Bluebell | Page 2

boots evidently requiring patching. "Oh, mother! could you manage another pair now? Miss Scrag has sent home my new 'waist,' and I can do up my hat, but these buckets are only fit for the dusthole."
Mrs. Leigh sighed,--"A new pair, with side-springs, would cost three dollars. No, Bluebell, I can't indeed."
"I might as well be a nun, then, at once," said the girl, with tears in her voice; and a sympathetic dew rose in Mrs. Leigh's weary eyes at the disappointment she could not avert from her spoiled darling.
"Bluebell," said Miss Opie, "if you read more and scampered about less, your mind would be better fortified to bear these little reverses."
"Shut up!" muttered Bluebell, in the artless vernacular of a school-girl, half turning her shoulder with an impatient gesture.
The entrance of the tea-things created a diversion, but the discontented girl sat apart, while the hideousness of her surroundings came upon her as a new revelation. Certainly, in Canada, in a poverty-stricken abode, taste seems more completely starved than in any other country.
Bluebell, in her critical mood, noted the ugly delf tea-things, so badly arranged; the black stove, four feet into the room, with its pipe running through a hole in the wall; the ricketty horsehair chairs and wire blind for the window, "gave" on the street, where gasping geese were diving in the gutters for the nearest approach to water they could find.
Scarcely less repugnant were the many-coloured crotchet-mats and anti-macassars with which Miss Opie loved to decorate the apartment; nor was a paper frill adorning a paltry green flower-vase wanting to complete the tasteless tout ensemble.
The evening wore on; Mrs. Leigh proceeded with the turning of an old merino dress; Miss Opie adjusted her spectacles, and read Good Words. Bluebell sat down to the piano and executed a selection from Rossini's 'Messe Solennelle' with force and fervour.
"You play very well, child," said Miss Opie.
"That is fortunate," said Bluebell, "for I mean to be a governess."
"You mean you want a governess," retorted the other. "Why, what in the world do you know?"
"More than most children of ten years old. I might get a hundred dollars a year. Mamma, I could buy myself new boots then."
"You are nothing but a self-willed child yourself, unable to bear the slightest disappointment," said Miss Opie.
"Never mind," said Mrs. Leigh, coaxingly; "I'll see if I cannot get you the boots. They will give me credit at the store."
"No, no; I know you can't afford it; they were new last April. Mamma is oil to your vinegar, Aunt Jane."
"And you the green young mustard in the domestic salad--hot enough, and, like all ill weeds, growing apace."
"Then it is field mustard, and not used for salad," said Bluebell, anxious for the last word. And, escaping from the room, went to place some bones in the shed, for a casual in the shape of a starving cur, who called occasionally for food and a night's lodging.
About twenty years ago, when this melancholy Mrs. Leigh was a lovely young Canadian of rather humble origin, Theodore Leigh, a graceless subaltern in the Artillery, had just returned from leave, and, going one day to the Rink, was "regularly flumocksed," as he expressed it, by the vision of Miss Lesbia Jones skimming over the ice like a swallow on the wing. And when she proceeded to cut a figure of 8 backwards, and execute another intricate movement called "the rose," his admiration became vehement, and, seizing on a brother-officer he had observed speaking to her, demanded an introduction.
"To the 'Tee-to-tum'? Oh, certainly."
Miss Lesbia was very small, and wore the shortest of petticoats, which probably suggested the appellation.
Fatigued with her evolutions, she had sunk with a pretty little air of abandon on the platform, and her destiny, in a beaver coat and cap, was presented by Mr. Wingfield.
After this, a common object at the Rink was a tall young man, in all the agonies of a _d��but_ on skates, and a bewitching little attendant sprite shooting before and around him, occasionally righting him with a fairy touch when he evinced too wild a desire to dash his brains against the wall.
At all the sleighing parties, also, Miss Lesbia's form was invariably observed in Mr. Leigh's cutter, with a violet and white "cloud" matching the robe borders and ribbons on the bells; and he and the "Tee-to-tum" spun round together in half the valses of every ball during the winter.
Perhaps, after all, the attachment might have lived and died without exceeding the "muffin" phase, had not the "beauty," Captain of the battery cut in, and made rather strong running, too, partly because he considered her "fetching," and partly, he said, "from regard to Leigh, who was making an ass of himself."
Jealousy turned philandering into earnest. Theodore went straight to the maiden aunt, with whom