A Houseful of Girls

S >> Sarah Tytler >> A Houseful of Girls

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There was the customary bustle of a market day at "Robinson's." Miss
Franklin was moving about in the women's department, seeing that
everybody there was served, and giving an occasional direction to the
women who served. She was, as Dora Millar had once described her, as
"fat as a pin-cushion," with what had been originally a fair
pink-and-white complexion, degenerated into the mottled "red all over,"
into which such complexions occasionally pass in middle life. But she
looked like a lady by many small traits--by her quiet, easy movements;
by the clear enunciation and pleasant tones, which could be ringing when
necessary, of a cultivated voice that reached the ears of the
bystanders. She did not wear the conventional black silk or cashmere of
a shop-woman. There might be a lingering protest or a lurking vanity in
the myrtle-green gown and the little lace cap, with its tiny _noeuds_
of dark green riband, which she wore instead. One might guess by their
dainty decorum and becomingness that Miss Franklin had thought a good
deal, and to purpose, about dress, in her day--had made a study of it,
and taken pleasure in its finer effects. In that light she was the right
woman in the right place--presiding over the shop-women in a
linen-draper's shop. At the same time she belonged as clearly to the
upper middle class as did the two girls advancing towards the shop, who,
in place of being studiously well and handsomely dressed, were just a
little shabby, and careless how they looked in their last year's gray
velveteens, with hats to match, which Dora in her conscientious economy
had re-trimmed not very nicely.

Lag as the girls might, they could not delay their progress much longer,
and their bosoms were torn with conflicting emotions. What were they to
do? Leave the truant Tray to his fate? Boldly halt before the next shop
window, and trust to his seeing and joining them there? Still more
boldly, enter and request "the body of the culprit" to be delivered up
to his owner? Before they could come to a decision, Tom Robinson himself
appeared in the foreground. He was speaking, or rather listening to a
giant of a farmer in a light overcoat and streaming cravat, who, in
place of treating the master of "Robinson's" as "a whipper-snapper of a
counter-jumper," was behaving to him with the most unsophisticated
deference. Yet Tom's under size and pale complexion looked more
insignificant than ever beside the mighty thews and sinews and perennial
bloom of his customer. In spite of that, Tom Robinson was as undeniably
a gentleman in the surroundings, as Miss Franklin was a lady, and the
big honest farmer recognized and accepted the fact. While the pair stood
there, and the farmer made an elaborate explanation of the matter in
hand--broadcloth or blankets probably--to which Tom attended
courteously, as courteously as he would have heard the deliverances of
the member of the county or the bishop, Tray flashed out of the mellow
obscurity of the background and sniffed vigorously at the trowser ankles
of the master of "Robinson's."

"Hallo!" cried Tom, looking down at his feet.

"A bit fine terrier-dawg, Mister Robinson, sir," remarked the farmer;
"but I'm thinking he's strayed."

At the same instant both Tray and Tom caught sight of May's anxious face
peering in at the shop door. Tray rushed to his mistress with a
boisterously gracious greeting, which did not include the slightest
self-consciousness or sense of wrongdoing in its affability. Tom took a
couple of steps after him.

"I'm afraid, Miss May, you're spoiling that dog," he said, in friendly
remonstrance, before he observed who was with May, and stopped and bowed
with some constraint.

"Oh! Mr. Robinson," replied May, in her volubility effacing any shy
attempt at greeting on Dora's part, "I am so sorry for Tray's rudeness
in going into your shop without being invited; but I do think he knew
you again, I am almost sure of it," she said eagerly, as if the
assurance were sufficient propitiation for any trifling lack of ceremony
where a reasonable human being was concerned.

"It might have been better if I had known a little more of him," said
Tom musingly, biting his moustache, as he took leave of the three.

Tray meandered down the street, followed hurriedly by his mistress and
Dora. Tom looked after them, and speculated into how many more scrapes
the brute would get the girls, wondered too if one of them would think
she had him to thank for the infliction, and that it was an odd instance
of the friendship which he had pressed her to give him in lieu of a
warmer feeling. That friendship was not progressing very rapidly, though
the world might consider the Millars more in need of friends than when
he had begged to make one of the number. But Tom Robinson knew better.
These girls were enough for themselves in any emergency. They would
never fall back on friends or depend upon them. Even Dora, who had
stayed at home with May, would suffer in silence and bear anything with
and for her family, before she would complain or ask help.

Tray's errant fancy finally took him down a lane leading to the Dewes
and to a sheltered walk between rows of yellowing elms by the side of
the river. The girls were at last able to enjoy themselves. They
sauntered along, talking at their ease, watching the bars of sunlight on
the water, and the crowds of flies in the golden mist which the approach
of sunset was drawing down over everything, and listening to a robin
singing on a bough, when their misadventures for one day culminated and
their worst apprehensions were fulfilled. A mongrel collie advancing in
the opposite direction, with no better qualified guardian than a young
servant girl, who had also a perambulator containing a couple of small
children to look after, aroused the warlike spirit of Tray. He growled
defiance and bristled in every hair, while Dora caught nervously at his
elegant morocco collar, which burst asunder in her grasp, and May
shrieked agitated soothing endearments to no purpose. What unmagnanimous
cur could resist such a challenge? In another instant the inequal combat
was raging furiously. The two dogs first stood on their hind legs,
grappled together, and glared at each other for a second, like two
pugilists trying a preliminary fall, or a couple of duellists pointing
their pistols. The next moment the dogs were rolling over and over each
other on the narrow path, worrying each other with the horrible
snarling noise that accompanies such a performance.

May danced a frantic dance round the combatants, screamed shrilly, and
made dangerous, ineffectual darts at Tray. The servant girl neither
danced, nor screamed, nor made darts; she stood stolidly still, with
something between a gape and a grin on her broad red face. She had not
the passion for dog-fights entertained by the _gamins_ of the streets,
such fights were simply immaterial trifles to her amidst the weightier
concerns of her life; and she had seen her master's dog get too many
kicks in the ribs--a discipline from which he rose up howling but not
greatly injured--to be troubled with any sensitive fears as to his
safety. Besides his enemy was a small beast, a lady's dog, whom Growler
could dispose of in a twinkling, if his temper were up.

"Oh! can you not call off your dog?" wailed May in her agony. "He will
kill Tray. Oh! my Tray, my Tray," and she made another rush to rescue
her pet.

"Don't, May, you'll be bitten," implored Dora.

"He don't mind me, miss, not one bit, our Growler don't," said the
composed damsel, as if Growler's indifference were rather a feather in
his cap.

Alas! for any attention that the victim paid to May's desperate
remonstrances. She had in fact no right to reproach the enemy's
temporary proprietress for her lack of authority over her four-footed
companion. But poor May in her misery was neither logical nor just. She
turned on the other with a passionate challenge, "What business have you
to bring out a horrid brute like that, which you cannot master, to kill
other people's dear little pets?"

"Hush, hush, May," besought Dora, "I think they are leaving off." There
was a slight cessation in the hostilities. "The noise you are making may
set them on again."

"It were your dog as begun it." Growler's sponsor defended both herself
and Growler defiantly.

"Oh!" screamed May, "they're at it again. Tray is down and the cruel
monster is at his throat. Will nobody help us? Will nobody save my poor
little dog?"

The girls were carrying neither sunshades nor umbrellas. They could not
reach the lower boughs of the trees to pull down a switch, but just as
May was springing forward to dare the worst herself, sooner than see
Tray perish unaided before her eyes, Dora caught sight of a large
half-loose stone in the path. "Stand back, May," she gasped, as she tore
it up. Dora's face was as white as paper; she was sick with fright and
distress; she would fain have shut her eyes if she had not known that
she needed every advantage which sight could give her to prevent her
hitting Tray, instead of his foe, as the two rolled over each other in
the struggle which was growing deadlier every second.

"Stop," cried a voice of command behind her, "you'll have the dog turn
upon you as soon as he has finished his present job," and a welcome
deliverer ran forward just in time. He seized the first tail he could
grasp--luckily for him it was Tray's and not Growler's--and hung on to
it like a vice. The "redder" of the combatants, regardless of "the
redder's lick," which was likely to be his portion, continued to hold
the tail of the now yelling Tray, and at the same time seized him by the
scruff of the neck with the other hand, and dragged both animals, still
locked together, with his whole force nearer and nearer to the edge of
the bank by the river.

A new terror beset May. "Take care, you'll have them in the water."

No sooner said than done. With a plunge the two dogs fell heavily into
the Dewes, while the man who had brought them to this pass kept his own
footing with difficulty.

"They'll both be drowned," cried May, clasping her hands in the last
depths of anguish.

"Not at all," said Tom Robinson, panting a little from his exertions
and wiping his hands with his handkerchief. "I did it on purpose--don't
you see? It was the only way to make the beggars lose their grip. Look
there, they are swimming like brothers down the stream--that small
spitfire of yours is not badly hurt. I told you that you were spoiling
him--you ought to make him obey and come to heel, or he will become the
torment of your life. The bank shelves a little a few yards further
down; you will find that he will come to shore shaking himself nothing
the worse. It may be a lesson to him; if not, I should like to give him
a bit of my mind."

True enough, Tray scrambled up the bank presently, bearing no more
alarming traces of the fray than were to be found in his limping on
three legs, and halting every other minute that he might ruefully attend
to the fourth.

Growler also landed, and after glancing askance at his antagonist and at
the champion who had suddenly interposed between Tray and his deserts,
wisely agreed with the small maid-servant on the judiciousness of
immediately taking themselves off, in company with the perambulator and
the babies, to avoid any chance of awkward inquiries.

May ran to Tray, clasped him all dripping in her arms, and prepared to
carry him tenderly home. But in spite of the injuries, for which he was
exceedingly sorry, he asserted his spirit of independence, and declined
to be made a baby of.

"I am afraid we have given you a great deal of trouble, Mr. Tom," said
Dora, while May was still devoting herself to her rescued treasure. Dora
spoke shyly, and inadvertently used the old familiar name, which he had
borne when his father was alive.

"Don't mention it," he said gravely, as shy as she was; "I feel
answerable for inflicting that wretched dog on you--that is, on your
sister. I was sure he would lead you a pretty dance after he was in the
shop this afternoon."

"Oh! Mr. Robinson," cried May, tearing herself away from the
contemplation of her darling in order to pour forth her sense of relief
and the depth of her gratitude, "what a good thing it was you came up to
us! What should we have done without you? Oh! you don't think dear
little Tray is lamed for life--do you? Of course that is ever so much
better than having him killed outright in our sight; still if he would
only let me pick him up and rest his poor hurt leg it might help him,"
protested May wistfully.

"Let him alone, he is all right," he said in his short stiff way. Then
he made a bantering amendment on his speech, because he was quick to see
that his want of sympathy vexed the young girl, perhaps rendered her
burden of gratitude more difficult to bear.

"At the worst, you know he would be as well off as Horatius Cocles, and
he is likely to escape the beating which he richly deserves."

"Oh! Mr. Robinson, beat him! when he meant no harm, when he has been all
but drowned or worried to death by that great, coarse, rough creature,"
cried May, opening large brown eyes of astonishment and indignation.

"I wonder what _he_ would call Tray if he could speak--an insolent
little rascal, who had no proper respect for his superiors."

Dora did not join in the conversation. Her colour came and went, and she
kept glancing at the handkerchief which Tom Robinson was fluttering
about in his hand.

It was May who stopped short and cried in fresh dismay, "There is blood
on your handkerchief; I believe you have been bitten. What shall we do?"

"What should you do, Miss May?" he answered with a laugh. "It is only a
minute impression left by the fine teeth of your friend. You would have
it that he knew me a little while ago, and it seems we were destined to
be more intimately acquainted."

"Come home with us this minute," cried May, so dead in earnest, that
she grasped his arm, and made as if she would have dragged him forward.
"Father will dress it and heal it. I am so sorry, so ashamed, though
Tray did not know what he was doing."

He laughed again quite merrily, as it sounded. "If Tray did not know, he
did his small best to get rid of me. I daresay I was not treating him
with much ceremony. I am afraid I gave his tail as sharp a pinch as I
could administer before I could get at his neck. No, I am not going home
with you; thanks for the invitation. Do you wish Dr. Millar to think me
crazy? Do you apply to your father for medical assistance when you give
yourself a pin-prick?"

"But the bite of a dog is very different, though Tray is the dog,"
moaned May.

"Tray is in excellent health and spirits; I can vouch for that," said
Tom. "I have not the slightest apprehension of hydrophobia."

"O--h!" said May, with a deeper moan.

Dora had continued silent; indeed she could hardly speak, and her face
had grown more like ashes than paper.

He was standing still, and raising his hat a little awkwardly with his
left hand, in lieu of shaking hands with his right, as they came to the
point where their roads parted.

Dora made a great effort and uttered her remonstrance: "I wish you would
come home with us, and let father look at your hand."

"You too, Miss Dora--nonsense," he said sharply as it sounded.

"If Annie had been here," she persisted, "she would have been of a
hundred times more use than I, but if you'll let me I'll try to tie it
up for you."

She spoke so humbly that he answered her with quick kindness, "And pain
you by exposing a scratch to your notice? No, indeed, all that I'll ask
of you is never to fling stones at strange dogs, though they should be
tearing that unlucky imp of mischief limb from limb."

"It was very unkind of him to speak so rudely of poor Tray," sighed May,
as the sisters hurried home; "although it was Tom Robinson who gave him
to me, I don't think the man has ever put a proper value on the dog. But
I daresay he will call to-morrow though he has not come with us just
now, to ask for Tray, and to see how we are after our fright."

"No, he won't come," said Dora with conviction, and she walked on
silently thinking to herself, "How strong and resolute he was, though he
is not a big man, and how little he minded being bitten. Men are
different from women. Of course, he is nothing to me, but I may be
permitted to admire his courage and coolness. No, he will not come, I
am sure of that, he is the last man to take advantage of an accident and
of his coming to our assistance. Even if he did, and I had ever cared
for him, and there had been no 'Robinson's,' it would be too late and
too bad to change one's mind after we had grown poor and had to work for
ourselves."

Dora was right. Tom Robinson did not come. He contented himself with
intercepting Dr. Millar on his rounds, learning that Dora and May were
no worse for their misadventure, and giving their father a piece of
information.

In consequence of that hint, and under the pretence of having Tray's
wounded leg properly seen to, he was, to May's intense chagrin and
disgust, despatched to a veterinary surgeon's, where he remained for
some time, returning at last a sadder and a wiser dog.

CHAPTER X.

LIFE IN AN HOSPITAL WARD.

St. Ebbe's was a model hospital, with every enlightened improvement in
the treatment of the sick poor, and every humane ordinance which the
highly developed skill and the strongly stimulated benevolence of the
nineteenth century could enforce.

Annie Millar was one of six lady probationers, including a bishop's
daughter, two daughters of squires, and three doctor's daughters like
herself. The matron was the widow of a doctor, who had been eminent
alike for professional talent and philanthropy. She was like-minded. If
she had not her late husband's knowledge and acumen as a medical man,
she had much of his experience, and was full of energy and determination
to better the world, the sick, and the poor, almost whether they would
or not. Very few people could look Mrs. Hull in the face and contradict
her high motives and determined will.

Fortunately, Annie's beauty had not worked the scathing destruction
which Mrs. Millar had anticipated with fear and trembling. An
inflammable medical student or two might have been just singed by the
fire of her charms; an older member of the fraternity might have
neglected for an instant to look up at the card above a bed in order to
turn his head and cast a second admiring glance after the new recruit in
the hospital uniform; but no man forgot his duty or was false to earlier
vows through her allurements.

Mrs. Hull had cast a sharp glance at the dainty figure and flower-like
face under the nurse's linen gown and close cap. Annie's sister
probationers, four of them considerably older than herself, had
telegraphed to each other emphatic--perhaps pardonable enough--signals
that the last accession to their number was so very ornamental they
could hardly expect her to be useful. They must look out for defects,
and prepare to atone for failures by their surpassing attainments. But
the mistake was soon rectified, and fresh light dawned on the doubtful
question. Mrs. Hull was the first to recognize and testify that nothing
was to be feared from Annie Millar's youth and beauty, while something
might be gained by them, because she was far more than pretty--she was a
bright, clever girl, very obedient to orders, and exceedingly anxious
to learn her business. In her St. Ebbe's had secured an auxiliary of the
highest promise. The elder sister probationers soon found that instead
of wanting indulgence, forbearance, and pity, the newcomer was more in
danger of awakening their envy as well as their respect by her quickness
in mastering details, her mental grasp of principles, her inexhaustible
spirit.

Yet poor Annie had no light apprenticeship to serve. The programme,
which extends from making poultices and making beds to receiving
doctors' instructions, understanding them, remembering them, and acting
on them, is neither short nor easy, though a fairly good and trained
intellect and an unswerving devotion to duty will get through it
triumphantly in time. Annie underwent the entire ordeal, while she
doubtless brought a little additional intelligence and capacity and a
few more grains of experience to the task than would have existed if she
had not been Dr. Millar's daughter. In spite of the warm woollen jacket
and cuffs which she wore under her linen gown, her little hands were
covered with the chaps and chilblains which are the scourge of
maids-of-all-work, because of their early rising, hard scrubbing, and
the frequency with which their fingers are wet and dried on chill winter
mornings. Her legs ached, as they had never ached after a night's
dancing, with being on her feet all day long, and day after day,
waiting on her patients and attending on the sisters who were placed
over the respective wards. Her mind, too, was kept on the stretch with
the serious charge of pulses and temperatures, with the grave
responsibility of shelves on shelves of medicine bottles, with acquiring
the best modes of bandaging, fomenting, bleeding, stopping the flow of
blood, so that during the little leisure she had she could not turn to a
book for relief; she fell asleep with sheer fatigue more frequently.

Annie was too high-spirited and independent to feel the loneliness of
her position among strangers, whom she soon converted into friendly
acquaintances, if nothing more, as many a girl--as Dora, for
instance--would have done. But, accustomed as Annie had been all her
life to much closer and warmer relations, she clung to the presence of
Rose in London; and it was a proof of how much the elder sister was used
up, when, even on her days and hours for getting out, it was often with
difficulty that she could bring herself to go and see Rose, or to meet
and walk a portion of the way with her on Rose's progress from Mrs.
Jennings's boarding-house to the Misses Stone's school, where she taught
drawing, or to Mr. St. Foy's art classes, where she learned it.

Annie had suffered considerably from what is known as hospital or
infirmary sore throat, because it is understood to be caused by inhaling
the fumes from the carbolic acid used in the wards. Her rich colour had
to Rose's dismay grown poor and pale for a time. She had laboured under
the still more trying and more dangerous infliction, when the senses
morbidly excited become morbidly acute, and she seemed still to smell
the peculiar air of the wards wherever she went. Then Mrs. Hull insisted
on Annie's leaving for a few days, and bundled her off, without the
power of resistance, to a sister of the matron's, who kindly consented,
as her part of the work, to receive and recruit the temporarily overdone
servants of St. Ebbe's Hospital.

In spite of the strength of Annie's nerves, and her power of controlling
them, she sickened once or twice with a deadly sickness at sights and
sounds worse than her most vivid imagination could have conceived
possible. She had to summon all her courage, together with the
conviction that if she did not overcome the weakness speedily, she would
be compelled to own that she had mistaken her calling, in order to
vanquish the insidious foe.

Sometimes, while she was ready to thank God that it was rather the
exception than the rule, she had to witness the lowest moral degradation
in addition to the sharpest human suffering, and this at an age and with
a nature when the feeling of extreme repulsion, amounting to positive
loathing, is in danger of prevailing. It needed all her faith to do
battle with this worst temptation, and force pity to conquer disgust, to
recognize humbly the frailty of the best and wisest men and women, to
acknowledge willingly, even thankfully, the propriety, if one may so use
the word, of what a preacher has called each Christian's suffering, "the
just for the unjust."

No wonder poor Annie's bright face took frequently a worn and harassed
look in those early days of hospital work.

Yet so great is the elasticity of youth, and so brave and cheerful was
the girl's temperament for the most part, that within an hour of such
prostrating attacks and violent revolts, she would be on her way with
her own little tea-pot to the retiring-room, where the lady probationers
and sisters assembled in order to profit by the great boiler steaming on
the hob for their women's refreshment of tea. It was about the only
servile act which they were required to do for themselves, while they
were the servants of others, and they all enjoyed doing it with true
housewifely relish. Annie, especially, was an adept at such tea-making,
and would propound her theories and circulate specimens of her
performance among her companions who profited by her skill, with a glee
not far removed from the mirth of the Millar girls on many a happy
family gathering in the old nursery or the drawing-room at Redcross.

The whole circumstances of one of the bad days in her lot Annie could
never quite forget. It was a raw, gray winter's day, cheerless above and
below, and all went wrong on it, from the moment Annie opened her sleepy
eyes, leapt shivering out of bed, washed in cold water by her own
choice, in order to rouse herself, dressed by gaslight, swallowed her
coffee scalding hot, and hastened to her particular ward. The sister and
the house-surgeon were, as if affected by the day, a little sour and
surly, and every patient seemed more or less out of tune, dismal,
grumbling, delirious, or in a state of collapse.

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