Two Little Waifs

CHAPTER I

PAPA HAS SENT FOR US

It was their favourite play. Gladys had invented it, as she invented most of their plays, and Roger was even more ready to play at it than at any other, ready though he always was to do anything Gladys liked or wanted. Many children would have made it different – instead of "going over the sea to Papa," they would have played at what they would do when Papa should come over the sea to them. But that was not what they had learnt to look forward to, somehow – they were like two little swallows, always dreaming of a sunny fairyland they knew not where, only "over the sea," and in these dreams and plays they found the brightness and happiness which they were still too young to feel should have been in their everyday baby life.

For "Mamma" was a word that had no real meaning to them. They thought of her as of a far-away beautiful angel – beautiful, but a little frightening too; cold and white like the marble angels in church, whose wings looked so soft, till one day Roger touched them, and found them, to his strange surprise, hard and icy, which made him tell Gladys that he thought hens much prettier than angels. Gladys looked a little shocked at this, and whispered to remind him that he should not say that: had he forgotten that the angels lived up in heaven, and were always good, and that Mamma was an angel? No, Roger had not forgotten, and that was what made him think about angels; but they weren't pretty and soft like Snowball, the little white hen, and he was sure he would never like them as much. Gladys said no more to him, for she knew by the tone of his voice that it would not take very much to make him cry, and when Roger got "that way," as she called it, she used to try to make him forget what had troubled him.

"Let's play at going to Papa," she said; "I've thought of such a good way of making a ship with the chairs, half of them upside down and half long-ways – like that, see, Roger; and with our hoop-sticks tied on to the top of Miss Susan's umbrella – I found it in the passage – we can make such a great high pole in the middle. What is it they call a pole in the middle of a ship? I can't remember the name?"

Nor could Roger; but he was greatly delighted with the new kind of ship, and forgot all about the disappointment of the angels in helping Gladys to make it, and when it was made, sailing away, away to Papa, "over the sea, over the sea," as Gladys sang in her little soft thin voice, as she rocked Roger gently up and down, making believe it was the waves.

Some slight misgiving as to what Miss Susan would say to the borrowing of her umbrella was the only thing that interfered with their enjoyment, and made them jump up hastily with a "Oh, Miss Susan," as the beginning of an apology, ready on Gladys's lips when the door opened rather suddenly.

But it was not Miss Susan who came in. A little to their relief and a good deal to their surprise it was Susan's aunt, old Mrs. Lacy, who seldom – for she was lame and rheumatic – managed to get as far as the nursery. She was kind and gentle, though rather deaf, so that the children were in no way afraid of her.

"Well, dears," she said, "and what are you playing at?"

"Over the sea, Mrs. Lacy," said Gladys. "Over the sea," repeated Roger, who spoke very plainly for his age. "Going over the sea to Papa; that's what we're playing at, and we like it the best of all our games. This is the ship, you see, and that's the big stick in the middle that all ships have – what is it they call it? I can't remember?"

"The mast," suggested Mrs. Lacy.

"Oh yes, the mast," said Gladys in a satisfied tone; "well, you see, we've made the mast with our hoop-sticks and Miss Susan's umbrella – you don't think Miss Susan will mind, do you?" with an anxious glance of her bright brown eyes; "isn't it high, the – the mart?"

"Mast," corrected Mrs. Lacy; "yes, it's taller than you, little Gladys, though you are beginning to grow very fast! What a little body you were when you came here first," and the old lady gave a sigh, which made Roger look up at her.

"Has you got a sore troat?" he inquired.

"No, my dear; what makes you think so?"

"'Cos, when my troat was sore I was always breaving out loud like that," said Roger sympathisingly.

"No, my throat's not sore, dear, thank you," said the old lady. "Sometimes people 'breathe' like that when they're feeling a little sad."

"And are you feeling a little sad, poor Mrs. Lacy?" said Gladys. "It's not 'cos Miss Susan's going to be married, is it? I think we shall be very happy when Miss Susan's married, only p'raps it wouldn't be very polite to say so to her, would it?"

"No, it wouldn't be kind, certainly," said the old lady, with a little glance of alarm. Evidently Miss Susan kept her as well as the children in good order. "You must be careful never to say anything like that, for you know Susan has been very good to you and taken great care of you."

"I know," said Gladys; "but still I like you best, Mrs. Lacy."

"And you would be sorry to leave me, just a little sorry; I should not want you to be very sorry," said the gentle old lady.

Gladys glanced up with a curious expression in her eyes.

"Do you mean – is it that you are sad about? —has it come at last? Has Papa sent for us, Mrs. Lacy? Oh Roger, listen! Of course we should be sorry to leave you and – and Miss Susan. But is it true, can it be true that Papa has sent for us?"

"Yes, dears, it is true; though I never thought you would have guessed it so quickly, Gladys. You are to go to him in a very few weeks. I will tell you all about it as soon as it is settled. There will be a great deal to do with Susan's marriage, too, so soon, and I wouldn't like you to go away without your things being in perfect order."

"I think they are in very nice order already," said Gladys. "I don't think there'll be much to do. I can tell you over all my frocks and Roger's coats if you like, and then you can think what new ones we'll need. Our stockings are getting rather bad, but Miss Susan thought they'd do till we got our new winter ones, and Roger's second-best house shoes are – "

"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Lacy, smiling, though a little sadly, at the child's business-like tone; "I must go over them all with Susan. But not to-day. I am tired and rather upset by this news."

"Poor Mrs. Lacy," said Gladys again. "But can't you tell us just a very little? What does Papa say? Where are we to go to? Not all the way to where he is?"

"No, dear. He is coming home, sooner than he expected, for he has not been well, and you are to meet him somewhere – he has not quite fixed where – in Italy perhaps, and to stay there through the winter. It is a good thing, as it had to be, that he can have you before Susan leaves me, for I am getting too old, dears, to take care of you as I should like – as I took care of him long ago."

For Mrs. Lacy was a very, very old friend of the children's father. She had taken care of him as a boy, and years after, when his children came to be left much as he had been, without a mother, and their father obliged to be far away from them, she had, for love of her adopted son, as she sometimes called him, taken his children and done her best to make them happy. But she was old and feeble, sometimes for days together too ill to see Gladys and Roger, and her niece Susan, who kept house for her, though a very active and clever young lady, did not like children. So, though the children were well taken care of as far as regarded their health, and were always neatly dressed, and had a nice nursery and a pleasant garden to play in, they were, though they were not old enough to understand it, rather lonely and solitary little creatures. Poor old Mrs. Lacy saw that it was so, but felt that she could do no more; and just when the unexpected letter from their father came, she was on the point of writing to tell him that she thought, especially as her niece was going to be married, some new home must be found for his two little waifs, as he sometimes called them.

Before Mrs. Lacy had time to tell them any more about the great news Miss Susan came in. She looked surprised to see her aunt in the nursery.

"You will knock yourself up if you don't take care," she said rather sharply, though not unkindly. "And my umbrella – my best umbrella! I declare it's too bad – the moment one's back is turned."

"It's the mast, Miss Susan," said Gladys eagerly. "We thought you wouldn't mind. It's the mast of the ship that's going to take us over the sea to Papa."

Some softer feeling came over Susan as she glanced at Gladys's flushed, half-frightened face.

"Poor little things!" she said to herself gently. "Well, be sure to put it back in its place when you've done with it. And now, aunt, come downstairs with me, I have ever so many things to say to you."

Mrs. Lacy obeyed meekly.

"You haven't told them yet, have you, aunt?" said Susan, as soon as they were alone.

"Yes, I told them a little," said the old lady. "Somehow I could not help it. I went upstairs and found them playing at the very thing – it seemed to come so naturally. I know you will think it foolish of me, Susan, but I can't help feeling their going, even though it is better for them."

"It's quite natural you should feel it," said Susan in a not unkindly tone. "But still it is a very good thing it has happened just now. For you know, aunt, we have quite decided that you must live with us – "

"You are very good, I know," said Mrs. Lacy, who was really very dependent on her niece's care.

"And yet I could not have asked Mr. Rexford to have taken the children, who, after all, are no relations, you know."

"No," said Mrs. Lacy.

"And then to give them up to their own father is quite different from sending them away to strangers."

"Yes, of course," said the old lady, more briskly this time.

"On the whole," Miss Susan proceeded to sum up, "it could not have happened better, and the sooner the good-byings and all the bustle of the going are over, the better for you and for me, and for all concerned, indeed. And this leads me to what I wanted to tell you. Things happen so strangely sometimes. This very morning I have heard of such a capital escort for them."

Mrs. Lacy looked up with startled eyes.

"An escort," she repeated. "But not yet, Susan. They are not going yet. Wilfred speaks of 'some weeks hence' in his letter."

"Yes; but his letter was written three weeks ago, and, of course, I am not proposing to send them away to-day or to-morrow. The opportunity I have heard of will be about a fortnight hence. Plenty of time to telegraph, even to write, to Captain Bertram to ensure there being no mistake. But anyway we need not decide just yet. He says he will write again by the next mail, so we shall have another letter by Saturday."

"And what is the escort you have heard of?" asked Mrs. Lacy.

"It is a married niece of the Murrays, who is going to India in about a fortnight. They start from here, as they are coming here on a visit the last thing. They go straight to Marseilles."

"But would they like to be troubled with children?"

"They know Captain Bertram, that is how we came to speak of it. And Mrs. Murray is sure they would be glad to do anything to oblige him."

"Ah, well," said Mrs. Lacy. "It sounds very nice. And it is certainly not every day that we should find any one going to France from a little place like this." For Mrs. Lacy's home was in a rather remote and out-of-the-way part of the country. "It would save expense too, for, as they have no longer a regular nurse, I have no one to send even as far as London with them."

"And young Mrs. – , I forget her name – her maid would look after them on the journey. I asked about that," said Susan, who was certainly not thoughtless.

"Well, well, we must just wait for Saturday's letter," said Mrs. Lacy.

"And in the meantime the less said about it the better, I think," said Susan.

"Perhaps so; I daresay you are right," agreed Mrs. Lacy.

She hardly saw the children again that day. Susan, who seemed to be in an unusually gracious mood, took them out herself in the afternoon, and was very kind. But they were so little used to talk to her, for she had never tried to gain their confidence, that it did not occur to either Gladys or Roger to chatter about what nevertheless their little heads and hearts were full of. They had also, I think, a vague childish notion of loyalty to their old friend in not mentioning the subject, even though she had not told them not to do so. So they trotted along demurely, pleased at having their best things on, and proud of the honour of a walk with Miss Susan, even while not a little afraid of doing anything to displease her.

"They are good little things after all," thought Susan, when she had brought them home without any misfortune of any kind having marred the harmony of the afternoon. And the colour rushed into Gladys's face when Miss Susan sent them up to the nursery with the promise of strawberry jam for tea, as they had been very good.

"I don't mind so much about the strawberry jam," Gladys confided to Roger, "though it is very nice. But I do like when any one says we've been very good, don't you?"

"Yes," said Roger; adding, however, with his usual honesty: "I like bofe, being praised and jam, you know, Gladdie."

"'Cos," Gladys continued, "if we are good, you see, Roger, and I really think we must be so if she says so, it will be very nice for Papa, won't it? It matters more now, you see, what we are, 'cos of going to him. When people have people of their own they should be gooder even than when they haven't any one that cares much."

"Should they?" said Roger, a little bewildered. "But Mrs. Lacy cares," he added. Roger was great at second thoughts.

"Ye – s," said Gladys, "she cares, but not dreadfully much. She's getting old, you know. And sometimes – don't say so to anybody, Roger – sometimes I think p'raps she'll soon have to be going to heaven. I think she thinks so. That's another reason, you see," reverting to the central idea round which her busy brain had done nothing but revolve all day, "why it's such a good thing Papa's sent for us now."

"I don't like about people going to heaven," said Roger, with a little shiver. "Why can't God let them stay here, or go over the sea to where it's so pretty. I don't want ever to go to heaven."

"Oh, Roger!" said Gladys, shocked. "Papa wouldn't like you to say that."

"Wouldn't he?" said Roger; "then I won't. It's because of the angels, you know, Gladdie. Oh, do you think," he went on, his ideas following the next link in the chain, "do you think we can take Snowball with us when we go?"

"I don't know," said Gladys; and just then Mrs. Lacy's housemaid, who had taken care of them since their nurse had had to leave them some months before, happening to bring in their tea, the little girl turned to her with some vague idea of taking her into their confidence. To have no one but Roger to talk to about so absorbing a matter was almost too much. But Ellen was either quite ignorant of the great news, or too discreet to allow that she had heard it. In answer to Gladys's "feeler" as to how hens travelled, and if one might take them in the carriage with one, she replied matter-of-factly that she believed there were places on purpose for all sorts of live things on the railway, but that Miss Gladys had better ask Miss Susan, who had travelled a great deal more than she, Ellen.

"Yes," replied Gladys disappointedly, "perhaps she has; but most likely not with hens. But have you stayed at home all your life, Ellen? Have you never left your father and mother till you came here?"

Whereupon Ellen, who was a kindly good girl, only a little too much in awe of Miss Susan to yield to her natural love of children, feeling herself on safe ground, launched out into a somewhat rose-coloured description of her home and belongings, and of her visits as a child to the neighbouring market-town, which much amused and interested her little hearers, besides serving for the time to distract their thoughts from the one idea, which was, I daresay, a good thing. For in this life it is not well to think too much or feel too sure of any hoped-for happiness. The doing so of itself leads to disappointment, for we unconsciously paint our pictures with colours impossibly bright, so that the real cannot but fall short of the imaginary.

But baby Gladys – poor little girl! – at seven it is early days to learn these useful but hard lessons.

She and Roger made up for their silence when they went to bed, and you, children, can better imagine than I can tell the whispered chatter that went on between the two little cots that stood close together side by side. And still more the lovely confusion of happy dreams that flitted that night through the two curly heads on the two little pillows.

CHAPTER II

POOR MRS. LACY

Saturday brought the expected letter, which both Mrs. Lacy and Susan anxiously expected, though with different feelings. Susan hoped that nothing would interfere with the plan she had made for the children's leaving; Mrs. Lacy, even though she owned that it seemed a good plan, could not help wishing that something would happen to defer the parting with the two little creatures whom she had learnt to love as much as if they had been her own grandchildren.

But the letter was all in favour of Susan's ideas. Captain Bertram wrote much more decidedly than he had done before. He named the date at which he was leaving, a very few days after his letter, the date at which he expected to be at Marseilles, and went on to say that if Mrs. Lacy could possibly arrange to have the children taken over to Paris within a certain time, he would undertake to meet them there at any hour of any day of the week she named. The sooner the better for him, he said, as he would be anxious to get back to the south and settle himself there for the winter, the doctor having warned him to run no risks in exposing himself to cold, though with care he quite hoped to be all right again by the spring. As to a maid for the children – Mrs. Lacy having told him that they had had no regular nurse for some time – he thought it would be a good plan to have a French one, and as he had friends in Paris who understood very well about such things he would look out for one immediately he got there, if Mrs. Lacy could find one to take them over and stay a few days, or if she, perhaps, could spare one of her servants for the time. And he begged her, when she had made her plans, to telegraph, or write if there were time, to him at a certain hotel at Marseilles, "to wait his arrival."

Susan's face had brightened considerably while reading the letter; for Mrs. Lacy, after trying to do so, had given it up, and begged her niece to read it aloud.

"My sight is very bad this morning," she said, and her voice trembled as she spoke, "and Wilfred's writing was never very clear."

Susan looked at her rather anxiously – for some time past it had seemed to her that her aunt was much less well than usual – but she took the letter and read it aloud in her firm distinct voice, only stopping now and then to exclaim: "Could anything have happened better? It is really most fortunate." Only at the part where Captain Bertram spoke of engaging a maid for the journey, or lending one of theirs, her face darkened a little. "Quite unnecessary – foolish expense. Hope aunt won't speak of it to Ellen," she said to herself in too low a voice for Mrs. Lacy to hear.

"Well, aunt?" she said aloud, when she had finished the letter, but rather to her surprise Mrs. Lacy did not at once reply. She was lying on her couch, and her soft old face looked very white against the cushions. She had closed her eyes, but her lips seemed to be gently moving. What were the unheard words they were saying? A prayer perhaps for the two little fledglings about to be taken from her wing for ever. She knew it was for ever.

"I shall never see them again," she said, loud enough for Susan to hear, but Susan thought it better not to hear.

"Well, aunt," she repeated, rather impatiently, but the impatience was partly caused by real anxiety; "won't you say what you think of it? could anything have happened better than the Murrays' escort? Just the right time and all."

"Yes, my dear. It seems to have happened wonderfully well. I am sure you will arrange it all perfectly. Can you write to Wilfred at once? And perhaps you had better see Mrs. Murray again. I don't feel able to do anything, but I trust it all to you, Susan. You are so practical and sensible."

"Certainly," replied Susan, agreeably surprised to find her aunt of the same opinion as herself; "I will arrange it all. Don't trouble about it in the least. I will see the Murrays again this afternoon or to-morrow. But in the meantime I think it is better to say nothing more to the children."

"Perhaps so," said Mrs. Lacy. Something in her voice made Susan look round. She was leaving the room at the moment. "Aunt, what is the matter?" she said.

Mrs. Lacy tried to smile, but there were tears in her eyes.

"It is nothing, my dear," she said. "I am a foolish old woman, I know. I was only thinking" – and here her voice broke again – "it would have been a great pleasure to me," she went on, "if he could have managed it. If Wilfred could have come all the way himself, and I could have given the children up into his own hands. It would not have seemed quite so – so sad a parting, and I should have liked to see him again."

"But you will see him again, dear aunt," said Susan; "in the spring he is sure to come to England, to settle probably, perhaps not far from us. He has spoken of it in his letters."

"Yes, I know," said Mrs. Lacy, "but – "

"But what?"

"I don't want to be foolish; but you know, my dear, by the spring I may not be here."

"Oh, aunt!" said Susan reproachfully.

"It is true, my dear; but do not think any more of what I said."

But Susan, who was well-principled, though not of a very tender or sympathising nature, turned again, still with her hand on the door-handle.

"Aunt," she said, "you have a right to be consulted – even to be fanciful if you choose. You have been very good to me, very good to Gladys and Roger, and I have no doubt you were very good to their father long ago. If it would be a comfort to you, let me do it – let me write to Wilfred Bertram and ask him to come here, as you say, to fetch the children himself."

Mrs. Lacy reflected a moment. Then, as had been her habit all her life, she decided on self-denial.

"No, my dear Susan," she said firmly. "Thank you for proposing it, but it is better not. Wilfred has not thought of it, or perhaps he has thought of it and decided against it. It would be additional expense for him, and he has to think of that – then it would give you much more to do, and you have enough."

"I don't mind about that," said Susan.

"And then, too," went on Mrs. Lacy, "there is his health. Evidently it will be better for him not to come so far north so late in the year."

"Yes," said Susan, "that is true."

"So think no more about it, my dear, and thank you for your patience with a silly old woman."

Susan stooped and kissed her aunt, which from her meant a good deal. Then, her conscience quite at rest, she got ready to go to see Mrs. Murray at once.

"There is no use losing the chance through any foolish delay," she said to herself.

Two days later she was able to tell her aunt that all was settled. Mrs. Murray had written to her niece, Mrs. Marton, and had already got her answer. She and her husband would gladly take charge of the children as far as Paris, and her maid, a very nice French girl, who adored little people, would look after them in every way – not the slightest need to engage a nurse for them for the journey, as they would be met by their father on their arrival. The Martons were to spend two days, the last two days of their stay in England, with Mrs. Murray, and meant to leave on the Thursday of the week during which Captain Bertram had said he could meet the children at any day and any hour. Everything seemed to suit capitally.