A LITTLE DOSE OF POISON.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VIII, Issue 42, 17 October 1891, Page 498

A LITTLE DOSE OF POISON.

MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.

BY

WKy'ftFJSsS’ HE was usually a cheery little body, but yF for the last day or two she had been w mournful, and, as her brothers were quick to discover, peculiarly susceptible to teasing. There was no apparent cause ' f° r t, h* B llnha PP.V state of affairs. The su,nmer vacation had begun, the weather jjV/Jil MjKr / was all that anybody could ask, and she was in good health. ‘ Don’t you feel well, dear ?’ her mother asked as Laura, with an unpleasantly resigned expression, began to gather up the dinner dishes for washing. Monday was a busy day, and the one servant could not do everything. ‘ Yes, thank you, mamma, quite well,’ answered Laura, and her downcast eyes did not see the quick little smile which flitted across her mother’s face. • Mamma ’ was a recently bestowed title ; it had been ‘ mother ’ until two days ago. A sudden recollection made Mrs Burton ask : ‘ What became of that illustrated paper that you found on the porch last week ? I wanted to save the large picture ;it was really pretty.’ *ltisup in my room. Shall I get it ?’ But there was a reluctance in the question which the mother noticed. ‘lt will be time enough when you have finished the dishes. Did you find anything interesting in the paper ’’ * Oh, yes !’ and Laura’s voice suddenly became animated. ‘ There was a very interesting story.’ ‘ Now if you can remember it well enough to give me an outline of it,’ said Mrs Burton, ‘it will beguile the time of the dish-washing very pleasantly. Can you ?’ *Oh yes,’ replied Laura unhesitatingly. She had a good memory and an agreeable voice, and she liked both to read aloud and to recite from memory, ‘lt was called “ A Trodden Heart,” ’she began, and somehow the title, which had seemed to her so romantically sweet, sounded just a little foolish, but she went on. ‘ The heroine, Imogene Desespoir, writes her story herself. She was left an orphan when she was very young—almost a baby—and she inherited a great estate and an immense fortune in money, which she was to have when she was eighteen ; but she was to have ever so much to spend in the mean time. Her father’s cousin was to be her guardian, but though the father had believed him to be a very good man, and had trusted him entirely, he was really a rascal, and he meant to manage so that he could steal the money a little at a time, and then, when she had nothing to go to law with, to show a forged will, and seize the e state. ’ ‘ Excuse me for interrupting you, dear,’ said Mrs Burton * but I am afraid your author was inspired by the mournful ballad of “ The Babes in the Wood.”’

‘ Oh, I don’t think so, mamma,’ replied Laura, eagerly. * It’s quite different. You see this was her cousin, not her uncle, and there wasn’t anything about a forged will in “ The Babes in the Wood.” Well, she grew up radiantly beautiful, so beautiful that everybody who saw her fell in love with her, and was ready to die for her.’ ‘ And she mentions this herself?’ inquired Mrs Burton, smiling. ‘ My dear child, what would you think of a woman who told you such a thing as that ? Should you consider her refined, or even well-bred ?’ Laura was truthful. * No, mamma, I shouldn't. But, you see, it sounds very different as she tells it in the book. I didn’t think how it would be in reality. 1 suppose it would be just as bad for a person—a real person—to tell how many lovers she had, and what they said to her, and what she said to them. I don’t know how it is—it all seems to come different as I tell it, like the verses in Wonderland. Do you want me to finish, mother ?’ ‘ Yes, dear, I do. I want you to see what the story really is stripped of its high-flown style and put into your every-day thoughts ; but you may condense as much as you please, for the dishes are nearly done.’ * Well, then, she was very fond of her guardian until he was so cold and—and unpleasant that she couldn’t be any longer; and he stole the money, just as he meant to ; and then all her lovers and all her friends but one old servant simply didn’t have anything more to do with her at all. It wasn’t natural; people’s friends don’t really behave so. It seems as if it was just put in to make the story. She went to live with the old servant, and she kept selling her jewels till they were all gone, and at last she was so poor that she took in washing from a boarding-house, and in the pocket of a linen coat she found a sealed letter directed in her guardian’s writing to a very bad lawyer, and it was a statement of just how he meant to manage about the money and all the rest.’ • A sealed letter, did you say ?’ inquired Mrs Burton. ‘ Why, yes, mother. Oh, I never thought; I was so interested in the story. What kind of a thing must she have been to read a sealed letter plainly directed to somebody else ? I don’t wonder her friends deserted her. I’ll make short work of the rest of her ; it’s too silly for anything. She got it all back, of course, and then she wouldn’t let them put her guardian in gaol, and the lover she liked best —Lord Deforest—came back from India, and explained how he had been obliged to go away just after she had lost her money, but that he had really loved her all the time. I don’t see how she could believe him now, though it seemed quite natural as I lead it. So they were married.’ ‘And after palaces and castles and noble lords and thrilling poverty, a nice big cheerful farm-house and an everyday loving father and mother and brotheis and good health and pleasant friends seemed quite too commonplace and tiresome to be enjoyed,' said Mrs Burton. Laura looked as she felt —ashamed. ‘ Oh, mother,’she said, * I didn’t put it just that way, but I did think it was stupid never to have anything happen; just to keep on, day after day and year after year, doing the same commonplace things over and over again.’ ‘And yet,’ said Mrs Burton, * this is just what by far the larger number of the people in the world must do, and this is why, it seems to me, stories which represent life as a series of striking events and startling adventures often do so much harm to people who do not do their own thinking. I am glad to believe, dear, that you have, at least, begun o think, so I will not say any more about the unintended

moral of this foolish story. Hat I think we both want something to take the taste of it out of our mental mouths, so now you must listen for a minute to my favourite passage in •’ Lucile ” : ',No life Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife. And all life not be purer and stronger thereby. The spirits of just men made perfect on high, The army of martyrs that stand round the Throne, And look into the Face that makes glorious their own. Know this surely at last. Honest love, honest sorrow. Honest work for to-day, honest hope for to-morrow, Are these worth nothing more than the hands they make weary. The hearts they have saddened, the lives they leave dreary i Hush! The sevenfold Heaven to the voice of the Spirit Echoes, “ He that o’crcometh shall all things inherit.”