Our Bessie Part 4

It was a wonderful relief to the hara.s.sed mother when she found a confidante to whom she could pour out all her anxieties.

Dr. Lambert was not a rich man; his practice was large, but many of his patients were poor, and he had heavy expenses. The hilly roads and long distances obliged him to keep two horses. He had sent both his sons to Oxford, thinking a good education would be their best inheritance, and this had obliged him to curtail domestic expenses. He was a careful man, too, who looked forward to the future, and thought it his duty to lay aside a yearly sum to make provision for his wife and children.

"I have only one son now, and Hatty will always be a care, poor child,"

he said more than once.

So, though there was always a liberal table kept in the doctor's house, it being Dr. Lambert's theory that growing girls needed plenty of nouris.h.i.+ng food, the young people were taught economy in every other matter. The girls dressed simply and made their own gowns. Carpets and furniture grew the worse for wear, and were not always replaced at once.

Tom grumbled sometimes when one of his Oxford friends came to dinner. He and Christine used to bewail the shabby covers in the drawing-room.

"It is such a pretty room if it were only furbished off a bit," Tom said once. "Why don't you girls coax the governor to let you do it up?" Tom never used the word governor unless he was in a grumbling mood, for he knew how his father hated it.

"I don't think father can afford anything this year, Tom," Bessie returned, in her fearless way. "Why do you ask your grand friends if you think they will look down on us? We don't pretend to be rich people.

They will find the chairs very comfortable if they will condescend to sit on them, and the tables as strong as other people's tables; and though the carpet is a little faded, there are no holes to trip your friends up."

"Oh, shut up, Betty!" returned Tom, restored to good humor by her honest sarcasm. "Ferguson will come if I ask him. I think he is a bit taken with old Chrissy." And so ended the argument.

CHAPTER IV.

A COSY MORNING.

Breakfast was half over before Miss Sefton made her appearance; but her graceful apology for her tardiness was received by Dr. Lambert in the most indulgent manner. In spite of his love of punctuality, and his stringent rules for his household in this respect, he could not have found it in his heart to rebuke the pretty, smiling creature who told him so navely that early rising disagreed with her and put her out for the day.

"I tell mamma that I require a good deal of sleep, and, fortunately, she believes me," finished Edna complacently.

Well, it was not like the doctor to hold his peace at this glaring opposition to his favorite theory, and yet, to Tom's astonishment, he forebore to quote that threadbare and detestable adage, "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise"--proverbial and uncomfortable philosophy that Tom hated with all his foolish young heart. Tom, in his budding manhood, often thought fit to set this domestic tyranny at defiance, and would argue at some length that his father was wrong in laying down rules for the younger generation.

"If my father likes to get up early, no one can find any fault with him for doing it," Tom would say; "but he need not impose his venerable and benighted opinions upon us. Great men are not always wise; even intellectual veterans like Dr. Johnson, and others I can mention, if you only give me time, have their hallucinations, fads, fancies, and flummeries. For example, every one speaks of Dr. Johnson with respect; no one hints that he had a bee in his bonnet, and yet a man who could make a big hole for a cat and a little one for a kitten--was it Johnson or Newton who did that?--must have had a screw loose somewhere. And so it is with my father; early rising is his hobby--his pet theory--the keystone that binds the structure of health together. Well, it is a respectable theory, but my father need not expect an enlightened and progressive generation to subscribe to it. The early hours of the morning are not good for men and mice, only for birds and bricklayers, and worms weary of existence."

Tom looked on, secretly amused, as his father smiled indulgently at Miss Sefton's confession of indolence. He asked her how she had slept, and made room for her beside him, and then questioned her about her intended journey, and finally arranged to drive her to the station before he went on his usual round.

An hour afterward the whole family collected in the hall to see Miss Sefton off. Edna bid them good-bye in her easy, friendly fas.h.i.+on, but as she took Bessie's hand, she said:

"Good-bye, dear. I have an idea that we shall soon meet again. I shall not let you forget me;" and then she put up her face to be kissed.

"I am not likely to forget you," thought Bessie, as Edna waved her little gloved hand to them all; "one could soon get fond of her."

"How nice it must be to be rich," sighed Christine, who was standing beside Bessie. "Miss Sefton is very little older than we are, and yet she has lovely diamond and emerald rings. Did you see her dressing bag?

It was filled up so beautifully; its bottles silver mounted; it must have cost thirty guineas, at least. And then her furs; I should like to be in her place."

"I should not envy Miss Sefton because she is rich," retorted Hatty disdainfully. "I would rather change places with her because she is so strong and so pretty. I did like looking at her so much, and so did Tom.

Didn't you, Tom?"

"I say, I wish you girls would shut up or clear off," responded Tom crossly; for things felt a little flat this morning. "How is a fellow to work with all this chattering going on round him?"

"Why, you haven't opened your books yet," replied Hatty, in an aggrieved voice; but Bessie hastily interposed:

"Tom is quite right to want the room to himself. Come along, girls, let us go to mother in the morning-room; we might do some of our plain sewing, and then I can tell you about Aunt Charlotte. It is so long since we have been cosy together, and our needles will fly while we talk--eh, Hatty?"

"There are those night s.h.i.+rts to finish," said Christine disconsolately; "they ought to have been done long ago, but Hatty was always saying her back ached when I wanted her help, and I could not get on with them by myself."

"Never mind, we will all set to work vigorously," and Bessie tripped away to find her work basket. The morning-room, as they called it, was a small room leading out of the drawing-room, with an old-fas.h.i.+oned bay window looking out on the garden.

There was a circular cus.h.i.+oned seat running round the bay, with a small table in the middle, and this was the place where the girls loved to sit and sew, while their tongues kept pace with their needles. When Hatty's back ached, or the light made her head throb with pain, she used to bring her low chair and leave the recess to Bessie and Christine.

The two younger girls went to school.

As Hatty brought her work (she was very skilful with the needle, and neither of her sisters could vie with her in delicate embroidery), she slipped a cold little hand into Bessie's.

"It is so lovely to have you back, Betty, dear," she whispered. "I woke quite happy this morning to know I should see you downstairs."

"I think it is lovely to be home," returned Bessie, with a beaming smile. "I am sure that is half the pleasure of going away--the coming back again. I don't know how I should feel if I went to stay at any grand place; but it always seems to me now that home is the most delicious place in the world; it never looks shabby to me as it does to Tom; it is just homelike."

Mrs. Lambert, who was sitting apart from the girls, busy with her weekly accounts, looked up at hearing her daughter's speech.

"That is right, dear," she said gently, "that is just how I like to hear you speak; it would grieve me if my girls were to grow discontented with their home, as some young ladies do."

"Bessie is not like that, mother," interposed Hatty eagerly.

"No, Hatty, we know that, do we not? What do you think father said the other day, Bessie? He said, 'I shall be glad when we get Bessie back, for the place does not seem like itself when she is away.' That was a high compliment from father."

"Indeed it was," returned Bessie; and she blushed with pleasure. "Every one likes to be missed; but I hope you didn't want me too much, mother."

"No, dear; but, like father, I am glad to get you back again." And the mother's eyes rested fondly on the girl's face. "Now you must not make me idle, for I have all these accounts to do, and some notes to write.

Go on with your talking; it will not interrupt me."

It spoke well for the Lambert girls that their mother's presence never interfered with them; they talked as freely before her as other girls do in their parent's absence. From children they had never been repressed nor unnaturally subdued; their childish preferences and tastes had been known and respected; no thoughtless criticism had wounded their susceptibility; imperceptibly and gently maternal advice had guided and restrained them.

"We tell mother everything, and she likes to hear it," Ella and Katie would say to their school-fellows.

"We never have secrets from her," Ella added. "Katie did once, and mother was so hurt that she cried about it. Don't you recollect, Katie?"

"Yes, and it is horrid of you to remind me," returned Katie wrathfully, and she walked away in high dudgeon; the recollection was not a pleasant one. Katie's soft heart had been pierced by her mother's unfeigned grief and tender reproaches.

"You are the only one of all my little girls who ever hid anything from me. No, I am not angry with you, Katie, and I will kiss you as much as you like," for Katie's arms were round her neck in a moment; "but you have made mother cry, because you do not love her as she does you."

"Mother shall never cry again on my account," thought Katie; and, strange to say, the tendency to secretiveness in the child's nature seemed cured from that day. Katie ever afterward confessed her misdemeanors and the accidents that happen to the best-regulated children with a frankness that bordered on bluntness.

"I have done it, mother," she would say, "but somehow I don't feel a bit sorry. I rather liked hurting Ella's feelings; it seemed to serve her right."

"Perhaps when we have talked about it a little you will feel sorry," her mother would reply quietly; "but I have no time for talking just now."

Mrs. Lambert was always very busy; on these occasions she never found time for a heated and angry discussion. When Katie's hot cheeks had cooled a little, and her childish wrath had evaporated, she would quietly argue the point with her. It was an odd thing that Katie generally apologized of her own accord afterward--generally owned herself the offender.

"Somehow you make things look different, mother," she would say, "I can't think why they all seem topsy-turvy to me."