Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

“How do you know I am not sentimental, Rose?”

“Because I heard a lady say you were not.”

“Voilà, qui devient intéressant!” exclaimed Mr. Yorke, hitching his chair nearer the fire. “A lady! That has quite a romantic twang. We must guess who it is.⁠—Rosy, whisper the name low to your father. Don’t let him hear.”

“Rose, don’t be too forward to talk,” here interrupted Mrs. Yorke, in her usual killjoy fashion, “nor Jessy either. It becomes all children, especially girls, to be silent in the presence of their elders.”

“Why have we tongues, then?” asked Jessy pertly; while Rose only looked at her mother with an expression that seemed to say she should take that maxim in and think it over at her leisure. After two minutes’ grave deliberation, she asked, “And why especially girls, mother?”

“Firstly, because I say so; and secondly, because discretion and reserve are a girl’s best wisdom.”

“My dear madam,” observed Moore, “what you say is excellent⁠—it reminds me, indeed, of my dear sister’s observations; but really it is not applicable to these little ones. Let Rose and Jessy talk to me freely, or my chief pleasure in coming here is gone. I like their prattle; it does me good.”

“Does it not?” asked Jessy. “More good than if the rough lads came round you.⁠—You call them rough, mother, yourself.”

“Yes, mignonne, a thousand times more good. I have rough lads enough about me all day long, poulet.”

“There are plenty of people,” continued she, “who take notice of the boys. All my uncles and aunts seem to think their nephews better than their nieces, and when gentlemen come here to dine, it is always Matthew, and Mark, and Martin that are talked to, and never Rose and me. Mr. Moore is our friend, and we’ll keep him.⁠—But mind, Rose, he’s not so much your friend as he is mine. He is my particular acquaintance; remember that!” And she held up her small hand with an admonitory gesture.

Rose was quite accustomed to be admonished by that small hand. Her will daily bent itself to that of the impetuous little Jessy. She was guided, overruled by Jessy in a thousand things. On all occasions of show and pleasure Jessy took the lead, and Rose fell quietly into the background; whereas, when the disagreeables of life⁠—its work and privations⁠—were in question, Rose instinctively took upon her, in addition to her own share, what she could of her sister’s. Jessy had already settled it in her mind that she, when she was old enough, was to be married; Rose, she decided, must be an old maid, to live with her, look after her children, keep her house. This state of things is not uncommon between two sisters, where one is plain and the other pretty; but in this case, if there was a difference in external appearance, Rose had the advantage: her face was more regular-featured than that of the piquant little Jessy. Jessy, however, was destined to possess, along with sprightly intelligence and vivacious feeling, the gift of fascination, the power to charm when, where, and whom she would. Rose was to have a fine, generous soul, a noble intellect profoundly cultivated, a heart as true as steel, but the manner to attract was not to be hers.

“Now, Rose, tell me the name of this lady who denied that I was sentimental,” urged Mr. Moore.

Rose had no idea of tantalization, or she would have held him a while in doubt. She answered briefly, “I can’t. I don’t know her name.”

“Describe her to me. What was she like? Where did you see her?”

“When Jessy and I went to spend the day at Whinbury with Kate and Susan Pearson, who were just come home from school, there was a party at Mrs. Pearson’s, and some grownup ladies were sitting in a corner of the drawing-room talking about you.”

“Did you know none of them?”

“Hannah, and Harriet, and Dora, and Mary Sykes.”

“Good. Were they abusing me, Rosy?”

“Some of them were. They called you a misanthrope. I remember the word. I looked for it in the dictionary when I came home. It means a man-hater.”

“What besides?”

“Hannah Sykes said you were a solemn puppy.”

“Better!” cried Mr. Yorke, laughing. “Oh, excellent! Hannah! that’s the one with the red hair⁠—a fine girl, but half-witted.”

“She has wit enough for me, it appears,” said Moore. “A solemn puppy, indeed! Well, Rose, go on.”

“Miss Pearson said she believed there was a good deal of affectation about you, and that with your dark hair and pale face you looked to her like some sort of a sentimental noodle.”

Again Mr. Yorke laughed. Mrs. Yorke even joined in this time. “You see in what esteem you are held behind your back,” said she; “yet I believe that Miss Pearson would like to catch you. She set her cap at you when you first came into the country, old as she is.”

“And who contradicted her, Rosy?” inquired Moore.

“A lady whom I don’t know, because she never visits here, though I see her every Sunday at church. She sits in the pew near the pulpit. I generally look at her, instead of looking at my prayerbook, for she is like a picture in our dining-room, that woman with the dove in her hand⁠—at least she has eyes like it, and a nose too, a straight nose, that makes all her face look, somehow, what I call clear.”

“And you don’t know her!” exclaimed Jessy, in a tone of exceeding surprise. “That’s so like Rose. Mr. Moore, I often wonder in what sort of a world my sister lives. I am sure she does not live all her time in this. One is continually finding out that she is quite ignorant of some little matter which everybody else knows. To think of her going solemnly to church every Sunday, and looking all service-time at one particular person, and never so much as asking that person’s name. She means Caroline Helstone, the rector’s niece. I remember all about it. Miss Helstone was quite angry with