The Palace Beautiful | Page 4

a very faint color; at Poppy's words it deepened slightly.
"We've tried to act in a sensible way all through," she said, with gentle dignity. "Perhaps Miss Martineau does not quite understand. We love one another very much; we are not going to be foolish, but we cannot help grieving for our mother."
At these words Jasmine rushed out of the room and Poppy's round eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, Miss Primrose--," she began.
"Never mind, Poppy," said Primrose; "we'll see Miss Martineau to-night. I am glad you told us she was coming."
The neighbors at Rosebury were all of the most sociable type; the Mainwaring girls knew every soul in the place, and when their mother died there was quite a rush of sympathy for them, and the little cottage might have been full from morning till night. Primrose, however, would not have it; even Miss Martineau, who was their teacher, and perhaps their warmest friend, was refused admittance. The neighbors wondered, and thought the girls very extraordinary and a little stuck-up, and their sympathy, thrown back on themselves, began to cool.
The real facts of the case, however, were these: Primrose, Jasmine and Daisy would have been very pleased to see Poppy Jenkins, or old Mrs. Jones, who sometimes came in to do choring, or even the nice little Misses Price, who kept a grocery shop at the other end of the village street; they would also have not objected to a visit from good, hearty Mrs. Fry, the doctor's wife, but had they admitted any of these neighbors they must have seen Miss Martineau, and Miss Martineau, once she got a footing in the house, would have been there morning, noon and night.
Poor Jasmine would not have at all objected to crying away some of her sorrow on kind Mrs. Fry's motherly breast; Primrose could have had some really interesting talk which would have done her good with the Misses Price; they were very religious people, and their brother was a clergyman, and they might have said some things which would comfort the sore hearts of the young girls. Little Daisy could have asked some of her unceasing questions of Poppy Jenkins, and the three would really have been the better for the visits and the sympathy of the neighbors did not these visits and sympathy also mean Miss Martineau. But Miss Martineau at breakfast, dinner, and tea--Miss Martineau, with her never-ending advice, her good-natured but still unceasingly correcting tone, was felt just at first to be unendurable. She was sincerely fond of the girls, whom she had taught to play incorrectly, and to read French with an accent unrecognized in Paris, but Miss Martineau was a worry, was a great deal too officious, and so the girls shut themselves away from her and from all other neighbors for the first month after their mother's death.

CHAPTER III
.
MISS MARTINEAU.
Primrose was the soul of hospitality; having decided that Miss Martineau was to be admitted that evening, it occurred to her that she might as well make things pleasant for this angular, good-humored, and somewhat hungry personage. Primrose could cook charmingly, and when dinner was over she turned to her sisters, and said in her usual rather slow way--
"I am going to make some cream-cakes for tea; and Jasmine, dear, you might put some fresh flowers in the vases; and Daisy--"; she paused as she looked at her sister--the child's blue eyes were fixed on her, she noticed with a pang that the little face was pale, and the dimpled mouth looked sad.
"Daisy," she said, suddenly, "you can go into the garden, and have a romp with the Pink."
"The Pink" was Daisy's favorite kitten.
Daisy laughed aloud, Jasmine started up briskly from the dinner-table, and Primrose, feeling that she had done well, went into the kitchen to consult with Hannah, the old cook, over the making of the cream-cakes.
The result of all this was that when Miss Martineau, sharp at four o'clock (the hours were very primitive at Rosebury), arrived at the Mainwarings' door, the outward aspect of the house bore no tokens of violent grief on the part of its inmates--the blinds were drawn up, not quite to the top, for that would have been ugly, and Jasmine was full of artistic instincts, but they were drawn up to let in plenty of sunlight, the white muslin curtains were draped gracefully, some pots of fresh flowers could be seen on the window-ledge, and a canary in a rather battered cage hung from a hook above, and disported himself cheerfully in the sunlight.
Miss Martineau was very old-fashioned in her ideas, and she did not much like the look of the bay window.
She comforted herself, however, with the reflection that even under the direst afflictions blinds must be drawn up some time, and that she would doubtless find