Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!. Coleridge Christabel Rose
read,” said Martha, colouring.
“Well, ‘Waste not, want not.’ Read your Bible, I say.”
“That’s not in the Bible, Aunt Lizzie.”
“It might be,” said Mrs Stroud; “there’s a deal of truth in it. But, bless you, Martha, it ain’t talcs nor nonsense of that kind that signifies. Florrie must be held in. She’s that saucy, and that bouncing and set on her own way, that there’s only one in the family she’s like, Martha Jane, and that’s ’Enery himself.”
“Harry! Oh, Aunt Lizzie! But she’s a girl.”
“Well, Martha Jane, and if she is? There’s plenty of ways for girls to trouble their families. You wasn’t more than eleven or so when ’Enery went; but surely you can recollect him, ramping round. Why, when he come to sit with his family he was like an engine with the steam up for starting off again! And he went about that audacious!”
“I can remember his jumping me off the tomb-stones,” said Martha.
“Ah! He jumped off tomb-stones once too often. It all came of ramping about and reading, so there’s lessons in it for you and Florence both. Well, I promised a call on Mrs Taylor at the upper lodge, so I’ll stroll up quietly and meet your father, and come back for a cup of tea.”
Martha made no objection to this proposal; for though she never “answered back,” nor asserted herself against her elders, she strongly resented the connection between ramping about and reading, and between herself and the troublesome Florence, and was very glad to get rid of her aunt for the present.
She sat still when Mrs Stroud, having assumed her mantle and opened her parasol, walked up the cemetery to meet her brother. She really wished to be a good elder sister; but what could she do with a girl only three years younger than herself, and with more “go” in her little finger than poor Martha had in her whole body?
Surely Florence was not going to be like poor Harry! Martha called him “poor Harry” in her thoughts – it is an epithet often applied half in kindness and half in contempt to the family ne’er-do-weel; but she had not a very pleasant recollection of this absent brother. If Florrie was rude, inconsiderate, and bouncing, she was nothing to Harry at fifteen. Martha recollected his utterly unscrupulous teasing and bullying alternating with rough good-nature, which had made her hopelessly afraid of him. He got situations, and lost them by practical jokes. He was started in a good place at a large printing establishment in Rapley, and, after sundry smaller feats, had sent the rector of the parish a packet of playbills announcing the performance that night of “The Corsican Brothers” and “Cut off with a Shilling;” while the manager of the theatre received the rector’s notices of a missionary meeting, also being got up in a hurry on some special occasion. Neither the rector nor the manager spared the printer, and as Harry Whittaker had been heard sniggering with a companion over the exchange, it could not pass as a mistake, so that situation came to an end. Then he had to content himself with being errand-boy at a linen-draper’s. There somehow the ball dresses which should have been delivered to Lady Temple in time for the county ball floated down the river instead, and were landed the next afternoon mashed up in their cardboard boxes.
And worst of all, a dreadful night, which Matty never did forget, when some poor people, coming in the dusk to one of those sad hurried evening funerals which terrible infection sometimes necessitates, had been frightened – how she did not know, but cruelly and unfeelingly by Harry’s means. Martha remembered her father’s just annoyance and anger. Harry had been sent away to his Uncle Warren’s, where something else happened – Martha never knew what – and that was the last she heard of her eldest brother.
A little while before, mother had died, and father grew severe and strict, and Aunt Lizzie bustled them about till a year ago, when, late in life, she married a well-to-do ironmonger, and turned her energies on to her step-children.
Since then Martha Jane had done her best for her three sisters, for the brother, George, who had a good post as clerk on the railway, and for Johnnie and Arthur, the youngest of the family, who still attended the day school. The Whittaker girls had never been sent to a national school, but had got, or were getting, their education at one of the many “Establishments for Young Ladies” which prevailed at Rapley. It was supposed that in this way they would be less likely to “make acquaintances;” but acquaintances are very easily made by sociable people, and Mrs Stroud had always thought it the proper thing to send them all to Sunday school. Martha, however, had had very little of this. She was a good girl, with a turn for church-going, and the interest of most well-disposed girls of her day in varieties of church services, church music, and church decorations; but she had no personal tie to the church which the Whittakers attended, and she had not found the connection between these tastes and the duties of life.
She was rather imaginative, and she read every story book she could lay her hands on – religious domestic tales from the parochial library, novels from that provided for the servants of the railway company, which her brother brought home, and quantities of penny serial fiction. Very little of it was absolutely bad. Martha would not have read it if she had known it to be so, but a great deal of it was extremely unreal, silly, and frivolous. Martha’s taste and critical powers were so uncultivated that she hardly knew that one book was of a higher tone than another, any more than she knew that it was better written. There were fine sentiments which she admired in all of them about love and constancy and self-devotion, and perhaps Martha was not to blame if she thought that people usually died in carrying out these virtues. Still, the character of the books did make a difference to her; for she was not one to whom a tale was nothing but a tale, and if she learnt from some that ladies wore wonderful and ever-varying costumes, and spent their time in what she would have called “talking about the gentlemen,” she learnt from others that they studied hard, and devoted themselves much to the good of their fellow-creatures and the comfort of their families.
Martha, when she might have been attending to the comfort of hers, was sometimes lost in imagining herself reading to a mothers’ meeting in “a tightly fitting costume of the richest velvet,” etc, etc; but, confused as were her notions, she had ideas and aspirations, and was ready for a guiding hand if only she could have found one.
Chapter Two
A Sunday Walk
Florrie was troubled with no aspirations and with very few ideas. She was just like a young animal, and enjoyed her life much in the same way and with as little regard to consequences. When she and her little sisters came out of the great cemetery gates into a broad, cheerful, suburban road, the children ran on, afraid of being late. Florrie caught up, as she had expressed it, with Carrie Jones and Ada Price, also in the full glory of their new summer things, and both eagerly looking out for her. For Florrie was bigger, smarter, and more daring than any of them; she was the ringleader in their jokes, and bore the brunt of the scrapes consequent upon them; she was therefore a favourite companion. The three girls hurried along the sunny road, chattering and laughing, with their heads full of their new clothes, their friends, and themselves, so that there was not an atom of room left for the Bible lesson which they were about to receive. They came with a rush and a bounce into the parish room, where their class was held, just as the door was unfastened after the opening hymn, found their places with a scuffle and a titter, pulled some Bibles towards them, and looked all round to greet their special acquaintances, as the teacher began her lesson.
Florrie Whittaker did not behave worse than several others of the young, noisy, irrepressible creatures who sat round the table; but there was so much of her in every way that the teacher never lost the sense of her existence through the whole lesson. Miss Mordaunt was a clever, sensible lady, not very young, nor with any irresistible power of commanding attention, but quite capable of keeping her class together, and of repressing inordinately bad conduct. Sometimes her lessons were interesting and impressive, and, as she was human, sometimes they were rather dull; but the girls liked her as well as they liked anyone, and if they had been aware that they wanted a friend would have expected her to prove a kind one. But they were mostly young and well-to-do, with life in every limb and every feeling; and the Bible class was a very trifling incident to them.
Florrie felt quite good-naturedly towards her, but she did like to make the other