It Might Have Been. Emily Sarah Holt

you o’er, and Hans to pick you up again. Have a care, Lettice. You remember when Walter was in Court, with my Lord Oxford?”

      “O Joyce!”

      Lettice wondered what they meant, for she had never heard of her Uncle Walter being with Lord Oxford. She had never much liked Uncle Walter. He was always rather stiff and stern, and he used to come down sharply on niece or nephew if they did any thing wrong, yet not like her Grandfather Murthwaite, who was slow and solemn, and seemed to mourn over their evil deeds; but Uncle Walter was quick and sharp, and he snapped at them. They were under the impression that he never could have done a naughty thing in the whole course of his life, because he always seemed so angry and astonished to see the children do so. Lettice, therefore, was curious to hear about Uncle Walter.

      “Well,” said Aunt Joyce, “not exactly the same, yet too like. He’ll take the colour of his company, like Walter: and he shall be evenly free-handed with his money—”

      Lettice stared, though there was nothing to stare at but Aunt Joyce’s big grey cat, curled up in the window-seat Uncle Walter a spendthrift! she could not even imagine it. Did she not remember her Cousin Jane’s surprise when her father gave her a shilling for a birthday present? When Lettice listened again, Aunt Joyce was saying—

      “He’s no standing-ground. Whatso be the fantasy of the moment, after it he goes; and never stays him to think what is like to come thereof, far less what might come. But that which causes me fear more for him than Walter, is the matter of friends. Walter was not one to run after folks; he was frighted of lowering himself in the eyes of them he knew, but methinks he ran not after them as Aubrey doth. Hast ever watched a dog make friends of other dogs? for Aubrey hath right the dog’s way. After every dog he goes, and gives a sniff at him; and if the savour suit, he’s Hail, fellow, well met! with him the next minute. Beware that Aubrey makes no friend he bringeth not home, so far as you can: and yet, Beware whom he bringeth, for Lettice’ sake. ’Tis hard matter: ‘good for the head is evil for the neck and shoulders.’ To govern that lad shall ask no little wisdom; and if thou have it not, thou knowest where to ask. I would his mother had more, or that his father had lived. Well! that’s evil wishing; God wist better than I. But the lad ’ll be a sore care to thee, and an heavy.”

      “I fear so much, indeed,” said Lady Louvaine, and she sighed.

      Then Edith came in, and exclaimed, “What, all in the dark?” and Aunt Joyce bade her call Rebecca to bring light. So the naughty Lettice slipped out, and in five minutes more came boldly in, and no one knew what she had heard.

      As they sat round the fire that evening, Aunt Joyce asked suddenly, “Tell me, you three young folks, what be your ambitions? What desire you most of all things to be, do, or have?—Lettice?”

      “Why, Aunt, I can scarce tell,” said Lettice, “for I never thought thereupon.”

      “She should choose to be beautiful, of course,” suggested Aubrey. “All women do.”

      “Marry come up, my young Master!” cried his Aunt Temperance.

      “Oh, let him be, Temperance,” answered Aunt Joyce. “He knows a deal more about women than thou and I; ’tis so much shorter a time since he was one.”

      Temperance laughed merrily, and Aubrey looked disconcerted.

      “I think I care not much to be beautiful, Aunt, nor rich,” said Lettice: “only sufficient to be not uncomely nor tried of poverty. But so far as I myself can tell what I do most desire is to know things—all things that ever there be to know. I would like that, I think, above all.”

      “To know God and all good things were a very good and wise wish, Lettice,” was Aunt Joyce’s answer; “but to know evil things, this was the very blunder that our mother Eve made in Eden. Prithee, repeat it not. Now, Aubrey, what is thy wish?”

      “I would like to be a rich king,” said he. “Were I a fairy queen, Aubrey, I would not give thee thy wish: for thou couldst scarce make a worser. ‘They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare,’ and they that seek power be little behind them. ‘Godliness is great riches,’ lad, ‘if a man be content with that he hath.’ ”

      “Methinks, Aunt, that is one of your favourite texts,” remarked Edith.

      “Ay,” said she, “it is. ‘Enough is as good as a feast.’ Hans, ’tis thy turn.”

      Hans had sat gravely looking into the fire while the others talked. Now he looked up, and answered—

      “Madam, I am ambitious more than a little. I desire to do God’s will, and to be content therewith.”

      “Angels could win no further,” answered Aunt Joyce, with much feeling in her voice. “Ay, lad; thou hast flown at highest game of all.”

      “Why, Aunt!” said Aubrey, “never heard I a meaner wish. Any man could do that.”

      “Prithee do it, then,” replied Aunt Joyce, “and I for one shall be full fain to see thee.”

      “No man ever yet fulfilled that wish,” added Edith, “save only Christ our Lord.”

      Lady Louvaine sighed somewhat heavily; and Joyce asked, “What is it, dear heart?”

      “Ah!” said she, “thy question, Joyce, and the children’s answers, send me back a weary way, nigh sixty years gone, to the time when I dwelt bowerwoman with my Lady of Surrey, when one even the Lady of Richmond willed us all to tell our desires after this manner. I mind not well all the answers, but I know one would see a coronation, and an other fair sights in strange lands: and I, being then young and very foolish, wished for a set of diamond, and my Lady of Richmond herself to be a queen. But my Aubrey’s wish was something like Hans’s, for he said he desired to be an angel. Ah me! nigh sixty years!”

      “He hath his wish,” responded Aunt Joyce softly. “And methinks Hans is like to have his also, so far as mortal man may compass it. There be some wishes, children, that fulfil themselves: and aspirations after God be of that sort. ‘He meeteth them that remember Him.’ Lettice, I trust thou mayest have thy wish to a reasonable length, so far as is good for thee: and, Aubrey, I can but desire the disappointment of thine, for it were very evil for thee. But thou, Hans Floriszoon, ‘go in peace; and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.’ ”

      It was hard work for those two old friends to part, each knowing that it was almost certain they would never again meet until they clasped hands in the Paradise of God. When it came to the farewell, Lady Louvaine knelt down, though with difficulty—for Joyce could not raise herself—and the adopted sisters exchanged one long fervent embrace.

      “O Joyce, my friend, my sister! my one treasure left to me from long ago! We shall never kiss again till—”

      Lettice Louvaine’s voice was lost in sobs.

      “Maybe, dear heart—maybe not. Neither thou nor I can know the purposes of God. If so, farewell till the Golden City!—and if thou win in afore me at the pearly portals, give them all my true love, and say I shall soon be at home.”

      “Farewell, love! There is none to call me Lettice but thee, left now.”

      “Nay, sweet heart, not so. ‘I have called thee by thy name.’ There will be One left to call thee ‘Lettice,’ until He summon thee by that familiar name to enter the Holy City.”

      So they journeyed on towards London. It was on the afternoon of the twenty-fourth of March that they sighted the metropolis at last from the summit of Notting Hill. They drove down the Oxford road, bounded on either side by green hedges, with here and there a house—the busy Oxford Street of our day—turned down the Hay Market to Charing Cross, and passed by Essex Gate and its companion portal, the Court Gate, through “the Court,” now known as Whitehall, emerging upon “the King’s Street.” There was no Parliament Street in those days.

      As they turned into King Street, it struck the elders of the