OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 849, 8 June 1888, Page 5

OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

A LITTLE BROWN WITCH. (Concluded.) By Harriet Prescott Sfofford. Once or twice during Lance’s stay Nina went into the kitchen, and with a strong hand compelled old Rose, the cook, to show her how to prepare certain dishes, and then she watched outside the kitchen door of the luncheon-room, now to learn 1 -of their reception, which was tolerably favourably. ‘ I always knew I could do it if 1 wanted to,’ she said. And then she might have been observed bent over work in hidden corners till she had finished a little purse of steel beads. ‘Here!’ she cried over, the bannisters, the morning Lance was going away, ‘..You take this 1 There’s a lucky penny in it.’ He looked up and saw her bending there—the strangest lady, so serious, and dark and witch-like, that ever sent knight on his devoir.

* I will take it,’ he said, ‘if you will come down and give it to me.’ And step by Btep she oame down, as if he drew her forward and some unwilling power held her back, and laid the little brown leaf of a hand in his. And then Lance drew her a little nearer, and bending from his lordly height to kiss me good-bye, turned and bent and gravely kissed her too. In another instant she had broken away and had raced out into the orchard and hidden herself in the long grass ; and when she came in, some hours afterward, she announced that she was never going to wash the spot upon her face that Lance had kissed.

‘That girl is a fool,’ said Aunt Juliet, who had dropped in. I don t know whether the fact that her foot caught in a croquet wicket and threw her down on her way to the gate afterward had anything to do with her remark or not.

Shortly after this Nina said : * You know I always said anybody could do anything if they only wanted to do it. I wanted to cook these things ; and you know what he said about them. I wanted to make him a purse, and there wasn’t a knot in the silk. Now I want to learn French and music and all that white thing Flora Denny knows. And you’ll see.’ And she did. Not all at once, of course, did we see the desired proficiency; but she had a natural aptitude for music and for art. And presently a strange quietude seemed to have fallen on the house ; and now*, instead of a little brown imp, there was a slender, dark young girl whose angles were~:iturning into curves, on whose olive cheek a ruddy tint was blossoming, whose lips were a bow-knot of scarlet, and whose eyes—there never were such eyes out of a gipsy’s head 1 The swift oapriciousness of movement had become a sort of flashing grace : indifference to dress had changed ■ to a wondrous taste for the picturesque, and carelessness for the feelings of others had vanished before her old intense tenderness for one and all of us.

‘She has been going through the chrysalis stage,’ said Ralph. ‘And what a gorgeous butterfly she is going to be 1’ * She is not going to be a gorgeous butterfly at all,’ said I. ‘All this has resulted from some dream- of Lance. And Lance will marry her white enemy there, of course, and she will sadden into a little brown moth of some sort. 1

‘Nonsense,’ said Rilph. ' 'Lance ouly opened her eyes. Every girl, every boy, has to have a half-dozen ohances before the real one comes along. Don’t you remember “Romeo’s Rosaliud ?” Yes, Lance will marry Flora, and much joy go with them. But our Nina shall do better.’

Ralph was right. One day Flora came in quietly with a letter in her hand, aud told 1 us in her gentle-voiced way of an engagemeut to Lance ; and if Nina had had a dream the dream was over. But I was not at all myself ; Nina did not sadden to any extent nor for any length of time,-and before we could account for it ourselves, she was brighter and sweeter and even gayer about the house than nny household fairy. * You had better call mo your Brownie,’ she said, when I began to perceive from how many little tasks she saved me, how much she looked out for Ralph’s comfort, how absorbed she was in Effie, how she beautified the house with her pencil and her flowers, what a bit of vital hearth-fire she had beoome.

But while this peacefulness was developing at home, there was trouble brooding abroad. Ralph’s business was in a sad way, and oreditors were cruel, and disaster was impending. And one day it came. The great operation ou whioh, outside of his legal business, Ralph had boeu engaged so long, fell with a crash, aud all our hopes of the future, aud all our certainty of the present fell with it. Everything was to be given up, and with all the rest our home that had been such a nest of happiness for all our married years. Of course I did what I could to hold up my poor Ralph’s hands, and it was settled that we were to go into lodgings and live in the smallest way possible while he was picking up some practice again, taking a desk in an office that was open to hitn. ‘Now,’said Aunt Juliet, ‘you see what it is to have burdened yourself with another mouth to feed and back to olotbe 1’

‘Nina is no burden,’ said I. * She is a blessing. She is an angel we entertained unawares.’

‘Oh, yes; she’s all your fancy painted her, she’s lovely, she’s divine. But she's got to live 1’ said Aunt Juliet. ’ ‘ And you’v* got to find her the means. And I don’t see how you’re going to do it without starving and stripping yourselves; Surely you can’t afford 1o keep a cook now j aud I’ll tike Rose off your lianda. I’ve always wanted her.’

Of course I gave Rose the option of going to Aunt Juliet. ‘No, I thank you, ma’am,’ said Rose. ‘I wouldn't live with your Aunt Juliet,, ma’am, not if she had the only mansion there was in heaven 1’

• I always told you I was your little servant maid,’ said Nina. 4 And now J will either go out to work some way, or stay and do your work here. I can’t do too much'for you. , I can’t do too much for him! Do you knosv, ouce I thought, for just a little while; that Lance was the only man iu the world l Lance isn’t a shadow beside him 1 Thero isn’s such a soul alive as his, and you were made for him ! Ob, if I only wore good for something now !’ - ‘We will all work together,’ I said, thinking it best to disregard her enthusiasiam lest it become hysterical. ‘The laundress and the second girl have gone, and it s just as well; for we shouldn’t havo room for them in our new lodgings’—and then it was I who was hysterical, for. I broke down crying, the thought of leaving my dear home just then being more than I could near. The appraisers had been there that day going over everything, and it had all seemed such an intrusion and profanation that it had been too much for me ; and I wondered when an apparently acci. dental bucketful of water was dashed from an upper-story window as they were going away giving them a thorough wetting, ft it Mad not been too much for somebody else and the old spirit might not be again taking possession; .<••••. • It made something flash fire inside of me like sparks, said Nina, ‘to see those men turning over our dear things. Ob, why can’t I do-something •to earn some money in a; lump 1 If there were only a millionaire for me to marry. I might marry him, you know —I’m very pretty.’ _ • ‘ Oh, Nina !’ I exclaimed. ‘ls this the end of all my teaching ?’ But I had to laugh in the midst of my troubles. But Nina did not look at it as I did, the affair anyway being in the nature of a myth. ‘ I’d marry him, you know in a minute if: I could,’ she said, ‘ and give his money all to you. -If I had Aunt Juliet’s money, do you; suppose I’d take your cook? Do you sup-; pose I’d let them take your house? No! If I had a quarter of the bonds she has packed, away in that safety deposit box of hers I’d make life so gay for you all that you’d think you’d died and gone to heaven ! And he should never have a care again! And have Effie to grow up without an education —•; heavens 1 I’m so glad I learned something at last—she can have all that now! I lie; awake nights and picture how I’d spend a fortune if I had it, and spend it all on you.’ Well, I felt such love more than repaid me for all the trouble I had with her from the hour when I found her iu the little fishing hut on the shore ; and I told her so, and we had a very enjoyable cry together. I was sitting that night rooking myself discontentedly by the low fire-light, for we had already began to economize in the matter of lamps, when Rriph came in from out doors and sat down opposite. Nina was-on a sofa behind the screen, with Effie lying back in her arms, telling, stories in a low voice to the child, who had not yet outgrown them, and 1 marvelled a little to hear her and think it was my bit of wild fire tamed. Ralph sat looking in the fire and occasionally throwing on a handful of cones and , watching the swift fragment blaze they made. ‘I suppose we shall have to go next week,’ he said. ‘I have baen over to look at that little flat. I suppose it will do. It ißn t the place for you— ’ ‘Oh, anywhore is the place for me,’ 1 said, ‘ that you can manage to put me in 1’ ‘ Four rooms in the heart of the town,’ he said bitterly; ‘ no views from my window but one of squalid back-yards ; no river, no great hemlock trees,, no pine cones to j bum on open fires—just the,. Jbarest getting along until we can do better —if we ever can.’

‘ Well,’ I said, 'it might be worse. We can be very happy if we are only well and have each other. 1 '• ifes;’ he- said, * yes. But it is hard to leave all jve have worked for these dozen years, all that is dear to us ; hard, too, to have slipped by so nearly as I have done to a vast fortune—as that would have been but for—if it had not been—if I had only seen—but there, there, the more one thinks the worse it. grows. The world is all alike. Somebody eUe is slipping tolerably near a fortune with less likelihood of getting it, by what I heard in the office to-day. Qne of those English fortunes falling due to some unfindable heir.’ ‘ I thought the things were all frauds,’ said I. ‘ The great fortunes iu the Bank of England belonging to people over here.’ ‘ OH'j they are very likely,' said Ralph, absently. ‘This wasn’t one of that sort. This is the ease of pii abssnt heir—the son of a man named Strachan Reginald Strachan a man of great wealth in London, an old E>st India merchant, whote son married some young singer or other and ran away with her —one .Rowena Rowena Dysart. The / have been traced to this country, and it is known that a child, was born and named for her mother, who died presently, rind all further trace of him is lost. The caao has just been,sent to our office by the English solicitors. If he is dead there is a fortune of some hundreds of thousands of pouuds belonging to that child, Rowena Straohan— ’

Suddenly there seemed to be an earthquake in the rooms, the screen went over with a thud, and Nina still grasping Effie, had sprung forward :.and stood between us, her eyes ablaze, the color flushing her dark

cheek; her lips parted. ‘Rowena Dysart 1’ said she. * That is my mother’s name 1 It is inside the ring—she said my father had it put there with* his own—it is in her marriage lilies; And Reginald was her husband. It'S all about them tfud the father, the cruel; ctiiSl fathet in the letters. Oh*, you can pirOvO it all !- It, isn’t balled Strachan, as you said, it’s called. Strawn, you know; And Nina was her pet name. And that child is the mistress of a fortune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, and they’re yonra ! All yours ! Why that’s just as plain as day !' she said without regard to grammar. ‘That’s me !’—Written for the Buffalo Express. ■!' En».)