Sara was to bear all this, spoken just in Sarah’s whisper, which made everybody, even Ellis, who was waiting, listen close to hear what she said. It was very seldom she said so many words in one day, not to say at one speaking. She began to eat her soup when she had done her pleasant remarks. And surely I never did remark before how odd the s’s sounded in her poor lost voice. Somehow they seemed to go hissing round the table, as if every word had an s in it. It was a round table, and not very large. Sarah never would do any carving, and I got tired of always doing it. So Ellis managed for us now on the sideboard, knowing foreign ways a little, and a small table suited us best.
“Ah, my dear lady, I wish you’d take her in hand,” said Mr. Cresswell (dear, dear! it is inconceivable how injudicious some people are!); “she’s too many for me.”
“My opinion is,” said I, breaking in as well as I could, seeing that poor little Sara must come to an explosion if they kept it up, “that when a gentleman comes to visit two single ladies, he should let us know what’s going on in the world. Have you never a new curate at St. John’s to tell us of, and are all the officers just exactly as they used to be? You may all be very superior, you wise people. But I do love gossip, I am free to acknowledge. I heard your rector preached in his surplice last Sunday. How did you Evangelicals take that, Mr. Cresswell, eh? For my part, I can’t see where’s the harm in a surplice as you Low Church people do.”
“You and I will never agree in that, Miss Milly,” said Mr. Cresswell; “though, indeed, if Dr. Roberts came into the pulpit in white, I’ve my own idea as to how you’d take it. However, not to speak of surplices, the red-coats are going, I hear. We’re to have a change. The Chestnuts are coming up from Scotland, and our men are ordered to the West Indies. The Colonel doesn’t like it a bit. It’s better for him in one way, but he’s getting to like a steady friendly little society, and not to care for moving. He’s getting up in years, like the rest of us, is the Colonel. This will tell on him, you’ll see.”
“Well, to be sure, when a man’s old, he ought to retire,” said I; “there are always plenty to take his place.”
“Ah, it’s easy to talk,” said Mr. Cresswell. “It’s all very well for us to retire that have made money; but a man that has only his pay, what is he to do? He has got that poor little widow-daughter of his to keep, and Fred is very unsettled, I’m afraid, and little comfort to his father. There’s a deal of difference, Miss Milly, between full-pay and half-pay. He’d have to cut down his living one half if he retired.”
“That’s just exactly what I quarrel with in these grand times of ours,” said I; “what’s the harm of cutting down one’s living one half? My own opinion is, I’d respect a man very much that did it. Great people can do it somehow. I wish you luxurious middle-class people would learn the way. But then you don’t stand by each other when you fall into poverty. You drop your friend when he can’t ask you to dinner. You are good to his children, and patronise them, and forget they were just the same as yours a little while ago. I don’t think we’ll ever come to any good in this country till we get back to knowing how to be poor.”
“My dear lady, England never was in such splendid condition,” said Mr. Cresswell, with a smile at my ignorance. “If we’ve forgotten how to save, we’ve learned how to grow rich.”
“I know all about England,” said I; “we read the Times; don’t you tell me. I’m anything but easy about England. Making money is no substitute in the world for saving it. I tell you, the world won’t be what I call right till a gentleman may be as poor as God pleases, without being ashamed of it; and have the heart to cut down his living one-half too.”
“Well, well Miss Milly, ladies are always optimists,” said Mr. Cresswell; “but I shouldn’t like to be poor myself, nor see Sara tried with economics. She don’t understand anything about them, that’s sure.”
“The more’s the pity. What if she should marry a poor man?” said I.
“She shan’t marry a poor man, my dear lady,” said Mr. Cresswell.
Upon which Sara lighted up. I knew she would. The dear child would do anything out of contradiction.
“Rather a poor one than a rich one, papa,” cried Sara, with a little start of opposition. “Godmamma is always quite right. It’s shocking how everybody worships rich people. If we were to live in a little cottage, now, and make a dozen poor people comfortable! instead of always living in that dull old house, and having the same chairs and tables, and looking at exactly the same things every day. Godmamma! I do so want my room fresh papered. I know every tint of that pattern, till it makes me quite ill to look at it. Wouldn’t it be a thousand times more reasonable and like a Christian, if papa would stop giving stupid dinners, and taking me to stupid parties, and divide all his money with, say, a dozen poor families, and live in a sweet country cottage? It isn’t enough for us, you know, to make us great people. But it would be quite enough to give us all plenty to live upon, the dozen others and ourselves as well. Don’t you think it would be a great deal more like what a man should do, than keeping all one’s money to one’s self, like papa?”
Little Sara grew quite earnest, and her eyes sparkled as she spoke. Her father laughed inwardly under his breath, and thought it just one of her vagaries. She divide all her money with her neighbours, the extravagant little puss in velvet! But don’t suppose Sara was shamming. She was as thoughtless and as prodigal as ever a child was who knew no better. But for all that, she could have done it. She could have found out how to do it. She meant what she said.
Chapter VII
“BUT you are a very foolish, thoughtless, provoking little puss; there can’t be any mistake about it,” said I.
“Nothing of the sort, godmamma,” said Sara, “such a quantity of time was always taken up with that hair of mine; it had to be brushed out at night, however sleepy I was, and it had to be done I don’t know how many times a day. Think of wasting hours of one’s time upon one’s hair!”
“But, my dear child, you have too much time on your hands. Do you ever do anything in the world, you velvet kitten,” said I.
“If it was anybody else but you, I should be angry, godmamma,” said Sara; “but, indeed, I have tried a quantity of things. As for working, you know I won’t work—I tell everybody so plainly. What’s the good of it? I hate crochet and cushions and footstools. If I had some little children to keep all tidy, there would be some good in it; or if papa was poor I might mend his stockings—but I won’t work now, whatever anybody says.”
“I don’t see any reason why you should not keep some little children tidy, or mend papa’s stockings either, if you would like it,” said I.
“If I would like it!” cried Sara, in high wrath and indignation, “as if that was why I should do it! I don’t think there can be anything more dreadful in life than always having to do just what one likes. Now, look here, godmamma; suppose I was to mend papa’s stockings because I liked it,—oh, how Mary would giggle and laugh and rejoice over me! She has to do it, and doesn’t like it a bit, you may be sure. And suppose I were making frocks for poor children, like the Dorcas society, wouldn’t all the sensible people be on me to say how very much better it would be to have poor women make them and pay them for their work? I could only do what it’s other people’s business to do. I have got no business. The best thing wanted of me is just to sit idle from morning to night and read novels; and nobody understands me either, not even my dear old godmamma, which is hardest of all.”
“But, Sara, if you chose, you could do good; the best thing of all to do—you could–”
“Oh stop, stop, godmamma! I can’t do good. I don’t want to do good. I hate going about and talking to people; and besides, they are all, every one of them,” said Sara, with tears, half of vexation and half of sorrow, sparkling in her eyes, “a great deal better than me.”
I had not a single word to say against this; for indeed, though I said it, because of course it was the right thing to say, I can’t undertake, upon my honour, that I thought a spoiled child like Sara Cresswell was the kind of creature to be much