but little more of such things than you do,” she said to Hester, who, for once in her life, was hoodwinked, and consented to let Mrs. Walter Scott take Magdalen and the check into her own hands.
There were two or three trips to New York, and two or three milliners and dressmakers’ bills paid and receipted and said nothing about. There were also bundles and bundles of dry goods forwarded to Millbank, from Stewart’s, and Arnold’s, and Hearne’s, and one would have supposed that Magdalen was a young lady just making her débût into fashionable society, instead of a little girl of twelve going away to school. The receipted bills of said bundles were all scrupulously sent across the water to Roger, to whom Mrs. Walter Scott wrote a very friendly letter, begging pardon for the liberty she had taken of going to his house uninvited, but expressing herself as so lonely and tired of the hot city, and so anxious to visit the haunt sacred to her for the sake of her dear husband, Roger’s only brother. Then she spoke of Magdalen in the highest terms of praise, and said she had taken it upon herself to see that she was properly fitted out, and as Roger, being a bachelor, was not expected to know how much was actually required nowadays for a young miss’s wardrobe, she sent him the bills that he might know what she was getting, and stop her if she was too extravagant.
This was her first letter, to which Roger returned a very gracious answer, thanking her for her interest in Magdalen, expressing himself as glad that she was at Millbank, asking her to prolong her visit as long as she found it agreeable, and saying he was not very likely to quarrel about the bills, as he had very little idea of the cost of feminine apparel.
Roger was not naturally suspicious, and it never occurred to him in glancing over the bills to wonder what a child of twelve could do with fifteen yards of blue silk or three yards of velvet. For aught he knew, blue silk and black silk and velvet were as appropriate for Magdalen as the merinos and Scotch plaids, and delaines and French calicoes, and ginghams, and little striped crimson and black silk which the lady purchased for Magdalen at reduced rates, and had made up for her according to her own good taste.
In Mrs. Walter Scott’s second letter she spoke of two or three other bills which she had forgotten to enclose in her last, and which were now mislaid so that she could not readily find them. The amount was a little over one hundred dollars, and she mentioned it so that he might know just what disposition was made of his check while the money was in her hands. Then it did occur to Roger that Magdalen must be having a wonderful outfit, and for a moment a distrust of Mrs. Walter Scott flashed across his mind. But he quickly put it by as unworthy of him, and by way of making amends for the distrust, sent to the lady herself his check for one hundred dollars, which she was to accept for her kindness to Magdalen. Mrs. Walter Scott was in the seventh heaven of happiness, and petted Magdalen more than ever, and confirmed old Hester in her belief that “she had joined the church or met with a great change.”
The will was never mentioned in Hester’s presence, but to Magdalen Mrs. Walter Scott talked about it, not as anything in which she was especially interested, but as something which it was well enough to find if it really existed, and gave, as she believed it did, more money to Frank than the other one allowed him. Magdalen was completely dazzled and charmed by the great lady whom she thought so beautiful and grand, and whose long curls she stroked and admired, wondering a little why Mrs. Irving was so much afraid of her doing anything to straighten them, when her own hair, if once wet and curled and dried, could not well be combed out of place. Magdalen believed in Mrs. Walter Scott, and looked with a kind of disdain upon Mrs. Johnson and Nellie, who had once stood for her ideas of queens and princesses. Now they were mere ciphers when compared with Mrs. Walter Scott, who took her to drive, and kept her in her own room, and kissed her affectionately when she promised of her own accord “to look for that will until it was found.”
“My little pet, you make me so happy,” she had said; and Magdalen, flushed with pride and flattery, thought how delightful it would be to give the recovered document some day into the beautiful woman’s hands and receive her honeyed words of thanks.
Those were very pleasant weeks for Magdalen which Frank and his mother spent at Millbank; the pleasantest she had ever known, and she enjoyed them thoroughly. The parlors were used every day, and Magdalen walked with quite an air through the handsome rooms, arrayed in some one of her new dresses which improved her so much, and made her, as Frank said, most as handsome as Alice Grey. At her particular request she had a white muslin made and tucked just like Alice’s in the picture, and then went with Frank to Springfield, and sat as Alice sat, with her head leaning on her hands, flowers in her lap, and her wavy hair arranged like Alice’s. It was a striking picture, prettier, if possible, than Alice’s, except that in Magdalen’s face there was an anxious expression, a look of newness, as if she had come suddenly into the dress and the position; whereas Alice was easy and natural, as if tucked muslins and flowers were everyday matters with her. Magdalen was not ashamed of her photograph this time, and she sent a copy to Roger, with the letter which she wrote him, and in which she made Frank the theme of her discourse. There was nothing roundabout in Magdalen’s character. She came directly at what she wanted to say, and Roger was told in plain terms that Magdalen wished he would give Frank a little more money, that he had debts to pay, and had said that if he could get them off his mind he would never incur another, but would work like a dog to earn his own living when once he was through college. If Roger would do this, she, Magdalen, would study so hard at school and be so economical, that perhaps she could manage to save all he chose to send to Frank. Mrs. Irving had bought her more clothes than she needed, and she could make them last for two or three years,—she knew she could.
This was Magdalen’s letter; and a week after Frank’s return to college he was surprised by a request from Roger to send him a list of all his unpaid bills, as he wished to liquidate them. There were some bills which Frank did not care to have come under Roger’s grave inspection; but as these chanced to be the largest of them all, he could not afford to lose the opportunity of having them taken off his hands; and so the list went to Roger, with a self-accusing letter full of promises of amendment. And kind, all-enduring Roger tried to believe his nephew sincere, and paid his debts, and made him a free man again, and wrote him a kind, fatherly letter, full of good advice, which Frank read with his feet on the mantel, an expensive cigar in his mouth, and a mint julep on the table beside him.
Meantime Magdalen had said good-by to Millbank, and was an inmate of Charlestown Seminary, where her bright face and frank, impulsive manner were winning her many friends among the young girls of her own age, and the quickness which she evinced for learning, and the implicit obedience she always rendered to the most trivial rule, were winning her golden laurels from her teachers, who soon came to trust Magdalen Lennox as they had seldom trusted any pupil before her.