Mary C. E. Wemyss

“ Betty slipped her little hand into mine. "You promised to let me walk with you for a little. Shall we pick honeysuckle, supposing we see any?"
"Yes, we will, darling."
"Supposing you can't reach it," she said.
"There is always some within reach."
"I suppose grown-ups can always reach things," said Betty.
Later, in the quiet darkness of the night, I could picture the garden, the roses, the distant moor, Lady Mary's beautiful face, but I could not bring myself to believe that I had really heard those words, "I am sure that he cares." ”

“ Not that she did not feel parting with Pauline, but her love for everybody and everything was of a nature so purely unselfish that it never occurred to her to count the cost to herself.
I have never met any one who so completely combines in her character gentleness and strength as does Aunt Cecilia: so gentle in spirit and judgment, and so strong in her fight for principles and beliefs. If she has a weakness, and I could never wish any one I love to be without one, it lies in her love for Patience. ”

“ I can hardly imagine so great a sorrow! I dare not even think of David the day Betty marries. He says he thinks it must be worse for a father than a mother."
"I wonder," I said. "I think a mother perhaps has a greater belief in the goodness of men; a woman, a happy woman certainly, has so little knowledge of men, other than her own."
"Yes," said Diana, "a good father and a good husband give one a very deep rooted faith and belief in the goodness of mankind generally. How we are prosing, Betty!"
Zerlina meanwhile sat on a rock, of the hardness of which she complained. ”

“ It is not astonishing, perhaps, that two children, modern children in particular, and a nursery-maid can fill to overflowing a small London house, but it is astonishing how demoralizing a thing it is. A visiting child to people who have children of their own means nothing, beyond the changing from one room to another of some particular child, or the putting up of an extra bed, or perhaps the joy supreme to some child of sleeping in something that is not a real bed. ”

“ If it is money, Betty dear, as I imagine it is, that must come right. It was money?"
"His father got into difficulties, no fault of his own, that—and friends made mischief."
"And he is helping his father," continued Lady Mary. "And while he is doing that, he thinks he has no right to bind a woman."
How could I say when I didn't know? "Men make that mistake; they forget how much easier it is for a woman to wait bound than to be free, not knowing. They don't distinguish between the woman who wants to get married and the woman who loves. Remember, Betty, how hard it must be for him. ”

“ Only when people seem to spend the whole of their life in doing things for other people, it makes one suspect that they are saying to themselves, 'As we can't be happy ourselves, we can see that other people are.'"
"What a philosopher you are, Pauline! If you go on that supposition, you must have a terrible sorrow somewhere hidden behind that happy face of yours."
Pauline is not meant to live in London. She thanks people in a crowd for letting her pass. If she is pushed off the pavement, she is only sorry that the person can be so rude as to do it. ”

“ Diana accepts such services; the mother of such creatures as Betty, Hugh, and Sara is forced to do so by very reason of their existence. But those services she accepts with generous appreciation; not that an aunt wants thanks, but being human, pitifully so, even the most professional of them, she is conscious where they are not expressed, in some form or other. A smile is enough.
So to Hames I went, in spite of Zerlina's appeal, with treasures deep down in my box for Betty, Hugh, and Sara. ”

“ Dear Cousin Penelope, we are told, had a love-story in her youth, the sadness of which ruined her life. It must have been a very beautiful thing, that sorrow, to have made her what she is. One feels that it must be a very wonderful love that is laid away in the wrappings of submission and tied with the ribbons of resignation. There is assuredly no bitterness about it, and I sometimes wonder if one's own sorrow which tears and tugs at one's heart will some day leave such a record of holiness and patience on one's face! ”

“ To begin with, it is not fair to a man that he should have to deny his wife things. It is bad for his character and, of course, for hers. He becomes a saint at her expense, whereas the expense should always be borne by the husband. William is so delightfully rich, but he is not an Archie, of course! But then husbands are not supposed to be."
Hugh, going to bed, wondered if the angels would bring Pauline a baby that night, a darling little baby!
And Betty said, in her great wisdom, "Oh, darling, I think it would be too exciting for Pauline to be married and have a baby all on one day." ”

“ Bindon, having done his duty by Betty, and not being able on this occasion to do it by both of us, made no further explanation. Like the first step, it is no doubt the first bite that costs most dearly; and while I was pondering whether to take two bites or swallow it whole, Mr. Dudley came in and sat down opposite me. He is a young man who thinks that no woman he doesn't know can be worth knowing. When by force of circumstances he comes to know a fresh one, he always tells her he feels as if he had known her all her life, and talks of a previous existence, and so gets over a difficulty. ”

“ The regeneration of Sara was evidently a matter of moments only, for the words were hardly out of Betty's mouth when Sara, in all her clean, delicious dumpiness, appeared in the doorway. If there is one thing more delicious than a grubby Sara, it is a clean Sara. Sara after gardening is delicious, but Sara clean is assuredly the cleanest thing on God's earth. I have never seen a child look so new, and so straight out of tissue-paper, as Sara can look. ”

“ I asked.
"Oh, quite close; when we go to tea there we walk. He hasn't got a mother, so there's no drawing-room. She died," added Hyacinth, as if it was an every-day occurrence that Thomas should be left without a mother, instead of its being a heart-breaking tragedy. A child with no mother, no mother to unwrap the pink bundle, no mother to grieve for the screw, no mother to understand things. Perhaps his mother had been a Diana sort of mother. ”

“ I do get such headaches at the seaside, and I look so awful when I get sun burnt, but it suits you.
Yours, ZERLINA
Julia's:
Betty dear,—You have simply got to come. Diana tells me she is asking you to Cornwall, and that, I know, you will not refuse, because for some extraordinary reason you can't refuse her anything. Oh! for Diana's charm for one day a week! What wouldn't I do! That woman wastes her life; I've always said so. But go to Cornwall, blazes, or anywhere you like, but come here on your way back—everywhere is on the way back from Cornwall. ”

“ For a fairyland it assuredly is, if she is lucky enough to find the right guide. He must, to begin with, believe in the fairyland. He must know that the path may be rough at times, stony and overgrown with weeds, but he will know that all the difficulties will be worth while when he brings her out into the open, and they look away to the limitless horizon of happiness.
A few hours later, Pauline said to me at breakfast, "Betty, I think I shall tell that bootmaker to make me two pairs of boots and two pairs of shoes. It is better to have enough while one is about it, don't you think so?" ”

“ It was a difficulty, but Hugh's Heaven was or is a very real and very happy place to him. It is strangely like Hames; and isn't the home of every happy child very near to Heaven? Surely it lies at its very gates, which we could see if it was not for the mountains which intervene, those beautiful snow mountains, which foolish grown-ups call clouds.
Diana has come triumphantly out of situations more difficult, and she will no doubt surmount those connected with the spiritual upbringing of Hugh, Betty, and Sara. ”

“ It is a terrible thing for a girl of that age to be left with a boy to bring up. I know, Betty, just what you are thinking—cold, heartless, mercenary Zerlina! But I'm practical."
When Diana came back, I could see in her face that she knew all about the poor little widow. It is wonderful what a comfort it seems to be even to strangers to confide in Diana. For one thing I feel sure they know that she won't tell, and that makes all the difference. It is a relief sometimes to tell some one, although some things can be better borne when nobody knows. ”

“ Could it be that I had arrived at the age when it is advisable for a woman to sit back to the light at breakfast? Was this only another instance of Bindon's devotion to us all? That the credit of the family is paramount in his mind, I know! All this flashed through my mind, but I saw a moment later that it was not of my complexion that Bindon thought, for on a plate before the chair behind which he stood, lay a small dark gray wad about the size of a five-shilling piece. I hesitated, and Bindon said in an undertone, "Miss Betty made it." ”

“ He has got into his head that we are a self-centered family, and that I am a prejudiced mother, when it is the only thing I am not. I may be everything else for all I know, I may be daily breaking all the commandments without knowing it! But a prejudiced mother I am not! Before he went to Oxford he came into my bedroom one morning, and he said that he thought Maud and Edith were quite the most beautiful girls he had ever seen, and he had sat behind some famous beauty in a theatre a few nights before. ”

“ I thought, "take courage, seaside time is coming. Within a few days, no doubt, an omnibus will come to the door empty, to go away full, filled with luggage, crowned by a perambulator and a baby's bath!" It is only a woman who can travel with a perambulator and a bath; they are the epitome of motherhood. A father is always too busy to go by that particular train. ”

“ Of course I had said by this time that I was Zerlina's sister-in-law.
We went upstairs, I following the tall Thomas, past the drawing-room, past that bedroom whose door I knew was closed. A mother's bedroom is nearly always in the same place in a London house, a child blindfolded could find it, and the handle of a mother's door is always within the reach of the smallest child; and so easily does it turn, that the door opens at the slightest pressure of the smallest fingers. ”

“ I had done her glorious hair on the top—that, I think is the expression—and she sat in the window so that her hair shone like burnished gold, and she was saying in a voice fraught with emotion, "If I had my way, there should be no sorrow or suffering," which of all sentiments was the most likely to appeal to Dick Dudley, for he is one of those who look upon sorrow and suffering as bad management on the part of some one, since the world is really such an awfully jolly place, if only people didn't make a muddle of their lives. ”

“ Meanwhile Sara was rocking herself backward and forward in a manner truly maternal and singing her version of "Jesus Tender" to her "lubbly blush."
"I thought she would love the rabbit," I said, and Nannie, by way of consolation, assured me that there was really nothing Sara loved so much as a rabbit. I suppose Nannie knew, and that it was only another instance of the folly of judging from appearances.
"You will love your bunny, won't you, darling?" said Nannie; "nice bunny!"
"Nasty bunny," said Sara with great decision.
"That's naughty, baby," said Nannie; "nice bunny!" ”

“ It is so easy to say clever, unkind things. Every one can do it if they choose; the difficulty is not to say them.
It is evident that Aunt Anna chooses the harder part.
Mrs. Blankley, having disposed of the fifth cup of tea, expressed a desire to see the pigs. Aunt Anna never goes to see pigs, nor demands that sacrifice of Londoners, for which act of consideration I honor her; not but what I am fond of pigs, black ones and small. Aunt Anna knows that there are such things because of the continual presence of bacon in her midst. She also knows that pigs are things that get prizes. ”

“ Listening more intently, I beard in the far distance, yet distinct, the cries of the children who ought to go to the seaside, children who have never been to the seaside, never paddled, never built castles, never caught crabs, never seen sea-anemones or starfish, children whose faces are wan and whose mothers are too tired to be kind to them. It is often that, I am sure, too tired to be kind! ”

“ Life, she says, is a garden, children the flowers, parents the gardeners. "If we treated children as we do roses, they would be far happier. We don't call roses naughty when they grow badly and refuse to flower as they ought to; we blame the gardeners or the soil."
"But, Aunt Cecilia," I say, "one can recommend an unsatisfactory gardener to a friend, but one can't so dispose of unsatisfactory parents." ”

“ A look I at last persuaded her to bestow upon the rabbit; but she gazed at its charms, unmoved.
"Yaya doesn't yike nasty bunnies, only nice blushes," she said.
"It's a hearth-brush dressed up," whispered Betty, "and it's dressed up in my dolly's cape, at least in one of my dolly's capes; she loves it. Aunt Woggles, do you think it is a good thing to make hearth-brushes say their prayers? Sara does."
I followed Sara disconsolately to the nursery and was shown the beauties of the "lubbly blush."
Nannie bemoaned her darling's taste, and the nursery-maid blushed for very shame. ”

“ She paused and walked to the window. Kind Nannie, she was giving me time. She blew her nose, she was crying, she knew. A double knock at the door brought my heart to a standstill. Lady Mary was right, he did care. It seemed hours before the telegram was brought to me. I hardly dared to open it. There is some happiness too great to bear. I opened it and read:—
Sara very ill. Come at once.
DIANA
"Nannie," I said, "I am going to Hames."
"To-day?" she said. She knew it was my day of days.
"I must, Nannie. Will you come?"
"No; I'll stay here. Poor Mrs. David, whatever will she do?" ”