The Palace Beautiful | Page 6

her high-pitched and thin voice--
"Now, my dears, you will take seats close to me--not too close, loves, for I dislike being crushed, and I have on my Sunday silk. My dear girls, I want us now to have a really comfortable talk. There is a great deal that needs discussion, and I think there is nothing like facing a difficult subject resolutely, and going through it with system. I approve of your sending Daisy into the garden, Primrose. She is too young to listen to all that we must go into. I purpose dears, after the manner of our school-hours, to divide our discourse into heads--two heads will probably be sufficient for this evening. First, the severe loss you have just sustained--that we will talk over, and no doubt mingle our tears together over; take courage, my dear children, such an unburdening will relieve your young hearts. Second--Jasmine, you need not get so very red, my dear--second, we will discuss something also of importance; how are you three dear girls going to live?"
Here Miss Martineau paused, took off her spectacles, wiped them, and put them on again. She felt really very kindly, and would have worked herself to a skeleton, if need be, for the sake of the Mainwarings, whom she sincerely loved. Jasmine's red face, however, grew still redder.
"Please, Miss Martineau--yes, Primrose, I will speak--please, Miss Martineau, we cannot discuss dear mamma with you. There is nothing to discuss, and nothing to tell--I won't--I can't--Primrose, I won't listen, and I won't talk."
Miss Martineau shook her head, and looked really angrily at Jasmine.
"Nothing to tell," she said, sorrowfully. "Is your poor dear mother then so soon forgotten? I could not have believed it. Alas! alas! how little children appreciate their parents."
"You are not a parent yourself, and you know nothing about it," said Jasmine, now feeling very angry, and speaking in her rudest tone.
Primrose's quiet voice interposed.
"I think, Miss Martineau," she began, "that the first subject will be more than Jasmine and I can quite bear--you must forgive us, even if you fail quite to understand us. It is no question of forgetting--our mother will never be forgotten--it is just that we would rather not. You must allow us to judge for ourselves on this point," concluded Primrose, with that dignity that suited her so well. Primrose, for all her extreme quietness and simplicity of manner and bearing, could look like a young princess when she chose, and Miss Martineau, who would have quarrelled fiercely with Jasmine, submitted.
"Very well," she said, in a tone of some slight offence; "I came here with a heart brimful of sympathy; it is repulsed; it goes back as it came, but I bear no offence."
"Shall we discuss your second subject, dear Miss Martineau?" continued Primrose. "I know that you have a great deal of sense and experience, and I know that you have a knack of making money go very far indeed. You ask us what our plans are--well, I really don't think we have got any, have we, Jasmine?"
"No," said Jasmine, in her shortest tones. "We mean to live as we always did. Why can't people leave us in peace?"
Miss Martineau cleared her throat, looked with some compassion at Jasmine, whom she thought it best to treat as a spoilt child, and then turned her attention to Primrose.
"My dear," she said, "I am willing to waive my first head, to cast it aside, to pass it over, and consider my second. My dear Primrose, the first thing to consider in making your plans--I take no notice of Jasmine's somewhat childish remarks--is on what you have to live."
Primrose knit her brows.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "we shall have what we always had--we spent very little money in the past, and, of course, we shall require still less now. We are fond of Rosebury; I think we shall do for the present at least just what Jasmine says, and stay on quietly here."
Miss Martineau cleared her throat again.
"My dear girl," she said, "even to live here you must have something to live on. Now, are you aware that your mother's annuity as a captain's widow ceases with her death? I believe something very trifling will still be allowed to you, as his orphans, but on that point I'm rather in the dark."
"Mother always did get ten pounds a year apiece for us," said Primrose.
"Well, yes, my dear, we will suppose, and trust, and hope that that small sum will still be continued; but even at Rosebury you three girls cannot live on thirty pounds a year."
"But there is the money in the bank," said Jasmine speaking in a more interested tone. "You remember Primrose dear, how whenever mother wanted some money she just wrote a cheque, and we took it down to Mr. Danesfield, and