THE BROWN-PAPER PARCEL.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1072, 6 August 1869, Page 3

THE BROWN-PAPER PARCEL.

IN FIVE CHAPTERS. — CHAPTER 111. (From " All the Year Round.") Troubles and cares had vanished like a dream of the night, when Mary awoke before dawn, to hear her own dear village bells pealing out their welcome to Christmas Eve, and awoke to the glad consciousness that she was really at home. " Rejoice in the Lord daily, and again I say rejoice," was the text that rose in her mind, setting itself to the tune of those joy-bells ail the time she was dressing, with noiseless movements not to disturb the sleeping Cilia. Her morning prayer over, she stole downstairs, and betook herself to the kitchen, where the one sleepy little schoolgirl who formed the whole of the domestic staff was lighting the fire. When Mr. Mackworth came down, it was to hear his daughter's happy voice singing carols, as she bent all her energies to the arrangement of as tempting a breakfast as the simple materials were capable of making. Mrs. Mackwortb, resting in the happy assurance that H her eldest" was now at home to see to everything, was able to enjoy an extra hour of well-earned rest. When Cilia appeared, shivering and miserable, long after every one else had begun breakfast, even her piteous little face brightened at sighi of the dainty spread breakfast table and the good fire ; and she condescended to express approval of the crisp toast which Mary hsd prepared for her. It never occurred to any one, apparently, that her appetite might have been better, and her hands and feet less frozen, if she likewise had been bestirring herself to help in the thousand and one household tasks which there were so few to perform. Mary would have been the last to entertain so sacrilegious and disloyal an idea ; for, ever since she was herself a sturdy brown child of six, and Cilia a delicate gol-den-haired fairy of three, she had learnt to consider that hers was the useful, and her sister's was the ornamental, department in life — a theory which the little lady herself had thoroughly adopted. It was as a matter of course that she sank after breakfast into the solitary arm-chair, with her feet on the fender, looking all that was graceful and pretty [in spite of rather untidy hair, and clothes which would have been the better for a little more brushing and mending] while her mother betook herself to her eternal mending of hoae and clothes, and Mary ilitted about, here, there, and everywhere, in her oldest dress, neat through all its shabbiness, rapidly and quietly establishing order and comfort, wherever she went. There is no need to write in detail the history of the next few days. The curate's family came in for no Christmas gaieties, and for a very scanty amount of Christmas cheer : but they were busy in ministering to the comfort and pleasure of all the poor around them, and even Cilia roused up into fitful interest. Each busy day was followed by a cheery evening. The curate would then rouse himself out of his usual gravity, and prove the truth of his children's old saying, that, when he liked, nobody could be such fun as papa. And Harry and Mary and Cilia all chattered at once, and the gentle mother smiled and listened, and Jack and Laurry got between everybody and the fire, and . were ordered to bed, and refused to go ; and altogether it was very pleasant. For whatever their faults might be, these people thoroughly loved and believed in each other, and even Cilia would with all her heart have endorsed the proverb, that " Home is Home, be it never so homely." "Mary!" she exclaimed one darkening afternoon, nearly a week after Christmas Day : " here is this mysterious brownpaper parcel lying on the chimney-piece. I have been dying all this afternoon to open it. Wasn't I honourable not to do it ?" Mary had just returned from some parish visiting, and Cilia, who considered herself to have a cold, was lounging in the armchair with a novel which Mrs. Halroyd had lent her governess to read on the journey home. " Oh ! let us open it by all means," Mary said, " only I will light the candle first, and draw the curtains, my clear ; you must be killing your eyes reading by fire-light ! " As she trimmed the fire, and proceeded to close the shutters and light the candle, Cilia seized the parcel and attacked the string. Of course she could not break it, and she began a raid on Mary's workbasket, but her sister stopped her. „Not even to gratify Cilia's curiosity would' Mary allow her beat scissors to be spoilt by cutting string. " Particular old thing ! " Cilia called her, with a little impatient shrug. " But my dear, my best scissors ! my only useful pair ! If you'll wait one minute till I light the candle, I'll fetch a knife from the kitchen." Cilia turned.it in her mind whether to go herself, but gave up the idea with a shiver, and applied herself to unfastening the knots. " What do you suppose it can be, Mary ? A fairy godmother's gift perhaps—eh ?" " A wishing-cap," said Mary, laughing. "Oh! dear, what a useful possession that

would be, Cilia. It shouldn't be a case of black puddings with us." '■•_,• " Nice rooms and pretty things, and a - pony carriage that I "could drive myself," said Cilia, with a sigh through all her jesting speech. "A living for papa, and a commission for Harry, and Harrow or Rugby for the boys !" "And what for yourself? For your very own self?" " Quite myself, and nobody else mixed up with it ? Really, I don't know. lam very lucky, I think I have everything. Oh ! I suppose I should give up governessing, if I were quite sure my dear old Archie would get somebody for his governess who wouldn't be cross to him over those sums of his." "And to go to the Nettlehursfc ball? Come, Polly, I've heard you wish for that." "Ah! to be sure! I forgot: and to be quite convinced that my polite unknown did not catch cold. There, Ci! V as she finished putting the room into i;s usual evening trim, "your patience shall bo rewarded! I am going to fetch a knife." " No, you need not : 1 have undone this knot now : the first I ever undid in my lifes I think. Now, Polly !" Mary came and knelt by her as she broke the seals, and unwound the packthread. Out fell a tightly folded roll of thin white paper. • Cilia gave a little half-laughing cry of disappointment : but Mary knew better the look of the article, and she pounced on it with an exclamation of astonishment. "Bank-notes! how strange! Where can they possibly come from ? One, two, three, ten notes ! Oh, Cilia, how wonderful!" " What are they ? Five-pound notes ? Ten-pound notes ?" " Thousand pound notes ! Ten of them, Cilia !" and the brown eyes looked as if they never would close again. " A wishing-cap indeed !" cried Cilia. Mary carried off the bank-notes to the dingy little second sitting-room, where her father was generally to be found at this hour : for under such tremendous circumstances, Saturday though it was, she ventured to interrupt his sermon. Mr. Mackworth was as surprised a3 his daughter, but less bewildered, and considerably less excited. v " Has it not struck you, my dear, that this money may belong to the gentleman who was so polite to you ? Don't you you think it probable that he may have left it in the cab, and that you may have taken it out with your other parcels ?" " But papa, would any one carry about ten thousand pounds in this way ? And then forget it ? It doesn't seem credible." " It is the only explanation I can see, however. And I think we must try to draw up an advertisement for the Times, which the owner would understand and nobody else. And now give me these things, and let me finish my sermon in peace." Mary obeyed ; but her father called her back to caution her against talking on the subject before the children or the servant. "It is just as well," he said, "that all the world should not know that we have ten thousand pounds locked up in my table drawer." So nothing was said about it during tea ; but when the boys were gone to bed, little else was talked about, and everybody had some solution of the mystery to offer, in which nobody else could see any probability. "We shall be like some of Miss Edgeworth's goody poor people," said Cilia ; "we shall send back the bank-notes, and be rewarded for our integrity, and turn into a deserving family. Shan't we, Mary ?" "Or the unknown will assure us that he intended it as a delicate little attention to Mary, and will beg her acceptance of the token," said Harry. " My dears," urged the curate, " we have had almost enough of that joke ; family wit is all very well, but it becomes depressing when the sun is allowed to go down upon it." "Has it depressed you, old Polly ?" said her brother. " You are all in the downs this evening." 3 " Well, I think I am," said Mary. "If this money really belonged to that kind man, I can't bear to think what a scrape his good-nature must have got him into." "His gross carelessness rather," sajd Mr. Mackworth ; " probably some banker's clerk. No doubt he has lost his place for it. Serve him right, I should say." 1 The next day was Sunday, and the ladies of the family betook themselves to the school for the space of time between breakfast and church. Harry and the little boys joined them at church, and Mary soon saw that her eldest brother was suffering under some unusual excitement. The moment the sermon was over, he was out of church like a shot, and siie found him waiting at the door with a newspaper in his hand. He seized her arm, and drew her off a little way, among the tombstones, while he eagerly explained : "Look here, Polly, it is such a queergo ! I was looking over the paper old Murch lent us this morning, and I lit on this advertisement. Look." Mary read : . "Five hundred pounds reward. " Left in a Hansom cab, at the door of Grueby's Library, on the 21st ult., a small brown paper parcel fastened with twine and with four seals in red wax, bearing the initials ." V. L." in a monogram. Any one bringing the same with the contents intact to Messrs. Langley and Co.'s Bank, Lom-bard-street, City, or to the same Bank, High-street, Brigham, shall receive the above reward." Before Harry and Mary had exchanged a word of comment, the curate was upon them, astonished and scandalised at seeing them apparently deep in the l\mes within the churchyard precincts. Mary gave him the paper, and pointed out the paragraph." " That's a comfort," was his first exclamation : " now I am saved the trouble and expense of advertising. We must not lose a moment in restoring the money. lam doubtful whether it is not ouv duty to take it to Nettlehurst. I know Mr. Langley is there. It is not a very Sunday-like bit of business, but I can't bear to keep such a sum in our cottage with no proper lock-up place for it." " Oh ! by all means, papa," cried Mary, eagerly ; " and might not I go with you ? If that poor clerk has got into trouble, I might perhaps say something for* him ; at all events I might explain how it all happened ; might I not ?" Mr. Mackworth decided that Mary's

presence would be desirable, d they\ hastened horn? td eat a hurri|d 'dijinef tfefbrig'f | setting outi ' ' ' '"' " . :,' Evening service at Farley was riot till six o'clock, so there was ample time for the walk to Nettlehurst, as both Mary and heir father were quick walkers, and thought no?. . thing of the three miles out, and three back, ' even in the dirt and gloom of a raw! January afternoon. Mary was well defended from the ' weather, and enjoyed thoroughly the rare treat of a t&e-a-tete withpapa. The walk itself too was enjoyable. It lay through country which would have been lovely! irk summer and which was picturesque } even. ■ in the dead of winter; the first part through flat green fields guarded ;by very imprao - tiuable stiles, and then they emerged into the road, which gradually mounted, until plantations and well-kept fences on each , side of it showed that they were passing through some gentleman's grounds. "Here is Nettlehursfc," said Mr. Mackworth as, after following a low park wall for some distance, they found themselves close to tall iron gates, spick and span* and fresh and neat, as was the picturesque lodge, its trim garden, and the broad carriage drive. A woman, as tidy as everything else, in her Sunday garb, admitted them; and they walked on through well-kept plantations first, and then through a small park, somewhat dreary now, with its tufta: of blackened heather and dead bracken.;, A flower-garden was laid out close to t^e house, which was a picturesque building, all gable ends. The flower-beds were filled with branches of holly-evergreen, a device which neither Mary nor her father had ever seen before ; and all along the south front of the house was a glittering conservatory giving a peep at gorgeous hues and graceful trailing forms, a welcome contrast to the bleak desolation of the out of door world. " Very nice all this is," said the curate, approvingly; you should have seen this place as I did in old Hathaway's time, when I was taking Morton's duty. Everything was going to wreck and ruin ! " Their ring at the bell was answered by a tall footman, whose gorgeous appearance made Mary blush for her own splashed stockings and her father's, threadbare coat; . But he was affable, though "not sure .that his master was at home," and on hearing that they came on business, he gave them over to a still more sublime personage out of livery, who, having taken Mr. Mackworth's card, conducted them through a small carpeted hall and long passage, and left them in the library.