most people, and, if you tried, you would know those things much better than I do, as you know how to learn history.”
“It is quite a different sort of cleverness,” said Flora. “Recollect Sir Isaac Newton, or Archimedes.”
“Then you must have both sorts,” said Ethel, “for you can do things nicely, and yet you learn very fast.”
“Take care, Ethel, you are singeing your frock! Well, I really don’t think you can help those things!” said Flora. “Your short sight is the reason of it, and it is of no use to try to mend it.”
“Don’t tell her so,” said Richard. “It can’t be all short sight—it is the not thinking. I do believe that if Ethel would think, no one would do things so well. Don’t you remember the beautiful perspective drawing she made of this room for me to take to Oxford? That was very difficult, and wanted a great deal of neatness and accuracy, so why should she not be neat and accurate in other things? And I know you can read faces, Ethel—why don’t you look there before you speak?”
“Ah! before instead of after, when I only see I have said something malapropos,” said Ethel.
“I must go and see about the children,” said Flora; “if the tea comes while I am gone, will you make it, Ritchie?”
“Flora despairs of me,” said Ethel.
“I don’t,” said Richard. “Have you forgotten how to put in a pin yet?”
“No; I hope not.”
“Well, then, see if you can’t learn to make tea; and, by-the-bye, Ethel, which is the next christening Sunday?”
“The one after next, surely. The first of December is Monday—yes, to-morrow week is the next.”
“Then I have thought of something; it would cost eighteenpence to hire Joliffe’s spring-cart, and we might have Mrs. Taylor and the twins brought to church in it. Should you like to walk to Cocksmoor and settle it?”
“Oh yes, very much indeed. What a capital thought. Margaret said you would know how to manage.”
“Then we will go the first fine day papa does not want me.”
“I wonder if I could finish my purple frocks. But here’s the tea. Now, Richard, don’t tell me to make it. I should do something wrong, and Flora will never forgive you.”
Richard would not let her off. He stood over her, counted her shovelfuls of tea, and watched the water into the teapot—he superintended her warming the cups, and putting a drop into each saucer. “Ah!” said Ethel, with a concluding sigh, “it makes one hotter than double equations!”
It was all right, as Flora allowed with a slightly superior smile. She thought Richard would never succeed in making a notable or elegant woman of Ethel, and it was best that the two sisters should take different lines. Flora knew that, though clever and with more accomplishments, she could not surpass Ethel in intellectual attainments, but she was certainly far more valuable in the house, and had been proved to have just the qualities in which her sister was most deficient. She did not relish hearing that Ethel wanted nothing but attention to be more than her equal, and she thought Richard mistaken. Flora’s remembrance of their time of distress was less unmixedly wretched than it was with the others, for she knew she had done wonders.
The next day Norman told Ethel that he had got on very well with the verses, and finished them off late at night. He showed them to her before taking them to school on Monday morning, and Ethel thought they were the best he had ever written. There was too much spirit and poetical beauty for a mere schoolboy task, and she begged for the foul copy to show it to her father. “I have not got it,” said Norman. “The foul copy was not like these; but when I was writing them out quite late, it was all I don’t know how. Flora’s music was in my ears, and the room seemed to get larger, and like an ocean cave; and when the candle flickered, ‘twas like the green glowing light of the sun through the waves.”
“As it says here,” said Ethel.
“And the words all came to me of themselves in beautiful flowing Latin, just right, as if it was anybody but myself doing it, and they ran off my pen in red and blue and gold, and all sorts of colours; and fine branching zig-zagging stars, like what the book described, only stranger, came dancing and radiating round my pen and the candle. I could hardly believe the verses would scan by daylight, but I can’t find a mistake. Do you try them again.”
Ethel scanned. “I see nothing wrong,” she said, “but it seems a shame to begin scanning Undine’s verses, they are too pretty. I wish I could copy them. It must have been half a dream.”
“I believe it was; they don’t seem like my own.”
“Did you dream afterwards?”
He shivered. “They had got into my head too much; my ears sang like the roaring of the sea, and I thought my feet were frozen on to an iceberg: then came darkness, and sea monsters, and drowning—it was too horrid!” and his face expressed all, and more than all, he said. “But ‘tis a quarter to seven—we must go,” said he, with a long yawn, and rubbing his eyes. “You are sure they are right, Ethel? Harry, come along.”
Ethel thought those verses ought to make a sensation, but all that came of them was a Quam optime, and when she asked Norman if no special notice had been taken of them, he said, in his languid way, “No; only Dr. Hoxton said they were better than usual.”
Ethel did not even have the satisfaction of hearing that Mr. Wilmot, happening to meet Dr. May, said to him, “Your boy has more of a poet in him than any that has come in my way. He really sometimes makes very striking verses.”
Richard watched for an opportunity of speaking to Harry, which did not at once occur, as the boy spent very little of his time at home, and, as if by tacit consent, he and Norman came in later every evening. At last, on Thursday, in the additional two hours’ leisure allowed to the boys, when the studious prepared their tasks, and the idle had some special diversion, Richard encountered him running up to his own room to fetch a newly-invented instrument for projecting stones.
“I’ll walk back to school with you,” said Richard. “I mean to run,” returned Harry.
“Is there so much hurry?” said Richard. “I am sorry for it, for I wanted to speak to you, Harry; I have something to show you.”
His manner conveyed that it related to their mother, and the sobering effect was instantaneous. “Very well,” said he, forgetting his haste. “I’ll come into your room.”
The awe-struck, shy, yet sorrowful look on his rosy face showed preparation enough, and Richard’s only preface was to say, “It is a bit of a letter that she was in course of writing to Aunt Flora, a description of us all. The letter itself is gone, but here is a copy of it. I thought you would like to read what relates to yourself.”
Richard laid before him the sheet of notepaper on which this portion of the letter was written, and left him alone with it, while he set out on the promised walk with Ethel.
They found the old woman, Granny Hall, looking like another creature, smoke-dried and withered indeed, but all briskness and animation.
“Well! be it you, sir, and the young lady?”
“Yes; here we are come to see you again,” said Richard. “I hope you are not disappointed that I’ve brought my sister this time instead of the doctor.”
