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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain," Charlotte M. Yonge intricately weaves a narrative that explores the moral and spiritual dilemmas faced by individuals in Victorian society. This novel, a continuation of her earlier work "The Daisy Chain," employs rich, descriptive prose and conveys a strong didactic purpose. Yonge adeptly portrays the contrasting lives of characters, engaging readers with themes of familial duty, social expectations, and the quest for personal integrity in a rapidly changing world. The interplay of character development and moral reflection creates a narrative that challenges the reader's perceptions of virtue and redemption. Charlotte M. Yonge, a prolific Victorian novelist, was deeply immersed in the religious and social issues of her time. Her extensive background in theological education, coupled with her commitment to social reform, profoundly influenced her writing. Yonge's work is not merely fiction; it serves as a reflective lens on the sociocultural fabric of Victorian England, embodying her conviction that literature can instigate moral improvement. Through her vibrant characters, she seeks to portray diverse paths toward faith and ethical living. This novel is highly recommended for readers interested in Victorian literature, moral philosophy, and the social dynamics of the 19th century. Yonge's compelling narrative invites readers to reflect on the complexities of life, making "The Trial" a pivotal read for those seeking deeper understanding of societal values and personal responsibility. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain
Table of Contents
Introduction
When a sudden calamity exposes the fragile seam between public justice and private conscience, a close-knit Victorian community finds that the most searching trial is not held in court but in the hidden forum of the heart, where loyalty contends with truth, reputation struggles with repentance, and the steady disciplines of faith and family are tested by the press of doubt, fear, and love, drawing each person to discover whether integrity is a principle to be professed in comfort or a path to be walked—at cost—through misunderstanding, grief, and the clarifying, often humbling labor of moral growth.
Charlotte M. Yonge’s The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain is a work of mid-Victorian domestic fiction, published in the 1860s as a sequel to The Daisy Chain. It returns to a provincial English setting where parish, household, and schoolroom intertwine to form the textures of everyday life. Yonge, a prolific novelist associated with High Church Anglican circles, situates her narrative within a recognizable social world shaped by duty, education, and communal ties. The novel participates in the period’s realist traditions, attentive to the moral implications of ordinary actions and to the subtle pressures exerted by family expectations and local opinion.
Without repeating the earlier book’s arc, this continuation gathers familiar characters into the aftermath of a grave incident that precipitates both a legal case and a sustained moral reckoning. The story remains closely focused on domestic spaces, friendships, and the day-to-day negotiations of responsibility, yet a heightened sense of scrutiny—official and informal—creates a new crucible for character. The premise invites readers to watch how compassion, judgment, and courage arrange themselves when certainties falter. Rather than relying on sensational turns, the narrative patiently traces consequences, asking what it means to speak truthfully, to act justly, and to bear the burdens that follow.
Yonge’s voice is measured and earnest, marked by clear narrative lines, careful observation, and a preference for psychological and ethical nuance over melodrama. Scenes unfold with unhurried precision, allowing conversations, small decisions, and ordinary duties to assume moral weight. The mood alternates between sober reflection and the warmth of domestic comedy, without losing the gravity of the central ordeal. Readers encounter a prose style shaped by mid-nineteenth-century sensibilities—formal yet humane, didactic yet empathetic—guided by an author attentive to the disciplines of self-command, the instructive power of adversity, and the sustaining habits of affection and worship that hold a household together.
At its core, the book explores justice, truth-telling, and the possibility of restoration. It asks how individuals form a conscience sturdy enough to meet public pressure, and how communities balance charity with accountability. Yonge examines duty as more than submission to rule; it is a freely embraced pattern of care that binds people across failures and misunderstandings. The themes of trust, forgiveness, and the cost of integrity are woven through everyday acts—letters written, visits paid, work undertaken—so that moral insight emerges organically. The trial of circumstances becomes an education in discernment, showing how the right choice can be both luminous and hard-won.
For contemporary readers, the novel’s questions feel strikingly current: What does fairness require when facts are contested? How do we uphold the vulnerable without excusing harm? Where do compassion and principle meet? Yonge portrays reputations forming and fraying under the gaze of neighbors, anticipating modern debates about public judgment and the prospects of restorative paths forward. The narrative encourages patient attention to context, resisting snap verdicts while not dissolving responsibility. In a culture of quick condemnation, its emphasis on steady character, communal bonds, and disciplined hope offers a counterpoint—challenging, consoling, and quietly provocative in what it imagines justice, mercy, and growth might look like together.
As a sequel, The Trial deepens the moral landscape introduced in The Daisy Chain, extending its network of relationships and the long work of character formation across seasons of strain. It rewards readers who appreciate domestic realism grounded in careful ethics, where the most decisive events unfold in parlors, lanes, and parish rooms rather than on battlefields. The book’s enduring appeal lies in its confidence that ordinary lives matter profoundly—that faithfulness in small things can steady a soul amid storms. Yonge invites her audience to witness not only what happens, but how it is borne, and to consider the kind of person one becomes in the bearing.
Synopsis
Charlotte M. Yonge’s The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain returns to Stoneborough to follow the May family as they move from youthful projects into adult responsibilities. Time has passed since the building of the Cocksmoor church first galvanized them. Dr. May’s household, once bustling with schoolroom plans, now balances professions, marriages, and parish work. Ethel May remains a central steadying presence, measuring zeal against duty as she guides younger minds and oversees charitable efforts. Everyday town life—visits, lessons, and parish meetings—frames the opening, establishing an ordinary setting in which character is quietly formed and small decisions prepare the way for large consequences.
The early chapters take stock of changed positions within the family. Older siblings have entered settled paths, while younger ones press forward into examinations, apprenticeships, and first employment. Tom May pursues medicine with talent that sometimes outpaces judgment, drawing gentle scrutiny from father and sister. Richard’s reliability anchors home affairs; the younger girls extend Ethel’s work among Cocksmoor’s children. Letters and reports arrive from friends and relations beyond Stoneborough, widening the horizon with news of travel, missions, and service. These glimpses of the wider world highlight a recurring contrast: public achievement is less decisive here than the quiet exercise of duty in familiar places.
A key thread centers on a promising youth from the Cocksmoor circle, encouraged by the Mays to cultivate learning and upright habits. As he steps into adult work beyond his home neighborhood, expectations for him are high, not only for his own advancement but as a sign that Cocksmoor’s steady instruction bears fruit. Yonge traces his progress through practical challenges, small successes, and the subtle moral tests that attend first independence. The May family’s role is watchful yet restrained, offering introductions, advice, and opportunities without removing responsibility. This careful mentorship underscores the book’s concern with forming character through consistent, ordinary faithfulness.
The narrative’s turning point arrives abruptly when a suspicious incident—combining missing property and a sudden death—shakes the community. Circumstances gather against the young man, and legal authorities become involved. Stoneborough’s close-knit networks react with a mix of shock, conjecture, and divided sympathy, and the title’s double sense emerges: there is a formal trial before the courts, and there are personal trials of conscience, loyalty, and truthfulness. Yonge keeps the focus on process rather than sensational detail, following preliminary inquiries, shifting appearances, and the gradual hardening of positions as the matter moves toward judgment.
Parallel domestic strands continue alongside the legal crisis. Flora, settled in her own household, must reconcile social expectations with family ties and discretion. Tom faces professional tests that probe diligence, honesty, and humility, bringing him uncomfortably close to the consequences of carelessness. Dr. May’s medical work expands during outbreaks and local illnesses, calling for endurance and practical charity. Meanwhile, the Cocksmoor church and school mark milestones that reflect long investment rather than sudden triumph. Subtle changes in friendship and affection occur, handled without overt romance, as Yonge shows how attachment grows amid shared tasks and common principle.
When the case comes forward, the court scenes emphasize testimony, character evidence, and the difficulty of disentangling fact from appearance. Witnesses recall moments imperfectly, and motives remain veiled. The Mays act within proper limits to assist, gathering information, engaging counsel, and offering moral support without presuming outcomes. Ethel’s inward struggle is prominent: she weighs the claims of affection, prudence, and truth, determined neither to excuse wrong nor to abandon hope. Clergy and neighbors appear in their ordinary mediating roles, and the town’s response reveals competing impulses of judgment and mercy, habit and compassion.
Without disclosing the verdict, the book turns to the long work of endurance that follows a public decision. Yonge depicts the routines of separation, the power of letters and books, and the sustaining influence of regular visits under careful rules. The consequences ripple outward: vocations are reconsidered, study is redirected, and some characters embrace stricter self-discipline. Family sorrows are met with quiet consolations, and new responsibilities are accepted without flourish. A removal or journey for one branch of the circle extends the web of connection, while Stoneborough continues its steady course, knitting together ordinary duties in the wake of upheaval.
In its closing movements, the novel gathers threads through gradual, unspectacular resolutions. Reputations are recalibrated as time tests first impressions, and individuals prove themselves through persistent reliability. The Cocksmoor enterprise comes of age, with local leadership strengthening the institutions once fostered by the Mays. Younger members step into roles formerly held by their elders, translating instruction into practice. Memory is honored in commemorations that point toward service rather than sentiment. Yonge allows changes in station and feeling to emerge naturally, framing outcomes as stages in ongoing lives rather than final tableaux.
The Trial presents trial as both legal ordeal and moral proving-ground. Its “more links” are bonds of kinship, mentorship, parish, and neighborliness, stretched yet strengthened by adversity. The central message is consistent with Yonge’s broader vision: character is shaped by patient duty, truth is served by steadfastness more than display, and charity must be wise as well as warm. By following the May family through ordinary labor, public scrutiny, and private testing, the book conveys a sober hope: that fidelity in small things knits communities, steadies the erring, and prepares the way for larger trust without promising dramatic closure.
Historical Context
Set in the decades after 1840, the narrative unfolds in and around a fictional cathedral town (Stoneborough) and its outlying hamlet (Cocksmoor) in southern England, mirroring the social texture of mid-Victorian provincial life. The time frame, contemporary with its 1864 publication, spans the years marked by parish revival, medical professionalization, and widening philanthropic networks. The town’s routines revolve around Anglican worship, the grammar school, and the surgery of a respected physician, while the hamlet embodies rural poverty, ill-health, and sparse schooling. Rail links, new sanitary ideas, and expanding voluntary societies begin to press upon traditional hierarchies, creating a lived tension between inherited customs and reformist energies that the plot repeatedly tests.
The Oxford Movement (from 1833) decisively shaped the milieu. John Keble’s Assize Sermon at St Mary’s, Oxford (14 July 1833) initiated the Tracts for the Times (1833–1841) under John Henry Newman and E. B. Pusey, urging a return to patristic theology, sacramental life, and robust parish structures. Its effects were practical: more frequent communion, renewed catechesis, and careful pastoral visitation in neglected districts. Yonge, Keble’s parishioner at Hursley (Hampshire), channels this High Church programme into Stoneborough’s rhythms. In The Trial, the family’s commitments to daily devotion, conscientious schooling of the poor, and respect for clerical authority enact Tractarian priorities not as theory but as the moral air the characters breathe.
Linked to that revival was the parish-extension and church-building surge. The Church Building Acts (notably 1818 and 1824) and later mid-century endowments enabled new districts, schools, and churches in growing or deprived areas. Controversies such as the Gorham Judgment (1850, Privy Council) over baptismal regeneration sharpened High Church resolve to teach doctrine clearly and to form disciplined parish communities. Stoneborough’s attempt to plant a church-and-school in Cocksmoor echoes hundreds of real foundations across England, where a curate and a schoolmistress became the nucleus of social renewal. The novel’s attention to liturgy, catechism, and sacramental preparation reflects this climate of earnest, parish-centered reconstruction.
The same energies propelled Anglican missionary expansion. George Augustus Selwyn became first Bishop of New Zealand in 1841; the Melanesian Mission began in 1849 and, under John Coleridge Patteson (consecrated bishop in 1861), linked English parishes to Pacific evangelization through prayer, funds, and recruits. Societies such as SPG (1701) and CMS (1799) organized networks of reports, collecting boxes, and parish auxiliaries. The Trial alludes to this outward horizon in characters’ vocational debates and fundraising for distant missions, presenting a domestic spirituality that opens onto imperial geography. The sense that diligent study, self-denial, and parish work might culminate in a clerical or missionary calling shapes youthful aspirations in the story.
Public health and medical reform furnish another crucial backdrop. Cholera epidemics (1832, 1848–49, 1853–54, 1866), John Snow’s 1854 Broad Street pump investigation, the 1848 Public Health Act, and the 1858 “Great Stink” galvanized sanitary engineering and local boards of health. The Medical Act 1858 created the General Medical Council and a national register, raising standards for medical education and practice. Within The Trial, the physician-father’s authority, a son’s rigorous training, and repeated encounters with fever, injury, and convalescence mirror a profession moving from craft to credentialed science. Clinical discipline, hygiene, and organized hospital care enter the household’s vocabulary and shape decisions during outbreaks in the poorer hamlet.
Education reform, especially for the poor, animates the Cocksmoor storyline. The National Society (1811) expanded Anglican elementary schools; the London Ragged School Union (1844, championed by Lord Shaftesbury) offered basic instruction to street children. Inspectorial regimes tightened under the Revised Code of 1862 (“payment by results”), pressuring teachers to measurable outcomes in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Industrial Schools Act 1857 and Reformatory Schools Act 1854 linked schooling with juvenile welfare. In the novel, a laywoman’s systematic catechizing, timetable-making, and fundraising to secure premises and a trained mistress reflect these national currents. Lessons, needlework, and Scripture become instruments for stabilizing families battered by casual labor and drink.
The title’s legal resonance engages mid-Victorian criminal justice. The County and Borough Police Act 1856 professionalized local forces; the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts 1861 rationalized offences; and reforms for youths (Juvenile Offenders Act 1847; Reformatory Schools Act 1854) sought alternatives to transportation, largely curtailed to Australia by the 1850s. Assize trials, reliance on character testimony, and the weight of social reputation remained pivotal. In The Trial, a working-class youth from the parish school faces the assizes on a grave charge, exposing evidentiary standards, the role of magistrates, and the fragility of the poor before procedure. The episode tests philanthropic networks, clerical advocacy, and middle-class responsibility toward dependents.
As social and political critique, the book indicts the complacency that left hamlets like Cocksmoor without sanitation, schooling, or spiritual care, while also probing the limits of paternalistic charity. It exposes the legal system’s class-inflected vulnerabilities—where a laborer’s fate may hinge on reputation and access to advocates—and questions urban–rural disparities sustained by uneven rates, vestry politics, and landowner priorities. By aligning female energy with parish institutions, it both affirms and interrogates gendered avenues of influence. Above all, it insists that mid-Victorian progress—medical professionalism, parish extension, missionary ambition—must be measured by justice for the weak, not by institutional prestige or sentimental philanthropy.
The Trial; Or, More Links of the Daisy Chain
CHAPTER I
Quand on veut dessecher un marais, on ne fait pas voter les grenouilles.—Mme. EMILE. DE GIRADIN
'Richard? That's right! Here's a tea-cup[4] waiting for you,' as the almost thirty-year-old Incumbent of Cocksmoor[1], still looking like a young deacon, entered the room with his quiet step, and silent greeting to its four inmates.
'Thank you, Ethel. Is papa gone out?'
'I have not seen him since dinner-time. You said he was gone out with Dr. Spencer, Aubrey?'
'Yes, I heard Dr. Spencer's voice—"I say, Dick"—like three notes of consternation,' said Aubrey; 'and off they went. I fancy there's some illness about in the Lower Pond Buildings, that Dr. Spencer has been raging so long to get drained.'
'The knell has been ringing for a little child there,' added Mary; 'scarlatina[2], I believe—'
'But, Richard,' burst forth the merry voice of the youngest, 'you must see our letters from Edinburgh.'
'You have heard, then? It was the very thing I came to ask.'
'Oh yes! there were five notes in one cover,' said Gertrude. 'Papa says they are to be laid up in the family archives, and labelled "The Infants' Honeymoon."'
'Papa is very happy with his own share,' said Ethel. 'It was signed, "Still his own White Flower," and it had two Calton Hill real daisies[3] in it. I don't know when I have seen him more pleased.'
'And Hector's letter—I can say that by heart,' continued Gertrude. '"My dear Father, This is only to say that she is the darlint, and for the pleasure of subscribing myself—Your loving SON,"—the son as big as all the rest put together.'
'I tell Blanche that he only took her for the pleasure of being my father's son,' said Aubrey, in his low lazy voice.
'Well,' said Mary, 'even to the last, I do believe he had as soon drive papa out as walk with Blanche. Flora was quite scandalized at it.'
'I should not imagine that George had often driven my father out,' said Aubrey, again looking lazily up from balancing his spoon.
Ethel laughed; and even Richard smiled; then recovering herself, she said, 'Poor Hector, he never could call himself son to any one before.'
'He has not been much otherwise here,' said Richard.
'No,' said Ethel; 'it is the peculiar hardship of our weddings to break us up by pairs, and carry off two instead of one. Did you ever see me with so shabby a row of tea-cups? When shall I have them come in riding double again?'
The recent wedding was the third in the family; the first after a five years' respite. It ensued upon an attachment that had grown up with the young people, so that they had been entirely one with each other; and there had been little of formal demand either of the maiden's affection or her father's consent; but both had been implied from the first. The bridegroom was barely of age, the bride not seventeen, and Dr. May had owned it was very shocking, and told Richard to say nothing about it! Hector had coaxed and pleaded, pathetically talked of his great empty house at Maplewood, and declared that till he might take Blanche away, he would not leave Stoneborough; he would bring down all sorts of gossip on his courtship, he would worry Ethel, and take care she finished nobody's education. What did Blanche want with more education? She knew enough for him. Couldn't Ethel be satisfied with Aubrey and Gertrude? or he dared say she might have Mary too, if she was insatiable. If Dr. May was so unnatural as to forbid him to hang about the house, why, he would take rooms at the Swan. In fact, as Dr. May observed, he treated him to a modern red-haired Scotch version of 'Make me a willow cabin at your gate;' and as he heartily loved Hector and entirely trusted him, and Blanche's pretty head was a wise and prudent one, what was the use of keeping the poor lad unsettled?
So Mrs. Rivers, the eldest sister and the member's wife, had come to arrange matters and help Ethel, and a very brilliant wedding it had been. Blanche was too entirely at home with Hector for flutterings or agitations, and was too peacefully happy for grief at the separation, which completed the destiny that she had always seen before her. She was a picture of a bride; and when she and Hector hung round the Doctor, insisting that Edinburgh should be the first place they should visit, and calling forth minute directions for their pilgrimage to the scenes of his youth, promising to come home and tell him all, no wonder he felt himself rather gaining a child than losing one. He was very bright and happy; and no one but Ethel understood how all the time there was a sensation that the present was but a strange dreamy parody of that marriage which had been the theme of earlier hopes.
The wedding had taken place shortly after Easter; and immediately after, the Rivers family had departed for London, and Tom May had returned to Cambridge, leaving the home party at the minimum of four, since, Cocksmoor Parsonage[5] being complete, Richard had become only a daily visitor instead of a constant inhabitant.
There he sat, occupying his never idle hands with a net that he kept for such moments, whilst Ethel sat behind her urn, now giving out its last sighs, profiting by the leisure to read the county newspaper, while she continually filled up her cup with tea or milk as occasion served, indifferent to the increasing pallor of the liquid.
Mary, a 'fine young woman,' as George Rivers called her, of blooming face and sweet open expression, had begun, at Gertrude's entreaty, a game of French billiards. Gertrude had still her childish sunny face and bright hair, and even at the trying age of twelve was pleasing, chiefly owing to the caressing freedom of manner belonging to an unspoilable pet. Her request to Aubrey to join the sport had been answered with a half petulant shake of the head, and he flung himself into his father's chair, his long legs hanging over one arm—an attitude that those who had ever been under Mrs. May's discipline thought impossible in the drawing-room; but Aubrey was a rival pet, and with the family characteristics of aquiline features, dark gray eyes, and beautiful teeth, had an air of fragility and easy languor that showed his exercise of the immunities of ill-health. He had been Ethel's pupil till Tom's last year at Eton, when he was sent thither, and had taken a good place; but his brother's vigilant and tender care could not save him from an attack on the chest, that settled his public-school education for ever, to his severe mortification, just when Tom's shower of honours was displaying to him the sweets of emulation and success. Ethel regained her pupil, and put forth her utmost powers for his benefit, causing Tom to examine him at each vacation, with adjurations to let her know the instant he discovered that her task of tuition was getting beyond her. In truth, Tom fraternally held her cheap, and would have enjoyed a triumph over her scholarship; but to this he had not attained, and in spite of his desire to keep his brother in a salutary state of humiliation, candour wrung from him the admission that, even in verses, Aubrey did as well as other fellows of his standing.
Conceit was not Aubrey's fault. His father was more guarded than in the case of his elder sons, and the home atmosphere was not such as to give the boy a sense of superiority, especially when diligently kept down by his brother. Even the half year at Eton had not produced superciliousness, though it had given Eton polish to the home-bred manners; it had made sisters valuable, and awakened a desire for masculine companionship. He did not rebel against his sister's rule; she was nearly a mother to him, and had always been the most active president of his studies and pursuits; and he was perfectly obedient and dutiful to her, only asserting his equality, in imitation of Harry and Tom, by a little of the good-humoured raillery and teasing that treated Ethel as the family butt, while she was really the family authority.
'All gone, Ethel,' he said, with a lazy smile, as Ethel mechanically, with her eyes on the newspaper, tried all her vessels round, and found cream-jug, milk-jug, tea-pot, and urn exhausted; 'will you have in the river next?'
'What a shame!' said Ethel, awakening and laughing. 'Those are the tea-maker's snares.'
'Do send it away then,' said Aubrey, 'the urn oppresses the atmosphere.'
'Very well, I'll make a fresh brew when papa comes home, and perhaps you'll have some then. You did not half finish to-night.'
Aubrey yawned; and after some speculation about their father's absence, Gertrude went to bed; and Aubrey, calling himself tired, stood up, stretched every limb portentously, and said he should go off too. Ethel looked at him anxiously, felt his hand, and asked if he were sure he had not a cold coming on. 'You are always thinking of colds,' was all the satisfaction she received.
'What has he been doing?' said Richard.
'That is what I was thinking. He was about all yesterday afternoon with Leonard Ward, and perhaps may have done something imprudent in the damp. I never know what to do. I can't bear him to be a coddle; yet he is always catching cold if I let him alone. The question is, whether it is worse for him to run risks, or to be thinking of himself.'
'He need not be doing that,' said Richard; 'he may be thinking of your wishes and papa's.'
'Very pretty of him and you, Ritchie; but he is not three parts of a boy or man who thinks of his womankind's wishes when there is anything spirited before him.'
'Well, I suppose one may do one's duty without being three parts of a boy,' said Richard, gravely.
'I know it is true that some of the most saintly characters have been the more spiritual because their animal frame was less vigorous; but still it does not content me.'
'No, the higher the power, the better, of course, should the service be. I was only putting you in mind that there is compensation. But I must be off. I am sorry I cannot wait for papa. Let me know what is the matter to-morrow, and how Aubrey is.'
Richard went; and the sisters took up their employments—Ethel writing to the New Zealand sister-in-law her history of the wedding, Mary copying parts of a New Zealand letter for her brother, the lieutenant in command of a gun-boat on the Chinese coast. Those letters, whether from Norman May or his wife, were very delightful, they were so full of a cheerful tone of trustful exertion and resolution, though there had been perhaps more than the natural amount of disappointments. Norman's powers were not thought of the description calculated for regular mission work, and some of the chief aspirations of the young couple had had to be relinquished at the voice of authority without a trial. They had received the charge of persons as much in need of them as unreclaimed savages, but to whom there was less apparent glory in ministering. A widespread district of very colonial colonists, and the charge of a college for their uncultivated sons, was quite as troublesome as the most ardent self-devotion could desire; and the hardships and disagreeables, though severe, made no figure in history—nay, it required ingenuity to gather their existence from Meta's bright letters, although, from Mrs. Arnott's accounts, it was clear that the wife took a quadruple share. Mrs. Rivers had been heard to say that Norman need not have gone so far, and sacrificed so much, to obtain an under-bred English congregation; and even the Doctor had sighed once or twice at having relinquished his favourite son to what was dull and distasteful; but Ethel could trust that this unmurmuring acceptance of the less striking career, might be another step in the discipline of her brother's ardent and ambitious nature. It is a great thing to sacrifice, but a greater to consent not to sacrifice in one's own way.
Ethel sat up for her father, and Mary would not go to bed and leave her, so the two sisters waited till they heard the latch-key. Ethel ran out, but her father was already on the stairs, and waved her back.
'Here is some tea. Are you not coming, papa?—it is all here.'
'Thank you, I'll just go and take off this coat;' and he passed on to his room.
'I don't like that,' said Ethel, returning to the drawing-room, where Mary was boiling up the kettle, and kneeling down to make some toast.
'Why, what's the matter?'
'I have never known him go and change his coat but when some infectious thing has been about. Besides, he did not wait to let me help him off with it.'
In a few seconds the Doctor came down in his dressing-gown, and let himself be put into his easy-chair; his two daughters waiting on him with fond assiduity, their eyes questioning his fagged weary face, but reading there fatigue and concern that made them—rather awe-struck—bide their time till it should suit him to speak. Mary was afraid he would wait till she was gone; dear old Mary, who at twenty-two never dreamt of regarding herself as on the same footing with her three years' senior, and had her toast been browner, would have relieved them of her presence at once. However, her father spoke after his first long draught of tea.
'Well! How true it is that judgments are upon us while we are marrying and giving in marriage!'
'What is it, papa? Not the scarlatina?'
'Scarlatina, indeed!' he said contemptuously. 'Scarlet fever in the most aggravated form. Two deaths in one house, and I am much mistaken if there will not be another before morning.'
'Who, papa?' asked Mary.
'Those wretched Martins, in Lower Pond Buildings, are the worst. No wonder, living in voluntary filth; but it is all over the street—will be all over the town unless there's some special mercy on the place.'
'But how has it grown so bad,' said Ethel, 'without our having even heard of it!'
'Why—partly I take shame to myself—this business of Hector and Blanche kept Spencer and me away last dispensary day; and partly it was that young coxcomb, Henry Ward, thought it not worth while to trouble me about a simple epidemic[6]. Simple epidemic indeed!' repeated Dr. May, changing his tone from ironical mimicry to hot indignation. 'I hope he will be gratified with its simplicity! I wonder how long he would have gone on if it had not laid hold on him.'
'You don't mean that he has it?'
'I do. It will give him a practical lesson in simple epidemics.'
'And Henry Ward has it!' repeated Mary, looking so much dismayed that her father laughed, saying—
'What, Mary thinks when it comes to fevers being so audacious as to lay hold of the doctors, it is time that they should be put a stop to.'
'He seems to have petted it and made much of it,' said Ethel; 'so no wonder! What could have possessed him?'
'Just this, Ethel; and it is only human nature after all. This young lad comes down, as Master Tom will do some day, full of his lectures and his hospitals, and is nettled and displeased to find his father content to have Spencer or me called in the instant anything serious is the matter.'
'But you are a physician, papa,' said Mary.
'No matter for that, to Mr. Henry I'm an old fogie, and depend upon it, if it were only the giving a dose of salts, he would like to have the case to himself. These poor creatures were parish patients, and I don't mean that his treatment was amiss. Spencer is right, it was an atmosphere where there was no saving anyone, but if he had not been so delighted with his own way, and I had known what was going on, I'd have got the Guardians and the Town Council and routed out the place. Seventeen cases, and most of them the worst form!'
'But what was Mr. Ward about?
'"Says I to myself, here's a lesson for me; This man's but a picture of what I shall be,"
'when Master Tom gets the upper hand of me,' returned Dr. May. 'Poor Ward, who has run to me in all his difficulties these thirty years, didn't like it at all; but Mr. Henry was so confident with his simple epidemic, and had got him in such order, that he durst not speak.'
'And what brought it to light at last?'
'Everything at once. First the clerics go to see about the family where the infant died, and report to Spencer; he comes after me, and we start to reconnoitre. Then I am called in to see Shearman's daughter—a very ugly case that—and coming out I meet poor Ward himself, wanting me to see Henry, and there's the other boy sickening too. Then I went down and saw all those cases in the Lower Ponds, and have been running about the town ever since to try what can be done, hunting up nurses, whom I can't get, stirring dishes of skim milk, trying to get the funerals over to-morrow morning by daybreak. I declare I have hardly a leg to stand on.'
'Where was Dr. Spencer?'
'I've nearly quarrelled with Spencer. Oh! he is in high feather! he will have it that the fever rose up bodily, like Kuhleborn, out of that unhappy drain he is always worrying about, when it is a regular case of scarlet fever, brought in by a girl at home from service; but he will have it that his theory is proved. Then I meant him to keep clear of it. He has always been liable to malaria and all that sort of thing, and has not strength for an illness. I told him to mind the ordinary practice for me; and what do I find him doing the next thing, but operating upon one of the worst throats he could find! I told him he was as bad as young Ward; I hate his irregular practice. I'll tell you what,' he said, vindictively, as if gratified to have what must obey him, 'you shall all go off to Cocksmoor to-morrow morning at seven o'clock.'
'You forget that we two have had it,' said Mary.
'Which of you?'
'All down to Blanche.'
'Never mind for that. I shall have enough to do without a sick house at home. You can perform quarantine with Richard, and then go to Flora, if she will have you. Well, what are you dawdling about? Go and pack up.'
'Papa,' said Ethel, who had been abstracted through all the latter part of the conversation, 'if you please, we had better not settle my going till to-morrow morning.'
'Come, Ethel, you have too much sense for panics. Don't take nonsense into your head. The children can't have been in the way of it.'
'Stay, papa,' said Ethel, her serious face arresting the momentary impatience of fatigue and anxiety, 'I am afraid Aubrey was a good while choosing fishing-tackle at Shearman's yesterday with Leonard Ward; and it may be nothing, but he did seem heavy and out of order to-night; I wish you would look at him as you go up.'
Dr. May stood still for a few moments, then gave one long gasp, made a few inquiries, and went up to Aubrey's room. The boy was fast asleep; but there was that about him which softened the weary sharpness of his father's manner, and caused him to desire Ethel to look from the window whence she could see whether the lights were out in Dr. Spencer's house. Yes, they were.
'Never mind. It will make no real odds, and he has had enough on his hands to-day. The boy will sleep quietly enough to-night, so let us all go to bed.'
'I think I can get a mattress into his room without waking him, if you will help me, Mary,' said Ethel.
'Nonsense,' said her father, decidedly. 'Mary is not to go near him before she takes Gertrude to Cocksmoor; and you, go to your own bed and get a night's rest while you can.'
'You won't stay up, papa.'
'I—why, it is all I can do not to fall asleep on my feet. Good night, children.'
'He does not trust himself to think or to fear,' said Ethel. 'Too much depends on him to let himself be unstrung.'
'But, Ethel, you will not leave, dear Aubrey.'
'I shall keep his door open and mine; but papa is right, and it will not do to waste one's strength. In case I should not see you before you go—'
'Oh, but, Ethel, I shall come back! Don't, pray don't tell me to stay away. Richard will have to keep away for Daisy's sake, and you can't do all alone—nurse Aubrey and attend to papa. Say that I may come back.'
Well, Mary, I think you might,' said Ethel, after a moment's thought. 'If it were only Aubrey, I could manage for him; but I am more anxious about papa.'
'You don't think he is going to have it?'
'Oh no, no,' said Ethel, 'he is what he calls himself, a seasoned vessel; but he will be terribly overworked, and unhappy, and he must not come home and find no one to talk to or to look cheerful. So, Mary, unless he gives any fresh orders, or Richard thinks it will only make things worse, I shall be very glad of you.'
Mary had never clung to her so gratefully, nor felt so much honoured. 'Do you think he will have it badly?' she asked timidly.
'I don't think at all about it,' said Ethel, something in her father's manner. 'If we are to get through all this, Mary, it must not be by riding out on perhapses. Now let us put Daisy's things together, for she must have as little communication with home as possible.'
Ethel silently and rapidly moved about, dreading to give an interval for tremblings of heart. Five years of family prosperity had passed, and there had been that insensible feeling of peace and immunity from care which is strange to look back upon when one hour has drifted from smooth water to turbid currents. There was a sort of awe in seeing the mysterious gates of sorrow again unclosed; yet, darling of her own as Aubrey was, Ethel's first thoughts and fears were primarily for her father. Grief and alarm seemed chiefly to touch her through him, and she found herself praying above all that he might be shielded from suffering, and might be spared a renewal of the pangs that had before wrung his heart.
By early morning every one was astir; and Gertrude, bewildered and distressed, yet rather enjoying the fun of staying with Richard, was walking off with Mary.
Soon after, Dr. Spencer was standing by the bedside of his old patient, Aubrey, who had been always left to his management.
'Ah, I see,' he said, with a certain tone of satisfaction, 'for once there will be a case properly treated. Now, Ethel, you and I will show what intelligent nursing can do.'
'I believe you are delighted,' growled Aubrey.
'So should you be, at the valuable precedent you will afford.'
'I've no notion of being experimented on to prove your theory,' said Aubrey, still ready for lazy mischief.
For be it known that the roving-tempered Dr. Spencer had been on fire to volunteer to the Crimean hospitals, and had unwillingly sacrificed the project, not to Dr. May's conviction that it would be fatal in his present state of health, but to Ethel's private entreaty that he would not add to her father's distress in the freshness of Margaret's death, and the parting with Norman. He had never ceased to mourn over the lost opportunity, and to cast up to his friend the discoveries he might have made; while Dr. May declared that if by any strange chance he had come back at all, he would have been so rabid on improved nursing and sanatory measures, that there would have been no living with him.
It must be owned that Dr. May was not very sensible to what his friend called Stoneborough stinks. The place was fairly healthy, and his 'town councillor's conservatism,' and hatred of change, as well as the amusement of skirmishing, had always made him the champion of things as they were; and in the present emergency the battle whether the enemy had travelled by infection, or was the product of the Pond Buildings' miasma, was the favourite enlivenment of the disagreeing doctors, in their brief intervals of repose in the stern conflict which they were waging with the fever—a conflict in which they had soon to strive by themselves, for the disease not only seized on young Ward, but on his father; and till medical assistance was sent from London, they had the whole town on their hands, and for nearly a week lived without a night's rest.
The care of the sick was a still greater difficulty. Though Aubrey was never in danger, and Dr. Spencer's promise of the effects of 'intelligent nursing' was fully realized, Ethel and Mary were so occupied by him, that it was a fearful thing to guess how it must fare with those households where the greater number were laid low, and in want of all the comforts that could do little.
The clergy worked to the utmost; and a letter of Mr. Wilmot's obtained the assistance of two ladies from a nursing sisterhood, who not only worked incredible wonders with their own hands among the poor, but made efficient nurses of rough girls and stupid old women. Dr. May, who had at first, in his distrust of innovation, been averse to the importation—as likely to have no effect but putting nonsense into girls' heads, and worrying the sick poor—was so entirely conquered, that he took off his hat to them across the street, importuned them to drink tea with his daughters, and never came home without dilating on their merits for the few minutes that intervened between his satisfying himself about Aubrey and dropping asleep in his chair. The only counter demonstration he reserved to himself was that he always called them 'Miss What-d'ye-call-her,' and 'Those gems of women,' instead of Sister Katherine and Sister Frances.
CHAPTER II
Good words are silver, but good deeds are gold.[1q]—Cecil and Mary
'It has been a very good day, papa; he has enjoyed all his meals, indeed was quite ravenous. He is asleep now, and looks as comfortable as possible,' said Ethel, five weeks after Aubrey's illness had begun.
'Thank God for that, and all His mercy to us, Ethel;' and the long sigh, the kiss, and dewy eyes, would have told her that there had been more to exhaust him than his twelve hours' toil, even had she not partly known what weighed him down.
'Poor things!' she said.
'Both gone, Ethel, both! both!' and as he entered the drawing-room, he threw himself back in his chair, and gasped with the long-restrained feeling.
'Both!' she exclaimed. 'You don't mean that Leonard—'
'No, Ethel, his mother! Poor children, poor children!'
'Mrs. Ward! I thought she had only been taken ill yesterday evening.'
'She only then gave way—but she never had any constitution—she was done up with nursing—nothing to fall back on—sudden collapse and prostration—and that poor girl, called every way at once, fancied her asleep, and took no alarm till I came in this morning and found her pulse all but gone. We have been pouring down stimulants all day, but there was no rousing her, and she was gone the first.'
'And Mr. Ward—did he know it?'
'I thought so from the way he looked at me; but speech had long been lost, and that throat was dreadful suffering. Well, "In their death they were not divided."'
He shaded his eyes with his hand; and Ethel, leaning against his chair, could not hinder herself from a shudder at the longing those words seemed to convey. He felt her movement, and put his arm round her, saying, 'No, Ethel, do not think I envy them. I might have done so once—I had not then learnt the meaning of the discipline of being without her—no, nor what you could do for me, my child, my children.'
Ethel's thrill of bliss was so intense, that it gave her a sense of selfishness in indulging personal joy at such a moment; and indeed it was true that her father had over-lived the first pangs of change and separation, had formed new and congenial habits, saw the future hope before him; and since poor Margaret had been at rest, had been without present anxiety, or the sight of decay and disappointment. Her only answer was a mute smoothing of his bowed shoulders, as she said, 'If I could be of any use or comfort to poor Averil Ward, I could go to-night. Mary is enough for Aubrey.'
'Not now, my dear. She can't stir from the boy, they are giving him champagne every ten minutes; she has the nurse, and Spencer is backwards and forwards; I think they will pull him through, but it is a near, a very near touch. Good, patient, unselfish boy he is too.'
'He always was a very nice boy,' said Ethel; 'I do hope he will get well. It would be a terrible grief to Aubrey.'
'Yes, I got Leonard to open his lips to-day by telling him that Aubrey had sent him the grapes. I think he will get through. I hope he will. He is a good friend for Aubrey. So touching it was this morning to hear him trying to ask pardon for all his faults, poor fellow—fits of temper, and the like.'
'That is his fault, I believe,' said Ethel, 'and I always think it a wholesome one, because it is so visible and unjustifiable, that people strive against it. And the rest? Was Henry able to see his father or mother?'
'No, he can scarcely sit up in bed. It was piteous to see him lying with his door open, listening. He is full of warm sound feeling, poor fellow. You would like to have heard the fervour with which he begged me to tell his father to have no fears for the younger ones, for it should be the most precious task of his life to do a parent's part by them.'
'Let me see, he is just of Harry's age,' said Ethel, thoughtfully, as if she had not the strongest faith in Harry's power of supplying a parent's place.
'Well,' said her father, 'remember, a medical student is an older man than a lieutenant in the navy. One sees as much of the interior as the other does of the surface. We must take this young Ward by the hand, and mind he does not lose his father's practice. Burdon, that young prig that Spencer got down from London, met me at Gavin's, when I looked in there on my way home, and came the length of Minster Street with me, asking what I thought of an opening for a medical man—partnership with young Ward, &c. I snubbed him so short, that I fancy I left him thinking whether his nose was on or off his face.'
'He was rather premature.'
'I've settled him any way. I shall do my best to keep the town clear for that lad; there's not much more for him, as things are now, and it will be only looking close after him for a few years, which Spencer and I can very well manage.'
'If he will let you.'
'There! that's the spitefulness of women! Must you be casting up that little natural spirit of independence against him after the lesson he has had? I tell you, he has been promising me to look on me as a father! Poor old Ward! he was a good friend and fellow-worker. I owe a great deal to him.'
Ethel wondered if he forgot how much of the unserviceableness of his maimed arm had once been attributed to Mr. Ward's dulness, or how many times he had come home boiling with annoyance at having been called in too late to remedy the respectable apothecary's half measures. She believed that the son had been much better educated than the father, and after the fearful lesson he had received, thought he might realize Dr. May's hopes, and appreciate his kindness. They discussed the relations.
'Ward came as assistant to old Axworthy, and married his daughter; he had no relations that his son knows of, except the old aunt who left Averil her £2000.'
'There are some Axworthys still,' said Ethel, 'but not very creditable people.'
'You may say that,' said Dr. May emphatically. 'There was a scapegrace brother that ran away, and was heard of no more till he turned up, a wealthy man, ten or fifteen years ago, and bought what they call the Vintry Mill, some way on this side of Whitford. He has a business on a large scale; but Ward had as little intercourse with him as possible. A terrible old heathen.'
'And the boy that was expelled for bullying Tom is in the business.'
'I hate the thought of that,' said the Doctor. 'If he had stayed on, who knows but he might have turned out as well as Ned Anderson.'
'Has not he?'
'I'm sure I have no right to say he has not, but he is a flashy slang style of youth, and I hope the young Wards will keep out of his way.'
'What will become of them? Is there likely to be any provision for them?'
'Not much, I should guess. Poor Ward did as we are all tempted to do when money goes through our hands, and spent more freely than I was ever allowed to do. Costly house, garden, greenhouses—he'd better have stuck to old Axworthy's place in Minster Street—daughter at that grand school, where she cost more than the whole half-dozen of you put together.'
'She was more worth it,' said Ethel; 'her music and drawing are first-rate. Harry was frantic about her singing last time he was at home—one evening when Mrs. Anderson abused his good-nature and got him to a tea-party—I began to be afraid of the consequences.'
'Pish!' said the Doctor.
'And really they kept her there to enable her to educate her sisters,' said Ethel. 'The last time I called on poor Mrs. Ward, she told me all about it, apologizing in the pretty way mothers do, saying she was looking forward to Averil's coming home, but that while she profited so much, they felt it due to her to give her every advantage; and did not I think—with my experience—that it was all so much for the little ones' benefit? I assured her, from my personal experience, that ignorance is a terrible thing in governessing one's sisters. Poor thing! And Averil had only come home this very Easter.'
'And with everything to learn, in such a scene as that! The first day, when only the boys were ill, there sat the girl, dabbling with her water-colours, and her petticoats reaching half across the room, looking like a milliner's doll, and neither she nor her poor mother dreaming of her doing a useful matter.'
'Who is spiteful now, papa? That's all envy at not having such an accomplished daughter. When she came out in time of need so grandly, and showed all a woman's instinct—'
'Woman's nonsense! Instinct is for irrational brutes, and the more you cultivate a woman, the less she has of it, unless you work up her practical common sense too.'
'Some one said she made a wonderful nurse.'
'Wonderful? Perhaps so, considering her opportunities, and she does better with Spencer than with me; I may have called her to order impatiently, for she is nervous with me, loses her head, and knocks everything down with her petticoats. Then—not a word to any one, Ethel—but imagine her perfect blindness to her poor mother's state all yesterday, and last night, not even calling Burdon to look at her; why, those ten hours may have made all the difference!'
'Poor thing, how is she getting on now?'
'Concentrated upon Leonard, too much stunned to admit another idea—no tears—hardly full comprehension. One can't take her away, and she can't bear not to do everything, and yet one can't trust her any more than a child.'
'As she is,' said Ethel, 'but as she won't be any longer. And the two little ones?'
'It breaks one's heart to see them, just able to sit by their nursery fire, murmuring in that weary, resigned, sick child's voice, 'I wish nurse would come.' 'I wish sister would come.' 'I wish mamma would come.' I went up to them the last thing, and told them how it was, and let them cry themselves to sleep. That was the worst business of all. Ethel, are they too big for Mary to dress some dolls for them?'
'I will try to find out their tastes the first thing to-morrow,' said Ethel; 'at any rate we can help them, if not poor Averil.'
Ethel, however, was detained at home to await Dr. Spencer's visit, and Mary, whose dreams had all night been haunted by the thought of the two little nursery prisoners, entreated to go with her father, and see what could be done for them.
Off they set together, Mary with a basket in her hand, which was replenished at the toy-shop in Minster Street with two china-faced dolls, and, a little farther on, parted with a couple of rolls, interspersed with strata of cold beef and butter, to a household of convalescents in the stage for kitchen physic.
Passing the school, still taking its enforced holiday, the father and daughter traversed the bridge and entered the growing suburb known as Bankside, where wretched cottages belonging to needy, grasping proprietors, formed an uncomfortable contrast to the villa residences interspersed among them.
One of these, with a well-kept lawn, daintily adorned with the newest pines and ornamental shrubs, and with sheets of glass glaring in the sun from the gardens at the back, was the house that poor Mr. and Mrs. Ward had bought and beautified; 'because it was so much better for the children to be out of the town.' The tears sprang into Mary's eyes at the veiled windows, and the unfeeling contrast of the spring glow of flowering thorn, lilac, laburnum, and, above all, the hard, flashing brightness of the glass; but tears were so unlike Ethel that Mary always was ashamed of them, and disposed of them quietly.
They rang, but in vain. Two of the servants were ill, and all in confusion; and after waiting a few moments among the azaleas in the glass porch, Dr. May admitted himself, and led the way up-stairs with silent footfalls, Mary following with breath held back. A voice from an open door called, 'Is that Dr. May?' and he paused to look in and say, 'I'll be with you in one minute, Henry; how is Leonard?'
'No worse, they tell me; I say, Dr. May—'
'One moment;' and turning back to Mary, he pointed along a dark passage. 'Up there, first door to the right. You can't mistake;' then disappeared, drawing the door after him.
Much discomfited, Mary nevertheless plunged bravely on, concluding 'there' to be up a narrow, uncarpeted stair, with a nursery wicket at the top, in undoing which, she was relieved of all doubts and scruples by a melancholy little duet from within. 'Mary, Mary, we want our breakfast! We want to get up! Mary, Mary, do come! please come!'
She was instantly in what might ordinarily have been a light, cheerful room, but which was in all the dreariness of gray cinders, exhausted night-light, curtained windows, and fragments of the last meal. In each of two cane cribs was sitting up a forlorn child, with loose locks of dishevelled hair, pale thin cheeks glazed with tears, staring eyes, and mouths rounded with amaze at the apparition. One dropped down and hid under the bed-clothes; the other remained transfixed, as her visitor advanced, saying, 'Well, my dear, you called Mary, and here I am.'
'Not our own Mary,' said the child, distrustfully.
'See if I can't be your own Mary.'
'You can't. You can't give us our breakfast.'
'Oh, I am so hungry!' from the other crib; and both burst into the feeble sobs of exhaustion. Recovering from fever, and still fasting at half-past nine! Mary was aghast, and promised an instant supply.
'Don't go;' and a bird-like little hand seized her on either side. 'Mary never came to bed, and nobody has been here all the morning, and we can't bear to be alone.'
'I was only looking for the bell.'
'It is of no use; Minna did jump out and ring, but nobody will come.'
Mary made an ineffectual experiment, and then persuaded the children to let her go by assurances of a speedy return. She sped down, brimming over with pity and indignation, to communicate to her father this cruel neglect, and as she passed Henry Ward's door, and heard several voices, she ventured on a timid summons of 'papa,' but, finding it unheard, she perceived that she must act for herself. Going down-stairs, she tried the sitting-room doors, hoping that breakfast might be laid out there, but all were locked; and at last she found her way to the lower regions, guided by voices in eager tones of subdued gossip.
There, in the glow of the huge red fire, stood a well-covered table, surrounded by cook, charwoman, and their cavaliers, discussing a pile of hot-buttered toast, to which the little kitchen-maid was contributing large rounds, toasted at the fire.
Mary's eyes absolutely flashed, as she said, 'The children have had no breakfast.'
'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' and the cook rose, 'but it is the nurse-maid that takes up the young ladies' meals.'
Mary did not listen to the rest; she was desperate, and pouncing on the bread with one hand, and the butter with the other, ran away with them to the nursery, set them down, and rushed off for another raid. She found that the commotion she had excited was resulting in the preparation of a tray.
'I am sure, ma'am, I am very sorry,' said the cook, insisting on carrying the kettle, 'but we are in such confusion; and the nurse-maid, whose place it is, has been up most of the night with Mr. Leonard, and must have just dropped asleep somewhere, and I was just giving their breakfast to the undertaker's young men, but I'll call her directly, ma'am.'
'Oh, no, on no account. I am sure she ought to sleep,' said Mary. 'It was only because I found the little girls quite starving that I came down. I will take care of them now. Don't wake her, pray. Only I hope,' and Mary looked beseechingly, 'that they will have something good for their dinner, poor little things.'
Cook was entirely pacified, and talked about roast chicken, and presently the little sisters were sitting up in their beds, each in her wrapper, being fed by turns with delicately-buttered slices, Mary standing between like a mother-bird feeding her young, and pleased to find the eyes grow brighter and less hollow, the cheeks less wan, the voices less thin and pipy, and a little laugh breaking out when she mistook Minna for Ella.
While tidying the room, she was assailed with entreaties to call their Mary, and let them get up, they were so tired of bed. She undertook to be still their Mary, and made them direct her to the house-maid's stores, went down on her knees at the embers, and so dealt with matches, chips, and coal, that to her own surprise and pride a fire was evoked.
'But,' said Ella, 'I thought you were a Miss May.'
'So I am, my dear.'
'But ladies don't light fires,' said Minna, in open-eyed perplexity.
'Oh,' exclaimed the younger sister, 'you know Henry said he did not think any of the Miss Mays were first-rate, and that our Ave beat them all to nothing.'
