A Houseful of Girls

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"She must do the best she can," said Annie promptly, "and occupy herself
with something better than gossiping with you when she chances to meet
you coming from school. I suppose that was the manner in which you heard
all this; I don't think Mrs. Carey will approve of such a waste of
time."

"But, Annie," pled May, with her dark eyes ready to brim over, "poor
Phyllis has only me now, and she has a great many messages to go,
because their single servant has so much work to do in the house that
she cannot get out marketing. Mrs. Carey is always walking or sitting
with Mr. Carey. If it were not so, Phyllis is sure that her mother would
go out and not mind taking the market-basket herself--a rough, heavy
market-basket. The Careys' servants used to complain because one of them
was expected to carry it in the mornings. Phyllis is glad to let me have
it sometimes, her arms get tired and ache so. You see Jack and Dick are
not often home from school in time, and then they have the boots and
knives to clean. Cyril would carry it for her after it was dark, but
Mrs. Carey won't let her go out then, and sends her off to bed that she
may get up earlier for what she has to do in the morning."

That rough market-basket over which the Careys' former servants had
grumbled, was like a badge of honour in certain shining eyes--far more
so than Thirza Dyer's thoroughbred, or Camilla and Gussy Dyer's
exquisite hats and dainty parasols. Even Annie Millar was not too old or
too wise to refrain from wishing that Mrs. Millar, who still would not
let her daughters soil their fingers if she could help it, had sent them
out marketing in their native town, each in her turn flourishing a
market-basket.

At another time it would be Rose who would arrive flushed and breathless
with the great piece of news that Ned Hewett had taken the post of
station-master at a small station somewhere on the Yorkshire moors. He
had done it when nothing else turned up, without waiting to consult his
father. But the Rector had not forbidden him when he heard. Steadiness
and punctuality had always been Ned's strong points, so that, though he
had not taken his degree at the university, and his old masters had said
they were not surprised to hear it, he might be trusted not to wreck
trains, slay their passengers, and find himself tried for manslaughter.
The difficulty was to fancy a big, slow fellow like Ned rushing here and
there in a noisy, fussy little station. After all, it would only be
noisy and fussy at long intervals, and on rare occasions, "somewhere on
the Yorkshire moors." Ned might have time and space to walk about in.
But what of the uniform? Would the poor boy--they had all known him as a
boy--who had once cherished the notion of going into the army, have to
wear a railway company's coat and a station-master's cap? How funny it
sounded! Well, not altogether funny. There were Dora and May crying at
the bare anticipation. If they were ever on the Yorkshire moors, and had
to greet Ned in this extraordinary guise, it would be awkward for all
parties, to say the least. What were they thinking of? Of course they
would be proud to greet him when he was twice the man that he had ever
been. No doubt Cyril Carey would be glad to have Ned's chance; Cyril,
who had renounced his delicate plush vests and Indian gold chains and
charms, his loitering and dawdling, and taken to a shabby shooting-suit
and spade-husbandry. He was getting rid of his time and keeping out of
his mother's way by digging aimlessly in the garden. He was inquiring,
in a desultory fashion, all over Redcross for any opening in an office
which he could fill. He was not likely to find such an opening unless
it were made for him out of charity. He had not been trained to office
work, and he was far from having Ned Hewett's reputation for steadiness
and punctuality. If Tom Robinson should be the charitable man and ask
Cyril, a schoolfellow and college chum, to help him with his accounts,
the head of "Robinson's" would have to be at the trouble of running up
every column of figures over again. Cyril might ride to hounds and row
in a boat-race with the best; he might even have some elegant
acquaintance with the renaissance and old French, and be capable of
distinguishing himself in stately Latin verse, though that sounded more
than doubtful when he had been plucked at his university--the
inhabitants of Redcross did not, as a rule, pretend to be judges in such
matters. What they did know, because it had oozed out some time before,
was that Cyril Carey, though a banker's son, was lamentably weak in
arithmetic, and his handwriting would have been held a disgrace to any
shop-boy.

Money was required to start lads in the world in the humblest fashion.
Ned Hewett wanted an outfit, and if possible furniture for his
station-house, that he might not begin on credit. Even girls, though
they had been a good deal set aside in such consideration, could not
enter on an independent career without money any more than boys could.
The Millars were therefore thankful that Mrs. Millar had a little money
of her own, not above a hundred and fifty pounds a year, settled upon
her from the first, by one of those marriage contracts which are so hard
to break, and she could use it to supply what was needed for the girls,
who were going into the world with such dauntless spirits and light
hearts.

CHAPTER VII.

ROSE GOES WEST AND ANNIE GOES EAST.

In the end it was settled, to Annie and Rose's great satisfaction, and
no less to the temporary relief of Dora and May's quaking hearts, that
the two former were to take the first plunge into unknown waters. If
things had been as they were formerly, and there had been leisure to
spare from rougher rubs for highly delicate considerations, it might, as
has been hinted, have been held that Dora should have been the sister
selected to go away from Redcross--at least for a time.

But a great deal had happened since Tom Robinson's unsuccessful suit and
all connected with it had been in honour hushed up. People had too many
weighty matters to think of to keep in mind that small sentimental
episode between a couple of young people.

Rose's fate was chalked out from the first. She was to be an
artist--that went without saying. She had certainly artistic talent, she
might have genius. But though she had been tolerably well trained so
far, by a good drawing-master at Miss Burridge's, and by the lessons she
had received from the wandering exhibitor at the Academy and the
Grosvenor, neither she nor her family could be sufficiently infatuated
to imagine she wanted no more teaching. Their conceptions of art might
be crude, and their faith in Rose unbounded, but they did not suppose
that she had only to open her portfolio and sell its contents as often
as it was full. Dr. and Mrs. Millar made up their minds, Rose agreeing
with them, that she should have at least a year in a London studio.

All the three considered it very fortunate when the artist who had
given her lessons at Redcross, hearing of her intention, and of what
had rendered it incumbent on her to work for her living, not only
recommended a studio in which art classes were held, but good-naturedly
gave her a testimonial and helped her to a post as assistant
drawing-mistress in a ladies' school, a situation which she could fill
on two days of the week, while she attended the art classes on the
remaining four. The salary thus obtained was of the smallest, but it
would supplement Mrs. Millar's allowance to Rose, and help to pay her
board in some quiet, respectable family living midway between the
school and the studio. Rose was a lucky girl, and she thought herself
so. Indeed that minimum salary raised her to such a giddy pinnacle in
her own estimation that it nearly turned her head. It was only her
sisters, the wise Annie among them, who regarded the assistant
drawing-mistress-ship with impatience as a waste of Rose's valuable
time and remarkable talents.

A qualification came soon to Rose's exultation and to her pride in being
the first of her father's daughters--and she the third in point of
age--who had just left school, and had hardly been reckoned grown-up by
Annie till quite lately--to earn real tangible money, gold guineas,
however few. For something better still befell Annie. If Rose was lucky,
Annie was luckier. True, she would never be a great artist, she would
never get hundreds and thousands for a picture. At the utmost she would
only be at the head of a charitable institution. She might save the
greater part of her income then, and hand it over to her father, but
that was a very different prospect from the other. Still, from the
beginning Annie would be, so to speak, self-supporting; she need not
cost her mother or anybody else a penny, her very dress would be
provided for her. Above all Annie was going to do a great deal of good,
to be a comfort and blessing, not only to her people, but to multitudes
besides. She was, please God, to help to lessen the great crushing mass
of pain and misery in the world, not by passive, sentimental sympathy,
not by little fitful, desultory doles of practical aid, but by the
constant daily work of her life. Young as Rose was, and enamoured of art
in her way, she was able to comprehend that if Annie could do that
worthy deed, her life would be greater in a sense, fuller in its
humanity, perhaps also sweeter than that of the most famous and
successful painter.

Annie had always taken a lively interest in her father's profession, and
he had liked her to do so. He had been fond of talking to her about it,
and enlightening her on some of its leading principles. He had even
pressed her into his service in little things, and been gratified by the
hereditary firmness and lightness of grasp and touch, the control over
her own nerves and power of holding those of others in check, the quick
and correct faculty of observation she had displayed. But with all his
loyal allegiance to the calling which had been his father's before it
was his, which he would have liked to see his son fill, if a son had
been born to him, he was taken aback and well-nigh dismayed, as her
mother was, when Annie came and told them quietly that she had made up
her mind, if they would consent, to go into an hospital and be trained
for a nurse. He laid before her as calmly and clearly as he could the
conditions of the undertaking, and reminded her that it could not be
gone into by halves, while he thought, as he spoke, that Annie was not
the style of young woman to go into anything by halves.

Mrs. Millar followed with a trembling recital of the painfulness, the
absolute horror to a young girl of many of the details of the office.
But Annie was not shaken in the least. "I should not mind that," she
asserted with conviction. "I know there must be strict discipline and
hard trying work, with no respite or relaxation to speak of; but I am
young and strong, fitter to stand such an ordeal than most girls of my
age are qualified. I am too young, you say? Yes, I admit that; it is a
pity--at least I know I have always reckoned myself too young when the
thought crossed my mind six months--a year ago, of leaving home and
becoming trained for a nurse."

"You don't mean to say, Annie, that you ever thought of going out into
the world before our misfortunes in connection with the bank?" cried
both father and mother in one breath.

Annie hung her shapely head a little, then held it up, and confessed
frankly, "Yes, I have. Oh, you must forgive me. It was not from any
failure of kindness on your part, or, I trust, any failure on mine to
appreciate your kindness, for I believe you are the best, dearest father
and mother in the world," she cried, carried out of herself, and
betrayed into enthusiasm. "But what were you to do with a houseful of
girls, when one would have served to give you all the help you need,
mother, in your housekeeping and the company you see? I _have_ hated the
idea of being of no use in the world, unless I chanced to marry," ended
Annie, with a quick, impatient sigh.

"My dear, you are talking exaggerated nonsense." Mrs. Millar reproved
her daughter with unusual severity, dislodging her cap by the energy
of her remonstrance, so that Annie had to step forward promptly,
arrest it on its downward path, and set it straight before the
conversation went any further. "Nobody said such things when I was
young. I was one of a household of girls, far enough scattered now,
poor dears!"--parenthetically apostrophizing herself and her youthful
companions with unconscious pathos--"I would have liked to hear any
one say to us, or to our father and mother, that we were no good in
the world. I call it a positive sin in the young people of this
generation to be so restless and dissatisfied, and so ready to take
responsibilities upon themselves. It is a temptation of Providence to
send such calamities as the one we are suffering from. You will know
more about life when you are forced to work for yourself, and do not
set about it out of pure presumption and self-will, with a good home
to fall back upon when you are tired of your fad."

Mrs. Millar had been hurt and mortified by Annie's avowal. She had been
further nettled by the slighting reflection on a houseful of girls, made
by one of themselves, while she, their mother, the author of their
being, poor unsophisticated woman! had always been proud of her band of
bright, fair young daughters, and felt consoled by their very number for
the lack of a son.

"Come, come, mother," said Dr. Millar, "you must make allowance for the
march of ideas."

"I cannot help it," said Annie, with another quick sigh. "I suppose
girls are not so easily satisfied as they once were, or they have been
taken so far, and not far enough, out of their place. I could not have
remained content with tennis-playing and skating, or _rechauffe_ school
music, French and German, or fancy work, however artistic--not even with
teaching once a week in the Rector's Sunday-school--for my object in
life. But after the way in which things have turned out, there is no
need to discuss former views. Mother dear, it is surely well that I had
not a hankering after idleness, after lying in bed half the forenoon, as
people say the Dyers do, getting up only to read the silliest and
fastest of novels, with secret aspirations after diamonds and a carriage
and pair, if not a coach and six. Of course I should not have been
contented with a one-horse shay, a mere doctor's pill-box, such as you
have put down, father, which Rose and May are determined to set up for
you again before they are many year's older."

"Good little chits!" exclaimed the little Doctor, blowing his nose
suspiciously. "Tell them, Annie, that I like walking above all things. I
find it a great improvement on driving. I have been troubled with--let
me see, oh! yes, cold feet--a deficiency in the circulation, not at all
uncommon when one gets up in years, and after walking a bit I feel my
toes all tingling and as warm as a toast."

"I should prefer nursing to any other mode of earning my living," said
Annie, keeping to her point. "I may be presumptuous, like the girls of
my day, as mother says, but I really think that I have a natural turn
for nursing, derived from you father, and grandfather, no doubt, which
might have made me also a good doctor supposing I had been a man, or
supposing I had sought from the first to be a medical woman and had been
educated accordingly. If I am wrong, you will set me right, won't you?"

In place of contradicting her, he simply nodded in acquiescence, while
he linked his hands across the small of his back.

"Mother, I do not think I should shrink from dressing wounds, if I only
knew the best thing to do to avoid danger and give relief. You remember
when Bella burnt her arm badly from the elbow to the wrist, I tied it up
to keep out the air, before father came in, and he said it was rightly
done, and would not change the dressing. And when poor Tim, who has lost
his place with the putting down of the brougham, gave his hand the
terrible hack with the axe in breaking wood for cook, I was able to stop
the loss of blood, and did not get in the least faint myself. Yes, I
know it would be very pitiful to see a human creature die whom we could
not save," she added, in a lower tone, "and very sad to prepare such a
one for the grave. But, dear mother, somebody has to do it at some time,
and I may be the somebody one day, anyhow I shall have to be indebted to
my neighbour to do the last charitable offices for me. It might be all
the easier to look forward to in my own case if I had done it for other
people, not merely because they were my own, just because they were
God's creatures, and He had set me, among other women, to do the
sorrowful work, and would lend me strength for the task."

"I believe it, Annie," said Dr. Millar firmly, as he looked at the
reverently bent head, and listened to the faltering yet faithful words.

Mrs. Millar said no more, though the poor lady still shivered, as she
looked at the girl in her brilliant youthful bloom. It was too terrible
to think of her associated with disease and death, she whom her father
and mother would have sheltered from every rough wind. Yet what was
pretty Annie in the ranks of humanity, in the march of history? The
frivolous product of a heathen world, the feminine counterpart of some

"Idle singer of an empty day"?

or--

"A creature breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller 'twixt life and death"--

a Christian girl who with all true Christians had the Lord Christ, who
went about doing good, for an everlasting example? And had there not all
along been something fine in Annie, under her superficial hardness and
inclination to conceal her feelings, something which her family had not
suspected, brought to light by their troubles? something of which
everybody connected with her would be prouder in all humility, with
reason, in the days to come, than they had ever been proud of her
supreme prettiness and lively tongue in times past.

"It is a pity about my age," went on Annie ingenuously, lamenting over
her deficiency in years as other people lament over their superfluity in
that respect, "but it is a fault which will mend every day. I have
found out that there are two hospitals which make twenty-three--just a
year older than I am--the age of admission for probationers, and there
is one hospital that admits them at twenty. Would not the fact of my
being a doctor's daughter go for something? Have you not interest,
father, if you care to exert it, to get the hospital authorities to
stretch a point where I am concerned? You might tell them that I am the
eldest of the family," drawing up her not very tall figure, "that I have
been treated as grown-up for years and years, and that I have several
younger sisters whom I have tried to keep in order." There was a
returning twinkle in Annie's brown eyes and a comical curve of her rosy
lips.

But she relapsed into extreme gravity the next moment; indeed, she was
more agitated than she had yet been, and for Annie to betray an approach
to tearfulness was a rare spectacle.

"There is something worse than my age. I am afraid I am not half good
enough. I have a hasty temper; you have frequently said so, mother. I
often speak sharply, and am not always aware when I am doing it. I hurt
people, as I hurt myself, without being able to help it--something seems
to come over me and impel me to do it. Often I cannot resist making game
of people. I am so silly and fond of fun, like a child, a great deal
worse than 'little May' ever is, when the fit is upon me. Now, if I
could think that I should lose patience with poor sick people, and wound
instead of comforting them, or that I should find them food for my love
of the ridiculous, and forget and neglect their wants in following my
own amusement, I should hate myself--I would die sooner than so disgrace
a nurse's calling."

"You would not do it, my dear," said Dr. Millar, with calm conviction.

"Why, what treason is this you are speaking against yourself?" cried
Mrs. Millar, bristling up in her daughter's defence, the assailant being
that daughter. "You unkind or unfeeling when there was any call for
kindness--whoever heard of such a thing? I should as soon suspect Dora
of harshness or levity in the same circumstances. Don't you remember my
bad eyes last winter, when I had to get that tincture dropped into them
so often that your father could not always be at home to do it? You
dropped the tincture as well as your father could, and though I know I
must have made faces wry enough to frighten a cat, you never vouchsafed
a remark, and I did not hear the ghost of a laugh. Poor Dora was ready
to read to me by the hour, and to fetch and carry for me all day long,
but when she tried to drop the tincture her hand shook so that she sent
the liquid down my cheeks; and she was so frightened for giving me pain
that I could see when I opened my eyes she was as white as a sheet, and
fit to faint herself."

"Dora's hand will get steadier and her heart harder by and by," said Dr.
Millar, laughing. "Not that she has the knack of the operator, any more
than you have, Maria. I don't think one of you has it, except Annie
here."

"That was nothing," said Annie quickly. She added in a lower tone, "And
oh, mother, how could you imagine that I should laugh at your pain?"

"It was only for a moment, and I daresay it was not agonizing, as I was
tempted to call it; very likely your father and you would not have so
much as winced at it. Then there was Miss Sill, poor old Miss Sill.
Annie, I am afraid you girls laughed at her. Girls will be girls, and
she does dress outrageously. You all said her mantles were worse than my
cap," tenderly touching that untrustworthy piece of head-gear. "When she
sent for your father all of a sudden, just when he had been summoned to
Dr. Hewett's brother, who was very ill, as we knew, while we thought
Miss Sill had only one of her maiden-lady fancies, your father told you
to go over and say he would be with her in the course of the day. But
you found her nearly choking with bronchitis. How you were not
frightened out of your senses, I, who am a great deal more than twice
your age, and the mother of a family, cannot tell. You propped her up
in exactly the right position, saw to the temperature of the room, and
caused her cook to bring in the kitchen boiler and set it to steam on
the hob, before another doctor could be found. Miss Sill told me all
about it afterwards; she believes she owes her life to you."

"Oh, nonsense," protested Annie, "I was a little better than her two
servants, who stood looking at her, and beginning to sob and cry; but I
made several gross mistakes. You told me about them afterwards, father;
it was a great mercy that I did not cause her death."

"So far from that," continued Mrs. Millar, in triumphant defiance, "she
calls you her young doctor to this day, and says she will send for you
in preference to your father or any other doctor the next time she has
an attack."

"Infatuated woman!" declared Annie.

"I have not needed to talk to you in order to get you to go with your
sisters and see her since then. You have gone of your own accord twice
as often, and I am sure you have not laughed at her half so much. In
fact, I believe you are becoming quite attached to her."

"I suppose I am grateful to her for not dying in my unskilled hands. I
am afraid I still think her rather fantastic and foolish; but it does
make a difference in one's judgment of a person to have really rendered
him or her a service. I ought to be fond of Miss Sill, after all, if she
is to rank as my first patient."

Mrs. Millar sank into silence on the instant. She stood convicted in her
own eyes. What had she been doing? Proving to her daughter's
satisfaction that she had the special talents of a nurse!

"I am very glad that mother and you think me--not by any means good
enough, of course, not that, but not too impatient, sarcastic, and
trifling to be a nurse," said Annie brightly, addressing her father, who
simply acquiesced in an absent-minded fashion.

After that there was no serious objection made to Annie's wish, great as
the wonder was at first--a shock to her relations no less than to her
acquaintances. The former reconciled themselves sooner to it than did
the latter, with an entire faith in Annie and an affectionate admiration
which was genuine homage. It swelled Dora's heart well-nigh to bursting
with sister-worship. How good Annie was showing herself, how capable of
great acts of self-denial and self-consecration, while she was prettier
than ever with her graceful head, her merry brown eyes, and that soft,
warm colour of hers!

Only Mrs. Millar lay awake at night and cried quietly over what lay
before her young daughter, her first-born, the flower of the flock, as
people had called her in reference to her beauty. Annie's pretty
Grand-aunt Penny had at least enjoyed her day; she had had her triumph,
however short-lived, in marrying the man of her heart, who was also a
Beauchamp of Waylands, and in being raised for even a brief space to the
charmed circle of the county. What she had to go through--whether she
would or not--in the end, was not worse than Annie was proposing to
encounter in the beginning, to live in an hospital, to spend her
blooming life amidst frightful accidents, raging fevers, the spasm of
agony replaced by the chill silence and stillness of death. Annie's
father's time and strength had been given in much the same cause, ever
since he was a young man passing his examinations and taking his
diploma. But he was a man, which changed the whole aspect of affairs;
besides he had always had a cheerful home to come back to, with the
command of all the social advantages which Redcross, his native town,
could afford. He had not lived among his patients with no life to speak
of separate from theirs.

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