The Long Vacation

“Are the cousins gone?” asked Anna.

“Of course they are; Cousin Marilda, in a bonnet like a primrose bank, is to pick up Fernan somewhere, but I told her I was too true to my principles to let wild horses drag me there.”

“Let alone fat tame ones,” ejaculated Gerald.

“What did she say?” asked Anna.

“Oh, she opened her eyes, and said she never should ask any one to act against principles, but principles in her time were for Church and State. Is Aunt Cherry in the vortex?”

“No, she is reading to Uncle Clem, or about the house somewhere. I don’t think she would go now at least.”

“Uncle Grin’s memory would forbid,” muttered Gerald. “He saw a good many things, though he was a regular old-fashioned Whig, an Edinburgh Review man.”

“You’ve got the ‘Censor’ there! Oh, let me see it. My respected cousins don’t think it good for little girls. What are you going to do?”

“I believe the doctors want Uncle Clem to get a long leave of absence, and that we shall go to the seaside,” replied Anna.

“Oh! then you will come to us for the season! We reckon on it.”

“No, indeed, Emmie, I don’t see how I can. Those two are not in the least fit to go without some one.”

“But then mother is reckoning on our having a season together. You lost the last.”

Gerald laughed a little and hummed—

“If I were na to marry a rich sodger lad
My friends would be dismal, my minnie be mad.”

“Don’t be so disgusting, Gerald! My friends have too much sense,” cried Anna.

“But it is true enough as regards ‘my minnie,’” said Emilia.

“Well, eight daughters are serious—baronet’s daughters!” observed Gerald in his teasing voice.

“Tocherless lasses without even the long pedigree,” laughed Anna. “Poor mother.”

“The pedigree is long enough to make her keep poor Vale Leston suitors at arm’s length,” mumbled Gerald; but the sisters did not hear him, for Emilia was exclaiming—

“I mean to be a worker. I shall make Marilda let me have hospital training, and either go out to Aunt Angela or have a hospital here. Come and help me, Annie.”

“I have a hospital here,” laughed Anna.

“But, Nan dear, do come! You know such lots of swells. You would get one into real society if one is to have it; Lady Rotherwood, Lady Caergwent, besides all your delightful artist friends; and that would pacify mother, and make it so much pleasanter for me. Oh, if you knew what the evenings are!”

“What an inducement!”

“It would not be so if Annie were there. We should go out, and miss the horrid aldermanic kind of dinners; and at home, when we had played the two old dears to sleep, as I have to do every night, while they nod over their piquet or backgammon, we could have some fun together! Now, Annie, you would like it. You do care for good society, now don’t you?”

“I did enjoy it very much when Aunt Cherry went with me, but—”

“No buts, no buts. You would come to the laundry girls, and the cooking-class, and all the rest with me, and we should not have a dreary moment. Have you done fiddling over those flowers?”

“Not yet; Vale Leston flowers, you know. Besides, Aunt Cherry can’t bear them not artistic.”

“Tidy is enough for Marilda. She does them herself, or the housekeeper; I can’t waste time worrying over them.”

“That’s the reason they always look like a gardener’s prize bouquet at a country horticultural show,” said Gerald.

“What does it signify? They are only a testimony to Sir Gorgias Midas’ riches. I do hate orchids.”

“I wish them on their native rocks, poor things,” said Gerald. “But poor Fernan, you do him an injustice.”

“Oh, yes, he does quantities of good works, and so does Marilda, till I am quite sick of hearing of them! The piles of begging letters they get! And then they want them read and explained, and answered sometimes.”

“A means of good works,” observed Gerald.

“How would you like it? Docketing the crumbs from Dives’ table,” exclaimed Emilia.

“A clerk or secretary could do it,” said Anna.

“Of course. Now if you have finished those flowers, do come out with me. I want to go into Ponter’s Court, and Fernan won’t let me go alone.”

“Have you any special object?” said Gerald lazily, “or is it to refresh yourself with the atmosphere?”

“That dear boy—that Silky—has been taken up, and they’ve sent him to a reformatory.”

“What a good thing!”

“Yes, only I don’t believe he did it! It was that nasty little Bill Nosey. I am sure that he got hold of the lady’s parcel, and stuffed it into Silky’s cap.”

Emilia spoke with a vehemence that made them both laugh, and Gerald said—

“But if he is in a reformatory, what then? Are we to condole with his afflicted family, or bring Bill Nosey to confess?”

“I thought I would see about it,” said Emilia vaguely.

“Well, I decline to walk in the steps of the police as an amateur! How about the Dicksons?”

“Drifted away no one knows where. That’s the worst of it. Those poor things do shift about so.”

“Yes. I thought we had got hold of those boys with the gymnasium. But work wants regulating.”

“Oh, Gerald, I am glad you are coming. Now I am free! Just fancy, they had a horrid, stupid, slow dinner-party on Easter Monday, of all the burgomasters and great One-eyers, and would not let me go down and sing to the match-girls!”

“You had the pleasure of a study of the follies of wealth instead of the follies of poverty.”

“Oh, to hear Mrs. Brown discourse on her troubles with her first, second, and third coachman!”

“Was the irresistible Ferdinand Brown there?”