Magnum Bonum | Page 3

made numerous friends, about whom, as she grew more at home, she freely chatted to Mrs. Brownlow, who was always ready to hear of Mary Ogilvie and Clara Cartwright, and liked to draw out the stories of the girl-world, in which it was plain that Caroline Allen had been a bright, good, clever girl, getting on well, trusted and liked. She had been half sorry to leave her dear old school, half glad to go on to something new. She was evidently not so comfortable, while Miss Heath's lowest teacher, as she had been while she was the asylum's senior pupil. Yet when on Sunday evening the Doctor was summoned and the ladies were left tete-a-tete, she laughed rather than complained. But still she owned, with her black head on Mrs. Brownlow's lap, that she had always craved for something-��something, and she had found it now!
Everything was a fresh joy to her, every print on the walls, every ornament on the brackets, seemed to speak to her eye and to her soul both at once, and the sense of comfort and beauty and home, after the bareness of school, seemed to charm her above all. "I always did want to know what was inside people's windows," she said.
And in the same way it was a feast to her to get hold of "a real book," as she called it, not only the beginnings of everything, and selections that always broke off just as she began to care about them. She had been thoroughly well grounded, and had a thirst for knowledge too real to have been stifled by the routine she had gone through-��though, said she, "I do want time to get on further, and to learn what won't be of any use!"
"Of no use!" said Mr. Brownlow laughing��-having just found her trying to make out the Old English of King Alfred's 'Boethius'-��"such as this?"
"Just so! They always are turning me off with 'This won't be of any use to you.' I hate use��-"
"Like Ridley, who says he reads a book with double pleasure if he is not going to review it."
"That Mr. Ridley who came in last evening?"
"Even so. Why that opening of eyes?"
"I thought a critic was a most formidable person."
"You expected to see a mess of salt and vinegar prepared for his diet?"
"I should prepare something quite different��-milk and sweetbreads, I think."
"To soften him? Do you hear, mother? Take advice."
Caroline-��or Carey, as she had begged to be called-��blushed, and drew back half-alarmed, as she always was when the Doctor caught up any of the little bits of fun that fell so shyly and demurely from her, as they were evoked by the more congenial atmosphere.
It was a great pleasure to him and to his mother to show her some of the many things she had never seen, watch her enjoyment, and elicit whether the reality agreed with her previous imaginations. Mr. Brownlow used to make time to take the two ladies out, or to drop in on them at some exhibition, checking the flow of half-droll, half- intelligent remarks for a moment, and then encouraging it again, while both enjoyed that most amusing thing, the fresh simplicity of a grown-up, clever child.
"How will you ever bear to go back again?" said Carey's school- friend, Clara Cartwright, now a governess, whom Mrs. Brownlow had, with some suppressed growls from her son, invited to share their one day's country-outing under the horse-chestnut trees of Richmond.
"Oh! I shall have it all to take back with me," was the answer, as Carey toyed with the burnished celandine stars in her lap.
"I should never dare to think of it! I should dread the contrast!"
"Oh no!" said Carey. "It is like a blind person who has once seen, you know. It will be always warm about my heart to know there are such people."
Mrs. Brownlow happened to overhear this little colloquy while her son was gone to look for the carriage, and there was something in the bright unrepining tone that filled her eyes with tears, more especially as the little creature still looked very fragile-��even at the end of a month. She was so tired out with her day of almost rapturous enjoyment that Mrs. Brownlow would not let her come down stairs again, but made her go at once to bed, in spite of a feeble protest against losing one evening.
"And I am afraid that is a recall," said Mrs. Brownlow, seeing a letter directed to Miss Allen on the side-table. "I will not give it to her to-night, poor little dear; I really don't know how to send her back."
"Exactly what I was thinking," said the Doctor, leaning over the fire, which he was vigorously stirring.
"You don't think her strong enough? If so, I am very glad," said the mother,