Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls

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 training these girls had ever known.

'I'm very sorry, Jass,' said the younger sister, penitently. 'It was only – it did seem funny that her name was Harper, when I am so fond of Bessie and Marg' —

'I'm getting tired of your always talking of them,' said Jacinth. 'I daresay they're nice enough' —

'And they're quite ladies,' interposed Frances, 'though they are so very poor.'

'I wouldn't look down on them for that; I should think you might know me better,' said Jacinth. 'We're not at all rich ourselves, though I suppose papa and mamma seem so in India with all the parties and things they're obliged to have. And I never said the girls weren't "quite ladies," as you say. But I know how it will end: in a little while you won't like Bessie and Margaret any better than Prissy Beckingham. You fly at people so at first.'

'I don't think it will be that way this time,' said Frances in a tone of quiet conviction. 'There's something different about the Harpers.'

'It isn't a very uncommon name,' said Jacinth. 'There are all sorts of Harpers. Why, at Stannesley, the village schoolmaster's wife was called Harper before she married, I remember. And then Lord Elvedon's family name is Harper.'

They had drawn nearer to the other two by this time, and Phebe overheard the last words.

'If you please, Miss Jacinth, that is Lady Myrtle's family. Her father was Lord Elvedon, two or three back, and the Lord Elvedon now is a nephew or a cousin's son to her, though they never come near the place; it's been let ever since I can remember.'

'I wonder if she was brought up at Elvedon,' said Frances. 'It must seem rather sad to her, if she was there when she was a little girl, to have no one belonging to her there now.'

Altogether the adventure – and a real adventure it was – gave them plenty to think of and to talk about all the way home and after they got there. Eugene forgot his fatigue, and chattered briskly about the goodness of the little brown cakes, till he got a snub from Jacinth about being so greedy. His appetite, however, did not seem to have suffered, and he was quite ready to do justice to the tea waiting for them at home, though not without some allusions to Lady Myrtle's delicious cakes, and wishes that Aunt Alison would sometimes give them 'a change from bread and butter.'

For one of Miss Mildmay's fixed ideas about children was that they could not be brought up too plainly.

'We do have a change sometimes,' said Jacinth. 'We always have golden syrup on Saturdays and jam on Sundays, and you know we've had buns two or three times on birthdays.'

'Other children have buns and cakes far oftener than us,' said Eugene. 'Like we used to at Stannesley.'

'It was quite different there,' said Jacinth; 'a big country-house and baking at home.'

'Everything was nice at Stannesley,' said Frances with a sigh. 'Granny and Uncle Marmy really loved us; that makes the difference.'

'Aunt Alison loves us in her way,' said Jacinth. 'Everybody can't be the same. I think you're getting into a very bad habit of grumbling, Frances. And this afternoon you really should be pleased. For I shouldn't at all wonder if Lady Myrtle often asks us to go to see her, and that would be a treat and a change. But what you say about poor granny and Uncle Marmy reminds me to say something. You really needn't fly up so on the defensive every time I name them; you did it again to-day, and I'm sure Lady Myrtle must have thought it very queer, just as if I' —

But this second reproof for her behaviour at Robin Redbreast did not find Frances as meek as the former one, which, in deference to Jacinth's superior knowledge on such subjects, she had felt she perhaps deserved.

'I will "fly up" as you call it,' she interrupted angrily, 'when you talk in that cold measured way about dear granny and Uncle Marmy, as if you were almost ashamed of them. For one thing I can't bear you to say "poor" granny; it's not right. She was a sort of a saint, and I'm quite sure that now she's' – But here Frances burst into tears.

Jacinth felt sorry, but annoyed and irritated also. She blamed herself for having begun any private talk of the kind before Eugene and Phebe; for, as sometimes happened when they had come in late, Phebe was having tea with them this evening. And she felt conscious also of deserving, to a certain extent, her sister's blame. But Jacinth had a good deal of self-control.

'I cannot understand,' she said quietly, though the colour rose to her cheeks – 'I cannot understand how you can think such things of me – as if I – as if anybody could have loved them more than I did; as if' – But here the tears rose to her own eyes.

Frances was at once melted.

'I didn't mean that,' she said. 'I know you did. I wouldn't love you if I didn't know it. But it's your manner; you seem in such a hurry always to explain that granny wasn't our own grandmother.'

'I don't think that's fair,' said Jacinth. 'How could I possibly have helped explaining about it when it is only because of our own grandmother that Lady Myrtle cares anything at all about us. And I wasn't in a hurry to explain; don't you remember that Lady Myrtle kept asking if we were sure our grandmother was only Mrs?'

Yes, that had been so, but still the slightly hurt feeling which Jacinth's tone about the dear Stannesley people had more than once given Frances still remained, and she might have said more, had not her sister prevented her doing so.

'Anyway,' she said, 'we need not say any more about it just now.'

After tea they got out their lesson-books, anxious to do all they could, so as to wake on Saturday morning with the delightful sensation of a real whole holiday. But their long walk, perhaps the excitement of their adventure, had tired them. Lessons, with Frances especially, seemed more difficult than usual, and after a good many yawns and not a few groans, she decided that it was no use to attempt anything calling for a 'clear head' that evening.

'I'll just copy out my dictation and exercises,' she said, 'and do all the fresh learning to-morrow morning. Won't you do so too, Jass, for there are two or three things we can learn together?'

'Very well,' said Jacinth, though with a little sigh, 'perhaps it would be better.'

It was not only that she was tired – her head was full of Robin Redbreast and its owner, and all manner of fancies and castles in the air were crowding upon her. It was really so romantic, she thought; it was not silly to picture to herself the delightful possibilities of the future.

'Suppose Lady Myrtle really gets very fond of us' – she said 'us,' but 'me' would perhaps have been more correct, and after all this was scarcely unnatural, as it was she who had specially recalled the Jacinth Moreland of her enthusiastic youthful affection to the old lady – 'supposing she in a sort of way adopted us – or me' – for Jacinth was not selfish in the common acceptation of the word, though self-important and fond of ruling, 'what happiness it might bring us! She doesn't seem to have any relations, and she must be very well off. Supposing she took us to live with her, and treated us just like her own children, I wonder if mamma wouldn't come home then, and papa too perhaps. For of course, if they knew we were going to be well off, papa wouldn't worry so about staying out in India his full time and all that. How I should love to be the one to be able to do everything for them all.'

Still it would not do to begin speculating on what might happen in the far future when – Jacinth felt shocked when she realised that, in picturing herself as Lady Myrtle's possible heir, she was anticipating the old lady's death; yet she certainly could not 'fit in' the idea of their all living together at Robin Redbreast with its present châtelaine. And she laughed at her own absurdity.

'Papa is so independent,' she reflected. 'Even if mamma had a lot of money, I don't believe he'd be satisfied without working as hard as ever. And of course he loves his profession.'

Then she determined not to be silly, and to think no more about it. But her dreams that night were very fantastic and rosy-hued. She awoke in the morning from a vision of a wonderful room of which the walls were painted all over with robins, which suddenly burst out singing her name, 'Jacinth, Jacinth,' to find that Frances was awake and calling to her.

'Oh Francie, I was having such an interesting dream,' she said. 'I wish you hadn't awakened me: I can't remember what was dreams and what wasn't,' she went on sleepily. 'Did we really go inside Uncle Marmy's gates, and see?' —

'Of course we did,' said Frances, 'and I've got such a good thought. Don't you think we might go that way again to-day and take mamma's last photograph with us? Lady Myrtle would be sure to like to see it, and we needn't ask for her, you know. And it would keep her from forgetting us, and anyway we might walk round the garden, I should think.'

'No,' said Jacinth, 'we can't do anything like that without Aunt Alison's leave, and of course we can't ask for leave unless Lady Myrtle writes to Aunt Alison. And there's no telling if she will. She may be one of those whimsical old people that mean to do a thing, and then think better of it and do nothing.'

Frances's face fell.

'Oh, I do hope not,' she said. 'Somehow I don't think she's that sort of old lady.'

Nor in her heart did Jacinth. The expression of her misgivings had been as much or more to damp or check herself as Frances. For she was startled to find how wildly she had been indulging in building air-castles. Few, if any, even of those she had spent her life among, knew Jacinth Mildmay thoroughly, or had any suspicion of the impressionableness, the almost fantastic imagination, hidden under her quiet, almost cold exterior. But to some extent she knew herself better than is often the case at her age. She was well aware that she needed strict holding in hand; she sometimes even went too far in judging as contemptible weaknesses, feelings and impulses which were full of good.

But as regards the fancies which since yesterday had been so absorbing her, she was in the right. Even apparently harmless hopes and wishes dependent on the caprice, or, if carried where they may lead to, contingent on the life or death of others, are better checked at once. Indulgence in such can do no good, and may do harm.

They had not seen their aunt the night before. And her manner was somewhat 'carried' and preoccupied when she kissed the girls as they entered the dining-room, where she was already seated at the table waiting to read prayers.

A slight misgiving came over Jacinth. She glanced at the sideboard where the morning letters were always placed. Yes, one or two torn wrappers were lying there: evidently the letters had come and been opened. For Miss Alison Mildmay was, as Frances expressed it, 'a dreadfully early getter-up,' and had always an hour or more to herself before the younger members of the household appeared.

I am afraid Jacinth's attention that morning was rather distracted. She sat glancing at her aunt's profile, cold and almost hard, as she was accustomed to see it, but with just now the addition of some irritable lines about the forehead which were certainly not always there.

'Something has vexed her, I am certain,' said Jacinth to herself. 'I do wonder if it has anything to do with Lady Myrtle. Oh dear, if she has written so as to vex Aunt Alison, and we get blamed for it, and everything is spoilt!'

CHAPTER IV.