Six to Sixteen | Page 4

now the Vicarage was originally an old farmhouse, of which this same charming kitchen was the chief "living-room." It is quite a journey, through long, low passages, to get from the modern part of the house to this.
One year, when the "languages fad" was strong upon us, Eleanor and I earned many a backache by carrying the huge volumes of the Della Crusca Italian dictionary from the dining-room shelves to the kitchen. We piled them on the oak chest for reference, and ran backwards and forwards to them from the table where we sat and beat our brains over the "Divina Commedia," while the wind growled in the tall old box-trees without, and the dogs growled in dreams upon the hearth.
It is by this well-scrubbed table, in this kitchen, that our biographies are to be written. They cannot be penned under the noses of the boys.
Eleanor finds rocking a help to composition, and she is swinging backwards and forwards in the glossy old rocking-chair, with a pen between her lips, and a vacant gaze in her eyes, that becomes almost a look of inspiration when the swing of the chair turns her face towards the ceiling. For my own part I find that I can meet the crisis of a train of ideas best upon my feet, so I pace up and down past the old black dresser, with its gleaming crockery, like a captain on his quarter-deck. Suddenly Eleanor's chair stands still.
"Margery," she says, laying her head upon the table at her side, "I do think this is a capital idea."
"Yours will be capital," I reply, pausing also, and leaning back against the dresser; "for you have kept your old diaries, and----"
"My dear Margery, what if I have kept my old diaries? I've lived in this place my whole life. Now, you have had some adventures! I quite look forward to reading your life, Margery. You have no idea what pleasure it gives me to think of it. I was thinking just now, if ever we are separated in life, how I shall enjoy looking over it again and again. You must give me yours, you know, and I will give you mine. Yes; I am very glad we thought of it." And Eleanor begins to rock once more, and I resume my march.
But this quite settles the matter in my mind. To please Eleanor I would try to do a great deal; much more than this. I will write my autobiography.
Though it seems rather (to use an expressive Quaker term) a "need-not" to provide for our being separated in life, when we have so firmly resolved to be old maids, and to live together all our lives in the little whitewashed cottage behind the church.
CHAPTER I.
MY PRETTY MOTHER--AYAH--COMPANY.
My name is Margaret Vandaleur. My father was a captain in her Majesty's 202nd Regiment of Foot. The regiment was in India for six years, just after I was born; indeed, I was not many months old when I made my first voyage, which I fancy Eleanor is thinking of when she says that I have had some adventures.
Military ladies are said to be unlucky as to the times when they have to change stations; the move often chancing at an inconvenient moment. My mother had to make her first voyage with the cares of a young baby on her hands; nominally, at any rate, but I think the chief care of me fell upon our Ayah. My mother hired her in England. The Ayah wished to return to her country, and was glad to do so as my nurse. I think that at first she only intended to be with us for the voyage, but she stayed on, and became fond of me, and so remained my nurse as long as I was in India.
I have heard that my mother was the prettiest woman on board the vessel she went out in, and the prettiest woman at the station when she got there. Some people have told me that she was the prettiest woman they ever saw. She was just eighteen years old when my father married her, and she was not six-and-twenty when she died.
[I got so far in writing my life, seated at the round, three-legged pinewood table, with Eleanor scribbling away opposite to me. But I could get no further just then. I put my hands before my eyes as if to shade them from the light; but Eleanor is very quick, and she found out that I was crying. She jumped up and threw herself at my feet.
"Margery, dear Margery! what is the matter?"
I could only sob, "My mother, O my mother!" and add, almost bitterly, "It is very well for you to write about your childhood, who have had a mother--and such a mother!--all your