Maud Florence Nellie: or, Don't care!. Coleridge Christabel Rose
she said, in a rather hesitating voice, “tell mother you’re sorry. She’ll not be hard on you. Don’t be like your poor brother, and throw all your chances away. You are like him, but there’s no need to follow in his steps.”
“If Harry was like me he must have been a deal nicer than George,” said Florrie, who knew nothing about her eldest brother’s history.
“I don’t care,” she said to herself as she walked home. “I ain’t done nothing, and I won’t stay to be put upon. If she’ve gone to father!”
The guess was too true. When Florence opened the parlour door, there sat Mrs Lee, her father, and Martha, all looking disturbed and worried.
“Oh,” said Florence, “if you please, father, I was just coming home to tell you as how I’d rather leave Mrs Lee’s shop, as she ain’t satisfied with me, and I ain’t done nothing at all.”
“You’ve taken a great liberty, Florence, as I understand,” said her father, “and you will certainly not leave if Mrs Lee is good enough to give you another trial.”
“If Florence will express herself sorry,” said Mrs Lee.
“I ain’t sorry,” said Florence coolly.
“And I shall put a stop to your Bible class at once, and forbid you to go out without your sister if I hear of such behaviour as yours on Sunday afternoon.”
“Martha’d have a time of it,” said Florence. “Well, Mr Whittaker,” said Mrs Lee, rising, “I know what girls’ tempers are, and if Florence has come to a better mind by to-morrow, and will come down and tell me so, I will overlook it this once, but no more.”
“Bless me, Florrie,” said little Ethel, as her father took Mrs Lee out, “what a piece of work to make! It ain’t much to say you’re sorry and have done with it.”
“I ain’t sorry, and I mean to have done with it. I’m tired of the shop, and I’m tired of the Lees. Mrs Lee’s an old cat and Miss Lee’s a young one! She ain’t so very young neither.”
“Oh my, Florrie!” repeated Ethel. “What a deal you’ll have to say you’re sorry for before you’ve done! For you’ll have to say it first or last.”
“Why?” said Florence.
“Why, one always has to.”
“You’ll see.”
Florence remained stubborn. She did not look passionate or sulky, but say she was sorry she would not. She was tired of the business, and she didn’t care for losing her situation. She didn’t care at all.
“Don’t care came to a bad end,” said Matty angrily.
“Don’t care if he did,” said Florence.
George had come back from his walk by this time, and had added his voice to the family conclave. Now he gave an odd, half-startled look at his father, and to the supreme astonishment of the naughty girl her sally was received in silence. Nobody spoke.
Back on Martha’s mind came an evening long ago, and the sound of a sharp, aggravating, provoking whistle, a boy’s face, too like Florrie’s, peeping in first at the door and then at the window, and a voice repeating, “Don’t care – don’t care – don’t care!” in more and more saucy accents, as the speaker ran off across the forbidden turf of the cemetery, jumping over the graves as he came to them. That night had brought the explosion of mischief which had resulted in Harry’s departure from home and in his final banishment. Where was that saucy lad now? And had he learnt to care out in the wide world by himself? But Florence was a girl and if she said “Don’t care” once too often her father could not say to her, “Obey me, or you shall do for yourself in future.”
And she had no sense of responsibility sufficient to give her a good reason for conquering herself. She had a child’s confidence in the care she was childishly defying. People so proud and so respectable as the Whittakers could not even send their girl to a rough place where she would “learn the difference” between Mrs Lee’s “fancy shop” and general service. Poor Martha felt that to have Florence at home, doing nothing but give trouble, would be nearly intolerable; while what she would do if Mrs Stroud’s suggestion was adopted, and she was sent to stay with her, passed the wildest imagination to conceive.
“You’ll be very sorry, Florrie,” she said, “when it’s too late.”
“No, I shan’t,” said Florence; “I like a change. I’m tired of serving in the shop. Dear me! there’s a many situations in the world. I’ll get a new one some time.”
Florence got her way, and though she was supposed to be in disgrace, she declined to recognise the fact. She fell back into the position of an idle child at home, worried Matty, set her little sisters a very poor example, and enjoyed as much half-stolen, half-defiant freedom as she could. When she found that Carrie and Ada had been forbidden by their respective mothers to “go with her,” as they expressed it, she made it her delight to tease and trap them into enduring her company, and finally, after about a fortnight, walked coolly down to see Mrs Lee and ask how she got on with the new assistant!
Chapter Four
Ashcroft
Some twenty miles away from Rapley, in a less flat and dull and more richly wooded landscape, was the little village of Ashcroft, where Mr Whittaker’s cousin, Charles Warren, was head keeper to Mr Cunningham, of Ashcroft Hall.
The keeper’s lodge was a large, substantial cottage, with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls, standing all alone in a wide clearing in the midst of the woods that surrounded the Hall. It was nearly a mile from the great house, and had no other cottages very near it, being situated in what was sometimes grandly called “the Forest” – a piece of unenclosed woodland, where the great ash-trees that gave their name to the place grew up, tall and magnificent, with hardly any copse or brushwood at their feet – only ferns, brambles, and short green turf! Right out on this turf the keeper’s cottage lay, with never a bit of garden ground about it, the idea being that, as the rabbits and hares could not be kept out of the way of temptation, temptation had better be kept out of the way of the rabbits and hares.
There were no flowers, except in the sitting-room window, but there were tribes of young live things instead – broods of little pheasants, rare varieties of game and poultry, and puppies of different kinds under training. The barking, twittering, and active movements of all these little creatures made the place cheerful, and took off from the lonely solemnity of the great woodland glades, stretching out from the clearing as far as eye could reach.
It was a very beautiful place, but “it weren’t over populated,” as Mrs Stroud remarked one fine July evening, as she sat at the door looking out at the wood, having come to spend a couple of nights with her cousins.
“We don’t find it lonesome,” said Mrs Warren. “It’s not above half a mile down that path to the village, and there’s a good many of us scattered about in the lodges and gardens to make company for each other.”
Mrs Warren was a pleasant-looking woman, well spoken, with a refined accent and manner, being indeed the daughter of a former gardener at Ashcroft Hall.
“Well,” said Mrs Stroud, “there’s something about them glades as I should find depressing. With a street, if you don’t see the end of it, at least you know there’s fellow-creatures there, if you did see it; but there’s no saying what may be down among those green alleys. To say nothing that one does associate overhanging trees with damp.”
“Well, we have to keep good fires, but, you see, there’s plenty of fuel close by. And how did you leave your brother and his young family? I’ve often thought I’d like to renew the acquaintance.”
“Well, they have their health,” said Mrs Stroud. “But there, Charlotte, young people are always an anxiety, and them girls do want a mother’s eye.”
“No doubt they do, poor things. Why, the eldest must be quite a young woman.”
“I don’t