I must finish my journey alone—
Never hear the sweet music of speech,
I start at the sound of my own.”
“But really, Nag,” broke in Paulina, “it is horrid. Here we are equidistant from three or four churches, and condemned to the most behind the world of them all, and then to the one where there is this distant fragrance of swells, instead of the only Catholic one.”
Agatha had a little more common sense than the other two, and she responded—
“After all, you know, you are better off than if you were still at school; and the M.A. is a good old soul at the bottom, and you may manage her, depend on it. Though I wish she had let me go to Girton.”
Magdalen and Mrs. Best meantime were going over future prospects and old times. Mrs. Best’s destination was Albertstown, in Queensland, where her son George had a good practice as a doctor, and where he assured her she would find church privileges—even a cathedral, so-called, and a bishop—though Bishop Fulmort was always out on some expedition among the colonists or the natives, but among his clergy there was always Sunday service. In fact, Magdalen thought the good old lady expected to find a town more like Filsted than the Goyle. There was a sisterhood located there too, which tried, mostly in vain, to train the wild native women—an attempt at which George Best laughed, though he allowed that the sisters were splendid nurses, especially Sister Angela, who had a wonderful way of bringing cases round.
Magdalen could feel secure that her old friend would be near kind people; and presently Mrs. Best, returning to the actual neighbourhood, observed—
“Merrifield! It is not a common name.”
“No; but I do not think this is the same family. This is a retired general, living in a house of Lord Rotherwood’s. I once met one of his little girls, who came to Castle Towers with the Rotherwood party, and though she had a brother of the name, he was evidently not the same person.”
Mrs. Best asked no more, for tell-tale colour had arisen in Magdalen’s cheeks; and she had been the confidante of an engagement with a certain Henry Merrifield, who had been employed in the bank at Filsted when Magdalen was a very young girl. His father had come down suddenly, had found debt and dissipation, had broken all off decidedly, and no more had been heard of the young man. It was many years previously; but those cheeks and the tone of the reply made her suspect that there was still poignancy in the remembrance.
CHAPTER IV—CYCLES
“What flowers grow in my field wherewith to dress thee.”
—E. Barrett Browning.
Mrs. Best departed early the next morning. It was probably a parting for life between the two old friends; and Magdalen keenly felt the severance from the one person whom she had always known, and on whose sympathy she could rely. Their conversations had been very precious to her, and she felt desolate without the entire companionship. Yet, on the other hand, she felt as if she could have begun better with her sisters if Sophy Best had not come with them, to hand them over, as it were, when she wanted to start on the same level with them, and be more like their contemporary than their authority.
They all stood on the terrace, watching the fly go down the hill, and she turned to them and said—
“We will all settle ourselves this morning, and you will see how the land lies, so that to-morrow we can arrange our day and see what work to do. Thekla, when you have had a run round the garden, you might bring your books to the dining-room and let me see how far you have gone.”
“Oh, sister, it is holidays!”
“Well, my dear, you have had a week, and your holiday time cannot last for ever. Looking at your books cannot spoil it.”
“Yes, it will; they are so nasty.”
“Perhaps you will not always think so; but now you had better put on your hat and your thick boots, for the grass is still very wet, and explore the country. The same advice to you,” she added, turning to the others; “it is warm here, but the dew lies long on the slopes.”
“We have got a great deal too much to do,” said Agatha, “for dawdling about just now.”
Really, she was chiefly prompted by the satisfaction of not being ordered about; and the other two followed suit, while Magdalen turned away to her household business.
They found the housemaid in possession of the bedrooms, so that the unpacking plans could not conveniently be begun; and while Agatha was struggling with the straps of a book box, Thekla burst in upon them.
“Oh, Nag, Nag, there is the loveliest angel of a bicycle in the stable, and a dear little pony besides! ‘New tyre wheels,’ he says.”
“A bicycle! Well, if she has got it for us, she is an angel indeed,” said Vera.
“It is a big one,” said Thekla, “but the pony is a dear little thing; Pixy is his name, and I can ride him! Do come, Flapsy, and see! Earwaker will show you. It is he that does the oiling of Pixy and harnessing the bicycle. I mean—”
“Tick, Tick, which does he oil and which does he harness?” said Paula.
“That little tongue wants both,” said Agatha.
“But do, do come and see,” said Thekla, not at all disconcerted by being laughed at; and Vera came, only asserting her independence by not putting on either hat or boots.
Thekla led the way to the stable, tucked under the hill at the back, and presiding over a linhay, as she had already learnt to call the tiny farm-court, containing accommodation for two cows, a pig, and sundry fowls. There was a shed attached with a wicker pony carriage and the bicycle, a handsome modern one, with all the newest appendages, including the “Nevertires,” as Thekla had translated them.
But disappointment was in store for Vera. Magdalen came out during the inspection, and was received with—
“Sister, you never told us of this beauty.”
“It was a parting present from General Mansell,” she said, “and he took great pains to get me a very good one.”
“And you bike!”
“Oh, yes; I learnt to go out with the Colvins. But I do not venture to use it much here, unless the road is good. Those rocks, freshly laid towards Rockstone, would make regular havoc of the pneumatic tyres.”
Vera saw that this was prohibitive, and felt too much vexed to mention Thekla’s version of the same; but Magdalen asked, “Have you learnt?”
“They were always going to teach me at Warner Grange, but it always snowed, or rained, or skated, I mean we skated, or something, whenever Hubert had time; but I am perfectly dying to learn.”
“Well, before you expire, we may teach you a little on these smoother paths; and hire one perhaps, by the time the stones are passable. Just at present, I think our own legs and Pixy’s are safer for that descent.”
Vera was pacified enough to look on with a certain degree of complacency, while Thekla was enraptured at being set to take out the eggs from the hens’ nests.
But the conclave in the sitting-room on Vera’s report decided, “Selfish old thing, it is only an excuse! Of course we should take care not to spoil it. It shows what will be the way with everything.”
No one knew of a still more secret conclave within Magdalen’s own breast, one of those held at times by many an elder, between the claims of loyalty to the keepsakes of affection and old association and the gratification of present desires. Magdalen thought of the rules of convents forbidding the appropriation of personal trifles, and wondered if it were wise, if stern; but for the present she decided