The Two Sides of the Shield

‘You saw that she was pleased with them.’

‘Yes, but that was the more ridiculous. Fancy the evening star climbing up—up—you know in the sunset!’

‘Portentous, certainly! Yet still I wish you could have found it in your heart to take advantage of any feeler towards sympathy.’

‘How could I pretend to admire such stuff?’

‘You need not pretend; but there are two ways of taking hold of a thing without being untrue. If you had been a little wiser and more forbearing you need not have given Dolores such a shock as would drive her in upon herself. Depend upon it, the older you grow, the more dangerous you will find it to begin by hitting the blots.’

Gillian looked on in some curiosity when the next day good Miss Hacket, enchanted with her dear Connie’s success, trotted up to display the lines to Lady Merrifield, who on her side felt bound to set an example alike of tenderness and sincerity, and was glad to be able to observe, ‘The lines run very smoothly. This must be a great pleasure to her.’

‘Indeed it is! Connie is so clever. I always say I can’t think where she got it from; but we always tried to give her very advantage, and she was quite a favourite pupil at Miss Dormer’s. Is not it a sweet idea, the stillness of the evening broken by the sounds of battle, and then it proving to be only our brave defenders?’

‘Yes,’ was the answer. ‘I have often thought of that, and of what it might be to hear those volleys of musketry in earnest. It has made me very thankful.’

So Miss Hacket went away gratified, and Gillian owned that it would have been useless to wound the good lady’s feelings by criticism, though her mother made her understand that if her opinion had been asked, or Connie herself had shown the verses, it would have been desirable to point out the faults, in a kindly spirit. The wonder was, how they could have found their way into the paper, and they were followed by more with the like signature.

Indeed, the great sensational tale, ‘The Waif of the Moorland,’ was being copied out of the books where it had been first written. Dolores had sounded Mr. Flinders on the subject, and he had replied that he could ensure its consideration by a publisher, but that her fair friend must be aware that an untried author must be prepared for some risk.

Constance could hardly abstain from communicating her hopes to her sister; but Mr. Leadbitter—to whom the poetry was duly shown—had given such a character of the Darminster Politician that Miss Hacket besought Constance to have no more to do with it. Besides, she was so entirely a lady, and so conscientious, that all her tender blindness would not have prevented her from being shocked at encouraging, or profiting by, a surreptitious correspondence.

Constance declared that Mr. Leadbitter’s objection to the paper was merely political, and her sister was too willing that she should be gratified to protest any further. The copying had to be done in secret, since it was impossible to confess the hopes founded on Mr. Flinders, and it therefore lasted several weeks, each fresh portion being communicated to Dolores on Sunday afternoons. There were at first a few scruples on Constance’s part whether this were exactly a Sunday occupation; but Dolores pronounced that ‘the Sabbatarian system was gone out,’ and after Constance had introduced the ghostly double of her vanished waif walking in a surpliced procession, she persuaded herself that there was a sufficient aroma of religion about the story to bring it within the pale of Sunday books.

The days were shortening so that Lady Merrifield had doubts as to the fitness of letting the girls return in the dark, but Gillian would have been grieved to relinquish her class, and the matter was adjusted by the two remaining till evensong, when there was sure to be sufficient escort for them to come home with.

Therewith arrived the holidays and Jasper, whose age came between those of Gillian and Mysie. Dolores had looked forward to his coming, for, by all the laws of fiction, he was bound to be the champion of the orphan niece, and finally to develop into her lover and hero. In ‘No Home,’ when Clare’s aunt locked her up and fed her on bread and water for playing the piano better than her spiteful cousin Augusta, Eric, the boy of the family, had solaced her with cold pie and ice-creams drawn up in a basket by a cord from the window. He had likewise forced from his cruel mother the locket which proved Clare’s identity with the mourning countess’s golden-haired grandchild and heiress, and he had finally been rewarded with her hand, becoming in some mysterious manner Lord Eric.

Jasper, however, or Japs, as his family preferred to call him, proved to be a big, shy boy, not at all delighted with the introduction of a stranger among his sisters, neither golden-haired nor all-accomplished, only making him feel his home invaded, and looking at him with her great eyes.

‘Is that girl here for good?’ he asked, when he found himself with Harry and Gillian.

‘Yes, of course,’ said the cousin, ‘while her father is away, and that is for three years.’

Jasper whistled.

‘Aunt Ada said,’ added Gillian, ‘that if she got too tiresome, mamma had Uncle Maurice’s leave to send her to school.’

‘That would be no good to me,’ said Jasper, ‘for she would still be here in the holidays.’

‘Has she been getting worse?’ asked Harry.

‘No, I don’t know that she has,’ said Gillian, ‘except that she runs after that Constance more than ever. But, I say, Jasper, mamma says she is particularly anxious that there should be no teasing of her; and you can hinder Wilfred better than anybody can. She wants her to be really at home, and one—’

But though Jasper was very fond both of mother and sister, he would not stand a second-hand lecture, and broke in with an inquiry about chances of rabbit-shooting.

Among his juniors he heard more opinions and more undisguised, when the whole party had rushed out together to the stable-yard to inspect the rabbits and other live-stock.

‘And Dolly says you are a fright,’ sighed Mysie, condoling with a very awkward-looking puppy which she was nursing.

‘She! she thinks everything a fright!’ said Valetta.

‘Except Constance,’ added Wilfred.

‘Who is ugliest of all!’ politely chimed in Fergus.

‘Oh, Japs, she is such a nasty girl—Dolly, I mean!’ cried Valetta.

“You know you ought not to say ‘nasty,’” exclaimed Mysie.

‘Well, but she is!’ insisted Val. ‘She squashed a dear little ladybird, and said it would sting!’

‘She really thought it would,’ said Mysie.

At which the young barbarians shouted aloud with contempt, and Valetta added. ‘She is afraid of everything—cows and dogs and frogs.’

‘I got a whole match-box full of grasshoppers to shut up in her desk and make her squall,’ said Wilfred, ‘only the girls went and turned them out.’

‘It was so cruel to the poor grasshoppers,’ said Mysie. ‘One had his horn broken, and dragged his leg.’

‘What does she do?’ asked Jasper.

‘She’s always cross,’ said Fergus.

‘And she won’t play,’ added Valetta. ‘And never will lend us anything of hers.’

‘And she’s a regular sneak,’ said Wilfred. ‘She wants to tell of everything—only we stopped that and she doesn’t dare now.’

‘You see,’ said Mysie, gravely, ‘she has always lived alone and in London, and that makes her horribly stupid about everything sensible. We thought we should soon teach her to be nice; and mamma says we shall if we are patient.’

‘We’ll teach her, won’t we, Japs!’ said Wilfred, aside, in an ominous voice.

‘She is only thirteen,’ added Valetta, ‘and she pretends to be grown up, and only to care for a grown-up young lady—that Constance Hacket.’

‘Yes,’ added Mysie, ‘only think—they write poetry!’

‘What rot it must be!’ said Jasper. ‘There’s a man in my house that writes poetry, and don’t they chaff him! And this must be ever so much worse.’

‘Oh, that it is,’ said Valetta. ‘I heard Mr. Poulter and Miss Vincent laughing about it like anything.’

‘But they get it put into print,’ said Mysie, still impressed. ‘Miss Hacket brought it up to give to mamma, and there’s ever so much of it shut up in the drawing-room blotting-book with the malachite knobs. I can’t think why they laugh—I think it is very pretty. Old Miss Hacket read me the one about “My Lost Dove.”’

‘Mysie always will stick up for Dolores,’ said Valetta in a grumbling voice.

‘I always meant her to be my friend,’ said Mysie, disconsolately.

‘Well, I’m glad she’s not,’ said Jasper. ‘What a sell it would have been for me to find you chummy with a stupid, poetry-writing, good-for-nothing girl like that, instead of my jolly old Mice!’

And at that minute all Dolly’s slights were fully compensated for!