"My aunt thought of it," said Fanny, "and as she seems to find the
children too much--"
She broke off, for Mrs. Curtis had paused to let her introduce the
subject, but poor Fanny had never taken the initiative, and Rachel did
it for her by explaining that all had come on the same errand, to ask
if Miss Williams would undertake the lessons of her nephews; Lady
Temple softly murmured under her veil something about hopes and too much
trouble; an appointment was made for the following morning, and Mrs.
Curtis, with a general sensation of an oppressive multitude in a small
room, took her leave, and the company departed, Fanny, all the way home,
hoping that the other Miss Williams would be like her sister, pitying
the cripple, wishing that the sisters were in the remotest degree
military, so as to obtain the respect of the hoys, and wondering what
would be the Major's opinion.
"So many ladies!" exclaimed little Rose. "Aunt Ermine, have they made
your head ache?"
"No, my dear, thank you, I am only tired. If you will pull out the rest
for my feet, I will be quiet a little, and be ready for tea when Aunt
Ailie comes."
The child handily converted the chair into a couch, arranging the dress
and coverings with the familiarity of long use, and by no means shocked
by the contraction and helplessness of the lower limbs, to which she had
been so much accustomed all her life that it never even occurred to
her to pity Aunt Ermine, who never treated herself as an object of
compassion. She was thanked by a tender pressure on her hair, and then
saying-"Now I shall wish Augustus good night; bring Violetta home from her play
in the garden, and let her drink tea, and go to bed."
Ah, Violetta, purchased with a silver groat, what was not your value
in Mackarel Lane? Were you not one of its most considered inhabitants,
scarcely less a child of Aunt Ermine and Aunt Alison than their Rosebud
herself?
Murmur, murmur, rippled the child's happy low-toned monologue directed
to her silent but sufficient playmate, and so far from disturbing the
aunt, that more than one smile played on her lips at the quaint fancies,
and at the well of gladness in the young spirit, which made day after
day of the society of a cripple and an old doll, one constant song of
bliss, one dream of bright imaginings. Surely it was an equalization
of blessings that rendered little lonely Rose, motherless and well nigh
fatherless, poor, with no companion but a crippled aunt, a bird and a
toad, with scarcely a toy, and never a party of pleasure, one of the
most joyous beings under the sun, free from occasions of childish
troubles, without collisions of temper, with few contradictions, and
with lessons rather pleasure than toil. Perhaps Ermine did not take
into account the sunshiny content and cheerfulness that made herself
a delightful companion and playfellow, able to accept the child as her
solace, not her burthen.