“The wind blew nice and strong last night,” said Dick; “it would be pleasant in the Channel. I say, mamma, I hope Frederick liked it. How queer he would look this morning! What a thing it is not to be able to stand a breeze at sea! You should have seen us off the Needles in the last equinoctial, in old Summerdale’s yacht.”
“Don’t tell me about it,” said Mrs. Eastwood, closing her eyes and setting down her tea-cup. “Some of these days you will hear that Mr. Summerdale and his yacht have gone to the bottom: and I am sure, though I would not be uncharitable to any man, I think he deserves it: carrying boys away in a storm without the knowledge of their people. I thought I should have died.”
“I was a good bit more like dying, and I did not mind,” cried Dick. “It was glorious. The noise, so that you couldn’t hear yourself talk, and the excitement, and the confusion, and the danger! Hadn’t we just a squeak for it? It was gloriously jolly,” cried Dick, rubbing his hands at the recollection. He looked so wickedly pleased with the escapade that his mother could not help snubbing him on the spot.
“I hope you have got a great deal of work done this morning. Alice tells me you got up directly when you were called. And you must remember, Dick, how very short the time is getting,” she said, in her softest tones. “I would not for the world deprive you of a single advantage; but seven-and-sixpence an hour is a very great deal to pay unless you take the full advantage of it. And now I shall have another child to provide for,” Mrs. Eastwood added, sighing faintly. Poor Dick’s random mood was over. He said something about mathematics in general which was not complimentary to that lofty science.
“If it was to be of any use to a fellow after I should not mind,” he said. “It is the doing it all for no good that riles one. If I were to be mathematical master somewhere, or head accountant, or even a bookkeeping fellow——. You need not cry ‘Oh, oh!’ You ain’t in Parliament, Nell, and never can be; that’s a comfort. Girls ought to talk of things they understand. I don’t interfere with your fiddle-de-jigs. That’s what discourages a fellow. Besides, mathematics are horribly hard; ladies that never opened a Euclid,” said Dick, with dignity, “are quite incapable of forming an idea.”
“They tell the best in the examination,” said Mrs. Eastwood. “When you have passed you will have no more trouble with them. But we must not forget how many marks there are for mathematics; and you must not be discouraged, Dick. But you know, children, if we are to have a new member in the family, we shall require to think of economy more than ever. I do not see anything we can actually put down,” the mother said, with deliberation, and a sigh to the memory of the carriage. “The only thing I could think of was the fires in our bedrooms, and really that would not be good for your healths. But we must be generally economical. And the very first principle of economy is making the best use of what we have. So recollect, Dick.”
“I’m going, mamma,” he said, and pulled the book out of his coat pocket which had been keeping him company all the morning. Mrs. Eastwood followed him to the door with her kind eyes.
“I really think, though he is such a harum-scarum, that he is doing his work, poor boy,” she said, with that fond maternal confidence which is often so indifferently deserved.
“Yes, yes, mamma,” cried Nelly, with some impatience, not feeling all the interest in the subject her mother did. “But never mind Dick, he’ll do very well, I daresay. Come and see what I want to have done to the little room.”
The Elms was an old-fashioned house. It was built, as houses in England are rarely built now-a-days, in those suites of rooms which are so general on the Continent. Mrs. Eastwood’s room occupied the whole width of the wing. It had an alcove, which was like an inner room, for the bed, and abundance of space for reading tables and writing tables, and sofas and book-cases in the rest of the spacious chamber, which was like a French room in every way, with its dressing-closet opening from the alcove, and all the less beautiful accessories of the toilet kept well out of sight. Ellinor’s room opened from her mother’s, and opening from that again was the little room which was to be prepared for the new-comer. Already it was all pulled to pieces by Nelly’s commands, and under her supervision; and a brisk little workwoman sat in Nelly’s own chamber surrounded by billows of bright new chintz, with a running pattern of rose buds and fern leaves. A tall old woman, in a black gown and cap, stood beside this artist, advising it seemed and disapproving. Ellinor stopped with the anxious and indeed servile politeness of fear to speak to this personage. “How kind of you, Alice, to come and help,” she said; “I hope you like the chintz. Don’t you think we shall make the room look nice after all, when it has been papered and cleaned?”