Part 48 (2/2)

In spite of all the regrets that Bessie's more coeval cousins, Alethea and Phyllis were not at home, she and her aunt each felt that a new friends.h.i.+p had been made, and that they understood each other, and Bessie had uttered her resolution henceforth always to think of the impression for good or evil produced on the readers, as well as of the effectiveness of her story. 'Little did I suppose that 'Clare' would add to any one's difficulties,' she said, 'still less to yours, Aunt Lilias.'

CHAPTER XX. -- CONFESSIONS OF A COUNTRY MOUSE.

Here were the travellers at home again, and Mysie clinging to her mother, with, 'Oh, Mamma!' and a look of perfect rest. They arrived at the same time as Dolores had come, so late that Mysie was tired out, and only half awake. She was consigned to Mrs. Halfpenny after her first kiss, but as she pa.s.sed along the corridor, a door was thrown back, and a white figure sprang upon her. 'Oh, Mysie! Mysie!' and in spite of the nurse's chidings, held her fast in an embrace of delight. Dolores had been lying awake watching for her, and implored permission at least to look on while she was going to bed!

Harry meanwhile related his experiences to his mother and Gillian over the supper-table. The b.u.t.terfly's Ball had been a great success. He had never seen anything prettier in his life. Plants and lights had been judiciously disposed so as to make the hall a continuation of the conservatory, almost a fairy land, and the children in their costumes had been more like fairies than flesh and blood, pinafore and bread-and-b.u.t.ter beings. There was a most perfect tableau at the opening of the scenery constructed with moss and plants, so as to form a bower, where the b.u.t.terfly and Gra.s.shopper, with their immediate attendants, welcomed their company, and afterwards formed the first quadrille, Lady Phyllis, with Mysie and two other little girls staying in the house, being the b.u.t.terflies, and Lord Ivinghoe and three more boys of the same ages, the gra.s.shoppers, in pages' dresses of suitable colours.

'I never thought,' said Harry, 'that our little brown mouse would come out so pretty or so swell.'

'She wanted to be the dormouse,' said Gillian.

'That was impracticable. They were all heath b.u.t.terflies of different sorts, wings very correctly coloured and dresses to correspond. Phyllis the ringlet with the blue lining, Mysie, the blue one, little Lady Alberta, the orange-tip, and the other child the burnet moth.'

'How did Mysie dance?'

'Very fairly, if she had not looked so awfully serious. The dancing-mistress, French, of course, had trained them, it was more ballet than quadrille, and they looked uncommonly pretty. Uncle William granted that, though he grumbled at the whole concern as nonsense, and wondered you should send your nice little girl into it to have her head turned.'

'Do you think she was happy?'

'Oh, yes, of course. She always is, but she was in prodigious spirits when we started to come home. Lady Rotherwood said I was to tell you that no child could be more truthful and conscientious. Still somehow she did not look like the swells. Except that once, when she was got up regardless of expense for the ball, she always had the country mouse look about her. She hadn't--'

'The 'Jenny Say Caw,' as Macrae calls it?' said his mother. 'Well, I can endure that! You need not look so disgusted, Gill. You didn't hear of her getting into any sc.r.a.pe, did you?'

'No,' said Hal. 'Stay, I believe she did break some gla.s.s or other, and blurted out her confession in full a.s.sembly, but I was over at Beechcroft, and I am happy to say I didn't see her.'

Mysie's tap came early to her mother's door the next morning, and it was in the midst of her toilette that Lady Merrifield was called on to hear the confession that had been weighing on the little girl's mind.

'I was too sleepy to tell you last night, mamma, but I did want to do so.'

'Well, then, my dear, begin at the beginning, for I could not understand your letter.'

'The beginning was, mamma, that we had just come in from our walk, and we went out into the schoolroom balcony, because we could see round the corner who was coming up the drive. And we began playing at camps, with umbrellas up as tents. Ivinghoe, and Alberta, and I. Ivy was general, and I was the sentry, with my umbrella shut up, and over my shoulder. I was the only one who knew how to present arms. I heard something coming, and called out, 'Who goes there?' and Alberta jumped up in such a hurry that the points other tent--her umbrella, I mean--scratched my face, and before I could recover arms, over went my umbrella, perpendicular, straight smash through the gla.s.s of the conservatory, and we heard it.'

'And what did you do? Of course you told!'

”Oh yes! I jumped up and said, 'I'll go and tell Lady Rotherwood.' I knew I must before I got into a fright, and Ivinghoe said I couldn't then, and he would speak to his mother and make it easy for me, and Ply says he really meant it; but I thought then that's the way the bad ones always get the others into concealments and lies. So I wouldn't listen a moment, and I ran down, with him after me, saying, 'Hear reason, Mysie.'

And I ran full b.u.t.t up against some-body--Lord Ormersfield it was, I found--but I didn't know then. I only said something about begging pardon, and dashed on, and opened the door. I saw a whole lot of fine people all at five-o'clock tea, but I couldn't stop to get more frightened, and I went up straight to Lady Rotherwood and said, 'Please, I did it.' Mamma do you think I ought not?”

'There are such things as fit places and times, my dear. What did she say?'

”At first she just said, 'My dear, I cannot attend to you now, run away;' but then in the midst, a thought seemed to strike her, and she said, rather frightened, 'Is any one hurt?' and I said, Oh no; only my umbrella has gone right through the roof of the conservatory, and I thought I ought to come and tell her directly. 'That was the noise,'

said some of the people, and everybody got up and went to look. And there were Fly and Ivy, who had got in some other way, and the umbrella was sticking right upright in the top of one of those palm-trees with leaves like screens, and somebody said it was a new development of fruit. Lady Rotherwood asked them what they were doing there, and Ivy said they had come to see what harm was done. Dear Fly ran up to her and said, 'We were all at play together, mother; it was not one more than another;' but Lady Rotherwood only said, 'That's enough, Phyllis, I will come to you by-and-by in the schoolroom,' and she would have sent us away if Cousin Rotherwood himself had not come in just then, and asked what was the matter. I heard some of the answers; they were very odd, mamma. One was, 'A storm of umbrellas and of untimely confessions;' and another was, 'Truth in undress.'”

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