Miriam Monfort | Page 3

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 instructress, deeming rightly that the law of love would prove the stronger and better guidance in our case, and understanding well, and by some line magnetic sympathy as it appeared, my own peculiar nature, to which affection was a necessity.
Ours was a peaceful and happy childhood under her gentle and fostering rule; and, when it ceased, all the wires of life seemed jangled and