Part 18 (1/2)

”No--not all.”

”Well, what else?” Sophia laughed a little, and laid her cool hand on the girl's hot one.

”I can't be anything grand ever, and begin by being a servant, Miss Sophia. I say I'm not a servant, and I try not to act like one; but Mrs.

Rexford, she's tried hard to make me one. You wouldn't like to be a servant, Miss Sophia?”

”You are very childish and foolish,” said Sophia. ”If I had not been just as foolish about other things when I was your age I would laugh at you now. But I know it's no use to tell you that the things you want will not make you happy, and that the things you don't want would, because I know you will not believe it. I will do my best to help you to get what you want, so far as it is not wrong, if you will promise to tell me all your difficulties.”

”Will you help me? Why are you so kind?”

”Because--” said Sophia. Then she said no more.

Eliza showed herself cheered.

”You're the only one I care to talk to, Miss Sophia. The others haven't as much sense as you, have they?”

As these words were quietly put forth in the darkness, without a notion of impropriety, Sophia was struck with the fact that they coincided with her own estimate of the state of the case.

”Eliza, what are you talking of--not of my father and mother surely?”

”Why, yes. I think they're good and kind, but I don't think they've a deal of sense--do you?”

”My father is a wiser man than you can understand, Eliza; and--” Sophia broke off, she was fain to retreat; it was cold for one thing.

”Miss Sophia,” said Eliza, as she was getting to the door, ”there's one thing--you know that young man they were talking about to-night?”

”What of him?”

”Well, if he were to ask about me, you'd not tell him anything, would you? I've never told anybody but you about father, or any particulars.

The others don't know anything, and you won't tell, will you?”

”I've told you I won't take upon myself to speak of your affairs. What has that young man to do with it?”--with some severity.

”It's only that he's a traveller, and I feel so silly about every traveller, for fear they'd want me to go back to the clearin'.”

Sophia took the few necessary steps in the cold dark granary and reached her own room.

CHAPTER XVI.

Sophia was sitting with Mrs. Rexford on the sofa that stood with its back to the dining-room window. The frame of the sofa was not turned, but fas.h.i.+oned with saw and knife and plane; not glued, but nailed together. Yet it did not lack for comfort; it was built oblong, large, and low; it was cus.h.i.+oned with sacking filled with loose hay plentifully mixed with Indian gra.s.s that gave forth a sweet perfume, and the whole was covered with a large neat pinafore of such light was.h.i.+ng stuff as women wear about their work on summer days. Sophia and her step-mother were darning stockings. The homesickness of the household was rapidly subsiding, and to-day these two were not uncomfortable or unhappy. The rest of the family, some to work, some to play, and some to run errands, had been dismissed into the large outside.

The big house was tranquil. The afternoon sun, which had got round to the kitchen window, blazed in there through a fringe of icicles that hung from the low eaves of the kitchen roof, and sent a long strip of bright prismatic rays across the floor and through the door on to the rag carpet under the dining-room table. Ever and anon, as the ladies sewed, the sound of sleigh-bells came to them, distant, then nearer, then near, with the trotting of horses' feet as they pa.s.sed the house, then again more distant. The dining-room window faced the road, but one could not see through it without standing upright.

”Mamma,” said Sophia, ”it is quite clear we can never make an ordinary servant out of Eliza; but if we try to be companionable to her we may help her to learn what she needs to learn, and make her more willing to stay with us.”

It was Mrs. Rexford's way never to approach a subject gradually in speech. If her mind went through the process ordinarily manifested in introductory remarks it slipped through it swiftly and silently, and her speech darted into the heart of the subject, or skipped about and hit it on all sides at once.

”Ah, but I told her again and again, Sophia, to say 'miss' to the girls.