The Woman Thou Gavest Me | Page 9

subservient and, as Tommy the Mate used to say, "as smooth as an
old threepenny bit" to the ruling powers, which always meant my Aunt,
but spiteful, insolent, and acrid to anybody who was outside my Aunt's
favour, which usually meant me.
Between my cousin and myself there were constant feuds, in which
Nessy MacLeod never failed to take the side of Betsy Beauty, while my
poor mother became a target for the shafts of Aunt Bridget, who said I
was a wilful, wicked, underhand little vixen, and no wonder, seeing
how disgracefully I was indulged, and how shockingly I was being
brought up.
These skirmishes went on for a considerable time without
consequences, but they came at last to a foolish climax which led to
serious results.
Even my mother's life had its gleams of sunshine, and flowers were a
constant joy to her. Old Tommy, the gardener, was aware of this, and
every morning sent up a bunch of them, freshly cut and wet with the
dew. But one day in the spring he could not do so, being out in the dubs
of the Curragh, cutting peat for the fires. Therefore I undertook to

supply the deficiency, having already, with the large solemnity of six,
begun to consider it my duty to take charge of my mother.
"Never mind, mammy, I'll setch some slowers sor you," I said (every f
being an s in those days), and armed with a pair of scissors I skipped
down to the garden.
I had chosen a bed of annuals because they were bright and fragrant,
and was beginning to cut some "gilvers" when Nessy MacLeod, who
had been watching from a window, came bouncing down me.
"Mary O'Neill, how dare you?" cried Nessy. "You wilful, wicked,
underhand little vixen, what will your Aunt Bridget say? Don't you
know this is Betsy Beauty's bed, and nobody else is to touch it?"
I began to excuse myself on the ground of my mother and Tommy the
Mate, but Nessy would hear no such explanation.
"Your mamma has nothing to do with it. You know quite well that your
Aunt Bridget manages everything in this house, and nothing can be
done without her."
Small as I was that was too much for me. Somewhere in my little heart
there had long been a secret pang of mortified pride--how born I do not
know--at seeing Aunt Bridget take the place of my mother, and now,
choking with vexation but without saying a word, I swept off the heads
of all the flowers in the bed, and with my arms full of them--ten times
more than I wanted--I sailed back to my mother's room.
Inside two minutes there was a fearful tumult. I thought I was doomed
to punishment when I heard the big bunch of keys, which Aunt Bridget
kept suspended from her waist, come jingling up the stairs, but it was
my poor mother who paid the penalty.
"Isabel," cried Aunt Bridget, "I hope you are satisfied with your child at
last."
"What has Mary been doing now, dear?" said my mother.

"Don't ask me what she has been doing. You know quite well, or if you
don't you ought to."
My mother glanced at the flowers and she seemed to understand what
had happened, for her face fell and she said submissively,
"Mary has done wrong, but I am sure she is sorry and will never do it
again."
"Sorry, indeed!" cried my Aunt. "Not she sorry. And she'll do it again
at the very next opportunity. The vixen! The little wilful, underhand
vixen! But what wonder if children go wrong when their own mothers
neglect to correct them."
"I daresay you are quite right, dear Bridget--you are always right," said
my mother in a low, grave voice. "But then I'm not very well, and Mary
is all I have, you know."
My mother was in tears by this time, but Aunt Bridget was not content
with her triumph. Sweeping downstairs she carried her complaint to my
father, who ordered that I was to be taken out of my mother's charge on
the ground that she was incapable of attending to my upbringing--a task
which, being assigned to my Aunt Bridget, provided that I should
henceforward live on the ground floor and eat oaten cake and barley
bonnag and sleep alone in the cold room over the hall while Betsy
Beauty ate wheaten bread and apple tart and slept with her mother in
the room over the kitchen in which they always kept a fire.

FIFTH CHAPTER
The altered arrangements were a cause of grief to my mother, but I am
bound to confess that for me they had certain compensations. One of
them was the greater ease with which I could slip