Part 13 (1/2)
When the examiners' decision was made known, it was found that the first prize had been awarded to Miss Eastwood, who was quite taken by surprise at receiving it; but that, as Miss Raymond's paper had been so good in all except a very few points, the second prize, awarded to her, was considered almost equal to the first. This was much better than Lucy had expected; and as she received two first prizes in subjects where she had felt by no means sure of success, she was on the whole very well satisfied, as was Fred also, when her joyful letter informed him of the result.
Stella announced Lucy's success at home with almost as much pleasure as if the success had been her own. Edwin congratulated her with rather more animation than he was in the habit of showing, and Ada declared that ”It must be nice to be so smart.”
”Yes; but Lucy has been injuring her health by her close study,”
remarked the more observant Sophy. ”Look at her now, how pale and thin she is, compared with what she was when she came!”
”Oh, the holidays will set me all right again,” Lucy declared, laughing; but Mrs. Brooke decided that Lucy needed immediate change of air. She had been hoping to be able to spend her holidays at Ashleigh, among her old friends; and as the Brookes were all going to a fas.h.i.+onable seaside resort, it seemed likely that nothing would occur to prevent the hoped-for visit. But Amy's cough, as well as other symptoms of delicacy of the lungs, had increased so much, that the doctor declared the sea-air too keen for her, and that she had better be sent, during the warm season, to a quiet inland place in the neighbourhood, the air of which he thought particularly suited to her const.i.tution. But of course Amy could not be sent there alone, and none of the rest would have been willing to give up their proposed visit to the seaside, except Mrs. Brooke, who could not be spared from her duties to her other daughters.
Lucy therefore seemed the one who should accompany Amy, and she herself felt that it was an occasion on which she might make some return for the kindness she had met with in her uncle's family. So her visit to Ashleigh was given up, and Amy's delight at finding that she was to accompany her to Oakvale, was enough to make her forget any disappointment which her decision had involved. They were to be received into the family of a friend of the doctor's, a widow lady, who frequently received invalids as boarders, with whom little Amy would receive all the care and comfort she needed.
A few days before their departure, Lucy at last received, through Bessie Ford, the address of Nelly Connor's mistress. Stella, who, notwithstanding her raillery at Lucy's _protegee_, had a sort of latent interest in Nelly, from her a.s.sociation with her pleasant visit to Ashleigh, accompanied her cousin in her long walk to look for the house. On reaching it at last, tired and hot, the door was opened, not by Nelly, as Lucy had hoped, but by an unprepossessing-looking woman, whose hard face grew more rigid when informed what was the object of her visit.
”You needn't come here to look for her,” she replied grimly; ”she's left this some time since, and I don't never want to set eyes on her again.”
”Is she not here, then? Where is she gone?”
”I don't know,” was the reply, ”and I don't want to know. A girl that could behave as she done to one who took such pains with her, and kept her so long, ain't a girl to my taste. I wash my hands of her.”
”But perhaps you could tell us what place she went to from you?”
persisted Lucy. ”I am a friend of hers, and would like to find her out.”
”Well, she is no credit to her friends,” said the woman, rather pleased at being able to give her a bad character where it might be of some consequence. ”And as for the vagrant character she went off with, I'd be very sorry to have any acquaintance with him.”
Finding the uselessness of prosecuting her inquiries there, Lucy bade Mrs. Williams good-day, feeling sure that Nelly's conduct had been misrepresented,--an opinion shared by Stella, who had taken a strong dislike to the woman's grim demeanour and spiteful tone,--and very sorry for having lost the only clue to her _protegee_ once more.
XIII.
_A Friends.h.i.+p._
”We had been girlish friends, With hearts that, like the summer's half-oped buds, Grew close, and hived their sweetness for each other.”
Lucy and Amy were soon settled in Mrs. Browne's pleasant little cottage at Oakvale, a pretty sheltered village surrounded by hills, clothed princ.i.p.ally with n.o.ble oaks, whence it derived its name. Mrs.
Browne's house lay a little way out of the village, amid green fields and lanes, which, after the hot, dusty city streets, were inexpressibly refres.h.i.+ng to Lucy, recalling old times at Ashleigh.
Mrs. Browne was a kind, motherly person, a doctor's widow, herself possessing a good deal of medical skill, which rendered her house especially eligible for invalids, and she established a careful watch over little Amy, whose very precarious condition her practised eye saw at a glance. Whenever the child, feeling better than usual, would have overtasked her failing strength in the quiet country rambles, which were such a delightful novelty to one who had scarcely ever been really in the country before, and when Lucy's inexperience might have allowed her to injure herself without knowing it, Mrs. Browne would interpose a gentle warning, which was always cheerfully obeyed. It was with some surprise, indeed, that she noticed with what perfect submission the little girl bore all the deprivations of innocent pleasure which her weak state compelled, as well as the feverish languor which often oppressed her in the hot August days. This submission arose from the implicit belief which, child as she was, she had, that everything that befell her was ordered by the kind Saviour, who would send nothing that was not for her real good. Such a belief, fully realized, would soon relieve most of us from the fretting cares and corroding anxieties that arise from our ”taking thought” about things we cannot control.
”I never saw a child like her,” Mrs. Browne would say; ”indeed, she's more like an angel than a child, and it's my belief she'll soon be one in reality. And I'm sure heaven's more the place for her than this rough world.”
However, Amy seemed to improve under the healthful influences of Oakvale, living almost wholly in the fresh open air, perfumed with mignonette and other sweet summer flowers, sitting with Lucy under the trees before Mrs. Browne's house, or in her shady verandah, where, even on the warmest day, there was a breeze to cool the sultry air.
Lucy would read to her, sometimes some of Longfellow's simpler poems, out of one of her prize-books, and sometimes out of more juvenile story-books brought down for Amy's benefit, who was never tired of hearing her favourites read over and over again, to which she would listen with an abstracted, thoughtful expression, as if she were interpreting the story in a spiritual fas.h.i.+on of her own. ”Heaven is about us in our infancy,” says the poet; and it is nearer to some children, by the grace of G.o.d, than older people often imagine.
When Lucy wanted to read to herself, Amy would amuse herself quietly for hours, dressing her dolls, and looking over the ill.u.s.trations in her story-books, supplying the story from memory. Lucy conscientiously kept up her practising on Mrs. Browne's piano, and always ended by playing and singing some hymns for Amy, who was pa.s.sionately fond of music, and loved to try to sing too, with her sweet, feeble voice.
As Mrs. Browne, having but one servant, had a great deal to do herself, Lucy volunteered to a.s.sist her a little. She had always been accustomed to perform some household tasks at home, and it was quite an amus.e.m.e.nt to her and Amy, bringing back old days of her childhood, to vary their mornings by sh.e.l.ling the peas for dinner, or, when it was not too warm, picking the fruit for Mrs. Browne's preserves. So pleasant did Lucy find it, that she thought her city cousins really missed a good deal of enjoyment, in never, by any chance, employing themselves in anything of the kind, even when the busy servants were really over-worked. Indeed it is somewhat surprising that domestics go on as contentedly as they do in their constant treadmill of labour, often too much for their strength, when so many healthy members of the families for whose benefit they toil spend so large a portion of their time in luxurious idleness, or in mere pleasure-seeking.
In the fresh, cool morning, after their early breakfast, and in the evening, when the heat of the day was over, Lucy and Amy always went for a short ramble, climbing a little way up one of the hill-paths, or wandering by the side of the stream, which, fringed with elm and birch, wound through the village that lay on both sides of it, the river being crossed in two or three places by rustic bridges. From the point on the hillside which generally formed the limit of their walk, and where they used to sit on a mossy stone to rest, they had an extensive view over the surrounding country, diversified with corn-fields, orchards, and deep green woods, and dotted with farmhouses, while close at their feet lay the white cl.u.s.ter of village-houses, with a few of higher pretensions scattered here and there on the green slopes by the river-side, among their shrubberies and embowering trees.
The fields were beginning to wear the deeper and richer hues of approaching autumn, and it was a perpetual pleasure to watch the rippling motion of the golden grain waving in the breeze, or the rapid changes of light and shade on the fields and woods, as the clouds pa.s.sed swiftly over the sky. To watch these were their morning pleasures; but better still, perhaps, they loved the quiet sunset hours, when the glowing tints of the sky seemed to clothe the landscape in an unearthly glory, and then gradually each bright hue would fade out from the sky and from the land below, leaving the scene to the solemn repose of the shadowy evening, broken only by the flitting fireflies, or to the flood of silver light shed by the rising moon. But Amy was never to be allowed to be out in the night air, so that their rambles had to be over before the damp night dews. They generally found Mrs. Browne standing at the gate, awaiting their return, anxious lest her charge should have ventured to remain out too long.