Clare Avery. Emily Sarah Holt

since I am widow. And I make the cakes, as Arthur knows,” added Mrs. Rose, cheerily, patting her grandson’s head; “but if I should go hence, there should be a famine, ma foi!”

      “A famine of pain d’épices” assented Mrs. Tremayne, smiling. “Ah, Mother dear, thou spoilest the lad.”

      “Who ever knew a grandame to do other?” observed Barbara. “More specially the only one.”

      “The only one!” echoed his mother, softly, stroking his long hair. “There be four other, Barbara—not lost, but waiting.”

      “Now, Barbara, come in hither,” said Mrs. Rose, bustling back into the room, apparently desirous of checking any sad thoughts on the part of her daughter; “sit thou down, and tell us all about the little Clare, and the dear Master Avery, and all. I listen and mix my cake, all one.”

      Barbara followed her, and found herself in the kitchen. She had not done wondering at the change—not in Mrs. Tremayne, but in her mother. Nineteen years before, Barbara had known Marguerite Rose, a crushed, suffering woman, with no shadow of mirth about her. It seemed unnatural and improper to hear her laugh. But Mrs. Rose’s nature was that of a child—simple and versatile: she lived in the present, whether for joy or pain.

      Mrs. Rose finished gathering her materials, and proceeded to mix her pain d’épices, or Flemish gingerbread, while Mrs. Tremayne made Barbara sit down in a large chair furnished with soft cushions. Arthur came too, having picked up his big book, and seated himself in the window-seat with it, his long hair falling over his face as he bent down over it but whether he were reading or listening was known only to himself.

      The full account of John Avery’s end was given to these his dearest friends, and there was a good deal of conversation about other members of the family: and Barbara heard, to her surprise, that a cousin of Clare, a child rather older than herself, was shortly coming to live at the parsonage. Lysken van Barnevelt (a fictitious person), like Clare, was an only child and an orphan; and Mr. Tremayne purposed to pay his debt to the Averys by the adoption of Frances Avery’s child. But Barbara was rather dismayed when she heard that Lysken would not at first be able to talk to her cousin, since her English was of the most fragmentary description.

      “She will soon learn,” said Mrs. Tremayne.

      “And until she shall learn, I only can talk to her,” added Mrs. Rose, laughing. “Ay de mi! I must pull up my Flemish out of my brains. It is so deep down, I do wonder if it will come. It is—let me see!—forty, fifty—ma foi! ’tis nigh sixty years since I talk Flemish with my father!”

      “And now, tell us, what manner of child is Clare?” asked Mrs. Tremayne.

      “The sweetest little maid in all the world, and of full good conditions (disposition), saving only that she lacketh breeding (education) somewhat.”

      “The which Mistress Rachel shall well furnish her withal. She is a throughly good teacher. But I will go and see the sweeting, so soon as I may.”

      “Now, Mrs. Thekla, of your goodness, do me to wit what manner of folk be these that we be fallen in withal? It were easier for me to govern both Mrs. Clare and mine own self, if I might but, know somewhat thereof aforetime.”

      “Truly, good friend, they be nowise ill folk,” said Mrs. Tremayne, with a quiet smile. “Sir Thomas is like to be a good father unto the child, for he hath a kindly nature. Only, for godliness, I fear I may not say over much. But he is an upright man, and a worthy, as men go in this world. And for my Lady his wife, you know her as well as I.”

      “Marry La’kin, and if you do love her no better!—”

      “She is but young,” said Mrs. Tremayne, excusingly.

      “What heard I?” inquired Mrs. Rose, looking up from her cookery. “I did think thou hadst been a Christian woman, Barbara Polwhele.”

      “Nay, verily, Mistress Rose!—what mean you?” demanded the astonished Barbara.

      “Bon!—Is it not the second part of the duty of a Christian woman to love her neighbour as herself?”

      “Good lack! ’tis not in human nature,” said Barbara, bluntly. “If we be no Christians short of that, there be right few Christians in all the world, Mistress mine.”

      “So there be,” was the reply. “Is it not?”

      “Truly, good friend, this is not in nature,” said Mrs. Tremayne, gently. “It is only in grace.”

      “Then in case it so be, is there no grace?” asked Barbara in a slightly annoyed tone.

      “Who am I, that I should judge?” was the meek answer. “Yet methinks there must be less grace than nature.”

      “Well!—and of Mistress Rachel, what say you?”

      “Have you a care that you judge her not too harshly. She is, I know, somewhat forbidding on the outside, yet she hath a soft heart, Barbara.”

      “I am thankful to hear the same, for I had not so judged,” was Barbara’s somewhat acrid answer.

      “Ah, she showeth the worst on the outside.”

      “And for the childre? I love not yon Lucrece.—Now, Mistress Rose, have a care your cakes be well mingled, and snub not me.”

      “Ah! there spake the conscience,” said Mrs. Rose, laughing.

      “I never did rightly understand Lucrece,” answered her daughter. “For Margaret, she is plain and open enough; a straightforward, truthful maiden, that men may trust. But for Lucrece—I never felt as though I knew her. There is that in her—be it pride, be it shamefacedness, call it as you will—that is as a wall in the way.”

      “I call it deceitfulness, Thekla,” said her mother decidedly.

      “I trust not so, Mother! yet I have feared—”

      “Time will show,” said Mrs. Rose, filling her moulds with the compound which was to turn out pain d’épices.

      “Mistress Blanche, belike, showeth not what her conditions shall be,” remarked Barbara.

      “She is a lovesome little maid as yet,” said Mrs. Tremayne. “Mefeareth she shall be spoiled as she groweth toward womanhood, both with praising of her beauty and too much indulging of her fantasies.”

      “And now, what say you to Master Jack?” demanded Barbara in some trepidation. “Is he like to play ugsome (ugly, disagreeable) tricks on Mrs. Clare, think you?”

      “Jack—ah, poor Jack!” replied Mrs. Tremayne.

      Barbara looked up in some surprise. Jack seemed to her a most unlikely subject for the compassionate ejaculation.

      “And dost thou marvel that I say, ‘Poor Jack’? It is because I have known men of his conditions aforetime, and I have ever noted that either they do go fast to wrack, or else they be set in the hottest furnace of God’s disciplining. I know not which shall be the way with Jack. But how so—poor Jack!”

      “But what deem you his conditions, in very deed?”

      “Why, there is not a soul in all the village that loveth not Jack, and I might well-nigh say, not one that hath not holpen him at some pinch, whereto his reckless ways have brought him. If the lacings of satin ribbon be gone from Mistress Rachel’s best gown, and the cat be found with them tied all delicately around her paws and neck, and her very tail—’tis Jack hath done it. If Margaret go about with a paper pinned to the tail of her gown, importing that she is a thief and a traitor to the Queen’s Highness—’tis Jack hath pinned it on when she saw him not. If some rare book from Sir Thomas his library be found all open on the garden walk, wet and ruinated—’tis Jack. If Mistress Rachel be astepping into her bed, and find the sheets and blankets all awry, so that she cannot compass it till all is pulled in pieces and turned aright,