Volume I Part 5 (1/2)
”Dear me, yes, sister Betsy.... Why do you tease me so, making me take the pipe out of my mouth every minute?”
Miss Betsy left the little smoke-dried back parlour appropriated to the master of the house, and made her way to the front room up stairs called the drawing-room, which had been reserved, since time out of mind, for the use of the ladies of the family and their visitors. There she found, as she expected, Mrs. Compton and her daughter amidst an ocean of needle-work, all having reference, more or less, to the ceremony which was to be performed on the following Thursday.
”So, Mrs. Compton,” was her salutation to the old lady, and a nod of the head to the young one. ”I have been speaking to my brother,” continued Miss Betsy, ”concerning the education of little Agnes, and he has given his consent to my putting her to school.”
”_His_ consent!...” exclaimed Mrs. Compton; ”and, pray, is she not my grandchild too?... I think I have as good a right to take care of the child as he has.”
”_She_ has a right,” replied the spinster, ”to expect from both of you a great deal more care than she has found; and were I you, Mrs. Compton, I would take some trouble to conceal from all my friends and acquaintance the fact that, at eleven years of age, my grandchild was unable to read.”
”And that's a fact that I can have no need to hide, Miss Betsy, for it's no fact at all--I've seen Martha teaching her scores of times.”
”Then have her in, Mrs. Compton, and let us make the trial. If I have said what is not true, I will beg your pardon.”
”Lor, mamma!” said Miss Martha, colouring a little, ”what good is there in contradicting aunt Betsy, if she wants to send Agnes to school? I am sure it is the best thing that can be done for her, now I am going to be married.... And Mr. Barnaby asked me the other day, if you did not mean to send her to school.”
”I don't want to keep her from school, G.o.d knows, poor little thing, or from anything else that could do her good.... Only Miss Betsy speaks so sharp.... But I can a.s.sure you, sister, we should have put her to the best of schools long and long ago, only that, Heaven knows, we had not the means to do it; and thankful shall I be if you are come at last to think that there may be as much charity in helping your own blood relations, as in giving away your substance to strangers and beggars.”
”You are right, Mrs. Compton, as far as relates to sending Agnes to school ... that will certainly be a charity. When can the child be got ready?”
”As soon as ever you shall be pleased to give us the means, sister Betsy.”
”Do you mean, Mrs. Compton, that she has not got clothes to go in?”
”I do indeed, sister Betsy.”
”Let me see what she _has_ got, and then I shall know what she wants.”
”That is easily told, aunt, without your troubling yourself to look over a few ragged frocks and the like. She wants just everything, aunt Betsy,” said the bride expectant, brave in antic.i.p.ated independence, and rather inclined to plague the old lady by drawing as largely as might be on her reluctant funds, now they were opened, even though the profit would not be her own.
”If she really does want everything, Martha Compton, while you are dressed as you now are, very cruel injustice has been done her,” replied the aunt. ”Your sister had no portion given her, either of the patrimony of her father, or the thousand pounds brought by her mother; and as her marriage with a man who had not a sixpence was permitted, this child of hers has an equal right with yourself to share in the property of your parents.”
”The property of their parents!... Why bless me, Betsy Compton, how you do talk!... as if you did not know that all the property they ever had, is as good as gone. Has not farmer Wright got the estate? And has not the butcher, and the baker, and the shoemaker, and all the rest of them, got what it sold for, as well as my thousand pounds among them, long ago?”
”Then you are now on the very verge of ruin, Mrs. Compton?” said the spinster gravely.
”Yes, sister Betsy, we are,” replied the matron reproachfully. ”And I can't but say,” she continued, ”that a lone woman like you, without any expenses whatever but your own meat and drink, which everybody says is next to nothing,--I can't but say that you might have helped us a little before now, and no harm done.”
”That is your opinion of the case, Mrs. Compton: mine is wholly different. I think harm is done whenever power of any kind is exerted in vain. I have no power to help you.... Were all I have, poured out upon you, while I lodged myself in the parish workhouse, my conviction is, that I should only be enabling you to commit more follies, and, in my judgment, more sins.”
”Well, well, Miss Betsy, it is of no use talking to you--I know that of old; and to tell you the truth, when I _do_ come to beggary, I had rather beg of anybody else than of you. I hear far and near of your charity to others, but I can't say that I ever saw any great symptom of it myself.”
”Let me see what clothes little Agnes has got, Mrs. Compton, if you please. Our time will be more profitably employed in seeing what I may be able to do for her, than in discoursing of what I am not able to do for you. Miss Martha then, I suppose, may be able to bring her things in.”
”Why, as far as the quant.i.ty goes, they won't be very difficult to carry. But I don't see much use in overhauling all the poor child's trumpery ... unless it is just to make you laugh at our poverty, ma'am.”
The spinster answered this with a look which shewed plainly enough that, however little beauty her pale face could boast, it was by no means deficient in expression. Miss Martha hastened out of the room to do her errand without saying another word.
I will not give the catalogue of poor Agnes's wardrobe, but only observe that it was considerably worse than Miss Betsy expected; she made, however, no observation upon it; but having examined it apparently with very little attention, she took leave of the mother and daughter, saying she would call again in a day or two, and took with her (no permission asked) a greatly faded, but recently fitted frock, which abduction mother and daughter remonstrated against, loudly declaring it was her best dress, except the old white muslin worked with coloured worsteds, and that she would have nothing upon earth to wear.