style="font-size:15px;"> 'Mrs Denison was only our step-grandmother,' interrupted Jacinth, eagerly. Frances could not blame her now for explaining this! 'She was very good to us, but – she wasn't our own grandmother. She died before we were born. She was mamma's mother, and I am called after her. She was Lady Jacinth Denison, and' —
'I knew it,' exclaimed the old lady. 'And her name before she was married was' —
Jacinth hesitated a little. It is sometimes rather confusing to remember relations so far back.
'I know,' said Frances; 'it was More' – but here she too stopped.
'Moreland?' said Lady Myrtle.
The girls' faces cleared. Yes, that was it.
'But the Christian name – "Jacinth" – satisfied me,' said the old lady. 'The name, and your face, my dear,' to Jacinth herself. 'Thank you, for answering my questions. Perhaps I must not keep you any longer to-day, but I will write to your aunt – Miss Mildmay – Miss Alison Mildmay – I think I have heard of her at Thetford – and ask her to allow you to come to see me again very soon. If I keep you longer just now, she may be uneasy.'
'Oh no,' said Frances, 'she won't be at home when we get back. It's one of the days she's out all day – till after we're in bed, generally.'
'Dear me!' said Lady Myrtle, 'she must be a very busy person.'
'Yes,' said Jacinth, 'she is. She is very, very useful, I know. And one couldn't have expected her to give up all the things she'd been at so many years, all of a sudden, when we came. We don't mind, except that it seems a little lonely sometimes; but – I don't think Aunt Alison cares much for children or girls like us. She says she's got out of the way of it. But she's quite kind.'
'You have a governess, I suppose?' asked Lady Myrtle.
'No,' said Jacinth, 'we go every day but Saturday to Miss Scarlett's school.'
She coloured a little as she said it, for she had an instinct that 'school' for girls was hardly one of the things that her hostess had been accustomed to in her youth, and notwithstanding Jacinth's decision of character, she was apt to be much influenced by the opinions and even prejudices of those about her. But still she knew that Miss Scarlett's was really a somewhat exceptional school.
'To Miss Scarlett's,' repeated Lady Myrtle. 'I have heard of it. I believe it is very nice, but still – I prefer home education. But perhaps I should not say so. No doubt your parents and guardians have acted for the best. I should like you to tell Miss Alison Mildmay all I have asked you, and I will write to her. And in the meantime, that she may not think me too eccentric an old woman, pray tell her that I was – that your own grandmother – I like you to call her that – Lady Jacinth Moreland, afterwards Lady Jacinth Denison, and I, were the – yes, the very dearest of friends when we were young. It is possible that Miss Alison Mildmay may have heard my name from your mother. I think your mother – what is her name – "Eugenia," oh yes, I remember – I think your mother must have heard of me even in her childhood. My unmarried name was Harper, "Myrtle Harper;" your grandmother and I first took to each other, I think, because we had such uncommon names.'
'Harper!' exclaimed Frances eagerly, 'there are some – what is it, Jacinth? – I mean Bessie and Margar' —
'We must go,' said Jacinth, getting up, as she spoke. 'Frances, will you call Eugene? and' – turning to her hostess, 'thank you very much for being so kind. And oh, if you will ask Aunt Alison to let us come again, it would be such a pleasure.'
She raised her beautiful eyes to Lady Myrtle's face. A mist came over the keen bright old pair gazing at her in return. Partly perhaps to conceal this sudden emotion, Lady Myrtle stooped – for, tall though Jacinth was for her age, she was shorter than her grandmother's old friend – and kissed the soft up-turned cheek. 'My dear, you are so like her – my Jacinth, sometimes,' she murmured, 'that it is almost too much for me.'
Then a practical thought struck her.
'You have not told me your address at Thetford,' she said. 'I had better have it, though no doubt Miss Alison Mildmay is well known in the place.'
Jacinth gave it.
'Number 9, Market Square Place,' she said.
'Oh, I know where it is – a row of rather nice quaint old houses. Still, you must feel rather cooped up there sometimes, after Stannesley; was not that the Denisons' place? I was there once.'
'We miss the grounds, and – yes, we miss a good many things,' said Jacinth simply.
'Then I hope that Robin Redbreast will make up to you for some of them,' said Lady Myrtle. 'You know the name of my funny old house, I daresay?'
'Oh yes,' said Francis, who had just rejoined them with Eugene and Phebe, 'we heard it the very first day. And we've always thought it lovely – both the house and the name. And we always pass by this way when we can, because of the gates. We call them 'Uncle Marmy's gates,' for it was here we said good-bye to him – good-bye properly, I mean.'
'Kissing, and trying not to cry,' added Eugene, by way of explanation.
Lady Myrtle seemed a little startled.
'Uncle Marmy!' she repeated, 'that was your grandfather's name. I thought your mother was an only child.'
'Yes,' said Jacinth, 'Uncle Marmaduke is not our real – not our full uncle. He is mamma's half-brother only.'
'Oh,' exclaimed the old lady, 'now I understand.'
'But we love him just as much —quite as much as if he was our whole uncle,' said Frances, eagerly. 'He's perfectly – oh, he's as nice as he can possibly be.'
Lady Myrtle smiled, and gave a little pat to Frances's shining tangle of curly hair.
'Good-bye then, my dears, for to-day,' she said.
But she stood at the gate looking after them till they reached the corner of the lane, when some happy impulse made Jacinth – undemonstrative Jacinth – turn round and kiss her hand to the solitary old figure.
'She's like a sort of a grandmother to us,' said Eugene. 'What a good thing,' with extreme self-complacency, 'I made you go in! – what a good thing I was' – after a great effort – 'wursty!'
But Jacinth's face was slightly clouded. She drew Frances a little apart from the others.
'Frances,' she said severely, 'you must have more sense. How could you begin about those girls at school?' Lady Myrtle, if she does notice us, won't want to hear all the chatter and gossip of Miss Scarlett's. And it's such a common sort of thing, the moment you hear a name, to start up and say "Oh, I know somebody called that," and then go on about your somebodies that no one wants to hear anything of.'
Frances looked rather ashamed. She was barely two years younger than her sister, but on almost every subject – on questions of good manners and propriety above all – Jacinth's verdict was always accepted by her as infallible, though whence Jacinth had derived her knowledge on such points it would have been difficult to say. No one could have been less a woman of the world than the late Mrs Denison; indeed, the much misused but really sweet old word 'homely' might have been applied to her in its conventional sense without unkindly severity. And no life could have been simpler, though from that very fact not without a certain dignity of its own, than the family life at Stannesley, which was in reality the only
