“My sister Gay tells me that the children are getting so brown and strong with the sea air,” she wrote once, “and that dear little Joyce has quite a nice colour. Thank you so much for your ceaseless care of them; you know I trust you implicitly, Merle, and I have no fear that you will disappoint me; your good sense will carry you safely through any little difficulty that may arise. Write to me as often as you can; your letters are so nice. I am very busy and very tired, for this ball has entailed so much work and fuss, but your letters seem to rest me.”
Rolf was also a serious impediment to my enjoyment. Ever since I had helped him with his kite, he had attached himself to me, and insisted on joining us in all our walks, and in spending the greater part of his day with us. I was tolerably certain in my own mind that this childish infatuation excited Mrs. Markham’s jealousy. Until we had arrived she had been Rolf’s sole companion; he had accompanied her in her drives, harassed her from morning to night with his ceaseless demands for amusements, and had been the secretly dreaded torment of all the visitors to Marshlands, except Mr. Hawtry, who was rather good to him.
His precocity, his love of practical jokes, and his rough impertinence, made him at feud with the whole household; the servants disliked him, and were always bringing complaints of Master Rolf. I believe Judson was fond of him in a way, but then she had had charge of him from a baby.
When Rolf began to desert the drawing-room for the nursery, Mrs. Markham used all her efforts to coax him back to her side, but she might as well have spoken to the wind. Rolf played with Joyce on the beach; he raced her up and down the little hillocks in the orchard, or hunted with her for wild flowers in the lanes that surrounded Marshlands. When the children were asleep, he invaded my quiet with requests to mend his broken toys or join him in some game. I grew quite expert in rigging his new boat, and dressed toy soldiers and sailors by the dozen. Sometimes I was inclined to rebel at such waste of time, but I remembered that Rolf had no playfellows; it was better for him to be playing spillikins or go-bang with me in the nursery than lounging listlessly about the drawing-room, listening to grown-up people’s talk; a natural child’s life was better for his health. Miss Cheriton told me more than once that people who came to the house thought Rolf so much improved. Certainly he was not so pale and fretful after a long morning spent on the beach in wading knee-deep to sail his boat or digging sand wells which Joyce filled out of her bucket. When he grew too rough or boisterous I always called Joyce away, and with Hannah and myself to look after them no harm could come to the children.
I grew rather fond of Rolf, after a time, and his company would not have been irksome to me, but for his tiresome habit of repeating the speeches he had heard in the drawing-room. He always checked himself when he remembered, or when I held up my finger, but the half sentence would linger in my memory.
But this was not the worst. I soon found out that anything I told him found its way into the drawing-room; in fact, Rolf was an inveterate chatterbox. With all his good intentions, he could not hold his tongue, and mischief was often the result.
It was my habit to teach the children little lessons under the guise of a story, sometimes true, sometimes a mere invention. Rolf called them “Fenny’s Anecdotes,” but I had never discovered an anecdote about crossness.
One day I found myself being severely lectured by Mrs. Markham for teaching her son the doctrine of works. “As though we should be saved by our works, Miss Fenton!” she finished, virtuously.
I was too much puzzled to answer; I had no notion what she meant until I remembered that I had induced Rolf to part with some of his pocket-money to relieve a poor blind man that we found sitting by the wayside. Rolf had been sorry for the man, and still more for the gaunt, miserable-looking woman by his side; but when we had gone on our way, followed by voluble Irish blessings, Rolf had rather feelingly lamented his sixpence, and I had told him a little story inculcating the beauty of almsgiving, which had impressed him considerably, and he had retailed a garbled version of it to his mother—hence her rebuke to me. I forget what my defence was, only I remember I repudiated indignantly any such doctrine; but this sort of misunderstanding was constantly arising. If only Rolf would have held his tongue!
But these were mere surface troubles, and I often managed to forget that there was such a person as Mrs. Markham in the world; and, in spite of a few trifling drawbacks, I look back upon this summer as one of the happiest in my life.