"Yes, my dear, it looks very well; and now you will oblige me by not
wearing that black lace thing, that looks fit for your grandmother."
"Poor Lovedy Kelland's aunt made it, mother, and it was very expensive,
and wouldn't sell."
"No wonder, I am sure, and it was very kind in you to take it off their
hands; but now it is paid for, it can't make much difference whether you
disfigure yourself with it or not."
"Oh yes, dear mother, I'll bind my hair when you bid me do it and really
these buds do credit to the makers. I wonder whether they cost them
as dear in health as lace does," she added, taking off the flowers and
examining them with a grave sad look.
"I chose white roses," proceeded the well-pleased mother, "because I
thought they would suit either of the silks you have now, though I own I
should like to see you in another white muslin."
"I have done with white muslin," said Rachel, rousing from her reverie.
"It is an affectation of girlish simplicity not becoming at our age."
"Oh Rachel!" thought Grace in despair; but to her great relief in at
that moment filed the five maids, the coachman, and butler, and the
mother began to read prayers.
Breakfast over, Rachel gathered up her various gifts, and betook herself
to a room on the ground floor with all the appliances of an ancient
schoolroom. Rather dreamily she took out a number of copy-books, and
began to write copies in them in large text hand.
"And this is all I am doing for my fellow-creatures," she muttered half
aloud. "One class of half-grown lads, and those grudged to me! Here is
the world around one mass of misery and evil! Not a paper do I take up
but I see something about wretchedness and crime, and here I sit with
health, strength, and knowledge, and able to do nothing, nothing--at the
risk of breaking my mother's heart! I have pottered about cottages and
taught at schools in the dilettante way of the young lady who thinks it
her duty to be charitable; and I am told that it is my duty, and that
I may be satisfied. Satisfied, when I see children cramped in soul,
destroyed in body, that fine ladies may wear lace trimmings! Satisfied
with the blight of the most promising buds! Satisfied, when I know that
every alley and lane of town or country reeks with vice and corruption,
and that there is one cry for workers with brains and with purses!
And here am I, able and willing, only longing to task myself to the
uttermost, yet tethered down to the merest mockery of usefulness by
conventionalities. I am a young lady forsooth!--I must not be out late,
I must not put forth my views; I must not choose my acquaintance, I must
be a mere helpless, useless being, growing old in a ridiculous fiction
of prolonged childhood, affecting those graces of so-called sweet
seventeen that I never had--because, because why? Is it for any better
reason than because no mother can bear to believe her daughter no longer
on the lists for matrimony? Our dear mother does not tell herself that
this is the reason, but she is unconsciously actuated by it. And I have
hitherto given way to her wish. I mean to give way still in a measure;
but I am five and twenty, and I will no longer be withheld from some
path of usefulness! I will judge for myself, and when my mission has
declared itself, I will not be withheld from it by any scruple that does
not approve itself to my reason and conscience. If it be only a domestic
mission--say the care of Fanny, poor dear helpless Fanny, I would that
I knew she was safe,--I would not despise it, I would throw myself into
it, and regard the training her and forming her boys as a most sacred
office. It would not be too homely for me. But I had far rather become
the founder of some establishment that might relieve women from the
oppressive task-work thrown on them in all their branches of labour. Oh,
what a worthy ambition!"