The Two Sides of the Shield Part 44

'Yes, I know Aunt Lily does now; but, oh! if you had seen Uncle Alfred's face, and heard Uncle Regie,' and Dolly began to sob again as they returned on her. 'I see them whenever I shut my eyes!'

'Darling,' whispered Mysie, 'when I feel bad at night, I always kneel up in bed and say my prayers again!'

'Do you ever feel bad?'

'Oh yes, when I'm frightened, or if I've been naughty, and haven't told mamma. Shall we do it, Dolly?'

'I don't know what that has to do with it, but we'll try.'

'Mamma told me something to say out of.'

The two little girls rose up, with clasped hands in their bed, and Mysie whispered very low, but so that her companion heard, and said with her a few childish words of confession, pleading and entreating for strength, and then the Lord's Prayer, and the sweet old verse:--

'I lay my body down to sleep, I give my soul to Christ to keep, Wake I at morn, as wake I never, I give my soul to Christ for ever.'

'Ah! but I am afraid of that. I don't like it,' said Dolores, as they lay down again.

'It won't make one never wake,' returned Mysie; 'and I do like to give my soul to Christ. It seems so to rest one, and make one not afraid.'

'I don't know,' said Dolores; 'and why did you say the Lord's Prayer?

That hasn't anything to do with it!'

'Oh, Dolly, when He is our Father near, though our own dear fathers are far away, and there's deliver us from evil--all that hurts us, you know-and forgive us. It's all there.'

'I never thought that,' said Dolores. 'I think you have some different prayers from mine. Old nurse taught me long ago. I wish you would always say yours with me. You make them nicer.'

Mysie answered with a hug, and a murmured 'If I can,' and offered to say the 121st Psalm, her other step to comfort, and, as she said it, she resolved in her mind whether she could grant Dolores's request; for she was not sure whether she should be allowed to leave her room before saying her own, and she I knew enough of Dolores by this time to be aware that to say she would ask mamma's leave would put an end to all.

'I know,' was her final decision; 'I'll say my own first, and then come to Dolly's room.'

But by that time Dolores was asleep, even if Mysie had not been too sleepy to speak.

She meant to have rushed to the room she shared with Valetta before it was time to get up, but Lots found the black head and the brown together on Dolores's pillow, wrapped in slumber; and though Mysie flew home as soon as she was well awake, Mrs. Halfpenny descended on her while she was yet in her bath, and inflicted a sharp scolding for the malpractice of getting into her cousin's bed.

'But Dolly was so miserable, nurse, and mamma was too tired to call.'

'Then you should have called me, Miss Mysie, and I'd have sorted her well! You kenned well 'tis a thing not to be done and at your age; ye should have minded your duties better.'

And nurse even intercepted Mysie on her way to Dolores's room, and declared she would have no messing and gossiping in one another's rooms.

Miss Mysie was getting spoilt among strangers.

Mysie went down with a strong sense of having been disobedient, as well as of grief for Dolores's disappointment. Happily mamma was late that morning, and n.o.body was in her room but Primrose. Poor Mysie had soon, with tears in her eyes, confessed her transgression. Her mother's tears, to her great surprise, were on her cheek together with a kiss. 'Dear child, I am not displeased. Indeed, I am not; I will tell nurse. It must not be a habit, but this was an exception, and I am only thankful you could comfort her.

'And, mamma, may I go now to her. She said I could help her to say her prayers, and I think she only has little baby ones that her nurse taught her and she doesn't see into the Lord's Prayer.'

'My dear, my dear, if you can help her to pray you will do the thing most sure to be a blessing to her of all.'

And when Mysie was gone, Lady Merrifield knelt down afresh in thankfulness.

CHAPTER XVIII. -- MYSIE AND DOLORES.

Things were going on more quietly at Silverton. That is to say, there were no outward agitations, for the house was anything but quiet. Lady Merrifield had no great love for children's parties, where, as she said, they sat up too late, to eat and drink what was not good for them, and to get presents that they did not care about; and though at Dublin it had been necessary on her husband's account to give and take such civilities, she had kept out of the exchange at Silverton. But, on the other hand, there were festivals, and she promoted a full amount of special treats at home among themselves, or with only an outsider or two, and she endured any amount of noise, provided it was not quarrelsome, over-boisterous, or at unfit times.

There was the school tea, and magic-lantern, when Mr. Pollock acted as exhibitor, and Harry as spokesman, and worked them up gradually from grave and beautiful scenes like the cedars of Lebanon, the Parthenon and Colosseum, with full explanations, through dissolving views of cottage and bridge by day and night, summer and winter, of life-boat rescue, and the siege of Sevastopol, with sh.e.l.ls flying, on to Jack and the Beanstalk and the New Tale of a Tub, the sea-serpent, and the nose-grinding! Lady Phyllis's ecstacy was surpa.s.sing, more especially as she found her beloved little maid-of-all-work, and was introduced to all that small person's younger brothers and sisters.

Here they met Miss Hacket, who was in charge of a cla.s.s. She comported herself just as usual, and Gillian's dignity and displeasure gave way before her homely cordiality. Constance had not come, as indeed nothing but childhood, sympathy with responsibility for childhood, could make the darkness, stuffiness, and noise of the exhibition tolerable. Even Lady Merrifield trusted her flock to its two elders, and enjoyed a tete-a-tete evening with her brother, who profited by it to advise her strongly to send Dolores to their sister Jane before harm was done to her own children.

'I would not see that little Mysie of yours spoilt for all the world,'

said he.

'Nor I; but I don't think it likely to happen.'

'Do you know that they are always after each other, chattering in their bedrooms at night. I hear them through the floor.'

'Only one night--Mysie told me all about it--I believe Mysie will do more for that poor child than any of us.'

Uncle Regie shrugged his shoulders a little.

'Yes, I know I was wrong before, when I wouldn't take Jane's warning; but that was not about one of my own, and, besides, poor Dolores is very much altered.'

'I'll tell you what, Lily, when any one, I don't care who, man, or woman, or child, once is given up to that sort of humbug and deceit, carrying it on a that girl, Dolores, had done, I would never trust again an inch beyond what I could see. It eats into the very marrow of the bones--everything is acting afterwards.'

'That would be saying no repentance was possible--that Jacob never could become Israel.'

'I only say I have never seen it.'

'Then I hope you will, nay, that you do. I believe your displeasure is the climax of all Dolly's troubles.'

But Colonel Reginald Mohun could not forgive the having been so entirely deceived where he had so fully trusted; and there was no shaking his opinion that Dolores was essentially deceitful and devoid of feeling and that the few demonstrations of emotion that were brought before him were only put on to excite the compa.s.sion of her weakly, good-natured aunt, so he only answered, 'You always were a soft one Lily.'

To which she only answered, 'We shall see knowing that in his present state of mind he would only set down the hopeful tokens that she perceived either to hypocrisy on the girl's side, or weakness on hers.

Dolores had indeed gone with the others rather because she could not bear remaining to see her uncle's altered looks than because she expected much pleasure. And she had the satisfaction of sitting by Mysie, and holding her hand, which had become a very great comfort in her forlorn state--so great that she forebore to hurt her cousin's feelings by discoursing of the dissolving views she had seen at a London party. Also she exacted a promise that this station should always be hers.

Mysie, on her side, was in some of the difficulties of a popular character, for Fly felt herself deserted, and attacked her on the first opportunity.

'What does make you always go after Dolly instead of me, Mysie? Do you like her so much better?'

'Oh no! but you have them all, and she has n.o.body.'

'Well, but she has been so horridly naughty, hasn't she?'

'I don't think she meant it.'