"Half-grown as yet, a child and vain,
She cannot fight the fight of death.
What is she cut from love and faith?"
Knowledge and Wisdom, TENNYSON.
It was long before the two Mrs. Keiths met again. Mrs. Curtis and Grace
were persuaded to spend the spring and summer in Scotland, and Alick's
leave of absence was felt to be due to Mr. Clare, and thus it was that
the first real family gathering took place on occasion of the opening of
the institution that had grown out of the Burnaby Bargain. This work
had cost Colonel Keith and Mr. Mitchell an infinity of labour and
perseverance before even the preliminaries could be arranged, but they
contrived at length to carry it out, and by the fourth spring after
the downfall of the F. U. E. E. a house had been erected for the
convalescents, whose wants were to be attended to by a matron, assisted
by a dozen young girls in training for service.
The male convalescents were under the discipline of Sergeant O'Brien
and the whole was to be superintended by Colonel and Mrs. Keith. Ermine
undertook to hear a class of the girls two or three times a week,
and lower rooms had been constructed with a special view to her being
wheeled into them, so as to visit the convalescents, and give them her
attention and sympathy. Mary Morris was head girl, most of the others
were from Avonmouth, but two pale Londoners came from Mr. Touchett's
district, and a little motherless lassie from the --th Highlanders was
brought down with the nursery establishment, on which Mrs. Alexander
Keith now practised the "Hints on the management of Infants."
May was unusually propitious, and after an orthodox tea-drinking, the
new pupils and all the Sunday-schools were turned out to play on the
Homestead slopes, with all the world to look on at them. It was a warm,
brilliant day, of joyous blossom and lively green, and long laughing
streaks of sunlight on the sea, and no one enjoyed it more than did
Ermine, as she sat in her chair delighting in the fresh sweetness of the
old thorns, laughing at the freaks of the scampering groups of children,
gaily exchanging pleasant talk with one friend after another, and most
of all with Rachel, who seemed to gravitate back to her whenever any
summons had for a time interrupted their affluence of conversation.
And all the time Ermine's footstool was serving as a table for the
various flowers that two children were constantly gathering in the grass
and presenting to her, to Rachel, or to each other, with a constant
stream of not very comprehensible prattle, full of pretty gesticulation
that seemed to make up for the want of distinctness. The yellow-haired,
slenderly-made, delicately-featured boy, whose personal pronouns were
just developing, and his consonants very scanty, though the elder of
the two, dutifully and admiringly obeyed the more distinct, though less
connected, utterances of the little dark-eyed girl, eked out by
pretty imperious gestures, that seemed already to enchain the little
white-frocked cavalier to her service. All the time it was droll to see
how the two ladies could pay full attention to the children, while going
on with their own unbroken stream of talk.