LITMIR.BIZ

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gone by,—so at least the father and mother said to each other. But the young people had met in the summer, and one joyful letter had come from the girl home to her mother. “I have accepted him. Dearest, dearest mamma, I do love him. But don’t tell papa yet, for I have not quite accepted him. I think I am sure, but I am not quite sure. I am not quite sure about him.”

      And then, two days after that, there had come a letter that was not at all joyful. “Dearest Mamma,—It is not to be. It is not written in the book. We have both agreed that it will not do. I am so glad that you have not told dear papa, for I could never make him understand. You will understand, for I shall tell you everything, down to his very words. But we have agreed that there shall be no quarrel. It shall be exactly as it was, and he will come at Christmas all the same. It would never do that he and papa should be separated, nor could we now put off Isabella. It is better so in every way, for there is and need be no quarrel. We still like each other. I am sure I like him, but I know that I should not make him happy as his wife. He says it is my fault. I, at any rate, have never told him that I thought it his.” From all which it will be seen that the confidence between the mother and daughter was very close.

      Elizabeth Garrow was a very good girl, but it might almost be a question whether she was not too good. She had learned, or thought that she had learned, that most girls are vapid, silly, and useless,—given chiefly to pleasure-seeking and a hankering after lovers; and she had resolved that she would not be such a one.

      Industry, self-denial, and a religious purpose in life, were the tasks which she set herself; and she went about the performance of them with much courage. But such tasks, though they are excellently well adapted to fit a young lady for the work of living, may also be carried too far, and thus have the effect of unfitting her for that work. When Elizabeth Garrow made up her mind that the finding of a husband was not the only purpose of life, she did very well. It is very well that a young lady should feel herself capable of going through the world happily without one. But in teaching herself this she also taught herself to think that there was a certain merit in refusing herself the natural delight of a lover, even though the possession of the lover were compatible with all her duties to herself, her father and mother, and the world at large. It was not that she had determined to have no lover. She made no such resolve, and when the proper lover came he was admitted to her heart. But she declared to herself unconsciously that she must put a guard upon herself, lest she should be betrayed into weakness by her own happiness. She had resolved that in loving her lord she would not worship him, and that in giving her heart she would only so give it as it should be given to a human creature like herself. She had acted on these high resolves, and hence it had come to pass,—not unnaturally,—that Mr. Godfrey Holmes had told her that it was “her fault.”

      She was a pretty, fair girl, with soft dark-brown hair, and soft long dark eyelashes. Her grey eyes, though quiet in their tone, were tender and lustrous. Her face was oval, and the lines of her cheek and chin perfect in their symmetry. She was generally quiet in her demeanour, but when moved she could rouse herself to great energy, and speak with feeling and almost with fire. Her fault was a reverence for martyrdom in general, and a feeling, of which she was unconscious, that it became a young woman to be unhappy in secret;—that it became a young woman, I might rather say, to have a source of unhappiness hidden from the world in general, and endured without any detriment to her outward cheerfulness. We know the story of the Spartan boy who held the fox under his tunic. The fox was biting into him,—into the very entrails; but the young hero spake never a word. Now Bessy Garrow was inclined to think that it was a good thing to have a fox always biting, so that the torment caused no ruffling to her outward smiles. Now at this moment the fox within her bosom was biting her sore enough, but she bore it without flinching.

      “If you would rather that he should not come I will have it arranged,” her mother had said to her.

      “Not for worlds,” she had answered. “I should never think well of myself again.”

      Her mother had changed her own mind more than once as to the conduct in this matter which might be best for her to follow, thinking solely of her daughter’s welfare. “If he comes they will be reconciled, and she will be happy,” had been her first idea. But then there was a stern fixedness of purpose in Bessy’s words when she spoke of Mr. Holmes, which had expelled this hope, and Mrs. Garrow had for a while thought it better that the young man should not come. But Bessy would not permit this. It would vex her father, put out of course the arrangements of other people, and display weakness on her own part. He should come, and she would endure without flinching while the fox gnawed at her.

      That battle of the mistletoe had been fought on the morning before Christmas-day, and the Holmeses came on Christmas-eve. Isabella was comparatively a stranger, and therefore received at first the greater share of attention. She and Elizabeth had once seen each other, and for the last year or two had corresponded, but personally they had never been intimate. Unfortunately for the latter, that story of Godfrey’s offer and acceptance had been communicated to Isabella, as had of course the immediately subsequent story of their separation. But now it would be almost impossible to avoid the subject in conversation. “Dearest Isabella, let it be as though it had never been,” she had said in one of her letters. But sometimes it is very difficult to let things be as though they had never been.

      The first evening passed over very well. The two Coverdale girls were there, and there had been much talking and merry laughter, rather juvenile in its nature, but on the whole none the worse for that. Isabella Holmes was a fine, tall, handsome girl; good-humoured, and well disposed to be pleased; rather Frenchified in her manners, and quite able to take care of herself. But she was not above round games, and did not turn up her nose at the boys. Godfrey behaved himself excellently, talking much to the Major, but by no means avoiding Miss Garrow. Mrs. Garrow, though she had known him since he was a boy, had taken an aversion to him since he had quarrelled with her daughter; but there was no room on this first night for showing such aversion, and everything went off well.

      “Godfrey is very much improved,” the Major said to his wife that night.

      “Do you think so?”

      “Indeed I do. He has filled out and become a fine man.”

      “In personal appearance, you mean. Yes, he is well-looking enough.”

      “And in his manner, too. He is doing uncommonly well in Liverpool,

       I can tell you; and if he should think of Bessy—”

      “There is nothing of that sort,” said Mrs. Garrow.

      “He did speak to me, you know,—two years ago. Bessy was too young then, and so indeed was he. But if she likes him—”

      “I don’t think she does.”

      “Then there’s an end of it.” And so they went to bed.

      “Frank,” said the sister to her elder brother, knocking at his door when they had all gone up stairs, “may I come in,—if you are not in bed?”

      “In bed,” said he, looking up with some little pride from his Greek book; “I’ve one hundred and fifty lines to do before I can get to bed. It’ll be two, I suppose. I’ve got to mug uncommon hard these holidays. I have only one more half, you know, and then—”

      “Don’t overdo it, Frank.”

      “No; I won’t overdo it. I mean to take one day a week, and work eight hours a day on the other five. That will be forty hours a week, and will give me just two hundred hours for the holidays. I have got it all down here on a table. That will be a hundred and five for Greek play, forty for Algebra—” and so he explained to her the exact destiny of all his long hours of proposed labour. He had as yet been home a day and a half, and had succeeded in drawing out with red lines and blue figures the table which he showed her. “If I can do that, it will be pretty well; won’t it?”

      “But, Frank, you have come home for your holidays,—to enjoy yourself?”

      “But a fellow must work now-a-days.”

      “Don’t overdo it, dear; that’s all. But, Frank, I could not rest if

      

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