A Modern Tomboy | Page 9

Had I given
up my own way, and let them go to see my old cousin, they might have
been alive now."
"But you--you might have taken the fever. Oh! I think it is fearfully sad;
but how could you know? And you could not be blamed--you could not
really be blamed," said Lucy with great earnestness.

"Perhaps not," said Aunt Susan, recovering herself on the spot. "And I
do not mean to be morbid about it; only, at the time, my conscience
troubled me, and your poor aunty had a very bad time. It was soon
afterwards that my dear father wrote to me, and I shall always keep his
letter. Since then I have never been jealous of any one, and I would
advise you to lay my story to heart, Lucy, and to do your utmost to
keep down the seeds of jealousy, for they make a man or woman
miserable, and they do no good in the world."
Lucy did not know why Aunt Susan's talk affected her so much. She
still kept her hand on the old lady's arm, and they walked slowly up to
the house. As they were approaching it she said suddenly, "Now that I
have seen you, I mean to do my very best. I know it is remarkably
brave of mother to have started the school and to have the girls here,
and I know I ought to help her, and not to be cross because her ideas
are not my ideas. And I will try, and I will remember your story and
what you have said, for you always suit me, and you always understand
me, Aunt Susan. But may I ask you one thing, one great favor?"
"What is that, my dear?" asked her aunt.
"If I find matters quite intolerable, may I come to you for a week to the
Rectory at Dartford--just for one week? Will you invite me?"
"You have a hearty welcome, child. You know what it is like:
soup-kitchens, mothers' meeting, coal-tickets, reading aloud to the
children, rushing about from this place to the other trying to help those
who cannot help themselves. It will do you good, Lucy, and of course
you shall come."
CHAPTER III.
A GYPSY TEA.
Lessons were not to begin until the following morning, and the six
boarders were feeling in consequence a trifle disconsolate. They did not
know what to do with themselves. They had explored the place the day
before. They had visited the kitchen-garden and the flower-garden, and

the paddocks and the shrubberies and the lawns, and they had wandered
down towards the river. There seemed to be nothing special to do. The
tennis-lawn was not properly mowed for tennis, and anyhow the net
was not out, and there seemed to be no croquet-ground anywhere. In
consequence, there was nothing whatever to do but to pace up and
down under the shadow of the trees a little way from the house.
Rosamund Cunliffe walked with Phyllis Flower, Jane Denton with
Agnes Sparkes, and Laura Everett with her special friend and factotum,
Annie Millar. They were all good-natured, kind-hearted girls, ready to
make the best of things; but as they walked now, pacing up and down,
Rosamund suddenly stopped, faced round, and addressed the rest of her
companions.
"Well, girls," she said, "I must say that I think we are placed in a rather
disagreeable position at Sunnyside."
"What do you mean?" asked Laura, opening her wide blue eyes to their
fullest extent.
"Why, can't you judge for yourself? That little Lucy Merriman is
determined to be disagreeable to us. We cannot get her to make herself
the least pleasant; whatever we do she interprets in the wrong manner,
and how we are to keep the peace I don't know. I am sure I don't want
to dislike her or be disagreeable to her; but she is at home, and we are
strangers. She is exceedingly ill-bred, there is no doubt of that. Why
should we put up with it? Ought we not at once to declare our
independence, and to let her know that as we pay--or, rather, our
parents pay for us--a very good sum for our education, she is bound at
least not to make herself obnoxious?"
"Oh, I don't think she is obnoxious," said Agnes Sparkes. "She is just a
little bit jealous. I used to be jealous of a girl once. It is a horrid
sensation."
"Oh, my dear!" said Rosamund slowly, stamping her foot in her
endeavor to speak with emphasis, "it is absolutely ridiculous for any
one to give way to those morbid feelings in these days. If her mother

wished us to come here to be educated, I suppose she had her good
reasons for it, and that Lucy should be