bees make the honey, Alex; it would not answer if all were butterflies. You are one of those who think that folks were made to make your life pleasant."
"Bees can sting, I see," was Alexander's remark. "But give me a kiss, Lina; we don't forget our old home-love, do we? Let us hold together."
"I am willing, dear Alex; if I am crabbed at times, make excuses. These servants are a pest. I could fancy this last is a thief: the odds and ends vanish, who knows how? Oh! I do long for the German households which go on oiled wheels, and don't stop and put everyone out – time and temper too – like these English ones."
"We will all hasten back to Hanover, sister, with the telescopes at our backs, when – "
"When the thirty-foot mirror is made. Ah! – a – "
This last interjection was prolonged, and turned into a sigh, almost a groan.
When Alex was gone his sister got up and walked two or three times round the room, drank a glass of cold water, opened the shutters, and looked out into the night.
The moon had passed out of the ken of Rivers Street now, but its light was throwing sharp blue shadows from the roofs of the houses, and the figure of the watch-man with his multitude of capes as he stood motionless opposite the window from which Caroline Herschel was looking out into the night.
Presently the dark shadow of the watchman's figure moved. He sounded his rattle and walked on, calling in his ringing monotone:
"It is just two o'clock, and a fine frosty morning. All well."
As the sound died away with the watchman's heavy footsteps, Caroline Herschel closed the shutter, and saying, "I am wide awake now," reseated herself at the table, and wrote steadily on till the clock from the Abbey church had struck four, when at last she went to bed.
Her naturally strong physique, her unemotional nature, and her calm and quiet temper, except when pestered by her domestics' misdemeanours, were in Caroline Herschel's favour. Her head had scarcely touched the pillow before she was in a sound refreshing sleep, while many of the votaries of fashion tossed on their uneasy beds till day-dawn.
CHAPTER IV.
MUSIC
Griselda Mainwaring was up very much earlier than Lady Betty on all occasions, but on the morning after the ball in Wiltshire's Rooms she was dressed and in the sitting-room before her ladyship had made any sign of lifting her heavy head from the pillow. Heavy, indeed, as she had been too cross and too tired to allow Graves to touch the erection of powder and puff, which had cost Mr. Perkyns so many sighs.
Griselda had taken down her own hair without help, and had shaken the powder out of its heavy masses – no easy task, and requiring great patience.
"I will forswear powder henceforth," she said, as she looked at herself in the glass. "Lady Betty says truly, powder must go with paint. I will have neither."
So the long, abundant tresses were left to their own sweet will, their lustre dimmed by the remains of the powder at the top, but the under tresses were falling in all their rippling beauty over her shoulders.
Amelia Graves brought her a cup of chocolate and some finger-biscuits, saying:
"Her ladyship has already had two breakfasts, and after the last has gone off to sleep again."
"I hope she will remember she promised to go to Mr. Herschel's musical reunion," Griselda said. "If not, Graves, I must go alone; I must indeed. You will send the boy Zack for a chair, won't you?"
"More of the gay world! Ah, my dear, I do pity you."
"Gay world! Well, I know nothing that lifts one above it as music does. I am no longer the pleasure-seeker then?"
Graves shook her head, and, getting a long wrapper, she covered Griselda with it, and began to comb and brush the hair which nearly touched the floor as it hung over the back of the chair.
"Come, I will gather the hair up for you. Well, it's a natural gift coming from God, and the Word says long hair is a glory to a woman, or I'd say it ought to be cut close. It is like your poor mother's, poor lady!" It was very seldom that Graves or anyone else referred to the sister of Mr. Longueville, who had disgraced herself by a mésalliance. "Poor thing! – ah, poor thing! it all came of her love of the world and the lust of the flesh."
Griselda's proud nature always felt a pain like a sword-thrust when her dead mother was spoken of.
"Don't talk of her, Graves, unless you can speak kindly. You know I told you this the other day."
"Well, I don't wish to be unkind; but when a lady of high birth marries a wretched playwright, a buffoon – "
"Stop!" Griselda exclaimed. "No more of this. If you can be neither respectful nor kind, say no more."
"Well, my dear, there are times when I see your mother over again in you, and I tremble," said poor Graves, "yes, I shudder. If a bad man got hold of you, what then? I have my fears. It's out of love I speak."
Griselda was touched at once.
"I know it – I know, dear old Graves," she said. "There are few enough to care about me, or whether bad or good men are in my company. That is true, and I am glad you care," she added, springing up, and, throwing off the wrapper, she bent her stately head and kissed the lined, rugged cheek, down which a single tear was silently falling. "Dear old 'Melia, I am sure you love me, and I will keep out of the hands of bad men and women too. I want to go to-day to see a good, brave woman who sings divinely, and whose whole life is devoted to her brother – a wonderful musician."
"Musician, yes. Music – music – "
"But, to other things also; Mr. Herschel studies the wonders of the heavens, and is measuring the mountains in the moon and searching star-depths."
"A pack of nonsense!" said Graves, recovering herself from the passing wave of sentiment which had swept over her. "A pack of nonsense! I take the stars as God set them in the heavens – to give light with the moon – and I want to know no more than the Word teaches me. The sun to rule by day, the moon and stars to rule by night. There! I hear her ladyship. Yes, I'll order the chair – maybe two; but you'll dine first? Her ladyship said she should dine at two – late enough."
"Well, make haste and get her up, and stroke her the right way."
"Ah, that's not easy. There's always a crop of bristles sticking up after a night's work like the last. It's the way of the natural man, and we must just put up with it."
There could be no doubt that when Lady Betty at last presented herself from the room opening from the drawing-room she was in a bad mood, and Griselda said "her chance of getting to the Herschels' was remote if it depended on her will."
Lady Betty yawned and grumbled, and taxed Griselda with stupidity; and said by her airs she had affronted one of the best friends she, a poor widow, had.
"Sir Maxwell won't stand to be flouted by you, miss – a man of ton like him; and you– well, I do not tell tales, or I might ruin your chance of matrimony."
Griselda's eyes flashed angrily; and then, recovering herself, she said:
"At what hour shall we order the chairs?"
"The chairs? – who said I wanted a chair? I am too
