Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 10

"I wonder whether it is their mother's doing?"

"I am afraid it is their father's. The Colonel spoke of her as a poor helpless little thing, who was thrown on his hands with all her family."

After the morning's examination and placing of the boys, there was a half-holiday; and the brother and sister set forth to enjoy it together, for Kenminster was a place with special facilities for enjoyment. It was built as it were within a crescent, formed by low hills sloping down to the river; the Church, school, and other remnants of the old collegiate buildings lying in the flat at the bottom, and the rest of the town, one of the small decayed wool staples of Somerset, being in terraces on the hill-side, with steep streets dividing the rows. These were of very mixed quality and architecture, but, as a general rule, improved the higher they rose, and were all interspersed with gardens running up or down, and with a fair sprinkling of trees, whose budding green looked well amid the yellow stone.

On the summit were some more ornamental villa-like houses, and grey stone buildings with dark tiled roofs, but the expansion on that side had been checked by extensive private grounds. There were very beautiful woods coming almost close to the town, and in the absence of the owner, a great moneyed man, they were open to all those who did not make themselves obnoxious to the keepers; and these, under an absentee proprietor, gave a free interpretation to rights of way. Thither were the Ogilvies bound, in search of primrose banks, but their way led them past two or three houses on the hill-top, one of which, being constructed on supposed Chinese principles of architecture, was known to its friends as "the PaG.o.da," to its foes as "the Folly." It had been long untenanted, but this winter it had been put into complete repair, and two rooms, showing a sublime indifference to consistency of architecture, had been lately built out with sash windows and a slated roof, contrasting oddly with the frilled and fluted tiles of the tower from which it jutted.

Suddenly there sounded close to their ears the words--"School time, my dear!"

Starting and looking round for some impertinent street boy, Mr. Ogilvie exclaimed, "What's that?"

"Mother Carey! We are all Mother Carey's chickens."

"See, there," exclaimed Mary, and a great parrot was visible on the branch of a sumach, which stretched over the railings of the low wall of the paG.o.da garden. "O you appropriate bird,--you surely ought not to be here!"

To which the parrot replied, "Hic, haec, hoc!" and burst out in a wild scream of laughing, spreading her grey wings, and showing intentions of flying away; but Mr. Ogilvie caught hold of the chain that hung from her leg.

Just then voices broke out--

"That's Polly! Where is she? That's you, Jock, you horrid boy."

"Well, I didn't see why she shouldn't enjoy herself."

"Now you've been and lost her. Poll, Poll!"

"I have her!" called back Mr. Ogilvie. "I'll bring her to the gate."

Thanks came through the hedge, and the brother and sister walked on.

"It's old Ogre. Cut!" growled in what was meant to be an aside, a voice the master knew full well, and there was a rushing off of feet, like ponies in a field.

When the sheep gate was reached, a great furniture van was seen standing at the door of the "Folly," and there appeared a troop of boys and girls in black, eager to welcome their pet.

"Thank you, sir; thank you very much. Come, Polly," said the eldest boy, taking possession of the bird.

"I think we have met before," said the schoolmaster to the younger ones, glad to see that two--i.e. the new Robert and Armine Brownlow--had not joined in the sauve qui peut.

Nay, Robert turned and said, "Mother, it is Mr. Ogilvie."

Then that gentleman was aware that one of the black figures had a widow's cap, with streamers flying behind her in the breeze, but while he was taking off his hat and beginning, "Mrs. Brownlow," she held out her hands to his sister, crying, "Mary, Mary Ogilvie," and there was an equally fervent response. "Is it? Is it really Caroline Allen?" and the two friends linked eager hands in glad pressure, turning, after the first moment, towards the house, while Mary said, "David, it is my dear old schoolfellow; Carey, this is my brother."

"You were very kind to these boys," said Carey, warmly shaking hands with him. "The name sounded friendly, but I little thought you were Mary's brother. Are you living here, Mary? How delightful!"

"Alas, no; I am only keeping holiday with David. I go back to-morrow."

"Then stay now, stay and let me get all I can of you, in this frightful muddle," entreated Caroline. "Chaos is come again, but you won't mind."

"I'll come and help you," said Mary. "David, you must go on alone and come back for me."

"Can't I be of use?" offered David, feeling rather shut out in the cold; "I see a bookcase. Isn't that in my line?"

"And here's the box with its books," said Janet. "Oh! mother, do let that be finished off at least! Bobus, there are the shelves, and I have all their pegs in my basket."

The case was happily in its place against the wall, and Janet had seized on her recruit to hold the shelves while she pegged them, while the two friends were still exchanging their first inquiries, Carey exclaiming, "Now, you naughty Mary, where have you been, and why didn't you write?"

"I have been in Russia, and I didn't write, because n.o.body answered, and I didn't know where anybody was."

"In Russia! I thought you were with a Scottish family, and wrote to you to the care of some laird with an unearthly name."

"But you knew that they took me abroad."

"And Alice Brown told me that letters sent to the place in Scotland would find you. I wrote three times, and when you did not answer my last--" and Caroline broke off with things unutterable in her face.

"I never had any but the first when you were going to London. I answered that. Yes, I did! Don't look incredulous. I wrote from Sorrento."

"That must have miscarried. Where did you address it."

"To the old place, inside a letter to Mrs. Mercer."

"I see! Poor Mrs. Mercer went away ill, and did not live long after, and I suppose her people never troubled themselves about her letters. But why did not you get ours."

"Mrs. McIan died at Venice, and the aunts came out, and considering me too young to go on with the laird and his girls, they fairly made me over to a Russian family whom we had met. Unluckily, as I see now, I wrote to Mrs. Mercer, and as I never heard more I gave up writing. Then the Crimean War cut me off entirely even from David. I had only one letter all that time."

"How is it that you are a governess? I thought one was sure of a pension from a Russian grandee!"

"These were not very grand grandees, only counts, and though they paid liberally, they could not pension one. So when I had done with the youngest daughter, I came to England and found a situation in London. I tried to look up our old set, but could not get on the track of anyone except Emily Collins, who told me you had married very soon, but was not even sure of your name. Very soon! Why, Caroline, your daughter looks as old as yourself."

"I sometimes think she is older! And have you seen my Eton boy?"

"Was it he who received the delightful popinjay, who 'Up and spak' so much to the purpose?" asked Mr. Ogilvie.

"Yes, it was Allen. He is the only one you did not see in the morning.

Did they do tolerably?"

"I only wish I had any boys who did half as well," said Mr. Ogilvie, the lads being gone for more books.

"I was afraid for John and Armine, for we have been unsettled, and I could not go on so steadily with them as before," she said eagerly, but faltering a little. "Armine told me he blundered in Phaedrus, but I hope he did fairly on the whole."

"So well that if you ask my advice, I should say keep him to yourself two years more."

"Oh! I am so glad," with a little start of joy. "You'll tell his uncle?

He insisted--he had some impression that they were very naughty boys, whom I could not cope with, poor little fellows."

"I can decidedly say he is learning more from you than he would in school among those with whom, at his age, I must place him."

"Thank you, thank you. Then Babie won't lose her companion. She wanted to go to school with Armie, having always gone on with him. And the other two--what of them? Bobus is sure to work for the mere pleasure of it--but Jock?"

"I don't promise that he may not let himself down to the standard of his age and develop a capacity for idleness, but even he has time to spare, and he is at that time of life when boys do for one another what no one else can do for them."