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Jane Druce displays two pairs of gloves and two neckties for herself and her sister; and after all Meg will not go; she is so uncouth that her mother does not like her to go without her own supervision; and she with true Bourne Parva self-appreciation and exclusiveness says—

“I’m sure I don’t want to go among a lot of stupid people, who care for nothing but fine clothes and lawn tennis.”

There was a light till one o’clock last night in the room where Avice sleeps with Charley and the dog; and I scarcely saw either of the Oxford sisters or Jane all this morning till dinner-time, when Pica appeared very appropriately to her name, turned out in an old black silk dress left behind by her mother, and adorned with white tulle in all sorts of folds, also a pretty white bonnet made up by Avice’s clever fingers, and adorned with some soft gray sea-birds’ feathers and white down.  Isa and Metelill were very well got up and nice.  Metelill looks charming, but I am afraid her bouquet is from one of those foolish pupils.  She, as usual, has shared it with Isa, who has taken half to prevent her cousin being remarkable.  And, after all, poor Avice is to be left behind.  There was no time to make up things for two, and being in mourning, she could not borrow, though Metelill would have been too happy to lend.  She says she shall be very happy with the children, but I can’t help thinking there was a tear in her eye when she ran to fetch her dress cloak for Jane, whom, by the bye, Avice has made wonderfully more like other people.  Here is the waggonette, and I must finish to-morrow.

16.—We have had a successful day.  The drive each way was a treat in itself, and the moon rising over the sea on our way home was a sight never to be forgotten.  Hollybridge is charming in itself.  Those grounds with their sea-board are unique, and I never saw such Spanish chestnuts in England.  Then the gardens and the turf!  One must have lived as long in foreign parts as we have to appreciate the perfect finish and well-tended look of such places.  Your dear old chief does not quite agree.  He says he wants space, and is oppressed with the sense of hedges and fences, except when he looks to the sea, and even there the rocks look polished off, and treated by landscape gardeners!  He walked me about to see the show places, and look at the pictures, saying he had been so well lionised that he wanted some one to discharge his information upon.  It was great fun to hear him criticising the impossibilities of a battle-piece—Blenheim, I think—the anachronisms of the firearms and uniforms, and the want of discipline around Marlborough, who would never have won a battle at that rate.  You know how his hawk’s eye takes note of everything.  He looked at Metelill and said, “Uncommonly pretty girl that, and knows it,” but when I asked what he thought of Isabel’s looks, he said, “Pretty, yes; but are you sure she is quite aboveboard?  There’s something I don’t like about her eyes.”  I wish he had not said so.  I know there is a kind of unfriendly feeling towards her among some of the girls, especially the Druces and Charley.  I have heard Charley openly call her a humbug, but I have thought much of this was dislike to the softer manners, and perhaps jealousy of my notice, and the expression that the old lord noticed is often the consequence of living in an uncongenial home.

Of course my monopoly of the hero soon ended, and as I had no acquaintances there, and the young ones had been absorbed into games, or had fraternised with some one, I betook myself to explorations in company with Jane, who had likewise been left out.  After we had wandered along a dazzling stand of calceolarias, she said, “Aunt Charlotte, papa says I ought to tell you something; I mean, why Avice could not come to-day, and why she has nothing to wear but her round hat.  It is because she and Pica spent all they had in paying for that Maude Harris at the Convalescent Home.  They had some kind of flimsy gauzy bonnets that were faded and utterly done for after Commemoration week; and as Uncle Martyn is always growling about ladies’ luggage, they thought it would be a capital plan to go without all the time they are down here, till another quarter is due.  Avice never thought of its not being right to go to Church such a figure, and now she finds that papa thinks the command to “have power on her head” really may apply to that sort of fashion, we are going to contrive something for Sunday, but it could not be done in time for to-day.  Besides, she had no dress but a serge.”

“She preferred dressing her sister to dressing herself,” I answered; and Jane began assuring me that no one knew how unselfish that dear old Bird is.  The little money she had, she added to Pica’s small remnant, and thus enough had been provided to fit the elder sister out.

“I suppose,” I said, “that Isa manages better, for she does not seem to be reduced to the same extremities, though I suppose she has less allowance than her cousins.”

“She has exactly the same.  I know it.”  And Jane caught herself up, evidently checking something I might have thought ill-natured, which made me respond something intended to be moralising, but which was perhaps foolish, about good habits of economy, and how this disappointment, taken so good-humouredly, would be a lesson to Avice.  “A lesson?  I should think so,” said Jane bluntly.  “A lesson not to lend her money to Isa”; and then, when I asked what she meant, she blurted out that all Isa’s so-called share of the subscription for Maude Harris had been advanced by Avice—Pica had told her so, with comments on her sister’s folly in lending what she well knew would never be repaid; and Alice could not deny it, only defending herself by saying, she could not sacrifice the girl.  It was a very uncomfortable revelation, considering that Isa might have given her cousin my sovereign, but no doubt she did not think that proper, as I had meant it to be spent for this outing.

I will at least give her the benefit of the doubt, and I would not encourage Jane to say any more about her.  Indeed, the girl herself did not seem so desirous of dwelling on Isa as of doing justice to Avice, whom, she told me very truly, I did not know.  “She is always the one to give way and be put aside for Pie and Isa,” said Jane.  And now I think over the time we have had together, I believe it has often been so.  “You are very fond of her,” I said; and Jane answered, “I should think so!  Why, she spent eight months with us once at Bourne Parva, just after the great row with Miss Hurlstone.  Oh, didn’t you know?  They had a bad governess, who used to meet a lover—a German musician, I think he was—when they were out walking, and bullied Avice because she was honest.  When it all came to light, Pica came out and Isa was sent to school, but Avice had got into a low state of health, and they said Oxford was not good for her, so she came to us.  And papa prepared her for Confirmation, and she did everything with us, and she really is just like one of ourselves,” said Jane, as the highest praise imaginable, though any one who contrasted poor Jane’s stiff piqué (Miss Dadsworth’s turn-out) with the grace even of the gray serge, might not think it a compliment.  Jane was just beginning to tell me that Avice always wrote to her to lay before her father the difficulties about right and wrong faith and practice that their way of life and habits of society bring before the poor child, when Isa descended upon us with “Oh! Aunt Charlotte, I could not think what had become of you, when I saw the great man without you.”

I begin to wonder whether she is really so very fond of me, or whether she does not like to see me with one of the others.

However, I shall be able to take Jane’s hint, and cultivate Avice, for, as my mother did not come yesterday, Lady Hollybridge has most kindly insisted on her going over to-day.  The carriage is taking some one to the station, and is to call for her and me to bring us to luncheon, the kind people promising likewise to send us back.  So I asked whether I might bring a niece who had not been able to come yesterday, and as the young people had, as usual, become enamoured of Metelill, they begged for her likewise.  Avice looks very well in the dress she made up for Pica, and being sisters and in mourning, the identity will only be natural.  She is very much pleased and very grateful, and declares that she shall see everything she cares about much more pleasantly than in the larger party, and perhaps ‘really hear the hero talk.’  And Uncle Horace says, “True, you Bird, you are not like some young folk, who had rather hear themselves talk than Socrates and S. Ambrose both at once.”  “Oh!” said saucy Pica, “now we know what Uncle Horace thinks of his own conversations with father!”  By the bye, Martyn and Mary come home to-morrow, and I am very glad of it, for those evening diversions on the beach go on in full force, and though there is nothing tangible, except Charley’s smoke, to object to, and it is the present way of young people, there is something unsatisfactory in it.  Edith does not seem to mind what her daughters do.  Margaret has no occasion to be uneasy about Jane, who always stays with the little ones while the maids are at supper, and generally takes with her the devoted Avice, who has some delicacy of throat forbidding these evening excursions.  Meg gets more boisterous and noisy every day, Uchtred being her chief companion; but as she is merely a tomboy, I believe her parents think it inexpedient to give her hints that might only put fancies in her head.  So they have only prohibited learning to smoke, staying out later than nine o’clock, and shrieking louder than a steam whistle!

17.—Yesterday was a great success.  Avice was silent at first, but Metelill drew her out, and she had become quite at her ease before we arrived.  You would have been enchanted to see how much was made of our dear mother.  Lord Hollybridge came out himself to give her his arm up the stone steps and across the slippery hall.  The good old chief talked to her by the hour about you, and Avice’s eyes shone all the time.  After luncheon our kind hostess arranged that dear mother should have half an hour’s perfect rest, in a charming little room fitted like a tent, and then had a low chair with two little fairy ponies in it to drive her about the gardens, while I walked with the two gentlemen and saw things much better than in the former hurly-burly, though that was a beautiful spectacle in its way.  Avice, who has seen scores of fêtes in college grounds, much preferred the scenery, etc., in their natural state to a crowd of strangers.  The young people took possession of the two girls, and when we all met for the five o’clock tea, before going home, Lady Georgina eagerly told her father that Miss Fulford had made out the subject of ‘that picture.’  It was a very beautiful Pre-Raffaelite, of a lady gathering flowers in a meadow, and another in contemplation, while a mysterious shape was at the back; the ladies stiff-limbed but lovely faced, and the flowers—irises, anemones, violets, and even the grass-blossom, done with botanical accuracy.  A friend of Lord Hollybridge had picked it up for him in some obscure place in Northern Italy, and had not yet submitted it to an expert.  Avice, it appeared, had recognised it as representing Leah and Rachel, as Action and Contemplation in the last books of Dante’s Purgatorio, with the mystic griffin car in the distance.  Our hosts were very much delighted; we all repaired to the picture, where she very quietly and modestly pointed out the details.  A Dante was hunted up, but Lady Hollybridge and I were the only elders who knew any Italian, and when the catalogue was brought, Avice knew all the names of the translators, but as none were to be found, Lord Hollybridge asked if she would make him understand the passage, which she did, blushing a little, but rendering it in very good fluent English, so that he thanked her, and complimented her so much that she was obliged to answer that she had got it up when they were hearing some lectures on Dante; and besides it was mentioned by Ruskin; whereupon she was also made to find the reference, and mark both it and Dante.

“I like that girl,” said the old Governor-General, “she is intelligent and modest both.  There is something fine about the shape of her head.”

When we went home, Metelill was as proud and delighted as possible at what she called the Bird’s triumph; but Avice did not seem at all elated, but to take her knowledge as a mere outcome of her ordinary Oxford life, where allusions, especially Ruskinese and Dantesque, came naturally.  And then, as grandmamma went to sleep in her corner, the two girls and I fell into a conversation on that whole question of Action and Contemplation.  At least Metelill asked the explanation, but I doubt whether she listened much while Avice and I talked out the matter, and I felt myself a girl again, holding the old interminable talks with the first dear Avice, before you made her my sister for those two happy years, and—Well, it is no use paining you and myself with going back to those days, though there was something in the earnest thoughtfulness and depth of her young namesake and godchild that carried me back to the choicest day of companionship before you came on the scene.  And to think what a jewel I have missed all this time!

18.—I am deeply grieved, and am almost ashamed to write what I have to tell you.  I had been out to see my mother with Margaret and Emily settle in their favourite resort on the beach, and was coming in to write my letters, when, in the sitting-room, which has open French windows down to the ground, I heard an angry voice—

“I tell you it was no joke.  It’s no use saying so,” and I beheld Charley and Isa in the midst of a violent quarrel.  “I’ve looked on at plenty of your dodges, sucking up to Aunt Charlotte to get taken out with her; but when it comes to playing spiteful tricks on my sister I will speak out.”

By this time I was on the window-step, checking Charley’s very improper tone, and asking what was the matter.  Isa sprang to me, declaring that it was all Charley’s absurd suspicion and misconstruction.  At last, amid hot words on both sides, I found that Charley had just found, shut into a small album which Metelill keeps upon the drawing-room table, a newly taken photograph of young Horne, one of the pupils, with a foolish devoted inscription upon the envelope, directed to Miss Fulford.

Isa protested that she had only popped it in to keep it safe until she could return it.  Charley broke out.  “As if I did not know better than that!  Didn’t you make him give you that parasol and promise him your photo?  Ay, and give it him in return?  You thought he would keep your secret, I suppose, but he tells everything, like a donkey as he is, to Bertie Elwood, and Bertie and I have such fun over him.  And now, because you are jealous of poor Metelill, and think Aunt Charlotte may take a fancy to you instead of her, you are sticking his photo into her book just to do her harm with the aunts.  I’m not strait-laced.  I wouldn’t mind having the photos of a hundred and fifty young men, only they would be horrid guys and all just alike; but Aunt Charlotte is—is—well—a regular old maid about it, and you knew she would mind it, and so you did it on purpose to upset Metelill’s chances.”

Isa clung to me in floods of tears, desiring me not to believe anything so cruel and false.  Every one always was so hard upon her, she said, and she had only put the thing inadvertently there, to get it out of sight, into the first book she saw, but unfortunately she did not know I had heard her trying to pass it off to Charley as a jest.  However, as there was no proof there, I asked about the parasol.  While the shopping was going on, she and young Horne had been in another street, and this was the consequence!  I was perfectly confounded.  Receive presents from young men!  It seemed to me quite impossible.  “Oh, Isa thinks nothing of that!” said Charley.  “Ask her where she got those bangles, and that bouquet which she told you was half Metelill’s.  You think me awful, I know, Aunt Charlotte, but I do draw a line, though I would never have said one word about it if she had not played this nasty trick on Metelill.”  Isa would have begun some imploring excuse, but our two gentlemen were seen coming up towards the window, and she fled, gasping out an entreaty that I would not tell Uncle Martyn.

Nor did I then and there, for I needed to understand the matter and look into it, so I told Martyn and Horace not to wait for me, and heard Charley’s story more coolly.  I had thought that Mr. Horne was Metelill’s friend.  “So he was at first,” Charley said, “but he is an uncommon goose, and Isa is no end of a hand at doing the pathetic poverty-stricken orphan!  That’s the way she gets so many presents!”  Then she explained, in her select slang, that young Horne’s love affairs were the great amusement of his fellow-pupils, and that she, being sure that the parasol was no present from me, as Isa had given the cousins to understand, had set Bertie Elwood to extract the truth by teasing his friend.  “But I never meant to have told,” said Charley, “if you had not come in upon us, when I was in the midst of such a wax that I did not know what I was saying”; and on my demanding what she meant by the elegant expression she had used about Isa and me, she explained that it was the schoolboy’s word for currying favour.  Every one but we stupid elders perceived the game, nay, even the Druces, living in full confidence with their children, knew what was going on.  I have never spoken, but somehow people must read through one’s brains, for there was a general conviction that I was going to choose a niece to accompany us.  I wonder if you, my wise brother, let out anything to Edith.  It is what men always do, they bind women to silence and then disclose the secret themselves, and say, “Nothing is safe with these women.”

Any way, these girls have been generous, or else true to their esprit de corps, I do not know which to call it; for though they looked on at Isa’s manœuvres and my blindness with indignant contempt, they never attempted to interfere.  Jane Druce was seized with a fit of passionate wrath and pity for me, but her father withheld her from disclosures, assuring her that I should probably find out the girl’s true disposition, and that it would be wrong to deprive Isa of a chance of coming under a fresh influence.

Poor girl, she must be very clever, for she kept up her constant wooing of me while she also coquetted with Mr. Horne, being really, as her contemporaries declare, a much worse flirt than Metelill, but the temptation of the parasol threw her off her guard, and she was very jealous of my taking out Metelill and Avice.  I see now that it has been her effort to keep the others away from me.  This spiteful trick, if it be true that she meant it, seems to have been done on Metelill, as being supposed to be her only real rival.  Avice always yields to her, and besides, is too inoffensive to afford her any such opportunity.

When I talked to Mary, she said, “Oh yes, I always knew she was a horrid little treacherous puss.  Nature began it, and that governess worked on a ready soil.  We sent her to school, and hoped she was cured, but I have long seen that it has only shown her how to be more plausible.  But what can one do?  One could not turn out an orphan, and I did not see that she was doing our own girls any harm.  I’m sure I gave her every chance of marrying, for there was nothing I wished for so much, and I never told Martyn of her little manœuvres, knowing he would not stand them; and now what he will do, I can’t think, unless you and Edward will take her off our hands.  I believe you might do her good.  She is an unfathomable mixture of sham and earnest, and she really likes you, and thinks much of you, as having a certain prestige, and being a woman of the world” (fancy that).  “Besides, she is really religious in a sort of a way; much good you’ll say it does her, but, as you know, there’s a certain sort of devotion which makes no difference to people’s conduct.”

It seems to be the general desire of the family that we should take this unfortunate Isabel off their hands.  Shall we?  Cruelly as I have been disappointed in the girl, I can’t help liking her; she is obliging, pleasant, ladylike in manners, very affectionate, and I can’t help thinking that with the respect and fear for you she would feel she might be restrained, and that we could be the saving of her, though at the same time I know that my having been so egregiously deceived may be a sign that I am not fit to deal with her.  I leave it to your decision altogether, and will say no more till I hear.  Metelill is a charming girl, and I fancy you prefer her, and that her mother knows it, and would send her for at least a winter; but she gets so entirely off her balance whenever a young man of any sort comes near, that I should not like to take charge of her.  It might be good for the worthy Jane, but as she would take a great deal of toning down and licking into shape, and as she would despise it all, refer everything to the Bourne Parva standard, and pine for home and village school, I don’t think she need be considered, especially as I am sure she would not go, and could not be spared.  Pica would absorb herself in languages and antiquities, and maintain the rights of women by insisting on having full time to study her protoplasms, snubbing and deriding all the officers who did not talk like Oxford dons.  Probably the E. E. would be the only people she would think fit to speak to.  Avice is the one to whom I feel the most drawn.  She is thoroughly thoughtful, and her religion is not of the uninfluential kind Mary describes.  Those distresses and perplexities which poor Isa affected were chiefly borrowed from her genuine ones; but she has obtained the high cultivation and intelligence that her Oxford life can give in full measure, and without conceit or pretension, and it is her unselfish, yielding spirit that has prevented me from knowing her sooner, though when not suppressed she can be thoroughly agreeable, and take her part in society with something of her mother’s brilliancy.  I think, too, that she would be spared, as Oxford does not agree with her, and a southern winter or two would be very good for her.  Besides, the others might come and see her in vacation time.  Could we not take both her and Isabel at least for the first winter?

19.—A stormy wet day, the first we have had.  Poor Isa has made an attempt at explanation and apology, but lost herself in a mist of words and tears.  I suppose I was severe, for she shrinks from me, and clings to Avice, who has stood her friend in many a storm before, and, as Jane indignantly tells me, persists in believing that she is really sorry and wishes to be good.  She is very attentive and obliging, and my dear mother, who is in happy ignorance of all this uproar, really likes her the best of all the girls.

21.—We have had a great alarm.  Last evening we went to the parish church; Horace Druce had been asked to preach, and the rain, which had fallen all the morning, cleared off just in time for the walk.  Emily, Margaret, two of her children, and I sat in the gallery, and Avice and Isa in the free seats below.  Avice had been kept at home by the rain in the morning, but had begged leave to go later.  Darkness came on just as the first hymn was given out, and the verger went round with his long wand lighting the gas.  In the gallery we saw plainly how, at the east end, something went wrong with his match, one which he thought had failed, and threw aside.  It fell on a strip of straw matting in the aisle, which, being very dry, caught fire and blazed up for a few seconds before it was trampled out.  Some foolish person, however, set the cry of ‘Fire!’ going, and you know what that is in a crowded church.  The vicar, in his high old-fashioned desk with a back to it, could not see.  Horace in a chair, in the narrow, shallow sanctuary, did see that it was nothing, but between the cries of ‘Fire!’ and the dying peal of the organ, could not make his voice heard.  All he could do was to get to the rear of the crowd, together with the other few who had seen the real state of things, and turn back all those whom they could, getting them out through the vestry.  But the main body were quite out of their reach, and everybody tried to rush scrambling into the narrow centre aisle, choking up the door, which was a complicated trap meant to keep out draughts.  We in the gallery tried vainly to assure them that the only danger was in the crowd, and the clergyman in his desk, sure that was the chief peril, at any rate, went on waving and calling to them to wait; but the cries and shrieks drowned everything, and there was a most terrible time, as some 600 people jammed themselves in that narrow space, fighting, struggling, fainting.