The Palace Beautiful | Page 4

"The bird will want a heap of sunshine," she said; "he's young, and my
mother says that all young things want lots and lots of sun. May I pull
up the blind in the bay window, Miss Primrose; and may I hang
Jimmy's cage just here?"
Primrose nodded. She forgot, in her interest over Jimmy, to remember
that the bay window looked directly on to the village street.
"And please, miss," said Poppy, as she was preparing to return home,
"Miss Martineau says she'll look in this evening, and that she was glad
when she saw you out last night, young ladies, and acting sensible
again."
Primrose had always a very faint color; at Poppy's words it deepened
slightly.
"We've tried to act in a sensible way all through," she said, with gentle
dignity. "Perhaps Miss Martineau does not quite understand. We love
one another very much; we are not going to be foolish, but we cannot
help grieving for our mother."
At these words Jasmine rushed out of the room and Poppy's round eyes
filled with tears.
"Oh, Miss Primrose--," she began.

"Never mind, Poppy," said Primrose; "we'll see Miss Martineau
to-night. I am glad you told us she was coming."
The neighbors at Rosebury were all of the most sociable type; the
Mainwaring girls knew every soul in the place, and when their mother
died there was quite a rush of sympathy for them, and the little cottage
might have been full from morning till night. Primrose, however,
would not have it; even Miss Martineau, who was their teacher, and
perhaps their warmest friend, was refused admittance. The neighbors
wondered, and thought the girls very extraordinary and a little stuck-up,
and their sympathy, thrown back on themselves, began to cool.
The real facts of the case, however, were these: Primrose, Jasmine and
Daisy would have been very pleased to see Poppy Jenkins, or old Mrs.
Jones, who sometimes came in to do choring, or even the nice little
Misses Price, who kept a grocery shop at the other end of the village
street; they would also have not objected to a visit from good, hearty
Mrs. Fry, the doctor's wife, but had they admitted any of these
neighbors they must have seen Miss Martineau, and Miss Martineau,
once she got a footing in the house, would have been there morning,
noon and night.
Poor Jasmine would not have at all objected to crying away some of
her sorrow on kind Mrs. Fry's motherly breast; Primrose could have
had some really interesting talk which would have done her good with
the Misses Price; they were very religious people, and their brother was
a clergyman, and they might have said some things which would
comfort the sore hearts of the young girls. Little Daisy could have
asked some of her unceasing questions of Poppy Jenkins, and the three
would really have been the better for the visits and the sympathy of the
neighbors did not these visits and sympathy also mean Miss Martineau.
But Miss Martineau at breakfast, dinner, and tea--Miss Martineau, with
her never-ending advice, her good-natured but still unceasingly
correcting tone, was felt just at first to be unendurable. She was
sincerely fond of the girls, whom she had taught to play incorrectly,
and to read French with an accent unrecognized in Paris, but Miss
Martineau was a worry, was a great deal too officious, and so the girls
shut themselves away from her and from all other neighbors for the
first month after their mother's death.

CHAPTER III
.
MISS MARTINEAU.
Primrose was the soul of hospitality; having decided that Miss
Martineau was to be admitted that evening, it occurred to her that she
might as well make things pleasant for this angular, good-humored, and
somewhat hungry personage. Primrose could cook charmingly, and
when dinner was over she turned to her sisters, and said in her usual
rather slow way--
"I am going to make some cream-cakes for tea; and Jasmine, dear, you
might put some fresh flowers in the vases; and Daisy--"; she paused as
she looked at her sister--the child's blue eyes were fixed on her, she
noticed with a pang that the little face was pale, and the dimpled mouth
looked sad.
"Daisy," she said, suddenly, "you can go into the garden, and have a
romp with the Pink."
"The Pink" was Daisy's favorite kitten.
Daisy laughed aloud, Jasmine started up briskly from the dinner-table,
and Primrose, feeling that she had done well, went into the kitchen to
consult with Hannah, the old cook, over the making of the cream-cakes.
The result of all this was that when Miss Martineau, sharp at four
o'clock (the hours were very primitive at Rosebury), arrived at the
Mainwarings' door, the outward aspect of the house bore no tokens of