Miss Grantley's Girls / And the Stories She Told Them

is hushed to a sleepy murmur, but I seem to leave half my poor life there; would that I could leave it all, I sometimes think, and that when the sexton comes to bring the keys of the church

me get to my books, there is comfort and companionship in them; and yet I have

se in Hoxton. Ah me! how I seem to see the old black oaken wainscot of the court room, and the little parlour where the firelight danced in deep crimson flecks and pools in the polished floor, and the shadowy panels! How I can remember going in after dark in winter evenings and sitting there,

esent-that is to say no strongly conscious life of my own, apart from the region of imagination-except when I was sitting in the deep old escutcheoned bay-window of the Hall, looking out upon the old shaded courtyard, where the sunlight, darting amidst the spreading plane-trees, flecked and chequered the marble pavement, and the little carved fountain trilled and rippled till i

ho came four times a week to teach her, for her father was a man of more consideration than mine. But Mary was motherless as I was. Our mothers had been dear friends in their school-girl days and afterwards; and our fathers were old acquaintances; and so it came about that I was often at the Hall for the week round after office hours, and that I seemed to belong as much to the place as the old, fat, wheezy, brown spaniel that stood upon the broad stone step and welcomed m

son-"My son, the captain," as he called him-a captain by purchase, and with the right to wear a brilliant uniform and long moustachios. A chuckle-pated fellow, for all his scarlet coat and clanking heels, but with a bullying, insolent air. When the feast was over, and

here, and she knew it. The other diners were already coming down the stairs at the end of the passage. He must have stolen down quickly, and she must have been waiting for him. This all passed through

as he turned with a swagger,

y a friend of my father's, and he's so near-sighted I supp

anners," said the ca

my limbs seem

captain with a grin. "Confou

I blurted out; "you have none of your ow

he warmth that kept it alive had gone out suddenly. But it smouldered yet, and when I went to meet her a few evenings afterwards I had determined to gather courage and speak to her once for all. I walked mechanically through the streets between the Hall and Doctors' Commons, where she had gone on a visit, and was ju

aying to me, "Dick, my son, I can see and feel for you too, but bear up; you are no boy now, you know. And I had set my heart on it too; so had our old friend. He wan

rts her," I inte

hand-his other hand upon my shoulder. "Go an

nd to go only to the office. There her father sat, look

erman had bought the captain off, and that now he had all his time to dangle after Mary. It had broken him, he said; he was not the man he had been. His accounts confused him, and his cash-balance was short.

to grow into an emphatic beat upon my ear quickened with nervous pain; but I sat down and was soon immersed in my accustomed drudgery of figures, so that, when I had taken out sundry balances, and checked the totals with a sum of money in gold and silver that lay upon t

o heavy and well hung to make a sound, if only the locks were noiselessly turned. I was so concealed by the great chair, and by the darkness of the corner where I sat beyond the radius of the lamp, that the intruder advanced quickly. He evidently expected to find nobody there, and, with scarcely a glance round, went to the table, peered amongst the books, and then, as though not finding what he sought, turned to the se

's well that I happened

to see the noble captain who has turned thief. You don't

"It's only your word against mine; and who

d a woman was whimpering there. I stepped back, still facing him, and flung it o

here, Algernon?" she aske

treasure besides yourself," I said. "He i

, her face all aflame. "Do you kn

sband!" And I leaned o

I might leave it for my father when he came in. You will see that he has it

I stood there, dumb and sick, they se

etter. Another moment, as it seemed to me, and her father had let himself in and I had placed it in his hand. He read it half through before

for that! But-but-married, and to h

er, nor rightly knew where she was, he heard that her husband had an allowance made him by his father after his gambling debts had b

for the sake of old routine, and stayed to eat a little supper and drink a glass of the famous claret, or to smoke a pipe with the old gentleman, who was failing greatly. His daughter wa

ught he was drivelling, but he held an open l

the bankruptcy court. Poor dear, poor dear, she's reaping the fruits of her disobedience, and yet she will not come to see me. To her own hand, Dick, to her own hand only, must this letter go. It tells her how, in the last resort

usband had taken furnished lodgings. A servant girl took up my name, and I was asked to walk upstairs. There, upon the landing, stood the woman I had not seen since

faint smile, and holding

eplied; "but if I can ever do you real service y

the landing window to read the letter. She had but just finished, and was slipping it into the bosom of her dress, when, with a sudden gesture, she said, "I dare not s

ied to go out, the "Captain" stood in the way. I knew him, bloated, shabby, and broken down as he looked, but shoul

isfortune had overtaken his father, and had come

asked, with an ugly laugh; and when I said, I had n

e upon the stairs; and he spoke words that made the little blood that was in me surge swift and hot to my face. In a moment I had wrenched myself free, and

taloon," he screamed,

n his fall. Then I closed the door, and walked away. The page is turned for ever now, I muttered to myself. I cannot even meet her father again. Poor old gentleman!-he died-he died too soon; but not before I'd

nd all that dead past was to be closed like

imes, where a sprig of rue has been

followed my old pursuits; went to my old haunts;

bookstall in Holborn, when the keeper of it came out and put two or three battered volumes among the rest. Instinctively I took one of them up and opened it. A great throb came into

says the dealer; "let me fetch you a

ped, "where you bought t

thing that said it was all her mother had to part with-Stop, sir, stop; why, there she is coming out of the grocer's

outrun me though, and was now coming back with a child-a young girl-poorly clad; oh! so poorly

!" I

"I must make haste home, or

.

was not. By the bedside of the woman whom I had loved and lost, and who was now passing from the world into the great reality of life, I had few words to spe

ar

ic

hand; to be in future my child and the child of the moth

voice singing as she comes-that sweet sweet vo

----

mber so much about people I can't imagine; but really, my dear, these love stories never do end except in the saddest way. Now if I could only wri

e gone behind a cloud and the world turns the wrong way, till the storm lowers and breaks, and then come regret and forbearance, and the stillness, and 'the gentle shining after rain.' Life is often a rather difficult school, and our education in this world is not completed without trouble and the discipline of pain and the finding of s

ith Mr. Parmigan, who, as you know, was in the Bank of England, and came home as regularly as the clock struck half-past five; but then I was trying

eamy blue eyes. What a fine, strong-looking man her husband is too! Marion and I have often stood looking into the shed while he has been at work making tubs and casks, and sometimes we have heard him singing som

, and she and her children have been here to tea several times in the holidays, her husband fetching them home in the evening. I was selfish in that, for I wanted to refresh my own ear with the German accent, and they both spe

ah Jorring, "and try to tell it just as you he

e fair, to give us a German exercise under the

ger and paler, and wore a round white cap and great silver ear-rings, and was in fact a slender, rather pale pretty girl with a plaintive look in her great blue eyes, and a voice soft and low. The story arose from our talking about the fashion of Christmas-trees having been adopted in Englan