When Dolly adopted Mark as a brother, in order to make a double fraternal quartet, she did him a vast service by giving him a friend on whose truth and good sense he could rely at all times.
At first, when the girl spoke to him in her frank fashion about his home, and asked him if this and the other in her own were like it, Mark hesitated, and scarcely knew what to say, whilst his face flushed painfully. How could this dainty maiden realise the difference between her parents beautiful house and its surroundings and the cottage he called home! So he turned the talk from furniture to flowers, and being great on this subject, he delighted and instructed Dolly by telling her about those she loved, and such as grew in his father's garden.
As time went on, Mark, after thinking over the matter, decided to tell this girl friend the exact story of his past life, and to describe, with the utmost minuteness, the cottage home and its contents, as well as the narrow circle in which his parents were satisfied to move.
Dolly listened attentively, picturing the while all that Mark was taking such pains to make clear to her. She could guess, too, what it cost him; but when he finished she bravely looked in his face and said—
"When people have lived so long in one way they cannot change, Mark, can they? They are like old trees—if you try to take them up and plant them somewhere else, the roots cling, and there is no moving them without breaking some. If people choose to live in a little house and wait on themselves, instead of in a big one and be waited on by other people, it is their own business, and nobody has a right to find fault. One working bee is worth a lot of drones, is he not? Any way, if your mother has no servants, she has not them to grumble about all the time she is out calling, as my mamma's visitors do. I do get tired of hearing them, when I am dressed up and sitting in the drawing-room sometimes, and I wish they would talk of something else. So does mamma. I mean to learn how to do everything, and then when I am grown-up, and have a house and servants, I shall be able to tell them what they do not know."
Mark agreed with the wisdom of this resolution; then he said:
"You must not think we are without anything that is really necessary. We have good food, beautifully cooked, and clothes, only they have to be taken great care of. I know my parents are very fond of me; only somehow, I have never been a boy like other boys. I never ran, and jumped, and raced, and got into scrapes, and tore my clothes, or got sent off to bed, as the neighbours' lads did. I think I was born rather old."
Dorothy laughed at this, and Mark joined her, then added that he had been growing younger every day since he came to Claybury, and it was all through Mr. and Mrs. Mitcheson and herself.
"But you work fearfully hard, Fred says."
"Because I want to get one scholarship at least—two if possible. I cannot live at Grimblethorpe always, and unless I can give a very good reason for doing so, my father will insist on my going home, and working as he does. He calls it 'keeping in the old rut.' If I had known no different life, I might have done it, but not now."