The Palace Beautiful | Page 6

may run into the garden, darling, and take the Pink," she said.
Miss Martineau had no intention of leaving the Mainwarings without
speaking out her mind. It was one of this good lady's essential
privileges to speak out her mind to the younger generation of the
Rosebury world. Who had a better right to do this than she? for had she
not educated most of them? had she not given them of the best of her
French and her music? and was she not even at this present moment
Jasmine's and Daisy's instructress? Primrose she considered her
finished and accomplished pupil. Surely the girls, even though they had
refused to admit her for a month, would turn to her now with full
confidence. She settled herself comfortably in the arm-chair in which

Primrose had placed her, and saying, in her high-pitched and thin
voice--
"Now, my dears, you will take seats close to me--not too close, loves,
for I dislike being crushed, and I have on my Sunday silk. My dear girls,
I want us now to have a really comfortable talk. There is a great deal
that needs discussion, and I think there is nothing like facing a difficult
subject resolutely, and going through it with system. I approve of your
sending Daisy into the garden, Primrose. She is too young to listen to
all that we must go into. I purpose dears, after the manner of our
school-hours, to divide our discourse into heads--two heads will
probably be sufficient for this evening. First, the severe loss you have
just sustained--that we will talk over, and no doubt mingle our tears
together over; take courage, my dear children, such an unburdening
will relieve your young hearts. Second--Jasmine, you need not get so
very red, my dear--second, we will discuss something also of
importance; how are you three dear girls going to live?"
Here Miss Martineau paused, took off her spectacles, wiped them, and
put them on again. She felt really very kindly, and would have worked
herself to a skeleton, if need be, for the sake of the Mainwarings, whom
she sincerely loved. Jasmine's red face, however, grew still redder.
"Please, Miss Martineau--yes, Primrose, I will speak--please, Miss
Martineau, we cannot discuss dear mamma with you. There is nothing
to discuss, and nothing to tell--I won't--I can't--Primrose, I won't listen,
and I won't talk."
Miss Martineau shook her head, and looked really angrily at Jasmine.
"Nothing to tell," she said, sorrowfully. "Is your poor dear mother then
so soon forgotten? I could not have believed it. Alas! alas! how little
children appreciate their parents."
"You are not a parent yourself, and you know nothing about it," said
Jasmine, now feeling very angry, and speaking in her rudest tone.
Primrose's quiet voice interposed.
"I think, Miss Martineau," she began, "that the first subject will be
more than Jasmine and I can quite bear--you must forgive us, even if
you fail quite to understand us. It is no question of forgetting--our
mother will never be forgotten--it is just that we would rather not. You
must allow us to judge for ourselves on this point," concluded Primrose,
with that dignity that suited her so well. Primrose, for all her extreme

quietness and simplicity of manner and bearing, could look like a
young princess when she chose, and Miss Martineau, who would have
quarrelled fiercely with Jasmine, submitted.
"Very well," she said, in a tone of some slight offence; "I came here
with a heart brimful of sympathy; it is repulsed; it goes back as it came,
but I bear no offence."
"Shall we discuss your second subject, dear Miss Martineau?"
continued Primrose. "I know that you have a great deal of sense and
experience, and I know that you have a knack of making money go
very far indeed. You ask us what our plans are--well, I really don't
think we have got any, have we, Jasmine?"
"No," said Jasmine, in her shortest tones. "We mean to live as we
always did. Why can't people leave us in peace?"
Miss Martineau cleared her throat, looked with some compassion at
Jasmine, whom she thought it best to treat as a spoilt child, and then
turned her attention to Primrose.
"My dear," she said, "I am willing to waive my first head, to cast it
aside, to pass it over, and consider my second. My dear Primrose, the
first thing to consider in making your plans--I take no notice of
Jasmine's somewhat childish remarks--is on what you have to live."
Primrose knit her brows.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "we shall have what we always had--we
spent very little money in the past, and, of course, we shall require still
less now. We are fond of Rosebury; I think we shall do for the present
at