Herb of Grace. Rosa Nouchette Carey
now, Herrick?"
"Yes, I am all right, as you will see for yourself on Friday. My crib just suits me. I have excellent companionship when I want it, or solitude if I prefer it, and though life at Cheyne Walk is a trifle Bohemian after Queen's Gate, I would not exchange it for a palace."
"I am so glad to hear you say that. But, Herrick, I begin to be afraid, don't you know, that you will find the Wood House slow. Of course I think no end of my sisters; but you see they are not young."
"So I imagine," returned Malcolm, who was secretly disposed to agree with Cedric. Two maiden ladies of uncertain age might be endeared to their brother; but Malcolm, who was rather fastidious on the subject of female beauty, was not over-anxious to cultivate their acquaintance.
"Dinah is much older than Elizabeth," continued Cedric confidentially. "There were two or three brothers and sisters between them, only they died. She is over forty, you know, and Elizabeth is nearly thirty. There is a good bit of difference—only she never makes herself out young. You will be sure to like them," went on the lad eagerly; "they are good women, and just your sort."
"Oh, I daresay we shall get on first-rate," returned Malcolm mendaciously, for he was anything but certain of it. "Hallo, old fellow," interrupting himself, "the storm is over and we can make tracks now." And then they went out together.
As they parted at the Temple station, Cedric pushed a little sealed packet into his friend's hand.
"It is the first instalment," he whispered, growing very red; "don't open it till you get back." But Malcolm's curiosity would not allow him to wait; and when Cedric had disappeared into the station he broke the seal. To his surprise there were fifty pounds in notes and gold, the saving and scrapings of two years.
"Good lad," he murmured approvingly, as he stowed it carefully away in a breast-pocket, and a thrill of pride and pleasure shot through him. Yes, he must keep it, he thought; he could not affront his young manliness and independence by returning it. "It is what I should have done in his case," he said to himself. And then he thought that he would lay out part in buying a keepsake for Anna. There was a little brooch she had much admired, a mere toy of a thing, a tiny quiver full of arrows, studded with small diamonds and tipped with a pearl. The shop where they had noticed it was close by, and he would buy it at once. But as Malcolm hurried off on this kindly errand he little realised what the joy of that possession would be to Anna Sheldon.
CHAPTER III
A PAGE OF ANCIENT HISTORY
Before we can bring happiness to others, we must first be happy ourselves; nor will happiness abide within us unless we confer it on others.—MAETERLINCK.
During the preceding hour or two Malcolm's face had worn its brightest and most youthful aspect—the society of Cedric had roused him and taken him out of himself; but as he approached the handsome and imposing-looking house where his mother lived, his countenance resumed its normal gravity.
To him it had been a house of bondage, and he had never regarded it as a home; his environment from boyhood had not suited him, and though he loved his mother, and gave her, at least outwardly, the obedience and honour that were due to her, there had not been that sympathy between them that one would have expected from an only son to a widowed mother.
Malcolm's father had died when he was about six years old, but his infant recollections of him were wonderfully vivid. He remembered waking up one night from some childish dream that had frightened him, to see a kind face bending over him, and to feel warm, strong arms lifting him up.
"Never mind, Sonny, father's with you," he heard a cheery voice say.
"Daddy's wid baby," he repeated drowsily, as he nestled down in his father's arms. "Nice, nice daddy," and two hot little hands patted his face.
Then a voice in the distance said, "You are spoiling him, Rupert. Malcolm ought to be a brave boy and not cry on account of a silly dream." Of course it was his mother who spoke; even from his infancy her method of education had been bracing. "Baby isn't a boy, movver," he had once said in extenuation of some childish fault; "movver must not punish Baby."
The memories of early childhood are always vague and hazy; but in the distance, among shifting forms and changing prospects, there was always a big, big figure, with kind eyes and strong arms, looming largely in his recollection.
"If my father had lived, I know we should have been such friends," Malcolm would sigh to himself in his growing youth; and though his mother never suspected it, he often looked at his father's portrait that hung in her dressing-room, until his eyes were full of tears. "If father had lived, I shouldn't have been so lonely and out of it all," he would say as he turned away with a quivering lip.
Mrs. Herrick tried to do her duty by the boy; but she was a busy woman, and had no leisure to devote to his amusement. The long holidays were more pleasant in anticipation to both mother and son than they proved in reality.
In the working hive at 27 Queen's Gate there seemed no place for the restless, growing lad. His mother was always shut up in the library, where she wrote her endless letters and reports and added up her accounts, and Anna was with her governess.
Malcolm would be put in Anderson's charge, the steady, reliable butler and factotum, and introduced to all the sights of London—Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, the Tower, and the British Museum, the Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud's. Sometimes they went to Kew, or Richmond Park, or took the steamer to Hampton Court. The nearest approach to dissipation was an afternoon spent with the Christy Minstrels. Mrs. Herrick would not hear of the theatre; but once, sad to relate, when Anderson was indisposed, and the footman, a rather feeble-minded young man, had been sent with Malcolm to see a panorama that was considered interesting and instructing, Malcolm, by sundry bribes and many blandishments, had seduced his guardian into accompanying him to Drury Lane, where they sat in the pit, side by side, and watched with breathless interest the never-to-be-forgotten pantomime of "Jack and the Bean Stalk."
"They'll run you in for this, Master Malcolm," Charles had observed ruefully, as they hurried through the dark streets. "If I lose my place it will be all along of you, and it is a good place too, though Mr. Anderson is a bit down on one." But, strange to say, they escaped scot-free. Mrs. Herrick had not returned from a monster meeting at St. James's Hall, and Anderson had retired to bed to nurse his cold. Malcolm confided the whole story of his escapade to Anna, and she had wept with grief and dismay. "Oh, Mally, how wicked of Charles to take you!" she sobbed. "I never did think he looked quite good. Mother would be so angry and unhappy if she knew; she says theatres are not good for young people."
"It is just a crank on mother's part," returned Malcolm loudly; his eyes were bright with excitement. "It was the loveliest thing you ever saw, Anna. The princess was a beauty, and no mistake; even Charles thought so, and he has seen princesses by the score. I am glad I went; the boys won't think me such a duffer when I tell them. Don't shake your head, Anna; you are a girl, and you don't understand how much one has to put up with from the fellows. They call me the Puritan, and ask if I wear pinafores at home. But I stopped that," and here Malcolm doubled up his fists in a singularly suggestive manner.
Malcolm's only sister, a pretty, fair-haired girl, had died of fever when she was eight years old, and for years Mrs. Herrick had felt her loss too deeply to mention her name. "If Florence had lived," she once said rather bitterly to her son, "she would have been my close companion, and we should have thought alike on all points;" but it may be doubted if this maternal dream would ever have been realised.
A mere accident had led to the adoption of Anna Sheldon shortly after Florence's death. She was the orphan child of a young artist in whom Mrs. Herrick had interested herself, and when the broken-hearted wife had followed her husband, Mrs. Herrick had taken the lonely child home.
The kind action had brought its own reward. Anna's gentleness and sweetness of disposition soon won the