Miriam Monfort | Page 3

their olden habit, as a car backs slowly
from a switch to its accustomed grooves, that a new face appeared
among us, destined to influence, in no slight degree, the happiness of
all who composed the family of Reginald Monfort.
It was summer. The house in which we lived was partly finished in the
rear by wide and extensive galleries above and below, shaded by
movable _jalousies;_ and, on the upper one of these, that on which our
apartments opened, my father had caused a hammock to be swung, for
the comfort and pleasure of his children. With one foot listlessly

dragging on the floor of the portico so as to propel the hammock, and
lying partly on my face while I soothed my wide-eyed doll to sleep, I
lay swaying in childish fashion when I heard Evelyn's soft step beside
me, accompanied by another, firmer, slower, but as gentle if not as light.
I looked up: a sweet face was bending over me, framed in a simple
cottage bonnet of white straw, and braids of shining brown hair.
The eyes, large, lustrous, tender, of deepest blue, with their black
dilated pupils, I shall never forget as they first met my own, nor the
slow, sad smile that seemed to entreat my affectionate acquaintance.
The effect was immediate and electric. I sat up in the hammock, I
stretched out my hands to receive the proffered greeting, and then
remained silently, child-fashion, surveying the new-comer.
"Kiss me," she said, "little Miriam. Have they not told you of me? I am
Constance Glen--soon to be your teacher."
"Then I think I shall learn," I made grave reply, putting away the thick
curls from my eyes and fixing them once more steadily on the face of
the new-comer. "Yes, I will kiss you, for you look good and pretty. Did
my mother send you here?"
"She is a strange child, Miss Glen," I heard Evelyn whisper. "Don't
mind her--she often asks such questions."
"Very natural and affecting ones," Miss Glen observed, quietly, and the
tears sprang to her violet eyes, at which I wondered. Yet, understanding
not her words, I remembered them for later comprehension; a habit of
childhood too little appreciated or considered, I think, by older people.
She had not replied to my question, so I repeated it eagerly. "Did my
dear mother send you to me?" I said. "And where is she now?"
"No, tender child! I have not seen your mother. She is in heaven, I trust;
where I hope we shall all be some day--with God. He sent me to you,
probably--I fancy so, at least."
"Then God has got good again. He was very bad last week--very

wicked; he killed our mother," whispering mysteriously.
"He is never bad, Miriam, never wicked; you must not say such
things--no Christian would."
"But I am not a Christian, Mrs. Austin says; only a Jew. Did you ever
hear of the Jews?"
Evelyn laughed, Mrs. Austin frowned, but Miss Glen was intensely
grave, as she rejoined:
"A Jew may be very good and love God. That is all a little child can
know of religion. Yet we must all believe God and His Son were one."
The last words were murmured rather than spoken--almost
self-directed.
"Is His Son a little boy, and will he be fond of my mother?" I asked.
"Will she love him too? Oh, she loved me so much, so much!" and, in
an agony of grief, I caught Miss Glen around the neck, and sobbed
convulsively on her sympathetic breast. Again Evelyn smiled, I
suppose, for I heard Miss Glen say, rebukingly:
"My dear Miss Erle, you must not make light of your little sister's
sufferings. They are very severe, I doubt not, young as she is. All the
more so that she does not know how to express them."
Revolving these words, I came later to know their import. They seemed
unmeaning to me at the time, but the kind and deprecating tone of voice
in which they were conveyed was unmistakable, and that sufficed to
reassure me.
"And now, Miriam, let me go to my room and take off my bonnet and
shawl, for I am going to stay with you. Perhaps you will show me the
way yourself," she said, pausing. "Bring Dolly, too;" and we walked off
hand-in-hand together to the large, commodious chamber Mrs. Austin
pointed out as that prepared for our governess. I recognized my affinity
from that hour.

There, sitting on her knee, with her gentle hand on my hair, and her
sweet eyes fixed on mine, I learned at once to love Miss Glen, or
"Constance," as she made us call her, because her surname seemed
over-formal. She wished us to regard her as an elder sister, she said,
rather than mere