Girls New and Old

Matilda flushed more hotly than ever. She looked in the direction of the door, and made a sudden dart toward it. Hester Temple was standing close to it.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Home; I am suffocating. This room is too hot for me."

"I'll open the window, and you can stand near it. You really can't go now, Matilda; it would be awfully rude; just when Kate is going to make her birthday speech."

Matilda looked round her wildly; there was no means of escape. She resigned herself sullenly to her fate.

There was a little empty space in the middle of the room, and into this space Kate now lightly stepped. She looked around her to right and left. Her eyes, bright as stars, met Molly's. They did not rest a moment on her old friend's face. From Molly she looked full at Matilda.

"There is a seat in front for you," she said. "Come forward, Matilda; you are choking, back there in the crowd. Come and sit near Miss Leicester."

"Yes, my dear; here is a comfortable chair, in which you will be quite cool," said Miss Leicester.

Poor Matilda was dragged unwillingly to the front. Kate's eyes danced more brightly than ever, and smiles of delight soon rippled all over her face.

"It was so kind of you all to come to celebrate my birthday," she began. "I am seventeen to-day; quite old for a girl. I have been at St. Dorothy's exactly a year. It has been a very happy year to me. I have made a good many friends. The girls in the house have been particularly kind to me. I want to thank all the girls here for their kindness. I want also to say something else."

Here her manner suddenly changed. The gay sparkle and fun went out of her face. She pressed one hand for an instant to her left side; her eyes, troubled and misty, were fixed on Miss Leicester's face.

"I think Miss Leicester knows all about me," she said. "She knows my origin; she knows what I was before I came to St. Dorothy's."

"Kate, dear, I would rather you did not allude to that subject," said Miss Leicester, distress and astonishment in her tone.

"I am very sorry to disobey you, Miss Leicester, but I have thought it all out, and I think it is best," replied Kate. "I am ashamed of nothing. I should like now to describe the life – the early life – of a girl."

Here she looked quickly from one eager face to the other.

"The girl is myself," continued Kate. "If I were to shut my eyes now, I should see a picture. Perhaps I can describe that picture to you with eyes open. There is a little farm, far, far away in the west of Ireland. The country is beautiful, although somewhat wild. The mountains seem in parts to reach the very sky. Now and then the clouds come right down and cover them. The grass is very green, and the streams make a merry sound as they ripple past the little farmstead. The house would be thought a poor one by most of you. It has a thatched roof; there is a kitchen, and a great open hearth. On the hearth the fire blazes merrily. A lot of bacon hangs from the rafters across the ceiling. There is a deal table in the middle of the room, and a great dresser at one side. The table is clean and white, as white as snow. The dresser is white also, and the plates and cups and saucers, and jugs and bowls, and the tins and saucepans, all shine with good washing and good rubbing. You see, it is a very humble kitchen, and there is no parlor, nor drawing room, nor any regular sitting room in the little old house. Upstairs there are two bedrooms. You go upstairs by means of a step-ladder. One of the rooms is prettier than the other. It has a lattice window, and there are lots of monthly roses, creepers, myrtle, and other flowers twining about it. A sweet smell comes in when you open the window, and you hear the robins and swallows chirping in the eaves, and you get a sweet whiff of strong air from the mountains opposite. The little room inside is very poor, but the window and the view without are lovely. The inner room looks out on the yard or byre. You can see the cattle from this window; the four cows in their stalls, and the dairymaid, with her red elbows, milking them. I am not the dairymaid, but I go to superintend the milking. At the back of the kitchen is the dairy. The dairy is lovely; it is cool and sweet and dark. On the hottest day in summer you feel a breath of ice on your cheek when you enter here, and the milk and cream look good in the large glass pans; and the churn stands open, waiting to receive its daily portion of cream; and there are piles of yellow butter standing on the shelves, and great dishes of fresh eggs not far away.

"I think I have described the house well enough to you now. You must see for yourselves that it is just the sort of place where poor people would live. The people who live in it are an old man and a girl. They keep no servant; they do their own work. There is a dairymaid who comes morning and evening to milk the cows and help the girl with the butter, and there are two men who help with the land, and that is all. The old man and the girl have the house to themselves most of the time. I should like to describe that old man. He does a lot of rough work; he lays the fire for the girl day after day, and fills the kettle for her, and won't allow her to do anything except the lightest part of the daily toil; but, for all that, he is quite a gentleman. I say nothing about the girl. She may belong, in every sense of the word, to the class from which she springs, but the old man is a king in his way. He has a very noble head, and hair as white as silver. His eyes are dark and soft, his nose aquiline. When he stands up, he looks dignified; when he looks at you, you get a peep at his grand soul.

"That old man is between seventy and eighty years of age. He has spent his entire life in one county, and he is known all over the place. The old people know him, and the young people, and the children; and there is not an individual who does not love him. Not an evil word has ever been flung against him. During the whole of his long life no one can accuse him of having ever done a mean thing, of having oppressed the fatherless and the widow, of having taken money that did not belong to him. All during his long life he has lived by the golden rule, 'Do to others as you would be done by.' He is not a learned man, but he knows his Bible very well, and he can quote whole pages from Shakspere. He also understands nature splendidly. It is wonderful to hear him when he talks about nature's secrets. There is nothing that grows on the land, or feeds on the soil, or flies in the air, or lives in the sea (which is not far away), that this old man does not know about. He can tell you about the habits of all the birds, and the ways of all the fishes, and about the medicinal uses of a great many herbs, and the food uses of all the vegetables and the fruits. It is delightful to hear him when he speaks, for he chooses his words with grace, and his grammar is perfectly correct. He has the most beautiful mind the girl ever came across in the whole course of her life. It is an idyl and a poem to live with him.

"I must now tell you something of the life of the girl. She is naturally very fond of books, but she has not much time for them. She gets up at five o'clock in the morning, summer and winter; she is busy from early morning till early bedtime. There are the cows to see to – she loves those cows. She wishes she could describe to you the look in Cusha's eyes. Cusha has the most perfect brown eyes of any creature in all the world. The girl cannot think of them now without tears coming into her own. She loves the memory of the other cows, too, but Cusha comes first. She has even milked Cusha – yes, with these hands; look at them. She and Cusha enjoyed themselves at these times. The girl has not only the dairy to see to and superintend, but she has also the poultry yard. Do you like fluffy little balls of yellow chickens? There is nothing vulgar about them, is there? The girl walked about the yard, and through the gardens, with the chickens pressed to her neck, and cuddled in her arms, hundreds and hundreds of times; and there are the goslings, almost prettier still. You see for yourselves that she must have plenty to do.

"She has also the flower garden to see to. All the mignonette, and the sweet peas, and the roses; the great hedges of Scotch roses, white and red, are her care. She lives with her flowers. The old man talks to her about them while she tends them. It is strange, but it seems to me there is nothing vulgar nor commonplace in her life. She has no time for commonplace thoughts, nor for slander and gossip, nor evil speaking. She is not to be praised for not indulging in these things; she has simply no time for them. In the evening she studies. She reads Shakspere and many books of history, and she always ends up with the Bible. She goes to bed quite early. Perhaps I have not half described her life; perhaps also I have told you enough.

"The girl – the girl who now stands before you – lived this beautiful ideal life until she was nearly sixteen years of age; then God thought it right, for reasons of his own, to take it away from her. The old man, the grand old king of the hamlet, was found dead in his bed one morning. It was a very fitting end for him, and he was quite ready to go. But the girl! somehow or other, her heart broke then. She has never been the same since that dreadful summer's morning. The sun of her early happy youth seemed to set for her then, and though the bees hummed, and the birds sang, and the flowers bloomed, and all the creatures of the world went on in their happy way, the girl felt that nothing could be perfect with her again until she joined the old man in the land beyond the sea.

"Great troubles came to her after this. Perhaps some of you here would not have thought them so. The little old farm, the shabby, dear old house, had to be sold, and Cusha went to strangers, and the other cows followed her example, and the chickens and goslings, and all the other live stock, even to dear Black Beauty, the farm horse, who was so sweet and noble that the girl can't talk about him without tears – they were all scattered far and wide, and the girl herself was left with money in the bank; not much, but a little. Then she remembered her grandfather, and she said to herself, 'For his sake I will stop fretting, and I will make the most I can out of my life.' She wrote to Miss Forester, and Miss Forester wrote back, and begged of her to come to Redgarth. She came, and in the fresh, glad, full life she tried to drown her sorrow.

"But," continued Kate, stopping abruptly, and turning with flashing eyes from Molly to where Matilda crouched by Miss Leicester's side, "she can never drown the sorrow which tells her that the old beautiful life is over. Lately, quite lately, a report has reached this girl, which for a day or two drove her nearly mad. There are certain girls at St. Dorothy's, and at other houses of residence, who think the ideal life which she used to live desecration. This fact cut her to the heart. Perhaps, girls," continued Kate, "I am not a lady in your acceptation of the word, but I wish to tell you all to-night, every one of you, that I would not change with you. I would not give up that old memory. I would not give up that near relationship to the grand old king of that humble hamlet for any you could confer on me. You know everything now. You can gossip as much as you like. You can speak of me as low, as uneducated, as of humble birth. Do you think I care? No, not now; now that you know the simple truth. I have only one word more to say. Among the gossip which has reached my ears, I am told that I am the recipient of Miss Forester's charity. I am quite certain that Miss Forester would give charity in the kindest and most thoughtful way, but my grandfather was proud as well as great, and he left me enough money when he died to give me all the advantages of this home of learning. Girls, I may be poor and humble, but I am not here on charity."

As Kate uttered her last words, she walked quietly out of the room. She had spoken with force; there had been an earnest ring in her voice, and a look about her eyes which had caused a queer sensation in the minds of all who listened to her. When she went toward the door of the room, no one stirred to call her back; there was a dead silence. After a time, Miss Leicester rose to her feet and spoke.

"I am very much surprised at all this," she said. "Has anyone in this school dared to be unkind to Kate O'Connor? Has anyone dared to gossip about her, or laugh about her? No, I don't expect an answer to-night, for this matter must be thoroughly investigated."

Then she also left the room.

Her departure was the signal for a perfect babel of tongues. The girls of St. Dorothy's were immensely excited. Matilda sought an opportunity to find her way to the door; no one noticed her departure now, and she rushed out of the house trembling a good deal, and glad when she found herself in the open air. Matilda was a thorough coward. She perceived at a glance that the full weight of public opinion would be against her, if her part in this sorry story were known.

"There is nothing for it now, but for me to take up Kate O'Connor," she said to herself; "to make much of her; to consider it the finest thing in the world to have been a dairymaid and a peasant girl when you were a child. Kate is wonderfully clever, and she has scored a point in her favor. By and by, however, there will come a reaction, and then my hour will have arrived."