That Stick ...

p. 72It was a little dreary.  The rooms looked large and empty.  Miss Morton’s belongings had been just what gave a homelike air to the place, and when these were gone, even the big fires could not greatly cheer the huge spaces.  However, these two months had accustomed the new arrivals to their titles, and likewise to being waited upon, and they were less at a loss than they would have been previously, though to Mary especially it was hard to realise that it was her own house, and that she need ask no one’s leave.  Also that it was not a duty to sit with a fire.  She could not well have done so, considering how many were doing their best to enliven the house, and finally she spent the evening in the library, not a very inviting room in itself, but which the late lord had inhabited, and where the present one had already held business interviews.  It was, of course, lined with the standard books of the last generation, and Mary, who had heard of many, but never had access to them, flitted over them while her husband opened the letters he had found awaiting him.  To her, what some one has called the ‘tea, tobacco, and snuff’ of an old library where the books are chiefly viewed as appropriate furniture, were all delightful discoveries.  Even to ‘Hume’s History of England—nine volumes!  I did not know it was so long!  Our first class had the Student’s Hume.  Is there much difference?’

‘Rather to the Student’s advantage, I believe.  Half these letters, at least, are mere solicitations for custom!  And advertisements!’

‘How the books stick together!  I wonder when they were opened last!’

p. 73‘Never, I suspect,’ said he.  ‘I do not imagine the Mortons were much disposed to read.’

‘Well, they have left us a delightful store!  What’s this?  Smollett’s Don Quixote.  I always wanted to know about that.  Is it not something about giants and windmills?  Have you read it?’

‘I once read an odd volume.  He was half mad, and too good for this world, and thought he was living in a romance.  I will read you some bits.  You would not like it all.’

‘Oh, I do hope you will have time to read to me!  Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  All these volumes!  They are quite damp.  You have read it?’

‘Yes, and I wish I could remember all those Emperors.  I must put aside this letter for Hailes—it is a man applying for a house.’

‘How strange it sounds!  Look, here is such an immense Shakespeare!  Oh! full of engravings,’ as she fell upon Boydell’s Shakespeare—another name reverenced, though she only knew a few selected plays, prepared for elocution exercises.

Her husband, having had access to the Institute Library, and spent many evenings over books, was better read than she, whose knowledge went no farther than that of the highest class, but who knew all very accurately that she did know, and was intelligent enough to find in those shelves a delightful promise of pasture.  He was by this time sighing over requests for subscriptions.

‘Such numbers!  Such good purposes!  But how can I give?’

p. 74‘Cannot you give at least a guinea?’ asked Mary, after hearing some.

‘I do not know whether in this position a small sum in the list is not more disadvantageous than nothing at all.  Besides, I know nothing of the real merits.  I must ask Hailes.  Ah! and here is Emma, I thought that she would be a little impatient.  She says she shall let her house for the winter, and thinks of going to London or to Brighton, where she may have masters for the girls.’

‘Oh, I thought you meant them to go to a good school?’

‘So I do, if I can get Emma’s consent; but I doubt her choosing to part with Ida.  She wants to come here.’

‘I suppose we ought to have her?’

‘Yes, but not immediately.  I do not mean to neglect her—at least, I do hope to do all that is right; but I think you ought to have a fair start here before she comes, so that we will invite her for Christmas, and then we can arrange about Ida and Constance.’

‘Dear little Connie, I hope she is as nice a little girl as she used to be!’

‘With good training, I think, she will be; and the tutor gives me good accounts of Herbert in this letter.’

‘Shall we have him here on Sunday week?’

‘Yes, I am very anxious to see him.  I hope his master gives him more religious instruction than he has ever had, poor boy!’

Though not brilliant or playful, Lord and Lady Northmoor had, it may be perceived, no lack of good p. 75sense in their strange new surroundings.  It was hard not to feel like guests on sufferance, and next morning, a Sunday, was wet.  However, under their waterproofs and umbrellas trudging along, they felt once more, as Mary said, like themselves, as if they had escaped from their keepers.  Nobody on the way had the least idea who the two cloaked figures were, and when they crept into the seat nearest the door they were summarily ejected by a fat, red-faced man, who growled audibly, ‘You’ve no business in my pew!’