as he phrased it, "to drag them up somehow." Two of the boys were doing for themselves in London, and had dropped out of ken, since they neither sent money nor wrote to their father; three were at school, where Dr. Marsh found it hard work to keep them, and since someone must pay, the four sisters remained at home, and were furnished by Hilda with a scratch education, she being the only one of the girls who had received a good one. Hilda detested teaching her sisters, and gave them as little of her time as she well could without falling foul of her father. For the rest she was like a lily of the fields, and neither toiled nor spun. Mrs. Marsh – she was of ample habit – did the toiling and the spinning, with the assistance of the exhausted menial aforesaid. When not scrubbing, or baking, or mending, she indulged in the most mawkish class of fiction, and complained querulously of her lot the while. Yet even the Marsh family had their idea of a millennium – when Hilda would marry a rich man, and the rich man would rain gold on Poverty Hall. That was why Hilda was pampered and much was pardoned to her. She was the Circassian beauty destined for the seraglio of some millionaire sultan; and the proceeds of her sale was to set up the family for life.
"Where have you been, Hilda?" asked her mother, looking up from a novel. The room was a chaos of dirt and dust, and in the midst of it all sat Mrs. Marsh, a very she-Marius amongst the ruins of Carthage, placidly but thoroughly enjoying the sentimentality of her hero and heroine. The carpet was ragged, the blind was askew; the table was littered with plates dirty from the mid-day meal, and the furniture was more or less dilapidated. Thus did Mrs. Marsh, in an old dressing-gown, with hair unkempt, delight to read of the erratic course of true love and Belgravian luxury, oblivious utterly to her surroundings.
"I'm sure, Hilda, I wish you hadn't gone out," she lamented. "Who is to clear the table if you're not here?"
"Oh, bother!" cried Hilda all graciously, "where are the girls?"
"They took some bread and jam and went out with the boys," said Mrs. Marsh vaguely. "I don't know exactly where – they were going to have a picnic, I think. You really must help, Hilda. Gwendoline" (Mary Jane was not to be tolerated) "has too much to do as it is. Your father will soon be home, and will want something; and I'm that tired! Oh dear me, how tired I am!"
"Well, I can't help it, mother. You will have to manage with Gwendoline as best you can. I must get my blue dress cleaned and altered. Mrs. Darrow has asked me to dinner to-morrow night."
"Who is to be there?" asked Mrs. Marsh with a ray of interest in her tired blue eyes.
"Mr. Barton, Mr. Arkel, and Major Dundas. I suppose that horrid governess will be there too. She was with Mr. Arkel just now."
"How did she come to know him?"
"Oh, she's a sly creature. She has managed to make his acquaintance somehow, and I can see the fool is quite taken already with her airs and graces."
"Hilda!" said her mother apprehensively, for Mr. Arkel was the second string to Hilda's bow, and it was supposed would inherit the Manor House. "That must not be."
"Oh, so far as I am concerned, they can please themselves. If Mr. Arkel prefers red hair and freckles, he can do so. Major Dundas may have better taste."
"But he is not rich, dear – he will never be."
"How do you know that?" retorted Hilda, who made a rule of contradicting her mother on principle. "Mr. Barton may make him his heir instead of Gerald Arkel. Or for that matter, I shouldn't be surprised if the horrid old thing left his money to an asylum."
"Be sure of that before you marry either of them," said the anxious mother. "Unless," with a touch of romance, "you are in love with – "
"Love!" Hilda echoed the word with fine contempt. "I want money, not love. Either Major Dundas or Gerald would make a good enough husband. I like Gerald the best – he is better looking and not so dull as the Major. But I'd marry anyone – even old Barton, much as I hate him, to get out of this pig-sty."
"It is your only home," said Mrs. Marsh with dignity.
"That's exactly why I want to get out of it, mother. If that red-haired governess tries any of her pranks, trust me, I won't spare her."
"Whatever do you mean, Hilda?"
"Never you mind, mother," Miss Marsh nodded mysteriously. "I've been talking with Mrs. Darrow, and she says – well, don't bother about it just now. But Miss Crane – if that is what her name is – is no saint, believe me. I'm not altogether sure that she's respectable."
"Hilda!" Mrs. Marsh's middle-class virtue was up in arms. "If that is so, you must not associate with her. Our house is lowly (she might have added dirty), lowly, but genteel."
"Now don't you bother, ma. Leave the governess to me. If you talk you'll spoil all."
"All what?" cried Mrs. Marsh, frantic with curiosity.
"H'm, h'm," Hilda nodded again. "Come upstairs, ma, and look over my dresses. I must look particularly well to-morrow night."
"But the clearing and washing-up, Hilda?"
"Oh, the girls can do that when they come in; pigs! It's little enough they do!"
"Your father will want something hot," suggested Mrs. Marsh with compunction.
"Will he! Well, there's cold corned beef and pickles; he can warm them if he likes."
So Mrs. Marsh went upstairs, novel, dressing-gown and all, and spent a happy hour with Hilda over chiffons. Dr. Marsh came home to a cold dinner, and was truly pathetic in the restraint of his language. The picnic-party arrived back hungry and boisterous, to find that as the baker had not called, there was no bread in the house. They lamented, Mrs. Marsh nagged, her husband's patience gave way, and the whole house was as pleasant as Bedlam. Hilda, the cause of the trouble, kept out of it in her room – the only clean room in the house – and stitched away at her costume. She thought of Miriam and smiled. It was not a sweet smile.
"So you're going to spoil my chance, are you, you horrid creature!" she thought. "I'll push you back into the mud you came from – or I'll know the reason why."
If Miriam could have seen her then, she might have felt still more uneasy. What could Miss Marsh know of her past? Perhaps Mrs. Darrow, always poking and prying, could have explained.
CHAPTER IV.
MR. BARTON'S VISITOR
As a rule Mrs. Darrow was not very hospitable – unless there was something to be gained from the exercise of such hospitality. She revelled in the afternoon tea, because it cost little – a few spoonfuls of "Lipton" and some slices of thin bread and butter – and afforded ample opportunity for that small talk, which was the essence of her life, since it enabled her to keep au fait with her neighbours' delinquencies. She had been known to go so far as a hot luncheon for certain high and mighty people whom it suited her book to conciliate; but never by any chance had she been known to give a dinner. Now – for some weighty reason, known only to herself – she had actually requested no less than five people to rally round her in the stuffy little dining-room of Pine Cottage – Major Dundas, Mr. Arkel, and Uncle Barton, to pair with Miriam, Hilda, and herself. When Mr. Barton was informed of this festivity, he not only point-blank refused to go himself, but he positively forbade his nephews, who were staying at the Manor House, to represent him.
"So you can have a hen-party, Julia," he croaked, "and abuse better people than yourself."
Mrs. Darrow sought refuge in her handkerchief, and shed a few careful tears – I say careful, because she was made up for the day, an operation which entailed the labour of an hour or more.
"Oh, Uncle Barton," she sobbed, "why won't you come?"
"Now why, I should like to know, are you so thunderingly generous all of a sudden. There must be something very much amiss, surely, or going to be!"
The widow raised her eyes to the blue sky – this conversation took place in the open air – to call Heaven to witness how she was misjudged.
"As if I was a miser," she complained, "instead of one whose whole thought is for my fellow creatures."
"At other people's expense – quite so," said Barton. He really was