"Oh! I can't tell. They got past my reckoning long ago. I only know they are all boys, and that this baby is a girl."
"Baby! Ah, poor Fanny, I feared that was the reason the did not come sooner."
"Yes, and she has been very ill; she always is, I believe, but there is very little about it. Fanny never could write letters; she only just says: 'I have not been able to attempt a letter sooner, though my dear little girl is five weeks old to-day. Think of the daughter coming at last, too late for her dear father, who had so wished for one. She is very healthy, I am thankful to say; and I am now so much better, that the doctor says I may sail next week. Major Keith has taken our cabins, in the Voluta, and soon after you receive this, I hope to be showing you my dear boys. They are such good, affectionate fellows; but I am afraid they would be too much for my dear aunt, and our party is so large, so the Major and I both think it will be the best way for you to take a house for me for six months. I should like Myrtlewood best, if it is to be had. I have told Conrade all about it, and how pretty it is, and it is so near you that I think there I can be happy as ever I can be again in this world, and have your advice for the dear children.'"
"Poor darling! she seems but a child herself."
"My age--five and twenty," returned Rachel. "Well I shall go and ask about the house. Remember, mother, this influx is to bring no trouble or care on you; Fanny Temple is my charge from henceforth. My mission has come to seek me," she added as she quitted the room, in eager excitement of affection, emotion, and importance, for Fanny had been more like a sister than a cousin.
Grace and Rachel Curtis were the daughters of the squire of the Homestead; Fanny, of his brother, an officer in the army. Left at home for education, the little girl had spent her life, from her seventh to her sixteenth year, as absolutely one with her cousins, until she was summoned to meet her father at the Cape, under the escort of his old friend, General Sir Stephen Temple. She found Colonel Curtis sinking under fatal disease, and while his relations were preparing to receive, almost to maintain, his widow and daughter, they were electrified by the tidings that the gentle little Fanny, at sixteen, had become the wife of Sir Stephen Temple, at sixty.
From that time little had been known about her; her mother had continued with her, but the two Mrs. Curtises had never been congenial or intimate; and Fanny was never a full nor willing correspondent, feeling perhaps the difficulty of writing under changed circumstances. Her husband had been in various commands in the colonies, without returning to England; and all that was known of her was a general impression that she had much ill-health and numerous children, and was tended like an infant by her bustling mother and doting husband. More than half a year back, tidings had come of the almost sudden death of her mother; and about three months subsequently, one of the officers of Sir Stephen's staff had written to announce that the good old general had been killed by a fall from his horse, while on a round of inspection at a distance from home. The widow was then completely prostrated by the shock, but promised to write as soon as she was able, and this was the fulfilment of that promise, bringing the assurance that Fanny was coming back with her little ones to the home of her childhood.
Of that home, Grace and Rachel were the joint-heiresses, though it was owned by the mother for her life. It was an estate of farm and moorland, worth some three or four thousand a year, and the house was perched on a beautiful promontory, running out into the sea, and inclosing one side of a bay, where a small fishing-village had recently expanded into a quiet watering-place, esteemed by some for its remoteness from railways, and for the calm and simplicity that were yearly diminished by its increasing popularity. It was the family fashion to look down from their crag at the new esplanade with pity and contempt for the ruined loneliness of the pebbly beach; and as Mrs. Curtis had not health to go often into society, she had been the more careful where she trusted her daughters. They belonged to the county by birth and tradition, and were not to be mixed up with the fleeting residents of the watering-place, on whom they never called, unless by special recommendation from a mutual friend; and the few permanent inhabitants chanced to be such, that a visit to them was in some degree a condescension. Perhaps there was more of timidity and caution than of pride in the mother's exclusiveness, and Grace had always acquiesced in it as the natural and established state of affairs, without any sense of superiority, but rather of being protected. She had a few alarms as to the results of Rachel's new immunities of age, and though never questioning the wisdom of her clever sister's conclusions, dreaded the effect on the mother, whom she had been forbidden to call mamma. "At their age it was affecting an interesting childishness."
Rachel had had the palm of cleverness conceded to her ever since she could recollect, when she read better at three years old than her sister at five, and ever after, through the days of education, had enjoyed, and excelled in, the studies that were a toil to Grace. Subsequently, while Grace had contented herself with the ordinary course of unambitious feminine life, Rachel had thrown herself into the process of self-education with all her natural energy, and carried on her favourite studies by every means within her reach, until she considerably surpassed in acquirements and reflection all the persons with whom she came in frequent contact. It was a homely neighbourhood, a society well born, but of circumscribed interests and habits, and little connected with the great progressive world, where, however, Rachel's sympathies all lay, necessarily fed, however, by periodical literature, instead of by conversation or commerce with living minds.
She began by being stranded on the ignorance of those who surrounded her, and found herself isolated as a sort of pedant; and as time went on, the narrowness of interests chafed her, and in like manner left her alone. As she grew past girlhood, the cui bono question had come to interfere with her ardour in study for its own sake, and she felt the influence of an age eminently practical and sifting, but with small powers of acting. The quiet Lady Bountiful duties that had sufficed her mother and sister were too small and easy to satisfy a soul burning at the report of the great cry going up to heaven from a world of sin and woe. The examples of successful workers stimulated her longings to be up and doing, and yet the ever difficult question between charitable works and filial deference necessarily detained her, and perhaps all the more because it was not so much the fear of her mother's authority as of her horror and despair, that withheld her from the decisive and eccentric steps that she was always feeling impelled to take. Gentle Mrs. Curtis had never been a visible power in her house, and it was through their desire to avoid paining her that her government had been exercised over her two daughters ever since their father's death, which had taken place in Grace's seventeenth year. Both she and Grace implicitly accepted Rachel's superiority as an unquestionable fact, and the mother, when traversing any of her clever daughter's schemes, never disputed either her opinions or principles, only entreated that these particular developments might be conceded to her own weakness; and Rachel generally did concede. She could not act; but she could talk uncontradicted, and she hated herself for the enforced submission to a state of things that she despised.
This twenty-fifth birthday had long been anticipated as the turning- point when this submissive girlhood ought to close, and the privileges of acting as well as thinking for herself ought to be assumed. Something to do was her cry, and on this very day that something seemed to be cast in her way. It was not ameliorating the condition of the masses, but it was educating those who might ameliorate them; and Rachel gladly hailed the prospect of a vocation that might be conducted without pain to her mother.