A True Friend Part 13

"Nonsense, children," said Nora, with an air of authority. "You know that it can't be mamma. It is papa, of course, coming in for his supper.

And one of us must go down."

"I'll go," said Janetta, hurriedly. "I want a little talk with him, you know."

There was a general chorus of "Oh, don't go, Janetta!" "Do stay!" "It will be no fun when you are gone!" which stimulated Nora to a retort.

"Well, I must say you are all very polite," she said. "One would think that I was not here at all!"

"You are not half such good fun as Janetta," said Joey. "You don't throw yourself into everything as she does."

"I must throw myself into giving father his supper, I'm afraid," said Janetta, laughing, "so good-night, children, and do go to bed quietly now, for I don't think father will like such a dreadful noise."

She was nearly choked by the fervent embraces they all bestowed upon her before she went downstairs. Nora, who stood by, rolling up the ribbon that she had taken from Tiny's hair, felt a little pang of jealousy. Why was it that everyone loved Janetta and valued her so much? Not for what she did, because her share of household duty was not greater than that of Nora, but for the way in which she did it. It always seemed such a pleasure to her to do anything for any one--to serve another: never a toil, never a hardship, always a deep and lasting pleasure. To Nora it was often a troublesome matter to help her sister or her schoolboy brother, to attend on her mother, or to be thoughtful of her father's requirements; but it was never troublesome to Janetta. And as Nora thought of all this, the tears came involuntarily to her eyes. It seemed so _easy_ to Janetta to be good, she thought! But perhaps it was no easier to Janetta than to other people.

Janetta ran down to the dining-room, where she found her father surveying with a rather dissatisfied air the cold and scanty repast which was spread out for him. Mr. Colwyn was so much out that his meals had to be irregular, and he ate them just when he had a spare half hour.

On this occasion he had been out since two o'clock in the afternoon, and had not had time even for a cup of tea. He had been attending a hopeless case, moreover, and one about which he had been anxious for some weeks.

f.a.gged, chilled, and dispirited, it was no wonder that he had returned home in not the best of tempers, and that he was a little disposed to find fault when Janetta made her appearance.

"Where is mamma?" he began. "Out, I suppose, or the children would not be making such a racket overhead."

"They are going to be quiet now, dear father," said his daughter, kissing him, "and mamma has gone out to supper at Mrs. Maitland's. I am going to have mine with you if you will let me."

"And is this what you are going to have for your supper?" said Mr.

Colwyn, half ruefully, half jestingly, as he glanced again at the table, where some crusts of bread reposed peacefully on one dish, and a scrag of cold mutton on another. "After your sojourn at Miss Polehampton's and among the Adairs, I suppose you don't know how to cook, Jenny?"

"Indeed I do, father, and I'm going to scramble some eggs, and make some coffee this very minute. I am sorry the table is not better arranged, but I have been out, and was just having a little game with the children before they went to bed. If you will sit down by the fire, I shall be ready in a very few minutes, and then I can tell you about a wonderful adventure that Nora and I had this evening in the Beaminster wood."

"You should not roam about those woods so much by yourselves; they are too lonely," said Mr. Colwyn; but he said it very mildly, and dropped with an air of weariness into the arm-chair that Janetta had wheeled forward for him. "Well, well! don't hurry yourself, child. I shall be glad of a few minutes' rest before I begin my supper."

Janetta in a big white ap.r.o.n, Janetta flitting backwards and forwards between kitchen and dining-room, with flushed cheeks and brightly shining eyes, was a pretty sight--"a sight to make an old man young,"

thought Mr. Colwyn, as he watched her furtively from beneath his half-closed eyelids. She looked so trim, so neat, so happy in her work, that he would be hard to satisfy who did not admire her, even though she was not what the world calls strictly beautiful. She succeeded so well in her cooking operations, with which she would not allow the servant to intermeddle, that in a very short time a couple of dainty dishes and some coffee smoked upon the board; and Janetta bidding her father come to the table, placed herself near him, and smilingly dispensed the savory concoction.

She would not enter upon any account of her evening's work until she felt sure that the wants of her father's inner man were satisfied; but when supper was over, and his evening pipe--the one luxury in the day he allowed himself--alight, she drew up a ha.s.sock beside his chair and prepared for what she called "a good long chat."

Opportunities for such a chat with her father were rather rare in that household, and Janetta meant to make the most of this one. Nora had good-naturedly volunteered to stay away from the dining-room, so as to give Janetta the chance that she wished for; and as it was now barely ten o'clock, Janetta knew that she might perhaps have an hour of her father's companionship--if, at least, he were not sent for before eleven o'clock. At eleven he would probably go to Mrs. Maitland's to fetch his wife home.

"Well, Janet, and what have you to tell me?" he said kindly, as he stretched out his slippered feet to the blaze, and took down his pipe from the mantel-piece. The lines had cleared away from his face as if by magic; there was a look of rest and peace upon his face that his daughter liked to see. She laid her hand on his knee and kept it there while she told him of her experiences that evening at Brand Hall.

Mr. Colwyn's eyebrows went up as he listened. His face expressed astonishment, and something very like perplexity. But he heard the whole story out before he said a word.

"Well, you have put your head into the lion's den!" he said at last, in a half-humorous tone.

"What I want to know is," said Janetta, "why it is thought to be a lion's den! I don't mean that I have heard the expression before, but I have gathered in different ways an impression that people avoid the house----"

"The family, not the house, Janet!"

"Of course I _mean_ the family, father, dear. What have they done that they should be shunned?"

"There is a good deal against them in the eyes of the world. Your poor mother, Janetta, always stood up for them, and said that they were more sinned against than sinning."

"_They?_ But these young men were not grown up then?"

"No; it was their father and----"

Mr. Colwyn stopped short and seemed as if he did not like to go on.

"Tell me, father," said Janetta, coaxingly.

"Well, child, I don't know that you ought to hear old scandals. But you are too wise to let them harm you. Brand, the father of these two young fellows, married a barmaid, the daughter of a low publican in the neighborhood."

"What! The Mrs. Brand that I saw to-day? _She_ a barmaid--that quiet, pale, subdued-looking woman?"

"She has had trouble enough to make her look subdued, poor soul! She was a handsome girl then; and I daresay the world would have overlooked the marriage in time if her character had been untarnished. But stories which I need not repeat were afloat; and from what I have lately heard they are not yet forgotten."

"After all these years! Oh, that does seem hard," said Janetta, sympathetically.

"Well--there are some things that the world does not forgive, Janet. I have no doubt that the poor woman is much more worthy of respect and kindness than her wild sons; and yet the fact remains that if Wyvis Brand had come here with his brother alone, he would have been received everywhere, and entertained and visited and honored like any other young man of property and tolerable repute; but as he has brought his mother with him, I am very much afraid that many of the nicest people in the county mean to 'cut' him."

"It is very unfair, surely."

"Yes, it is unfair; but it is the way of the world, Janetta. If a woman's reputation is ever so slightly blackened, she can never get it fair and white again. Hence, my dear, I am a little doubtful as to whether you must go to Brand Hall again, as long as poor Mrs. Brand is there."

"Oh, father, and I promised to go!"

"You must not make rash promises another time, my child."

"But she wants me, father--she is so lonely and so sad?"

"I am sorry, my Janet, but I don't know----"

"Oh, do let me, father. I shall not be harmed; and I don't mind what the world says."

"But perhaps _I_ mind," said Mr. Colwyn, quaintly.

CHAPTER X.

MARGARET.

Janetta looked so rueful at this remark that her father laughed a little and pulled her ear.

"I am not given to taking much notice of what the world says," he told her, "and if I thought it right for you to go to Brand Hall I should take no notice of town talk; but I think that I can't decide this matter without seeing Mrs. Brand for myself."

"I thought you had seen her, father?"