'Weel may the boatie row,'
while making paper boats for Stella to drag by strings upon the smooth boards.
'Eh, Cherry, are you the Last Man, or the Last Rose of Summer ?'
'The last of the caterpillars,' said Cherry, smiling, but with effort. 'Do you see Stella's fleet-just thirteen?'
'Making omens, foolish child!' but though Stella was eagerly pointing and explaining, 'Tat Tella's boat-tat Tedo's-tat brothers-tat Angel,' and so on, the word foolish was not directed to the little one, but to the gray eyes heavy with unshed tears, that rested wistfully upon a wreck that had caught upon a nail and lay rent and ragged.
'Pray don't look which it is,' said she.
'Certainly not; I hate auguries.'
'Do you think there is nothing in them?'
'I think there is nothing in this room but what ought to be in mine. Do you expect me to stand discussing superstition in this horrible raw emptiness? Here,' picking up Theodore, 'I'll come back for you.'
'Oh no, thank you, let me get down by myself; he cannot be left alone in a room.'
'Come, Stella, and take care of him.'
'That's worse, she leads him into mischief. We are fox, goose, and cabbage. Please give me my crutch; Wilmet put it out of reach because she said I was destroying myself.'
'You are tired to death.'
'Oh no; but one can't sit still when so much is going on. Oh, how delicious!' as after an interval she arrived, and found Mr. Audley winding up a musical box, which Theodore was greeting with its own tunes, and Stella with a dance and chant of 'Sing box-sing box;' and then the two sat listening to the long cycle of tunes which would hold Theodore entranced for any length of time.
After a short inquiry and a reply as to the sister-in-law's state, and a few words on the progress of the flitting, there was a silence while Mr. Audley read the letters that had come for him in his absence, and Cherry's face became more and more pensive. At last, when Mr. Audley laid down his letters, and leant against the chimneypiece, she ventured to say, 'Is it wrong?'
'Is what wrong?' said the Curate, who had quite forgotten the subject.
'To care about omens.'
'That depends. To accept them is sometimes necessary; to look out for them is generally foolish and often wrong.'
'Sometimes necessary?' said Cherry eagerly.
'Sometimes experience seems to show that in good Providence a merciful preparation is sent not so much to lead to anticipations, as to bring the mind into keeping with what is coming, and, as it were, attune it.'
'So that little things may be constantly types of great future ones?'
'My dear Cherry, I said not constantly.'
'Just let me tell you. Sibby says that the very day we all came into this poor old house, just as the omnibus stopped, there was the knell ringing overhead, and a funeral coming up the street. She knew it was a token, and burst out crying; and dear Mamma, who you know never shed tears, turned as white as a corpse, as if she was struck to the heart.'
'And your father?'
'Oh! Sibby said he just stood in the doorway, lifted his hat as the funeral passed and then well-nigh carried Mamma, with the baby (that was Fulbert) in her arms, over the threshold, and smiled at her, saying, "Well, mother, what better than to have found our home till death!" So you see he did believe in it.'
'I see he wanted to cheer her spirits, not by saying "stuff and nonsense," but reminding her that there are worse things than death. Have you an omen on your mind, Cherry? Have it out; don't let it sink in.'
'Only please don't laugh at me. Indeed, it was not my own doing, but Stella's fancy to have a boat for each of us, when she was launching them; and I could not help recollecting how we are all starting out and away from our first home.'
'Stella's was not a very perilous ocean.'
'That was a comfort at first; and Stella tried to draw all the thirteen lines together, but they tangled, and one thread broke, and that boat was left behind; and one poor crooked ill-made thing fell over, and was left at home because hindering all the rest, and even Stella knew that was me, and-'her voice quivered, 'one was caught on a nail, and torn into a wreck! Now, can I help thinking, though you'll just call them newspaper-boats, dragged by a baby on a dry dusty floor?'
'Watched by a weary fanciful damsel,' said Mr. Audley, sitting down by her, 'who does not know a bit more than she did before, that all are launching on a sea, and if it is a rougher one, there's a better Guiding Star than Stella Eudora to lead them, and they have compasses of their own-ay, and a Pilot. And if there are times when He seems to be asleep in the ship-why, even the owner of the unseaworthy boat left at home can show the Light, and pray on till the others are roused to awaken Him.
'I wish there had not been that wreck,' she sighed.
'What seems a wreck need not be really one,' said Mr. Audley. 'It may be the very way of returning to the right course. And by and by we shall see our Master standing on the shore in the morning light.'
At that moment there was a sound at the door-Felix had accompanied Cherry's chair, to bring her and Theodore to the new home. There was too much haste for the wistful last looks she intended: she was deposited in the chair with Theodore on her knee, Stella trotting after, with Felix and Mr. Audley who was coming to see the inauguration. St. Oswald's Buildings were left behind, and she was drawn up to the green private door, beside the shop window; Wilmet hurried down and took Theodore from her; Felix helped her out, and up the narrow steep staircase, which certainly was not a gain, but when landed in the drawing-room, the space seemed to her magnificent. And their own furniture, the two or three cherished portraits brought from Vale Leston, their father's chair, their mother's sofa, the silk patchwork table-cover that had been the girl's birthday present to Mamma, the bookcase with Papa's precious books, made it seem home- like.
'The mantelpiece is just the same!' cried Cherry, delighted, as she recognised all the old ornaments.
The next moment her delight was great at the flower-stands, which Mr. Froggatt had kindly left full of primulas, squills, and crocuses; and when she looked out from the back room into the little garden, where Mr. Froggatt's horticultural tastes had long found their sole occupation, and saw turf, green laurels, and bunches of snowdrops and crocuses, she forgot all Stella's launch!
CHAPTER XI. THE CHORAL FESTIVAL
'And with ornaments and banners,
As becomes gintale good manners,
We made the loveliest tay-room upon Shannon shore.'
THACKERAY.
'Of course, after this,' said Lady Price, 'Miss Underwood did not expect to be visited.'
Otherwise the gain was great. The amusement of looking out of window into the High Street was alone a perpetual feast to the little ones, and saved Geraldine worlds of anxiety; and the garden, where they could be turned out to play, was prized as it only could be by those who had never had any outlet before. It was a pleasant little long narrow nook, between the printing-house on the west, and such another garden on the east, a like slip, with a wall masked by ivy and lilacs, and overshadowed by a horse-chestnut meeting it on the south. It was not smoky, and was quite quiet, save for the drone and stamp of the steam-press; there was grass, a gum-cistus and some flower- beds in the centre, and a gravel-walk all round, bordered by narrow edgings of flowers, and with fruit trees against the printing-house wall, and a Banksia and Wisteria against that of the house. Mr. Froggatt was quite touched at the reverence with which Angela and Stella regarded even the daisies that had eluded his perpetual spud; and when he found out the delight it was to Cherry to live with flowers for the first time in her life, he seldom failed to send her a bunch of violets or some other spring beauty as soon as he arrived in the morning, and kept the windows constantly supplied with plants.