The Grey Monk

by T. W. Speight

The Miss Thursbys had come to reside at St. Oswyth’s when Ethel was about two years old. She was an orphan, and who, if not they, should take charge of the parentless girl and bring her up as their own? Even then they were spinsters of mature age, but beyond silvering their hair in some measure, the intervening years had changed them scarcely at all. They belonged to that happy class of persons, with equable tempers, untroubled by dyspepsia and uncorroded by pessimism, whom Time loves to touch with the gentlest of fingers. He does not overlook them entirely, but the furrows he traces on their placid brows are few and far between. And so they go on for years, growing older by gradations so gentle as to be scarcely perceptible; for, say as we will, the old scythe-man has his favourites.

The sisters, on coming to St. Oswyth’s, had bought Vale View House—a substantial modern-built mansion, standing in its own pleasant grounds, but a world too big for the requirements of their unpretentious establishment. That, however, was nobody’s business but their own.

There they had settled down, and there, in “quiet innocency,” it was their hope to spend the remaining term of their lives.

They had a joint income, derivable in part from property left them by their father, and in part by their brother, of about eight hundred pounds a year. In addition to their faithful Tamsin, they kept a couple of maid-servants, a cook, a youth in buttons, and a man who combined the duties of gardener with those of groom to Flossie, the pony driven by them in their pretty little basket-carriage. They came of a Quaker stock, but their father had seceded when they were quite young. They still, however, retained much of the traditional simplicity of dress and demeanour of their progenitors and “thee’d” and “thou’d” each other when they were alone, but rarely, or never, when in the company of others.

Be it known, further, that Miss Matilda and Miss Jane were twins, they having been born within half-an-hour of each other.

Owing, however, to some stupid mismanagement on the part of the nurse, they had got “mixed,” so to speak, when only a few hours old, and it was not positively known which of them was the elder.

In this embarrassing state of affairs they had long ago—that is to say, from the date of their commencing to keep house together—come to a mutual arrangement by which they agreed to take it in turns, month and month about, to enact the part of elder sister, during which time the other deferred to her in every way, only, in her turn, to occupy the superior position and be deferred to throughout the following month.

It was an arrangement well understood among the circle of their friends and acquaintance, but, in order that there should be no mistake in the matter, each in turn, during the month she filled the rôle of elder sister, wore round her neck, by way of distinguishing token, an old-fashioned gold chain from which was suspended an equally old-fashioned locket, which, when open, displayed on one side a miniature of their mother, and on the other a lock of their father’s hair.

Thus it came to pass that whenever people visited at Vale View House, or whenever they were called upon by the sisters, they would nudge each other and whisper, “This is Miss Matilda’s month,” or Miss Jane’s, according to which of them was wearing the chain and locket; and to that one they would have been considered by the sisters as lacking in good manners, had they failed to address her as “Miss Thursby,” or to treat her with an added shade of deference as representing for the time being the head of the family.

By every one who knew them, both rich and poor (and to numbers of poor people they were very well known indeed) the ladies of Vale View were beloved and respected; although it might be that there were not wanting some would-be “superior” persons who smiled to themselves at certain old-fashioned ways and quaint simplicities of speech and manner which they were quite incapable of appreciating. But such people are to be met with everywhere. It was Mrs. Trippington-Fynes, a new-comer at St. Oswyth’s, and regarded as quite an acquisition to the somewhat restricted circle of society in the little town, who, after having been introduced to the Misses Thursby and chatted with them awhile, remarked to Mrs. Sandilands, wife of the popular squire of that name: