The Queen of Hearts | Page 9

the lowest possible spirits, and bringing her own sackcloth and ashes
along with her.
The first ordeal to which this alarming letter forced me to submit was
the breaking of the news it contained to my two brothers. The
disclosure affected them very differently. Poor dear Owen merely
turned pale, lifted his weak, thin hands in a panic-stricken manner, and
then sat staring at me in speechless and motionless bewilderment.
Morgan stood up straight before me, plunged both his hands into his
pockets, burst suddenly into the harshest laugh I ever heard from his
lips, and told me, with an air of triumph, that it was exactly what he
expected.
"What you expected?" I repeated, in astonishment.
"Yes," returned Morgan, with his bitterest emphasis. "It doesn't surprise
me in the least. It's the way things go in this world--it's the regular
moral see-saw of good and evil--the old story with the old end to it.
They were too happy in the garden of Eden--down comes the serpent
and turns them out. Solomon was too wise--down comes the Queen of
Sheba, and makes a fool of him. We've been too comfortable at The
Glen Tower--down comes a woman, and sets us all three by the ears
together. All I wonder at is that it hasn't happened before." With those
words Morgan resignedly took out his pipe, put on his old felt hat and
turned to the door.
"You're not going away before she comes?" exclaimed Owen, piteously.
"Don't leave us--please don't leave us!"
"Going!" cried Morgan, with great contempt. "What should I gain by
that? When destiny has found a man out, and heated his gridiron for
him, he has nothing left to do, that I know of, but to get up and sit on
it."
I opened my lips to protest against the implied comparison between a
young lady and a hot gridiron, but, before I could speak, Morgan was
gone.

"Well," I said to Owen, "we must make the best of it. We must brush
up our manners, and set the house tidy, and amuse her as well as we
can. The difficulty is where to put her; and, when that is settled, the
next puzzle will be, what to order in to make her comfortable. It's a
hard thing, brother, to say what will or what will not please a young
lady's taste."
Owen looked absently at me, in greater bewilderment than
ever--opened his eyes in perplexed consideration--repeated to himself
slowly the word "tastes"--and then helped me with this suggestion:
"Hadn't we better begin, Griffith, by getting her a plum-cake?"
"My dear Owen," I remonstrated, "it is a grown young woman who is
coming to see us, not a little girl from school."
"Oh!" said Owen, more confused than before. "Yes--I see; we couldn't
do wrong, I suppose--could we?--if we got her a little dog, and a lot of
new gowns."
There was, evidently, no more help in the way of advice to be expected
from Owen than from Morgan himself. As I came to that conclusion, I
saw through the window our old housekeeper on her way, with her
basket, to the kitchen-garden, and left the room to ascertain if she could
assist us.
To my great dismay, the housekeeper took even a more gloomy view
than Morgan of the approaching event. When I had explained all the
circumstances to her, she carefully put down her basket, crossed her
arms, and said to me in slow, deliberate, mysterious tones:
"You want my advice about what's to be done with this young woman?
Well, sir, here's my advice: Don't you trouble your head about her. It
won't be no use. Mind, I tell you, it won't be no use."
"What do you mean?"
"You look at this place, sir--it's more like a prison than a house, isn't it?

You, look at us as lives in it. We've got (saving your presence) a foot
apiece in our graves, haven't we? When you was young yourself, sir,
what would you have done if they had shut you up for six weeks in
such a place as this, among your grandfathers and grandmothers, with
their feet in the grave?"
"I really can't say."
"I can, sir. You'd have run away. She'll run away. Don't you worry your
head about her--she'll save you the trouble. I tell you again, she'll run
away."
With those ominous words the housekeeper took up her basket, sighed
heavily, and left me.
I sat down under a tree quite helpless. Here was the whole
responsibility shifted upon my miserable shoulders. Not a lady in the
neighborhood to whom I could apply for assistance, and the nearest
shop eight miles distant from us. The toughest case I ever had to
conduct, when I was at the Bar, was plain sailing