CHARLOTTE FULFORD.
July 4.-By noon to-day arrived Martyn,{127} with Mary his wife, Margaret and Avice their daughters, Uchtred their second son, and poor Harry Fulford's orphan, Isabel, who has had a home with them ever since she left school. Though she is only a cousin once removed, she seems to fall into the category of eligible nieces, and indeed she seems the obvious companion for us, as she has no home, and seems to me rather set aside among the others. I hope there is no jealousy, for she is much better looking than her cousins, with gentle, liquid eyes, a pretty complexion, and a wistful expression. Moreover, she is dressed in a quiet ladylike way, whereas grandmamma looked out just now in the twilight and said, "My dear Martyn, have you brought three boys down?" It was a showery, chilly evening, and they were all out admiring the waves. Ulsters and sailor hats were appropriate enough then, but the genders were not easy to distinguish, especially as the elder girl wears her hair short-no improvement to a keen face which needs softening. She is much too like a callow undergraduate altogether, and her sister follows suit, though perhaps with more refinement of feature-indeed she looks delicate, and was soon called in. They are in slight mourning, and appear in gray serges. They left a strap of books on the sofa, of somewhat alarming light literature for the seaside. Bacon's Essays and Elements of Logic were the first Emily beheld, and while she stood regarding them with mingled horror and respect, in ran Avice to fetch them, as the two sisters are reading up for the Oxford exam-'ination' she added when she saw her two feeble-minded aunts looking for the rest of the word. However, she says it is only Pica who is going up for it this time. She herself was not considered strong enough. Yet there have those two set themselves down with their books under the rocks, blind to all the glory of sea and shore, deaf to the dash and ripple of the waves! I long to go and shout Wordsworth's warning about 'growing double' to them. I am glad to say that Uchtred has come and fetched Avice away. I can hardly believe Martyn and Mary parents to this grown-up family. They look as youthful as ever, and are as active and vigorous, and full of their jokes with one another and their children. They are now gone out to the point of the rocks at the end of our promontory, fishing for microscopical monsters, and comporting themselves boy and girl fashion.
Isabel has meantime been chatting very pleasantly with grandmamma, and trying to extricate us from our bewilderment as to names and nicknames. My poor mother, after strenuously preventing abbreviations in her own family, has to endure them in her descendants, and as every one names a daughter after her, there is some excuse! This Oxford Margaret goes by the name of Pie or Pica, apparently because it is the remotest portion of Magpie, and her London cousin is universally known as Metelill-the Danish form, I believe; but in the Bourne Parva family the young Margaret Druce is nothing worse than Meg, and her elder sister remains Jane. "Nobody would dare to call her anything else," says Isa. Avice cannot but be sometimes translated into the Bird; while my poor name, in my second London niece, has become the masculine Charley. "I shall know why when I see her," says Isa laughing. This good-natured damsel is coming out walking with us old folks, and will walk on with me, when grandmamma turns back with Emily. Her great desire is to find the whereabouts of a convalescent home in which she and her cousins have subscribed to place a poor young dressmaker for a six weeks' rest; but I am afraid it is on the opposite side of S. Clements, too far for a walk.
July 5.-Why did you never tell me how charming Metelill is? I never supposed the Fulford features capable of so much beauty, and the whole manner and address are so delightful that I do not wonder that all her cousins are devoted to her; Uchtred, or Butts, as they are pleased to name him, has brightened into another creature since she came, and she seems like sunshine to us all. As to my namesake, I am sorry to say that I perceive the appropriateness of Charley; but I suppose it is style, for the masculine dress which in Pica and Avice has an air of being worn for mere convenience' sake, and is quite ladylike, especially on Avice, has in her an appearance of defiance and coquetry. Her fox-terrier always shares her room, which therefore is eschewed by her sister, and this has made a change in our arrangements. We had thought the room in our house, which it seems is an object of competition, would suit best for Jane Druce and one of her little sisters; but a hint was given by either Pica or her mother that it would be a great boon to let Jane and Avice share it, as they are very great friends, and we had the latter there installed. However, this fox-terrier made Metelill protest against sleeping at the hotel with her sister, and her mother begged us to take her in. Thereupon, Emily saw Isa looking annoyed, and on inquiry she replied sweetly, "Oh, never mind, aunty dear; I daresay Wasp won't be so bad as he looks; and I'll try not to be silly, and then I daresay Charley will not tease me! Only I had hoped to be with dear Metelill; but no doubt she will prefer her Bird-people always do." So they were going to make that poor child the victim! For it seems Pica has a room to herself, and will not give it up or take in any one. Emily went at once to Avice and asked whether she would mind going to the hotel, and letting Isa be with Metelill, and this she agreed to at once. I don't know why I tell you all these details, except that they are straws to show the way of the wind, and you will see how Isabel is always the sacrifice, unless some one stands up for her. Here comes Martyn to beguile me out to the beach.
July 6 (Sunday).-My mother drove to church and took Edith, who was glad neither to walk nor to have to skirmish for a seat. Isa walked with Emily and me, and so we made up our five for our seat, which, to our dismay, is in the gallery, but, happily for my mother, the stairs are easy. The pews there are not quite so close to one's nose as those in the body of the church; they are a little wider, and are furnished with hassocks instead of traps to prevent kneeling, so that we think ourselves well off, and we were agreeably surprised at the service. There is a new incumbent who is striving to modify things as well as his people and their architecture permit, and who preached an excellent sermon. So we triumph over the young folk, who try to persuade us that the gallery is a judgment on us for giving in to the hired pew system. They may banter me as much as they like, but I don't like to see them jest with grandmamma about it, as if they were on equal terms, and she does not understand it either. "My dear," she gravely says, "your grandpapa always said it was a duty to support the parish church." "Nothing will do but the Congregational system in these days; don't you think so?" began Pica dogmatically, when her father called her off. Martyn cannot bear to see his mother teased. He and his wife, with the young ones, made their way to Hollyford, where they found a primitive old church and a service to match, but were terribly late, and had to sit in worm-eaten pews near the door, amid scents of peppermint and southernwood. On the way back, Martyn fraternised with a Mr. Methuen, a Cambridge tutor with a reading party, who has, I am sorry to say, arrived at the house vis-à-vis to ours, on the other side of the cove. Our Oxford young ladies turn up their noses at the light blue, and say the men have not the finish of the dark; but Charley is in wild spirits. I heard her announcing the arrival thus: "I say, Isa, what a stunning lark! Not but that I was up to it all the time, or else I should have skedaddled; for this place was bound to be as dull as ditchwater." "But how did you know?" asked Isa. "Why, Bertie Elwood tipped me a line that he was coming down here with his coach, or else I should have told the mater I couldn't stand it and gone to stay with some one." This Bertie Elwood is, it seems, one of the many London acquaintance. He looks inoffensive, and so do the others, but I wish they had chosen some other spot for their studies, and so perhaps does their tutor, though he is now smoking very happily under a rock with Martyn.