“I know,” said Lilias, confidently; “it is a copy. You have had no education, you don’t know what a copy is: but me, I have done them, though never any so pretty as this. Mary is a grown-up lady, old, not like us; it must be Mary’s copy. You should not touch it, you are too little.”
“I will try,” cried Nello, with his eyes upon the brushes. Already he had rubbed against something not yet dry, and had smudged the colour, to the horror of his sister. He had both his elbows upon it and the greater part of his small person.
“Oh, what have you done, you naughty boy!” cried Lilias; “you cannot do it. Let me!”
“Yes, I will do it, I will do it!” cried Nello, seizing the crackling vellum and dashing at it with a brush full of colour. Lilias had to stand and look on, sorest of miseries, while her little brother performed badly what she felt she could have done well. There was a large shield in the centre, upon which the cherished “augmentation,” the chief ornament of the Musgrave arms, was slightly drawn. Gules on a shield argent, it ought to have been—Nello made a blurred dash of bright blue, surrounded by a sea of red. “How it is pretty!” he cried in his half-foreign speech, with a crow of triumph. Colour upon colour! and such colour! the sight would have driven Mr. Musgrave wild.
Lilias uttered a cry of horror; but the work of destruction was very captivating. Close to the vellum was the original draught of the genealogical tree, from which Mary had been copying. Lilias took possession of this, and carried it away to the table in the recess. She meant only to look at it, but the temptation was too much for her. At the bottom of the page an escutcheon void of all colour gradually caught her eye, a little white space which might be made, she thought, to resemble the others with great advantage to the whole. That this came opposite to the name of John Musgrave was nothing to the child, but the sight of it wrought her by degrees into a sort of creative frenzy. She would not spoil it as Nello was doing, but to complete what was wanting could be no harm. Lilias took a brush and filled it with fine broad vermilion, a colour about which there could be no mistake, and painted the vacant shield a strong decided gules, safe from any accident. The outline was not very firm, and there were overflowings and runs of colour outside, but at all events the hue was undeniable. She was standing looking at it with a satisfied yet agitated mind, with the brush still in her hand, when her elbow was grasped by some one behind and a hand laid on her shoulder. In the start she gave, the child’s arm made a nervous jerk of the brush over the paper, and ran a tremulous line of red over some half-dozen of the kindred names. “Mary!” she cried with a sudden perception of wrong-doing. But Lilias did not weep or excuse herself. She got quite pale, with a red spot on each cheek, and stood, not even dropping the brush, looking up at her judge, with the corners of her mouth suddenly turned downwards, and a gleam of awakened understanding in her alarmed eyes.
“Lilias! I thought I could trust you; what have you been doing?” cried Mary. “And Nello?” she added, looking round with dismay at the more important work. Nello had already been roused to that instinctive sense of harm which comes with the arrival of an aggrieved person. But he did not face his victim as Lilias did. He threw down his streaming pencil on the vellum, got down from his chair in the twinkling of an eye, and fled to take shelter with Martuccia, who, ever ready to defend, and yet unaware who was wrong, put an arm round him at once and faced Miss Musgrave with prompt defiance.
“Oh Mary!” cried Lilias, trembling, “Nello did not mean it. He is so little. Nello did not know.”
Mary was not so angelically sweet as to be indifferent to the damage done, but she had not the freedom of reproof which people exercise with children familiar to them. The little meddlers were still strangers. So she restrained herself and said nothing. She went to the parchment and began to sponge off the still wet colour. Nello kept in his refuge regarding her from afar, ready to bolt behind Martuccia if she made any hostile advances and hide himself in his nurse’s skirt. But Lilias followed Miss Musgrave closely as her shadow. She watched the sponging with the gravest anxious attention. She kept herself close against Mary’s dress, touching it, and put herself in Mary’s way, and interposed her wistful face, now quite pale and troubled, between the vellum and Mary’s eyes. At last her aunt said, perhaps somewhat peevishly, “What do you want, child? You have done harm enough for one morning. Pray go out of my way.”
“Have we done much harm?” said Lilias, with strained and anxious eyes.
“Yes; you have spoiled my week’s work, you mischievous children,” said Mary, melting a little. “I shall have to do it over again. I did not expect this, Lilias, from you.”