girl-friendships might have been of doubtful effect
where circumstances were so unequal; but Lady Temple’s
household of boys appeared to Ermine by no means a
desirable sphere for her child to be either teased
or courted in. Violetta, Colinette, and Augustus
were safer comrades, and Rose continued to find them
sufficient, varied with the rare delight of now and
then sharing her aunt’s drive, and brightened
by many a kind message in Colonel Keith’s letters
to her aunt, nay, occasionally a small letter to herself,
or an enclosure of some pretty photograph for her
much-loved scrap book, or some article for Colinette’s
use, sometimes even a new book! She was never
forgotten in his letters, and Ermine smiled her strange
pensive smile of amusement at his wooing of the unconscious
Rose.
THE PHILANTHROPIST.
“Scorn not the smallness of daily endeavour,
Let the great meaning ennoble it ever,
Droop not o’er efforts expended
in vain,
Work, as believing, that labour is gain.”
Queen
Isabel, &c. by S. M.
The sturdy recusant against Myrtlewood croquet continued
to be Rachel Curtis, and yet it was not a testimony
against the game so much as real want of time for
it. She was always full of occupation, even
while her active mind craved for more definite and
extended labour; and when she came upon the field
of strategy, it was always either with some business
before her, or else so late that the champions were
only assisting their several lags to bring the battle
to an end.
If there had been a will there would have been a way,
but, as she said, she saw enough to perceive that
proficiency could only be attained at the cost of
much time and study, and she did not choose to be
inferior and mediocre. Also, she found occupations
open to her elsewhere that had long been closed or
rendered unpleasant. Mr. Touchett had become
wonderfully pacific and obliging of late, as if the
lawn tactics absorbed his propensities for offence
and defence, he really seemed obliged for one or two
bits of parish work that she attended to; finding
that between him and his staff of young ladies they
were getting omitted. Somehow, too, an unaccountable
blight was passing over the activity of those curatolatresses,
as Rachel had been wont to call them; they were less
frequently to be met with popping out of the schools
and cottages, and Rachel, who knew well all the real
poor, though refusing the bonds of a district, was
continually detecting omissions which she more often
supplied than reported. There was even a smaller
sprinkling at the weekly services, and the odd thing
was that the curate never seemed to remark or be distressed
by the change, or if any one spoke of the thin congregation
he would say, winter was the Avonmouth season, which
was true enough, but the defaulters were mostly his
own peculiar followers, the female youth of the professional
and mercantile population.
