“Yes! a carriage,” she resumed—“I ask you, why don’t you get one? Don’t tell me you can’t afford it. I know better.”
“I cannot tell what ye know, love,” said Mr Kerr; “but a carriage is out of the question.”
“It is not out of the question,” she resumed; “and question or no question, you must have one. Do you suppose I am to be kept here like a nun all my life?”
More conversation of a similar character passed between them; but it ended in this, that within two months Walter Kerr had a coachman, a carriage, and a pair of horses.
But in noticing the doings of the second Mrs Kerr, I have overlooked the situation of the children of poor Hannah. I have seen stepmothers who have been as kind to the children entrusted to their care—I have thought even more so—than if they had been their own. But such, the reader will already have imagined, was not the treatment of the children of Hannah Jerdan. Within twelve months from their father’s marriage, they became subjected to daily, almost hourly scenes of cruel, petty, and capricious persecution.
But they endured their hard treatment and murmured not. In the society of each other they were happy—they spoke of their mother and wept. To Jacobini she was as a dream-mother—like the “dream-children” of poor matchless Elia.
But Francis remembered his mother; and by that name he could never be brought to call her who had now taken her place. Mrs Kerr, indeed, though she had no children of her own, was wont to say—
“Don’t let the creatures call me mother.”
Time had passed on until Francis was a boy, or, perhaps, I should say a youth, of nearly fourteen, and Jacobini was approaching twelve. Now, it occurred, that, at the time I refer to, she had offended her stepmother, in what way I know not; but, according to the statement of the latter, it was an every-day offence—although Jacobini was a gentle child, docile as her mother was. But Mrs Kerr was in an evil humour, and, after having caused her favourite serving-maid to beat the child in her presence, not satisfied with the punishment she had received, she began to chastise her herself.