A Houseful of Girls

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"And poor father is one of them," said Annie quickly.

"Poor father!" echoed Dora piteously; "and you, poor, poor mother, to
have to think of us, and break it to us, while your heart is with
father."

"And he has not even been left in peace for a single afternoon, to make
up his mind what we shall do," lamented his sympathetic wife. "As usual,
so many tiresome people have fallen ill--as if they did it on purpose,
and sent for him."

"I daresay they could not help it," said Annie, "and I don't think it
would quite suit father if they were never ill."

"Don't speak so unfeelingly, child," remonstrated her mother; "well, I
suppose I gave you a bad example," she corrected herself immediately,
"but I have been in such trouble since lunch time."

"Poor mother!" repeated Dora in a voice that was only more soft and
caressing because of its sorrowfulness. She was very fond of her mother,
who reciprocated the special fondness, while Dr. Millar was rather
inclined to favour Annie and Rose, and both father and mother petted
May.

"Will it ruin us, mother?" inquired Annie directly, but before her
mother could answer her, Annie's practical mind took a sudden flight. It
went straight back to the purchases which she and Rose had been making
that afternoon. They had been at "Robinson's," of all places. But Tom
Robinson was only to be seen in the glass office, or walking about the
place in the morning, at hours which these two customers had carefully
avoided. Dora's heart had quaked all the same, in dread of an event
which, bad enough when it was confined to a passing bow, or a limp
hand-shake and half a dozen words exchanged in the street, would have
been intolerable in "Robinson's," under the eyes of his satellites. Yet
for the Millars to have refrained altogether from going to the one great
shop in the town, where women oft did congregate, would have been to
expose an event, the participators in which devoutly hoped was buried in
oblivion. They had been in Miss Franklin's department without anything
untoward happening; but it was neither "Robinson's" nor the person who
served them there that flashed like lightning across Annie's thoughts at
this crisis. It was the articles the girls had been buying, the Tussore
silk and Torchon lace for frocks that Annie and Dora had meant to wear
at a garden-party--for which the Dyers, the new people who had come to
Redcross Manor-house, had sent out invitations. If the Millars were
ruined, they were not likely to go to many more garden-parties, and
though the sisters might still want frocks, yet frocks of Tussore silk
trimmed with Torchon lace--granted that the materials had appeared a
modest and becoming wear for a doctor's daughters an hour before--might
not be quite an appropriate selection in the family's altered
circumstances.

"It depends upon what you call ruin," Mrs. Millar was saying
falteringly, "and of course the bank's assets may turn out better than
is thought just now, though your father is far from hopeful. He says all
his savings will go, and he may count on having to pay bank 'calls' on
his income till the business is wound up, which may not be in his
lifetime. No doubt he is taking the darkest view of things at present."
Then she yielded to the relief of pouring forth some of the coming woes
in detail. "Oh, my dears, your father says, though nothing can be
settled in a moment, there is one thing certain--this house must be
given up."

"Our house!" cried both of the girls in dismay.

"Where we were all born, where father himself was born," pleaded Dora,
still hanging about her mother.

"The Old Doctor's House--why, it seems to belong to the practice,"
protested Annie, sitting down, taking off her hat and tossing it on the
bed as if the better to realize the situation.

"No, I don't think it would hurt the practice--not in a town the size of
Redcross, where everybody would know where your father was to be found,
though he were to change his house again and again. Still it does seem
hard," she admitted, as she covertly wiped away a tear, "particularly
when the fault has not been ours--we have always lived within your
father's income, even though his practice has been falling off in these
bad times, what with his getting up in years, and what with these young
doctors trying to get in their hands everywhere. He tells me that he has
never had to find fault with me for extravagance," she finished
wistfully.

"I should think not," said Annie emphatically. "Why you have always been
as simple as simple could be in your own tastes and habits, not a woman
in your circle dresses more quietly. You have hardly even driven in the
brougham when father was not wanting it, in case you should over-work
the horse--you have always said, but I really believe that you chose to
walk for the simple reason that many of your acquaintances had no
choice. Nobody can ever reflect upon you, mother, for having wasted
either father's means or other people's," said Annie, with a bright
glance which became her infinitely.

"Thank you, my love, for saying so," replied her mother gratefully; "and
you see it is as well that I did not accustom myself to driving, among
other indulgences, for another of the retrenchments which your father
mentioned was putting down the brougham. Yet how he is to manage his
more distant patients on foot, at his age, I cannot imagine," she broke
off in helpless distress, clasping her hands tightly together, according
to a way she had. "It seems downright madness to propose it."

"Then you may be sure it will be prevented," said Dora with earnest
trustfulness, as she gently patted her mother's cap. "Nobody can ask a
sacrifice from him which he is unable to make. Mother, do you know what
I was thinking? that the only occasions on which you and father were
regardless of expense have been where the profit or pleasure of us girls
was concerned. You have given us every advantage you could get for us in
the shape of education. You sent Annie and me to London to take these
costly music-lessons;--Annie, I wish we had made more of them. You
arranged that we should go on that foreign tour with the Ludlows."

"We did our best for you--your father and I. I think I may say that,"
admitted Mrs. Millar simply.

Dora went on eagerly with her generous catalogue. "There was the young
artist who exhibits at the Academy and the Grosvenor, who was sketching
at Nenthorn, you had him over at a high price once a week, and he
condescended to help Rose with her drawing and painting. Then there was
Mr. Blake, the university man whom father considered so far in advance
of any classical master Miss Burridge could afford, he was induced so
long as he was staying at Woodleigh to bring on May with her Latin and
Greek."

"So far so good," said Mrs. Millar, in her excitement borrowing one of
her husband's brisk, cut and dry phrases. "I hope you will reap the
benefit of any effort we made, dears, because"--she hesitated, and
nearly broke down--"well, I don't think you need mind so much your
father's giving up this house and going into a smaller one; I'm sure I
don't mind it at all when I think what other people will have to suffer;
and as for you, why, you may not be here--not always, at least. We are
afraid, your father and I, that you'll need to go and do something to
keep yourselves."

"To be sure," said Annie promptly. "Don't trouble about that, mother;
we'll be only too glad to be of use!"

"We'll be too thankful to relieve you and father as much as we can,"
said Dora in a voice soft and fervent, but less assured.

"That will be the least trial," asserted Annie fearlessly.

"Oh, you don't know what you're saying!" cried Mrs. Millar, fairly
giving way and permitting herself to sob for a minute or two behind her
handkerchief. "You are dear, good girls! I knew you would be, and so
brave that I ought to take courage; but young people are so hopeful and
inexperienced. I don't wish you to be unhopeful, of course, still you
cannot tell what it is for your father and me to send our girls--our own
girls whom we have been so proud and fond of, that have been making the
old house brighter and brighter ever since they were born--out into a
cold world, to have to struggle for a pittance, to lose their youth and
its privileges, to be knocked about, and perhaps ill-treated, and looked
down upon by people in every way their inferiors."

"Don't, mother," interrupted Annie with decision; "you're conjuring up
bogies which have ceased to exist now-a-days. Think of the women who go
out into the world by no compulsion, simply for the honour and pleasure
of the thing, because they will not stay at home to lead idle, useless
lives, when there is needful work to be done abroad. I don't question
that they have difficulties to encounter, but I have yet to learn that
staying at home will keep away crosses. Brave women can bear whatever
trouble comes. I have often thought of such workers, if you will believe
me"--the girl was in a glow of animation--"with both shame and envy. It
is true I have not proposed to join them," she added in a lower tone,
"because I knew I was young for such work and not half good enough or
clever enough, and because we were all so happy at home--you and father
made us so," and Annie turned away her head, and forthwith came tumbling
down a few steps from the exalted position she had taken up.

"No, don't tell me, Annie Millar," said her mother with something like
passionate resistance, "that any good father or mother can be glad to
send their young daughters out into the wide world to fight and suffer
by themselves. It is not natural and it is not true. It is an altogether
different thing to give them to good men who will take care of them and
make them happy."

"But if the good men are not forthcoming, or if they happen to be the
wrong men," protested Annie. There was an irresistible twinkle in her
dark eyes, in spite of the care and trouble that had come upon the
household, which she was too sensible and warm-hearted a girl not to
share fully.

Dora stood conscience-stricken and guilty-looking, until, as she stroked
her mother's locked hands, she at last found words to put in her humble
petition, "We shan't all go away, mother dear. Father and you must let
one of us stay to take care of you and cheer you?"

"Oh, my dear, we are not old enough, at least I am not old enough to
accept such a boon, supposing we are very poor," said Mrs. Millar
sadly, "and in that case it might be sacrificing one of you, and
spoiling your prospects in life."

"No, no," cried Dora vehemently.

"Dora means that one of us ought to stay at home to set your cap right,"
said Annie brusquely.

It sounded an inopportune jest, positively unfeeling. The truth was
Annie still laboured under the common youthful necessity to hide her
deeper feelings, an obligation made up of a touch of hysterical
excitement, pride, shyness, and possibly the unsubdued buoyance of
two-and-twenty years. The last is apt to rebound swiftly, with a mixture
of cheerfulness and defiance from any sorrow, short of the one sorrow
which cannot be trampled down or made light of, that has its root in a
grave. Annie must find something to laugh at, to get fun out of, in the
tribulation which she nevertheless felt in every nerve of her body, to
the core of her heart.

"I ought to be able to keep my cap straight," said poor Mrs. Millar very
literally and meekly, looking a little puzzled by Annie's ill-timed
nonsense, and apparent hardness. "I daresay I should pin it, but the
pins drag my hair so and hurt me."

"Never think of it, mother," said mild Dora indignantly, looking daggers
at Annie.

"Of course I did not mean that, mother. I was not in earnest," Annie
made the penitent amendment.

"You are right to make the best of things," said Mrs. Millar, giving a
little shivering sigh on her own account. "It is the will of Providence.
We are in God's hands, poor Mr. Carey and all of us, as we were a year
ago--twenty years ago when you two were babies."

They were simple truisms which she uttered, but they were honest words,
which meant a great deal to her. They borrowed impressiveness from the
truthfulness of the speaker, in addition to the truth of the sayings,
and by force of sympathy told on the listening girls, quieting and
controlling them.

"Poor Mr. Carey as you say, mother," Annie caught up the words. "Well, I
suppose the Careys will be in a far worse plight than we can be, and
Cyril has been such a fool, though I don't suppose he meant much harm,
with his dandyisms and idleness and his college airs--all that he has
brought back from college."

"Hush! child," exclaimed the elder, more tolerant woman. "He has been a
silly, selfish lad, but as he will know it now, to his cost, I do not
like to hear you casting it in his teeth to-day. Perhaps it will steady
him, and then this misfortune will be a blessing so far as he is
concerned."

"Rather hard that we should all be sacrificed to prop up Cyril's weak
moral nature," muttered Annie.

"And the Russells," suggested Dora. "I have heard Colonel Russell
speaking to father, as if he and the Rector also had to do with the
bank. Oh! there is Ned Hewett, who has not passed his Cambridge
examination any more than Cyril Carey. Not that it has been Ned's fault,
or that he goes in for nothing save amusement, only he is so slow over
his books, poor fellow! He will grudge his father's having spent money
over him to no purpose more than ever now; and Lucy and Bell will be
sorry for him--they are so fond of Ned."

CHAPTER V.

PROMOTION.

At that moment a rush was heard on the stairs, and Rose and May burst
into their mother's room, Rose at the last moment bethinking herself
that she had left school, accordingly she must be grown up, or on the
brink of it, if Annie would but allow it, and therefore trying to
moderate the headlong pace, which would have better become a troop of
boys than a pair of girls.

"Little May," who, in spite of her height, was still in frocks an inch
from the ground, was not troubled by any such scruples. She scampered up
to her mother, and hailed her breathlessly--"Mother, we want you to let
us--Rose and me--go with Ella and Phyllis Carey a walk to the Beeches.
Ella says she saw some periwinkles and young ferns there, and we need,
oh! ever so many fresh roots for the rockery. We should have gone
without coming home to tell you, because you wouldn't mind, but we might
have kept tea waiting, and we'll be horribly late. Besides, we are not
coming home for tea; Ella and Phyllis say we must go up with them to the
Bank House."

"No, no, my dears, you can't do that," said Mrs. Millar, hurriedly but
decidedly. "I am sorry that you should be disappointed, but you must not
think of such a thing. Ella and Phyllis don't understand--don't
know--that their mother is particularly engaged this afternoon. She will
not wish to have people in the house, not even in the schoolroom."

Rose and May looked in wonder at their mother, discomposed enough in her
own person, sitting leaning back in her chair doing nothing; she whose
motherly hands were wont to be busy with some little bit of sewing or
knitting.

Annie, too, was sitting idle at a short distance, with her hat thrown on
the bed, but still wearing her jacket; and Dora, in her walking dress,
was standing like a lady-in-waiting, or a sentry, behind Mrs. Millar's
chair.

Annie and Dora remained silent, looking at the intruders in a peculiar
manner. At the same time the first pair did not tell the second more or
less curtly, as the elder girls had been in the habit of doing not so
very long ago, to go away and leave grown-up people to finish important
discussions in peace.

What other new thing could have come about? Was there a fresh wooer in
the field, a second offer of marriage to be laid at reluctant feet? Was
it Annie, their beauty, who was in request this time? Who was the lover?
not Cyril Carey, with his plush waistcoat and gold chains and odious
snuff-box? He had no means of keeping a wife, unless his father took him
into partnership in the bank, and their father would not hear of Cyril;
besides, Annie held him in supreme disdain. She had more patience with
Tom Robinson and "the shop" than with the nineteenth century dandy, whom
she pronounced a mistaken revival of one of the many curiosities of
Queen Anne's reign.

But Rose and May had no certainty that Annie was the object of pursuit.
She was pretty enough, they had all pinned their faith to her beauty,
yet already Dora had been preferred before her, though it was only by
the head of "Robinson's." Was it possible that now it might be Rose,
unsuspecting, unconsulted? Could her own mother and sisters be so unfair
as to arrogate to themselves the settlement of her affairs without her
consent or knowledge, without so much as admitting her into the
conclave?

Annie took the initiative, she was sufficiently quick to see both behind
and before her. She had a head for directing and managing which her
mother did not possess.

"Mother, don't you see they had better be told at once?" she said, with
the aplomb of a girl who, however young and irresponsible, is capable of
arriving at independent conclusions and reversing existing conditions.
"They are, as Rose says, all but grown up; indeed not so very much
younger than Dora and I. I think Rose and May are entitled to be told."

Annie was proceeding to act upon the permission implied in her mother's
nod. She was not without some small sense of personal importance in
being the mouthpiece which was to announce the calamity to her younger
sisters. She did it in a very different fashion from that in which their
mother had broken the news to her and Dora.

"What we are going to speak to you about is not a thing that can be long
concealed. It will not be a secret for more than a few days, if for so
long. But that does not mean that you are not to shut this room door
which you have left wide open. Thanks, May. Don't bang it! You are not
to show that you know what is going to happen. And, after it has
happened, you are not to chatter about it before the servants or to your
companions. We are trusting you because you have almost come to the
years of discretion, and ought to have a notion how to behave under the
circumstances."

"Well, this is too bad of you, Annie!" cried Rose, showing instant
symptoms of revolt. "What have May and I done that we should be spoken
to as if we were a pair of tell-tales, or babies--and geese into the
bargain? Dora and you are not so much older, as you confess; neither are
you so much wiser with all your pretensions. If something of so much
consequence to everybody is on the eve of happening, I think we might
have been told before. Surely mother is not afraid that we should repeat
anything which we ought not to mention," and she glanced with burning
reproach at her mother.

Rose was both high-spirited and touchy. She was not disposed to play the
second part without a murmur like Dora. She was not content, with her
art as a balance to Annie's beauty and May's budding scholarship. Rose
desired everybody to acknowledge her mother-wit and trustworthiness.

Dora and Mrs. Millar spoke together in reply. "Mother only told Annie
and me this afternoon," said the general peacemaker.

"It was not such a pleasant piece of information for me to give, or you
to receive, child, that you and May should grudge my keeping it from you
as long as I could, as I dared," was the mother's weary reply. "Besides,
your father did not wish it spoken about before; it would have been
wrong, a great risk to many others as well as to ourselves, to have
mentioned such a thing."

"Then don't tell us now if you don't care to, mother, and if father
disapproves of our hearing it," said Rose magnanimously, for she was
dying to be at the bottom of the mystery.

"No, don't, mother dear, please don't, if it will hurt you," said May
affectionately, with something of a childish ring in her voice. Her
mother took her hand at the words and clasped it tightly.

"Mother has made up her mind and father has given her leave to speak,"
said Annie with determination, "because you must hear soon anyhow. There
is something wrong with the bank, Mr. Carey's bank. We have all, even
May, read and heard of bank failures, and have some idea how disastrous
they are."

"The Carey's bank!" cried Rose, with sufficient intelligence in her
astonishment. "I understand now why we were not to go home with Ella and
Phyllis."

"Then somebody must run over and tell them that we are not coming,"
interrupted May. "Do let Bella take the message, mother, in case I
should look as if I knew something. Poor Mr. Carey! he was always so
kind to us. I am so sorry; but the bank has not anything to do with us;
father is not the banker, he is just a doctor like grandfather," ended
May composedly.

"O May, you are a baby, though you read the Greek Testament and have
something to say to Tacitus in the original," exclaimed Annie
indignantly.

"Your father has shares in the bank, my dear," explained her mother with
patient reiteration. "He bought them with his savings, and he will get
nothing for them. Nobody will buy them from him again, they will be no
better than waste paper. But that is not the worst. The shares make him
responsible for the bank's debts--I am sure I cannot tell you how far;
he told me, I daresay, but I was so grieved for him and for all of you,
and so confused, I could not take it in. But he says that what he will
have to pay up will be as much as he can do, with a hard fight, for the
rest of his days."

"I am so sorry for father," murmured May in an awed tone, but with a
little of a parrot note, just as she had pitied Mr. Carey, who was only
an old acquaintance and the father of her friends. The fact was that the
young girl, brought away suddenly from her girlish interests and her
whole past experience, and plunged into the cares of older people, was
thoroughly staggered and bewildered, in spite of a small head which was
capable of construing Latin and conjugating Greek.

There was a moment's pause. "Will it make a great difference to father
and the rest of us?" asked Rose, in spite of her quickness, and in spite
of what her mother had said.

"Certainly," Annie took it upon her to answer, with a mixture of fire
and conviction, "we'll all have to earn our living."

"Oh, don't make such sweeping statements, Annie, frightening your
sisters," said their mother reproachfully; and unquestionably May looked
scared, and dropped her gloves without noticing it. "You must do what
you can to help your poor dear father, and I am sure you'll do that
willingly, but so long as he is spared to work for all of us----" She
stopped short, unable to say any more.

Then her daughters closed round her, from the youngest to the eldest,
and told her in concert that she was not to be concerned for them. They
were ready for the occasion and equal to it, and they would not mind in
the very least.

"Mind!" declared Rose, with her eyes beginning to shine and her cheeks
to flush like Annie's. "Why, it is the one great comfort that we'll have
to make our way in the world, and push our fortunes like boys. We'll
have plenty of adventures and rise triumphant over them all, and be such
a help to you and father. Think of that, May, you little coward,"
appealing to her younger sister who, in spite of her small dabbling in
masculine acquirements, did not look as if the prospect of pushing her
fortune like a boy was full of unmixed charm for her. But she
brightened up at the visionary honour and delight of being a great help
to their father and mother, and cried, "Yes, yes, Rose," with subdued
enthusiasm.

Dora also echoed the "yes" with a quiet intensity.

Annie, on her part, graciously approved of her juniors, and rewarded
them by patronizing them tremendously.

"That is right. I don't very well know yet what Dora and I can do, but
we'll find something. However, you two young ones are the geniuses of
the family, and we'll look to you. I suspect Dora and I will have to
march under your wings. You, Rose, must be quick and paint Academy
pictures, get them hung on the line, and have them sold before the
opening day. May must pass all her examinations in no time, gain a
scholarship, and be appointed classical mistress to a Girls' Day-school,
of which she will eventually become the head. Fancy 'little May' a
full-blown school ma'am."

"Dear! what creatures girls are! They are jesting and laughing already
over their own and other people's misfortunes. It is little they know of
life, it is little they guess what will befall them," sighed Mrs. Millar
to herself. Nevertheless, in the middle of her anxiety and sorrow, she
was in some respects a happy woman, and she had a dim but consoling
perception of the truth.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CLOUD DEEPENS.

The storm burst, but the cloud did not disperse, it only closed in more
darkly over Redcross. At the same time, as the bank authorities had
foreseen, there was little or nothing of the wild, panic-stricken run on
the capital which heralds and intensifies many a bank's fall. The losers
went about their ordinary occupations. The Rector preached, presided
over meetings of the vestry and Christian Associations, and attended to
his sick. Doctor Millar looked after his sick. Colonel Russell even went
to the Literary Institute and read the newspapers as usual. Every one of
them wore his customary face, however abnormal the working of his heart.
The Redcross victims, and many another innocent man besides, behaved
like gentlemen, Englishmen, and Christians. There was neither outward
fuss nor fury.

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