RAE GIFFORD.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1581, 18 March 1887, Page 4

RAE GIFFORD.

Chapter I.

Linton was an old-fashioned white house, with an air of old fashioned, narrow respectability. It was situated in a paddock kept trim but unomaniented. The door of the house opout'd into a small room barely sufficient to hold hat-pins, an umbrella stand, and a clock-case, and to let a man or a woman pass without an accident. The windows of the roj»m were small; the rooms themselves were low roofed and dark; and the furniture was black in colour and out of date in shape. The Giffords of Linton were not above cai ing for t i pese things. Thev were proud of t bem —proud of Linton having been two h una red years in tho family—prouder than the next squire was of his acres six times the bounds of Linton. But he went into the world and measured himself with bigger squires, earls, and dukes, and knew, after all, that he was nobody except at the Grange, or in the town of Clouds. The Giffords never subjected themselves to such an experience i they hud lived, generation after generation of the heads heads of the house, at home, farming their three grassy farms, and so had grown more and more satisfied of their own dignity and unoccountability. The present Gifford of Linton, who had been a younger son, had given up, on his .nheriting the property, hi* practice as a country lawyer of good standing, tint 1* might enjoy to the full the independence and leisure traditional in the heads of the house. He had married the druggist's daughter at Clouds, to show that he did not need to look out for rank or wealth in a wife, and that he did ,iot care for being cut by the community ; in fact, he preferred ir, sure as he was of retaining the countenance of his one equal —his sister, Mi?s Gifford of Linton.

Miss Gifford forgave her brother's low marriage and tolerated Mrs Gifford, because a Gjffo ed of Liotoo could not do wioogj and

she continued to stay at Linton because nobody could arrange its household and order its domestic economy perfectly, as it had always been ordered, save a born Gifford or somebody very near a Gifford. As for the opinion of the world, Eunice Gifford did not mind,it much more than her brother did.

Mrs and Miss Gifford, the sisters-in-law, were sitting at work together among the grim imitation-ebony chairs, and before the crazy work-table of the drawing-room at Linton. It was not fire o'clock in the afternoon, but the table was [set for tea —not the woman's fife o'clock tea, in the anticipation of the six or seven o'clock dinner of the present generation—but the family tea of the past. The Giffords had not yet given in their adkerence to late hours. The cows allowed to feed in the piddock (the garden was protected by the formality of a high wall, glass a-top, with a stout door having a big rusty key in the lock), on coming home to their supper or their bed, might cross the sweep and"look in at the window on the meal, as cows had done in Misa Gilford's grandmother's time. The two women were" both young—about one age—three or four-and-twenty, and were ten or twelve years Christopher Gifford's juniors. They were dressed alike—in grey silk gowns, with little collars and cuffs; they were working at the same piece of work—two cotton squares for one crotchet-quilt; but nothing could make them like sisters. All that was reached was the loek of two entirely different soldiers in the one uniform. Eunice was the elder. She was a handsome woman, with the clear-cut face of the Giffords. She did not look older than she was, or careworn or unhappy, or even pettish ; she looked fully alive, energetic, and cheerful. But the colour .of her dress did not become her, for she wanted complexion—having an ivory whiteness of skin, extending even to her lips, accompanied by light-brown hair of that dead light-brown in which there is neither oil nor wine. She failed in every gleam of warmth and ray of sunshine. Still, she was a handsome woman, with nothing girlish about her, but much that was womanly. Sitting there, with an easy carriage and a light rapid finger, an observer might read that she was not an illiterate woman; that she was clear-headed and firm-willed; that she kept the best accounts and trained the best servants in her own proud, old-fashioned way in the country; and that there was possibly some branch of science or art in which she was an unpretending skilful proficient. Mrs Gifford (Rae, or Racbael Corbet, that had been) was another order of women; she was low in stature, and exaggerated the defect by stooping, or rather slouching over her work: had she raised herself it would have been seen that her neck, shoulders, and bust were fine. She was low-browed, with an olive complexion that clears to a glowing brown or gets thick and sodden, according to the health of body and mind. The features of the face, in their present outline, were good but heavy, witli a relaxed looseners in the lines ; the lips, particularly, hung half apart, and exposed the naturally small teeth. Tne hair should have redeemed other disadvantages. At first sight, or on a casual glance, it was black. In reality it was auburn, dark to blackness ; but it was ill arranged, in a poor copy of Eunice Gifford's braids, and not very smooth on the rippled-over surface. The eyes had the same deceptive darkness fromithe hue of the lashes ; they were blue-grey eyes—the only clear tiling about her, —somewhat cold from the dnsh of red in the hair—shrinking, introverted eyes, which kept ?back [something, and held a story frozen in their depths. The ey.s of Kae Gifford's were not often seen, they were bent on her work as at present; at church, the ony place where she appeared in public, she never lifted them from her prayer-book. ..Nobody could say that she displayed elation at her rise in society, or challenged observation on her fine clothes. When she walked about the piddock, or took country rambles with her husband and Eunice, she was wont to fall a step behind, and goon looking at the ground, not joining in the conversation unless she was directly addressed, and not caring to lift up her eyes to the elms and beeches friuging the paddock-hedge on the side of the high road, or to the fields and wooded hangers of the general landscape. She had some awkward attitudes and movements out of which Eunice could not break her, fiuding more difficulty there than in the set lessons which she did not scruple to bestow, and which Mrs Gifford did not refuse to sccept. She would sit, her feet drawn below her chair, slouching over her work as described, creep behind people when they walked, and muffle her bauds in her apron, her handkerchief, or her shawl. " Rae, what are you doing with that squire ?" cried Eunice, suddenly; " don't you see that the sides are not even P It is out of shape; it will never fit." - 1 did not notice : shall I pull it down P " asked Mrs Gifford, raising those frozen eyes helplessly. She ;spoke correctly, but with a heavy provincial articulation, as if she had difficulty in moving her tongue, and were too listless in her nature to get rid of the slow drawl.

" Of course; you don't grudge the additional work, Rac ; it would make an ugly blunder in a quilt," exclaimed Eunice, condescend* ingly. " Oh, no * I had as lief pull down as put up," answered Mrs Gifford, stolidly, beginning to tug at the cotton.

" Not' as lief' as soon t the one is as easily said as the other. And take care, Bae, or you will have the whole square down : you know you can stop at the row which is amiss." Eunice did her teaching gently, as a wise woman guides her child; and, taking the work from her sister-in-law's hand, put it all right for her. Wheu it was returned, Mrs Gifford said, " Thank you," let it hang dangling from her fingers for a minute, and then begin again to pick, pick at the lojus, as if she had been set on a treadmill for crotcheting cotton, and, alter a pause, authorised bv the gaoler, had gone on again.

Eunice had the full privilege of looking at her brother's wife as she sat at work, for she never by any chance caught Mrs Gilford's eye; it never wandered: it had nothing to wander for. As for Eunic?, she could work without staring by the hour at her work, and she had quick, sharp eyes, which took in everything, did jnot appreciate oatholirally, but what they appreciated, appreciated thoroughly. " She is little short of an idiot in practical matters, though she can learn theories well enough," meditated Eunice. •' What would poor Christopher have done without me ? What would become of the child, if it be spired ? I wonder what he saw in her, a common, ignorant girl, very rustic, if not altogether vulgar—not even a beauty ? a blurred face und slovenly figure, which repulse me. The kd Penn her father's apprentice gave her up, after keeping company with her, when he went away and got on in the world. Yet they called her ' taking,' at Clouds: in the town's ;phraae— * a wonderful taking girl was Joe Corbet's daughter: took strangers, took Penn, who was a young genius, took Mr Gilford of Linton.' Ah ! that wis the great tuke, and the Giffords have been accustomed lo please themselves. I suppose she has fallen oil; but it is a mercy that lam here to care for the comfort and respectibility of the family. And I mean never to marry—neve to leave Linton." {To it wnfaud),