Beechcroft at Rockstone | Page 7

crying
for nothing.'
'That you had!' said several voices, and Val very nearly cried again as
she exclaimed: 'Don't be all so tiresome. I shall make mamma a
beautiful crewel cushion, with all the battles in history on it. And won't
she be surprised!'
'I think mamma meant more than that,' said Mysie.
'Oh, Mysie, what shall you do?' asked Primrose.
'I did think of getting to translate one of mamma's favourite German
stories quite through to her without wanting the dictionary or stumbling
one bit,' said Mysie; 'but I am sure she meant something better and
better, and I'm thinking what it is---Perhaps it is making all little
Flossie Maddin's clothes, a whole suit all oneself---Or perhaps it is
manners. What do you think, Gill?'
'I should say most likely it was manners for you,' volunteered Harry,
'and the extra you are most likely to acquire at Rotherwood.'
'I'm so glad,' said Mysie.
'And you, Gill,' inquired Primrose, 'what will you do? Mine is a
copy-book, and Fergus's is the spinning-top-engines, and rule of three;

and Val's is a crewel battle cushion and not crying; and Mysie's is
German stories and manners; and what's yours, Gill?'
'Gill is so grown up, she is too good to want an inside thing' announced
Primrose.
'Oh, Prim, you dear little thing,' cried both elder brother and sister, as
they thought with a sort of pang of the child's opinion of grown-up
impeccability.
'Harry is grown up more,' put in Fergus; 'why don't you ask him?'
'Because I know,' said Primrose, with a pretty shyness, and as they
pressed her, she whispered, 'He is going to be a clergyman.'
There was a call for Mysie and Val from upstairs, and as the younger
population scampered off, Gillian said to her brother---
'Is not it like "occupy till I come"?'
'So I was thinking,' said Harry gravely. 'But one must be as young as
Mysie to throw one's "inside things" into the general stock of
resolutions.'
'Yes,' said Gillian, with uplifted eyes. 'I do---I do hope to do
something.'
Some great thing was her unspoken thought---some great and excellent
achievement to be laid before her mother on her return. There was a
tale begun in imitation of Bessie Merrifield, called "Hilda's
Experiences". Suppose that was finished, printed, published, splendidly
reviewed. Would not that be a great thing? But alas, she was under a
tacit engagement never to touch it in the hours of study.
CHAPTER II.
ROCKQUAY

The actual moment of a parting is often softened by the confusion of
departure. That of the Merrifield family took place at the junction,
where Lady Merrifield with her brother remained in the train, to be
carried on to London.
Gillian, Valetta, and Fergus, with their aunt, changed into a train for
Rockstone, and Harry was to return to his theological college, after
seeing Mysie and Primrose off with nurse on their way to the ancestral
Beechcroft, whence Mysie was to be fetched to Rotherwood. The last
thing that met Lady Merrifield's eyes was Mrs. Halfpenny gesticulating
wildly, under the impression that Mysie's box was going off to London.
And Gillian's tears were choked in the scurry to avoid a smoking-
carriage, while Harry could not help thinking---half blaming himself
for so doing---that Mysie expended more feeling in parting with Sofy,
the kitten, than with her sisters, not perceiving that pussy was the
safety-valve for the poor child's demonstrations of all the sorrow that
was oppressing her.
Gillian, in the corner of a Rockstone carriage, had time for the full
heart-sickness and tumult of fear that causes such acute suffering to
young hearts. It is quite a mistake to say that youth suffers less from
apprehension than does age; indeed, the very inexperience and novelty
add to the alarms, where there is no background of anxieties that have
ended happily, only a crowd of examples of other people's misfortunes.
The difference is in the greater elasticity and power of being distracted
by outward circumstances; and thus lookers-on never guess at the
terrific possibilities that have scared the imagination, and the secret
ejaculations that have met them. How many times on that brief journey
had not Gillian seen her father dying, her sisters in despair, her mother
crushed in the train, wrecked in the steamer, perishing of the climate, or
arriving to find all over and dying of the shock; yet all was varied by
speculations on the great thing that was to offer itself to be done, and
the delight it would give, and when the train slackened, anxieties were
merged in the care for bags, baskets, and umbrellas.

Rockstone and Rockquay had once been separate places---a little
village perched on a cliff of a promontory, and a small fishing hamlet
within the bay, but these had become merged in