Mistress and Maid Part 4

Which was true enough until lately. So Miss Leaf kept contentedly to the c, a, t, cat, and d, o, g, dog, of the little butchers and bakers, as Miss Selina, who taught only sewing, and came into the school-room but little during the day, scornfully termed them. The higher branches such as they were, she left gradually to Hilary, who, of late, possibly out of sympathy with a friend of hers, had begun to show an actual gift for teaching school.

It is a gift--all will allow; and chiefly those who have it not, among which was poor Johanna Leaf. The admiring envy with which she watched Hilary, moving briskly about from cla.s.s to cla.s.s, with a word of praise to one and rebuke to another, keeping every one's attention alive, spurring on the dull, controlling the unruly, and exercising over every member in this little world that influence, at once the strongest and most intangible and inexplicable--personal influence--was only equaled by the way in which, at pauses in the day's work, when it grew dull and monotonous or when the stupidity of the children ruffled her own quick temper beyond endurance, Hilary watched Johanna.

The time I am telling of now is long ago.

The s...o...b..ry children, who were then little boys and girls, are now fathers and mothers--doubtless a large proportion being decent tradesfolk in s...o...b..ry still; though, in this locomotive quarter, many must have drifted elsewhere--where, Heaven knows. But not a few of them may still call to mind Miss Leaf, who first taught them their letters--sitting in her corner between the fire and the window, while the blind was drawn down to keep out, first the light from her own fading eyes, and, secondly, the distracting view of green fields and trees from the youthful eyes by her side. They may remember still her dark plain dress and her white ap.r.o.n, on which the primers, torn and dirty, looked half ashamed to lie; and above all, her sweet face and sweeter voice, never heard in any thing sharper than that grieved tone which signified their being "naughty children." They may recall her unwearied patience with the very dullest and most wayward of them; her unfailing sympathy with every infantile pleasure and pain.

And I think they will acknowledge that whether she taught them much or little--in this advancing age it might be thought little--Miss Leaf taught them one thing--to love her. Which, as Ben Johnson said of the Countess of Pembroke, was in itself a "liberal education."

Hilary, too. Often when Hilary's younger and more restless spirit chafed against the monotony of her life; when, instead of wasting her days in teaching small children, she would have liked to be learning, learning--every day growing wiser and cleverer, and stretching out into that busy, bright, active world of which Robert Lyon had told her--then the sight of Johanna's meek face bent over those dirty spelling books would at once rebuke and comfort her. She felt, after all, that she would not mind working on forever, so long as Johanna still sat there.

Nevertheless, that winter seemed to her very long--especially after Ascott was gone. For Johanna, partly for money, and partly for kindness, had added to her day's work four evenings a week when a half educated mother of one of her little pupils came to be taught to write a decent hand, and to keep the accounts of her shop. Upon which Selina, highly indignant, had taken to spending her evenings in the school room, interrupting Hilary's solitary studies there by many a lamentation over the peaceful days when they all sat in the kitchen together and kept no servant. For Selina was one of those who never saw the bright side of any thing till it had gone by.

"I'm sure I don't know how we are to manage with Elizabeth. That greedy--"

"And growing," suggested Hilary.

"I say that greedy girl eats as much as any two of us. And as for her clothes--her mother does not keep her even decent."

"She would find it difficult upon three pounds a year."

"Hilary, how dare you contradict me! I am only stating a plain fact."

"And I another. But, indeed, I don't want to talk Selina."

"You never do except when you are wished to be silent; and then your tongue goes like any race horse."

"Does it? Well, like Gilpin's,

'It carries weight: it rides a race, 'Tis for a thousand pound?'

--and I only wish it were. Heigh ho! if I could but earn a thousand pounds!"

Selina was too vexed to reply and for five quiet minutes Hilary bent over her Homer which Mr. Lyon had taken such pleasure in teaching her, because he said, she learned it faster than any of his grammar school boys. She had forgotten all domestic grievances in a vision of Thetis and the water nymphs; and was repeating to herself, first in the sonorous Greek and then in Pope's small but sweet English, that catalogue of oceanic beauties ending with

"Black Janira and Jana.s.sa fair, And Amatheia with her amber hair."

"Black, did you say? I'm sure she was as black as a chimney sweep all to-day. And her pinafore"

"Her what? Oh, Elizabeth, you mean--"

"Her pinafore had three rents in it, which she never thinks of mending though I gave her needles and thread myself a week ago. But she does not know how to use them any more than a baby."

"Possibly, n.o.body ever taught her."

"Yes; she went for a year to the National School, she says, and learned both marking and sewing."

"Perhaps she has never practiced them since. She could hardly have had time, with all the little Hands to look after, as her mother says she did. All the better for us. It makes her wonderfully patient with our troublesome brats. It was only to day, when that horrid little Jacky Smith hurt himself so, that I saw Elizabeth take him into the kitchen, wash his face and hands, and cuddle him up and comfort him, quite motherly. Her forte is certainly children."

"You always find something to say for her."

"I should be ashamed if I could not find something to say for any body who is always abused."

Another pause--and then Selina returned to the charge.

"Have you ever observed, my dear, the extraordinary way she has of fastening, or rather, not fastening her gown behind? She just hooks it together at the top and at the waist, while between there is a--"

"Hiatus valde deflendus. Oh dear me! what shall I do? Selina, how can I help it if a girl of fifteen years old is not a paragon of perfection? as of course we all are, if we only could find it out."

And Hilary, in despair, rose to carry her candle and books into the chilly but quiet bedroom, biting her lips the while lest she should be tempted to say something which Selina called "impertinent," which perhaps it was, from a younger sister to an elder. I do not set Hilary up as a perfect character. Through sorrow only do people go on to perfection; and sorrow, in its true meaning, the cherished girl had never known.

But that night, talking to Johanna before they went to sleep--they had always slept together since the time when the elder sister used to walk the room of nights with that pulling, motherless infant in her arms--Hilary anxiously started the question of the little servant.

"I am afraid I vexed Selina greatly about her to-night, and yet what can one do? Selina is so very unjust--always expecting impossibilities. She would like to have Elizabeth at once a first rate cook, a finished house-maid, and an attentive lady's maid, and all without being taught! She gives her things to do, neither waiting to see if they are comprehended by her, nor showing her how to do them. Of course the girl stands gaping and staring and does not do them, or does them so badly, that she gets a thorough scolding."

"Is she very stupid, do you think?" asked Johanna, in unconscious appeal to her pet's stronger judgment.

"No, I don't. Far from stupid; only very ignorant, and--you would hardly believe it--very nervous. Selina frightens her. She gets on extremely well with me."

"Any one would, my dear. That is," added the conscientious elder sister, still afraid of making the "child" vain, "any one whom you took pain with. But do you think you can ever make any thing out of Elizabeth? Her month ends to-morrow. Shall we let her go?"

"And perhaps get in her place a story-teller--a tale-bearer--even a thief. No, no; let us

'Rather bear the ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of;'

and a thief would be worse than even a South Sea Islander."

"Oh yes, my dear," said Johanna, with a shiver.

"By-the-by, the first step in the civilization of the Polynesians was giving them clothes. And I have heard say that crime and rags often go together; that a man unconsciously feels that he owes something to himself and society in the way of virtue when he has a clean face and clean shirt, and a decent coat on. Suppose we try the experiment of dressing Elizabeth. How many old gowns have we?"

The number was few. Nothing in the Leaf family was ever cast off till its very last extremity of decay; the talent that

"Gars auld claes look amaist as gude's the new"

being specially possessed by Hilary. She counted over her own wardrobe and Johanna's but found nothing that could be spared.

"Yes, my love, there is one thing. You certainly shall never put on that old brown merino again; though you have laid it so carefully by, as if you meant it to come out as fresh as ever next winter. No, Hilary, you must have a new gown, and you must give Elizabeth your brown merino."

Hilary laughed, and replied not.

Now it might be a pathetic indication of a girl who had very few clothes, but Hilary had a superst.i.tious weakness concerning hers.--Every dress had its own peculiar chronicle of the scenes where it had been, the enjoyments she had shared in it. Particular dresses were special memorials of her loves, her pleasures, her little pa.s.sing pains; as long as a bit remained of the poor old fabric the sight of it recalled them all.

This brown merino--in which she had sat two whole winters over her Greek and Latin by Robert Lyon's side, which he had once stopped to touch and notice, saying what a pretty color it was, and how he liked soft-feeling dresses for women--to cut up this old brown merino seemed to hurt her so she could almost have cried.

Yet what would Johanna think if the refused? And there was Elizabeth absolutely in want of clothes. "I must be growing very wicked,"

thought poor Hilary.

She lay a good while silent in the dark, while Johanna planned and replanned--calculating how, even with the addition of an old cape of her own, which was out of the same piece, this hapless gown could be made to fit the gaunt frame of Elizabeth Hand.--Her poor kindly brain was in the last extremity of muddle, when Hilary, with a desperate effort, dashed in to the rescue, and soon made all clear, contriving body, skirt, sleeves and all.