Magnum Bonum; Or, Mother Carey's Brood Part 18

"I hope he will. It would have only been civil in me to have asked him, considering that I have taken possession of you," said Caroline.

"I fully expect to see him on Miss Barbara's invitation. Do you know, Carey, he says you have transformed his school."

"Translated it, like Bottom the Weaver."

"In the reverse direction. He says you have made the mothers see to their boys' preparation, and wakened up the intellects."

"Have I? I thought I had only kept my own boys up to the mark. Yes, and there's Johnny. Do you know, Mary, it is very funny, but that boy Johnny has adopted me. He comes after me everywhere like a shadow, and there's nothing he won't do for me, even learning his lessons. You see the poor boy has a good deal of native sense, Brownlow sense, and mind had been more stifled than wanting in him. n.o.body had ever put things to him by the right end, and when he once let me do it for him, it was quite a revelation, and he has been so happy and prosperous that he hardly knows himself. Poor boy, there is something very honest and true about him, and so affectionate! He is a little like his uncle, and I can't help being fond of him. Then Robin is just as devoted to Jock, though I can't say the results are so very desirable, for Jock _is_ a monkey, I must confess, and it is irresistible to a monkey to have a bear that he can lead to do anything. I hear that Robin used to be the good boy of the establishment, and I am afraid he is not that now."

"But can't you stop that?"

"My dear, n.o.body could think of Jock's devices so as to stop them, who had not his own monkey brain. Who would have thought of his getting the whole set to dress up as n.i.g.g.e.r singers, with black faces and banjoes, and coming to dance and sing in front of the windows?"

"There wasn't much harm in that."

"There wouldn't have been if it had been only here. And, oh dear, the irresistible fun of Jock's capering antics, and Rob moving by mechanism, as stiff and obedient as the giant porter to Flibberti-gibbet." Carey stopped to laugh. "But then I never thought of their going on to present themselves to Ellen in the middle of a mighty and solemn dinner party!

All the grandees, the county people (this in a deep and awful voice), sitting up in their chignons of state, in the awful pause during the dishing-up, when these five little wretches, in finery filched from the rag bag, appear on the smooth lawn, mown and trimmed to the last extent for the occasion, and begin to strike up at their shrillest, close to the open window. Ellen rises with great dignity. I fancy I can see her, sending out to order them off. And then, oh dear, Jock only hopping more frantically than ever round the poor man the hired waiter, who, you must know, is the undertaker's chief mute, and singing--

'Leedle, leedle, leedle, Our cat's dead.

What did she die wi'?

Wi' a sair head.

A' you that kenned her While she was alive, Come to her burying At half-past five.'

And then the Colonel, bestirring himself to the rescue, with 'go away boys, or I'll send for the police.' And then the discovery, when in the height of his wrath, Jock perked up, and said, 'I thought you would like to have the ladies amused, Uncle Robert.' He did box his ears then--small blame to him, I must say. I could stand that better than the jaw Ellen gave us afterwards. I beg your pardon, Mary, but it really was one. She thinks us far gone in the ways of depravity, and doesn't willingly let her little girls come near us."

"Isn't that a pity?"

"I don't know; Essie and Ellie have feelings in their clothes, and don't like our scrambling walks, and if Ellie does get allured by our wicked ways, she is sure to be torn, or splashed, or something, and we have shrieks and lamentations, and accusations of Jock and Joe, amid floods of tears; and Jessie comes to the rescue, primly shaking her head and coaxing her little sister, while she brings out a needle and thread. I can't help it, Mary. It does aggravate me to look at her!"

Mary could only shake her head with a mixture of pity, reproof, and amus.e.m.e.nt, and as a safer subject could not help asking--

"By the bye, why do you confuse your friends by having all the two families named in pairs?"

"We didn't know we were going to live close together," said Carey. "But the fact is that the Janets were named after their fathers' only sister, who seems to have been an equal darling to both. We would have avoided Robert, but we found that it would have been thought disrespectful not to call the boy after his grandfather and uncle."

"And Bobus _is_ a thoroughly individual name."

"Then Jock's name is John Lucas, and we did mean to call him by the second, but it wouldn't stick. Names won't sometimes, and there's a formality in Lucas that would never fit that skipjack of a boy. He got called Jock as a nickname, and now he will abide by it. But Joseph Armine's second name does fit him, and so we have kept to it; and Barbara was dear grandmamma's own name, and quite our own."

Therewith Babie rushed downstairs with "He's coming, Mother Carey," and darted out at the house door to welcome Mr. Ogilvie at the gate, and lead him in in triumph, attended by her two brothers. The two ladies laughed, and Carey said, with a species of proud apology--

"Poor children, you see they have been used to be noticed by clever men."

"Mr. Ogilvie is come to see our museum," cried Babie, in her patronising tone, jumping and dancing round during his greetings and remarks that he hoped he might take advantage of her invitation; he had been thinking whether to begin a school museum would not be a very good thing for the boys, and serve to open their minds to common things. On which, before any one else could answer, the parrot, in a low and sententious tone, observed, "Excellent."

"There, you have the consent of your first acquaintance," said Carey, while the bird, excited by one of those mysterious likings that her kind are apt to take, held her grey head to Mr. Ogilvie to be scratched, chuckling out, "All Mother Carey's chickens," and Janet exclaimed--

"That's an adoption."

The troop were climbing the stairs to the third story, where Armine and Bobus were already within an octagon room, corresponding to the little hall below, and fitted with presses and shelves, belonging to the store-room of the former thrifty inhabitant; but now divided between the six children, Mother Carey, as Babie explained, being "Mine own, and helping me more specially."

The table was likewise common to all; but one of the laws of the place was that everything left there after twelve o'clock on Sat.u.r.day was, as Babie's little mouth rolled out the long words, "confiscated by the inexorable Eumenides."

"And who are they?" asked Mr. Ogilvie, who was always much entertained by the simplicity with which the little maid uttered the syllables as if they were her native speech.

"Janet, and Nurse, and Emma," she said; "and they really are inex-o-rable. They threw away my snail sh.e.l.l that a thrush had been eating, though I begged and prayed them."

"Yes, and my femur of a rabbit," said Armine, "and said it was a nasty old bone, and the baker's Pincher ate it up; but I did find my turtle-dove's egg in the ash-heap, and discovered it over again, and you don't see it is broken now; it is stuck down on a card."

"Yes," said his mother, "it is wonderful how valuable things become precisely at twelve on Sat.u.r.day."

Each had some department: Janet's, which was geology, was the fullest, as she had inherited some youthful h.o.a.rds of her father's; Bobus's, which was botany, was the neatest and most systematic. Mary thought at first that it did not suit him; but she soon saw that with him it was not love of flowers, but the study of botany. He p.r.o.nounced Jock's b.u.t.terflies to be perfectly disgraceful.

"You said you'd see to them," returned Jock.

"Yes, I shall take up insects when I have done with plants," said Bobus, coolly.

"And say, 'Solomon, I have surpa.s.sed thee'?" asked Mr. Ogilvie.

Bobus looked as if he did not like it; but his mother shook her head at him as one who well deserved the little rebuke for self-sufficiency.

There was certainly a wonderful winning way about her--there was a simplicity of manner almost like that of Babie herself, and yet the cleverness of a highly-educated woman. Mary Ogilvie did not wonder at what Mr. and Mrs. Acton had said of the charm of that unpretending household, now broken up.

There was, too, the perception that, beneath the surface on which, like the children, she played so lightly, there were depths of sorrow that might not be stirred, which added a sweetness and pathos to all she said and did.

Of many a choice curiosity the children said, in lowered tones of reverence, that "_he_ found it;" and these she would not allow to be pa.s.sed over, but showed fondly off in all their best points, telling their story as if she loved to dwell upon it.

Barbara, who had specially fastened herself on Mr. Ogilvie, according to the modern privileges of small girls, after having much amused him by doing the honours of her own miscellaneous treasury, insisted on exhibiting "Mother Carey's studio."

Caroline tried to declare that this meant nothing deserving of so grand a name; it was only the family resort for making messes in. She never touched clay now, and there was nothing worth seeing; but it was in vain; Babie had her way; and they mounted to the highest stage of the paG.o.da, where the eaves and the twisted monsters that supported them were in close juxtaposition with the four windows.

The view was a grand one. Belforest Park on the one side, the town almost as if in a pit below, with a bird's-eye prospect of the roofs, the gardens and the school-yard, the leaden-covered church, lying like a great grey beetle with outspread wings. Beyond were the ups-and-downs of a wooded, hilly country, with glimpses of blue river here and there, and village and town gleaming out white; a large house, "bosomed high in tufted trees;" a church-tower and spire, nestled on the hill-side, up to the steep grey hill with the tall land-mark tower, closing in the horizon--altogether, as Carey said, a thorough "allegro" landscape, even to "the tanned hayc.o.c.k in the mead." But the summer sun made the place dazzling and almost uninhabitable, and the visitors, turning from the glare, could hardly see the casts and models that filled the shelves; nor was there anything in hand; so that they let themselves be hurried away to share the midday meal, after which Mr. Ogilvie and the boys betook themselves to the school, and Carey and her little ones to the shade of the garden-wall, to finish their French reading, while Mary wondered the less at the Kenminster ladies.

CHAPTER IX. -- FLIGHTS.

Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?--Twelfth-Night.

The summer holidays not only brought home Allen Brownlow from Eton, but renewed his mother's intercourse with several of her friends, who so contrived their summer outing as to "see how poor little Mrs. Brownlow was getting on," and she hailed them as fragments of her dear old former life.

Mr. and Mrs. Acton came to a farmhouse at Redford, about a mile and a half off, where Mr. Acton was to lay up a store of woodland and home sketches, and there were daily meetings for walks, and often out-of-door meals. Mr. Ogilvie declared that he was thus much more rested than by a long expedition in foreign scenery, and he and his sister stayed on, and usually joined in the excursion, whether it were premeditated or improvised, on foot, into copse or glade, or by train or waggonette, to ruined abbey or cathedral town.

Then came two sisters, whom old Mrs. Brownlow had befriended when the elder was struggling, as a daily governess, to provide home and education for the younger. Now, the one was a worthy, hard-working law-copier, the other an artist in a small way, who had transmogrified her name of Jane into Juanita or Nita, wore a crop, short petticoats, and was odd. She treated Janet on terms of equal friendship, and was thus a much more charming companion than Jessie. They always came into cheap sea-side lodgings in the vacation, but this year had settled themselves within ten minutes walk of the Folly, a t.i.tle which became more and more applicable, in Kenminster eyes, to the PaG.o.da, and above all in those of its proper owner. Mrs. Robert Brownlow, in the calm dignity of the heiress, in a small way, of a good family, had a bare toleration for professional people, had regretted the vocation of her brother-in-law, and cla.s.sed governesses and artists as "that kind of people," so that Caroline's a.s.sociation with them seemed to her absolute love of low company. She would have stirred up her husband to remonstrate, but he had seen more of the world than she had, and declared that there was no harm in Caroline's friends. "He had met Mr.