CHAPTER II.

"Children, do make haste! How long you do take coming when I send for you! And I've had such news I am really quite bewildered, and haven't a moment to spare. All my plans are changed in a minute, and I can hardly realise all I have to do. I have heard from your father. He wants me to come out to him, and I am going, at once; of course, I must go. I couldn't refuse to, and—you must all go to live with your Aunt Julia. I know you don't like her—and it is very naughty and ungrateful of you— but I can't do anything else, and you must make up your minds to behave."

Mrs. Carroll paused at last from want of breath, and the children gasped in sympathy.

They had barely entered the dining-room when this cataract of speech was turned on them by their mother, with every appearance of excitement and gratification. All her usual melancholy apathy was thrown aside; her face was alight with pleasure, her eyes bright with excitement. Mrs. Carroll loved to be the bearer of startling news, to spring a surprise on people— just as she loved to have a pleasant one sprung on herself. She adored excitement, and under its influence saw nothing but the one thing that appealed to her at the moment.

Now, after hastily scanning her husband's letter, she grasped the one fact that he thought she might come out to him very soon. What the change might mean to others, never occurred to her; that it might be for the worse, never entered her head. She saw simply a chance of a change, an escape from the monotony and sordidness of her present life. She would have a new outfit, and travel, and meet new people, and escape from that dreadful little cheap house and dull village, not to speak of other tiresome things which had been thrusting themselves on her attention for a long time, but had been put aside and aside for consideration 'some day.'

The children stood just within the door, startled and bewildered—too bewildered for the moment to move or speak. "Going away!" they gasped at last, "and—and we are to be left behind! Oh, mother, you can't mean it!"

They loved their careless, easy-going mother very dearly, and, in spite of her neglect of them were, as a rule, very happy. She was the one person in the world, too, that they knew well and were accustomed to; and to be thus suddenly bereft of her and left entirely to strangers, or worse, was a prospect too appalling almost to be credited. In spite of her neglect they loved her; in fact it was only as they grew older that they realised that she did neglect them, or was not to them all she might have been. Esther was beginning to realise it; but Esther, in spite of her odd, sharp temper and reserved manner, had a great love for her mother; she loved her so much that she wanted her to be different, to be more what the ideal mother was—such a one as she had read of in books.

"Oh, mother, you aren't really going away, and going to leave us!" cried Angela again. "Mother, you can't! We can't be left!" At the thought of it Poppy began to cry.

"Yes, your father wants me to come, and I must go as soon as I can make arrangements. Of course I can't take you all with me, so I am going to ask your Aunt Julia to let you go and live with her."

What Esther had been on the point of saying, was never said—her mother's apparent indifference to their separation hurt her too deeply. "Oh, then, Aunt Julia does not know it yet?" she remarked shrewdly.

"No, your father has left all the arrangements to me to make, and I am to come as soon as I like; so, as I see no use in delaying, I shall try to get away as soon as I possibly can."

Mrs. Carroll's brain could work very quickly under certain circumstances. Now, though only a few moments had elapsed since the momentous letter had arrived, she had formed plans innumerable, to be carried out at once in spite of all obstacles. She would give Lydia a month's notice this very day, and the landlord notice that she was going to leave the house, and her sister Julia that she was about to send the four children to take up their abode with her at once—she would feel so much freer when they were settled, and she was alone.

"But perhaps Aunt Julia will not have us," said Penelope, joyfully clutching at the hope. They none of them loved their Aunt Julia. Not to be going to Canada was bad enough, but to have to go and live with Aunt Julia, for no one knew how long, was too dreadful to contemplate.

"Oh, mother, don't send us to her, do take us with you, mother dear," pleaded Angela tearfully. "Doesn't father say we are to come? I am sure he wants us too."

"Don't bother me now, child," said Mrs. Carroll, not crossly, but with a distracted air, pushing aside Angela's clinging, eager arms. "I've got more than enough to think of as it is. Of course you can't go now."

"Why, mother? Can't we afford it?" asked straightforward Penelope.

"Oh, do be quiet. Don't bother any more," cried Esther bitterly. "Don't you see that mother doesn't want us, and Aunt Julia won't want us— nobody wants us." And in a tumult of pain and anger she flung herself out of the room to hide the tears that made her eyes smart and tingle.

"I really think your Aunt Julia would refuse to have Esther if she knew how bad her temper has become," said Mrs. Carroll with a sigh. "She seems quite to have forgotten the respect due to her mother, and to think I may be spoken to in any way she chooses. I am sure no other mother would endure such behaviour from their children as I have to."

"Esther didn't mean to be rude, mother," pleaded Penelope. "I expect she is upset 'cause daddy didn't send for us too. He said he would, you know, and we always thought we should go too when you went. It is an awful disappointment," sadly.

"Mother," pleaded Angela wistfully, "it isn't true what Esther said, is it? You do want us, don't you?"

"I certainly do not want children with me who don't know how to behave," said Mrs. Carroll in a quick, reproving tone, never dreaming of the love and longing in the child's heart. A few words of explanation, of love, and sorrow for the parting, of hope of a speedy reuniting would have relieved all their young hearts of a load, would have banished that chilling feeling of being unloved, unwanted, would have filled them with hope and patience, and have bound their young hearts to their absent parents for ever. Instead of which they felt rebuffed and unloved, they were turned in on themselves, until such time as some other love should warm their chilled hearts and expand their natures, and a stranger, maybe, should mean more to them than a parent.

Of all the little brood Angela was the most affectionate, the most clinging little home-bird. She loved her mother passionately, and her home too, in spite of its unattractiveness, for the flaws she saw in persons or things only made her love with a deeper, more sympathetic desire to help. It was always to the most unlovable and unattractive that Angela's heart went out. If people or animals had no one else to care for them, she felt they might be glad of her.

She turned away from her mother with a little sigh. She did not blame her for her want of feeling, she only winced as at a new revelation of her own unlovableness.

Poppy, who all this while had been standing mute and considering, was at that moment struck by an inspiriting idea.

"But, mother," she said gravely, "if we don't know how to behave properly Aunt Julia won't want us either, and then what shall we do! You will have to take us with you," with rising hope in her voice, "and I am sure daddy would be glad, and I do want to go in the big ship and see daddy," with a deep sigh. "Oh, I do," pathetically, "want to see daddy, so badly."

"Don't talk nonsense, child. You can't remember your father. Why should you want to see him?"

"I do. I want to see what he is like. Esther remembers him, and she wants to see him too. Do take us with you, mother. We'll be—oh, ever so good. I don't like Aunt Julia; she is always cross, and I don't like cross people."

Poppy had no fear or awe of any one. Every one but Aunt Julia had loved her always, and done their best to make her happy, even cross Lydia, and she in return rewarded them by a placid, sweet acceptance of their efforts, and allowing them to love her.

"Mother," burst out Penelope eagerly, "couldn't we all go to boarding-school while you are away? It would be jolly, and ever so much nicer than living with Aunt Julia. I know we shall always be getting into scrapes if we go to her, and no one could please her, Lydia said so."

"Nonsense," said Mrs. Carroll warmly, "Lydia is a very rude girl to speak so of a lady, and my sister, and if I were remaining here I should not allow you all to go into the kitchen so much. It will be very good for you to try to please your aunt. Children don't know what is best for them, and—and they should learn to consider others before themselves."

A grown-up observer might have smiled satirically at Mrs. Carroll's theories, so easily preached, so neglected in practice.

"Now run away. I have so much to think of, my poor head is quite bewildered. I think I must have a cup of tea at once—will you tell Esther or Lydia to make it for me—or I shall have a dreadful headache, and I must think out what outfit I shall require, or it will never be ready in time, and I must try to let the house, or we shall have to pay another quarter's rent, and there is the furniture to get rid of and—oh dear, oh dear, my poor head feels quite bewildered already; however shall I manage it all, and by myself too! It is really too much to face alone—now, children, don't make a noise or you will drive me distracted."

Without another word the three walked away in search of Esther, and to talk over the dreadful and bewildering change the last hour had wrought in their outlook; but Esther, sitting white-faced and angry-eyed on her bed, could not be brought to discuss anything. She was bitterly disappointed not to be going to Canada, furiously angry at having to go to Aunt Julia, who treated them all invariably as though they were naughty or going to be naughty, cruelly hurt that her mother showed so little feeling at being parted from them all, and, curiously, full of pain at the thought of parting from that mother.

Poor Esther could not see, of course, that this same parting was really for her good; that there, under the strain and discord of her home she was allowing herself to become irritable and captious, despondent and sharp-tongued. She knew she always felt cross and injured and sore, but she never set herself to face the reason and combat it.

Two days later a reply came from Miss Julia Foster, and a frown sat heavily on Mrs. Carroll's brow. Aunt Julia firmly refused to take over at a moment's notice the burden her sister was so calmly laying on her shoulders.

"People who have children must expect to give up something for them," she wrote. "You really must not expect to throw off your responsibilities in this way. It is your duty to stay with them if you cannot take them with you. I observe you say nothing as to the provision you are prepared to make for their board and clothing and education. I presume you don't expect me to take over the responsibility of providing all that too."

Miss Foster wrote as she talked, very candidly.

Mrs. Carroll's face flushed with anger and annoyance.

"Julia never would do anything to oblige any one," she said sharply. "She has always been the same. I only wonder I thought of asking her."

It never occurred to her to think what it would mean to a person unaccustomed to children to have four suddenly introduced into a quiet home hitherto occupied only by one very prim and particular lady and two equally prim servants, who did not know what real work was.

Miss Foster's first thought had been: "Neither of the maids would stay," and she could not contemplate the terrors of changing. Her second thought, "Who is to provide for the children?" She felt quite certain that that important point had never entered into their mother's calculations, and she felt distinctly annoyed with her sister for the abrupt and casual way in which she threw such a great responsibility on others' shoulders, and in her letter she made her feelings plain.

For a few moments Mrs. Carroll sat considering. One by one all her relations and friends were passed in review before her mind's eye. "There seems," she said at last in a musing tone, "no one but Cousin Charlotte. I wonder—"

There was not much doubt as to what Mrs. Carroll was wondering. Her face lightened, determination shone in her eye.

"Cousin Charlotte," or Miss Charlotte Ashe, was a cousin of Mrs. Carroll's mother. In her earlier years she had kept a girls' school in London, but when she found herself growing old she sold it, and retired to a little house in her native village in Devonshire. Schoolmistresses do not, as a rule, grow rich, and Miss Ashe was the last person to save money for herself while there was any one else wanting it; she managed, however, to save enough to keep herself, and Anna, her former cook, in their little house in comfort, and put a trifle by for an emergency.

It was to this quiet, modest little home that Mrs. Carroll's thoughts now flew, without the slightest feeling of compunction at invading it, as she meant it to be invaded. Her letter to Miss Ashe was a masterpiece of pathetic pleading. Miss Charlotte read it with tears of pity for the poor mother, reduced from affluence and luxury to poverty and the position of an emigrant's wife torn from her children by stress of circumstance. Then she read it again to Anna, and Anna's eyes filled too; but it was for the children that Anna wept. Both kind hearts agreed, though, that they could not refuse to give the homeless ones a home; and a letter was despatched at once, full of warm hospitality and affection, and almost before it was posted a perfect fury of cleaning, planning, rearranging burst over Moor Cottage, in preparation for the four new inhabitants.

"Children," cried Mrs. Carroll delightedly, when the letter arrived, "your dear Cousin Charlotte is quite anxious to have you in her charming little home in Devonshire. I know you will be happy there, she is so sweet and kind. I was always very fond of her, and so will you be, I know; and you must do all you can to help her, and not be too troublesome. She says she can have you at any time, so I think you really had better go as soon as I can get you ready. I shall be able to see to things better, and pay a few farewell visits, when I am quite free. It will be a great relief to know you are comfortably settled."

Esther listened in silence. She was terribly sensitive. She was interested, but troubled. Did Cousin Charlotte really want them, she wondered, "or had mother forced them on her?"

Penelope knew no qualms; she simply danced with delight at the thought of going to Devonshire, and to live on a moor. "I always wanted to go there," she cried. "I know I shall love it."

Angela wept quietly at the thought of leaving Framley, and her mother, and the house and the woods. Poppy stood gazing eagerly from one to the other, prepared to do whatever her sisters did, but puzzled to know which to copy.

"Cousin Charlotte will want a big house," she remarked gravely, "if she has all of us to live with her. I wonder if she is glad we are coming—or sorry," she added as an afterthought.

"What about our clothes and food, and everything," asked Esther presently, nervously summoning up courage to put the great question that had troubled her most ever since the move was first mooted. She knew from bitter experience that the very last person to trouble about such details was her mother.

"Really, Esther, you are very inquisitive and interfering," said Mrs. Carroll, deeply annoyed because the question was one of the most embarrassing that could have been put to her. "Who do you consider is the right person to attend to such matters, myself or yourself?"

Esther sighed, but made no answer. She had no doubt as to who was the right person, her doubt was as to the right person's doing it. The matter, though, was too important for her to be easily daunted. She felt she must know, or she could not go.

"And—and what about our education?" she asked. She meant so well, but she spoke in that sullen, aggressive tone that always put her in the wrong and made her mother angry. It was purely the result of nervousness. She did so hate to have to be disagreeable and say these things, making herself seem so forward and important, when she really felt just the reverse. There was no one else though to do it, so she had to. "Is there a school there? We all ought to go to school now, even Poppy. I am thirteen, and—and I don't know as much as the village children, and I—I'm ashamed to go anywhere or meet any one. Every one sees how stupid and ignorant we are." A great sob clutched her throat and choked the rest of her words, tears of mortification and bitterness filled her eyes. She was painfully conscious of her own ignorance, and had an exaggerated idea of the contempt others must feel for her. "And some day the others would come to feel the same," she told herself resentfully, "if nothing was done for them. It was cruel. No one seemed to care for them, or how they grew up."

And then again, she would hate herself for her bad temper, and the nasty things she said. She knew she was making herself unlovable, and she did so long for love.

Mrs. Carroll looked somewhat taken aback at this new question. "Oh," she stammered, "I suppose I must arrange something. I must talk to your father about it when I get out to him. In the meantime I daresay Cousin Charlotte will be able to help you a little with a few lessons. She has been a schoolmistress all her life; she had a splendid school— such nice girls, too. She must miss them so. She will probably be quite glad to do a little teaching."

"I wonder what she will think of us," said Esther, "if she has been accustomed to well-brought-up girls."

"Well," cried Mrs. Carroll, turning on her sharply, "surely if you are so anxious to learn, you might have been studying by yourself all this time. I am sure there are books enough in the house, and you knew there was no money to spare for education."

"Yes, there are books," said Esther quietly. "Father's books that he brought from Oxford, but I can't understand them. It is books for quite little children that I want," her face flushing hotly.

"Well, I daresay Cousin Charlotte will have loads of old school-books, and—and well, at any rate, Esther," reproachfully, "you know how to read and write, and you might have been teaching Angela and Poppy to do so, you really might have done that."

"I have," said Esther.

"Oh, well, that is something. When one can read there is no excuse for ignorance in a place where there are books. There are lots of people who have set to work and taught themselves when they have been too poor to go to school, and have done—oh, marvels!" responded Mrs. Carroll, relieving herself of any feeling of self-reproach. Because a few rare geniuses had done so, by facing difficulties and self-sacrifices such as she could not even imagine, she felt there was nothing to prevent every ordinary child from pursuing the same course.

Esther said no more; a sense of hopelessness and helplessness seized her— a feeling common to most who had to do with Mrs. Carroll, but Esther, as yet, did not know that. She walked away out of the room and the house— she felt she must get away somewhere by herself.

She hurried on quickly till she came to the woods. There, at any rate, there was peace and rest, and no bickerings. "But oh," she thought, as she flung herself down on the soft, springy pine-needles which lay so thickly everywhere, "what shall I do when I haven't the woods to come to?" and she put out her hand and patted tenderly the rough trunk of the nearest pine-tree.

Half an hour later she rose as bewildered and vexed as ever. Her thoughts had led her nowhere; instead of finding some way to surmount her troubles, she had just brooded and brooded, and nursed her grievances until they were larger than ever. She could not go home yet, she felt too depressed and miserable, so she wandered on and on.

In one little hollow in the woods was a spot they called their 'house,' where they spent long days playing all sorts of lovely games, and very often, when their mother or Lydia wanted to have a free day, they had their dinner and tea there too. Making for this place now, Esther came upon Penelope perched in the forked trunk of an old tree, a book in her hand. She was so absorbed she gave quite a start when Esther called to her, "What are you doing, Pen?"

Penelope had a deep pucker in her forehead and a very grave face. "I am trying to educate myself," she said soberly. "I thought if I could learn even only a little before I went to Cousin Charlotte's it would not seem so bad. But I don't seem able to get on very well. I can't quite make out what it is all about, and the words are very long. I thought I'd try though. I only wish I'd thought of it sooner."

Esther felt a twinge of shame. She had thought of it, but she had done nothing, and her inmost conscience told her she might have spent her time more profitably than she had. "If we were not going away, Pen," she said enthusiastically, "we would have lessons here every day. P'r'aps if we kept on at it we might get to understand better, and we might get some nice books in time. But," hopelessly, "it is too late now."

"Oh, I don't think so," said Penelope encouragingly. "It can never be too late to learn things, and p'r'aps we can make up for lost time. At any rate, let's try."

"Very well, we'll begin now. Shall we start together? What book are you reading?"

"It is called The Invasion of the Crimea" said Penelope slowly. "I think it will be very interesting—further on."

"I wonder what the Crimea was," mused Esther.

"If we read very carefully perhaps we shall find out. There seems to be a lot about soldiers and battles."

"I wonder," said Esther, after a moment's thought, "if it will be any good our reading all this. Don't you think we ought to learn something that people talk about every day?"

Penelope looked a little disappointed. "I don't know," she said slowly. "I don't know how to—or what books to get, and—and p'r'aps some people do talk about the Crimea. Cousin Charlotte may, and then won't she be surprised if we know all about it!"

"Is it long?" asked Esther, still dubiously. Esther wanted to find the royal road to knowledge, which is easy and short and smooth—so they say, but no one knows, for no one has found it yet.

"Eight more volumes," said Penelope, almost apologetically. She was beginning to feel her zest for self-education considerably damped. "But," brightening up a little, "we can go on with this, at any rate, until we find out what we ought to learn. It can't do any harm. It looks like history, and I am sure we ought to know history."

"Yes," agreed Esther. So they began taking it in turns to read; but the words were long, and the names difficult to pronounce, and Esther's mind was in such a state of turmoil she could not fix it on anything, and line after line, as Penelope read, fell on deaf ears. "I think I shall go home now," she said at last. "Penelope, do you think we shall have some new clothes before we go away? We ought, we are dreadfully shabby."

Penelope looked up with doubt in her face. "I don't know. I don't expect so; you see it would cost such a lot to get things for the four of us, and there will be the tickets too, and it must be a very long journey."

Esther sighed. "Well, we are disgracefully shabby. I don't know what we are going to do. Cousin Charlotte will think we are a tramp's children."

The next day, when the study hour came, Esther took a large basket of stockings out into the woods with her to darn. "I must try and mend these again," she said. "We don't seem to be going to have any new ones," and while Penelope with some trouble made her way through a chapter of the Invasion of the Crimea, and the younger ones collected fir-cones to take home for the kitchen fire, Esther sorted out and darned a motley collection of stockings of various sizes and every variety of shade of washed-out black and brown. She darned them quickly and thoroughly; but the great excrescences of blue, brown, grey, or black darning-wool would have brought terror to the heart of any one who suffered from tender feet. "There," she said, laying aside the last pair with a sigh, "at any rate we shall be sound if we are shabby. I wish, though, the darns didn't show quite so much," gazing regretfully at a large light-blue patch in the middle of one of Poppy's black stockings.

After that the Crimea was abandoned, and they all fell to talking of the strange new life which was drawing so close to them now, and by degrees, and in spite of their first dread, was so exciting, so full of interest, and all manner of possibilities.