Part 63 (1/2)

Mr. Sumner was not so easy to please. A disappointed artist, who hated teaching, and only gave lessons from absolute necessity, this gentleman had but little patience with the natural inexperience of an untrained girl.

But Edith had made up her mind to overcome all difficulties, and it was not very long before she began to make progress with the pencil too, and to enjoy the drawing-lesson almost as well as the pleasant hours with Monsieur Delorme.

These were almost the only things she did enjoy, however. It was hard work to read for two hours every morning with Miss Rachel, who made her plod wearily through dreary histories and works of science that are reduced to compendiums and abridgements for the favoured students of the present day.

But even that was better than the needlework, the hemming and st.i.tching and darning, over which Stimson presided, and which, good and useful as it is, is apt to become terribly irksome when it is compulsory, and a poor girl must get through her allotted task before she can turn to any other pursuit.

Every day, too, Edith went into the kitchen and learned pastry-making and other mysteries from the good-natured cook, who, with Stimson, and the boy who came daily to look after the garden and pony made up Aunt Rachel's household.

What with these occupations, and the daily walk or drive, the girl found her time pretty well taken up, and had little to spare for the rambles in the garden she loved so much, and for writing letters home.

To write and to receive letters from home were her greatest pleasures, for the separation tried her terribly.

It was difficult, too, for one who had lived a free, careless life, to have to do everything by rule, and submit to restraint in even the smallest matters.

In spite of her efforts to be cheerful and to keep from all complaining, Edith grew paler and thinner, and so quiet, that Aunt Rachel was quite pleased with what she called her niece's ”becoming demeanour.”

The girl was growing fast; she was undoubtedly learning much that was useful and good, but no one knew what it cost her to go quietly on from day to day and never send one pa.s.sionate word to the distant home, imploring her father to let her return to the beloved circle again.

[Sidenote: A Welcome Letter]

But the six months, though they had seemed such a long time to look forward to, flew quickly by when there were so many things to be done and learned in them. Edith began to wonder very much in the last few weeks whether she had really been able to please her aunt or not.

It was not Miss Harley's way to praise or commend her niece at all.

Young people required setting down and keeping in their proper places, she thought, rather than having their vanity flattered. Yet she could not be blind to Edith's honest and earnest efforts to please and to learn, and at the end of the six months a letter went to Winchcomb, which made both Dr. and Mrs. Harley proud of their child.

”Edith has her faults, as all girls have,” wrote Miss Rachel; ”but I may tell you that ever since she came I have been pleased with her conduct.

She makes the best use of the advantages I am able to give her, and I think you will find her much improved both in knowledge and deportment.

You had better have her home for a week or two, to see you and her brothers and sisters, and then she can return, and consider my house her home always. I make no doubt that you will be glad to yield her to me permanently, but be good enough not to tell her how much I have said in her favour. I don't want the child's head turned.”

”It is very kind of Rachel,” said Mrs. Harley, after reading this letter for the third or fourth time. ”I must say I never expected Edith to get to the end of her six months, still less that she should gain so much approval. She was always such a wild, harem-scarem girl at home.”

”She only wanted looking after, my dear, and putting in a right way,”

said the doctor, in a true masculine spirit; and Mrs. Harley answered, with her usual gentle little sigh:

”I don't think that was quite all. Maude and Jessie, who have been brought up at home, have done well, you must admit. But I sometimes think there is more in Edith--more strength of character and real patience than we ever gave her credit for. You must excuse my saying so, but she could never have borne with your sister so long if she had not made a very great effort.”

”And now she is to go back to this tyrant of a maiden aunt,” laughed the doctor. ”But by all means let her come home first, as Rachel suggests, and then we shall see for ourselves, and hear how she likes the prospect too.”

That week or two at home seemed like a delightful dream to Edith. It is true the fields and woods had lost all their sweet summer beauty; but the mild late autumn, which lasted far into November that year, had a charm of its own; and then it was so pleasant to be back again in the dear old room which she had always shared with Jessie, to have the boys and Francie laughing and clinging about her, and to find that they had not forgotten her ”one bit,” as Johnnie said, and that to have their dear Edith back was the most charming thing that could possibly have happened to them.

”You must make much of your sister while she is here,” said the doctor.

”It will not be long before you have to say 'Goodbye' again.”

”Oh, papa, can't she stay till Christmas?” cried a chorus of voices.

”No, no, children. We must do as Aunt Rachel says, and she wants Edith back in a fortnight at the outside.”

Both father and mother, though they would not repeat Miss Harley's words, could not help telling their daughter how pleased they were with her.