Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 23

Whereupon Mrs. Brownlow, in her neat figures, built up a pretty little economical scheme, based on a thorough knowledge of the subject.

Caroline tried to follow her calculations, but a dreaminess came over her; she found herself saying "Yes," without knowing what she was a.s.senting to; and while Ellen was discoursing on coals and c.o.ke, she was trying to decide which of her casts she could bear to offer for sale, and going off into the dear old a.s.sociations connected with each, so that she was obliged at the end, instead of giving an unqualified a.s.sent, to say she would think it over; and Ellen, who had marked her wandering eye, left off with a conviction that she had wasted her breath.

Certainly she was not prepared for the proposal with which Mother Carey almost rushed into the room the next day, just as she was locking up her wine, and the Colonel lingering over his first glance at the day's Times.

"I know what to do! Miss James is not coming back? And you have not heard of any one? Then, if you would only let me teach your girls with mine! You know that is what I really can do. Yes, indeed, I would be regular. I always was. You know I was, Robert, till I came here, and didn't quite know what I was about; and I have been regular ever since the end of the holidays, and I really can teach."

"My dear sister," edged in the Colonel, as she paused for breath, "no one questions your ability, only the fitness of--"

"I had thought over two things," broke in Caroline again. "If you don't like me to have Jessie, and Essie, and Ellie, I would offer to prepare little boys. I've been more used to them than to girls, and I know Mr. Ogilvie would be glad. I could have the little Wrights, and Walter Leslie, and three or four more directly, but I thought you might like the other way better."

"I can see no occasion for either," said Ellen. "You need no increase in income, only to attend to details."

"And I had rather do what I can--than what I can't," said Caroline.

"Every lady should understand how to superintend her own household,"

said her Serene Highness.

"Granted; oh, granted, Ellen! I'm going to superintend with all my might and main, but I don't want to be my own upper servant, and I know I should make no hand of it, and I had much rather earn something by my wits. I can do it best in the way I was trained; and you know it is what I have been used to ever since my own children were born."

Ellen heaved a sigh at this obtuseness towards what she viewed as the dignified and ladylike mission of the well-born woman, not to be the bread-winner, but the preserver and steward, of the household. Here was poor little Caroline so ignorant as actually to glory in having been educated for a governess!

The Colonel, wanting to finish his Times in peace, looked up and said, with the gracious tone he always used to his brother's wife--

"My good little sister, it is very praiseworthy in you to wish to exert yourself, and very kind and proper to desire to begin at home, but you must allow us a little time to consider."

She took this as a hint to retreat; and her Serene Highness likewise feeling it a dismissal, tried at once to obviate all ungraciousness by saying, "We are preserving our magnum bonums, Caroline dear; I will send you some."

"Magnum bonum!" gasped Caroline, hearing nothing but the name. "Do you know--?"

"I know the recipe of course, and can give you an excellent one. I will come over by-and-by and explain it to you."

Caroline stood confounded. Had Joe revealed all to his brother? Was it to be treated as a domestic nostrum? "Then you know what the magnum bonum is?" she faltered.

"Are you asking as a philosopher," said the Colonel, amused by her tone

"I don't know what you mean, Colonel," said his wife. "I offered Caroline a basket of magnum bonums for preserving, and one would think I had said something very extraordinary."

"Perhaps it is my c.o.c.kney ignorance," said Caroline, beginning to breathe freely, and thinking it would have been less oppressive if Sua Serenita would have either laughed or scolded, instead of gravely leading her past the red-baize door which shut out the lower regions to the room where white armies of jam-pots stood marshalled, and in the midst two or three baskets of big yellow plums, which awoke in her a remembrance of their name, and set her laughing, thanking, and preparing to carry home the basket.

This, however, as she was instantly reminded, was not country-town manners. The gardener was to be sent with them, and Ellen herself would copy out the recipe, and by-and-by bring it, with full directions.

Each lady felt herself magnanimously forbearing, as Caroline went home to the lessons, and Ellen repaired to her husband on his morning inspection of his hens and chickens.

"Poor thing," she said, "there are great allowances to be made for her.

I believe she wishes to do right."

"She knows how to teach," rejoined the Colonel. "Bobus is nearly at the head of the school, and Johnny has improved greatly since he has been so much with her."

"Johnny was always clever," said his mother. "For my part, I had rather see them playing at good honest games than messing about with that museum nonsense. The boys did not do half so much mischief, nor destroy so many clothes, before they were always running down to the PaG.o.da. And as to this setting up a school, you would never consent to have Joe's wife doing that!"

"There is no real need."

"None at all, if she only would--if she only knew how to attend to her proper duties."

"At the same time, I should be very glad of an excuse for making her an advance, enough to meet the weekly bills, till her rent comes in, so that she may not begin a debt. Could you not send the girls to her for a few hours every day?"

"That's not so bad as her taking pupils, for n.o.body need know that she was paid for it," said his wife, considering. "I don't believe it will answer, or that she will ever keep to it steadily; but it can hardly hurt the children to try, if Jessie has an eye on Essie and Ellie. I will not have them brought on too fast, nor taught Latin, and all that poor little Babie is learning. I am sure it is dreadful to hear that child talk. I am always expecting that she will have water on the brain."

The decision, which really involved a sacrifice and a certain sense of risk on the part of these good people, was conveyed in a note, together with a recipe for the preservation of magnum bonums, and a very liberal cheque in advance for the first quarter of her three pupils, stipulating that no others should be admitted, that the terms should be kept secret, that the hours should be regular, and above all, that the pupils should not be forced.

Caroline was touched and grateful, but could hardly keep a little satire out of her promise that Essie and Ellie should not be too precocious.

She wrote her note of thanks, despatched it, and then, in the interest of some arithmetical problems which she was working with Janet, forgot everything else, till a sort of gigantic buzz was heard near at hand. A sudden thought struck her, and out she darted into the hall. There stood the basket in the middle of the table, just where the boys were wont to look for refections of fruit or cake when they tumbled in from school.

Six boys and Babie hovered round, each in the act of devouring a golden-green, egg-like plum, and only two or three remained in the leaves at the bottom!

"Oh, the magnum bonums!" she cried; and Janet came rus.h.i.+ng out in dismay at the sound, standing aghast, but not exclaiming.

"Weren't they for us?" asked Bobus, the first to get the stone out of his mouth.

"No; oh, no!" answered his mother, as well as laughter would permit; "they are your aunt's precious plums, which she gave us as a great favour, and I was going to be so good and learn to preserve and pickle them! Oh, dear!"

"Never mind, Mother Carey," mumbled her nephew Johnny, with his stone swelling out his cheek, where it was tucked for convenience of speech; "I'll go and get you another jolly lot more."

"You can't," grunted Robin; "they are all gathered."

"Then we'll get them off the old tree at the bottom of the orchard, where they are just as big and yellow, and mamma will never know the difference."

"But they taste like soap!"

"That doesn't matter. She'd no more taste a magnum bonum, before it is all t.i.tivated up with sugar, than--than--than--"

"Babie's head with brain sauce," gravely put in Bobus, as his cousin paused for a comparison. "It's a wasting of good gifts to make jam of these, for jam is nothing but a vehicle for sugar."

"Then the grocer's cart is jam," promptly retorted Armine, "for I saw a sugarloaf come in one yesterday."

"Come on, then," cried Jock, ripe for the mischief; "I know the tree!

They are just like long apricots. Aunt Ellen will think her plums have been all a-growing!"

"No, no, boys!" cried his mother, "I can't have it done. To steal your aunt's own plums to deceive her with!"

"We always may do as we like with that tree," said Johnny, "because they are so nasty, and won't keep."

"How nice for the preserves!" observed Bobus.

"They would do just as well to hinder Mother Carey from catching it."

"No, no, boys; I ought to 'catch it!' It was all my fault for not putting the plums away."

"You won't tell of us," growled Robin, between lips that he opened wide enough the next moment to admit one of three surviving plums.