CHAPTER ONE.: THE LAST NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME.

“FIDDLE-DE-DEE! DO GIVE OVER SNUFFING and snivelling and sobbing, and tell me if you want your warm petticoat in the saddle-bag. You’d make a saint for to swear!” More sobs, and one or two disjointed words, were all that came in answer. The sobbing sister, who was the younger of the pair, wore widow’s mourning, and was seated in a rocking-chair near the window of a small, but very comfortable parlour. Her complexion was pale and sallow, her person rather slightly formed, and her whole appearance that of a frail, weak little woman, who required perpetual care and shielding. The word require has two senses, and it is here used in both. She needed it, and she exacted it.

The elder sister, who stood at the parlour door, was about as unlike the younger as could well be. She was quite a head taller, rosy-cheeked, sturdily-built, and very brisk in her motions. Disjointed though her sister’s words were, she took them up at once.

“You’ll have your thrum hat, did you say? (Note 1.) Where’s the good of crying over it? You’ve got ne’er a thing to cry for.”

Another little rush of sobs replied, amid which a quick ear could detect the words “unfeeling” and “me a poor widow.”

“Unfeeling, marry!” said the elder sister. “I’m feeling a whole warm petticoat for you. And tears won’t ward off either cramp or rheumatism, my dear—don’t think it; but a warm petticoat may. Will you have it, or no?”

“Oh, as you please!” was the answer, in a tone which might have suited arrangements for the speaker’s funeral.

“Then I please to put it in the saddle-bag,” cheerily responded the elder. “Lettice, come with me, maid. I can find thee work above in the chamber.”

A slight sound behind the screen, at the farther end of the parlour, which sheltered the widow from any draught proceeding from the window, was followed by the appearance of a young girl not hitherto visible. She was just eighteen years of age, and resembled neither of the elder ladies, being handsomer than either of them had ever been, yet not sufficiently so to be termed beautiful. A clear complexion, rosy but not florid, golden-brown hair and plenty of it, dark grey eyes shaded by dark lashes, and a pleasing, good-humoured, not self-conscious expression—this was Lettice, who said in a clear musical voice, “Yes, Aunt,” and stood ready for further orders.

As the door shut upon the aunt and niece, the former said, as if to the sister left behind in the parlour—

“A poor widow! Ay, forsooth, poor soul, that you are! for you have made of your widowhood so black a pall that you cannot see God’s blue sky through it. Dear heart, but why ever they called her Faith, and me Temperance! I’ve well-nigh as little temperance as she has faith, and neither of them would break a cat’s back.”

By this time they were up in the bedchamber; and Lettice was kept busy folding, pinning, tying up, and smoothing out one garment after another, until at last her aunt said—

“Now, Lettice, bring thine own gear, such as thou wilt need till we light at Minster Lovel, for there can we shift our baggage. Thy black beaver hat thou wert best to journey in, for though it be good, ’tis well worn; and thy grey kirtle and red gown. Bring the blue gown, and the tawny kirtle with the silver aglets (tags, spangles) pendant, and thy lawn rebatoes, (turn-over collar) and a couple of kerchiefs, and thy satin hat Thou wert best leave out a warm kerchief for the journey.”

“And my velvet hood, Aunt, and the green kirtle?”

“Nay, I have packed them, not to be fetched out till we reach London. Thou mayest have thy crimson sleeves withal, an’ it list thee.”

Lettice fetched the things, and her aunt packed them in one of the great leather trunks, with beautiful neatness. As she smoothed out the blue kirtle, she asked—“Lettice, art thou sorry to be gone?”

“Truly, Aunt, I scarce know,” was the answer. “I am sorry to leave Aunt Milisent and my cousins, and Aunt Frances,”—but Aunt Frances was an evident after-thought—“and I dare say I shall be sorry to leave all the places I know, when the time comes. But then so many of us are going,—you, and Grandmother, and Aunt Edith, and Cousin Aubrey, and Aunt Faith—and there are so many new places to see, that on the whole I don’t think I am very sorry.”

“No, very like not, child.”

“Not now,” said a third voice, softly, and Lettice looked up at another aunt whose presence she had not previously noticed. This was certainly no sister of the two plain women whose acquaintance we have just made. Temperance Murthwaite had outlived her small share of good looks, and Faith’s had long since been washed away in tears; but Edith Louvaine had been extremely beautiful, and yet was so notwithstanding her forty years. Her hair was dark brown, with a golden gleam when the sun caught it, and her eyes a deep blue, almost violet. Her voice was sweet and quiet—of that type of quietness which hides behind it a reserve of power and feeling. “At eighteen, Lettice, we are not commonly sorry to leave home. Much sorrier at thirty-eight: and at eighty, I think, there is little to leave but graves.”

“Ay, but they’re not all dug by the sexton,” remarked Temperance, patting the blue kirtle to make it lie in the hole she had left for it. “At any rate, the sorest epitaphs are oft invisible save to them that have eyes to see them.”

Edith did not answer, and the work went on. At length, suddenly, the question was asked—

“Whence came you, Edith?”

“From Mere Lea, whither I have been with Mother and Aubrey, to say farewell.”

“And for why came you hither? Not to say farewell, I reckon.”

“Nay,” replied Edith, smiling. “I thought I might somewhat help you, Temperance. We must all try to spare poor Faith.”

“Spare poor Faith!” repeated Temperance, in a sarcastic tone. “Tell you what, Edith Louvaine,—if you’d think a bit less of sparing her, and she’d think a bit more of sparing you, it would be a sight better for poor Faith and poor Edith too.”

“I? I don’t want to be spared,” answered Edith.

“No, you don’t, and that’s just it. And Faith does. And she oughtn’t. And you oughtn’t.”

“Nay, Temperance. Remember, she is a widow.”

“Small chance of my forgetting it. Doesn’t she tell me so six dozen times a day? Ask Faith to do any thing she loveth not, and she’s always a widow. I’ve had my thoughts whether I could not be an orphan when I’m wanted to do something disagreeable. What think you?”

“I think your bark is worse than your bite, Temperance,” said Edith, smiling.

“I’m about weary of barking,” answered Temperance, laying smooth a piece of cobweb lawn. “I think I’ll bite, one of these days. Deary me, but there are widows of divers sorts! If ever there were what Paul calls ‘a widow indeed,’ it is my Lady Lettice; and she doesn’t make a screen of it, as Faith does, against all the east winds that blow. Well, well! Give me that pin-case, Lettice, and the black girdle yonder; I lack somewhat to fill up this corner. What hour must we be at Selwick, Edith?”

“At five o’ the clock the horses are bidden.”

“Very good. You’ll bide to supper?”

“Nay, not without I can help you.”

“You’ll not help me without you’ll tell Faith she’s a snivelling lazy-bones, and that you’ll not, I know. Go and get your beauty-sleep—and comfort Lady Lettice all you can.”

When Edith had departed, and the packing was finished, the aunt and niece went down to supper. It consisted of Polony sausages, sweetmeats, and an egg-pie—a Lancashire dainty, which Rachel the cook occasionally sent up, for she was a native of that county. During the entire meal, Faith kept up a slow rain of lamentations, for her widowhood, the sad necessity of leaving her home, and the entire absence of sympathy which she experienced in all around her: till at last her sister inquired—

“Faith, will you have any more pie?”

“N–o,” said Faith with a sob, having eaten nearly half of it.

“Nor any more sausage?”

“Oh no!” she answered, heaving a weary sigh.

“Nor sucketts (sweetmeats; subsequently spelt succadet) neither?”

Faith shook her head dolefully.

“Then I’ll help you to a little of one other thing, which you need sorely; and that’s a bit of advice.”

Faith moaned behind her handkerchief.

“As to quitting home, that’s your own choice; so don’t go and pretend to fret over it. And as to sparing you, you’ve been spared a deal too much, and I’ve been a...