The Caxtons — Volume 12 eBook

But not to wrong thee, O dear mother! as thou sittest there, opposite the grim Captain, so fair and so neat,—­with thine apron as white, and thy hair as trim and as sheen, and thy morning cap, with its ribbons of blue, as coquettishly arranged as if thou hadst a fear that the least negligence on thy part might lose thee the heart of thine Austin,—­not to wrong thee by setting down to frivolous motives alone thy feminine visions of the social amenities of life, I know that thine heart, in its provident tenderness, was quite as much interested as ever thy vanities could be, in the hospitable thoughts on which thou wert intent.  For, first and foremost, it was the wish of thy soul that thine Austin might, as little as possible, be reminded of the change in his fortunes,—­might miss as little as possible those interruptions to his abstracted scholarly moods at which, it is true, he used to fret and to pshaw and to cry Papa! but which nevertheless always did him good, and freshened up the stream of his thoughts.  And, next, it was the conviction of thine understanding that a little society and boon companionship, and the proud pleasure of showing his ruins and presiding at the hall of his forefathers, would take Roland out of those gloomy reveries into which he still fell at times.  And, thirdly, for us young people, ought not Blanche to find companions in children of her own sex and age?  Already in those large black eyes there was something melancholy and brooding, as there is in the eyes of all children who live only with their elders.  And for Pisistratus, with his altered prospects, and the one great gnawing memory at his heart,—­which he tried to conceal from himself, but which a mother (and a mother who had loved) saw at a glance,—­what could be better than such union and interchange with the world around us, small though that world might be, as woman, sweet binder and blender of all social links, might artfully effect?  So that thou didst not go, like the awful Florentine,—­

          “Sopra for vanita che par persona,”—­

“over thin shadows that mocked the substance of real forms,” but rather it was the real forms that appeared as shadows, or vanita.

What a digression!  Can I never tell my story in a plain, straightforward way?  Certainly I was born under Cancer, and all my movements are circumlocutory, sideways, and crab-like.

CHAPTER V.

“I think, Roland,” said my mother, “that the establishment is settled,—­ Bolt, who is equal to three men at least; Primmins, cook and housekeeper; Molly, a good, stirring girl, and willing (though I’ve had some difficulty in persuading her to submit not to be called Anna Maria).  Their wages are but a small item, my clear Roland.”

“Hem!” said Roland; “since we can’t do with fewer servants at less wages, I suppose we must call it small.”

“It is so,” said my mother, with mild positiveness.  “And indeed, what with the game and fish, and the garden and poultry-yard, and your own mutton, our housekeeping will be next to nothing,”