CHAPTER XXXIX.
“Oh, papa,” cried Joanna Huntley, bursting into Melmar’s study like a whirlwind, “they’re ill-using Desirée! they shut her out at the door among a crowd, and they threw stones at her, and she might have been killed but for Cosmo Livingstone. I’ll no’ stand it! I’ll rather go and take up a school and work for her mysel’.”
“What’s all this?” said Melmar, looking up in amazement from his newspaper; “another freak about this Frenchwoman—what is she to you?”
“She’s my friend,” said Joanna, “I never had a friend before, and I never want to have another. You never saw anybody like her in all your life; Melmar’s no’ good enough for her, if she could get it for her very own—but I think she would come here for me.”
“That would be kind,” said Mr. Huntley, taking a somewhat noisy pinch of snuff; “but if that’s all you have to tell me, it’ll keep. Go away and bother your mother; I’m busy to-day.”
“You know perfectly well that mamma’s no’ up,” said Joanna, “and if she was up, what’s the use of bothering her? Now, papa, I’ll tell you—I often think you’re a very, very ill man—and Patricia says you have a secret, and I know what keeps Oswald year after year away—but I’ll forgive you every thing if you’ll send for Desirée here.”
“You little monkey!” cried Melmar, swinging his arm through the air with a menaced blow. It did not fall on Joanna’s cheek, however, and perhaps was not meant to fall—which was all the better for the peace of the household—though feelings of honor or delicacy were not so transcendentally high in Melmar as to have made a parental chastisement a deadly affront to the young lady, even had it been inflicted. “You little brat!” repeated the incensed papa, growing red in the face, “how dare you come to me with such a speech—how dare you bother me with a couple of fools like Oswald and Patricia?—begone this moment, or I’ll—” “No, you will not, papa,” interrupted Joanna. “Oswald’s no’ a fool—and I’m no’ a monkey nor a brat, nor little either—and if any thing was to happen I would never forsake you, whatever you had done—but I like Desirée better than ever I liked any one—and she knows every thing—and she could teach me better than all the masters and mistresses in Edinburgh—and if you don’t send for her here to be my governess, I may go to school, but I’ll never learn a single thing again!”
Melmar was perfectly accustomed to be bullied by his youngest child; he had no ideal of feminine excellence to be shocked by Joanna’s rudeness, and in general rather enjoyed it, and took a certain pleasure in the disrespectful straightforwardness of the girl, who in reality was the only member of his family who had any love for him. His momentary passion soon evaporated—he laughed and shook his closed hand at her, no longer threateningly.
“If you like to grow up a dunce, Joan,” he said, with a chuckle, “what the deevil matter is’t to me?”
“Oh, yes, but it is, though,” said Joanna. “I know better—you like people to come to Melmar as well as Patricia does—and Patricia never can be very good for any thing. She canna draw, though she pretends—and she canna play, and she canna sing, and I could even dance better myself. It’s aye like lessons to see her and hear her—and nobody cares to come to see mamma—it’s no’ her fault, for she’s always in bed or on the sofa; but if I like to learn—do you hear, papa?—and I would like if Desirée was here—I know what Melmar might be!”