That Stick ...

‘Come, come, my dear, I can’t have you get mopy and dull; religion is a very good thing, but it isn’t meant to hinder all one’s pleasure, and when you’ve been to church on a Christmas Day, what more can be expected of young people but to enjoy themselves?  Come, go to bed and think no more about it.’

To express or even to understand what she felt would have been impossible to Constance, so she p. 160had to content herself with feeling warm at her heart, at her mother’s kind kiss.

All the other parties she saw were much more decorous, even to affectation, except that at the old skipper’s, and he was viewed by the family as a subject for toleration, because he had been a friend and messmate of Mrs. Morton’s father.  All the good side of that lady and Ida came out towards him and his belongings.  He had an invalid granddaughter, with a spine complaint and feeble eyesight, and Ida spent much time in amusing her, teaching her fancy works and reading to her.  Unluckily it was only trashy novels from the circulating library that they read; Ida had no taste for anything else, and protested that Louie would be bored to death if she tried to read her the African adventures which were just then the subject of enthusiasm even with Herbert!  Ida was not a dull girl.  Unlike some who do not seem to connect their books with life, she made them her realities and lived in them, and as she hardly ever read anything more substantial her ideas of life and society were founded on them, though in her own house she was shrewd in practical matters, and though not strong was a useful active assistant to her mother whenever there was no danger of her being detected in doing anything derogatory to one so nearly connected with the peerage.

Indeed, she seemed to regard her sister’s dutiful studies as proofs of dulness and want of spirit.  She was quite angry when Constance objected to The Unconscious Impostor,—very yellow, with a truculent flaming design outside—that ‘she did not think she p. 161ought to read that kind of book—Aunt Mary would not like it.’

‘Well, if I would be in bondage to an old governess!  You are not such a child now.’

‘Don’t, Ida.  Uncle Frank would not like it either.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Ida, with an ugly, meaning laugh as she glanced again at the title.

Constance might really have liked to read more tales than she allowed herself.  The House on the Marsh tempted her, but she was true to the advice she had received, and Rose Rollstone upheld her in her resolution.

Ida thought it rather ‘low’ in Herbert and Constance to care for the old butler’s daughter, but their mother had a warm spot in the bottom of her heart, and liked a gossip with Mrs. Rollstone too much to forbid the house to her daughter, besides that she shrank from inflicting on her so much distress.

So during the fortnight that Rose spent at home the girls were together most of the morning.  After Constance, well wrapped up, had practised in the cold drawing-room, where economy forbade fires till the afternoon, she sped across to Rose in the little stuffy parlour where Mr. Rollstone liked to doze over his newspaper to the lullaby of their low-voiced chatter.  Often they walked together, and were sometimes joined by Herbert, who on these occasions always showed that he knew how to behave like a gentleman.

Herbert was faithfully keeping his promise not to bet, though, as he observed, he had not expected p. 162to be in for it so long.  But it was satisfactory to hear that his present fellow-pupils did not go in for that sort of thing, and Constance felt sure that her uncle and aunt would be pleased with him and think him much improved.

p. 163CHAPTER XXIV

THE REVENGE OF SORDID SPIRITS

‘I am quite convinced,’ said Ida Morton, ‘it is quite plain why we are not invited.’

‘My dear, you see what your aunt says; that Mrs. Bury’s daughter’s husband is ordered to India, and that having the whole family to stay at Northmoor gives them the only chance of being all together for a little while, and after their obligations to Mrs. Bury—’

‘Ma, how can you be so green?  Obligations, indeed!  It is all a mere excuse to say there is not room for us in that great house.  I see through it all.  It is just to prevent us from being able to ask inconvenient questions of the German nurse and Mrs. Bury and all!’

‘Now, Ida, I wish you would put away that fancy.  Your uncle and aunt were always such good people!  And there was Mrs. Bury—’

‘Mother, you will never understand the revenge of sordid souls,’ said Ida tragically, quoting from The Unconscious Impostor.

‘Revenge!  What can you mean?’