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 "AN HOUR LATER PIE SET OUT ALONE." [Page 164. 
 
 "Girl neighbors."
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS; 
 
 OR, THE 
 
 OLD FASHION AND THE NEW. 
 
 / 
 
 By SARAH TYTLER^ y> 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 A. L. BUfiT, PUBLISHER.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE. 
 The Manor House at Maidsmeadows is Taken 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Awkwardly Twin Character of the Manor House and the 
 Cottage at Maidsmeadows 21 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Pie Stubbs Makes Her " Reconnaissance " 40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Harriet Cotton on the Other Side of the Brook Arrives at her 
 Conclusions 62 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 An Old-fashioned Bee 82 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 A New-fashioned Butterfly 101 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Common Humanity has a Voice in the Question 118 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Result of Mrs. Stnbbs' Visit 138 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 Broken Ice 152 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Firmer Ground. . 177 
 
 2138658
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PAGE. 
 Isolation 206 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 A Lady Nurse from an Hospital ... 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 A Lady Cook from a Cooking School 243 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 A Ladies' College 258
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MANOK HOUSE AT MAIDSMEADOWS IS TAKEN. 
 
 IT is A fact, Mr. Stubbs, and not a fancy, the 
 manor house is taken. The board is down, and I 
 met Mrs. Whittaker's son, who is with Adams, and 
 he told me the decorator's men are to be in to- 
 morrow." 
 
 The speaker was Mrs. Stubbs, the wife of 
 Haderezer Stubbs, Esquire, a retired post office offi- 
 cial, who had ranked somewhere between a post- 
 master-general and a postman. For the last ten 
 years he had lived on his retiring allowance, oc- 
 cupying the cottage which was a semi-attached, 
 rather than a semi-detached appendage of the 
 manor house at one end of the village of Maids- 
 meadows. 
 
 " It is a great pity," said Mr. Stubbs discon- 
 tentedly. 
 
 " A pretty life we'll lead for the next six months
 
 2 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 with all these workmen about," reflected Mrs. 
 Stubbs calmly, as if she had made up her mind to 
 the worst. " Lydia is not too steady as it is, when 
 she has only the young milkman and the carrier 
 who lost his wife last summer, and the butcher's 
 and baker's boys to tempt her. Cook's temper will 
 not stand more worrying. I expect if any of these 
 men ask her to melt a glue-pot or are not civil to her 
 cat she will give me warning and go and take up 
 house with her sister, as she is always threatening to 
 do. Then there is "William, we shall have him tak- 
 ing to a pipe, though he is barely in his teens, and 
 setting fire to the pantry or the stable one of these 
 nights." 
 
 " My dear, spare us farther demoralization on the 
 part of our domestics," said Mr. Stubbs, " we have 
 more need to think of ourselves. Imagine us in 
 such close quarters with an utter stranger a man 
 who may be a ruffian, a forger, or a house-breaker in 
 disguise ! I believe criminals are now in the habit 
 of taking country-houses, in which they can conceal 
 their prey, or ' swag,' as they are supposed to call it 
 and gull their neighbors, while the burglars sally 
 forth at stated intervals to commit their depredations. 
 Or the tenant of the manor house may be a fast 
 man, with a fast family and fast company, making
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 3 
 
 day and night hideous with their riotous behavior. 
 Even if he is nothing worse, he is almost certain, 
 from his settling in a quiet country place, to be a 
 man with a hobby, bees or butterflies, or cocks and 
 hens, or roses. It is possible for roses to be made 
 to grow nothing save thorns under certain 
 circumstances. We shall not dare cry out 
 though we are pricked or stung. Don and Whiskers 
 must no longer run about at their pleasure in case 
 they do mischief to the manor-house man's treas- 
 ures." 
 
 Neither Mr. or Mrs. Stubbs was past middle age, 
 but while she was a fresh-colored, broad shouldered 
 woman, whose hair was still brown and abundant, 
 her carriage erect, her step elastic, her whole strong 
 physique betraying no sign of failure or premature 
 decay, his tall figure was spare and stooping, his 
 face lined, his hair partly gone, and what was left 
 of it full of white streaks. She looked like a woman 
 of considerable force of will and character, who had 
 taken life composedly, and always been equal to 
 the situation which presented itself. He showed on 
 the surface a bundle of nerves, which had done their 
 business effectually, and must have rendered him in 
 his more active days a considerable trial and a 
 source of improving discipline to those who worked
 
 4 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 with him and under him. In the middle of his sen- 
 sitiveness, which is generally another word for ir- 
 ritability, there was a twinkle in his light gray eyes 
 which proved that he was also something of a 
 humorist, capable of laughing at himself and his 
 woes. He had in addition fine lines about the 
 mouth unspoiled by self-indulgence, that pointed to 
 a nature in which delicacy of mind and high principle 
 had their share. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs, who was free from her husband's 
 defects, and gave a correct idea of herself as a pillar 
 of strength and self-control on which to rest, yet 
 lacked something which her husband possessed, a 
 quickness of generosity and sympathy, a keenness 
 of perception, even a power of forbearance in ex- 
 treme and extraordinary cases. The stronger blade, 
 admirably adapted for daily use, was less finely tem- 
 pered and less effective under exceptional condi- 
 tions. 
 
 The room in which the couple sat was an old- 
 fashioned room for that matter the cottage was 
 altogether old-fashioned, filled with somewhat out- 
 of-date walnut wood and chintz-covered furniture, 
 good of its kind and in perfect order and preserva- 
 tion, but destitute of any picturesque attribute or of 
 much ornament of any kind. It was a plain though
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 5 
 
 comfortable sitting-room for a family in the Stubbs' 
 station of life. Perhaps Mrs. Stubbs defined its 
 character when she persisted in calling it by the 
 old-fashioned name which her mother might have 
 used, " parlor," instead of drawing-room. Some- 
 how, in its respectability, unqualified substantiality, 
 and formal neatness, it seemed to have more rela- 
 tion to the mistress than to the master of the house. 
 It was easy to guess that he had a den of his own 
 in which he spent a considerable part of his time ; 
 where he could leave his books lying about on their 
 faces, his inkstand in a mess, and the materials for 
 his hobby whatever it might be, he was pretty 
 sure to have one, though he had inveighed against 
 the hobbies of other men scattered anywhere with- 
 out risk of his being called to order and swept and 
 dusted out of the room. 
 
 There was a third person present who had said 
 nothing as yet, who had not indeed been brought 
 up to put in her word first and talk down her elders, 
 but this silent person only thought the more because 
 of her silence. She was Pie Stubbs, the only daugh- 
 ter of the house, and the only sister of an only 
 brother, Haderezer the younger, who bore his fath- 
 er's imposing name, and was absent at college. Pie 
 in itself does not sound imposing, though in fact it
 
 6 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 stood for something even more striking than Ilade- 
 rezer. Why she was Sapientia and he was Hadere- 
 zer demands a very few words of explanation. To 
 begin with, the son and daughter were simply called 
 after the father and mother, who might in their 
 turn have been called after their father and mother 
 in the strictest orthodoxy, for Mrs. Stubbs at least 
 would no more have been unorthodox in the rules 
 for naming her children than in any of the other 
 laws of her life of law. It would be taking both 
 the writer and reader too far in the dim distance to 
 investigate into the origin of Iladerezer and Sapien- 
 tia in the family annals. Suffice it to say that in a 
 country churchyard not a score of miles from Lon- 
 don the names will be found engraved on a joint 
 tombstone. It is a memorial to a worthy husband 
 and wife who were an ordinary English couple, dis- 
 charging ordinary social duties two or three genera- 
 tions back. Moreover, this couple's children also 
 bore their parents' names in course of time. Mrs. 
 Stubbs had made only one concession, she had modi- 
 fied the stately forms of address to her children 
 when they were children. There would have been 
 a positive impropriety in styling a senseless mite of 
 a baby girl " Sapientia," hence Pie crept into the 
 mouths of unguarded relations and keepers, though
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 7 
 
 it provoked frivolous strangers to slander the child 
 by asking the one moment if her temper was crusty 
 and the next whether she chattered like a magpie ? 
 These mistakes rather confirmed Mrs. Stubbs in the 
 practice than deterred her from it, for she was not a 
 woman likely to be driven from any course she had 
 chosen to adopt because of the adverse opinions or 
 silly jests of her neighbors. She was inclined to 
 regard the world in general as having no title to 
 interfere in her private affairs, and to treat the 
 intruders and their criticism as simply beneath her 
 notice. She did not imagine little Pie would be the 
 worse for it. If she were that is if she suffered 
 from ridicule and turned out thin-skinned when she 
 had to do with any ludicrous association the sooner 
 she grew hardened and rose to a fine state of inde- 
 pendent indifference the better for her. 
 
 Neither Pie nor her brother, who was two years 
 her senior, could in their tender youth compass the 
 pronunciation of " Haderezer," so that there was 
 an absolute necessity for some change in his case 
 also. " Ezra " was thought of, but Mrs. Stubbs 
 dropped the idea as savoring of irreverence, partic- 
 ularly where children were in question. The infant 
 chiefly interested had decided summarily against 
 the natural diminutive "Haddie," which had a\vk-
 
 8 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ward relations in his mind with a Scotch fish that 
 sometimes figured in its cured stage at his father's 
 breakfast table. Little Haderezer was much more 
 touchy about being laughed at than Pie had ever 
 shown herself. He might for that very reason 
 have stood still more in need of the discipline which 
 Mrs. Stubbs had judged the best thing possible for 
 her daughter. But Haderezer was a young lord of 
 the creation, a distinction which had its full weight 
 with his mother, all the more so, no doubt, because 
 she herself belonged to the Aveaker sex. He was 
 therefore humored in this matter, and allowed to 
 appropriate " Harry " as an alternative for Hader- 
 ezer. "With the experience of a public school and 
 college before him, his selection did credit to his 
 dawning masculine sense. It is hardly worth while 
 to say that the childish names had stuck to the boy 
 and girl, already in the last stages of boyhood and 
 girlhood. 
 
 Pie was like her mother, brown-haired, hazel- 
 eyed, fresh-colored, well-developed, with only here 
 and there a reminiscence of her father in her slen- 
 der hands and feet, the fineness rather than the 
 abundance of her hair, the thinness of her nostrils, 
 and the tendency to a point in her small chin. She 
 was a maiden fair to see in her simple youthful
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 9 
 
 bloom always supposing the gazer was capable of 
 seeing attractions in a girl who wore her limited 
 amount of hair in a plain, rather prim coil ; whose 
 frock was one of those servieeable ginghams which 
 are again worn in nondescript brown and gray, 
 made in another revived fashion of plain skirt and 
 round bodice which looked almost self-conscious be- 
 side the complicated draperies of the modern dress- 
 maker. It was Pie's mother, not Pie's self, who 
 warmly welcomed these revivals, though Pie was 
 content to accept them, and to own that they were 
 convenient for country wear ; as to town wear, she 
 knew nothing of it. Pie's pretty feet were cased in 
 somewhat stout shoes, with heels of the most mod- 
 erate dimensions. But here her own will and pleas- 
 ure came into play. She might have liked another 
 mode of doing her hair which would not have ren- 
 dered its absence of quantity so conspicuous. She 
 might have preferred to have in her frocks some 
 variety of neutral tints less earthy in tone than the 
 browns and grays, some pattern or no pattern less 
 rectangular than checks broken or unbroken. But 
 she did not think there could be two opinions on 
 shoes. They must protect the feet, and they must 
 enable one to walk. Nothing would have induced 
 Pie to consent to what she had been taught to con-
 
 10 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 sider the degradation of deforming her feet like a 
 Chinese lady, so as to spoil all active exercise in 
 walks and scrambles. She would not agree to place 
 her toes at the end of a steep slope from her instep, 
 and her heels in close proximity to that instep. She 
 would never wish to wear gloves in which her hands 
 were packed so tightly that they could not bend, 
 and resembled a doll's hands, composed of kid or 
 silk and stuffed with bran. Further, Pie would well 
 nigh have mounted a scaffold where she might have 
 died nobly for the sake of God and her conscience, 
 and the love of her friends and neighbors, sooner 
 than perish most ignobly by pinching her waist till 
 her body resembled an hour-glass. 
 
 As to meretricious arts of powdering and paint- 
 ing, penciling the eyebrows, and darkening the 
 eyes, they were so unknown to Pie that she had not 
 even dreamed of them, and if she could have 
 dreamed of what she had never seen and scarcely 
 heard, she would have repudiated the dream as 
 wholly unbecoming and positively affronting. 
 
 " A creature breathing thoughtful breath, 
 A traveler betwix life and death." 
 
 Pie had been brought up to think an enormous 
 amount of attention given to personal appearance 
 and dress, after all the requirements of dainty
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 11 
 
 propriety had been scrupulously fulfilled, a foolish 
 expenditure of trouble and a sinful waste of time. 
 True, she was tempted to regard her mother's rules 
 on such points as a little arbitrary. She was moved 
 so far as to have a hankering after certain modest 
 toilet vanities, and an inclination to supply them 
 by her own skill and ingenuity. Nevertheless Pie 
 would no more have thought of exceeding her al- 
 lowance, running up bills, and taking the lion's share 
 of the small surplus from her father's yearly in- 
 come, than she could have been guilty of robbing a 
 till or breaking into a bank. She would not even have 
 proposed to devote to remodeling her dress with 
 her own hands, and studying personally what be- 
 came her complexion, the principal portion of the 
 hours which she had been accustomed to look upon 
 as belonging by right to her father and mother, and 
 after them to Harry, and after Harry to the house- 
 hold generally next to her classes in the Sunday 
 and night schools, her mother's district, the poor in 
 the parish. 
 
 Pie was the sole girl in the house, her brother 
 was from home the most of his time, and the neigh- 
 borhood was not very largely supplied with young 
 people in the Stubbs' rank. Even if it had been, 
 Mrs. Stubbs did not approve of much visiting for a
 
 12 OIHL NETOHBOnS. 
 
 young girl, while the family was not rich enough 
 to give many entertainments to their neighbors. Pie 
 had her gayeties, in which the school festivals, the 
 anniversary party at the cottage hospital, the vicar's 
 Christmas teas and suppers to the old men and 
 women of Maidsmeadows had a considerable place, 
 together with a few tennis and skating parties, 
 and a much rarer half-juvenile dance or two the 
 last mostly when Harry was at home. She would 
 have laughed at the bare notion of occupying her 
 time with throwing about tennis-balls, when she 
 was not dressing or riding, or paying visits or read- 
 ing novels. We have heard what she thought of 
 dressing, and we have been told that she did not 
 pay many visits. As to a horse, she had none, and 
 though she had been taught to ride in the course of 
 her education, she had no opportunity of practicing 
 the accomplishment. 
 
 Pie did read novels pretty frequently. It is hard 
 to live in this generation and escape from what is 
 its peculiar literature in every mental and moral 
 shade. But she had read under the unslumbering 
 supervision of her mother, until the daughter's 
 taste and judgment could be trusted not to prefer 
 bad pastry to good bread, or strong drink to strong 
 meat in fiction. But neither did novels usurp Pie's
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 13 
 
 days any more than her nights. She had been 
 trained to put the best tale aside in order to do her 
 duty, whatever it was, and return to the story with 
 fresh zest and redoubled appreciation of its merits 
 because of the temporary abstinence. 
 
 Pie Stubbs was a busy, cheerful girl, very sel- 
 dom dull or even listless, yet the news that the 
 manor house was let could not be indifferent to her ; 
 she pricked her ears with a lively sensation of 
 expectation, which at her sanguine age took an 
 agreeable instead of a doleful shape, and could not 
 even be damped by the gloomy prognostications of 
 her father and mother. She happened to be 
 engaged in plain sewing, for the Stubbses kept no 
 sewing-maid, and Mrs. Stubbs disapproved equally 
 of sewing-machines and shop-made clothing. There- 
 fore both mother and daughter had work-baskets 
 one of which stood at Pie's elbow for use as well as 
 for show, capable of containing not only fancy work, 
 but the white seam, which in the Stubbs' house- 
 hold was not banished out of the sitting-room, but 
 held its place there as it had kept its ground in 
 every parlor in the days of Mrs. Stubbs' mother. 
 
 "Don't you think the manor-house's being let 
 might turn out a great gain to us ? " said Pie, 
 glancing up from her work. She spoke deprecat-
 
 14 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ingly, but without a shade of apprehension, for it 
 must be said that, however much she had been 
 accustomed to respect and obey her parents, she had 
 no slavish fear of them ; the relations between her 
 and them were of a peculiarly frank, affectionate 
 the nature. Indeed, there was a considerable ring of 
 mother's independence of character in the daughter. 
 " Suppose," Pie went on persuasively, " our new 
 neighbors are particularly nice, and end by being an 
 immense acquisition to us." 
 
 " I can suppose nothing of the kind all the 
 chances of life are against it," said Mr. Stubbs 
 cynically. 
 
 " Impossible," said Mrs. Stubbs emphatically. 
 " The best we can hope for is to be able to put up 
 with each other, and we are too absurdly near for 
 much likelihood of that. It was such a silly mis- 
 take of old Squire Fuller's when he was the young 
 squire, to build the cottage under the very nose of 
 the manor house, and, as if that were not bad 
 enough, to make all these nonsensical foot-paths 
 and foot-bridges across the brook, and these wretched 
 little wicket-gates, so that there is not a bit of the 
 ground of either house not even the kitchen-garden 
 that cannot be entered quite easily from the grounds 
 of the other. There can be no privacy or freedom
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 15 
 
 from intrusion at any point when both houses are 
 let, unless, indeed, the respective families make up 
 their minds not to visit, and practically close all the 
 too abundant means of communication between 
 them." 
 
 " But mother," objected Pie with something 
 slightly hurt in her voice and look, " you know 
 Squire Fuller built the cottage for his mother and 
 sisters. He had been such a good son and brother 
 that he was anxious to soften to them as much as 
 possible the pain of their having to quit the manor- 
 house on his marriage." 
 
 " The excellence of his intentions did not make 
 his act less foolish," said Mrs. Stubbs sententiously. 
 " His mother and sisters ought to have faced the 
 necessary separation from the beginning." 
 
 " But was it more necessary than he made it ? " 
 urged Pie wistfully, her excited feelings causing a 
 deeper rose color to rise in her fresh round cheeks. 
 " Old Patty Luke has often told me of the family. 
 His mother was a widow, and had been used to 
 depend upon him, her only son, in everything. 
 One of his sisters was a great invalid, and would 
 have missed her brother so much if they had re- 
 moved to any distance. They were all very fond 
 of each other, and he married somebody they had
 
 16 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 known all their lives, a particular friend of his 
 sisters." 
 
 " That would not make the smallest difference," 
 said Mrs. Stubbs promptly, and a little contemp- 
 tuously; "indeed, under the circumstances, a 
 stranger might have been better. The nearest, 
 most intimate relations generally bear worst the 
 strain of such a situation. They have the least 
 protection in the polite and ceremonious barriers of 
 society." 
 
 " Well," said Pie, still looking unconvinced and a 
 little aggrieved, " I remember in one of Jane Aus- 
 ten's novels she makes a good deal of the danger of 
 daily visiting between the great house and the cot- 
 tage, as a fertile source of petty gossip and small 
 grievances on either side. But I always thought it 
 was because the heads of the family and the son and 
 his wife were not very sensible, and had not much 
 to occupy their minds. I fancied too that the ob- 
 jection belonged to the more formal habits and 
 peculiar prudence of a former generation." 
 
 " My dear Pie, one cannot be too prudent," her 
 mother interposed. " Discretion is the soul of peace 
 as well as of valor." 
 
 " Even more than love and kindness ?" asked Pie 
 quickly.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 17 
 
 " I did not say so," denied Mrs. Stubbs sharply, 
 like a person unjustly accused, " and the Musgroves 
 in ' Persuasion,' to which you are referring, were 
 quite as sensible and busy as the generality of people. 
 You may depend upon it, Jane Austen is a safe guide 
 here." 
 
 " You know how I admire Jane Austen," said 
 Pie, still more aggrieved, and speaking quite re- 
 proachfully, " yet I do think she is hard now and 
 then." 
 
 " Not at all," said her mother, who was not fol- 
 lowing the course of Pie's thoughts, which were 
 reaching far into the unknown future, and busy with 
 Harry. She felt sore at the suggestion that the 
 time would ever come when it would be wise for her 
 and all his friends to keep at a respectful distance 
 from him and his, lest offenses should arise through 
 near neighborhood. 
 
 " No, it was very short-sighted of old Squire Ful- 
 ler," repeated Mrs. Stubbs, harping on the original 
 string. " It was just like a man." 
 
 "When you make personal observations like these, 
 Mrs. Stubbs," her husband observed, " I always feel 
 that your vaunted discretion is indeed the better 
 part of valor, and that it is time for me to beat a 
 speedy retreat. Come along, Pie, and help me
 
 18 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 with my specimens." For geology was Mr. Stubbs' 
 hobby, while the preservation and proper arrange- 
 ment of his specimens on their shelves and in their 
 cases formed at once the blessing and the bane of 
 his existence. But no strata, however interesting, 
 prevented him from penetrating what was in Pie's 
 mind, and being unwilling that the girl should be 
 pained by anticipation. " The matter is as purely 
 supposititious," he said to himself in carrying off Pie, 
 " as was the reasoning of the timid young kitchen- 
 maid who could not bear to look at her chopping- 
 axe, in case she should marry and have a son, and 
 
 I 
 
 he should present her with a grandson of a rash 
 and reckless disposition, who might tamper with 
 that very axe and lose an arm or even his head in 
 the encounter. Mrs. Stubbs is as strongly attached 
 to her offspring as any mother need be, and is as 
 little likely to give them up as such mothers usually 
 are with all their acquired worldly wisdom. Why, 
 even I, who, I am convinced, am more of a philo- 
 sopher, as becomes one of the men she was pleased 
 to decry, do not care to look forward to the time 
 when I cannot command the attendance of Harry 
 and Pie, my own young flesh and blood, when 
 Harry will not give us even the fag-end of his holi- 
 days, but be only an occasional visitor according to
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 19 
 
 his convenience not mine, and Pie may have flown 
 to the ends of the earth and owe her service to 
 another and not to me. Bless the woman, why 
 should she forestall evil ? That is just like a woman, 
 if the other simple resource of planting his deposed 
 family by his side was like a man ; though, to do 
 Pie's mother and her whole sex justice, I don't sup- 
 pose she has the most distant conception of Pie's 
 application of the argument." 
 
 " Pie, child," her father said aloud when the pair 
 had arrived at his den, the little room full of wel- 
 come cupboards, and itself opening into the garden, 
 " don't imagine I'll let you off from dusting these 
 spars, and laying bare with your finest needle these 
 fossils from the sandstone in which they have been 
 embedded for ages, though the evil communications 
 of your neighbors at the manor house may have 
 corrupted your good manners, and you may have 
 grown fine, or fast, or strong-minded, and may have 
 taken it upon you to set up engagements of your 
 own. You owe this to me, and I'll have my due, I 
 warn you." 
 
 " All right, father," answered Pie, laughing with 
 recovered good spirits, and using one of the men's 
 expressions, which, when the men and women of
 
 20 QIRL NK1GHBOR8. 
 
 a house are pretty equally balanced, the latter are 
 apt to acquire in right of their belonging to the 
 more teachable and impressionable of the two 
 sexes.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE AWKWARDLY TWIN CHAEACTER OF THE MANOR 
 HOUSE AND THE COTTAGE AT MAIDSMEADOWS. 
 
 THERE was good cause for the disturbance of the 
 elder Stubbs' minds on the manor house being let, 
 and for Mrs. Stubbs' indignant reflections on the 
 imbecility of the old squire of the place in planning 
 and putting down the cottage where it stood in re- 
 lation to the other house. His only excuse would 
 have been a direct revelation that the millennium 
 was at hand ; and that families as well as nations 
 were thenceforth, however trying the circumstances 
 in which they found themselves, to live in perfect 
 harmony. For even if he had received a super- 
 natural intimation that he and the members of his 
 family were to live forever, or even if he had suc- 
 ceeded in executing a deed of settlement through 
 which the great house and the small were to be 
 occupied in perpetuity by a succession of family 
 parties in two divisions, according to Mrs. Stubbs' 
 theory these extraordinary provisions for the future
 
 23 GIRL NEIGHBORS 
 
 would only have intensified the mischief. But so 
 far from any of these refuges presenting themselves, 
 the millennium had not come, it had not even 
 heralded its distant approach by any remarkable 
 evidence of brethren and nearest neighbors abiding 
 together in unbroken unity. Squire Fuller and his 
 wife with his mother an1 sisters had long been 
 gathered to their fathers. Instead of other genera- 
 tions of their race following them in the twin houses, 
 the squire had survived all his children. The manor 
 house and the cottage had first passed to a far-away 
 cousin of the name, and shortly afterward been sold 
 to strangers. The two houses had in reality never 
 been used as house and dowager house since Squire 
 Fuller's day. They had been let separately to ten- 
 ants having nothing to do with each other, where 
 everything had been tried in vain to undo thoroughly 
 the efforts of the founder of the cottage and sever 
 the invidious connection. Indeed the immediate 
 vicinity of the dwellings had been considered so 
 great a drawback that for a period of } T ears the fact 
 that one was tenanted had implied the tenantless 
 condition of the other. 
 
 At last a bold enough man was found to take a 
 lease of the manor house, while the cottage con- 
 tinued, as it had been for a considerable time, in
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 23 
 
 the possession of Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs and their 
 family. It was about to be seen whether two 
 households brought into such tantalizing proximity- 
 could survive in tolerable amity, and whether the 
 sole chance for so desirable an end was the one ad- 
 vocated by Mrs. Stubbs, that they should decline to 
 know each other. 
 
 In justice to Squire Fuller it must be granted that 
 such family colonies as he had aspired to plant were 
 not very unusual in his day, when there was no 
 longer in the fair average of civilization the slight- 
 est plea for kindred drawing together in order to 
 ensure safety from the violence of strangers. Still 
 people remained dependent on those allied to them, 
 because the seniors especially moved much more 
 rarely from place to place, formed far fewer new 
 associations, and clung with greater tenacity to 
 early ties. The heads of the houses, in their honest 
 worth, were not particularly cultivated or liberal- 
 minded. They had not many available means of 
 interest and entertainment. They were quick to 
 miss any to which they had been accustomed. 
 They demanded companionship, and could require 
 it from the members of their families, not untinc- 
 tured with the deference which the rest of the 
 world was not always prepared to pay. Whatever
 
 24 GIEL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the reason, dowager houses, or cottages for younger 
 brothers or maiden sisters within the grounds of the 
 grounds of the mansion house, were far more com- 
 mon then than now. 
 
 These dependencies differed considerably from 
 the houses in a street or from semi-detached villas, 
 which continue innumerable, and may be occupied 
 either by strangers or acquaintances for a dozen 
 years without any great danger of a pitched battle, 
 to be followed by a deadly irreconcilable feud. 
 For in the last design which man has originated 
 the cautious qualification of the arrangement is in- 
 tended to render the one householder as independ- 
 ent as possible of the other. Each is meant to 
 draw water at his will from his own cistern, and sit 
 under his own vine or fig-tree without the smallest 
 obligation implied on either side. Separate en- 
 trances and exits are provided for as absolutely 
 indispensable. If it can be contrived that the par- 
 allel domestic movements shall be rendered invisi- 
 ble to all save the special performers, by high walls, 
 blind windows, and ground glass, so much the 
 better. 
 
 Now, the old social arrangement was the very 
 opposite of all this. The whole intention was to 
 facilitate seeing each other and meeting each other
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 25 
 
 perpetually without any exertion or fatigue, and so 
 well was the intention fulfilled that it was next to 
 impossible to evade it. A speculative man might 
 have defied his brother man to escape him, to keep 
 an hour out of his sight and hearing, unless by 
 shutting himself into a room with an extensive out- 
 look, if the two men lived in the manor house and 
 the cottage at Maidsmeadows. Poor old Squire 
 Fuller had been only too intent on his purpose and 
 too successful in attaining his end. From the 
 window of his dressing-room he could, in life, com- 
 mand the windows of what had been his mother's 
 room, and that of his favorite sister. From the 
 principal sitting-rooms of both houses there was a 
 fine view each of the other's front door. Nay, 
 there was a business and gun-room in the manor 
 house which so corresponded, in the matter of 
 opposite lights, with a housekeeper's room and 
 pantry and a garret in the other, that it appeared 
 as if the latter had been planned with the very 
 design of being raked fore and aft, as sailors say, by 
 the former. The old-fashioned gardens and shrub- 
 beries were contiguous, w r ith the prevailing motive 
 that neither lilac nor thorn, artichoke nor asparagus- 
 beds should act as a screen, or intercept the full 
 knowledge of what was going on in the one from 
 the stroller in the other.
 
 26 01HL XR1GHBORS. 
 
 Since the Fullers' day, though strenuous efforts 
 had been made to divorce the two houses, they had 
 not been long enough occupied contemporaneously 
 for the most desperate endeavor to overthrow to 
 any great extent the original laying-out of the re- 
 spective grounds. Somebody had stuck in a surly 
 row of Scotch firs to serve as a substitute for a file 
 of Jack's bean-stalks. But though the firs had got 
 time enough to grow long after their planter was 
 gone, they had not agreed with the soil. Only one 
 or two had arrived at the rank of trees, standing far 
 apart, falling to different sides, and twisting them- 
 selves fantastically, more like frames to landscape 
 vignettes than an obscuring barrier. 
 
 All the time there was a brook running between 
 the grounds, but this Squire Fuller had crossed and 
 recrossed with rustic bridges, pointedly terminating 
 each of the winding walks, which were conspicuous 
 features in the landscape-gardening of the day. In 
 the middle of the widest bridge the infatuated man, 
 had actually built a couple of arbors back to back, 
 as an expression of some simple, sly jest of his own ; 
 for, while the one arbor belonged to the manor house 
 and the other to the cottage, every word said in the 
 one could be heard in the other, and by pulling aside 
 the twigs of clematis and woodbine a pair of faces 
 could be brought into closest contact.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 27 
 
 It was certain that while the main object had 
 been to furnish access from one establishment to the 
 other at every point, a secondary intention had been 
 put in force. This was to multiply indefinitely 
 those circumscribed winding walks, so that the ladies 
 of the respective families might have sufficient walk- 
 ing exercise within their own and their son's and 
 brother's, or their mother's and sister-in-law's, 
 sheltered, cultivated domain, without having to pass 
 through the village, and pace the dusty or muddy 
 highway or the rough farm lanes. The last locali- 
 ties were viewed with reserve as hardly fit resorts 
 for the essence of what was considered feminine and 
 ladylike in a past generation. 
 
 When only the one house was tenanted its occu- 
 pants had so far profited by this wealth of walks 
 on both sides of the brook. Half of them were 
 largely let alone ; but though these had lost much 
 of their trimness, in anoth er light they were not 
 spoiled by some of the old-fashioned shrubs having 
 been suffered to spread and hang about in unpruned 
 luxuriance. The benefit of the manor house grounds 
 had been long enjoyed by the Stubbses as dwellers 
 in the cottage. Pie had been wont to wander as un- 
 checked on the one side of the brook as on the 
 other. She had fallen into the mistaken practice of
 
 28 Qim. NEIGHBORS. 
 
 acting as if she had as much to do with the manor 
 house as with the cottage honeysuckle and hollies, 
 and of helping herself not more freely to her own 
 lilies and violets, than to those which came up year 
 after year, unbidden and uncared for, in the un- 
 tended garden-beds. For Maidsmeadows was at too 
 great a distance from any large town to render the 
 lingering old-fashioned flowers worth the labor of 
 the market-gardener, who still reared peas and pota- 
 toes on the old soil, and looked after what was left 
 of the jargonelle pears and ribstone pippins, the 
 peaches and nectarines. 
 
 Pie almost felt as if the weather-stained, two- 
 storied, stone-roofed manor house belonged to the 
 Stubbses, so familiar was she with its outside fea- 
 tures, though she had only peeped within its half- 
 closed shutters and walked once or twice through 
 its unfurnished rooms. The manor house was much 
 the larger building, and had been rather a stately, 
 imposing mansion in its prime. At the same time 
 Pie greatly preferred the cottage, which was quaint 
 in its irregularities, its queer contrivances, and 
 small copies of the rain-water barrel, the shed for 
 the wood, the tool-house, as they existed in their en- 
 larged version at the bigger house; while the cot- 
 tage was home-like, cozy, snug in the trimness of
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 29 
 
 its creepers, the brightness of its windows, the gen- 
 eral excellent order which Mrs. Stubbs never suf- 
 fered to be upset. 
 
 Pie thought she would not have minded so much 
 the circumstance of the manor house's falling into 
 the hands of strangers, if only she and hers and they 
 and theirs could have been friendly together, which 
 her father and mother had at once reckoned an im- 
 possibility. In addition to the natural youthful 
 hankering after a mixture of novelty and sociality, 
 it seemed to Pie such a piteous mockery that there 
 should be a final rejection and sour closing up of all 
 old Squire Fuller's elaborate outlooks and by-roads. 
 Why, there had even been a covered way, for there 
 was a remnant of a miniature pleached alley, meeting 
 another at a roofed bridge. The roof of the bridge 
 was ruinous, letting in both sun and rain, and there 
 were a good many holes and breaks in the dimin- 
 utive alleys from the fall and removal of trees. But 
 when all was entire, it was said to have been meant 
 that the ladies of the two houses, especially old 
 madam and Miss Mary who was sickly, should go 
 to and fro on a wet day, without so much as the 
 call to buckle on clogs and put up umbrellas. The 
 original author of all these devices might have been 
 rash and saguine, he might not have taken into con-
 
 30 GIUL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 sideration the weakness and short-comings of hu- 
 man nature, on the moral as well as the physical 
 side, but there had been such a wealth of homely 
 tenderness in the lavish provision for friendliness, 
 that Pie, though she was shrewd for her years, could 
 not bear to see it utterly wasted and despised. 
 
 She had heard a good deal of the old Fuller fam- 
 ily from the octogenarian Patty Luke, who had been 
 a young girl in their service before the squire mar- 
 ried, when marriage was in his head, and he had 
 built the cottage to be sure that his mother and sis- 
 ters would be comfortable, and to keep them near 
 him and his young wife. Patty, like most old 
 ladies, enjoyed recounting the experience of her 
 youth. She was proud of remembering what a 
 great part of the world around her had either never 
 known or had altogether forgotten. Pie's being on 
 the spot had lent a greater vividness to Patty's 
 reminiscences. " Bless' e, yes," Patty would say, " I 
 do see it all as if it had happened but yesterday. 
 The young squire as were manful and kind, a strap- 
 ping man six feet tn*o in his stocking soles, tramping 
 out and in, and allers coming to old madam, his 
 mother, with the tale of what he was doing, and to 
 ask her what she thought and if she were pleased. 
 
 " ' That will suit you, won't it, mother ? ' he would
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 31 
 
 ask, anxious like to meet her views. * You'll never 
 miss this corner for your chair or that window for 
 your table since I've caused the men to run up the 
 marrow of them at the cottage, only, if anything, 
 freer from draughts, and easier got at. And May' 
 he would call Miss Mary, * May,' as he had done 
 when they two were young things, though the rest 
 of the family called her ' Molly ' ' May will have 
 her bedroom next yours on the drawing-room floor, 
 so that she need not be tried by the stair except 
 when she goes down to dinner, or when she is bound 
 for a little walk, or to take a turn with you in 
 her donkey chair. But I expect she'll be getting 
 quite strong one of these days and not minding 
 stairs, long ere Otway comes back.' For Miss Mary 
 had been engaged to be married to a gentleman as 
 was a sailor before she took the bad illness from 
 which she never altogether recovered. 'You'll 
 never feel dull and lonesome,' the squire would say, 
 ' for me and Kitty ' that was young madam as was 
 coming 'will be running in and out, and looking 
 you up at all hours of the day, as I trust you will 
 be able to look us up for this many a year. There 
 can be no fatigue for you and May,' he said, * when 
 we're all within a stone's-throw of each other. Why, 
 mother, you can cross from your herb-beds into
 
 32 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ours without going back to the main path, and 
 when you run out of thyme or lavender there is 
 ours at your hand and your service the same as ever. 
 If you like you will see me mounting for the hunt 
 every hunting morning, and if you want me at any 
 time you have but to give me a wave and I'll be 
 with you in a trice.' Eh ! but the young squire was 
 thoughtful for his mother and sisters, and bent, if it 
 were in mortal man's power, that they should not 
 be great losers by his marriage." 
 
 " And did his schemes all work well, Patty ? 
 Was the double household as happy as he meant 
 it to be ? " Pie would ask doubtfully, for satirical 
 tongues had said the contrary, though it belonged 
 to the gossip of a past generation. 
 
 " I dunno, Miss Stubbs," Patty would say reluc- 
 tantly, echoing Pie's doubt; for she was a nice 
 woman, with a kindly tongue as a rule, loyal to the 
 patrons of her youth, and not relish ing their discom- 
 fiture after the fashion of more sardonic domestics. 
 " Ma'ppen they were as happy as men and women 
 could be in this here world of changes and crosses. 
 The young folks did run in and out of each other's 
 houses and share a deal of their good times and gay 
 doings for a time. They all joined I can say that 
 for them in paying a heap of respect to old madam
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 33 
 
 as her son thought so much on, which were her 
 due. 
 
 " The first mischief," Patty went on to admit 
 with a sigh, " were done by some friends of young 
 madam's as came from a distance and paid her a 
 long visit. Everything was strange to them, and 
 mebbe they did not mean no harm ; but they made 
 remarks, and said as how they wouldn't never sub- 
 mit to this, or they wouldn't never agree to that 
 if they were the manor house or the cottage family. 
 Them visitors carried tales as they didn't ought to, 
 them as were gentlefolks and should have knowed 
 better, and backed the different servants when they 
 fell out. 
 
 " Then young madam was bound up in her first 
 baby and a fine child as ever was born he were, 
 though she lived to see him in his coffin afore he had 
 left school. Who could blame her ? But she would 
 have him brought up in her new-fangled way, and 
 she was jealous if his grandmother or his aunts, as 
 were that fond, too, of the first child among them, 
 if they said a word for their way. She resented 
 even where the bairn's father would have a voice, as 
 was his right, in his own child's rearing, and was 
 persuaded that the ladies at the cottage were at the 
 bottom of the squire's interference.
 
 34 OIKL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Deary, deary me, miss, how sparks of trouble 
 will rise from nowt, or else what should have brought 
 nowt but a blessing in its train." 
 
 " And were the differences never got over ? " said 
 Pie, knowing all the time how it turned out. " Was 
 the family sundered like this by no fault, unless it 
 was by a small error of judgment, or an excess of 
 natural affection ? " 
 
 "Well, they were never like so frankly cordial 
 after that there first visit of young madam's rela- 
 tions. There was no quarrel, for they had respect 
 for themselves and one another, but there was a 
 stiffness and old madam did not live as long as the 
 squire had counted on, nor poor Miss Mar} 7 , as he 
 was so fond on, that had her lover drowned in the 
 wreck of his ship, and so she lost her chance of ever 
 throwing off her weakness and growing a hale and 
 hearty woman, a happy wife and mother with the 
 best. After that Miss Dorothy married and settled 
 in the north, and though Miss Fuller and Miss Joan 
 as never married, always lived part of the year at 
 the cottage their brother had built for them, they 
 divided their time between Maidsmeadows and their 
 sister's neighborhood, where they got rooms to their 
 mind in a farmhouse. They came to take deeper 
 root there than here, as was not to be \vondered at
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 35 
 
 since her children all lived and grew up around 
 them, while the squire's never saw their teens save 
 one, she as was thought to favor Miss Mary, and 
 she passed away before she reached her twenties. 
 Eh, but it was sore on the squire, and still sorer on 
 madam, as were a warm tempered and oonreason- 
 ing kind of lady, and could never abide the 
 sight of her blooming nephews and nieces, that had 
 lived and throve when her five bairns had pined 
 and perished most like bits of flowers in a strong 
 draught." 
 
 " So Squire Fuller might as well have spared all 
 his short cuts and little bridges, and. the opposite 
 windows which looked into each other," said Pie, 
 with a rueful smile. 
 
 " ^ay, now, do not be so fast, miss, if you will 
 forgive the freedom," said Patty quickly. "The}*" 
 served their turn as long as they was wanted. 
 There's One aboon our heads as would see to that, 
 I can trussen that far. And weren't young madam 
 hersen as thankful as thankful could be, twice in her 
 married life, that she hadn't to go round by the 
 carriage road between the two houses? The one 
 time was when little Master Sam was taken with 
 a fit in cutting his last tooth as his mother was 
 a-carrying him in her anns in the shrubbery. Off
 
 36 QIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 she flew like a wild thing, holding him tight, across 
 the nearest bridge to old madam, whom she had 
 seen a minute before looking at her damson trees. 
 Madam took the bairn from his mother, whipped 
 one of her kid muffatees between the teeth he had 
 got, that his tongue might be safe, and had him 
 straight into a hot bath in the cottage, and brought 
 round, long before the doctor could be sent for. The 
 other time was when Miss Mary read in the news- 
 paper the news of the wreck of her sweetheart's 
 ship, with the loss of all hands." 
 
 " As you have told me, Patty," said Pie, softly, 
 recalling the far-off tragedy, which, as it had to do 
 with youth and love and sorrow, and had been acted 
 on the very spot where Pie's e very-day life was 
 spent, had a special hold on the girlish imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Patty was nothing loth to tell the story once 
 again. " Eight you are, miss, and I have often 
 thought and spoken on it. It was in the early sum- 
 mer, and Miss Mary was lying resting after dinner 
 on the settee in her own room, before the open 
 window that had the lily of the valley bed aneath it, 
 as the squire made with his own hands to pleasure 
 his sister." 
 
 The lily of the valley was there still, as Pie knew.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 3? 
 
 for it came up every spring, and she had taken care 
 that it should not be disturbed. 
 
 " All the famity, even to old madam and the serv- 
 ants, were out in the hayfield beyond the paddock, 
 where the squire was having the first hay-making of 
 the season. Young madam had come to sit a little 
 with Miss Mary, and had brought her the news- 
 paper and given it to her without looking it over, 
 and sure enough the bit that at once caught Miss 
 Mary's eye was that about the wreck of the Duke of 
 York, with the loss of all on board. She knew that 
 Captain Otway was with his ship, so she just gave a 
 kind of gasp and a strangled cry, and her fell back 
 in a dead faint. Young madam lifted her sister up 
 as well as she was able and screeched for help, so 
 that they heard her plain in the hayfield. The squire 
 did not take two steps when one served him. He 
 ran so fast, and \vould have taken the bridge by the 
 mulberry bush in a flying leap, but he came down 
 with his whole weight upon the end of the plank, 
 and split it right up with the heel of his boot. All 
 the time madam, his wife, was praying aloud for 
 him to come quick, because she thought Miss Mary 
 would have died in her arms. But when she heard 
 her brother's voice she revived and sat up, and tried 
 to tell him what had happened. Natheless she
 
 38 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 had gotten her death-blow, though her lived on 
 through the summer into the autumn. Young 
 madam did what she could to make up for her rash- 
 ness. To do her justice it was not what she saw to 
 be her duty that she failed in, and if she liked any- 
 body that was a drop's blood akin to the squire, after 
 they were wed and she thought he should belong 
 to her alone it were old madam and Miss Mary. 
 There was never a morning that summer the squire 
 was not over by the shortest way to ask for Miss 
 Mary the first thing, before he tasted bite or sup. 
 He would sit hours at a time on her bed, seeking to 
 cheer her up. If she were a grain worse, Miss 
 Dorothy or Miss Joan would hang out her handker- 
 cher and he was with them, as he had said, ' in a 
 trice.' Day and night he kept a loving watch on 
 the cottage, and it were not with his will that there 
 ever came a coolness and a slackness in the traffic 
 between the two houses. Well-a-well, Miss Stubbs, 
 there is an end to everything under the sun." 
 
 " So there is, Patty, and there must be an end to 
 my call," said Pie. She had come to see Patty in 
 the cottage the old lady still kept clean and tidy, 
 and to beg a sitting of eggs from her famous hen, a 
 genuine " Plymouth Rock." 
 
 " Nay, now ? that is very quick and perky in you.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 30 
 
 miss, but you are too young a lady to lay the truth 
 to heart. The vicar he do say our mortal life is but 
 the beginning of a better, which the Lord grant for- 
 ever and ever, is my humble petition."
 
 O1RL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 PIE STUBBS MAKES HER "RECONNAISSANCE." 
 
 PIE MIGHT be, and was, the busiest, most intelli- 
 gently interested and occupied of girls, the center 
 of a crowd of avocations and obligations the 
 machinery of which, thanks to Mrs. Stubbs, went on 
 as regularly as clock-work that left her little time 
 for wearying or even for dreaming to any alarming 
 extent ; still the country is the country and girls 
 will be girls. The whole village of Maidsmeadows 
 including the vicarage, the surgery, the post 
 office, the saw-mill, which, happily for the pictur- 
 esqueness of the place, broke in upon the main 
 street, and was kept going by the same brook 
 which divided the manor house from the cottage, 
 the dressmaker's, the school, the wheelwright's, the 
 forge was keenly exercised by the arrival of the 
 new r family to live at least a part of the year at the 
 manor house, and none of the eager discussers of the 
 event was more alive to its importance, especially 
 where she was concerned than Pie Stubbs.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 41 
 
 True, Pie's father, and above all her mother, 
 whose word was law in social matters, had decreed 
 that the Stubbses should be guilty of the grossest 
 inhospitality to their new neighbors by taming 
 their backs and refusing to have anything to do 
 with the strangers. " It is not that I think they 
 will take what is not their own, or will begin by 
 borrowing our hair and tooth brushes, like people 
 in the bush or the backwoods," said Mrs. Stubbs, 
 candidly. " I hear Mr. Cotton is a rich London 
 merchant, and no doubt needs nothing that we have, 
 on the contrary possesses a great deal that we have 
 not. It is because I do not wish to have my serv- 
 ants tampered with, or fretted and gulled into 
 throwing up their places. I have no desire to see 
 Pie's head turned and perhaps her temper soured by 
 constant familiarity with the ways of a rich, luxur- 
 ious household. I don't deny it has been a tolerably 
 sensible girl's head hitherto, but it is better to keep 
 it out of temptation. It is not at all probable that 
 people in such different circumstances would be 
 companionable where we were concerned. In fact 
 we want no other company than what we have 
 already, and if we had it, and it were ten times 
 better worth than I suspect it is, it would be dearly 
 bought by the complete sacrifice of our privacy.
 
 4$ GIRL 
 
 Believe me, Pie, there is only one alternative not 
 to know these people at all. Very likely they are 
 birds of passage, and won't stay long anywhere. 
 Certainly it is the kind of establishment which goes 
 up to town where Mr. Cotton must have his office 
 or his warehouse after Christmas, runs abroad at 
 Easter, repairs to the seaside in June or July, is off 
 to the moors in August, and finds no partridge, 
 hare, or pheasant shooting worth cultivating here 
 after October." 
 
 " But, mother," Pie made the despairing protest, 
 " it seems so rude and unfriendly, positively unchris- 
 tian." 
 
 " Never mind what it seems," said Mrs. Stubbs, 
 imperturbably, " we know why it is. If the people 
 are worth their salt, they too will guess and will 
 acquiesce, if they do not aid and abet us. How can 
 it be inhospitable and unchristian " for these words 
 pricked the worthy woman's conscience a little 
 " when they can want nothing that we have to give 
 them! It might have been different if things had 
 been all the other way, if it had been possible for 
 the new people to represent some poor family taking 
 refuge beside us in their distress. Even then it 
 would have been a ' sell,' as Harry says, and a great 
 bore. But that is all nonsense. The rent of the
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 43 
 
 manor house is nearly double ours, and I hear Mr. 
 Cotton is doing a great deal for the house, which he 
 has only on lease, and that not a long one, pulling 
 the place to pieces and refitting it in the most ex- 
 pensive fashion, as these people always do." 
 
 " What people ? " inquired Mr. Stubbs, looking 
 up from the book he had been reading, and catching 
 his partner up. " I thought you knew nothing 
 about them." 
 
 " Neither do I," she answered unmoved, " but they 
 are rich people at least they have begun by acting 
 as if they did not kno\v what to do with their 
 money. To pay Keziah Clouston three shillings a 
 day for simply washing the floors, and to have 
 painters down from London to pick out the roofs ! 
 That is enough," she said conclusively. 
 
 Pie had to resign herself to the inevitable with a 
 faint hope of something turning up that last straw 
 of those who have nothing else to depend upon to 
 cause her mother to modify her decree. But any- 
 how there was the seeing and hearing a good deal 
 of the Cottons when they came to occupy the manor 
 house, and the receiving the willing report of luckier 
 neighbors less chary as to the corrupting contagion 
 of wealth and pleasure and the invasion of their re- 
 tirement.
 
 44 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs had begun by going so far as to say 
 she did not care to see or hear anything of the 
 Cottons, with whom she meant to have nothing to 
 do, though the two families were compelled to dwell 
 in closest contact. She trusted the Cottons would 
 not become a topic of unimproving conversation at 
 the cottage as well as the subject of the tittle-tattle 
 of the village. But, possibly because there are limits 
 even to virtuous abstinence, she let this extreme re- 
 striction drop. In fact it was Mrs. Stubbs herself, 
 who, having heard the details at some dinner-table 
 at which Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs were guests, while 
 Pie was too young to appear in their company, took 
 pity on her daughter, weakly craving for informa- 
 tion, and supplied her with certain particulars. Mr. 
 Cotton was a wealthy London merchant as had been 
 said. Further, as had not been known before he 
 came, he was a widower, without a son but with 
 several daughters the elder three married, the 
 fourth, a girl about Pie's age, who had lived mostly 
 at school or with one or other of her sisters where 
 she ought to have been still since the last marriage 
 in the family till now, when she was coming home 
 to be at the head of her father's house a girl not a 
 year older than Pie, and with nobody to support and 
 guide her except an old working housekeeper ! It
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS' 45 
 
 was preposterous and wrong, and showed again what 
 sort of people the Cottons were. A pretty finish they 
 would make of it at the manor house. 
 
 A girl no older than she was the mistress of a 
 large establishment, one of the heads of a great 
 household ! Here was food for Pie's active imagin- 
 ation. She pitied Miss Cotton, for though Pie was 
 an excellent deputy-housekeeper on a modest scale, 
 she had always her mother to refer to. And how 
 dull, stupid, and miserable it would be to have no 
 mother with a mother's authority and experience, 
 and yet young enough to have much of an elder 
 sister's sympathy, to share all her duties and many 
 of her recreations to walk with her, garden with 
 her, sit and work with her, to read to or be read to 
 by her, as suited the pair best. When Mrs. Stubbs 
 was from home, and the sense that her vigilant, un- 
 slumbering eye was removed from the household, 
 would tempt the human mice Pie amongst them 
 to play a little, the play speedily palled even before 
 something went wrong, and Pie longed for her 
 guardian and companion back as much openly as 
 Mr. Stubbs did secretly. How flat and pointless, 
 like a watch without a pivot or a wheel without an 
 axle, must life at the manor house be without a Mrs. 
 Cotton to look after the household, take care of every
 
 46 OfUL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 member, and " mother " her or him in a breezy, 
 bracing fashion. 
 
 Pie was so impressed by the blank that she pointed 
 it out to her mother with the inference that they 
 ought to feel for Miss Cotton in her forlorn position, 
 and that it was an additional reason why the cot- 
 tage should not be stoically indifferent to the manor 
 house. 
 
 But Mrs. Stubbs said, " Nonsense ! Miss Cotton 
 would not appreciate such reasoning." Mrs. Stubbs 
 understood that the Cottons would have company 
 staying in the house frequently. The married sisters 
 took it by turns to be a good deal with their father 
 and young sister a fine excuse if they cared for 
 gadding. She (Mrs. Stubbs) wondered how their 
 husbands liked it, but any how there was little chance 
 of Miss Cotton's feeling lonely even if she had not 
 been used to the situation. 
 
 Pie's room window was one of the few windows 
 of the cottage which did not look without blinking 
 straight across the lawn, over a bush or two, and 
 one or other of the bridges which spanned the 
 brook, at the manor house. But from nearly all the 
 other rooms, and from innumerable points on the 
 Stubbs' grounds she could get a glimpse, when she 
 had not time to get more, of the preparations and
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 47 
 
 improvements going on. Now it was the windows 
 cleaning, then it was the front-door painting, next it 
 was the transportation of tubs with choice specimens 
 of hydrangea, agapanthus, and aloe to furnish the 
 veranda that ran along one side of the house and 
 fronted the Stubbs' little veranda. Pie could not 
 only see what was going on, she could hear the 
 clattering and hammering, and smell the paint from 
 morning till night if she did not go out of the 
 way. 
 
 There was some excuse for Mr. Stubbs losing a 
 portion of his philosophy in his increase of nervous 
 headache ; and for Mrs. Stubbs, who defied noise 
 or evil odors to affect her nerves, taking the oppor- 
 tunity to practice a little counter-irritation and get 
 all the cleaning and carpentering, to which Mr. 
 Stubbs had a strong objection, done under cover of 
 the more extensive operations within hail. 
 
 Pie, in her youth and health of body and mind, 
 did not suffer any more than her mother suffered 
 from the racket within and without, but she began 
 to realize, even before the Cottons' arrival, the 
 awkwardness of the proximity. She did not see 
 the family arrive, v for the good reason that she had 
 shut herself up out of sight. " They will think we 
 are watching them and spying on them, and that
 
 48 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 would be too bad, particularly when we are not to 
 call or to have anything to do with them. Perhaps 
 they are tired with their journey and do not care to 
 be first seen by strangers, fagged and out of sorts. 
 Perhaps they travel in deshabille. Perhaps they 
 choose to keep their family arrangements in the 
 privacy my mother is fond of talking about, though 
 I am sure all the world might see what we are do- 
 ing at any moment of our lives," added Pie with a 
 little pride. " My mother would be the first to say 
 that we make no pretense of being what we are 
 not, and that as we have nothing to hide, so we 
 have nothing to be ashamed of. Still nobody 
 likes to be disturbed and intruded on when the 
 things they chiefly want are rest and refreshment; 
 and the worst form of intrusion must be to feel 
 one's self stared at by strangers who are never to 
 be anything else than strangers though the Cot- 
 tons can't know that yet," ended Pie with a sigh. 
 
 But Pie was tempted to hearken to the tales 
 exchanged on every side of her, which her very 
 mother seemed disposed to receive and repeat, for 
 events were rare at Maidsmeadows of the new 
 style of furnishing at the manor house, the care and 
 elaboration with which all was made in keeping, 
 the number of servants and of horses, the variety of
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 49 
 
 carriages, the fact, that when the family arrived 
 Mr. Cotton and his youngest daughter were alone. 
 He was reported to be a hale, stout man, who 
 looked as if his habits were active, while he lived 
 well. She was described as a tall girl in a regular 
 traveling suit, with jacket and hat to match such as 
 she might have got to go abroad, or worn at a 
 fashionable watering-place. She was said to look 
 in the fashion, and older than her years as they had 
 been guessed at Maidsmeadows. 
 
 But Pie could not continue to shut herself up. 
 She could not close her eyes. She must soon see all 
 about the Cottons whom she was not to know ex- 
 cept by sight whether she would or no. She felt 
 she had better take a good look when she was about 
 it, and found herself excellently placed for the pur- 
 pose. Pie was standing on the small bleaching-green 
 at the cottage, which was at right angles to what had 
 been the large bleaching-green at the manor house, 
 across the brook which ran between them very con- 
 veniently for what had been the original use of the 
 greens. Both were still surrounded with thickset- 
 hazel bushes, and presented just the pretty seques- 
 tered spots that old country-house bleaching greens 
 often were. 
 
 But though Mrs. Stubbs still had the family wash-
 
 50 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ing laid out in the attractive place destined for it, 
 the manor house bleach ing-green, after long remain- 
 ing empty, had been converted first into a bowling- 
 green and then into a tennis-court. It was the mar- 
 ket-gardener who had the manor house garden in 
 charge that, not caring to see waste and not liking 
 to introduce skittles into such a locality, had started 
 bowls instead. As the man and his cronies grew 
 older and stiffer they left off meeting for the 
 game. Pie and her brother were at an age 
 to appropriate the disused ground for the bouts of 
 tennis they indulged in when Harry was at home, 
 for which the Stubbses lacked space on their side of 
 the brook. Harry took off his coat, borrowed the 
 gardener's scythe, mowed afresh the grass, which 
 was no longer of a velvety texture, chalked it, put 
 up the net, and the tennis-court was a fact accom- 
 plished. Clearly the Cottons had taken up the same 
 idea, for it was the knocking about of tennis-balls 
 which Pie heard as she stood on the Stubbs' bleach- 
 ing-green, behind their special hazel bushes, planted 
 by the honest old squire, not at all as a screen, but 
 with the double design of furnishing the cottage 
 dessert with filberts and of saving an unnecessary 
 expenditure of poles and clothes-line by supplying 
 the maid who acted as laundress with a choice of
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 51 
 
 verdant clothes-horses. Pie had gone to find 
 whether the marsh-marigolds which she had noticed 
 budding by the brook were sufficiently in flower to 
 be gathered. She was an old-fashioned girl, but she 
 had awakened to a truth which could not have 
 dawned on the minds of the Miss Fullers namely, 
 the merits of marsh-marigolds in a nankin jar. 
 Harry's taste had been so far cultivated at Oxford 
 that he had presented his sister with a nankin jar 
 and a terra-cotta pot, and suggested to her to employ 
 them as substitutes for the elaborate mock Dresden 
 and mock Sevres vases on which Mrs. Stubbs still 
 set store as fit receptacles for flowers, and proper 
 ornaments for the chimney-piece on which they 
 alternated with clumsily fantastic alabaster and 
 Parian marble urns and statuettes. How often Pie 
 and Harry had looked at the vases, first with juve- 
 nile admiration, then with a strong infusion of doubt, 
 and at last with unmitigated aversion ! The art 
 critics could hardly tell whether they disliked 
 most the broad bands of monstrous tulips and roses 
 in all the colors of the rainbow of the mock Dres- 
 den, or the small soft olive-green landscapes on a 
 ground of opaque pink of the mock Sevres. But 
 neither of the young iconoclasts would have ven- 
 tured to disparage her ceramic treasures, which, in- 
 deed, had been wedding presents, to their owner.
 
 52 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Pie had just snatched a moment from the hundred 
 things she had to do to look how the mari- 
 golds were coming on, when she heard the soft 
 thudding of tennis-balls, and pausing to listen, 
 was satisfied that only one person was play- 
 ing, or rather, practicing. She readily con- 
 cluded that the person was her contemporary and 
 neighbor, Miss Harriet Cotton, for the last atom of 
 interesting intelligence which had reached Pie was 
 that the unmarried Miss Cotton's Christian name 
 was " Harriet," abbreviated into " Harry " by her 
 father ; so that had the two families visited and 
 grown intimate the common name might have been 
 a source of awkward confusion, when Haderezerthe 
 younger, alias Harry Stubbs, was at the cottage. It 
 was not probable that the game of tennis was being 
 practiced in solitude by an elderly man like Mr. Cot- 
 ton, who when not on 'change was said to devote 
 himself to the expensive amusement to be had from 
 amateur farming. In proof of it he had rented not 
 only the manor house but the home farm, and was 
 believed to be contemplating as great revolutions 
 and reforms there as in the house itself. It was 
 much more likely that it was Miss Harriet Cotton 
 who was thus idly knocking about the balls and kill- 
 ing her spare time. Pie had not much spare time to
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 53 
 
 kill, but she had only to advance quietly to the hazel 
 bushes, and looking between the branches of the 
 nearest, have a fine private view of the player. 
 
 Pie yielded to natural curiosity, and what did she 
 see ? Certainly not a handsome girl, wearing un- 
 abashed in broad day a necklace of flashing dia- 
 monds, to set off a pale blue or pink silk or satin 
 frock trimmed with priceless lace. This sounds an 
 incongruous costume, but it is very much that in 
 which a heroine from the far west has been de- 
 scribed as standing in an English village garden, and 
 we are told she not only entranced the children, to- 
 gether with Hodge and his wife, but went on from 
 conquest to conquest, smiting all the intelligent be- 
 holders the women with secret envy, the men with 
 unstinted admiration. 
 
 No, Pie did not come on such a disheartening spec- 
 tacle, else it would have convinced her that her 
 mother was right in her prepossession, and that she 
 Pie and Miss Harriet Cotton were totally incom- 
 patible as friends. What Pie did behold was im- 
 pressive enough to a homekeeping girl, but it was 
 not nearly so bad as the other vision. She saw a 
 tall girl with good features, dark eyes, and a fine, 
 but slightly sickly, ivory -tinted skin, wearing a frock 
 of some thin woollen stuff of the same delicate ivory
 
 54 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 color as her complexion, and a white hat trimmed 
 with soft white lace. 
 
 After all, the costume, contrasting broadly with 
 Pie's strong, sober ginghams and brown hollands, 
 and her brown or black hats, was not much more 
 judicious, though it was a good deal more modest 
 than the blue or pink silk and the diamonds. 
 Fancy that frock and hat after it had passed up a 
 muddy lane, or been in the plantations when a 
 shower was just over, or even encountered the dust 
 and debris of cabbage-stalks, potato-parings, and 
 soap-suds in the village street, which no combined 
 efforts on the part of Mrs. Stubbs, the vicar, the 
 doctor, and the inspector of nuisances could induce 
 the villagers to deposit elsewhere ! Fancy the 
 frock and hat after they had seen some service in 
 the cottage hospital, the alms-houses, and what was 
 still worse, the neighboring cottages ! and imagine 
 the life of the girl if she could not venture into a 
 muddy lane, or a plantation glistening with rain- 
 drops, or even into the village street ! If she could 
 not soil her gloves by gathering poppies and black- 
 berries, or tear her kid boots and her poor little feet 
 within them, among stones and thorns scrambling 
 after ferns and birds' nests ! She had a carriage or 
 two, and a pony perhaps more than one ; but Pie
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 55 
 
 was very much mistaken in the conclusion she ar- 
 rived at, if these luxuries would serve as substitutes 
 for the more natural boons. 
 
 It was fortunate that Mr. Cotton liked to fill his 
 house with company, and it was to be hoped that the 
 company was always as congenial as the presence of 
 her sisters must be to Miss Harriet Cotton, for 
 otherwise she was to be pitied in place of being en- 
 vied. It made very little difference that Pie, even 
 at the distance at which she stood, could distinguish 
 and appreciate the exquisite daintiness of the color 
 and the perfect harmony of the lines of the girl's 
 frock, together with the simple elegance of her hat. 
 Notwithstanding such items, she could not be in her 
 right place at the manor house of Maidsmeadows, 
 and if she were not in her natural element, conse- 
 quent discomfort and injury were sure to follow, in 
 the human being as in the animal, in alien and hostile 
 conditions, as the plant taken from the greenhouse 
 and exposed in poor soil to a cold blast. 
 
 The evil appeared at work already ; for Miss 
 Harriet Cotton looked colorless, listless, if not 
 cross, as she engaged in that decidedly flat and 
 somewhat dreary pastime of playing tennis all by 
 herself on the old bleaching-green. The Miss 
 Fullers of a former generation had the better of her
 
 56 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 there. They brought out in china bowls their o\vn 
 and their mother's laces, the washing and dressing 
 of which the ladies would not intrust to servants, 
 and shook and patted between soft palms cobweb 
 fabrics, then hung them out delicately on the bushes 
 and watered them from a little watering-can taken 
 from the greenhouse, dipped gingerly in the brook, 
 and employed to sprinkle head-dresses, cuffs and 
 collars, as well as myrtles and geraniums. That 
 was a labor of love, and being a labor implied satis- 
 faction in the result, and well-pleased rest, after the 
 dutiful task had been accomplished. So it had been 
 with the old ladies' work in their dairy, their 
 poultry yard, the housekeeper's room, where the 
 mistresses as well as the housekeeper made pre- 
 serves, pickles, brewed home-made wines, and con- 
 cocted essences and innocent medicines. But there 
 was something of the objectless round of the tread- 
 mill in this pretense of playing tennis as if it were 
 patience or solitaire, unless, indeed, Miss Harriet 
 Cotton had such a passion for the game that every 
 slight acquisition of skill would be ample reward 
 for long and lonely practice. It did not look as if 
 she had this passion, for she played, not to say care- 
 lessly, but badly. Pie, though she was not 
 naturally of a grudging temper, could not help
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 57 
 
 thinking it was a pity that she and Harry had lost 
 their old tennis ground if that spiritless perform 
 ance was what was to succeed their lively contests, 
 unless, of course, when the manor house company 
 came to amuse themselves for a vacant hour. 
 Another tennis court of anything approaching to 
 the same extent was not easy to find on the cottage 
 side of the brook, since Mrs. Stubbs maintained the 
 primary destination of the bleaching-green. It was 
 all very \vell to say the grounds were far larger 
 than such a style of house as the Stubbses usually 
 commanded, when these grounds were cut up every- 
 where by ridiculous winding walks, each supplied 
 with one or more movable garden chairs, and all 
 leading to the brook, the bridges, the manor house 
 beyond, as if the one house existed solely for the 
 other ! Even Pie with her romantic regard for the 
 old squire, sometimes saw the evil of his arrange- 
 ments. But she could observe and reflect no longer 
 at this moment if she would not have the book-box 
 too late for the carrier, or the seams for the mother's 
 meeting left entirely for her mother to prepare, 
 when this was the day of the week on which Mrs. 
 btubbs summed up her accounts, and wrote to 
 Harry at college, and to her widowed sister who 
 was at Brussels for the education of her children.
 
 58 OIItL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 The same day that Pie got a glimpse of Harriet 
 Cotton cheating herself with the notion that she 
 was playing tennis, Mr. Stubbs at the cottage dinner- 
 table made his first distinct demur to a decree in 
 which he had, to begin with, coincided. He had 
 been under the necessity of making a business call 
 at the manor house in order to come to an under- 
 standing with Mr. Cotton as to some mutual obliga- 
 tions resting on the two gentlemen in keeping up 
 the boundaries between the respective houses and 
 their grounds. The step, apart from all neighborly 
 recognition, had been so awkward that Mr. Stubbs 
 had nearly proposed his neighbor's seeing him in 
 his lawyer's office in Springfield, the next market 
 town. But the adjournment of the interview, in 
 the light of the fact that the tenants of the manor 
 house and the cottage concerned in the question at 
 issue, saw each other, unless they were from home 
 or in bed, about every hour of the twelve, rendered 
 the measure ridiculous in its elaborate formality. 
 At the same time Mr. Stubbs confessed in the pri- 
 vacy of his family that he had felt very much put out. 
 And he made the confession not without a nettled 
 sense of his excellent wife's hard-headed obduracy 
 having been to blame for his confusion. " The man 
 a gentleman-like, unassuming old fellow, I must
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 59 
 
 say, in spite of his money and the style he has set 
 up, took it for granted, naturally enough, that I had 
 come as a friend and his nearest neighbor better 
 late than never. He took my breath away by say- 
 ing cordially he was very glad he had not happened 
 to go up to town, though he trusted my call was 
 but the prelude to many such visits." 
 
 " Pushing," said Mrs. Stubbs, icily. 
 
 " It was not pushingly said ; and when I mumbled 
 something of having come on business, he took me 
 up in a moment, though he looked a little put out, 
 like myself, and puzzled into the bargain. He con- 
 tinued perfectly civil, and showed himself reasonable 
 and liberal ; but he said nothing more of seeing me 
 again. Upon my word I felt heartily ashamed. I 
 was inclined to make him an apology, and say we 
 should all look in on him to-morrow," ended Mr. 
 Stubbs, a little as if he were feeling his way with 
 the lady who was his grand chamberlain. 
 
 But no. " The worst is over," she said oracularly. 
 " There will be no occasion for you to call again, 
 Haderezer. How did the house look ? " 
 
 " As I never expected to see it. I was only in 
 the hall and the library, and as I am not an uphol- 
 sterer or a decorator I cannot give you details, but 
 it struck me they were precisely what a hall and 
 library should be."
 
 60 GIRL NKIGHBOR8. 
 
 "Then there must have been great improve- 
 ments," struck in Pie, excitedly, stopping in peeling 
 her walnuts. " I have only seen the manor house 
 in its unfurnished state, but the hall used to look 
 very forlorn, with its discolored cold black and white 
 marble, and its rusty stove ; as for the library, it 
 was a shabby dark room, with the walls smoky, and 
 the ceiling the cornice at least falling down in 
 one corner." 
 
 " This much I can say with confidence," declared 
 Mr. Stubbs, " there is no discolored black and white 
 in the hall now. I have an idea there is a suitable 
 fireplace in the room of the stove. In the library a 
 couple of lancet windows have been opened out, so 
 that it is no longer dark. All traces of smoke have 
 disappeared, as one might have guessed, Pie ; and, 
 by the way, there is a very fine ceiling, which looks 
 as safe as the sky over our heads. I wish you could 
 have seen it," went on Mr. Stubbs, waxing slightly 
 enthusiastic in spite of himself " I wish you could 
 have seen the graceful shapes, and the beautiful col- 
 ors of everything." 
 
 " If all that has been done to the library, what 
 will the rest of the house be like ? " speculated Pie, 
 who was unaccustomed to any more interesting al- 
 teration in the cottage than what belonged to the
 
 GIRL NE1QHBOHS. 61 
 
 spring and autumn cleanings, to the re-covering of a 
 chair, or to a new table-cover. 
 
 " You are quite carried away, Haderezer," said his 
 wife, with an implied rebuke for his fickleness and 
 frivolity. " We are obliged to you for wishing that 
 we had shared what seems, after all, to have been 
 an enjoyment to you. I was not aware that you 
 were fastidious about furniture, or cared for luxuri- 
 ous trappings. But we can do without a personal 
 inspection, thank you. We can very well imagine 
 what we do not see. I for one am not fond of 
 changes in my house. If I were to have my belong- 
 ings constantly pulled about and remodeled in or- 
 der to be in the fashion, as some people's houses are, 
 I believe I should learn to hate them." 
 
 This was not a very promising remark, so the sub- 
 ject dropped.
 
 62 01BL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTEE IY. 
 
 HAREIET COTTON ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BROOK AR- 
 RIVES AT HER CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 HARRIET COTTON had been rather a lonely girl 
 since her last unmarried sister had followed in the 
 footsteps of her predecessors, though Harriet would 
 have been the last person to own it, either to her- 
 self or to any one else. True, she had been at 
 school, and she had stayed a great deal with her 
 married sisters ; but that was not the same thing as 
 when they had shared her home life on something 
 like terms of equality. 
 
 Harriet had always been well looked after in a 
 sense ; though she had missed a mother's care she 
 had been a good deal petted, by her father, and, 
 when she was younger, by her elder sisters in turn, 
 while she was as much spoiled as she could be by 
 the old housekeeper who had been in Mr. Cotton's 
 service when the last child of the family was born. 
 Harriet Cotton did not think herself at all badly 
 off, or in any way to be pitied ; on the contrary,
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 63 
 
 what girlish vanity she had (and how many girls 
 are wholly without vanity ?) was decidedly gratified 
 by the consideration that numbers of girls would 
 covet her privileges with reason. She thought 
 with pride of her position, including her father's 
 large income and ungrudging expenditure, the hand- 
 some establishments he kept up both in town and 
 country, his affectionate indulgence to her the last 
 chit in the nest, as he was wont to call her. She 
 was persuaded that most girls would envy the un- 
 disputed influence and authority rarely exercised by 
 one so young which belonged to her as the mistress 
 of a large household, though, of course, her father 
 controlled her, and Mrs. Walls, the housekeeper, ad- 
 vised her. Even Harriet's married sisters cast long- 
 ing eyes on her advantages, and would have been 
 disposed, had Harriet permitted it, to interfere and 
 try to modify them, when the matrons were staying 
 under the paternal roof. For though neither Laura 
 nor Georgie nor Anne Cotton had done badly for 
 herself, naturally their houses and their other pos- 
 sessions were not on the same scale, and were not 
 to be mentioned in the same breath, as Mr. Cotton's. 
 However, w^hen the young married women forgot 
 that they had by their marriages forfeited their 
 equal rights with Harriet, she had simply to appeal
 
 64 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 to her father, when he upheld his little girl against 
 the interlop ers, since her sisters had become inter- 
 lopers, let them be ever so well married. 
 
 Harriet Cotton had much of the independent tone 
 of the girl of her day an independence far exceed- 
 ing, and quite distinct from Pie Stubbs' freedom of 
 conscience and opinion, which was respected by her 
 father and mother. Harriet had the modern girl's 
 inclination to undervalue the claims of seniority and 
 larger experience, and her hatred of the humbug of 
 sentiment which pushed her into the attitude of as- 
 suming that very little sentiment of any kind 
 existed. She was a little hard and worldly-minded 
 for her years, and was prompted to give herself out 
 as being a hundred times harder and more worldly- 
 minded than she really was in short, to talk with a 
 rather "brutal" matter-of-factness, and a dash of 
 cynicism which would have been held at one time 
 passing strange and positively alarming in a girl of 
 sixteen. Withal, notwithstanding her delicate dress 
 and delicate physique, her fine lady ways, and the 
 little airs and graces which she was not above indulg- 
 ing in, on occasions, Harriet Cotton had acquired a 
 slightly masculine element, the best phase of which 
 was its straightforwardness and downrightness. It 
 was an element lacking in Pie Stubbs, though the
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 65 
 
 latter had much more available knowledge and re- 
 source, and was capable of being of far greater serv- 
 ice in any emergency likely to befall a woman. 
 
 But behind the accidents of her generation and 
 her rearing, which had but the superficial masculine 
 tinge, there was an eager immature woman, with a 
 true woman's quick feelings smothered, and sensitive 
 conscience held in check. Poor Harriet, without 
 meaning it or thinking of it, did not do herself jus- 
 tice, and she was to a large extent careless, in the 
 commencement of her intercourse with her neigh- 
 bors, of the impression she produced on them, mo- 
 mentous as that impression might be to her. 
 
 To her disgust Harriet found herself hankering 
 after the girl at the cottage, of whom the girl at 
 the manor house had taken, as a matter of course, 
 hundreds of bird's-eye peeps, but who had not 
 thought fit to come near Miss Cotton. "Why did 
 Miss Stubbs not come ? What was she like close at 
 hand ? she looked a rustic and a dowdy at a little 
 distance. What was the reason for her very queer 
 name ? Indeed both her names were queer. " Pie 
 Stubbs," Harriet had heard her called was there 
 ever such a combination ? She (Harriet) had not 
 believed herself a gossip before she told herself 
 this as if in her slight person and youthful mind
 
 68 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 was garnered much of the wisdom of the ages 
 but she was afraid she would soon be descending to 
 village tattle. She supposed it was a case of con- 
 tagion. 
 
 " Father," said Harriet on the next opportunity 
 when the two were strolling about their lawn in 
 full view, as they were aware, of the occupants of 
 the cottage, if the Stubbses cared to look at the 
 Cottons, " we are not favored with aristocratic titles 
 in this quarter. I hear that the people over the way, 
 who do not think us fit to associate with them and 
 have sent us to Coventry, are called Stubbs. Where 
 did they get that sweet name ? It just suits their 
 behavior stubbly is the right word for it, is it not? 
 Do you suppose the first Stubbs was a hedger and 
 ditcher?" 
 
 "What ails you at 'Stubbs,' Harry?" inquired 
 her father with a good-natured laugh. " We must 
 speak low in case any of the Stubbses should hear 
 us. I admit the owners of the name have not been 
 particularly gracious to us I cannot tell you why. 
 I knew we had very near neighbors, but I did not 
 object to them, being town-bred myself. I had an 
 idea they would be social on a rainy day. How- 
 ever, the Stubbses are at liberty to choose their 
 friends, and we have certainly enough and to spare
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 67 
 
 without them. The only member of the family I 
 have actually encountered as rather prepossessing 
 at the first glance looked a man a little out of 
 the common in- intelligence and culture shy and 
 crotchety, perhaps, from living out of the world 
 and from being somewhat out of health, which I 
 hear was his reason for retiring here, but I dare say 
 not less original on that account ; still, as the old 
 song says : 
 
 " ' If she be not fair to me, 
 
 What care I how fair she be ! ' 
 
 Since he and his will have none of us, we can afford 
 to let them alone without bearing malice. We can 
 do without them, unless we are hard pressed to 
 make up a whist party, and then I suppose we 
 shall have to fall back on ' dummy ' or on billards." 
 
 "That is all very well," said Harriet with the 
 ease of a girl who knew she could say anything she 
 liked to her father, while she clasped one of his arms 
 with both her hands ; " but what has that to do with 
 their appropriate name Stubbs? How did Stubbs 
 rise above hedges and ditches? " 
 
 "Hush! my dear, you are talking nonsense," re- 
 monstrated. Mr. Cotton. " There are plenty of 
 Stubbses very good Stubbses in England ; and as
 
 68 OIRL NEIGHBORS 
 
 to these Stubbses, I was speaking to the vicar, and 
 he says the family are proud of their name, which 
 has come down to them from a famous uncompro- 
 mising Puritan ancestor I hope I am right in the 
 Puritan, Harry ? " asked the gentleman candidly. 
 " I was college bred, but I am not so clear on 
 English history and literature as I am on the mar- 
 kets at home and abroad, though I have no doubt 
 many a younger, glibber man would declare I am 
 an old fogey on them too. But you are just off the 
 irons, you should be brilliant on the Puritan, 
 Stubbs." 
 
 " I know nothing about them," said Harriet un- 
 blushingly. " I am not sure that I approve of the 
 Puritans, if he was a Puritan. I can believe he was 
 uncompromising, for that belongs to his single-sylla- 
 bled name ; but I still incline to think that he had 
 something to do with hedges and ditches." 
 
 " Just as we have to do with the staple produc- 
 tion of Manchester or with the niggers of old Yir- 
 ginny," said Mr. Cotton, ironically. " People who 
 live in glass houses ought not to throw stones. 
 There are only two syllables in 'Cotton,' Miss 
 Harriet, and the associations are well, not feudal." 
 
 " How can you compare the two names ! " pro- 
 tested Harriet indignantly ; " and you know we had
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 69 
 
 one ancestor at least who was not merely a man of 
 learning, he was a public benefactor." 
 
 " So may have been the Puritan Stubbs for aught 
 we can tell. I must call you to order on another 
 point. "We do not know that Cotton of the manu- 
 scripts was our ancestor. There are some trifling 
 collateral indications, but there would be just as 
 many if we put ourselves to the trouble to seek 
 them out in connection with any Manchester or 
 Glasgow cotton-broker, who happened to bear the 
 name of his merchandise. 
 
 Harriet hung her head for an instant, blushing 
 furiously, and muttering that Cotton for a name 
 was not at all common, therefore it was permissible 
 to trace back all the English Cottons to the same 
 stock. 
 
 " The founder of which dealt in the raw material, 
 depend upon it," said its present representative, 
 " just as the illustrious Smiths trace back to a smith, 
 and the Bakers to a baker." 
 
 Harriet was silent for another moment. It was 
 not like her to have been guilty of an unwarrant- 
 able assumption, and she was heartily ashamed of 
 it ; but she had talked herself into the belief that 
 she was entitled to claim so creditable a progenitor 
 as Cotton of the famous collection of MSS. depos-
 
 70 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 ited in the British Museum, according to her father's 
 definition. 
 
 " And think of Haderezer and Pie," she turned 
 the conversation a little. " The lady in the white 
 shawl who called to-day said these were the Chris- 
 tian names of the father and mother as well as of 
 the son and daughter. What do you make of such 
 names ? " 
 
 " Haderezer sounds Persian and Babylonish," 
 said Mr. Cotton boldly ; " and if Pie stands for 
 piety, no quality is more deserving of honor than 
 the genuine article. 
 
 " I believe it stands for cherry pie, her cheeks are 
 so red," said Harriet ; " seriously, father, Pie repre- 
 sents Sapientia." 
 
 " Well, wisdom is another good thing, though it 
 seldom dwells with girls. Quite true, my dear, I 
 am afraid this poor young lady must have suffered 
 a good deal from much idle play on her shortened 
 name pigeon pie, game pie, shepherd's pie there 
 is a horribly available suggestiveness of bad puns in 
 each." 
 
 " Don't forget mag-pie and pie-bald speak of 
 yonder she is ! " exclaimed Harriet, with all her 
 coolness holding her breath, as Pie, not more con- 
 scious of being observed than she had become at all
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 71 
 
 times lately, came out of the little cottage avenue, 
 and, crossing her own lawn, entered her house. 
 
 " Upon my word she looks as nice and sensible 
 a young girl as one need wish to see," said Mr. 
 Cotton, regretfully. 
 
 "Why are girls in brown ginghams or blue 
 serges and weather-beaten hats always considered 
 sensible ? Should you wish me to make myself a 
 fright and be thought sensible ? " 
 
 " I am afraid the attempt would be hopeless, 
 Harry no, don't shake my rheumatic shoulder. 
 How can you tell that I don't refer to making your- 
 self a fright, and not to being thought a wise-acre ? " 
 argued Mr. Cotton, looking with tAvinkling affec- 
 tionate eyes at his daughter's ivory skin, dark eyes, 
 and faultless costume faultless for a drawing-room 
 or a London park, or even a well swept garden ter- 
 race. " That girl would have been a good compan- 
 ion for you since your sisters have left you all by 
 yourself," he said again, harping on the subject of 
 Pie. " I wish to goodness these worthy people had 
 not taken into their heads to cut us. One would 
 have thought, without too much vanity, we might 
 have been a gain to them as they to us. I suppose 
 it is too late, and it would be too barefaced, to 
 attempt to propitiate them."
 
 72 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Father, what do you mean ? " cried Harriet. " I 
 want no companion. I can even do without you 
 at times," she added, relenting and pressing the 
 arm she held. " But as for girls, I am very glad to 
 be quit of them. I cannot be troubled with them, if 
 I do not exert myself sufficiently to hate them." 
 
 " Harry, this is rank treason against yourself and 
 your kind. I will not allow it. If I hear another 
 word of it I shall adopt half a dozen more girls on 
 the spot." He spoke laughingly, and presently 
 Harriet was called in for some consultation with her 
 old housekeeper. Mrs. Walls was punctilious in 
 what she considered her duty of making her " little 
 Miss Harry," of not so many years ago, play her 
 part of mistress in the house ; " and well she does 
 it too, the high-spirited, sharp-sighted dear," com- 
 mented the old woman admiringly. 
 
 Mr. Cotton's face fell, and his brow, which, in 
 spite of his years and his money, was wonderfully 
 smooth and placid in general, clouded over. " Poor 
 dear Harry ! she cannot help being precocious and 
 self-confident, like many girls nowadays ; but if I 
 thought my litle girl would grow up unwomanly I 
 almost think I could bring myself to the point of 
 marrying again at the risk of driving her frantic, 
 and drawing down all manner of unforeseen cares
 
 &1RL NEIGHBORS. 73 
 
 on my devoted head. Or I might give up house- 
 keeping, and quarter Harry and myself on the other 
 girls and their husbands by turns, like old Lear on 
 Eegan and Goneril, if that would mend matters, 
 only the precedent is neither cheerful nor encour- 
 aging.* 
 
 Harriet Cotton had ostensibty a great household 
 to rule and guide. She did not doubt her capacity 
 to hold the reins, and she conducted domestic affairs 
 with a high hand when she conducted them at all. 
 This meant that if Mr. Cotton's general support, 
 always there in abeyance even when he was in 
 town attending to his business, and Mrs. Walls' 
 skilled supervision in details, had been withdrawn 
 for a day, the whole domestic constitution would 
 have collapsed and dire confusion followed. Harriet 
 did not suspect this, clever as she was, and went on 
 in dignity and comfort, with her intermittent fits of 
 active interference in the housekeeping when she 
 was in the mood, and of letting it alone when she 
 was tired of the occupation, without any thought of 
 the consequences, which, to be sure, in the present 
 order of things, neither touched her nor any one 
 else. She had plenty of spare time on her hands 
 when she was not playing at being the lady of the 
 house, one of its heads in fact. She had more time
 
 74 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 than she could very well get rid of a great deal 
 more than fell to Pie's share ; so naturally Harriet 
 took to watching and criticising Pie far more fre- 
 quently and freely than Pie performed the same 
 office for Harriet. The soul of such watching is 
 criticism more or less carping according to the 
 nature of the watcher. It is the peculiar evil of 
 human nature in such a position of arrested inter- 
 course as the Stubbses and the Cottons had been in- 
 duced to take up to each other, that while both parties 
 may have begun with meaning to be strictly neutral, 
 the neutrality rapidly passes into superciliousness, 
 and it is an open question whether the supercilious- 
 ness does not develop into positive enmity. Indiffer- 
 ence between man and man in the circumstances, 
 however desirable, is beyond attainment. But the 
 persons most affected by the relations in which the 
 families stood to each other were two young, 
 impressionable, comparatively disengaged creatures 
 like Pie and Harriet. If it would have been foolish 
 of them, belonging to different spheres and knowing 
 little or nothing of each other, to have flown into 
 each other's arms, there was, on the other hand, 
 some danger of their flying metaphorically into 
 each other's faces ere long. The seniors on both 
 sides, though they might gradually yield to the
 
 QIRL NEIGHBORS. 75 
 
 same influence, were preoccupied, and had many 
 other long-standing interests to bespeak their atten- 
 tion. 
 
 The servants, for a wonder, and because human 
 nature is contradictory, probably, had declared in 
 favor of good-will and geniality, and rebuked their 
 betters by an immediate interchange of social over- 
 tures. This is a free country, and Mrs. Stubbs, how- 
 ever she might disapprove and feel aggrieved, could 
 not think of objecting to Lydia the housemaid's 
 politely volunteering to introduce a London Lydia 
 to church and to chapel, or to "William's telling Mr. 
 Cotton's groom where he would find the nearest 
 smith in order to have the horses shod, and who 
 was the best farrier in the district, and afterward 
 accepting the obliged groom's invitation to adjourn 
 to Mr. Cotton's stable and inspect all the new ar- 
 rangements in the shape of hay-racks and drain tiles. 
 Mrs. Stubbs was stonily silent when even cook, in- 
 stead of resenting the presence at the manor house 
 of another cook a much younger woman, and one 
 who was understood to have twice as many preten- 
 sions and three times more wages was actually 
 propitiated by the cunning woman's coming to the 
 door and begging her pardon, while she asked for a 
 little information about the village shops and the
 
 76 01RL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 shops in Springfield and the farms round, where ad- 
 ditional supplies of butter, eggs, and cream were to 
 be got. The manor house cook took it upon her to 
 bring over the manor house housekeeper, who was 
 only a working housekeeper not above visiting cooks 
 and owning that she too, had been a cook in her 
 day. Mrs. Walls was anxious to learn if the family 
 at the cottage reared their own poultry, as she felt 
 her " people " ought to do if they stayed for any 
 length of time in the country. She would be so 
 thankful for a few hints, for though she had trussed 
 and stuffed many a fowl, she had not brought up 
 one chicken. 
 
 Not only the Stubbs' servants, but several of the 
 Cottons' had, as Mrs. Stubbs would not have ex- 
 pected, either grown old in their master's service or 
 been to a great extent trained in it. These servants 
 not taking up and accentuating the incipient feud 
 between the families was a remarkable circumstance; 
 so was the fact that Miss Cotton, in her juvenile 
 dignity, was as much opposed on principle to serv- 
 ants' gossip and village tattle as Mrs. Stubbs could 
 be. Still, the obstacles did not prevent little scraps 
 of family history and tales of what was going on so 
 near from filtering continually out of the lower into 
 the higher regions like water rising to its own level.
 
 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 7? 
 
 These odds and ends of information, in addition to 
 the material which mutual acquaintances supplied 
 lent greater solidity of shape and depth of color to 
 Pie's and Harriet's observations. 
 
 There was one feature in the grounds of the 
 manor house of which there was not a minimized 
 duplicate in the grounds of the cottage, doubtless 
 because this exception dated considerably further 
 back than Squire Cotton's time. It was a sham 
 ruin of such respectable antiquity, as Harriet Cot- 
 ton said, with that curl of her soft lip which was 
 ominously near a sneer, it was every bit as good as 
 a real ruin. It was mossy, weather-stained, and 
 hung round with obsequious ivy. It had a window- 
 like, gaping aperture, in the style of a church win- 
 dow, and a crumbling stair among the ivy which 
 led to a half-hidden ledge that commanded as much 
 as was to be seen far and near of an unimpeachably 
 rural landscape. What did it signify that it was 
 only the monument of a silly fashion, a piece of 
 affectation, and make-believe, when so much of life 
 was composed of fashions and make-believes ? No- 
 body had been deceived in the sham tower as if it 
 had been sham jewelry, so that it did not seem to 
 matter to Harriet that no rough life full of human 
 humor and human pathos had been lived within the
 
 narrow bounds, no fierce warfare shaken the strong- 
 hold to its foundations. It had never been a strong- 
 hold, and such foundations as it had, must be of the 
 shoddiest description. It was only a place to cheat 
 the eye, a subject for a schoolgirl's sketch. At 
 best it formed a handy shelter for garden tools, like 
 a dilapidated summer-house, or it supplied an agree- 
 able elevation and a certain amount of shade, when 
 visitors, indifferent to earwigs and " God Almighty's 
 pigs," elected to sit on the ivy -garlanded steps and 
 drink afternoon tea. 
 
 But Harriet would climb up those steps which 
 were shallow and safe enough, though it was to the 
 serious detriment of her delicately -tinted cashmere 
 or canvas frocks, and without going as far as the 
 ledge, by merely ensconcing herself among the 
 bushy ivy could look over the little domain across 
 the brook as if it were a map at her feet. It became 
 a decidedly entertaining map as Harriet came to 
 know its points, which she did not scruple to study. 
 Proud as she was she did not show herself so chary 
 of sp3 7 ing on her neighbors as Pie Stubbs had shown 
 herself. Indeed, the minor characters in her drama 
 of life were apt to exist in the young lady's imagi- 
 nation, if not solely for her convenience, a good deal 
 for her entertainment. And always the center of
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 79 
 
 this little world of the cottage, the main figure 
 which eclipsed all others to this girl who professed 
 to despise other girls and to be glad to be rid of 
 them, was the girl like herself Pie moving among 
 the home surroundings. 
 
 " What a demure little wretch she is ! " Harriet 
 would tell herself, as her eyes followed Pie setting 
 out on some errand to Maidsmeadows. " I daresay 
 she has tracts in that little basket, and is going to 
 make hypocrites of all the old women in the vil- 
 lage. Well, she can also be a tomboy " for Pie, dis- 
 covering that she was late and forgetting for a mo- 
 ment what eyes might be upon her, had started to 
 run as far as the cottage gate, and was making such 
 progress basket with supposed tracts and all as 
 only a healthy, lively young girl or lad can accom- 
 plish. " Won't she be a blown and blowsy spec- 
 tacle, with her hair out of order, her hat falling off 
 her head, the pins dropping out of her linen collar, 
 and her shoe-ties loose, by the time she stops. I 
 should not care to run like that unless an engine 
 which had gone off the railway line, or a bear which 
 had escaped from a menagerie, were behind me." 
 
 The next time Harriet was on the tower steps Pie 
 and her mother were sitting at work together in the 
 little veranda which aped the big veranda at the
 
 80 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 manor house. " What an improving spectacle ! " 
 soliloquized Harriet with her head on one side. " Do 
 these two sit there for the benefit of the servants or 
 of chance visitors, or is it merely to gratify an un- 
 conscious craving for a display of virtue ? I know 
 exactly what is happening. The mother she does 
 look a shrew ! is stitching for dear life and giving 
 goo d advice, such as dreadful parents used to be in 
 the habit of administering to their sons and daugh- 
 ters ; while the dutiful daughter is stitching and lis- 
 tening or pretending to listen. I would not be a good 
 little girl, to sit and sew and be preached at, for the 
 whole world. I should prick my finger to the bone, 
 or have a sleeping foot and rise and run away." 
 Harriet looked again and opened her eyes widely. 
 " I declare she takes it coolly, she has put down her 
 work and leaned back to laugh ! Well done, Miss 
 Stubbs, I did not think it was in you ! She must 
 have lost her senses. She will get into disgrace. 
 But the mother is laughing too! What humbugs 
 they must both be ! They ought not to be encouraged! 
 horrid creatures ! " And Harriet hurried down from 
 her coigne of vantage, angry and sore, she could 
 not have told why, for she would not have minded 
 though it had been proved that her neighbors' 
 laughter was at her expense.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 81 
 
 All the afternoon and evening, when her father 
 was dining out without her, Harriet was haunted by 
 that small tableau, like a vignette, of the mother and 
 daughter in the veranda, framed by an old-fash- 
 ioned clematis and a noisette rose, sitting together 
 talking and laughing over their work. 
 
 " I suppose if I had watched long enough the cad- 
 averous father Stubbs would have appeared on the 
 scene and sung a merry song, or danced a hornpipe, 
 in order to complete the representation of domestic 
 felicity," reflected Harriet Cotton with withering 
 satire.
 
 83 01RL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AN OLD-FASHIONED BEE. 
 
 PIE MIGHT well laugh, if to have nearly as much 
 work as she could do, and plenty of youthful health 
 and spirit with which to do it, is, as has been as- 
 serted by the best authorities, one of the first secrets 
 for ensuring human happiness. She used to awake 
 to an exhilarating rather than a depressing sense of 
 the number of engagements she had to fulfill before 
 the sun set, and get up with the conviction that if 
 she lay a minute longer she would be guilty of dis- 
 graceful sloth and negligence of binding obligations. 
 Yet after she had gone briskly into her bath and 
 through her toilet she had still ample time not only 
 to sit down quietly and read her chapter and try to 
 say her prayers in a proper spirit, she had an inter- 
 val to spare in which she could just go round the 
 garden to see how the flowers were looking, and tie 
 up a plant here and pull up a weed there. When it 
 was the season of violets she was in the habit of 
 picking as many as she could find, and if the family
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 83 
 
 were alone, as they generally were, putting the vio- 
 lets beneath her father's and mother's plates, so that 
 they could only smell and not see them. Her father 
 alwa}^s got up a little wonder as to where the fra- 
 grant scent came from. Her mother only sniffed, 
 with the ghost of a smile, pursing up her mouth to 
 prevent further acknowledgment of a piece of child's 
 play which Pie really ought to leave off, as she was 
 getting far too old for it. When it was the season 
 of fruit from cherries and strawberries on to plums 
 and peaches, apples and pears Pie always gathered 
 the best, with the dew on them, and filled a dish to 
 grace the breakfast table sometimes it was the 
 only dish her father tasted. 
 
 Pie poured out the tea and coffee, for Mrs. Stubbs, 
 though an exceedingly active woman, had one flaw 
 in her armor. She had once gone through rheu- 
 matic fever, which had left its effects in a certain, 
 stiffness of the hands and feet in the morning before 
 she had walked and worked off the stiffness. 
 
 After breakfast and prayers Pie had the poultry, 
 which were her charge in the morning, to attend to. 
 If the housekeeper at the manor house thought of 
 rearing poultry in the country, the family at the 
 cottage had gone beyond thinking, they had done the 
 deed in successive generations of feathered fowls ever
 
 84 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 since Pie could remember. To feed the various tribes, 
 to gather the eggs and mark each with the name of 
 the mother hen, duck, turkey or goose, as might be 
 for Pie's poultry were not an indiscriminate, 
 nameless multitude* and write the date when the 
 egg was laid, took time and trouble, however equal 
 the performer might be to the task. 
 
 If her mother required her daughter's assistance, 
 Pie joined Mrs. Stubbs afterward in the storeroom 
 or linen closet, for there was no responsible paid 
 housekeeper like Mrs. Walls at the cottage. Indeed, 
 cook, who called herself just a plain working cook 
 but could be trusted with anything she undertook, 
 was not so young as she had been. To keep her 
 from feeling that she was failing a little and that 
 her memory was no longer on a par with her 
 honesty, and so being tempted to withdraw her 
 valuable services from the Stubbses and eat her 
 heart out away from them, a considerable amount 
 of diplomacy had to be practiced. Cook had to be 
 backed up, without speaking of it, with all the sup- 
 plementary aid that could be provided for her. 
 Many a hurried little walk Pie took in the blazing 
 noonday sun or the drizzling rain, to give the car- 
 rier to Springfield some commission which it was 
 suspected that cook had forgotten to mention to
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 85 
 
 him, or to get at the village shop some necessary 
 trifle of pepper or mustard which might have been, 
 found lacking when wanted. "How restless these 
 young misses do be, to be sure ! " cook would look 
 out and say with a mixture of complacency and 
 sardonicalness ; " if there ain't Miss Pie padding to 
 the village afore lunch just because she can't rest 
 at 'ome, though she's none so set against her 'ome 
 as I've seed some young ladies ! " 
 
 Lydia the housemaid, could not be trusted to dust 
 the china, or for that matter to put the finishing 
 touches to the parlor, without a mistress' eye 
 upon her. Pie undertook the china, and saw that 
 Lydia did not neglect any holes and corners. It 
 was then Lydia would confide to her young mis- 
 tress Lydia's " heaps of troubles" with her stepfather 
 and her young man who was threatening to emi- 
 grate, and the difficulties in the way of getting 
 proper places for her younger sisters who were in 
 Pie's class in the Sunday-school. 
 
 William, the boy who played a double part as 
 stable-boy and gardener lad, was apt to make havoc 
 among the seedlings and slips in the little green- 
 house if Pie or her mother did not make a point of 
 being at hand to inspect all his doings. And when 
 he was lifting pots under her orders, Pie without
 
 86 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 committing a breach of the liberty of the subject, 
 might induce him to enlist in the Blue Ribbon army, 
 in addition to being a member of her Boys' Lending 
 Library. 
 
 Sometimes when his nervous headache incapaci- 
 tated Mr. Stubbs from reading, he liked his news- 
 paper, or any scientific book he \vas engaged on, to 
 be read to him by Pie. On other days he sum- 
 moned her to go over to his drawers of minerals and 
 see that they were taking no harm, and to com- 
 pare them with his catalogue that no mistake might 
 creep in. He had a plan of writing a geological 
 history of the parish, and had advanced some way 
 in the task not without much copying and taking 
 notes and extracts on the part of Pie. He was mu- 
 sical in a marked degree for a man of his age. He 
 could not endure a false note from Pie or her mother 
 or any one else, and when there was a family con- 
 cert, in which Mrs. Stubbs took the piano and Pie 
 the harp, which looked grand and old-fashioned in 
 its corner of the parlor, and Mr. Stubbs the violin, 
 the ladies had to be well up in every bar else they 
 had to answer for it. Even Mrs. Stubbs had to sub- 
 mit to be scolded as if she had been a schoolgirl. 
 She always behaved admirably under the scathing 
 rebukes, unless we except the trifling circumstance
 
 'CURL NEIGHBORS. b? 
 
 that she looked rather as if she enjoyed them, for a 
 change. 
 
 After luncheon was the period of the day for par- 
 ish work. If there was any in hand and there 
 was generally a good deal, since the vicar worked 
 his parish thoroughly, and in the working did not 
 disdain the services of such aides-de-camp as the 
 ladies at the cottage Pie had the lighter half of 
 her mother's district to visit. She had her Sunday- 
 school class to keep in hand. She had another class 
 in the vicar's evening school when it was in oper- 
 ation, to which she was escorted in winter by Lydia 
 and William with a lantern. She had her reg- 
 ular afternoon for the cottage hospital when there 
 was no infectious disease in the place, and her after- 
 noon for the alms-houses. She helped at the moth- 
 ers' meeting and the meeting of the clothing 
 society. She was junior secretary of the Lending 
 Library for boys and of the Girls' Friendly 
 Society. 
 
 Occasionally Pie Stubbs was tempted to think, 
 like Harriet Cotton, with rather more warrant than 
 Harriet possessed, that she (Pie) was decidedly a 
 useful and important member of society. She had 
 realized the desire of Mary Carpenter when she was 
 a little child, and could not be contented to play
 
 88 GIRL NEIGHBORS., 
 
 among the hay in the field after she had seen the 
 haymakers at work. " I want to be oosef ul, I want 
 to be ooseful," cried the embryo philanthropist, ex- 
 pressing an innate craving of her benevolent nature. 
 Pie not only wanted to be " ooseful," she could not 
 always resist feeling herself so in a commendable 
 degree for her years. Then her father would quiz 
 her with canying the world on her shoulder. 
 Harry would nickname her " my Lady Bountiful." 
 Her mother would remind her of sundry glaring 
 blunders and failures which Pie had accomplished 
 in her career of public service. But what impressed 
 her still more than these remarks, and gave her a 
 wholesome and humble sense of insignificance after 
 all, was when Mrs. Stubbs would talk with the re- 
 strained enthusiasm which the subject alwa} r s called 
 forth, of a Avonderful sister of hers who had been 
 the stay of the whole family in a season of adversity. 
 Aunt Nancy had kept her father's accounts when 
 his sight had given way, and brought order out of 
 the disorder in the family exchequer, restoring hope 
 and prudence where she had found despair and 
 recklessness. She had nursed a sick mother she 
 had taught her younger sisters she had made and 
 trimmed her own and their frocks and bonnets she 
 had contrived to provide the different outfits which
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 89 
 
 had enabled her brothers to go abroad furnished 
 with home comforts. When Pie listened to the 
 achievements of this notable Aunt Nancy, whom the 
 girl had never seen, because the woman had died 
 as soon as her work was done, Pie felt her own poor 
 performances pale to a shadow, and was fain to hide 
 her diminished head. But it thrilled her like the 
 most exquisite flattery if her mother sometimes 
 glanced at her, and broke a long silence b}^ saying 
 abruptly, " I could almost fancy Pie, you are getting 
 a look of my sister Nancy." 
 
 Five-o'clock tea was a well-earned refreshment, 
 at least by the ladies of the family at the cottage. 
 It was a breathing space after which Pie was at 
 full liberty to read for an hour for her private grati- 
 fication. True, the book had a provoking habit of 
 being at its best just when she knew that she must 
 get ready for dinner. In the same way she was 
 driven to think that the sun was always at its hot- 
 test and the sultry air at its most breathless point, 
 or the pelting shower was at its heaviest, when it 
 was suggested that the young lady of the house 
 should go down to the village " in no time, Pie," to 
 intercept the carrier, or secure the indispensable con- 
 diment, and so save poor cook the mortification of 
 discovering an omission which " that feather-head
 
 90 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Lydia " would never take thought to anticipate and 
 prevent on such occasions. Sure enough Pie would 
 be unable to shut out the recollection of " that but- 
 terfly girl yonder," as Mrs. Stubbs had come to 
 style Harriet Cotton, idly tossing about the tennis- 
 balls in the pleasant shade of the hazel bushes, or 
 lying at full length with her arms above her head, 
 as Pie had often detected her neighbor in the ham- 
 mock swung between the two tall larches, with a 
 couple of volumes of a book stuffed under her head 
 and one open in her hand. Pie had seen Miss Cot- 
 ton in this easy, agreeable attitude, before the 
 Stubbs' lunch, when Miss Stubbs was on one of 
 her perfunctory peregrinations to the village. 
 After lunch she had to set out to look after a de- 
 serter from one of her classes, resident in a cottage 
 three miles distant, and there Miss Cotton still lay 
 taking her ease, possibly with her first volume ex- 
 changed for her second or third when Pie plodded 
 back dusty and weary. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs liked always to have a black grena- 
 dine frock in stock for Pie, because it was cool, and 
 looked and was what it looked fit for a dinner 
 dress at home. The black grenadine took the place 
 of the morning ginghams, hollands, and tweeds more 
 frequently than any white frock, which meant wash-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 91 
 
 ing and doing up. Generally Pie found no fault 
 with the grenadine, which was as comfortable and 
 as little troublesome as frock could be. But now 
 and then, mostly when she was fretted about some- 
 thing else, she conjured up contrasting toilets of 
 every soft tint and tixture, every novel and graceful 
 fashion, such as would entrance the fancy of any 
 girl, in which Pie would occasionally see Harriet 
 standing at an open window with a lamp shining be- 
 hind her, or flitting out on the veranda under the sun- 
 set. But Pie had never long enough time on her 
 hands to take it to heart that her frocks and fash- 
 ions were so inferior, for she forgot all about them 
 as soon as she went down to the dining-room. Mrs. 
 Stubbs was a good talker, and was ready to give an 
 account, with considerable spirit and a lurking sense 
 of fun, of her afternoon's engagements and adven- 
 tures. Mr. Stubbs would add a touch of dry humor 
 to the narrative, or would caustically com- 
 ment on what he had read in the news- 
 papers, with "the country going to the dogs, of 
 course." 
 
 After dinner there was more sewing to be done in 
 company with her mother, or there were Pie's special 
 contributions to this or that " charity basket " or 
 bazaar, or her individual attempts at fancy work,
 
 92 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 which, like her private reading, took the shape of a 
 treat entered upon with girlish ardor. The family 
 music made a break in the routine, but the working 
 was quite compatible with family reading, that is, 
 reading in which all the family were interested, and 
 would join each faithfully taking his or her turn as 
 reader. Even Mr. Stubbs, when his headache would 
 allow, held forth in his deep, somewhat hollow voice. 
 Mrs. Stubbs aired her old-fashioned, rather precise 
 pronunciation and punctuation. As for Pie, like 
 the rest of the younger generation, she could not, 
 though she had some practice, manage her voice so 
 w ell as her seniors could command theirs, she would 
 let it fall, and be authoritatively summoned to 
 " speak out " several times in the course of her per- 
 formance. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Stubbs played a game at pool to- 
 gether by fits and starts usually when he was not 
 able for protracted music or reading. But Pie had 
 always a couple of games of cribbage with her father 
 before the servants came in to prayers and her busy 
 day was ended. Of course the programme was 
 often broken in upon when the Stubbses went into 
 company, or saw it at home, which they did at inter- 
 vals, but not very frequently. The truth was, that 
 not only was Mr. Stubbs too much of a valetudinarian
 
 GILIL NEIGHBORS. 93 
 
 to care to have his ordinary habits often disturbed, 
 his retiring allowance was not great, while from it 
 he and his wife were fain to save money in order to 
 increase the provision for whoever of the family 
 was left behind him when his time came. 
 
 But the greatest alteration in the daily round 
 occurred when Harry was at home. He claimed 
 almost a monopoly of his sister's society, and Mrs. 
 Stubbs, though she could not be said to spoil either 
 of her children, allowed his claim. She had a great 
 idea of the rights of men and the duties of women, 
 and she regarded it as nearly as much Pie's duty to 
 entertain Harry when he was at home, as to help 
 her father and mother at all times. From the ex- 
 citing moment when Pie started for the station to 
 meet her brother and drive or walk home with him 
 to that other depressing epoch of his departure she 
 was understood to be, nothing loth, at Harry's beck 
 and call. Any other obligation that could be set 
 aside was deferred for the nonce. Pie relished this 
 and every other relaxation with a keen youthful 
 zest which even youth does not experience in its full- 
 ness, unless the lessons of discipline, self-denial, and 
 patience have been learned betimes, and work pre- 
 cedes play. Withal the gayeties were not so many 
 and so brilliant that Pie did not look on wistfully
 
 94 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 when the manor house had its full tale of company. 
 Then Harriet no longer played tennis alone, but was 
 one in a lively party of young people. Picnics were 
 the order of every fine day, and Pie from a dozen 
 convenient recesses in the cottage shrubbery, nay, 
 from within the cottage door, could hear the rattle 
 of the wheels, the tread of the horses' feet, the echo 
 of the jests and laughter, when the Cottons and their 
 visitors set out on a pleasant excursion. 
 
 Mr. Cotton returned the hospitalities of the neigh- 
 borhood by dinners and evening parties of more 
 than one of which all who had the luck to be in- 
 vited talked delightedly both before and after the 
 entertainment. He \vas a liberal and good-natured 
 host, and so young a hostess as Harriet, with one or 
 other of her married sisters in her train, though not 
 so popular as her father, was a novelty among the 
 party-givers round Maidsmeado\vs. 
 
 On these occasions poor Pie used to have a strange 
 sensation for so good and highly esteemed a girl in 
 her native place. She felt as if she had somehow 
 suddenly become an alien, a peri expelled from 
 paradise, before she so much as knew what paradise 
 was like. 
 
 Certainly every acquaintance she had known be- 
 fore liked her as well as ever, but she did not seem
 
 Ql&L NMGU&ORS. 95 
 
 to belong to them when they were all speaking with 
 interest of something with which she had nothing to 
 do. She saw the manor house with every window 
 lit up for its guests, and she pictured to herself a 
 dazzling phantasmagoria of flowers and lights, pretty 
 dresses, fine music brought all the way from town, 
 and pleasant partners with wonderful fates to be 
 met, and great events to happen from small begin- 
 nings. At last, being very young and human, a 
 lump would rise in Pie's throat, which she had some 
 difficulty in swallowing, before she went down se- 
 dately or with forced gayety to join the quiet home 
 circle the occupations and amusements of which 
 appeared this night so flat and tame. 
 
 " You are not hankering after forbidden fruit, 
 Pie ? " her mother would inquire sharply. " It is 
 beyond your reach in more senses than one. The 
 foolish extravagance of these people at the manor 
 house is both wrong in itself, and demoralizing in 
 its effects on others. Real turtle soup, as if mock- 
 turtle had not sufficed for better people, at their last 
 dinner, and for the evening parties baskets of forced 
 fruit at half a guinea apiece, though it is grown in 
 the manor house hothouses, put down here and 
 there all through the corridors and conservatories. 
 The man may be another Aladdin and may take good
 
 96 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 care not to lose his lamp, but we are not Aladdins. 
 Even if we had visited him, I should not care to 
 accept a style of hospitality I could never return in 
 kind unless I were guilty of what in us would be 
 prodigality. Why, you have not a dress in which you 
 could pass muster among troops of butterflies at one 
 of these regular dinners, for which you are a great 
 deal too young also." 
 
 "The Fieldings are going, and so are the Hunts," 
 said Pie, feebly, " and they are no richer than we 
 are. Fanny and Mary Fielding, and Kate Hunt, 
 who is just my age, were not any better dressed 
 than I formerly. 
 
 " Then I am heartily sorry for them, since they 
 will cut poor figures in such fine company," said 
 Mrs. Stubbs with decision. " Or if they, or their 
 friends for them, have made a desperate effort to 
 bridge over the gulf between wealth and small com- 
 petences, then they must pay the price sooner or 
 later, and the game will not be worth the candle. 
 But the wretched propensity to waste the candle in 
 such a mad race is one of the demoralizing effects 
 of contact with wealth of which I have often 
 spoken. Be thankful, Pie, that you and yours have 
 escaped it." 
 
 " Yes, Pie, be thankful for your post of Diogenes
 
 Ul.lL NEIGHBORS. 97 
 
 in his tub," said Mr. Stubbs with a twinkle in his 
 eyes ; and the notion of herself in the character of 
 Diogenes certainly diverted Pie's mind, and caused 
 her to smile a little, as her father intended her to 
 do, which was perhaps better for her than trying to 
 dwell on the folly and mischief of such festivities, 
 and seeking to make believe that she did not wish 
 to join in them. She could discuss the question 
 much more coolly and comfortably next morning. 
 
 The unkindest cut of all was Avhen Harriet Cotton 
 and her company blossomed into private theatricals. 
 Pie had the greatest curiosity to see how they were 
 managed, and to share in them, particularly after 
 Harry had been allowed to join a dramatic company 
 of amateurs, the existence of which was permitted 
 by his vice-chancellor and the dean of his college. 
 
 After that precedent she did not suppose that 
 there could still prevail the prudent objection to the 
 intimate association of young people in private 
 theatricals which Jane Austen had urged in " Mans- 
 field Park." Either youth had grown more indiffer- 
 ent to such influences or social opinion had altered 
 with regard to them. Pie could afford to lose a din- 
 ner, but she could ill afford to lose the rare chance 
 of having to do with private theatricals. It ought 
 to have been some consolation that they would have
 
 98 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 been put out of her power in another way. Mrs. 
 Stubbs was as rigidly opposed to amateur theatricals 
 as ever Sir Thomas Bertram had shown himself to 
 be. " I should never have listened to your being 
 mixed up with such a more than doubtful proceed- 
 ing," the lady asserted, " not though you had been 
 twice your age. As it is, you are a great deal too 
 young even for small country gayeties, and I would 
 not hear of them for you, only I don't want to make 
 a fuss and a pretense of your not having come out, 
 as if we were to go up to town next year, or the 
 year after, and you were to be presented to the 
 queen, and have a season's dissipation in due form. 
 But to be dressed up like an idiot of a great lady, 
 or a pert waiting maid, and spout love and hatred 
 or flippant impertinence, and have them spouted 
 back to you by men and women you have only seen 
 within the last fortnight and it may be as well if 
 you never see them again before a set of people 
 who are principally employed in laughing at your 
 clumsy blunders, is what I never could consent to 
 for any daughter of mine. Mr. Cotton is an easy- 
 minded, over-indulgent father, but I am astonished 
 to find that even he can stand it for that spoiled, 
 foolish girl." 
 
 "But Harry does it at college, mother," pro- 
 tested Pie.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 99 
 
 " Harry is a lad and not a girl," said his mother, 
 " and his dean and the heads of his college and 
 university are accountable for his joining in such a 
 performance, not I." 
 
 "And, mother, what do you call acted pro- 
 verbs ? " persisted Pie, goaded into mild rebellion. 
 " The Fieldings got them up, and sold the tickets 
 for them too " as if that last act put the finishing 
 stroke to the enormity of the deed "to help the 
 vicar to pay off the debt on his new class-rooms. 
 The vicar took the money and countenanced the ex- 
 hibition. We all went, and were greatly amused." 
 
 " Well, Pie," replied her mother cautiously, " I 
 don't say that the end justified the means, but I do 
 say again that here the vicar and Mrs. Fielding, not 
 I, were accountable." 
 
 "And you do not take into account, Pie," said 
 her father with the utmost gravity, " what a moral 
 difference there is between an acted proverb or a 
 charade, and a play, especially when the last is well 
 and the former ill done. There is something so art- 
 less about a play called by another name, and acted 
 without a particle of skill or talent, that one can no 
 more have the heart to call it by the old bad names 
 which in some senses it richly deserves, than one 
 can fall foul of the mimic games of children."
 
 100 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 All that Pie was destined to learn of how well 
 Harriet Cotton looked and spoke as " King Renee's 
 Daughter " was by hearsay. 
 
 It was doubtful whether all these arguments and 
 declarations of what might not have been, even 
 though the Stubbses had visited the Cottons, did 
 much to reconcile Pie for having to suffer ostracism 
 where her nearest neighbors were concerned. She 
 certainly thought that Harry would consider being 
 snut out from the manor house, especially in the so- 
 cial lead which it had appropriated, a hard case.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 101 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A NEW-FASHIONED BUTTERFLY. 
 
 APART from the dinner-hour, which was always 
 eight o'clock, meal-times at the manor house were 
 much more irregular than at the cottage, and they 
 were specially irregular when they had to do with 
 Harriet. If Mr. Cotton breakfasted at different 
 hours, just as he went to town by the early train or 
 walked over to his beloved farm, Harriet, who had 
 neither train nor farm to think of, and who had got 
 into the habit of not breakfasting with her father 
 unless when there were visitors in the house, di- 
 verged still more widely from any set time. Occa- 
 sionally she would take a fit of very early rising, and 
 would shame the maid-servants by being abroad 
 before six o'clock in order to hear the birds sing. 
 But generally this earty bout was followed by one 
 late in proportion, when her coffee would be brought 
 into the breakfast-parlor and carried out again 
 several times, and she would at last drink it luke- 
 warm between eleven and twelve in the forenoon.
 
 102 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Poor Harriet did many more things by fits and 
 starts. She would go about brandishing her suze- 
 rainship as the young mistress of the house, and 
 putting even Mrs. Walls on her mettle ; then she 
 would forget all about it, or get sick of it, lay down 
 as it were, her crown and scepter, lose all her keys 
 for a period of days, after which she would find the 
 keys and take up the crown and scepter again, to 
 wield them briskly for another interval. In the 
 meantime the house went on much in the same fash- 
 ion, with the wheels of the domestic machinery well 
 oiled, as wealth can oil them, and a humble but 
 capable charioteer like Mrs. "Walls always in the 
 background. 
 
 Harriet conducted her pursuit of knowledge after 
 a like intermittent and vehement mode. She was a 
 clever girl, in some respects far cleverer than Pie ; 
 and while Harriet labored under the disadvantage of 
 lacking the other's methodical training, she had pos- 
 sessed the counterbalancing gain of commanding far 
 wider and more diverse sources of instruction. For 
 one thing she had been taken a good deal about the 
 world for her age, and had been repeatedly on the 
 Continent ; while Pie had never been out of Eng- 
 land, and not even many times up in London. Har- 
 riet had a certain thirst for information. She cer-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 103 
 
 tainly liked exceedingly to know everything that 
 any one else knew, and to be able to show that she 
 knew it. But she went about her acquisition of 
 knowledge in a desultory, uncertain way, as she was 
 pretty sure to do when she had not the passion or 
 concentration of genius, and when she was doing 
 just as she liked, without any higher or surer motive 
 for her actions. She did not mean to do harm. Nay, 
 deep down in the lonely girlish soul, though she 
 would not have confessed it for the world, because 
 Harriet had a peculiar, well-nigh morbid, hatred of 
 making professions she had an honest wish to (Jo 
 right the unquestionable right of which her Bible 
 and prayer-book told her. She felt this in the still- 
 ness and solemnity of church, when her soul rose 
 above counteracting influences, and was, in some 
 measure, in tune for God's worship. She felt it also 
 in the quieter, more earnest moments of her life. 
 Harriet would take up the last most thorough geo- 
 graphical work, or bit of history probed to the core, 
 or sample of French criticism, or German poetry, or 
 mystical analysis of art. She would plunge into it, 
 sink herself over head and ears in it, engross herself 
 with it, endeavor to make herself mistress of it in an 
 incredibly short space of time ; and, after grasping 
 it desperately till her head reeled and ached, drop it
 
 104 GIRL NEfGHBORS. 
 
 as if it burned her fingers, disheartened, disappointed 
 and disgusted, till the next fit of study seized her. 
 Between the fits she would gallop through novels 
 by the cart-load, reading voraciously, and at the 
 same time skipping shamelessly, digesting nothing 
 and remembering marvelously little, which, after all 
 was a piece of good fortune, since for the most part 
 there was very little worth remembering. The fact 
 that she contracted small injury, even to her taste, 
 was principally because she was familiar with good 
 literature, and because she was clever enough to see 
 through a great deal, not only of the falsehood, the 
 gross exaggeration, and the crying unnatural ness, 
 but of the sophistry amid which she waded, or rather 
 plunged. Sometimes the attraction presented was 
 so slight that she would drop asleep over her novel, 
 like her elderly father over his newspaper, or would 
 send back the books to the library half read, without 
 paying the small compliment to the author of turn- 
 ing up the last page or two to see what became of 
 his or her puppets. 
 
 The worst result of this style of reading in Har- 
 riet was the fostering in her of that spirit of cavil- 
 ing and contempt in some respects the spirit of 
 her generation which came so easily to her. She 
 despised the books and spoke of them in the most
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 105 
 
 scornful terms even when she must have confessed 
 to being indebted to them for the power of passing 
 the time. If she had known the writers she 
 would have despised them also, though they had 
 catered for her amusement in the best manner they 
 could, as well as worked in the hope of having their 
 wages. Harriet Cotton was constantly tempted 
 to despise the insincerities and inconsistencies of 
 her acquaintances and friends, even, alas ! of her 
 nearest and dearest, while she hated herself for it. 
 
 She persuaded herself that she wanted nobody to 
 direct and encourage her, yet it was for the lack of 
 this help that she floundered and failed hope- 
 lessly in her attempts at keeping up her edu- 
 cation single-handed. Her father was well born 
 and college-bred, as he had said. He was inca- 
 pable of the wild lapses in grammar and in ordi- 
 nary knowledge frequently attributed to merchant 
 princes who have made their firms and their for- 
 tunes. But he was only a man of ordinary ability 
 and culture. He was just liberal enough to prize 
 greater attainments when they came in his way, 
 though he had been too long and closely engaged in 
 commercial warfare to pick up the arts of leisure and 
 peace. He had more common than uncommon 
 sense, and more of sheer kindliness than of 
 either.
 
 106 61RI* NEIGHBOUR 
 
 Mr. Cotton could be no tutor for his danghter 
 even if he had possessed both the time and the in- 
 clination, and perhaps he was right when he judged 
 that she was better left alone, and that she would 
 not get on well with a governess or resident 
 chaperon. No doubt he yielded to his desire to 
 please " Harry " in coming to this conclusion ; but 
 it must be said also that he could contradict her 
 when he saw fit, and that though he might err on 
 the side of amiability he could not be called a weak 
 man. 
 
 It is much easier to write the record of Pie Stubbs' 
 life, a life at one time next to universal in its main 
 features among healthy, happy, well-brought-up 
 English girls, than to chronicle Harriet Cotton's 
 daily doings, through which there ran an 
 erratic, unstable thread that effected all her actions 
 and would have done so still more if the 
 girl had not been inherently strong-minded and 
 clear-headed. 
 
 When Mr. Cotton was in town, and neither one 
 of her sisters nor any one else was with Harriet, 
 she hardly did anything at the same time and in 
 the same order two days on end, except eating her 
 dinner, and that she did by the combined decrees of 
 her father and the cook. Let us hope she was igno-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 107 
 
 rant of the trouble she gave and the disorder she 
 caused by her whims and fancies. She would send 
 out to a groom, just when he had arranged to do 
 his share in cleaning the harness or the stables, and 
 say she was going to ride or drive before luncheon, 
 keeping her word. Next day, when he was foolish 
 enough to hang about expecting similar orders, she 
 Avould let him remain idle the whole morning and 
 afternoon, and only go out for twenty minutes or 
 so, when it was not worth while having out the 
 horses, and they had to come scuttling home for 
 dinner. She had no sense, the middle-aged groom 
 would say, though she was a clever young lady, of 
 the consideration horses required in frost, or in hot 
 weather. She paid no heed to keeping them stand- 
 ing still while she was making calls, or getting out 
 of her saddle or out of the carriage and " trapesing 
 about " after wild flowers and such rubbish till she 
 was tired. She never calculated that she might 
 wear beasts out by taking them long rounds day 
 after day, and that it did not make up for it to let 
 them have no exercise, so far as she was concerned, 
 for the next week or fortnight. To be sure not 
 much sense could be expected from so young a lady 
 on such subjects, but Miss Cotton did not care to be 
 told more's the pity ! by them " as ought to have
 
 108 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 known best." Indeed all the servants had the con- 
 viction that it would not do to contradict Miss Cot- 
 ton. If Harriet had done nothing else, she had 
 impressed them with a sense of her strength of 
 will. 
 
 There were only two obligations which Harriet 
 fulfilled with any punctuality. She was a bad cor- 
 respondent to her sisters, but when her father was 
 in town she wrote to him every day faithfully, and 
 conveyed to him the details he cared for. She hud 
 been known to go over to the farm through mud 
 and mire, and worry the bailiff and laborers half 
 out of their wits, in order to let Mr. Cotton have 
 the last news of the state of his hay and his 
 turnips. 
 
 And Harriet daily arranged the flowers for the 
 table and the various rooms, all the time scoffing 
 at the very young ladylike nature of the work. 
 " "We used to be bread-and-butter misses," she re 
 minded herself, "but that was in the benighted 
 days when we were not above darning stockings 
 and making puddings and were devoted to worsted 
 work. Now we are flower-girls of the upper classes 
 every novel refers to the heroine at some time in 
 the course of her novel life, putting flowers in a jar 
 or bowl, or wreathing them into garlands to decor-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 109 
 
 ate a church. We are not supposed to condescend 
 to any less graceful employment. If we do work 
 we knit babies' socks, which is odd, for English 
 women, as a rule, are not knitters, and there cannot 
 be always babies known to us wanting socks. It is 
 more accountable that we should sew parish flan- 
 nels, though there again it seems bad economy, 
 when we might employ poor women who would do 
 them much better, and earn an honest penny by 
 sewing them. 
 
 The speaker would dawdle about the greenhouses 
 and the gardens spending more hours than Pie 
 would have had minutes to spare over the pleasant 
 task. The truth was Harriet felt the urgent neces- 
 sity for some occupation, or make-believe at occupa- 
 tion, and she could not endure Mrs. Walls' manner 
 of disposing of the flowers, in which there was a 
 strong inclination to form gorgeous groups in the 
 style of the old Flemish flower-pieces good in the 
 pictures but bad in the originals. Miss Cotton 
 made the most of what she had to do by being as 
 long about doing it as possible. She would go 
 round dangling the flowers till they were limp and 
 drooping in her grasp, and she had to fling half of 
 them away before she was finished with them. She 
 wandered all over the place till she was guilty of
 
 no OIHL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 trespassing on the cottage grounds after some bud 
 or berry, like the rich man coveting the poor man's 
 ewe-lamb. She pulled the handiwork, with which 
 ."$he was never pleased, to pieces half-a-dozen times, 
 "making no end of litter," the housemaid com- 
 plained. 
 
 "When Mr. Cotton was at home he wanted little 
 from his daughter except her presence and that she 
 should look well and happy, which she was far from 
 doing always. She had then no need to continue 
 to acquaint herself with farming operations, in order 
 to repeat them to him, for he could see them for 
 himself, and as he had a correct idea that she did 
 not care for wheat and barley, sheep and fat pigs 
 on their own account, he did not press her to accom- 
 pany him in his daily expeditions to inspect his 
 treasures. He was not a man who had ever de- 
 pended much on the women of his family for sym- 
 pathy in his pursuits. 
 
 Withal the days and nights had a trick of drag- 
 ging slowly with Harriet Cotton at the manor-house, 
 so that, though she professed to be independent, she 
 was glad to welcome the arrival of one of her sis- 
 ters, or any other company, " only for a little va- 
 riety," she said listlessly. 
 
 It was impossible that the Stubbses and Cottons
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. Ill 
 
 could live for any length of time together, even 
 though they had been in far less proximity, in the 
 same country neighborhood, without encountering 
 each other in the houses of common acquaintances 
 some o f whom were so lost to etiquette and so 
 meddlesome, so injudicious altogether, as to intro- 
 duce various members of the respective families. 
 Mr. Stubbs had been forced to meet Mr. Cotton on 
 business, so that, as Mrs. Stubbs had said, the worst 
 was over for him. Mrs. Stubbs carried off the in- 
 troduction as she carried off most things. She 
 availed herself of her privilege as much the older 
 woman, took the initiative, and decided that a slight 
 bow was the point at which her greetings to Mr. 
 and Miss Cotton should begin and end. 
 
 It was worse for the girls, who were contempo- 
 raries, and ought to have been natural allies. Both 
 felt strangely familiar from having seen each other 
 so often and speculated on each other so much. 
 Both felt also strangely stiff and stupid, though Pie 
 showed it more than the other, because Pie was 
 much less of a woman of the world and less able to 
 hide her feelings, while she was better qualified to 
 rule her spirit. 
 
 Once there had been a little opening of the closed 
 doors, which had closed again immediately, and
 
 112 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 served but to prove the inaccessibility of human 
 nature when thus artificially warped and fortified. 
 The vicar revived the idea of a penny reading, and 
 pressed all the young ladies of his parish into his 
 service. He had already tried to enlist Harriet 
 Cotton as a young parish work-woman, but had 
 speedily desisted for two reasons. The motion did 
 not meet with her father's approval any more than 
 with her own. Mr. Cotton thought Harriet delicate 
 and in all respects too precious to be exposed to the 
 remotest risk of injury for the public good. The 
 vicar had his own suspicions that Harriet would not 
 be the right woman in the right place if she were 
 set to perform light duties which were so admira- 
 bly discharged by Pie Stubbs for instance as 
 teacher of a junior class in the Sunday or day school, 
 or as one of the juniors secretaries of one or two of 
 his many clubs. But for some occult reason the 
 penny reading took Harriet's fancy, and she entered 
 on the project with an approach to girlish zeal. 
 The meeting of the volunteer performers took place 
 at the vicarage, and both Pie and Harriet were there. 
 There was no question of what Pie's contribution to 
 the entertainment should be. She was to play a 
 selection of popular airs on the vicar's piano, sent to 
 the parish schoolroom for the occasion, and her
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 113 
 
 father was to accompany her on his violin. But 
 when the time drew near for the readings he was 
 more out of health than usual, and Mrs. Stubbs 
 would not hear of his making the exertion. Pie 
 went to the vicarage to announce with regret and 
 mortification the breakdown of their quota to the 
 programme. Harriet Cotton had arranged to help 
 with the shades of a magio-lantern, which anybody 
 could do. "When she heard of the withdrawal of 
 Mr. Stubbs she was impelled to offer to take his 
 place. She could play the violin, as everybody 
 knew, for she had taken away the breath of the 
 natives with the new feminine accomplishment, first 
 when the Cottons came to the manor house. She 
 believed she was equal to the violin accompaniment 
 to the popular airs. The vicar cried " Bravo ! " 
 from a double motive. Pie could not give credit to 
 the testimony of her ears at the same time she felt 
 shy and wondered what her mother would say. It 
 might be taken for granted that Miss Cotton 
 could count on entire impunity from any censure on 
 her easy-going father's part for what she proposed 
 to do. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs shook her head, but said nothing 
 against the wish of her vicar, though Mr. Stubbs was 
 so exasperating as to suggest, did the clergyman de-
 
 114 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 sire to give an example of fraternization under diffi- 
 culties for the public benefit? 
 
 By tacit consent it was fixed that the necessary 
 practice and rehearsals of the two girls together 
 should take place on the debatable territories of the 
 vicarage drawing room, and finally of the school- 
 room. It was a remarkably grave, almost solemn 
 practice, the only thing that was peculiar about it 
 being that Pie, who played the more correctly of 
 the two, could not take it upon her to call back Har- 
 riet when she went astray. It was Harriet 
 who, Avhenever she was aware she was wrong, 
 called herself back punctiliously. " There I was in 
 fault," "There again I left out a couple of 
 notes," " Now I am not keeping time." But 
 she did not stop there. She did not hesitate to 
 pounce upon her partner in the duet for every 
 supposed error. " You are hurrying. Miss Stubbs ; 
 you are flurried." " Now you have gone to 
 the opposite extreme : you don't expect me to 
 wait for you, do you ? " " What are you about ? 
 Oh, I see it is I who should cone in. I beg your 
 pardon." 
 
 When the night of the penny reading arrived even 
 Harriet, though she had played her violin when her 
 father's drawing-room was full, was put out. She
 
 Q1RL NEIGHBORS. 115 
 
 had never before played to so many people, strang- 
 ers of all ranks. " Do you really think we can do 
 it ? " she asked Pie, without naming her, as the two 
 stood together, Harriet in one of her delicate-hued 
 costumes, with some of the jewels which her father 
 lavished upon her on her neck and arms ; Pie in her 
 white frock, with her locket on its little gold chain 
 and the bangle Harry had given her on her wrist. 
 
 Pie was turning over the leaves of the piece of 
 music. Harriet was tightening her fiddle-bow. 
 " Sha'n't we break down ? " she observed with a 
 little trepidation. 
 
 " No, I don't think so," Pie said reassuringly, 
 while she also abstained from mentioning her com- 
 panion's name. " I have played here before with 
 my father. Of course it was a great thing to have 
 him, for he did not mind, only he can't bear a false 
 note at any time. But somehow the excitement 
 seemed to carry me through." 
 
 Pie and Harriet played together quite creditably, 
 and were much applauded. The singular sight in 
 Maidsmeadows, of a young lady playing a fiddle in 
 company with another young lady manipulating a 
 much tamer instrument was enough in itself to cover 
 the players with eclat. 
 
 " I think we did wonderfully well," said Pie
 
 116 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 brightly when she rose from the piano, though she 
 still addressed an anonymous person. 
 
 u I know you kept time perfectly, and were not 
 disturbed by that stumble of mine," Harriet 
 responded with a gleam of gratification and of 
 gratitude in her dark eyes. 
 
 The next time the girls chanced to encounter each 
 other it was not without a little throb of expectation 
 on Pie's part ; but Harriet had one of her sisters 
 with her, who knew nothing of the penny reading. 
 She stared blankly at the stranger, and Harriet, not 
 without a slight flush of discomfiture, gave for greet- 
 ing only the small bow which was the formal token 
 of recognition between the Stubbses and the Cot- 
 tons. Their state of non-acquaintance appeared 
 more hopeless than ever after that small beginning 
 of friendliness was nipped in the bud. 
 
 The slumbering old antagonism and prejudice 
 sprang up with new vigor. It was " these people," 
 " that girl," on both sides, until the conviction was 
 established in the Stubbs' mind that Mr. Cotton 
 was a frivolous, worldly-minded elderly gentleman, 
 and that Harriet Cotton was a flippant, embryo fine 
 lady, without heart or soul, and incapable of 
 improvement. 
 
 On the Cottons' part there was an equally strong
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 117 
 
 impression that the Stubbses were a set of self- 
 righteous, arrogant fanatics ; with Pie a conceited, 
 fussy puppet, congenial clay in the hands of the 
 potters. 
 
 Time went without altering the relations between 
 the manor house and the cottage. Weeks and 
 months the greater part of a year passed, and 
 only served to 'render the severance chronic and 
 inveterate. Pie had got so far accustomed to it. 
 As for Harry Stubbs, he had not yet found himself 
 one of its victims. It happened that he had gone 
 to Wales with a reading party during the last long 
 vacation, and had spent Christmas with an ailing 
 friend. He had not been at home for more than a 
 day or two at a time since the Cottons came to the 
 neighborhood. After all, they had become much 
 more of a permanent institution than had at first 
 been thought likely. Mr. Cotton at least took 
 kindly to the place and seldom left it.
 
 118 GIRL NKIGUBORS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 COMMON HUMANITY HAS A VOICE IN THE QUESTION. 
 
 " OH ! MOTHER, mother, have you heard ? " cried 
 Pie, rushing white and breathless into the cottage 
 parlor where Mrs. Stubbs was unblushingly darning 
 such a basketful of stockings as Harriet Cotton had 
 relegated to previous generations. 
 
 " No, child ; take time and compose yourself," 
 said Mrs. Stubbs, pausing in artistically repairing 
 the heel of a sock in which one of Harry's cricket- 
 balls was inserted to enable the mender to do her 
 mending more deftly. The next instant she put 
 down her work hastily, interlaced her disengaged 
 fingers, and said with a gasp after the composure 
 which she had recommended to her daughter, 
 " You don't mean to tell me anything ails Hader- 
 ezer your father? I saw him reading his news- 
 paper not five minutes ago. You have not heard 
 any bad news of Harry? No post has come in 
 since the morning." 
 
 " Not my father or Harry, oh, no, not either of
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 119 
 
 them!" panted Pie. "It is Miss Cotton. Lydia 
 saw her thrown from her horse, and carried insen- 
 sible back to the manor house." 
 
 " And where was Lydia ? " inquired Mrs. Stubbs, 
 restored to calmness, and recovering her judicial 
 tone, but she did not resume her stocking darning. 
 Indeed, her hand was shaking so much that not 
 only would a needle between the trembling fingers 
 have been an unsafe instrument, they were better 
 kept out of sight. " How did she know that the 
 young lady was insensible ? " 
 
 " Lydia was coming from the village, where she 
 had gone with the soup for Granny Jones. She 
 says Miss Cotton's horse ran away opposite the 
 Cuckoo Gate, and that she fell into the road and 
 never stirred when she was taken up. Lydia ran 
 across when she saw her lying in a heap, but there 
 was nothing else to be done, for Mr. Cotton and a 
 groom were with Miss Cotton. One of the garden- 
 ers was in the lane too, and he called two other 
 men, and they caught Miss Cotton's horse and 
 helped Mr. Cotton to carry her to the house, while 
 the groom galloped off for Dr. Sanders." 
 
 "Lydia's geese are all swans," remarked Mrs. 
 Stubbs ; as if the comparative badness of an accident 
 corresponded with the difference of ornithological
 
 120 O1EL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 rank between a goose and a swan. " I daresay she 
 has exaggerated everything, and there is not much 
 the matter. Miss Cotton is a bad rider, very likely, 
 and has let her horse down, and there is the head 
 and tail of the story." 
 
 " No, mother. Miss Cotton has a good seat on 
 horseback. I have heard people who were judges 
 say so, and I have seen it myself," said Pie, scorning 
 to slander a fallen foe. " Besides, there has been an 
 accident, there could be no mistake in that," she 
 remonstrated ; " and if the accident is serious if 
 she is dead it will be so terrible," she ended, 
 in a low voice quivering with awe and horror. 
 
 " Terrible for Mr. Cotton ; but let us hope it is not 
 so," said Mrs. Stubbs more gravely. 
 
 " And for us," cried Pie excitedly, " not to have 
 known her hardly ever to have spoken to her, 
 while we have seen her continually nearly every day 
 for a number of months." 
 
 " I don't see what our speaking or not speaking to 
 her has to do with it," said Mrs. Stubbs a little 
 coldly. "Neither our speaking nor our being silent 
 would have kept her from not looking where she was 
 going, or from dropping her reins, or r iding some 
 untrustworthy brute of a horse." 
 
 " I meant, if we had known her we might have
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 121 
 
 gone over and done something for her," said Pie, 
 piteously. 
 
 " Most likely we should not have been wanted." 
 
 " Oh, mother, she has only her father and the serv- 
 ants with her, and she may be dying ! " cried Pie, 
 wringing her hands and growing very pale herself as 
 she sat down hastily. 
 
 " Pie, you are as bad as Lydia," cried her mother 
 in exasperation, starting up, bringing a glass of 
 water from a side table, and making Pie swallow it 
 instantly. "What should she die for? Do you 
 think every girl who gets a fall from her horse 
 must die, and that you are justifiable in fainting in 
 anticipation of the catastrophe ? I thought any 
 daughter of mine would have had more sense, with 
 a greater horror of making a fool of herself and 
 giving other people trouble." 
 
 In response to this bracing treatment Pie sat up 
 in her chair, and the red came into her cheeks 
 again. But the first use she made of her rallied 
 forces was to beg and entreat her mother : " Don't 
 mind me. It was very silly of me to feel a little 
 faint. I am quite ashamed of it. But, oh ! mother, 
 you will go over and see what can be done. If you 
 do not I shall feel as if we never can forgive our- 
 selves and she was so nice when she spoke to me 
 after the Penny Reading ! ''
 
 122 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Nonsense, Pie ! " said her mother sharply : but 
 she rose and began to put aside her work. " If I 
 go it will be an exceedingly disagreeable step for 
 me to take not that I should mind the disagreeable- 
 ness if I saw it to be my duty. It is not likely there 
 is much wrong with the girl ; but I do not care to 
 think of her father's being left alone with her and 
 a parcel of stuck-up servants, good for nothing, I 
 have no doubt though cook had struck up a friend- 
 ship with that demure old housekeeper, and will 
 stand up for her. I daresay I shall get no thanks 
 for my pains." 
 
 " Never mind thanks," said Pie, " you have so 
 much experience ! You are such a capital nurse, 
 you may be the means of saving her life." 
 
 "Pie you are getting light-headed. Who said I 
 wanted thanks, and why do you assail me with flat- 
 tery ? I should like to hear what your father says 
 first. Stay, there is Dr. Sanders galloping up with 
 the groom. I have no fault to find with the doctor; 
 but I cannot help thinking that if any poor child in 
 the village had been driven over or fallen into one 
 of the open draw-wells which the people will not 
 close, he would not have been found so easily, or 
 brought over with such speed. I shall take the lib- 
 erty of sending out to stop him when he is finished
 
 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 123 
 
 with his patient, and find what a story Lydia has 
 made out of nothing, and what an officious fool I 
 might have been considered if I had followed your 
 advice, Pie." 
 
 The doctor was not long in the manor house, 
 though Pie, who could not rest, believed he had 
 been hours. It was not to be wondered at, when 
 she kept telling herself that if her mother were 
 too late she (Pie) would be tempted to think that 
 Harriet Cotton's death would lie at their door. 
 Death come in a moment to a girl like Pie's self, 
 whom she had so often looked at and blamed or 
 ridiculed, but with whom she had never spoken a 
 friendly word, save during the brief interlude of 
 the Penny Reading, for all these months, to whom 
 she might never have another opportunity to 
 be kind ! The bare idea chilled Pie inexpress- 
 ibly. 
 
 When Dr. Sanders did reappear, and was 
 cleverly intercepted and conducted to the cottage, 
 his report was such that Mrs. Stubbs took up her 
 work again with an easy if a somewhat indig- 
 nant: 
 
 " I told you so, Pie. You see the scrape you 
 might have led me into by rashly leaping at con- 
 clusions."
 
 124 GIRL NEIGHB0113. 
 
 So far from Miss Cotton's being dead or dying, 
 it was supposed at first that she was very little hurt. 
 She had been stunned for a few minutes, and there 
 was a contusion on the back which a few days' rest 
 would set right. The doctor had been able to 
 assure Mr. Cotton that there was no real reason 
 why he should not go to town, where he had some- 
 what urgent business on the following day, as he 
 had previously intended. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs felt at liberty to reflect : " I dare- 
 say that girl is making as great an outcry as if 
 she had been half killed, and is worrying her poor 
 foolish father nearly out of his senses." "Whereas 
 if Mrs. Stubbs could have seen across the brook 
 and its bridges into Harriet Cotton's bedroom the 
 matron would have found the girl, not merely 
 bearing considerable pain with unusual fortitude 
 for her years, but concealing what she was suffer- 
 ing, to pacify Mrs. Walls, whose nerves had not 
 recovered from the shock they had received, and 
 to hinder Harriet's father from either having to 
 endure anxiety on her account or to give up going 
 to London when it was of consequence that he 
 should go. And the girl who was thus showing 
 what was best in her of courage and self-forgetful- 
 ness was telling herself during the long sleepless
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 125 
 
 hours of the night "If Pie Stubbs yonder had, 
 not to say a back opening and shutting and splitting 
 itself into pieces in the most sickening manner like 
 mine to-night, but the least bit of toothache, I 
 believe she would be crying like a baby for her 
 mamma, and her better-class vixen of a mother 
 would be keeping guard over her, calling her 
 'pretty dear,' and soothing her to sleep. I don't 
 wish anybody to keep guard over me or to call me 
 * pretty dear ! ' I could not stand it. But I should 
 like if I could go to sleep and forget for a moment 
 that bolt and rush of ' Lady Jane's,' the flash of 
 light before my eyes, and the thud with which I am 
 sure I came to the ground. I seem to feel it yet in 
 all my fingers and toes, and especially in my poor 
 back." 
 
 Mr. Cotton went up to town quite comfortably, 
 and returned without finding that Harriet's re- 
 covery had come to a stand-still in his absence. 
 He repeated the experiment several times, for this 
 was a busy season with his firm. Then he felt 
 himself justified in arranging to stay in town for a 
 whole week, to save himself from the fatigue of so 
 many journeys backward and forward. His house 
 in town was shut up, and he hated a club, but he 
 would easily get himself put up somewhere. He
 
 126 GIRL NEI011BOR8. 
 
 must do it, for he had felt rather out of sorts lately. 
 The additional strain of business was telling upon 
 him, or else he had not got over though he was 
 not such a twittering goose as Walls the panic 
 caused by poor Harry's little accident. She said 
 she would not mind in the least, she could do quite 
 well without him for eight days. The only thing 
 that vexed her was the suspicion of fuss and his 
 sending for his daughter Anne with her baby, that 
 she might keep her sister company in his absence, 
 while the child would serve as a true flesh-and- 
 blood doll for both sisters. It did not look to him 
 very long since his girls were playing with their 
 wax dolls. 
 
 But the truth was that Dr. Sanders, though he 
 hesitated to contradict his first statement, and did 
 not like to disturb Mr. Cotton's tranquillity when 
 there might not be sufficient reason for the disturb- 
 ance, began not to feel so satisfied with Miss Cotton 
 and her back as he had done in the beginning. He 
 was sanguine by nature, but he had to acknowledge 
 to himself that backs were ticklish places to get 
 jarred as well as bruised. He had to recall Rhoda 
 Fielding's fall on the ice at Broomend, which had 
 been thought nothing of at the time, for which he 
 had sent her a simple embrocation soap liniment or
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 127 
 
 something of that sort and told her she would be 
 skating as briskly as ever before the winter was 
 over. Instead, she had been kept on a couch till he 
 had hated the very name of skating. He wished to 
 goodness that Miss Cotton, now that she was on her 
 feet again, would not walk slightly lame. It was 
 ever so slightly, so that perhaps he was the only 
 person who detected the lameness ; still he did de- 
 tect it, and he could not deny it to himself any more 
 than he could refuse to see that she had looked very 
 wan and shaky from the date of her accident. She 
 had a pale complexion naturally, and the rest might 
 be fancy very likely it was nothing and she 
 would bo all right in a week or two, as he had said. 
 But though Dr. Sanders did not desire to alarm 
 anybody when the alarm might be uncalled for, he 
 did not care to have the whole responsibility in the 
 case. The girl was as good as a rich man's only 
 child, for it was understood Mr. Cotton was particu- 
 larly fond of his unmarried daughter, and would not 
 send her from home, or have her interfered with and 
 thwarted, by placing an older person at the head of 
 his household in the meantime. There was nothing 
 whatever to apprehend in the course of a week or a 
 month for that matter. Indeed, there was no abso- 
 lute danger to life to be feared in the future, though
 
 128 O2RL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the worst were to come to the worst only a pro- 
 tracted state of semi-invalidism, sad for a girl and 
 damaging to her prospects in. life, though she did 
 happen to be a rich man's darling. 
 
 Dr. Sanders, with his mind considerably exer- 
 cised, suddenly gave way so far as to confide some 
 of his fears to Mrs. Stubbs. She was an old friend, 
 a woman of experience as the mother of a family, 
 and a safe confidante in any circumstances. She 
 was rendered still safer by the fact that the Stubbses 
 did not visit the Cottons, so that Mrs. Stubbs could 
 not be betrayed into the indiscretion of dropping a 
 hint of danger ahead which might reach Mr. 
 Cotton's ears. 
 
 But though Mrs. Stubbs had first broached the 
 subject to Dr. Sanders, she now listened stiffly. No 
 doubt she was accustomed to be consulted both by 
 the doctor and the vicar on the welfare of the 
 parish, and found no fault with the general practice 
 on the contrary, relished her share of it without 
 question. But though she had sent for Dr. Sanders 
 just after he had been called in to Miss Cotton on 
 her accident, to ascertain at first hand how the 
 young lady was faring, yet now she as good as said 
 that she did not approve of being dragged into the 
 Cottons' family concerns, though they were under 
 her very nose.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 129 
 
 " I should suppose the effects of the accident will 
 pass off in time, since you have not been able to 
 trace any serious injury," she said coolly. " I dare- 
 say she is making a great ado about nothing, but I 
 have always thought that a goo<J sign where health 
 is concerned. It is a pity that she is a young lady 
 of too great importance for you to tell her so, as you 
 certainly would say it to Mattie Kidgeway at the 
 Mills or Mrs. Tom Adams* at the Adams' farm." 
 
 " You're quite out there, ma'am," said the doctor, 
 who was one of the most old-fashioned institutions 
 in Maidsmeadows, with his speech old-fashioned, in 
 keeping with his coat and his riding-boots. "I 
 never saw so young a woman show such power of 
 self-control as Miss Cotton has displayed. I have 
 felt driven to compliment her more than once, 
 though I am not given to paying compliments to 
 my patients." 
 
 " Indeed ! " was all Mrs. Stubbs allowed herself 
 to say in reply, though she was reflecting severely 
 on the subserviency of most men to a well-filled 
 purse. Dr. Sanders had only vague doubts of the 
 state of Miss Cotton's spine ; but though he hated to 
 raise a commotion, he could not keep them any 
 longer to himself, when some special authority 
 might be called in, without loss of time, to dissipate
 
 130 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 or confirm them, and in the latter case exercise his 
 skill in suggesting immediately the course to be 
 pursued. The doctor spoke very cautiously to Mr. 
 Cotton, and in the next minute had to combat a 
 complete cluster of distressed proposals. Mr. Cot- 
 ton would not go to London for a day, far less for 
 a week. Some one else would do his business for 
 him ; poor darling Harry's health and comfort were 
 the first things to be considered. He would take 
 Harry up to town with him, and put her under any 
 number of great London doctors that Dr. Sanders 
 might recommend. Unfortunately the Cottons' old 
 family doctor had died lately, but Mr. Cotton was 
 good enough to say that he had implicit confidence 
 in whomever Dr. Sanders might recommend. He 
 would summon all his three married daughters in- 
 stead of only Anne, who was the youngest of the 
 three, and had her first baby to engross her. The 
 others were well, and so were their husbands and 
 children. They could have no greater obligation 
 than to nurse their sick sister. They had been good 
 girls as girls went, and surely one or other of them 
 must have developed enough sense and capacity in 
 her married state, to take care of Harry and cheer 
 her up, till she was fit to go about again. Good 
 heavens ! was there any chance of her not going
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 131 
 
 about any more, or being a cripple for the best 
 part of her life ! He should never get over having 
 let her ride that brute. It Avas a favorite of hers, 
 but it had shied and run off once before. 
 
 It was with some difficulty that Dr. Sanders 
 calmed down Mr. Cotton, and caused him to see 
 that it would do no good, but a great deal of harm 
 to frighten and worry Miss Cotton. She would be 
 frightened and worried if he did not go up to town 
 as he had proposed. She could not go with him at 
 present, it would be next to impossible, and would 
 involve positive danger at this stage of her recovery. 
 One of her sisters was quite enough to be with the 
 invalid, as had been already arranged. To assemble 
 the whole family would be certain to startle and 
 agitate her. Nothing was worse for any one in her 
 condition than to be startled and kept in a fever of 
 agitation. On the whole, it would be better to 
 have the medical consultation after Mr. Cotton's re- 
 turn. He could bring down a doctor whom Dr. 
 Sanders named, if it suited them both. 
 
 Mr. Cotton left reluctantly to make out his week 
 in town, and within three days of his arrival at the 
 house of his daughter Laura in Kensington, where 
 he had decided to stay, a fresh disaster oc- 
 curred.
 
 132 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 It was Mrs. Walls, the housekeeper, who brought 
 the intelligence of the new trouble. She found 
 her way across one of the bridges and dropped 
 in at the cottage to relieve her burdened mind 
 by telling her grievous story to her crony the 
 Stubbs' old cook, and bespeaking her good offices 
 if anything could be done to avert still heavier 
 misfortunes. 
 
 The extremity was so grave that no ceremony 
 could be used. Cook solemnly marched into the 
 cottage parlor and addressed her mistress at the 
 tea table. " Mum, this here family at the manor 
 house do seem marked out for affliction," said cook. 
 " Mr. Cotton have gone and took the fever up in 
 London, where he is lying at the present moment in 
 one of his married daughter's houses. He cannot 
 be moved, and he has sent word, not being off his 
 head yet, that Miss Cotton is not to go up to town to 
 him not on no account. The infection would be 
 worse for her since she is out of health at anyratc, 
 and so it would be for Mrs. Parry, whose baby is 
 not more than three months old yet/ Mrs. Vincent 
 that was the eldest Miss Cotton, will take care of 
 her father, and they may be easy about him here 
 till he is well again. 
 
 " There is some sense in that," pronounced Mrs. 
 Stubbs slowly.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 133 
 
 " But, laws ! mum, Miss Cotton ain't easy. She's 
 neither to hold nor to bind. Mrs. Walls has stepped 
 over unbeknown to the ladies to see if you'll step 
 back before or after her, and try if you can pacify 
 Miss Harry Miss Cotton, I should say." 
 
 " Me ! " cried Mrs. Stubbs in such stern rebuke 
 that she forgot her grammar. " Is the woman 
 mad ? What have I to do with it ? I am sorry for 
 Mr. Cotton's illness, of course, as he is a near neigh- 
 bor. But I am not afraid of the family, we do not 
 even visit them, as you and this Mrs. Walls, or 
 whatever her name may be, are well aware. Miss 
 Cotton has one of her married sisters with her ; if 
 she cannot advise and console her I do not see how 
 anybody else can." 
 
 " If you please, mum, Mrs. Parry ain't no good, 
 Mrs. Walls says. She was always that soft, and 
 she is that taken up with her baby a bit delicate 
 thing she can think of nothing else. Miss Harry, 
 as they call her that is our Miss Cotton here says 
 she won't be kept away from her father or have 
 anybody else to nurse him. She understands his 
 ways best, and she always took care of him when he 
 had his fits of gout. She won't be made an invalid of; 
 there's nothing to speak of the matter with her. 
 Shell start for London the first thing to-morrow
 
 134 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 morning. That is how she goes on, with her face 
 as white as a sheet, and she can't bear her poor back 
 without a-holding of it, and she is limping as if it 
 was her leg and not her back that were broke." 
 
 " She must be stopped," said Mrs. Stubbs 
 promptly. 
 
 " So we, Mrs. "Walls and me, think, mum ; and if 
 a lady old enough to be her mother, as she must 
 look up to, were to interfere and tell her what her 
 dooty is, she might mind. Mrs. Walls says Miss 
 Harry don't mind her sister, not the least bit, and 
 she won't listen to Mrs. "Walls. Neither of them 
 will be able to keep Miss Harry from having her 
 way. Mrs. Walls is fit to lose her own wits, for she 
 says her poor young lady will not only be the death 
 of herself, as Mrs. Walls has known and done for 
 from a child, but of the poor gentleman as consider- 
 ate and bin offensive a gentleman, when he were 
 alive and at home, as could be found any- 
 wheres." 
 
 " He's not dead yet. And this comes of a girl 
 getting all her own way," cried Mrs. Stubbs impa- 
 tiently. " Why does not Dr. Sanders interfere ? 
 she is his patient." 
 
 " Because he is gone down to Southampton this 
 morning to see an old patient there, and he is not
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 135 
 
 expected back before the middle of the day to- 
 morrow. Mrs. Walls have been at the sur- 
 gery." 
 
 By good luck Pie chanced to be out, so that she 
 could not be blamed on this occasion for influencing 
 her mother in the course she took. For Mrs. Stubbs 
 could not answer to herself, either in the capacity of 
 a mother or of a woman who had come to the years 
 of discretion, for refusing any longer to pay her first 
 visit to the manor house in order to express her 
 sympathy and remonstrate, as the active minded, 
 warm-hearted, warm-tempered woman was prone 
 both to sympathize and remonstrate with her neigh- 
 bors, great and small, when there was any prospect 
 of hindering harm or doing good. It was awkward 
 in the circumstances, but, perhaps it would not have 
 been less but more awkward had she been an ordi- 
 nary acquaintance of the Cottons. Only an intimate 
 friendship and the family had not been long 
 enough in the neighborhood to make intimate 
 friends or mere humanity could warrant her 
 appearance on the scene. 
 
 As a humane woman, a Christian woman, Mrs. 
 Stubbs had no choice. She must stir up this weak 
 Mrs. Parry, she must master this willful Miss Cotton 
 in her rebellion, in whatever light they chose to 
 regard her Mrs. Stubbs' intrusion.
 
 136 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs did not require to make a toilet on 
 this spring afternoon a light shawl would be 
 enough to protect her head and cap, as it was 
 enough when she walked about the cottage grounds. 
 This was not a ceremonious call she was about to 
 make, but an act of charity she had to perform. In 
 fact so unceremonious an invasion of the [manor 
 house had not been attempted by the inmates of the 
 cottage since old Squire Fuller made his loving 
 elaborate preparations to welcome his family, at all 
 points, and at all hours. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs only stopped to tell Mr. Stubbs what 
 she was going to do, and Haderezer Stubbs laid 
 down the stone he was examining, with a lively 
 exclamation. 
 
 " Eh ! what ! Poor Cotton dow r n with fever ! A 
 bad look-out for a man of his build at his age. 
 Still, he seemed hale and energetic, always stump- 
 ing about that fancy farm of his when he was not 
 going up to town to see after his business. He had 
 the air, not only of living on the fat of the land 
 without a worldly care, but of being a temperate 
 man amid all the so-called delicacies of the season 
 so much the better for him now r ." 
 
 When Mrs. Stubbs went on to tell her errand 
 he made a kind of little bow, half in cordial ap-
 
 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 137 
 
 proval, half in jesting mockery. " Well done, Mrs. 
 Stubbs ! " he said. " Upon my word you intrepid 
 ladies are arrested by nothing when it is a question 
 of consistency or inconsistency, exactly where we 
 timid men would stand bungling and hesitating. 
 Just what I should have expected of you, Sapientia, 
 my dear. But I say, don't come down hard upon 
 the poor girls, who must have sore hearts any- 
 how." 
 
 "They must be a couple of fools in different 
 styles," said Mrs. Stubbs without mincing matters, 
 and without separating the innocent from the 
 guilty. "They cannot be let throw away their 
 own lives and endanger their father's by their care- 
 lessness and disobedience, while there are older 
 people at hand to speak their minds and show the 
 pair the mischief they may do by their sentimental 
 folly.
 
 138 GIRL 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE RESULT OF MRS. STUBBS' VISIT. 
 
 MRS. STUBBS returned, to find Pie, who had come 
 in and been apprised of her mother's absence and 
 its cause, eager to learn the sequel. Even Mr. 
 Stubbs, who was wont to be sarcastic on the attrac- 
 tions of gossip to women, was not unwilling to 
 listen to the details of the interview. 
 
 " I have done it," said Mrs. Stubbs, with a little 
 allowable satisfaction, as she walked in from the 
 veranda, laid aside her shawl, felt that her cap 
 was all right, and sat down again in her chair. 
 She did not seem to consider any farther communi- 
 cation necessary. 
 
 "Is Cotton very ill?" inquired Mr. Stubbs. 
 
 " Is Harriet Cotton in a dreadful state of mind ? 
 Does she look as broken down by her accident as 
 people say ? " asked Pie breathlessly. 
 
 " If you please, mum," burst in cook from the 
 open door, to which she had hurried to discover 
 " the rights and wrongs of things," with the stol-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS, 139 
 
 idity and absence of tact not uncommon in her 
 station, at her years, " I forgot to say so before, 
 but I hope you did not let on that me, or Mrs. 
 "Walls either, had anything to do with your calling. 
 We meant well, and to do as we'd be done by ; 
 but gentlefolks, more especially when they're rich 
 young ladies, are given to be onreasonable. It 
 may be thought as how we've forgotten our- 
 selves." 
 
 "Hold your tongue, cook!" said Mrs. Stubbs, 
 peremptorily. " Of course I told what had brought 
 me, and how I had heard that there was good rea- 
 son why I should intrude my advice. If you are 
 very anxious I can go back again and beg the 
 young ladies not to bear malice against you and 
 Mrs. Walls. But if I were you I should not require 
 the service. To tell the truth however interesting 
 the subject, I do not think that Mr. Cotton's daugh- 
 ters have a thought to share for the probable com- 
 plicity of you and Mrs. Walls in this matter." 
 
 Cook retreated, snubbed, reflecting that her 
 missus had a heart in its right place, and could be 
 trusted through thick and thin where it was in 
 question ; but she could be " that sharp " when she 
 was provoked. 
 
 " You have not said how Cotton is going OR ? " 
 Mr. Stubbs reminded his wife.
 
 140 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "Or how you found Miss Cotton?" chimed in 
 Pie. 
 
 " He is going on as well as can be looked for the 
 man is only in the first stage of the fever. By-the- 
 by, Haderezer, I promised that you would go up to 
 town to-morrow and call at the Cotton's counting- 
 house. Strange to say, that girl recollected there 
 might be some infection in the fever, for you as 
 well as for herself, and suggested that you ought to 
 go to the counting-house and not to the house where 
 her father is lying ill. At the same time I daresay 
 the precaution is needless. In all probability the 
 fever is typhoid, and the mention of infection is 
 merely a ruse to keep her away." 
 
 " But why on earth should I go to town and call 
 at Cotton's counting-house ? " demanded Mr. Stubbs 
 restively and ruefully. " Is not Cotton lying ill at 
 his daughter's house ? Both she and her husband 
 are on the spot, they can write by every post, or, 
 as they are rich people, send special messengers if 
 they prefer it. What reason is there for dragging 
 me out of my den and bothering me about their 
 father? I cannot imagine what you were thinking 
 of, Sapientia, to give such an absurd promise/' 
 
 "Haderezer," said his wife more in Idly than sne 
 was in the habit of speaking, because she was a just
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 141 
 
 woman and she acknowledged that there was some 
 justice in his remonstrance, " nothing else would 
 content the girl and put her past her determi- 
 nation to go to her father in spite of his prohibition. 
 She said the prohibition was all for her sake, and he 
 would not be angry with her for disregarding it. 
 That comes of allowing young people to tamper 
 with the letter of the law under the false impression 
 that the spirit is safe. A cat could see that Miss 
 Cotton is totally unable to travel. As to nursing 
 her father, poor man, he would be off his head 
 indeed if he permitted it. I cannot think how Dr. 
 Sanders failed to discover that the girl must have 
 got badly hurt by the fall from her horse. It is 
 enough to make one doubt his skill in future." 
 
 " What is her sister about, not to prevent her tak- 
 ing any rash step ? " grumbled the victim. 
 
 " Oh ! her sister is one of those pretty babies that 
 you men are so fond of marrying," said Mrs. Stubbs, 
 disdainfully ; " but even she, when Miss Harriet 
 Cotton spoke of starting to-morrow for London, 
 burst out crying, and implored me to stop her, for 
 she (Mrs. Parry) could not. It was with the great- 
 est difficulty that I induced the girl to consent at 
 last to delay the execution of her intention. She 
 has got it into her head that her sister and brother-
 
 142 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 in-law in town, and her father, if he knows what he 
 is doing, will smooth down matters and seek to deceive 
 her. She says the people at the counting-house will 
 be certain to know the truth, and though they 
 would not write it to her, if you were to go there, 
 simply as a friend of the family, they would not 
 keep it from you. There is some sense in what she 
 says, and for myself I hold that the truth is the truth 
 and should always be told." 
 
 " And, pray, who will go in for telling her the 
 truth, if the news should be bad ? I suppose I am 
 expected to do that also ! " protested Mr. Stubbs in 
 the tone of a deeply injured man. " I give you 
 warning beforehand that you may, but I sha'n't. 
 An excitable, passionate girl in a bad state of health, 
 good heavens ! it may kill her on the spot. Surely 
 her nearest relations, including her father, are the 
 best judges of what she ought to be told." 
 
 But he said no more of the grievance to himself 
 an elderly man and a delicate man, with engage- 
 ments of some importance to him personally, and 
 to the public too, he was fain to think, though he 
 had long ago resigned his post office duties, to have 
 to turn out of his retirement and encounter the 
 nuisance of a journey to town and back again, in 
 order to be a peevish, undisciplined girl's mes- 
 senger.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 143 
 
 " It will be time enough to settle who is to tell 
 the bad news when you bring them," said his wife 
 calmly, assured that she had gained her point ; 
 " and, Fie," she turned round to her daughter, " I 
 said to Miss Harriet Cotton you would go over be- 
 fore dinner and sit with her for half an hour, as Mrs. 
 Parry is so much taken up with her baby a little 
 mite that sleeps badly. Miss Cotton did not seem 
 to care much for your company, though she was not 
 so rude as to tell me so in plain words. I told her 
 that any company was better than none in the cir- 
 cumstances, and that you would keep her from mop- 
 ing and be at her service of an afternoon till her 
 father was better." 
 
 " But mother, if she does not want me ! " cried Pie 
 aghast, yet still with a thrill of expectation at the 
 prospect. 
 
 " It is not what she wants, or what you want 
 either, though I had a notion that you were dying 
 to make her acquaintance all this time," said Mrs. 
 Stubbs, dryly, " it is what is good for her. She is 
 fretting herself into a fever of her own about her 
 father, and about being kept away from him in his 
 illness. Any diversion will help her, even if it be 
 only the chance of snapping at you for disturbing 
 her ; at the same time she is well enough bred, she
 
 144 61RL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 will not take an actual bite of you. She will not refuse 
 to receive you, and she will be outwardly civil. 
 After all, being a girl, though her manners are 
 ridiculously formed for her years, I daresay she 
 will not really object to another girl it will be two 
 silly heads to put together and keep each other in 
 countenance. As I said to her, any company is bet- 
 ter than none sometimes," ended Mrs. Stubbs, with 
 quite cheerful philosophy. 
 
 Pie looked very blank at the qualified version 
 of the benefit she was to confer. Her father -had 
 left the room, so that she could not appeal to him, 
 but she must make more attempts to move her 
 mother. " After having stood out and not gone 
 near them for so long a time to descend upon them 
 in an avalanche like this ! " said Pie, with a sudden 
 assumption of dignity. 
 
 " Say no more," exclaimed her mother shortly. 
 " I can easily write a note that my daughter objects 
 to go, and there's an end of it. You are not a clergy- 
 man, Pie ; you are not even a clergyman's wife, 
 sister or daughter. You do not belong as a matter 
 of right to people in distress, only I made the great 
 mistake of supposing that you wished to help your 
 neighbors." 
 
 " So I do," said Pie, reproachfully, " and you
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 145 
 
 know I do not mean to raise any serious obstacle. 
 I am very sorry indeed for Harriet Cotton, but it 
 will be very difficult and hard for me, 1 shall not 
 know what to say or do." 
 
 " If you are under the impression that you can 
 ever be of much use to your neighbor without at 
 least a considerable amount of difficulty and hard- 
 ship to yourself, you have labored under a complete 
 delusion, my dear. I have yet to discover that the 
 old divine was wrong when he said neither saints 
 nor sinners could ever get to heaven on feather-beds. 
 As for not knowing what to say, I think that is a 
 little idiotic, Pie, when you are both girls near in 
 age, in rank, and in many of your surroundings, and 
 not very far apart in education." 
 
 Pie looked incredulous. " If she were like other 
 girls it might have been easier," she said, and 
 stopped. 
 
 " As far as my experience goes," replied Mrs. 
 Stubbs, " girls are not an order of beings that offers 
 infinite variety." 
 
 Pie began again on a new tack. " Was every- 
 thing very grand, mother ? You have not given me 
 a very clear idea of what you thought of Mrs. Parry 
 and Miss Cotton, how } r ou met, and all that passed." 
 
 " You will see and judge for yourself."
 
 146 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Either Mrs. Stubbs did not wish to bias her daugh- 
 ter's opinion more than she had already done, or 
 she declined to admit anything that would break 
 the force of her concession. 
 
 An hour later Pie set out alone with the last new 
 book and a bunch of fresh primroses for Harriet 
 Cotton, though it was on the cards that she might 
 refuse to read the one, and in the light of the spring 
 glories of her father's greenhouses, be utterly indif- 
 ferent to the other. Pie's heart beat fast as for the 
 first time for a number of months she crossed the 
 brook and advanced toward the manor house, at the 
 point where the veranda merged into a heavy 
 portico. It was too early in the year for the " blue 
 lilies " to be set out, though the air was not hostile 
 to primroses. The great tubs stood there and were 
 filled with hardy shrubs, laurustinus, dwarf rhodo- 
 dendron, and azalea the last bursting into bloom as 
 Pie had seen them from her own side of the bound- 
 ary. There were also some junipers and yews 
 pressed into the service, which struck her for the 
 first time, with a little recoil, as containing reminis- 
 cences of churchyards. She would not have had 
 such a thought yesterday but to-day, with poor 
 Mr. Cotton lying sick up in London, the association 
 would arise, and she could only hope that it did not 
 occur to his daughters.
 
 QIRL NEIGHBORS, 147 
 
 No, Pie had never seen anything so perfect as the 
 manor house hall under its present aspect, and she 
 could say the same of the untenanted drawing- 
 room into which she was ushered. She did not 
 imagine that she was peculiarly impressionable 
 where upholstery was concerned, but the last craze 
 for subdued depths of richness and artistic harmo- 
 nies is subtle and wide-spread in its influence. It 
 was something like a revelation as well as a delight 
 to Pie only to take in the tints of the ceiling, the 
 hues of the tiles, the outlines and carving of the 
 wood- work. Walls, floors, carpets, curtains, couches, 
 and chairs in their soft, deep blending of color in 
 contrast with vivid bits of brilliance, their dove- 
 neck gray, peacock blue, and green of unripe oats, 
 flashed upon by " high lights " of poppy-red and 
 burning gold ; their textures velvety, glossy, semi- 
 transparent, as the conditions required, Avere like 
 the creations of an exquisite dream, or the visions 
 of fairyland, or the glamor produced by moonlight. 
 Pie had not more of poetic insight and yearning than 
 may be found in many girls of her age, yet she im- 
 mediately felt that this was the poetry of furniture. 
 She thought of Harry's Nankin jars, and longed for 
 him to see the manor house thus transformed. She 
 wondered if her mother had sustained an instan-
 
 148 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 taneous conversion, or had stiffened herself in her 
 allegiance to her old serviceable, broad daylight 
 damask and Brussels with their hard jarring blues 
 and greens, reds and yellows, and their simpering 
 pinks. Her tables and chairs, by comparison, were 
 either clumsily uncouth or floridly gimcrack. For 
 even Mrs. Stubbs had some gimcrack ideas with 
 regard to gilding, plate-glass, papier-mache, and 
 mock Dresden and Sevres china vases, with their 
 bad shapes, Brobdingnagian lilies and roses, and 
 finical blurred landscapes. Pie herself was dis- 
 tractingly divided between an old family affection 
 and a sneaking kindness for the household gods of 
 her childhood her whole life, and a burning desire 
 to turn the cottage outside in and refurnish it with 
 those charming items which fascinated her taste and 
 soothed her senses. 
 
 Then she looked down at herself where she sat. 
 Pie had been guilty of thinking a little of her per- 
 sonal apperance before she started, even under the 
 sad circumstances. She had not wished to offend 
 the eyes of Harriet Cotton and her sister. But Pie 
 had not been provided with the time or the means 
 at hand to do much toward brightening her ordi- 
 narily rather sombre apparel. She had tied a little 
 Indian scarf, which was a favorite with her, round
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 149 
 
 her throat, and the act had given her a little the 
 look of a robin redbreast instead of a linnet. But 
 though an Indian scarf of the old Cashmere dyes is 
 a valuable adjunct to a toilet, it will hardly make 
 up for a host of deficiencies. Pie's serge frock and 
 jacket were dingy, not to say shabby. She wore 
 strong boots, which Mrs. Stubbs called " sensible 
 country boots," with which Pinet had nothing to 
 do, and thick calfskin gloves, for the weather was 
 still cold, though there were primroses in the hedge- 
 rows. She had a lively mental perception of her felt 
 hat with the mouse-colored velvet showing traces of 
 rain drops incurred the last time she had gone to 
 look into the affairs of the Boys' Lending Library, 
 when her arms had been encumbered with books 
 so that she. .had not been able to carry an umbrella. 
 Yes, she was a blot on the beautiful drawing- 
 room, but she forgot all about the momentary vex- 
 ation caused by the thought, when Mrs. Parry and 
 Harriet Cotton came into the room together, and 
 Harriet introduced her sister. Pie did not even no- 
 tice how the sisters were dressed Mrs. Parry in a 
 coral-colored dressing-gown, and Harriet, though she 
 and not her sister was the invalid, in one of her 
 winter morning-gowns, light and warm to look at in 
 its shifting olive shades, as it was warm to wear in its
 
 150 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 soft woolen material a much more suitable dress 
 than her ivory-tinted summer frocks. The garments of 
 the rich man's daughters did not mar the palace of 
 decorative art, but they entirely escaped Pie's atten- 
 tion for the instant. It was not that she was over- 
 powered with shyness and awkwardness. In spite 
 of her previous apprehensions she had too much 
 sense for these fears, and she was, as Mrs. Stubbs 
 had said of Harriet Cotton, reasonably well-bred. 
 Perhaps she was the better bred of the- two girls, if 
 one excepts just the slightest suspicion of rusticity 
 belonging to a life spent in the country, and a shade 
 of juvenile starchedness born of the fact that Pie 
 was a meretorious public servant. Because of the 
 amount of her public service and the limited num- 
 ber of her years, she was unable to wear her virtues 
 and achievements quite as lightly and humbly, with 
 as pleasant an absence of self-consciousness as 
 gracefully, in short, as, doubtless, she would wear 
 them when she was half-a-dozen years older and 
 wiser. But it was not because of her self-control 
 and the tiny grains of consequential ity at which 
 Harry had laughed so boisterously, that Pie would 
 have actually failed, had she undergone an exami- 
 nation on the subject, to be able to tell what Mrs. 
 Parry and Harriet Cotton wore on Pie's first visit to 
 the manor house,
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 151 
 
 For the Cottons were certainly affectionate 
 daughters ; they had been greatly alarmed and dis- 
 tressed by the tidings of their father's serious ill- 
 ness, and the sisters' faces bore tokens of their 
 anxiety and sorrow. In addition, Harriet was 
 looking very ill. There was a sallowness in her 
 face which did not belong to her naturally pale 
 complexion. Her dark eyes looked twice as big 
 and twice as dark because of the purple rings 
 round them. She was walking with manifest 
 lameness, and there was a pinched look about her 
 cold hands and a blue shade in her finger-nails, 
 and Pie could see nothing save the traces of sorrow 
 and sickness.
 
 153 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 BROKEN ICE. 
 
 THERE was no question of what Pie was to say 
 when she did meet her neighbors. " Oh, Miss Cot- 
 ton, I am so sorry ! I hope Mr. C otton will soon be 
 well again," burst incoherently from Pie Stubbs' 
 lips, the words saying themselves without any effort 
 on her part. 
 
 " It is very good of you to say so, and to come 
 over," said Harriet courteously if indifferently. 
 " Mrs. Stubbs said you would come, after she had 
 done all she could to comfort us." 
 
 It was gratitude a trifle extorted, betraying an 
 undercurrent cf weariness and just a grain or two 
 of exasperation. " After you had all stayed away 
 so long," the look and tone seemed to say, " you 
 need not have come and pestered us now. I wish 
 she had let me alone. I should have had more 
 peace if I had got my will, though it had hurt my 
 back." 
 
 " It is such a trial for us," Mrs. Parry said plain-
 
 CURL NE1G11BOR8. 153 
 
 lively. " Baby is delicate, and Tom, my husband, 
 is away I mean he is up in town and not able to 
 tell us what to do, or think here." 
 
 It was plain that Baby Parry was at present the 
 pivot round which Mrs. Parry's whole being revolved, 
 and that she could do nothing whether write a 
 note to bid Dr. Sanders call and see baby to-mor- 
 row and find out what was fretting him, why he 
 could not sleep, though she and nurse had dandled 
 and danced him or sung to him the whole of the 
 last night , or eat her dinner to keep up her strength; 
 or lie down on the sofa to make up for her sleep- 
 less night without having Tom at her elbow to 
 advise and put the advice into execution, to pity 
 and pet her. 
 
 There was very little harm in pretty daisy-faced 
 Mrs. Parry, but there was also very little wisdom- 
 even a girl like Pie could see that. The notion of 
 Mrs. Parry's guiding and restraining her sister 
 Harriet was simply ridiculous to all save a man. It 
 was founded on the popular delusion with regard to 
 the superior strength of mind of the matron espe- 
 cially the English matron as compared to the 
 maiden. Backed by Tom and unengrossed by baby, 
 Mrs. Parry might have wielded some reflected 
 power. As it was, she was the most bewildered, 
 overburdened, and helpless of mortals.
 
 154 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 There followed naturally between the three a little 
 talk of Mr. Cotton's illness, so inopportune away 
 from home, in which Mrs. Parry expressed an opin- 
 ion of her own. In spite of her sincere filial attach- 
 ment she let it slip out, that though the attack of 
 fever might be inopportune in other respects, its 
 happening away from home was not an unmiti- 
 gated evil in her eyes. "My father will have the 
 best doctors in the kingdom and every care from 
 Laura where he is. And you know, Miss Stubbs, 
 Laura, our eldest sister, has no children, so that 
 is no danger of the dear little things catching the 
 infection, if it is catching for children, which I sup- 
 pose it may be." 
 
 Harriet looked indignant, but did not condescend 
 to argue the point, aud the topic was changed for 
 that of babies, on which the conversation was likely 
 to continue so long as Mrs. Parry was in the room. 
 
 Happily Pie did herself credit on the subject. She 
 had the wholesome liking for babies which is as in- 
 nate in the natures of healthy-minded, unsophisticated 
 young girls as the love of dolls and pet animals is 
 wide-spread among childlike children. Moreover, 
 Pie in her work on behalf of the public came across 
 a good many babies of all kinds, and was qualified 
 to speak almost like a grandmother on their weight
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 155 
 
 under six months, the teeth they ought to have at a 
 year old, and how soon they should begin to walk, 
 with what were the comparative merits and demerits 
 of crawling over the carpet as an exercise before the 
 first peripatetic attempts. 
 
 Mrs. Parry was very much struck by Miss Stubbs. 
 She thought her one of the nicest, most intelligent 
 girls she had ever met, twice as womanly as Harry 
 was, though Miss Stubbs was too dowdily dressed to 
 admit of her having come out. Mrs. Parry began 
 to reckon what a very great loss it would have been 
 for her younger sister not to have known these 
 excellent friendly people the Stubbses, so close at 
 hand too that Harry, not having a Tom, might apply 
 to them in all her little difficulties. 
 
 The young matron had failed to recognize in Pie 
 a girl Mrs. Parry had seen on her last visit to her 
 father's. The sisters had been walking through the 
 village, and had encountered an ill-dressed blowsy 
 girl, equipped with a clergy woman's basket. Harriet 
 had bowed slightly, and Mrs. Parry, who had a flut- 
 tered notion that she ought to keep a sharp look-out 
 on Harry's acquaintances, just as Tom had his wife's 
 visiting-list under his strict supervision, asked 
 quickly, " "Who was that, dear ? I thought the vicar 
 had no daughters."
 
 156 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Neither has he. That is nobody connected with 
 the vicar, unless, indeed, she counts as one of his 
 curates," answered Harriet. " That is one of our 
 neighbors at the cottage who don't care to visit 
 us." 
 
 " Why, Harry, I think you may be thankful," 
 said Mrs. Parry, with animation. " She is scarcely 
 presentable quite a common-looking girl a regu- 
 lar guy, Tom would say to be a young lady. Any 
 milliner's apprentice or shop-girl would be a hundred 
 times smarter." 
 
 " Smarter yes. But though we all call ourselves 
 smart nowadays, I don't know that smartness is the 
 distinguishing mark of a gentlewoman," said Harriet, 
 carelessly. 
 
 " I don't understand you," said little Mrs. Parry, 
 helplessly. " Surely it is always desirable to be well 
 dressed. Tom would not allow me to be otherwise. 
 Of course the style of dress is every thing ; and there 
 is a style that milliners' apprentices and shop-girls 
 don't aspire to, or cannot attain if they do aspire to 
 it. I only know that if the Sherwins and the Bridge- 
 norths come down here next week, a girl like the 
 one we passed would have been entirely out of place 
 among them." 
 
 " If she were good enough for us to know, I think
 
 QIRL NEIGHBORS. 157 
 
 the Sherwins and Bridgenorths might have put up 
 with her ! " said Harriet with some disdain. 
 
 " Oh, Harry, only fancy her beside Avice Sher- 
 win or Nora Bridgenorth ! And you could not well 
 have got off from inviting her if you had visited, 
 with her and her family living so very near. Not to 
 know them by their own act is a good riddance, 
 which you will appreciate better, dear, when you 
 are more familiar with your position and duties at 
 the head of my father's establishment," ended Mrs. 
 Parry with wonderful sapiency and sententiousness ; 
 indeed, she was borrowing piecemeal from Tom. 
 
 " How long have you been married, Nanny ? " in- 
 quired Harriet abruptly, breaking in ruthlessly on 
 the small peroration. 
 
 " You must remember," answered Nanny, half in 
 amazement, half in affront ; " why, a year and a 
 half ago, of course not a year after Georgie's mar- 
 riage, though Georgie is quite three years my 
 senior." She recalled the fact with manifest pride 
 and satisfaction. 
 
 " No doubt there is a greater difference between our 
 ages yours and mine, I mean," admitted Harriet. 
 " But when I had ceased to be a child, long before 
 your marriage, people did not always guess the dif- 
 ference ; and I had my way generally."
 
 158 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " You were so far forward and headstrong always, 
 Harry," said Mrs. Parry with a shake of her own 
 head in a hat that was beyond reproach. " You 
 ought not to be so masterful. Your husband will 
 not like it. Tom could not stand it." 
 
 " I shall not ask Tom's leave, begging his and your 
 pardon. / have not got a husband yet ; I shall 
 take care not to get one for many a day to come, if 
 I ever do." 
 
 " Oh, Harry, you would not be the old maid of 
 the family," cried the bride of a year and and a half 
 ago, in horror. 
 
 "Why not?" asked Harriet coolly. "I don't 
 think I should mind very likely I shall. But I say 
 Nanny, does a year and a half's experience of 
 matrimony offer so great an advantage that you 
 are entitled to lecture me on my position and duties 
 when I have my father to tell me all that is 
 necessary ? " 
 
 " My father is very good, dear, as a father no 
 one would acknowledge it more readily than I ; but 
 I am a married woman," announced Mrs. Parry 
 with dignity, as if that promotion put an end to the 
 dispute. 
 
 Mrs. Parry had forgotten all about this previous 
 encounter and conversation when she was so charmed
 
 OIBL NEIGHBORS. 159 
 
 with Pie Stubbs' intelligent interest in babies. The 
 young mother thought it worth while to ring for 
 nurse to display the infant phenomenon. Pie had 
 the honor of holding it in her arms for a minute, 
 when she did not say bluntly, as her mother had 
 said a little earlier, that the child was very small, 
 and ought to be kept a great deal out in the open 
 air when the weather was good, to make him grow. 
 Pie's remarks were more pleasing, while they were 
 perfectly sincere. She found Mrs. Parry's baby 
 firm-fleshed though he might be small-boned. She 
 thought he had a great deal more expression in his 
 face than was to be seen in the faces of very big 
 fat babies. 
 
 Mrs. Parry was more and more delighted with 
 Pie's sense and womanliness, and only withdrew 
 with a regretful apology that it was the hour for 
 her son's having his panada. She was sure Miss 
 Stubbs knew the importance of babies being fed 
 punctually and properly, and would excuse a mother, 
 as her first obligation, particularly in Mr. Parry's 
 absence, was to her child. 
 
 Pie felt that she did not gain ground \vith Har- 
 riet Cotton in the same way that her simple arts had 
 enabled her to win Mrs. Parry's favor. Harriet 
 made no secret of the truth that babies were
 
 160 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 anything rather than a passport to her heart. 
 "What a relief," she suffered herself to cry with 
 fervor when the door closed on mother, nurse, and 
 child, " though it is ray sister and my nephew ! Xo 
 doubt it will shock you to hear me say it ; but if 
 there is a thing I cannot endure it is a doting 
 mother and her squalling progeny." And Harriet 
 lay back with one arm thrown round the side of 
 her lounging-chair, waiting nonchalantly for Pie to 
 be shocked. 
 
 Pie was half-amused, half-vexed ; she had a 
 shrewd suspicion that Harriet Cotton deliberately 
 meant to shock her, and that if Harriet had been in 
 better spirits she would have greatly enjoyed the 
 operation. 
 
 " Don't you like when the little tiling comes to 
 visit you," Pie suggested, " to watch it growing to 
 find out whom it ' favors,' as the old people in 
 Maidsmeadows say, to discover when it begins to 
 know you ? " 
 
 " I can't say I do," answered Harriet with dry 
 candor. "I don't pay enough attention. lam glad 
 to get the morsel out of my head, its perfections are 
 so dinned into my ears." 
 
 " Besides, babies are so pretty," remonstrated 
 Pie.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 161 
 
 " Are they ? " demanded Harriet incredulously. 
 " This one is all gaping mouth, it has no nose to 
 speak of, and it has such winking eyes. What 
 Nanny, my sister, finds to worship in it I can't 
 imagine." 
 
 " Don't you admire its hands and feet ? " 
 
 " If they were not forever grasping and kicking, I 
 might. But I must protest against its ears they 
 stand out like the handles of a box." 
 
 Pie would have hoped that Harriet Cotton was at 
 least diverted and amused in her own way by ex- 
 pressing this kind of criticism, had it not been 
 for the restless air by which pain, and grief, and 
 longing, showed that they got the better of lan- 
 guor. 
 
 " Mr. Stubbs is to be so good as to go up to town 
 ajid call at the counting-house to-morrow." Harriet 
 retailed the arrangement for Pie's benefit. "I 
 should have been very much obliged to him if it had 
 not been that it prevents me from going. I should 
 have been there already with my father before any- 
 body could have stopped me, if your mother had not 
 come over and proposed to ascertain first how my 
 father was going on. I was taken by surprise, and 
 her proposal was so great a favor from a stranger 
 that I did not like to contradict her. Besides, your
 
 162 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 mother looked as if she was not accustomed to be 
 contradicted. I am sure I do not know why I gave 
 in," explained Harriet in naive astonishment at her 
 own unusual meekness. 
 
 " And I am sure it was for the best," urged Pie 
 earnestly. " You are ill you are not able to nurse 
 Mr. Cotton. Perhaps you have not been accustomed 
 to nurse people. The sight of you would have put 
 your father about, after he had said you were 
 not to go to him. It might have done him a great 
 deal of harm." 
 
 " I don't believe it," said Harriet obstinately. 
 " Do you think I should have minded having a pain 
 in my back, like a rheumatic old woman, if I could 
 have done any good to my father. I should not 
 have needed to be tcld what to do, I should have 
 done it by instinct, just because he is my father," 
 she insisted, with a sob in her throat to which she 
 would not have given egress for the world. " He 
 would have been pleased to see me, whatever he had 
 said beforehand. I could not have harmed him. 
 Now, Laura, my eldest sister, has her husband want- 
 ing her, though she has no children, and she does 
 not know half so well as I how my father likes his 
 soup seasoned about his egg being boiled hard at 
 breakfast-time and about the brands of the wine. It
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 163 
 
 is horrid to have everything done wrong when he is 
 ill." Harriet started up in her provocation from 
 her lounging-chair and began to limp up and down 
 the room ; but the exertion was too much for her, 
 she grew paler than ever, and subsided impatiently 
 into her old position. 
 
 Pie had smiled faintly to herself ; she had had 
 very little personal or family experience, happily 
 for her, of violent illness, though Mr. Stubbs was in 
 some respects a confirmed invalid. But her visits to 
 the cottage hospital had taught her this amount of 
 knowledge that seasoning in soup, hard-boiled eggs, 
 and brands of wine would be out of Mr. Cotton's 
 way for some weeks at least. Another thing of 
 which Pie was not altogether confident was that 
 pure instinct would teach anybody practical nursing, 
 though it Avas instinct that of another loving 
 daughter's heart which inspired her to soothe 
 Harriet with the assurance, " You will hear very 
 soon exactly how he is. If he is going on well and 
 likely to get better fast as I think it is very prob- 
 able he is Mr. Cotton has always looked so well 
 and strong you will not mind so much not being 
 with him ; and if there is any need, you can go up to 
 him at once, when you will perhaps be stronger and 
 fitter for the journey. Besides, you will be doing 
 what he wishes, which is the great thing."
 
 164 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Harriet remained gloomily silent, as if she objected 
 to her father's having any wishes save her -own, 
 especially any wish that she should not be with 
 him. 
 
 " I have brought a book by the author of " Yera," 
 you and your sister may not have seen it. My 
 mother and I liked it very much," said Pie, half 
 timidly. " I gathered these primroses this morning 
 from the tufts beneath the mulberry tree. There 
 are not many flowers yet." 
 
 " Oh, thanks ! " said Harriet, without more thank- 
 fulness in her voice and manner than common polite- 
 ness called for. " I daresay there are not many 
 primroses in the garden. I have not been out to see 
 since * Lady Jane ' chose to throw me. Floyd, our 
 gardener, always contrives to have a bank in the 
 greenhouse that suits them. I'll ring," suiting the 
 action to the word before Pie could interpose, " and 
 get these primroses put into water." 
 
 Pie saw the flowers which she had gathered with 
 pains and pleasure that morning carried away on a 
 salver by a stonily supercilious footman. She had 
 a conviction that even if they were brought back, 
 Harriet would never cast eyes on them again. 
 
 " I don't believe the book-box has been opened 
 since it came yesterday." Harriet rang again for
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 165 
 
 the footman to bring in the box, which might con- 
 tain treasures of wit and wisdom. She unlocked it 
 listlessly. " I should not say that we were readers 
 except by fits and starts," she said. " Only the 
 ' Baby's Annual ' I think there is such a profound 
 work would attract Anne for any length of time ; 
 and I tire of books," she ended, discontentedly, turn- 
 ing over a dozen volumes and barely looking at 
 their titles. 
 
 " Tire of books ! " Pie could not help exclaiming. 
 " I wish I had the chance. But I never heard of 
 any of these books," she remarked with a little 
 surprise, as she read the names of those nearest to 
 her. 
 
 " I dare say not. I believe the librarian sends us 
 all the rubbish in the library," said Harriet, check- 
 ing a yawn ; " while you, I suppose, only read the 
 excellent books Mrs. Stubbs recommends." 
 
 In spite of Harriet's good breeding, there was a 
 certain covert impertinence in her speech. In fact 
 there may be a good deal of impertinence slightly 
 veiled under the best superficial good manners. She 
 had the grace to be ashamed of it the next moment, 
 and as if to make amends, she put Pie's volume con- 
 spicuously apart from the others with the observa- 
 tion : " No doubt this is better worth, and as you
 
 166 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 took the trouble to bring it, and say you liked it, I 
 shall read it." 
 
 Pie failed to express her gratitude for the conde- 
 scension, amends or no amends. She had a spirit 
 of her own and was not slow of comprehension. 
 She answered straightforwardly Harriet's implica- 
 tion. " If I wish particularly to see any book not 
 a bad book, of course my mother lets me order it ; 
 but I have not a great deal of time for reading, and 
 it would be a pity, don't you think, at my age, to 
 waste the little time on what one knows nothing 
 about ? There are so many standard books 1 ought 
 to read. Indeed," said Pie in her honest} 1 ", " there 
 are so many good books on all subjects, well worth 
 reading by everybody, that I am rather surprised at 
 your letting the librarian send you rubbish." 
 
 " Oh, it does not signifiy," said Harriet coolly, 
 " when I usually read to pass the time, and a silly 
 book serves about as well as a wiser one. If I 
 waited till I wanted particularly to read, I am afraid 
 I should not often open a book." 
 
 Pie was dumb. 
 
 " There are girls who are always wanting to do 
 something," said Harriet didactically, " as there are 
 girls who adore babies jeunes ingenues, sweet inno- 
 cents all their unmarried, or, for that matter, their
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 16? 
 
 married lives. But I am not one of those ingenuous 
 young persons. There is no gush about me, I warn 
 you, Miss Stubbs." 
 
 " I don't care for gush," said Pie, indignantly. 
 
 Harriet went on without heeding her companion. 
 " I don't feel that I want anything very much. I 
 don't mean to pretend for a moment that I am con- 
 tented," she broke off, in horror at such an amiable 
 misconception, "only there is not much in life that 
 really deserves one's wishing for it greatly. Don't 
 you agree with me ? " 
 
 " No," said Pie as bluntly as her mother would 
 have spoken. " There are numbers of things I wish 
 for with all my heart, and I am convinced they de- 
 serve to be heartily wished for." 
 
 " It is like asking if life is worth living a ques- 
 tion that was put in a great many forms lately," 
 said Harriet, speculatively. 
 
 " I think it might be in any circumstances, even 
 if it were closely confined to one kind of life," said 
 Pie thoughtfully. " But as it is I am sure life is 
 immensely worth living." 
 
 " I knew she would try to preach a sermon at 
 me," reflected Harriet with acrimony, " the self- 
 righteous little prig and humbug ! " but she only 
 said carelessly, " Somebody called life ' intensely
 
 168 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 interesting,' but I am persuaded he or she did not 
 live in the country." 
 
 "Don't you like the country then? Are you 
 sorry Mr. Cotton ever came to Maidsmeadows ? " 
 asked Pie, wistfully. It seemed such treason to 
 Maidsmeadows, which everybody said was a de- 
 lightful rural neighborhood, to the manor house, to 
 the beautiful room in which the girls sat, to 
 attribute such sentiments to Harriet. 
 
 " According to my line of argument," Harriet 
 answered, " there is really nothing much worth 
 being glad or sorry for." She stopped suddenly 
 with a secret thrill of terror and anguish. What 
 was she saying ? Nothing much worth being sorry 
 for ! when her father was lying ill of fever up in 
 London, and the very next post might bring the 
 worst news news she could never get over though 
 she might not die of it, she might even live to be 
 old ? What if God took her at her rash, insincere 
 word, and punished her for her affectation, which 
 now seemed to be profane as well as silly and false, 
 by sending her what she professed not to dread ! 
 
 But the moment Harriet recovered herself she 
 was only the more provoked with Pie Stubbs for 
 having led her, Harriet, as she considered, to make 
 such a reckless, ill-omened speech.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 169 
 
 " I was afraid you were going to tell me the 
 stale story of ' Eyes and No Eyes,' " she said pet- 
 tishly ; " as I am not in any light a naturalist and 
 have not the least bit of Frank Buckland in me, it 
 would be singularly inappropriate." 
 
 " It is a pity," said Pie simply, not intending to be 
 more trying than she could help, but as it happened 
 Harriet disliked pity of all things. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it is a pity that there are not 
 more superior people in the world," she said with a 
 curling lip ; " but you see it cannot be helped, so 
 one must just put -up with the scum or the dregs, 
 whatever you like to call them. The country is 
 well enough in its way if people do not stay too 
 long in it, as my father has been doing, pottering 
 about that stupid farm. But, oh ! what would I not 
 give to have him there now among his wheat hoers 
 and turnip weeders ! " she broke off and cried incon- 
 sistently with such a ring of genuine sorrow in her 
 tone that Pie was very sorry too, and freely forgave 
 the offenses of which Harriet Cotton, to tell the 
 truth, had not been sparing. 
 
 " She does not know what she is saying. She is 
 inclined to quarrel with everybody and everything, 
 like a child that has had its toys taken away." Pie 
 came to the sage and charitable conclusion.
 
 170 Q1RL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Pie tried to change the subject again and to say any- 
 thing she conscientiously could which might sound 
 agreeable to Harriet. " What a lovely room this 
 is ! " Pie exclaimed, eagerly. " I know I ought not 
 to look round me and make remarks. Even in this 
 corner of the world we know a little better than 
 that," she said with mock gravity and a dash of 
 humor in her gray eyes ; " but I never saw any- 
 thing half so lovely as this. I should think it would 
 be a pleasure in itself to live here." 
 
 Harriet did not seem impressed or mollified. She 
 was accustomed to praises of the freshly-fitted-up 
 house till they, and it too, palled upon her. 
 
 " The decorators did their work tolerably well," 
 she said wearily. " I remember admiring it when 
 we came first, but 1 soon cease to pay attention to 
 what I see day after day. The house and the coun- 
 try are well enough, as I said," she added, repeating 
 a favorite phrase, " when one is not left too much 
 alone in them." 
 
 Pie looked guilty, for she felt Harriet Cotton 
 might be reflecting on such near neighbors as the 
 Stubbses for leaving her alone. But Pie found the 
 next moment that the speaker was not thinking of 
 anybody in or near Maidsmeadows. 
 
 " It does not do to trust to country neighbors,"
 
 OIHL NEIGHBORS. 171 
 
 said Harriet, candidly ; " if we are not Philistines 
 to them, they are Philistines to us. You do not 
 mind me saying so Miss Stubbs ? Excuse me, but 
 I hope you are not in the habit of taking things to 
 yourself." 
 
 " I hope I am not so foolish," said Pie, coloring, 
 but the next moment she recovered her temper. 
 Harriet Cotton was ill and unhappy ; if Pie could 
 not comfort her, at least Pie was not there to catch 
 up Harriet's words and resent them. "No one 
 could find fault with your present speech, Miss 
 Cotton," she found presence of mind to say, " for it 
 is perfectly impartial. But you often have the 
 company you have been accustomed to with you. 
 I have seen and heard from a little distance, and 
 thought how gay you were, and how grand it must 
 all be, though I could not have imagined this," look- 
 ing round her with renewed admiration, " and grand 
 is not the right word." 
 
 " Did we look gay to you ? " inquired Harriet, 
 slightly propitiated and interested. " But one gets 
 wearied of gayety too, especially in the country. 
 Now we should have had far greater variety even 
 when we were out of town if we had not been 
 settled down here. It would not have been tennis 
 parties and dinners and little dances, and drives
 
 172 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 and rides over the same country forever. We 
 should have gone abroad, or we should have bor- 
 rowed somebody's yacht, Mr. Vincent, my richest 
 brother-in-law's or some other man's boat. We 
 should have been so busy arranging tours and 
 trips and making preparations, as well as travel- 
 ing, that we should not have had time to get 
 sick of everything before we were half done with 
 it." 
 
 " I suppose it would be very nice," said Pie 
 vaguely, " but I. never did anything of the kind ; " 
 and then she wondered in her own mind what it 
 would feel like to be sick of a superfluity of tennis- 
 parties, dances, and dinners. 
 
 "You know," said Harriet with a desperate 
 temptation to boast, though she did not like the ap- 
 pearance of being confidential with Pie Stubbs of 
 all people, "I am at the head of my father's estab- 
 lishment both here and in town. I am accountable 
 for everything going off well." 
 
 " I did not think of that," said Pie, considerably 
 impressed, but more with commiseration than envy. 
 " What a weight it must be on your mind ! How it 
 must keep you from enjoying things like other 
 girls ! What should I do without my mother when 
 we have company, though it is always in the quiet-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 173 
 
 est, easiest way, because we are not rich and my 
 father has not good health ! When we have people 
 with us it is mostly on my brother Harry's account, 
 to make it more cheerful for him at home. I fancy 
 you got used to it when you were quite young," 
 said Pie, with gentle mysteriousness, as if the late 
 Mrs. Cotton's death, which had taken place a dozen 
 years before, was still too tender a subject to be 
 plainly mentioned by a stranger before the dead 
 woman's daughter. " What a loss it was, too, that 
 all your elder sisters married early! I have my 
 mother and father and brother, but I have often 
 thought how nice it would have been to have had 
 sisters." 
 
 Harriet stared. Was Pie Stubbs an utter sim- 
 pleton, or an impudent pretender, or an accom- 
 plished hypocrite ? 
 
 " Of course," Harriet answered dryly after a short 
 pause. " But there are such cases as ' packs of 
 girls ' always coming in each other's way, always 
 interfering with each other, as jealous as jealous can 
 be of each other's claims. We were not altogether 
 out of the nursery and schoolroom, but I remember 
 feeling ashamed, though I was so young, of appear- 
 ing once or twice in public, in a regular mob of girls. 
 My father was very good, and made no complaint,
 
 174 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 but he must have felt it and been aware that people 
 were pitying and laughing at him, and wondering 
 what he was to do with so many daughters, though 
 there was no call for us to work for our bread. I 
 assure you he has been considered a very fortunate 
 man to get so many of us off his hands quite 
 creditably so soon. I have been congratulated, with 
 reason, on having no rival queen to share my king- 
 dom. I confess I like to be undisputed mistress of 
 my father's house, to get all the credit and compli- 
 ments that belong to the position of Miss Cotton 
 the only Miss Cotton. Imagine having to stand 
 aside for the other girls because they happen to be 
 born a few years before me, having to consult their 
 opinions and defer to their wishes as if they were 
 each of them my grandmother ! " 
 It was Pie's turn to stare. 
 
 * 
 
 "People say," continued Harriet with languid 
 decision, " that no house full of young women ought 
 to be either expected or compelled to live together 
 after they are out of their teens. Girls if they don't 
 marry in their first or second season, should strike 
 out independent careers for themselves." 
 
 " I never had a sister," said Pie, sknvly ; " but I 
 wish you could hear my mother speak of her sister 
 Nancy. No doubt there must be sisters and sisters,
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 175 
 
 but, with some inevitably sad exceptions, I believe 
 there used to be sisters living together from youth 
 to age, not only amicably, but, oh ! devotedly and 
 tenderly attached to each other, like my mother 
 and my Aunt Nancy. My mother says it is not 
 the fashion now to praise Hannah More ; but when 
 she was young she knew an old woman who had 
 lived with the five Misses More, as Patty Luke lived 
 with the Misses Fuller at our cottage, and my 
 mother's old woman could never say enough of the 
 peace and happiness of that household of old maids. 
 Patty lived both here at the manor house and after- 
 ward at the cottage, and she tells to this day how 
 united the family were and how fond of each other, 
 so that even when the squire was going to be 
 married the idea of parting was too painful to him. 
 It is impossible to think of the Misses Fullers strik- 
 ing out independent careers for themselves," fin- 
 ished Pie, laughing, and yet with a touch of pathos 
 in the laughter. 
 
 "I daresay they were much too stupid," said 
 Harriet, contemptuously, " especially if they were 
 like their foolish brother who made all these cats' 
 walks and absurd little bridges, to bring into close 
 contact relations who ought to have been kept at 
 a respectful distance."
 
 176 OIllL NEIGHBORS 
 
 Pie could stand this no longer. It was all very 
 well, or ill, for her mother to air such sentiments 
 with regard to the old Fullers. Pie knew her 
 mother did not mean all she said quite. But for a 
 girl like Pie's self to fall foul of the old squire who 
 had been so trustful and hopeful in his young manli- 
 ness and happiness, was the additional straw that 
 threatened to break the camel's back. Pie hastened 
 to make her exit, leaving Harriet Cotton to come to 
 the conclusion, half with a certain hardened exulta- 
 tion, half with swift compunction, that she had suc- 
 ceeded in rendering herself " a disagreeable wretch." 
 She had teased and hurt Pie Stiibbs pretty consider- 
 ably in return for the Stubbs' unauthorized, officious 
 meddling in the Cottons' affairs.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 FIRMER GROUND. 
 
 IF PIE had been guilty of hankering after Harriet 
 Cotton's acquaintance, a crime of which her mother 
 had accused her, the tvro girls' first interview nearly 
 cured the hankerer of her foolish inclination. She 
 would certainly not have gone back to the manor 
 house under ordinary circumstances. She was not 
 fanciful, but she was at an age to feel particularly 
 sore at being made game of and laughed at. " She 
 thinks us all Philistines," Pie told her mother dole- 
 fully, though she qualified the expression of her 
 opinion by saying, " I have no doubt that they the 
 Cottons are Philistines in our eyes. She does not 
 like girls. She does not approve of sisters." 
 
 " Precisely," answered Mrs. Stubbs concisely and 
 oracularly. 
 
 But Harriet Cotton was ill, in trouble, in danger 
 of taking a false step from which she might suffer 
 all her life afterward. If Pie's going to her served 
 at all to pass the time and to prevent the catastrophe
 
 178 GIRL NKIOBBOR8. 
 
 there was no choice. Pie, who had been trained not 
 to consider her inclinations first and last, but to 
 think of others beside herself, felt there was none. 
 
 Virtue was not left to be its own sole reward. 
 First, Mr. Stubbs brought down as good news as 
 could be looked for of Mr. Cotton, from sources be- 
 yond suspicion, from the impartial counting-house, 
 and from the responsible medical man, whom the 
 messenger took the trouble to interview. Mr. Cot- 
 ton's case of fever was not bad, was not even severe ; 
 if he had been a } r ounger man, there would have 
 been nothing to be anxious about. As it was, he 
 had a good, unimpaired constitution, and kept up his 
 strength remarkably well. Every post carried con- 
 firmation of this comforting version of the illness, 
 until at last the welcome announcement reached 
 Maidsmeadows that he had got the turn, and was 
 likely to mend with wonderful quickness for an 
 elderly man. " She will be very glad, but I daresay 
 her tongue will be sharper than ever," Pie thought 
 when she heard 
 
 The next time she went to the manor house she 
 found, to her surprise, that it was Harriet Cotton 
 and not Mrs. Parry who was in a dressing-gown ; in 
 addition, Harriet was confined to her room. Yet no 
 fiat had gone forth from any special physician, in
 
 QIEL NEIGHBORS. 179 
 
 fact, no special physician had been summoned to the 
 manor house. It had been decided on the first blush 
 of Mr. Cotton's illness that nothing should be done 
 where Harriet was concerned till it could be seen 
 whether it would be advisable for her to run the 
 risk of joining her father. 
 
 Pie was taken to Harriet's room, which contained 
 everythiug that the heart of a girl could desire. Its 
 owner was lying on a sofa, with an invalid's table 
 drawn up before her. She received Pie under these 
 conditions as if they were not quite temporary but 
 intended to last at least for a time. 
 
 "I hope you are not worse," cried Pie, taken by 
 surprise. 
 
 " Xo, thanks," said Harriet, with a comical droop 
 of the corners of her mouth. "I have only given 
 in. I kept on my feet to be ready to go to my 
 father. You see if I had lain down they might 
 have said I could not be moved, for anything that I 
 knew. But now that he is getting better fast, I 
 must make haste to get well too, in case he should 
 beat me. It is nice to feel justified in saying that. 
 To tell the truth, I am a great deal more comfort- 
 able lying down ; and Dr. Sanders promises, though 
 he and I have been quarreling furiously for the last 
 fortnight, that if I keep quite still for a week or ten
 
 180 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 days he may be able to tell me at the end of the 
 time that there is nothing really far wrong with me, 
 and that I shall be equal to going about again pres- 
 ently, the same as ever, without pain and without 
 limping. You must have seen that I limped ; odd 
 isn't it, when I have not broken my leg or even 
 sprained my ankle ? The doctor says people often 
 stutter when there is nothing wrong with their 
 tongues." 
 
 Harriet did look much less suffering and worried 
 than she had looked for some time. The contraction 
 between her brows was gone, the ivory tint of her 
 skin had lost its sallowness. 
 
 "How brave you must be !" exclaimed Pie, with 
 unstinted admiration. 
 
 It was the compliment of all others most agree- 
 able to Harriet. A shade of pink came into her 
 white cheeks and her great dark eyes softened. " It 
 is good of you to say so. I don't think I am very 
 brave. I can screw my courage up to a certain 
 point for a certain time that is about all. I dare 
 say you are braver than I." 
 
 Pie shook her head. " I don't think I am. My 
 mother says I don't bear pain well only a little 
 better than Harry bears it. Boys and men are al- 
 ways very impatient, you know."
 
 QIRL NEIGHBORS. 181 
 
 " Is that true ? I mean, are you speaking fairly ? 
 for I do not know. I thought it was women who 
 always complained." 
 
 " I do not think that you are fair to women," said 
 Pie stoutly. " But I don't wish to contradict you, 
 now that your illness is is brought before me," 
 said Pie naively. " Has the pain been very bad ? " 
 
 " Like toothache in my back," explained Harriet, 
 knitting her brows forcibly again at the recollec- 
 tion. 
 
 " Oh, dear, oh dear ! " cried Pie in dismay ; " and 
 I was arguing with you and talking to you by the 
 hour ! " 
 
 "Never mind. You did not mean to hurt me. 
 It was kind of you to come, and I am sure I was as 
 cross as a bear." 
 
 " It was not kind," said Pie, not to be outdone in 
 self-reproach. " I did it because I could not help it. 
 I did not do it willingly ; I was always grudging 
 the time, though we are so near, and though I was 
 not required particularly, and my mother did all 
 that was wanted of me elsewhere." 
 
 " How much in request you are ! " exclaimed 
 Harriet, not without a touch of satire, in spite of 
 her present good behavior. " A girl like you ? 
 Why, nobody wants me much. Poor old Walls
 
 LS2 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 only pretends to, I believe to please me, and to 
 maintain my credit. You can judge for yourself ; 
 the house goes on better than ever with me lying 
 here." 
 
 " It is different with you your father is rich. 
 You have a number of servants. But it was not in 
 the house I meant I do what I can there, of 
 course, but my mother is a good housekeeper and 
 very active ; while our old cook is most trusty- 
 worthy, and does not like anybody except my 
 mother to give her orders at the same time she 
 has always been nice to Harry and me the fact is, 
 she adores Harry. Lydia, our housemaid, is more 
 my charge, but she knows her work pretty well 
 now, and we don't keep much company." 
 
 " Well, in the house or out of the house, I am not 
 of much consequence, though I am professedly at 
 the head of my father's establishment, as people 
 say," remarked Harriet, with an elevation of the 
 chin peculiar to her, which she managed to accom- 
 plish though she was lying on her back. "Even 
 my own father, it seems, can do without me, can 
 be ill and get well again, and dispense with my 
 company." 
 
 " You must not say that," said Pie in her wise old 
 woman's way, which was yet fresh and sweet, in its 
 unaffected sincerity.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 183 
 
 In spite of the continual sparring which had gone 
 on where the new acquaintances were in question, 
 the informality of the visits Pie paid, and the pro- 
 longed association between the two girls, had paved 
 the way for a degree of familiarity in their inter- 
 course. 
 
 " Your father kept you away for your own sake," 
 she went on, " because there might have been infec- 
 tion for you, and you were ill. Whenever the in- 
 fection is gone and you are stronger, mark my words, 
 he will not be able to do without you. How pretty 
 your room is almost as delightful to look at as the 
 drawing-room is ! " 
 
 " Would you like to go round and look at my 
 things ? " asked Harriet graciously. " Many of 
 them, such as that time-piece, we picked up abroad. 
 The book-case was once in a monk's cell, an aesthetic 
 monk he must have been. The jewel-case, I need 
 not say, did not belong to a nun. It was one of the 
 private possessions of the Countess Diane de Polig- 
 nac, the sister-in-law of poor Marie Antoinette's 
 great friend.. It was through the thick of the French 
 Revolution. The stand for the flower-glass is made 
 of dried and twisted vine stalks like the plaited 
 palm-leaves that serve for fresh palms in Rome at 
 Easter. The chest is old English, one of the ' brides '
 
 1-84 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 hutches ' in which brides carried off their wardrobes 
 and household linen long ago." 
 
 " Why, your room is like a story a succession of 
 stories ! " cried Pie, content for the moment to 
 wander about and examine the threads of the differ- 
 ent stories. Harriet lay and watched her, thought 
 how young Pie Stubbs was still, in spite of her 
 alarming amount of virtue and public-spirited ness, 
 and wished she would show a particular penchant 
 for any particular article, because then Harriet 
 might make a note of it and try to get its duplicate, 
 in order to give it to Pie on her birthday or at 
 Christmas. For Harriet was nothing if she was not 
 as generous as the day in what did not cost her 
 much. After all, Harriet was not ungrateful or un- 
 magnanimous, and it had not entered her head that 
 the acquaintance withheld from her so long, and at 
 last forced upon her, might be dropped when the call 
 for friendliness was over as if a call for friendliness 
 ever could be over. 
 
 Harriet Cotton continued so much better for 
 "laying herself up," as Dr. Sanders called the pro- 
 cess, that the worthy doctor grew very hopeful 
 about her again. " Nothing much amiss with tlut 
 girl's back, as I thought at first. Must write at 
 once and relieve her poor father's mind. Wish to
 
 GJRL NEIGHBORS. 185 
 
 Heaven I had never troubled it, especially as he 
 was ill. But what was I to do, with all the blame 
 to fall on me if it turned out she was seriously hurt? 
 Who was to guess that a man of his age would take 
 fever ? And the girl might have done herself in- 
 calculable mischief if she had persisted for any 
 length of time in her folly. A kind of high-bred 
 pluck and strength of will carried her through so 
 far, but it could not have lasted forever, and it was 
 risky to the last degree. There is the evil of the 
 absurd ideas of independence and judging for them- 
 selves which are so rife among young people now- 
 adays. Independent fiddlesticks ! Every girl 
 should be in leading-strings to her mother till she 
 is married, and after that she ought to be in lead- 
 ing-strdngs to her husband, though I have always 
 steered clear of such a ticklish job. "We should have 
 a safer and more reasonable world if these rules 
 were attended to." 
 
 The comparative ease of mind and body which 
 Harriet was now enjoying naturally did a good 
 deal to improve her temper and render her more 
 amiable. When Pie came up in the afternoons and 
 left Mrs. Parry at entire liberty to devote herself 
 to her baby, the girls chatted together, as girls will 
 chat on every subject under the sun, compared notes
 
 186 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 and laid plans not always in accord, in a pleasant, 
 well-nigh affectionate spirit. 
 
 The first day Harriet was sufficiently recovered 
 to drive out, she took the cottage in her drive, and 
 would not hear of Mrs. Stubbs coming to the door 
 to speak with her. On the contrary, Harriet in- 
 sisted on alighting and walking into the cottage 
 parlor. " I have come to thank you, Mrs. Stubbs," 
 said Harriet, " for all the trouble which you and 
 Mr. Stubbs and your daughter have taken on my 
 account, for which I have made so poor a return. 
 I have nothing to say for myself except that I was 
 ill and unhappy, and so, I am afraid, full of peevish- 
 ness and perversity." 
 
 "There is no occasion for apologizing to me, 
 Miss Cotton," said Mrs. Stubbs in her short, sharp 
 manner, as if she were snapping the lock of a 
 pistol, " nor, when it comes to that, for thanking 
 any of us. It is very little that we can do for each 
 other at any time, and that little we owe as a duty 
 to our neighbor whenever it is really wanted. I 
 hope Mr. Cotton continues better. I hear you are 
 stronger. I trust excuse me for saying so that 
 you will not endanger either his recovery or your 
 own." Mrs. Stubbs spoke in very much the same 
 strain to Harriet Cotton that the matron would
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 187 
 
 have employed in speaking to Lydia or any other 
 young person of Lydia's degree, when a rebuke had 
 to be administered to the culprit for fretting unne- 
 cessarily about a sick father or mother, or for dis- 
 obeying her mistress' or her parents' orders simply 
 to relieve the girl's unbridled feelings. 
 
 " Horrid, dictatorial, self-righteous woman ! " 
 Harriet made the private comment. " And the 
 room is like Noah's ark without the animals." 
 But she put force upon herself and submitted out- 
 wardly to the implied censure. She even admitted, 
 with some ingenuousness, " I deserve to be scolded, 
 Mrs. Stubbs ; but I hope you have not too bad an 
 opinion of me to suffer you to let Pie Miss 
 Stubbs bear me company still, as you were so 
 good as to offer she should, when you took com- 
 passion on Anne and me, at the height of our dis- 
 tress. Now that my father and I are both getting 
 better I trust you do not mean to forbid your 
 daughter to have any further intercourse with 
 me." 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Stubbs, with a faint smile, " not 
 if you wish it." Taken, like the typical bull, by the 
 horns, she could not refuse to give her consent. " I 
 don't imagine it will do either of you much harm, 
 though it may not be remarkably profitable girls' 
 intercourse rarely is."
 
 188 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Then 1 may take it for granted that you will 
 allow Pie to drive over with me and Anne to 
 Springfield to- morrow. I wish to buy a piece of 
 work at the fancy-shop there. I am not a worker, 
 neither is Anne, so we have no knowledge of our 
 own to guide us." 
 
 " I advise you not to depend on Pie's knowl- 
 edge. However, if you and your sister care to take 
 her, and she cares to go, she may. She is indebted 
 to you for the expedition. Only, Miss Cotton, re- 
 member driving is not much in Pie's way. Be so 
 good as not to put it into her head that she can- 
 not walk the distance when it is necessary in 
 future." 
 
 " Horrid woman ! " Harriet repeated to herself 
 under her breath as she drove away. 
 
 " That girl is much too ready with set speeches 
 when it suits her," was Mrs. Stubbs' counterblast 
 when Harriet was gone. " A chit like that to know 
 how to smooth her plumes, when she finds it con- 
 venient, to a woman of my age ! I thought her 
 rude but honester in her good breeding when I was 
 over at the manor house." 
 
 Pie did wish to drive to Springfield. She was 
 now at ease with Harriet, in addition to Har- 
 riet's more genial humor and Mrs. Parry's good-will
 
 GIHL NEIGHBORS. 189 
 
 to a young girl who had the sense and feeling so 
 well to appreciate babies. So Pie enjoyed the drive 
 and the shopping immensely, and made both much 
 more interesting and amusing to Mr. Cotton's 
 daughters by the copious information and explana- 
 tions which only the native of a place can supply. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs, though she had nothing grudging or 
 mean in her rasping, bracing nature, was a little dis- 
 concerted by Pie's changing her colors, and openly 
 expressing her satisfaction with a whole afternoon 
 spent in such company. 
 
 " I am afraid it is a bad precedent, Haderezer," 
 the lady confided to her husband when the two were 
 alone together. k ' I never knew Pie fickle or caught 
 bv the advantages which riches can command be- 
 
 O 
 
 fore. But she is young, and there can be no doubt 
 that luxurious habits are attractive to the young and 
 are easily picked up. This is the very thing for 
 which I wished to keep her away from these people 
 at the manor house. I dreaded lest Pie should con- 
 tract tastes which she would never have the means 
 of gratifying. In that case she will lose conceit of 
 all she has cared for hitherto, and become discon- 
 tentented with her lot in life." 
 
 " Never is a long word. How do you know that 
 Pie may not live to marry a millionaire ? "
 
 100 GIRL XBIGHBORS. 
 
 " I am serious," said Mrs. Stubbs, severely. 
 
 " I am not aware that I am anything, else. Be- 
 sides, Mrs. Stubbs, you could not keep away from 
 these people at the manor house. You even pressed 
 me into the service, and sent me trotting to town 
 
 ' O 
 
 after news of old Cotton. But wait till Pie has 
 grown sulky and discontented fancy poor little Pie 
 waxed savage under a sudden consciousness of the 
 woes of poor gentility ! before you begin to lament 
 over her and yourself." 
 
 "One may wait too long," said Mrs. Stubbs, gloom- 
 ily. " There is little use in locking the stable door 
 after the steed is stolen." 
 
 " I tell you, my dear, Pie has much less sense and 
 spirit than I have given her credit for, if her temper 
 is to be soured and her peace ruined by a passing 
 contact with rich neighbors. She does not have 
 enough companions of her own standing, and she 
 will soon grow too old-fashioned for those she has. 
 She is better to mix with rich as well as poor girls 
 and get what glimpse she can of the world all round. 
 You have not scrupled at my sending Harry first to 
 a public school and then to Oxford, where, for any- 
 thing that you or I know, or anything we should 
 object to in the circumstances, he is hob-nobbing 
 with the son of a duke at this moment. If Harry
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS, 191 
 
 can do it with impunity left to himself in his college 
 why cannot Pie under your own eye at home ? " 
 
 " Boys are different," was Mrs. Stubbs' brief de- 
 fense of her inconsistency. 
 
 " I protest I cannot see it," said Haderezer the 
 elder. " I have always had unbounded faith in the 
 sensible adage that what is sauce for the goose is 
 sauce for the gander, and vice versa." 
 
 The sisters were sitting together in the drawing- 
 room at the manor house, where Harriet was again 
 able to take her place. Pie Stubbs was with them. 
 She had run over to see that the late invalid was no 
 worse for her drive. One little table between the 
 three bore the usual dainty, cozy tea-equipage, 
 another table close at hand was covered with strips 
 of velvet, skeins of silk of the latest artistic dyes, 
 and gold thread in admired confusion. 
 
 " I am not a worker, above all at needlework," 
 said Harriet, as if there was merit or at least dis- 
 tinction in the announcement ; " neither is Nanny 
 there, unless at babies' boots and bibs." 
 
 " I am sure I wish I had begun earlier," lamented 
 poor Mrs. Parry disconsolately. " I should so like 
 to embroider a beautiful, jacket for darling baby, 
 like that I was told Lady Powell had embroidered 
 for her little son, but 1 am so stupid and slow at 
 such work that I dare not attempt it."
 
 192 GIRT. NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " Don't, Nanny," said Harriet ; " depend upon it, 
 he would be in tail-coats before you had finished." 
 
 " I suppose you wish to do some pretty amusing 
 piece of work while you are still not able to go 
 about much," suggested Pie ; " but this is rather an 
 ambitious undertaking," she added doubtfully, " a 
 great deal more so than a baby's jacket." 
 
 " I wish it to be ambitious," said Harriet, lazily 
 leaning back in her chair. " I mean it to cost time 
 and trouble, and I am not going to do it for my 
 amusement I don't believe it will amuse me much ;" 
 with a shrag of her shoulders. " If it were not for 
 the person who is to have it, it would rather be a bit of 
 a penance. I intend it for a border to the table-cover 
 in my father's business-room." 
 
 " But why should you do that, Harry ? " remon- 
 strated Mrs. Parry. " It will never be seen there. 
 The business-room is just a place where my father 
 can speak to the farm-bailiff, or the servants, or any 
 tradesman who is about the house." 
 
 " My father will see it, and that is enough," said 
 Harriet, somewhat loftily for the occasion. 
 
 " And does he care for grand table covers ? " ex- 
 claimed Pie, in surprise. " Yes, I understand ; you 
 mean to surprise him, and lie will like that. But 
 a fine table-cover would only trouble my father, and
 
 OlllL NEIGHBORS. 193 
 
 be iii hi s way. To be sure Mr. Cotton may not be 
 in the habit of covering his table with specimens of 
 sandy, slaty stones." 
 
 " I don't imagine my father notices cr cares what 
 kind of table-cover is on his table," said Harriet 
 impatiently ; " but he will value this one if I work 
 it for him. I know he has been vexed, though I 
 do not see any great reason why, because I have 
 not been fond of needlework. Now I am deter- 
 mined to do what Pie Stubbs here calls ' an ambi- 
 tious undertaking ' all in his honor and to gratify 
 him." 
 
 " Ah, that is nice of you ! " said Pie half under 
 her breath, with a sparkle in her kind eyes, while 
 Mrs. Parry thought them both a little odd and 
 quixotic. 
 
 "And you are to teach me, Pie Stubbs," pro- 
 claimed Harriet boldly. "I need hardly warn you 
 that I shall be a troublesome pupil." 
 
 " I should not mind that," said Pie in some dis- 
 may ; " but I have done very little work like this. 
 I can do plain work tolerably, only tolerably, my 
 mother says, and I have embroidered a few things, 
 mostly for Harry slippers and smoking-caps but 
 not in such expensive materials. It would be a 
 great pity to waste these which have cost so much,"
 
 1D4 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 said Pie with commendable prudence, " besides they 
 are quite lovely, like all your things ! And, Miss 
 Cotton, I suspect you do not guess how much work 
 you are imposing upon yourself if you are to em- 
 broider this table-cover soon. It might even be bad 
 for your health." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " cried Harriet. " I am sure that 
 anything which occupies me and takes me out of 
 myself is good for me. People have been preach- 
 ing that to me ever since I was born, but, somehow, 
 they have never been able to make ine put it in 
 practice. Yet I can do it, I know I can. You have 
 no idea what I can do when I set my mind to it. 
 By the way, Miss Stubbs, what do you take me for ? 
 Do you mean that I am to be Miss Cotton to you 
 while you are to be Pie to me not that I shall ever 
 again so far forget myself, if you do not call me 
 Harriet ? " 
 
 It was true that Pie, and many more than Pie, 
 had no conception of what Harriet Cotton could do 
 when she liked. As a rule she had not before con- 
 centrated what faculties she possessed on any given 
 object. The consequence was that in spite of more 
 than average talents, a good education, and many 
 opportunities for improving herself, she could 
 hardly do anything including her violin playing 
 more than " indifferently well."
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 195 
 
 But when she set about working her father's 
 table-cover with a will she distanced her teacher in 
 no time. Difficulties did not daunt her, or drudgery 
 disgust her ; even bodily weariness failed to dissi- 
 pate her energy. When Dr. Sanders found that 
 she did not use a frame in working, and could even 
 manage sometimes to embroider lying on her back, 
 he made no objections, which was a great relief to 
 Pie. Every time she went over to the manor house 
 she could not rest till she had seen how far Harriet 
 had advanced since she was there last, and she was 
 always amazed at the progress which had been 
 made. She took the greatest reflected interest and 
 pleasure in so beautiful a piece of work growing 
 under her eyes. She was as innocently proud of it 
 as if she had done it herself. 
 
 Pie was deeply impressed by Harriet's steadfast- 
 ness in the matter, and called her mother's attention 
 to it. 
 
 " It is a pity she does not turn her application and 
 perseverance if she has these qualities ; I should 
 not have thought it to better account," was Mrs. 
 Stubbs' cautious comment. 
 
 The two girls had many happy meetings and con- 
 sultations, and always more intimate relations over 
 the table cover, till Harriet dwindled into " Harry,"
 
 106 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 and Pie, by a refinement of corruption, lengthened 
 into " Pigeon." 
 
 The couple talked often of another Harry, who, at 
 home or at college, bulked largely in Pie's life. 
 Harriet had never seen him except in a series of 
 bird's-eye peeps like those she had been wont to take 
 at Pie from the imitation ruined tower. 
 
 "I could have dispensed with sisters," said Har- 
 riet, audaciously, "even married sisters, though I 
 do not intend you to suppose, Pie, that Laura and 
 Georgie and Anne in the nursery upstairs are not all 
 of them exemplary characters young matrons who 
 have been only too attentive to their younger sister, 
 and disinterestedly careful of her manners and 
 morals but I think I should not have minded hav- 
 ing a brother. What is it like to have a brother ? " 
 
 " It is very nice," said Pie heartily, " so nice that, 
 do you know, I have been tempted to wish it still 
 nicer ? If it feels so pleasant to have a brother to 
 tell things to, with whom you can quarrel and agree 
 again without scruple or fear, who teases and pets 
 and takes care of you when he is at home once a 
 year or so, what would it not be to have a sister 
 always with you, sharing and understanding things, 
 even better than a brother ? " 
 
 "My sisters all went off and got married before
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 197 
 
 they could share anything better worth having with 
 me than boxes of chocolate or pug puppies and Per- 
 sian kittens. When I come to think of it I believe 
 Nanny was generous enough to let me see how she 
 put up her hair without forbidding me to do mine in 
 the same fashion. No, I cannot say that I regretted 
 my sisters' marriages, but I begin to see that it is 
 just possible I have missed something which I might 
 have learned to prize," owned Harriet with a little 
 softening in her face and voice as she glanced at Pie. 
 Then she began again, not without a suspicion of 
 banter in her tone, " Is your brother very good, 
 like you ? Does he teach in Sunday-schools and 
 hold fathers' meetings and visit the poor ? " 
 
 Pie looked inclined to laugh, and yet showed 
 herself a little perplexed and a little hurt. "No," 
 she said, "boys are different from girls," uncon- 
 sciously quoting her mother's axiom. " If you had 
 a brother you would understand that. Harry is 
 like other lads more frightened for being accused 
 of cant and humbug than for being charged with 
 breaking all the ten commandments. My father 
 says that lads have some reason for this abhorrence 
 of what would be a loud profession on their part, 
 since untruth and hypocrisy are the most de- 
 structive and hopeless of sins. Besides, Harry is
 
 198 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 still in the middle of his education, while I am 
 understood to have finished, or to be nearly finish- 
 ing mine. It is his part to learn, not to teach, at 
 present. But you must not think for a moment 
 that he is not a dear, good fellow, and does not 
 wish to be of use and to do good in the world. If 
 I were at liberty to let you into some of Harry's 
 confidences, you would recognize that he has some- 
 thing in him, for as light-hearted as he is. Though 
 he affects to be selfish or ' 'cute,' as he calls it, and 
 to have no great opinion of anybody or anything, 
 I know he hopes, with God's blessing, to help in 
 mending the world some day," ended Pie rev- 
 erently. 
 
 " I wish you had not grown solemn and said 
 that," complained Harriet discontentedly. " I was 
 just beginning to trust that he might like me and 
 that I should like him, but now you have spoiled it 
 all. If he is to think of mending me it will be all 
 over with our friendship." 
 
 " It is you who are altogether mistaken," said 
 Pie, almost indignantly, " if you have taken that 
 into your head. Harry has too poor an opinion of 
 himself to think of improving anybody in that 
 sense. It will be by mending himself that he will 
 ever do anything toward mending the world."
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 199 
 
 " I don't understand," said Harriet doggedly. 
 
 Some time before Harry Stubbs came home for 
 the long vacation Mr. Cotton returned. He still 
 looked somewhat white and shaken in his former 
 fresh-colored portliness. He walked straight over 
 to the cottage and asked Lydia to show him into 
 Mr. Stubbs' room. " I may be an intrusive bore, in 
 which case you must turn me out presently," he 
 said cheerfully, " but in the meantime I must say 
 my say. It is that I cannot live a day at the manor 
 house without thanking all you good people at the 
 cottage for your friendly deeds to my daughters, 
 especially to my poor little girl. Why, she is like 
 another creature ! Please tell Mrs. Stubbs and Miss 
 Stubbs that I can never forget their kindness. 
 Now, having got my word out without inter- 
 ruption, a privilege for which I have again 
 to thank you, I'll take myself off if you like." 
 
 Mr. Stubbs could not choose to adopt such a 
 churlish course; so the visitor remained and was 
 taken to the ladies' part of the house and formally 
 presented to Mrs. Stubbs and Pie, to whom he ex- 
 pressed his gratitude a second time. Xobody, not 
 even Mrs. Stubbs, could be angry with him or re- 
 gard him as an unauthorized intruder, or refuse to
 
 200 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 say that they were glad to see him back recovered 
 from his dangerous illness. The worst that the 
 censor of the house said of him was that he was 
 "phrasy," a word of her own coining representing a 
 modified tendency to " blarney." 
 
 It was incumbent on Mr. Stubbs to return Mr. 
 Cotton's call. The visiting terms of the two fami- 
 lies were regularly established, and as the houses 
 were so near it was hardly possible to keep the ac- 
 quaintance slight, and the intercourse of the rare 
 nature of angel's dealings with men. The heads of 
 the houses, Mr. Cotton and Mr. Stubbs, had not a 
 great deal in common ; and it was not to be thought 
 that at their age the men's natures could unbend and 
 incline to meet each other, as the natures of girls 
 similarly circumstanced would do. However, 
 having exchanged armed neutrality fast merging 
 into hostility for a certain amount of esteem, the 
 gentlemen were likely enough to slip gradually into 
 a considerable degree of cordiality and positive 
 friendship. 
 
 Before this desirable change in the relations of 
 the manor house and the cottage had come about, 
 Harry Stubbs had heard many particulars of the 
 Cotton family. He professed to be mystified and 
 resentful because of the sliding-scale according to
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 201 
 
 which these had been presented to him. " Hold on, 
 Pie ! ain't this the girl you wrote about as a spoiled 
 fine lady, who was too listless even to knock about 
 the tennis-balls, after turning us out of our old 
 ground ? I say, why do you stand up for her now, 
 liker a turkey-cock than any of your sister magpies ? 
 Is it because she is as rich as Miss Kilmansegg, with 
 a golden back instead of a golden leg? didn't I 
 hear something of her back being broken ? Oh fie, 
 Pie, to be bought over by filthy lucre ! " 
 
 But Harry did not object to walk across with Pie 
 to the manor house and witness all the fine new 
 doings there. 
 
 Harry was an enlarged edition of Pie a greatly 
 enlarged edition, for he was a gigantic lad in the 
 chaotic state of mind and body through which young 
 giants have to pass before they emerge, well-knit 
 and well-packed in every limb and brain cell. 
 
 " It is a jolly house," Harry was moved to say 
 when Pie and he quitted it ; " and upon my word 
 she is a jolly girl." 
 
 Now " jolly " was about the last word which 
 could be applied correctly to a high-art house or a 
 girl like Harriet Cotton. Poetic, pensive, perhaps a 
 trifle lackadaisical, would be nearer the mark where 
 many of the present fashions in furniture are con-
 
 202 OIHL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 cerned. As for Harriet, she might have justly been 
 called spirited, self-possessed, a shade domineering, 
 more than a shade whimsical, at the same time frank 
 and true as any brother would like to find his sister ; 
 but jolly ? no ! The vocabulary of a young man 
 and his interpretation of it are often wonderful to 
 uninitiated ears. 
 
 Harry's presence at home had always been the 
 signal for the outbreak of the greatest gayety of 
 the year to Pie not that she took it without 
 qualms. She was, as her father said, in danger of 
 growing too old-fashioned, and of molding her 
 life on sets of rules and restrictions some of them 
 obsolete in the letter, though, let us be thankful, 
 still alive in the spirit. Pie was liable to magnify 
 the importance of her various missions, or rather of 
 her share in them, in the Sunday-school and night 
 school, the mothers' meeting, and the cottage hospi 
 tal, and in what was her sole concern, her junior 
 secretaryships. There was some danger of her be- 
 coming a prig and a prude. It was a transition 
 period with Pie no less than with Harriet. As the 
 old Jews burned incense to their nets and drags, 
 Pie was tempted to offer up sacrifices to her " duties " 
 sacrifices of other people's comfort and enjoy- 
 ment as well as her own. There was an ominous
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 203 
 
 probability of her getting to take the sacrifice of her 
 inclinations as the great test of whether she ought 
 to do this or that act, or to refrain from doing it. 
 At this time the chief antidote to the tendency in 
 Pie, after her mother's cutting common-sense com- 
 mentaries and her father's sly hits and cross protests, 
 was Harry's periodical rousing arrivals, with their sea- 
 sons of relaxation from all effort, while she ran 
 about with him. He pulled her down from her ped- 
 estal, as he defined the operation, and laughed at 
 her, while he trusted her and secretly reverenced 
 her, as the power of reverencing mother or sister is 
 the greatest earthly blessing and safeguard a young 
 man can possess. 
 
 Harriet Cotton, now that she was quite well again, 
 came in for her share in the small neighborly fes- 
 tivities which Harry Stubbs' appearance at the 
 cottage inaugurated. The encounters of the two 
 families in company had not only ceased to have 
 their old freezing effect both on themselves and the 
 circles in which they moved, the meetings were 
 hailed as welcome incidents nay, they came to be de- 
 liberately preconcerted and arranged for in the most 
 free-and-easy way. " If you and your brother are 
 going to Woodleigh, Pie," Harriet Cotton would 
 say, " I think I shall pay a call I am owing to the
 
 204 GIRL NKIGUBOR8. 
 
 Gordons this afternoon ; and perhaps they will give 
 me an invitation. We can go and come together, 
 which will be charming, and will save Mr. Stubbs 
 from hiring, since I'll have the carriage. I don't 
 want to lose both of you ; and it will be a splendid 
 chance for me to exhibit the improvement on my 
 tennis-playing." 
 
 " How do you do, Miss Cotton ? " Harry would 
 say. "I am getting a mount from Dick Townsend 
 before luncheon. Have I your leave to tell his sis- 
 ters th at you will walk over with Pie and me on 
 Wednesday to see the Market-Lewis rose and poul- 
 try show and ' drop in' is that the neatest way to 
 put it? on the Townsends for a cup of tea or a 
 glass of milk and soda in this hot weather?" 
 
 In the extreme change in the relations between 
 the manor house and the cottage, the second year af- 
 ter the Cottons came to Maidsmeadows, Mrs. Stubbs, 
 though she might be said to have begun it, did 
 what she could without effect to stop the increasing 
 power of the affinity between the young people, 
 which made them fly more and more to each other, 
 and do everything together. 
 
 Those narrow walks and-chvarfed bridges of poor 
 old Squire Fuller's were once more in full operation 
 in a manner which would have gladdened him to
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 205 
 
 see. Mr. Cotton was always glad to see Harry, and 
 enjoyed the lad's youthful bouyancy and manliness ; 
 while in Harry's eyes, Harriet Cotton was a jolly 
 beauty of a girl for a friend, not a sister. She was 
 the first girl friend, except Pie, he had ever pos- 
 sessed, and he found that though a sister is an ex- 
 cellent institution of her kind, there is a little to be 
 said also for somebody else as a change. Harry 
 took the various avenues to the manor house at all 
 points in a series of runs and flying leaps whenever 
 the impulse seized him. It did not seem to matter 
 that in the immature size which he did not know 
 how to carry, one was tempted to think that he 
 would fill the genteelly slender paths and cause the 
 planks to groan under him till he broke the bushes 
 on either side and cracked the wood, as the squire 
 had split the deal with the heel of his boot in hurry- 
 ing to the assistance of poor Miss Mary. 
 
 When the two girls had nothing else to do, after 
 they had exhausted all their other modes of inter- 
 course they would betake themselves to the twin 
 bowers in the middle of the biggest bridge, and find 
 a mysterious pleasure in whispering to each other 
 through the twigs. Harry caught them at it more 
 than once and bombarded them with his big boy's 
 raillery.
 
 206 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTEK XL 
 
 ISOLATION. 
 
 " PIE-CRUST, we want you to go with us and get 
 some water-lilies from the Nunn." The speaker was 
 Harry Stubbs, in boating flannels and a straw hat, 
 and be brandished a green bough which he had just 
 broken off in his impetuous progress, and presently 
 used it to tickle Pie in the nape of the neck as she 
 sat before a pile of decidedly untidy-looking account- 
 books at her particular side-table in the Stubbs' 
 parlor. 
 
 " Don't, Harry ! " objected Pie, with more irrita- 
 bility than was common with her. Either the con- 
 tact with the bough was specially exasperating, or 
 she had been overworking herself in a desperate 
 attempt to make various strikingly inconsistent col- 
 umns of figures agree. " Who are going ? " she 
 asked, in slightly rebuking accents. 
 
 u Why, Harry Cotton and I, to be sure. Did you 
 think the old fogies would dream of going in search 
 of water-lilies ? "
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 207 
 
 " Harry, you ought not to call your father and 
 mother not to say Mr. Cotton ' old fogies.' And 
 who gave you leave to say ' Harry Cotton ? ' It is 
 too far for Harriet and me to walk before we get to 
 Kunnpool, and when we reach it we may find the 
 boat engaged. Harriet is not aware of the distance. 
 She is not strong enough for a walk that 
 would tire me. You ought not to propose it to 
 her." 
 
 " Pie-crust," said Harry Stubbs, reflectively, " I 
 am certain I said Pie-crust, and not crusty Pie. 
 Harry Cotton knows the distance perfectly well. 
 She has ridden and driven by Nunnpool many a 
 time and oft. I say, are you coming, you great 
 arithmetician ? " 
 
 " No, Harry, I can't. These are the different 
 books of the juvenile collectors for the Cripples' 
 Home. The collectors have not made them up cor- 
 rectly it could hardly be expected," moralized 
 Pie with a deep sigh ; " and I promised to set 
 the sums right before the books are given to the 
 vicar at the meeting to-morrow. Will you not help 
 me?" 
 
 " What ! in broad daylight and strong sunshine, 
 you unreasonable object ! Pie, you're getting like 
 the child who asked, ' Auntie, ain't I good enough
 
 208 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 to be put into a tract ? ' I'll do it to-night if you 
 like not the putting you into a tract, but the 
 balancing business. I'll take it like a sleeping 
 draught before I seek my couch." 
 
 "No, that will not do," said Pie, discontentedly ; 
 " I could not trust you, lest you should forget all 
 about it. I cannot spare the time myself this even- 
 ing, for I have promised May Mummery to take the 
 harmonium at the choir practice." 
 
 " I suppose there is a kind of diseased pleasure in 
 making yourself a cart-horse and a beast of burden,'' 
 said Harry with a groan ; " for there is no need in 
 this case. I am sure the mother will take the har- 
 monium if you ask her." 
 
 " I shall not ask her," persisted Pie. " You for- 
 get how bad it is for her rheumatism to be out in 
 such heavy dews as we have at this time of the year. 
 Besides, she has enough to do with her own engage- 
 ments ; she ought not to be burdened vrith mine 
 also." 
 
 " Then let May Mummery get some other body 
 to do her fagging, and be hanged ' 
 
 "Harry!" 
 
 " Well, I was only going to say, what business has 
 she to undertake a hurdy-gurdy or a harmonium 
 and then transfer the obligation to your shoulders ?
 
 OTRL NEIGHBORS. 209 
 
 I should like to see any man in Trinity behave like 
 that to another man." 
 
 " You know nothing about it. I have offered to 
 be her substitute on the few occasions when she 
 has not been able to be present." 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Harry, " I know your tricks, 
 and if you can play them at all, you might also 
 manage to play them by proxy sometimes, won't 
 you, now, just to oblige me, Pie?" he said, coax- 
 
 " No," said Pie, still obdurate ; " it would not be 
 right." 
 
 " Right ! " repeated Harry, getting angry. 
 "Don't disgrace the words right and wrong by 
 dragging them into such a paltry transaction. You 
 know well enough there is neither right nor wrong 
 in such a trifle as your providing some one else to 
 play for you at the choir practice to-night, or in 
 your leaving these beastly little books alone till I 
 can look at them. Why will you be such a donkey, 
 Pie ? " and Harry Stubbs flung out of the room. 
 
 " It is going to be a thunder-s'orm," Pie called 
 after him. But Harry turned a deaf ear to the dis- 
 agreeable suggestion, as if Pie had no right to 
 mention thunder-storms after she had been so 
 obstinate and disobliging.
 
 210 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Pie had a perception that there was something 
 there was a good deal, in what her brother had 
 been telling her. She was making a mountain out 
 of a mole-hill. She was exaggerating what was 
 incumbent upon her. She was out of temper, and 
 therefore disposed to be twice as self-important and 
 intractable as on other occasions. 
 
 These disagreeable facts came still more home to 
 Pie when she had incidental confirmation of her 
 fears that the two Harrys had started for Nunnpool 
 without her. She had to struggle more and more 
 against a double sense of wrong-doing and repent- 
 ance. She knew that though Harriet Cotton was 
 hardly grown up, it was not desirable or fit for her to 
 be walking and rowing for a whole morning with no 
 companion save a lad of Harry's age who was not her 
 near relation. Mr. Cotton and Mrs. Stubbs, who had 
 unfortunately both been out of the way when the pair 
 started without waiting to announce their intention 
 at headquarters, would neither of them like it. 
 
 Harry Stubbs might be thoughtless and hot-headed 
 and Harry Cotton willful and defiant, but that was 
 the greater reason why the sister of the one and the 
 friend of the other should not have failed them when 
 they wanted her. Pie had been unkind to the one 
 Harry, and untrue to the other, and disagreeable all 
 round.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 211 
 
 Pie was perfectly miserable when a thunder-storm 
 did come on. She could imagine the rash couple 
 caught and drenched by the thunder-showers, per- 
 haps Harriet Cotton made ill, and both of the cul- 
 prits detained till their friends were in alarm about 
 them. And it happened very nearly as Pie had fore- 
 boded. The two ardent admirers of water lilies had 
 been overtaken by the storm, and compelled to take 
 refuge in more than one cottage before they reached 
 the river and the boat-house. There they had found 
 the boat which was to be hired out for the pool, in 
 the act of fulfilling a previous engagement. Before 
 the boat could return, its would-be passengers had 
 been obliged to renounce all idea of the bait which 
 had lured them on the expedition, and to make their 
 rnoist and muddy way homeward. 
 
 After all, the penance seemed light enough. Mr. 
 Cotton for the moment was too glad to see his 
 daughter back without accident, to do more than 
 give her and her escort a mild scolding for their im- 
 prudence. Harry Stubbs was too well accustomed 
 to his mother's sharp words to be much hurt by them, 
 while his father did not see himself called on to 
 interfere. 
 
 Harry Stubbs was at the age to be somewhat 
 foolishly elated by the idea that he had got into a
 
 212 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 scrape with a girl who was not Pie. A " stunning 
 girl," who did not mind a bit the scrape and the get- 
 ting wet and tired, if he were to tell the .whole 
 truth, terribly 'tired, so that he had been nearly 
 frightened out of his wits before he had got her 
 home. But Harriet Cotton in her delicate beauty 
 was as plucky as any fellow he knew, and after the 
 affair was over, she looked upon it, as he did, in the 
 light of an adventure to be boasted of rather than 
 blushed for. In short, the two offenders, with u 
 mixture of fearless innocence and hardihood, made 
 capital of the pulpy condition to which Harriet's 
 thin boots had been reduced, and the frantic efforts 
 Harry Stubbs had made to keep the rain out of her 
 face by fastening his handkerchief to his stick, and 
 holding it flying like a flag before her. 
 
 On the whole, perhaps it was not to be wondered 
 at that the Harrys were magnanimous, and freely 
 forgave Pie when she showed proper contrition for 
 her fault in abandoning them to their own devices. 
 
 About a fortnight after the walk to Xunnpool 
 one day Harry Stubbs had to own to such a racking 
 headache that he was reduced to taking refuge on 
 the parlor sofa. Pie, and even his mother, were 
 powerless to relieve him. After a second day's un- 
 abated misery Dr. Sanders was called in. He did
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 213 
 
 not look grave so long as he was in the room with 
 his patient, but the instant he was outside the bed- 
 room door he said, " Why, here is a pretty kettle of 
 fish ! Mrs. Stubbs, Harry has got small-pox." 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs was equal to this or any other emer- 
 gency, as the doctor knew, or probably he would not 
 have spoken so abruptly. Her first thought was 
 clearly for Harry. " Is he likely to have it badly ? " 
 she asked, with a little tremble of the lip. 
 
 " I should say smartly ; but, bless you, there's 
 scarcely a feather's weight of danger for an honest, 
 healthy lad of his habits. Considering his sex, we 
 may let his beauty take its chance. What we have 
 to think of is the risk of communicating the disease 
 to other people. I must set about re vaccinating the 
 whole household." 
 
 " I shall nurse Harry myself," said Harry's mother 
 promptly, " and keep Pie and Mr. Stubbs as much 
 out of the way as possible. Is the epidemic in the 
 village ? I have not heard of it." 
 
 " Nor I ; but there are cases a mile or two 
 off." 
 
 " All intercourse with the manor house must be 
 forbidden," said Mrs. Stubbs, not without a certain 
 grim satisfaction. 
 
 " Quite right ! By the way, I have a note bid-
 
 214 GIRL NKIOHBOR8. 
 
 ding me look in here this morning. Know what is 
 wrong ? No. Well, I shall soon see. Oh, I shall 
 take care to do no mischief. Doctors like heralds, 
 are priviliged persons." 
 
 A quarter of an hour later Dr. Sanders took 
 the cottage in passing as he had done on a pre- 
 vious occasion. He was impelled to tell his 
 striking news while he had a perplexed expres- 
 sion. " I say, Miss Cotton has got small-pox 
 also ! Where could the two have caught it simul- 
 taneously ? Anything wrong with your drains 
 here?" 
 
 Pie was present when Dr. Sanders put the 
 question. She had just been told the nature of her 
 brother's illness, and was struggling between grief 
 and anxiety for Harry and smothered rebellion 
 against the decree that she was not to come within 
 the passage that led to his bedroom. As to horror 
 of the complaint in the light of a repulsive disease 
 and fear of its affecting herself, she might have en- 
 tertained the sentiments in a greater or less degree 
 had a stranger and not Harry been the patient. 
 But now concern for him swallowed up any 
 apprehension for herself. *' Harriet too," she 
 lamented ; " and she and dear Harry took the disease 
 together." Then her faltering tongue managed to
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 215 
 
 say in answer to the doctor's question, " That day 
 at Nunnpool." 
 
 Dr. Sanders accepted the solution without stop- 
 ping to ask what the victims had to do with Nunn- 
 pool. 
 
 " Yes, there are cases at Nunnpool." 
 
 When Harry could be asked he told one part of 
 their adventures which neither he nor Harriet Cot- 
 ton had thought worth retailing before. From a 
 cottage door in which they had taken shelter from 
 the storm, they had seen a sick man, wrapped in a 
 blanket, in the act of being taken to a cart, in order 
 to be conveyed to a poor-house infirmary. To Har- 
 ry's disgust there had been an apparent reluctance 
 among the by-standers watching the poor man's 
 departure to come near and help him. Harry had 
 stepped forward and aided the invalid in getting 
 into the cart. He had been a s%iall-pox patient, and 
 the course of the contagion was tolerably plain. 
 
 " If I had gone with them," Pie said aloud in lam- 
 entable tones the moment Dr. Sanders left, "every- 
 thing might have been prevented. I might have 
 persuaded them to turn back long before. I 
 might have stopped Harry from touching the man." 
 
 " Somebody else must have touched him," said 
 Mrs. Stubbs, with a flash as of steel in her eyes, and
 
 216 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 then a swift dimming of them. "Don't be a fool, 
 Pie, talking as if you were a small Providence. 
 Let the great Providence ordain for us all, making 
 use of our very errors and mistakes. It is the sim- 
 plest and most becoming plan." 
 
 "But what is to be done about that little girl of 
 Cotton's ? " Mr. Stubbs broke in. 
 
 " Little girl ! She is taller than I," snapped Mrs. 
 Stubbs. 
 
 " That big girl, then, Mrs. Stubbs. The matter is 
 too serious to admit of us falling out about a word,'' 
 remonstrated Mr. Stubbs. " It seems certain Harry 
 got her into this mess. If her life is the forfeit, or 
 even her beauty spoiled, what will Cotton say to 
 it?" 
 
 " He must submit like other people." 
 
 " That goes without saying. Does anybody know 
 whether as yet slid* has the disease severely or 
 slightly?" 
 
 " Slightly," answered Pie, repressing a sob. " I 
 have just run after Dr. Sanders to inquire, and he 
 says slightly, but she is a delicate girl, and wants 
 careful nursing." 
 
 " Who is to nurse her ? " went on Mr. Stubbs. 
 
 "How can we tell?" protested Mrs. Stubba 
 " Perhaps one of her sisters will come, or Dr. San- 
 ders will tell her father where to get a nurse."
 
 GIliL NEIGHBORS. 217 
 
 " Cotton cannot summon any of her sisters. It 
 would not be fair to their husbands and children. 
 Sanders has not good nurses whom he knows and 
 can trust at his finger-ends, to be heard of at a 
 moment's notice, though, I daresay, he can procure 
 a nurse of some sort, or send to town for "the 
 article." 
 
 " There is Mrs. Walls, the old housekeeper," sug- 
 gested Mrs. Stubbs, faintly for her. 
 
 " A stupid, timid goose of an ignorant old woman, as 
 I have often heard you say, though faithful enough, 
 no doubt. But in all probability she is as useless 
 with terror and distress as people like her usually 
 are in a difficulty. She might be all very well with 
 even a young head like that of her mistress to di- 
 rect and control her. Without it well, she is a 
 body without a head." Mr. Stubbs dismissed the 
 suggestion with a wave of one gaunt arm. 
 
 There was a moment's pause. 
 
 " Pie," said her mother in a peculiar tone, unlike 
 her natural voice, " go into the kitchen and ask cook 
 wiiat milk she has in the house, then take the jug 
 to the first landing and wait for me there. I ex- 
 pect that girl Lydia will be scared out of her wits." 
 
 When the door closed on Pie, husband and wife 
 looked at each other.
 
 218 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 "You heard what the doctor said, Sapientia, 
 about the slight danger in small-pox to young people 
 who have never broken the laws of temperance and 
 cleanliness in fact, to whom they are as natural as 
 the air they breathe. 
 
 "I heard." 
 
 " A bad cold would very likely contain more ele- 
 ments of danger to thm, yet who fears to let them 
 run the risk of a cold ? " 
 
 She was silent. At last she said, " If it 
 had not been for the trouble here, with Harry 
 lying ill, I should have gone over and nursed her 
 myself." 
 
 " I know you would," he answered quickly, " and 
 I hope you do me the justice to consider what it 
 would cost me to let you go. But it comes to this, 
 my dear, either you must go over to the manor 
 house and leave Pie and me to nurse Harry I 
 would gladly undertake the whole of the business, 
 but I don't think you would trust me, even with 
 cook to fall back upon or you must send Pie to be 
 with Cotton's daughter. Pie has sense beyond her 
 years, though I say that it should not. She will not 
 fall into a panic. She is capable, especially if the 
 case is slight, of carrying out the doctor's orders. 
 Cotton will look after her, and see that all which
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 219 
 
 can be done is managed for her. You heard what 
 Sanders said about re-vaccination. He will see to 
 that, and will take every other precaution for her 
 safety." 
 
 " Haderezer, are you dreaming ? are you mad ? " 
 gasped Mrs. Stubbs from where she had been sitting 
 like stone. " You would have me leave my boy or 
 send Pie over to the manor house ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Stubbs. 
 
 " You would have me send our girl our one girl 
 Haderezer, perhaps to take the disease and die, 
 perhaps to live and be cruelly disfigured and you 
 don't know what that means to a woman ? " 
 
 " I thought you were wise, Mrs. Stubbs. You are 
 as bad as you said Lydia would be, though it is for 
 your children and not for yourself. Small-pox is 
 disagreeable enough, doubtless, but it is no longer 
 the scourge it was in the middle ages. It is not 
 leprosy, or the plague, or even yellow fever or 
 cholera. You heard what the doctor said. Pie 
 runs a certain risk already, living in the house with 
 Harry, which cannot be avoided, though it may be 
 minimized. Ask her what she thinks. If she 
 shrinks from incurring more risk, then don't expose 
 her to it I for one should be the last to do so 
 only I would rather see her disfigured in her body
 
 220 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 than in her soul, that is all." He turned upon his 
 heel, but only took a few steps, and came back 
 again. " If I am not mistaken," he said softly, 
 " our Pie will elect either to nurse her brother or 
 the girl she has been making such friends with 
 lately, whom poor Harry has got into this hobble." 
 
 It was so. Pie did not hesitate for an instant. 
 In fact, it was a relief to her to be allowed to share 
 what danger there was. She was not in the least 
 frightened or nervous. She recovered her spirits so 
 far as to laugh at the idea of being vaccinated over 
 again like a baby, while she obeyed the doctor. 
 She was willing either to stay with Harry or lo go 
 to the other Harry. Eventually it was decided that 
 she should go over to the manor house, because 
 Harriet Cotton was not nearly so ill as Harry 
 Stubbs was, whatever the consequences might be to 
 her. Besides, at the manor house a young amateur 
 nurse would not only have Mrs. Walls at her elbow, 
 she would have the assistance, on all hands, of the 
 numerous well-trained servants and the ample 
 resources of a rich man's establishment. 
 
 Mr. Cotton made a feeble objection to the arrange- 
 ment, but he was so put about by his daughter's ill- 
 ness and its nature, which would not allow him to 
 summon her sisters, that he was ready to clutch at
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 221 
 
 the first straw of comfort. lie hoped his poor 
 Harry would not want much nursing. He was 
 ready to do all he could, to sit up every night if it 
 were necessary, but a sick girl should have women 
 about her a girl like herself, a nice sensible girl 
 such as Miss Stubbs was, coming and staying in the 
 house (he would never forget the courageous unsel- 
 fish kindness both of her and her parents) would 
 make it so much less dreary and alarming for Harry. 
 Of course he would not have suffered it if the elder 
 Stubbses themselves had not proposed it ; and cer- 
 tainly there was something to be said for their 
 Harry, who was bearing his punishment, poor lad, 
 having led his Harry into the mischief. Then they 
 were all so near that, if Pie Stubbs showed the 
 slightest symptom of illness, she could be taken 
 home without loss of time, or fear of injury. 
 
 Dr. Sanders found no fault with the additional 
 exposure for Pie, and did not appear to think her 
 unfit for the task she had undertaken. He was too 
 well accustomed to serious illness in all forms, and 
 to the vexed questions of contagion and infection, to 
 be easily startled. In place of seeking to deter Pie, 
 he called her " a good little girl," said he should have 
 both his patients better in no time, and promised 
 that if his new nurse did him credit he would pro-
 
 222 GIRL NEIGHBOHS. 
 
 pose her for the first opening in the cottage hospital 
 or the workhouse infirmary. 
 
 In the meantime the two young patients were 
 tossing more or less uneasily on their pillows in the 
 cottage and the manor house. 
 
 At the cottage Harry was pressing his mother, 
 who had not thought it advisable to conceal from 
 him that Harriet Cotton had also been attacked by 
 small pox, for news of his fello \v-sufferer, and for 
 assurances that she would not be a painful object to 
 look upon for the rest of her days. 
 
 " Don't say she will be pitted all over ! " he cried 
 feverishly. " It does not signify for a man a great 
 hulking fellow like me, though I were as marked as 
 the blind fiddler fellow who used to come to Maids- 
 meadows, but I can't bear that her beauty should 
 be gone forever by my doing. Tell Pie, in case she 
 does not remember, that the front window in this 
 room just takes in the window of her dressing room, 
 and that if Pie will make a signal I'll know that 
 Harriet Cotton is all right, and that I have not 
 spoiled her beauty that she is not likely to be 
 marked by this horrible small-pox." 
 
 "Compose yourself, Harry, beauty is only skin- 
 deep at the best ; but if you are to make a fuss 
 about it, why don't you think of your sister's ? She
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS, 
 
 may lose hers in trying to set matters straight," said 
 Mrs. Stubbs reproachfully. 
 
 " Oh ! Pie is a brick," said Harry, with a brother's 
 easy manner of taking a sister's virtues as a matter 
 of course, " and she would still be a brick though 
 she were as plain as a pike-staif." 
 
 " Perhaps that is a compliment in one sense," said 
 Mrs. Stubbs with a dubious smile. 
 
 " Oh, never mind about senses and compliments ! " 
 insisted Harry. " Only do be quick and tell me 
 that I have not spoiled Harry Cotton's beauty. She 
 was so plucky that day on the long road in the wet, 
 and bore me no malice for having decoyed her into 
 it all. I wonder if she will bear me malice now to 
 the end of her days." Harry groaned as he turned 
 his face to the wall, and was not pacified until he 
 was told by Dr. Sanders that of Miss Cotton's genteel 
 sprinkling of small-pox, not one happened to be on 
 her face. 
 
 " Go away, Pie Stubbs," screamed Harriet Cot- 
 ton, trying to muffle herself up in the bed-clothes, 
 so that on Pie's appearance in the room she could 
 not even see her patient, far less greet her. ' Go 
 a \vay this moment!" What are you doing here? 
 Do you know that I have got small-pox as well as 
 Harry ? How is he going on ? Since you are here
 
 324 GIRL NEIGHBORS 
 
 you may as well tell me how he is before you go. 
 Now don't stay another minute ; sniff at a smelling- 
 bottle if you have one. I notice poor old Walls 
 does it when she thinks I do not see her. Go when 
 I bid you ! Tell Harry, whatever happens I for- 
 give him. He could not help it, at least he did it 
 in ignorance, and I was as much to blame as he was. 
 But if you catch small-pox from me by coming and 
 standing there when you know all about it, I shall 
 never forgive you, Pie never so long as I live." 
 
 " Never is a long word, Harriet, as my mother 
 says. Why should I not stand or sit here ? " suiting 
 the action to the word, " as soon as stand or sit be- 
 side my brother at home, where the small-pox is 
 also ? No, Harriet, I am not going away I am 
 come to take turns with Mrs. Walls in looking after 
 you till you are well again. Your father has con- 
 sented, so have my father and mother, and, though 
 last not least, the doctor. So, if you wish to get 
 well soon, your wisest plan is to submit, dear, and 
 be as good as you can. I am going to ring for your 
 chicken broth ; I see by the paper which the doctor 
 has written out for our use, that it is time you had 
 it. And oh ! Harriet, I have been re-vaccinated that 
 I may really bear you and Harry company, by hav- 
 ing cow-pox while you have small-pox. 1 can tell
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 225 
 
 you I mean to make a great deal of my sick arm, 
 and to wear it in a sling. Fortunately it is my left 
 arm, so I shall still be able to feed myself and you, 
 and to shake up your pillows. It was funny to have 
 the doctor pricking it, as if his lancet had been a 
 pin, and to think that the last time such a thing was 
 done to me, I was a baby in long clothes, like your 
 youngest nephew." 
 
 Harriet fixed her great eyes on Pie chattering 
 to divert her, and lay for some time in silence. 
 When she spoke again it was so gently, and on 
 such a different topic, that Pie could hardly re- 
 strain herself from starting a little, with a dis- 
 mayed dread that her patient, though she looked 
 much less excited than she had been when her 
 visitor came in, must be getting a little light- 
 headed. 
 
 " Pie," said Harriet, " I was reading a famous book 
 on South Africa lately. It was all about a man 
 and his wife and family who were settlers and mis- 
 sionaries. It happened forty or fifty years ago, 
 when they traveled in wagons through a country 
 without roads. The travelers often met lions as 
 well as unfriendly natives. Once there was only 
 one traveler, and she was nothing more than a girl, 
 with an escort of friendly natives, going to visit a
 
 226 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 married sister some distance off An accident be- 
 fell the wagon by the way, and help had to be 
 sought. The girl was left almost alone, with 
 the lions roaring round her. Do you know, if 
 I had got my choice, I would rather have been 
 that girl, listening to the lions roaring, than 
 have come, like you, into the jaws of small- 
 pox?" 
 
 " You must not talk so much, Harriet," answered 
 Pie, coolly, " and you are talking great nonsense. 
 You would have done it yourself if Harry had 
 been your brother and had made me ill, and if I 
 was left to servants, while he had his mother and 
 me if I was wanted. Do you know we were not 
 sure at first whether she ought not to have come 
 instead of me." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Harriet. 
 
 " Yes, and you have lost a great deal,',' Avent on 
 Pie, warmly. " My mother is the best nrse in the 
 world. You have no idea how clever she is and 
 how patient she can be." 
 
 "I think I am content to have you, Pie," said 
 Harriet, meekly, " and I hope God will take care of 
 you and make Harry and me better."
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XIT. 
 
 A LADY NURSE FROM AN HOSPITAL. 
 
 EVEN Mrs. Stubbs came the length of granting 
 that it was a comfort under present circumstances 
 to have so many means of rapid communication 
 with the manor house. For instance, it was a great 
 gain to her, which she did not refuse to own, to 
 have but to step to a window, by night or by day, 
 to find in an opposite window the candle burning, 
 or the jar with a flower, conveying Pie's message 
 that she was well, and every one and everything else 
 doing nicely. 
 
 " Poor old Fuller ! to think that he should receive 
 an ovation after all these years, and the many com- 
 plaints that have been uttered against his ingenious 
 landscape-gardening ! " said Mr. Stubbs. 
 
 " It is all very well when the conditions are ex- 
 ceptional," said Mrs. Stubbs in stout self-defense, 
 " but it is not usual, and one would not wish it to be 
 so, that men should build their houses with the main
 
 228 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 purpose of providing for illness and accident and 
 their consequent demands for sympathy and aid." 
 
 A source of interest to all, especially to Harriet 
 and Pie, arose in their isolation. They were not 
 likely to see any of their neighbors for a period of 
 weeks. At the same time, neither the invalids nor 
 their friends were engrossed by any special anxiety, 
 so that any interruption of what had so soon become 
 their routine was welcome to the young people. The 
 incident was the arrival of a lady nurse, for whom 
 Mr. Cotton in the first brunt of the misfortune, had 
 written to a London hospital. Some unforeseen de- 
 lay had occurred in her coining, so that it was toler- 
 abty certain before she appeared on the scene, that 
 unless fresh cases broke out, there would be no great 
 call for her services. Harriet Cotton's case had 
 been a slight one throughout, and had left no disfig- 
 urement behind it. Harry Stubbs was recovering, 
 but he had paid a heavier penalty for the help he 
 had been ready to lend to the sick pauper. His face 
 when he first caught sight of it in a glass, was so 
 red and swollen, with every feature so blurred and 
 marred that even his sturdy, youthful philosophy 
 could not stand it. He gave a half sob in his weak- 
 ness, and felt thankful that only his mother and Dr. 
 Sanders were there to see him, until, as the doctor
 
 QIHL NEIGHBORS. 229 
 
 pledged himself, Harry should become less hid- 
 eous. 
 
 " She is not like that ? " he kept wistfully calling 
 on them to reassure him. " You would not deceive 
 me, mother, Dr. Sanders. Harriet Miss Cotton has 
 not a face like mine ? " 
 
 Still, in the possibility of the strange nurse's hav- 
 ing to supersede Pie even yet, and as a provision 
 lest the disease should spread farther, Miss Brandon, 
 the nurse in question was heartily welcome. 
 
 Harriet and Pie, keeping quarantine together, as 
 well as waiting for Harriet's getting well again, 
 with no other variety in their lives than that sup- 
 plied by the doctor's daily call, talked and specu- 
 lated a great deal about Miss Emily Brandon. She 
 was not old. The matron of the hospital to which 
 she belonged had thought it necessary to mention the 
 nurse's age twenty-four not above seven or eight 
 years older than the two girls, and about the age of 
 Miss Mary Fuller when she died. 
 
 Miss Mary Fuller, the old squire's favorite sister 
 May, with her tragic little story, was another sub- 
 ject which had inevitably come a great deal on the 
 tapis lately, though it might not be supposed as 
 cheerful an association as could be desired for 
 two patients recovering from small-pox. Still, as- 
 sociations are difficult to suppress, and so much in
 
 230 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 the immediate vicinity of the two houses and in the 
 means of communication between them, had been 
 devised for her benefit, that naturally the use to 
 which they were again put, revived her image in 
 the minds of a younger generation, and made it take 
 once more something of the tender interest and im- 
 portance which had clung to the woman in life. 
 When Dr. Sanders was questioned he had no per- 
 sonal recollection of her, but his father had attended 
 her, and the younger doctor remembered hearing 
 the elder say that Miss Mary Fuller, poor young 
 soul ! was as good as she was pretty and delicate. 
 She had kept up her spirit, too, wonderfully, and 
 been the merriest of the sisters indeed her spirit 
 was the chief thing which had kept her alive till 
 her sailor lover was drowned, and her own death 
 became no longer a question of years but of 
 months. 
 
 Harriet had scoffed at the Fullers the first time 
 she saw Pie, and Harry had been guilty of asking 
 Miss Cotton, when he was in one of his most objec- 
 tionably mannish moods, whether Pie had been talk- 
 ing any rot to her about these humbuggy old Fullers. 
 But the Fullers and their deeds were mentioned 
 more respectfully in those later days. Harriet 
 even went so far as to say, " I should like to have a
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 231 
 
 root of that lily of the valley which the old squire 
 planted for his sister, if you can spare it, Pie : " and 
 Harry asked his mother confidentially, "Do you 
 think Pie would care if, when I get about again, 
 I were to set a lot of violets to blow under her 
 window ? " 
 
 "Pie," said Harriet, a bright idea occurring to 
 her when she was able to sit up in her dressing- 
 gown, look out at the dahlias, and help Pie to make 
 away with a dish of Orleans plums, " do you think 
 Miss Brandon can be anything like Miss Mary ? I 
 mean can there be any resemblance in their his- 
 tories. One can fancy," went on Harriet, looking 
 as shamefaced as if she were a boy about to allude 
 to a love story without laughing at it, " that after a 
 loss like that which killed Miss Mary, a girl might 
 turn her back on the world and go out as a nurse 
 that is, if she had health for the work. Perhaps 
 if Miss Mary had been able to go out as a nurse she 
 would not have died. Oh, I know she was a good 
 daughter and sister, but I think the life of a single 
 woman an old maid when it was looked forward 
 to, while she was still young, must have appeared 
 terribly slow and stifling, generations back." 
 
 Pie could not quite see it, when the family and 
 the parish would still remain not although liar-
 
 232 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 riet argued that marriages and deaths might remove 
 the spinster from the first place and reduce her to 
 the third or fourth rank in the family. As for the 
 parish, it might not want her, might be too prosper- 
 ous or too democratic, or it might have passed into 
 the hands of a vicar who held himself more than 
 equal to the situation and could not brook the 
 assistance of volunteers especially of women in 
 his province. 
 
 Pie could not see it. There would still be some 
 use for the maiden aunt, some task to spare for her 
 in the family. For her own part Pie was sure she 
 would have adored her Aunt Nancy. And the" poor 
 would not fail the Bible had said so. " Besides, 
 Harriet," said Pie, sagely," we don't know that Miss 
 Brandon has turned her back on the world." 
 
 It did not look very like Miss Brandon's having 
 turned her back on the world when she arrived just 
 in time for dinner next day, and, on being asked to 
 join Pie and Mr. Cotton, did so in an evening dress, 
 simple enough, but neither black nor constructed on 
 any principles which had the remotest affinity to a 
 nun's garments. In fact, Miss Brandon wore a 
 cheerful looking frock of terra-cotta color, and the 
 young lady within that frock was as bright and 
 pleasant looking a young woman as one could see.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 233 
 
 Brightness and pleasantness were her distinctive 
 attributes, in addition to being that part of her 
 nurse's testimonials which she carried in her face. 
 Otherwise she had no particular claims to good 
 looks or personal distinction of any kind, though 
 neither was she plain beyond the ordinary standard 
 of women, so as to tempt her new acquaintances to 
 suppose that she had taken refuge from a critical 
 world in a nursing sisterhood. She was really not 
 plain at all, and in place of being a " deformed 
 princess," she was particularly well grown, well 
 made, and vigorous all the more so probably 
 because she was as innocent of a wasp waist and 
 high-heeled shoes as Pie was. 
 
 After dinner Miss Brandon came and sat with the 
 two girls in Harriet's room and gave them a lively 
 account of the persons and things which had amused 
 her on her journey from town. There was the spare 
 elderly lady who had objected to the windows of 
 the carriage being opened the least little bit. 
 There was the stout elderly lady who had been 
 indignant with the boy who had smuggled in a 
 puppy in his hat box. There was the nervous gen- 
 tleman who was under the impression that one of 
 the railway bridges was on the point of giving way, 
 and wished to ascertain which. In the middle o/
 
 234 &niL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 her stories Emily Brandon stopped and looked with 
 laughing eyes into the puzzled faces of her young 
 companions. " I am not tiring you am I ? " she 
 said to Harriet. " Talking is rather a weak point 
 with me, but I'm careful when I'm on duty. For 
 that matter, I was trained in a hospital where we 
 were bound not to speak by day or night, except to 
 the house surgeon on his round, and to put the 
 necessary questions to our patients. We had to be 
 an example to the ordinary nurses, to keep them 
 from gossiping so perfect an example that we 
 dared not so much as say a word to the ' sister ' in 
 the next ward, and it would have been all the same 
 if she had been our sister literally as well as pro- 
 fessionally." 
 
 " I wonder you did not become dumb ! " said Har- 
 riet, indignantly. 
 
 "Oh we had our meal times and our 'out days,' 
 when we got away for a walk. I wish you had 
 seen the good use we made of our opportunities, 
 especially when each of us turned up with her own 
 little tea-pot in her hand to make her tea. How we 
 did compare notes, and argue and laugh some- 
 times ! " 
 
 " Laugh ! " cried Harriet, in a smothered voice, 
 looking positively aghast ; " were you in spirits ? 
 Had you had you the heart to laugh ? "
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 235 
 
 As for Pie she had been a little more behind the 
 scenes from her experience in the cottage hospital. 
 
 " When things were going on well of course we 
 had," said Miss Brandon, composedly. " How could 
 we have gone on and stood the fatigue of the sad 
 sights if it were not so! Yes, certainly there .were 
 sad enough sights," owned Emily Brandon, more 
 gravely. "There was suffering all around us, but 
 we were doing our best to relieve it, and sometimes 
 when somebody who had been given over came 
 round and made a remarkable recovery, you have 
 no idea what a weight was lifted off our minds, or 
 how thankful and proud we felt. I remember," she 
 said, looking straight before her at the reddening 
 Virginian creeper, " that boy who had got the rusty 
 nail into his foot and was brought into my ward. 
 It was a clearly developed case of tetanus, and in his 
 fits his body was bent like a bow. But he was 
 gradually got out of them until he was at last dis- 
 charged cured. "Well, that afternoon I laughed till 
 I cried at a joke of another sister's, which, between 
 you and me, was not worth repeating." 
 
 " But I thought you must all have had trials of 
 your own before you dreamed of proposing to be 
 nurses," said Harriet, a little awkwardly, for she 
 feared her speech would sound as if she were prying
 
 236 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 into her neighbor's secrets her grown-up neighbor's. 
 " I mean it seems so strange for women who are not 
 old not very many years older than I, or than Pie 
 here, to go voluntarily into hospitals and infirmaries 
 and spend their time with the sick and miserable. 
 It is awfully good and kind, no doubt, but it is diffi- 
 cult to understand, unless at a great national crisis 
 like the Crimean war, when everybody had a 
 patriotic craze ; or when the nurses have been 
 martyrs themselves and have grown saints under the 
 process of martyrdom." 
 
 " And do you think martyrs and saints don't 
 laugh ? " said Emily Brandon. " But don't you 
 know nursing is a profession now, like any of the 
 other professions or trades? there are not very 
 many of them open to women. Mind I don't say 
 any woman may try nursing and hope to succeed in 
 it. Even more than other callings I believe it 
 requires a peculiar bent to it, just as a special inclina- 
 tion a vocation if you will, is demanded in a man if 
 he would be a great divine, physician, lawyer, or 
 engineer. Apart from that, I for one would not 
 give much for a nurse, however quick her eye, steady 
 her hand, and well- informed her mind, if she had 
 not in addition both a conscience and a creed." 
 
 " I never imagined such a nurse," said Pie.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 237 
 
 " I suppose there are all kinds," said Harriet. 
 
 " Yes ; and there are women as well as men who 
 have risen after a stunning blow, and, like the 
 Lady of Garaye, dedicated themselves and their 
 wordly goods for the rest of their lives to the serv- 
 ice of God and man, and found peace in the dedi- 
 cation," granted Miss Brandon. "I have been 
 acquainted with such nurses. They have removed 
 mountains of difficulties and done wonders, besides re- 
 covering health and happiness in their self-imposed 
 task; but though they represent the popular idea, 
 I do not think that as a rule these nurses are the 
 most serviceable. Unquestionably they have not 
 brought their first and best to the work. They 
 may be young and yet not young enough and they 
 are certainly without unbroken spirits to face the 
 drudgery, and get no injury but only good from it." 
 
 " May I ask what made you be a nurse ? " inquired 
 Pie, modestly. 
 
 "Ask and welcome," answered Emily Brandon 
 cheerfully. "It is a question easily answered. I 
 have no secret sorrow, I am glad to say no skele- 
 ton in my cupboard. I don't look like a blighted 
 being do I? I am a doctor's daughter, one of 
 four daughters ; and my father is far from rich, 
 though I am sure he deserves to be. We girls could
 
 238 GIRL NEIOUBOR8. 
 
 not bear to be a drain on his resources particularly 
 as my mother is a hale active Avoman quite able to 
 manage the house ; and as we have no brothers 
 to share my father's burden, my sisters and I had 
 to do something to help ourselves and relieve him." 
 
 " If you put it in that way," said Harriet, " it 
 does not seem hard for women to have to work for 
 themselves." 
 
 " It was not hard. We were every one of us 
 healthy and fairly gifted with wits. I believe we 
 all enjoyed working more or less. I had been fond 
 of helping my father in his surgery whenever lie 
 would let me ; and he had always said I had as 
 much nerve as he had, and that many women were 
 similarly endowed, else it would be worse for the 
 babies and for women in general. It seemed the 
 most natural thing possible for me to go to be a 
 nurse. To show you how natural it was, out of 
 eight lady nurses in our hospital six were the daugh- 
 ters of medical men." 
 
 " But he could not have brought his cases home 
 with him you could not have lived in an atmos- 
 phere of illness before you went to be a nurse, 
 though you were a doctor's daughter," objected 
 Harriet. " I have been told that doctors make a 
 point of not talking shop or mentioning sickness at
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 239 
 
 home, and that their wives and daughters often 
 know much less of any epidemic such as the small- 
 pox we have had here than is known by the other 
 families in the place." 
 
 " They must be queer doctors with queer belong- 
 ings," said Emily Brandon, bluntly and a trifle scorn- 
 fully. " I think that is treating women like fools 
 and babies. I cannot see why it should be held that 
 it is more depressing for a woman to be a nurse than 
 it is for a man to be a doctor." 
 
 " Were you never frightened, Miss Brandon ? " 
 Pie put it to her plainly. " I don't think I am nerv- 
 ous myself, but I am afraid I could not stand some 
 things. To be sure I have always had my mother, 
 who says I am not fit for this and that, and will not 
 let me attempt what she does not do herself." 
 
 " She is quite right," said Emily, nodding emphat- 
 ically. " You are too young. It would not be good 
 for you. Iso hospital would admit candidates at 
 your age. I was turned twenty before I went to 
 my hospital ; and I understood that then I was taken 
 in as a favor, because my father was a doctor in some 
 esteem in the neighborhood." 
 
 " Pie need not question her courage when she has 
 nursed me in small-pox," cried Harriet. 
 
 " Only helped to nurse you," corrected Pie.
 
 240 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " And how could I think of myself and of being 
 frightened when there was my brother, who had 
 brought you, my friend, into contact with the 
 disease, lying ill of it also at home ? I do not say 
 that I might not, if you two had been strangers to 
 me, have shrunk away from you and been terrified, 
 however little to my credit such cowardice and lack 
 of faith would have been." 
 
 " And I do not say that I have never had any 
 qualms, especially at first,'' said Emily Brandon, 
 with honest candor ; " but one gets used to any ex- 
 perience, and I knew I was trying to do my duty, 
 and believed God would take care of me. Then 
 whenever I was in the thick of work I was like a 
 soldier in the middle of a battle, I had no time to 
 think I could only act. But let me see what 
 o'clock is it ? Half-past ten ! It is high time you 
 were in bed, Miss Cotton. Remember I am answer- 
 able for you now ; and I am to sleep in the dressing- 
 room, and to send away Miss Stubbs to get a good 
 night's rest elsewhere." 
 
 It was a surprise and entertainment to the girls 
 to see how the strange young lady, who was not so 
 much older than themselves, took possession of 
 them and the situation ; with what unguessed-at 
 cleverness and quickness she made all the arrange-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 241 
 
 ments. She rendered everybody and everything 
 twice as comfortable as they had been before, 
 while at the same time she instituted precautions 
 which had not been thought of previous to her 
 coming. Even Dr. Sanders, in the busy round 
 of his old-fashioned country practice, had not 
 taken such measures into account. It was her 
 business, Emily Brandon said with gay good 
 humor. 
 
 It was a still greater wonder almost a shock to 
 the girls when Miss Brandon, in pursuit of another 
 patient, calmly walked over to the cottage, made 
 friends with Mrs. Stubbs on the spot, and 
 penetrated to Harry's sick room as coolly as Dr. 
 Sanders invaded Harry and his mother's territory. 
 There Miss Brandon proceeded to inaugurate pro- 
 ceedings for the sick man's benefit, to which Mrs. 
 Stubbs, shrewdly recognizing their utility, did not 
 object. As for Hany, after his first horror at the 
 intrusion, he rapidly succumbed as to an irresistable 
 course of bribery and corruption. He saw in Emily 
 Brandon an older, wiser Pie, and understood why 
 such as she were called " sisters " in the hospitals. 
 To her he was certainly a brother more, a 
 younger brother whom she would fain solace and 
 cheer under his sense of discomfort and disfigure- 
 ment.
 
 242 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Shades of the old dainty decorous Miss Fullers, 
 what would you have thought of Miss Brandon's 
 braving the small-pox, and entering a young man's 
 sick room ? 
 
 Everybody liked Emily Brandon, from Dr. San- 
 ders upward and downward. She was so unexact- 
 ing and obliging ! She had known and profited by 
 discipline, yet she was not a mere disciplinarian, 
 and martinet to rules and orders. She could judge 
 and act for herself. She made very little of her 
 capabilities, while all her near friends, Dr. Sanders 
 among the rest, felt more secure, hopeful, and light 
 of heart under her sway. The girls never tired of 
 hearing her graphic stories of hospital life and dis- 
 trict visiting. These stories had more of human 
 nature, heroism, pathos, and humor than an}' stories 
 of real life which Harriet and Pie, or for that mat- 
 ter, Harry Stubbs, had ever heard before. If there 
 were also painful elements, these vanished to a 
 great extent in the telling, or were transformed into 
 a solemn accompaniment like the deep bass of a 
 singer, lending the strength and dignity of truth, 
 however grave and severe, to the strain.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 243 
 
 CHAPTEK XIII. 
 
 A LADY COOK FROM A COOKING SCHOOL. 
 
 WHEN the small-pox was a thing of the past and 
 all danger of transmitting it had fled, Miss Brandon 
 was persuaded to take a little holiday at Maidsraead- 
 ows. She had already exchanged vows of eternal 
 friendship with her three juniors, and less eager, but 
 not less sincere, pledges of regard with her seniors. 
 She had promised faithfully to come down the mo- 
 ment anybody was ill and nurse him or her through 
 the illness. She had also agreed, though with more 
 qualification, for she had been pressed to give the 
 same assurance to scores of former patients, to 
 spend a portion of all her future holidays at the 
 manor house and the cottage. 
 
 But " a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," 
 while 
 
 " The present moment is our ain, 
 The neist we never saw " 
 
 the conspirators had Emily Brandon tight in their
 
 244 O1RL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 clutches, and they were determined not to let her 
 go until she should make a point of being idle and 
 enjoying herself for at least a couple of weeks or 
 so, like other people. 
 
 No feint was wanted. She did enjoy herself with 
 the abandonment of one who is a good worker, and 
 whose life is more work than play, while the relish 
 for the play is greater than ever. For each country 
 sight and sound was a treat to the town-bred nurse 
 abroad, and free to give herself up to the treat. 
 Emily Brandon played when she set about it, in a 
 way which threatened to distance, not only Harriet, 
 but Pie also if she was not on her mettle. 
 
 The first time Harry Stubbs came across to the 
 manor house, as he said, to ask Mr. and Miss Cotton 
 to forgive him, he had a vivid consciousness that 
 Harriet Cotton hurried out of sight of his altered 
 face, and came back presently with her own face 
 red as if she had been crying. He said afterward 
 that was a thousand times worse to bear than if 
 she had refused to speak to him, or than if Mr. 
 Cotton had shown him the door. His sole consola- 
 tion was that she looked as jolly a beauty as ever. 
 However, when his nurse engaged him in a genuine 
 tug-of-war at tennis, he forgot his scars incurred on 
 another field, and played for his honor as a tennis-
 
 QIRL NEIGHBORS. 245 
 
 player as if he were playing for his life. Emily 
 Brandon went down on her hands and knees to 
 pick mosses. She mounted ladders to gather fruit. 
 She fed Pie's poultry. She walked, drove, and 
 danced, as well as played tennis with all her heart 
 in it for the moment, 
 
 Withal Miss Brandon was still anxious to be of 
 service, and to turn even her holiday to profit where 
 others were concerned. She went with Mr. Cotton, 
 who was a poor-law guardian, and inspected the 
 workhouse and its infirmary, offering such sugges- 
 tions as were practicable. She did her best for the 
 cottage hospital in the same manner. She visited 
 the schools with Pie, and presented the pupil-teach- 
 ers with sixpenny copies of " Florence Nightingale's 
 Notes on Nursing," to be administered in small doses 
 to the advanced scholars. She accompanied Mrs. 
 Stubbs to many of the cottages old and new drop- 
 ping such sanitary hints on the progress as the elder 
 lady and her cottagers were not above adopting. 
 For Mrs. Stubbs had seen what Miss Brandon could 
 do, as Mrs. Stubbs admitted magnanimously. She 
 had not hitherto entertained any very exalted opin- 
 ion of the merits of the present generation, as some 
 of her hearers might be aware, but she would think 
 better of it from this time, since it had produced an 
 Emily Brandon.
 
 246 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 " I am a little surprised that you don't have a 
 cook from one of the cooking schools to give a few 
 lessons to the village girls," said the oracle. " The 
 lessons might be of great advantage to the younger 
 women ; even the mothers might pick up a few 
 hints," Miss Brandon went on. "I have a little hes- 
 itation in mentioning cooking lessons, bacause my 
 pretty sister Fanny, who is engaged to be married, 
 is the professional cook in our family, and is open to 
 1 orders.' After you have loaded me with kindness 
 it is hardly fair to inflict another of us upon you." 
 
 Another of them ! There could not be too many 
 Emily Brandons. Besides, the idea of a cooking 
 school for the village was charming and was not 
 to be lost sight of. Mrs. Stubbs looked on it with 
 favor. The vicar voted for it. Harriet Cotton 
 never rested till she had persuaded her father to 
 furnish her with the funds, as a thank-offering for 
 her recovery. Miss Fanny Brandon, with her cer- 
 tificate from Kensington, was invited down to live 
 as a visitor alternately at the manor house and 
 the cottage, and to deliver a course of cooking lee- 
 
 ~ 7 <~3 
 
 tures, with practical illustrations, to members of all 
 classes, the working-class to be preferred, in one of 
 the schoolrooms. 
 Miss Fanny Brandon was a woman of engage-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 247 
 
 ments, and the plan could not be put into execution 
 till winter, long after her sister Emily had returned 
 to her hospital. 
 
 Then the reformers found, as Mrs. Stubbs said 
 dryly, that they had better have " left well alone." 
 Emily Brandon had been a great success as a 
 small-pox nurse and public benelactress, but there 
 were not two Emily Brandons. Fanny was a 
 considerable falling off from her sister. Indeed, in 
 the sharpness of her disappointment Mrs. Stubbs 
 went so far as to say that she was astonished and 
 sorry to find their Miss Brandon could take advan- 
 tage of their ignorance to send such a goose as 
 her sister among them to instruct them in any- 
 thing. An acquaintance with Fanny had done a 
 good deal to shake Mrs. Stubbs' high opinion of 
 Emily. 
 
 Yet there was nothing far amiss with Fanny 
 Brandon. She was only a pretty girl in a lan- 
 guishing, simpering way the beauty of her 
 family, and apparently spoiled by them in that 
 light. She was rather juvenile for her age, since- 
 she was a year older than Emily, and was greatly 
 occupied with her situation as an engaged woman 
 (unfortunately the marriage was not to take place 
 for a year or two), much in the fashion that Mrs. 
 Parry was wrapped up in her baby.
 
 248 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Harriet and Pie suffered a disenchantment in 
 their turn, though, naturally, there was more to 
 interest them than there could be to interest Mrs. 
 Stubbs in Fanny Brandon's " situation," including 
 her lover, their correspondence and future prospects. 
 Harriet Cotton had known her own sisters when 
 they were engaged and even married, but this was 
 different. They had all of them even Anne, after 
 the dignified, sensible example of Laura and Georgie 
 treated Harriet as a schoolgirl. They had kept 
 their own counsel and sent her out of the way when 
 there was anything specially interesting to young 
 ladies going on ; whereas Miss Fanny Brandon 
 showed every inclination to make Harriet and Pie 
 her confidantes supposing they felt inclined. If this 
 unbending affability and indulgence to their ignor- 
 ance and immaturity in a girl so far before them in 
 experience of life, proved alluring to Harriet with her 
 supposed greater knowlege of the world, how fasci- 
 nating was it not to Pie in her simplicity ! 
 
 " What an arrant fool that Brandon girl must be," 
 Mrs. Stubbs was forced to cry in her exasperation 
 to Mr. Stubbs. " What nonsense she is putting into 
 these two girls' heads enough to unfit them for eve^ 
 improving pursuit and rational occupation suitable 
 to their years ! I declare I believe she shows them
 
 GIHL NEIGHBORS. 249 
 
 the man's letters, and asks their advice on her an- 
 swers. I found Pie devouring a letter, which I can 
 vouch did not come to her, by firelight the other 
 evening before dinner. She grew as red as the fire 
 when I came in on her, and put the letter hastily 
 into her pocket, saying that neither Harry or any- 
 body else had been writing to her. She had only 
 been asked to read some marked passages in another 
 person's letter. I wonder what the unlucky writer 
 would say if he knew the liberties taken with his 
 correspondence. I could beat that idiot Fanny 
 Brandon, and I cannot no, I do not think I ever 
 can excuse Emily Brandon for allowing us to have 
 down her sister, to give us lessons in cooking, for- 
 sooth." 
 
 " My dear," suggested Mr. Stubbs, " cooking 
 seems in the line of a bride elect. You know girls 
 will marry and other girls will look on till dooms- 
 day as they have clone since the creation." 
 
 " I don't care, Haderezer," said Mrs. Stubbs some- 
 what irrelevantly ; " but what I shall make a point 
 of is, that another of these Miss Brandons does 
 not find an entrance here, with my will, on 
 any pretense whatever. I believe that a third girl 
 has taken up scientific dressmaking, and goes about 
 the world teaching the trade on scientific principles
 
 250 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 i 
 
 to village dressmakers and their apprentices, and 
 to sewing-classes in schools. I'll not be inveigled 
 into consenting that she shall be invited to come 
 among us and improve our patterns and our stitch- 
 ing." 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs had no faith left in the younger 
 generation by the time the first lecture was to 
 come off, and she saw Miss Fanny Brandon 
 actually standing blushing and bridling on a plat- 
 form improvised for the occasion. She wore a 
 stylish frock ; a conspicuous locket, which no doubt 
 contained a certain photograph and lock of hair ; 
 and a pair of pink silk gloves. Now, Mrs. Stubbs, 
 while she regarded platforms for women with 
 strongly disapproving eyes, also abhorred pink 
 gloves. 
 
 The aggrieved lady expected nothing less than a 
 woeful break-down on the part of the lecturer, 
 which would render her and her supporters tho 
 laughing-stock of the very working-class uhe had 
 been brought there to enlighten. Yonder they 
 were, these pitiless critics, headed by Mrs. Stubbs' 
 own cook, a picture of homely shrewdness and 
 scornful incredulity. Whatever was the fine 
 young lady, Miss Pie and Miss Cotton's friend 
 going to tell her of ovens and frying-pans as she
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 251 
 
 did not know afore the whole young pack were 
 born ! As for the school girls, they were giggling 
 already. 
 
 But the moment a small portable cooking appara- 
 tus, Miss Fanny Brandon's private property, was 
 put on the platform before her, and she drew off the 
 offending gloves, a change came over the spirit of 
 Mrs. Stubbs and of everybody else. 
 
 With the first handling of a sauce-pan and the 
 first instructions uttered in words few and well- 
 chosen, it was evident to all present, not only that 
 there would be no break-down, but that there would 
 be an entirely creditable lecture. 
 
 Fanny Brandon was a born cook still more than 
 she was a born beauty and simpleton. Perhaps the 
 gentleman to whom she was engaged was great in 
 gastronomic tastes, and having satisfied himself on 
 that head, had overlooked any other deficiency. It 
 was " quite pretty," and greatly relished by the 
 audience, to see how the young lady's skilled little 
 hands boiled potatoes, mashed turnips, stewed a 
 steak, and beat a batter pudding without a single 
 accident. The evidence of the excellence of her 
 achievements was as plain as day in the rapid con- 
 sumption of the savory morsels eagerly eaten, then 
 and there, by the company.
 
 252 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 In her farther lessons, when Fanny Brandon had 
 pupils in the admiring village girls they were headed 
 by Harriet Cotton and Pie Stubbs, who worked under 
 the chef. The teacher displayed not only sound pro- 
 fessional feeling, but great good-nature in the pleas- 
 ure which she took in the performances of her staff, 
 great and small alike. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs half forgave Fanny Brandon for her 
 sentimental enormities when she saw her exhibit 
 triumphantly a basin of lentil-soup and an omelet, 
 which were not the work of Harriet Cotton or Pie 
 Stubbs, but of Amanda Brown and Celestina Black 
 (the village, like most other villages, was laboring 
 under a violent eruption of fine names), and main- 
 taining that she (Miss Fanny Brandon of South 
 Kensington) could not have made them better. 
 
 Fanny Brandon's visit came to an end like her 
 sister Emily's without worse results than these. 
 Harriet Cotton and Pie Stubbs engaged, subject to 
 the consent of their parents, to officiate as two of 
 Fanny's bridesmaids when her marriage took place. 
 The future bridesmaids indulged occasionally in 
 such unprofitable arguments as to how often a gentle- 
 man was warranted in writing " dearest " on one 
 sheet of paper, to the lady to whom he was engaged, 
 or as Fanny Brandon had preferred to call it, " be-
 
 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 253 
 
 trothed ;" and whether it was not foolish of him to 
 be jealous of the heroes of her dreams, and to exact 
 from her a solemn promise, which she could hardly 
 be expected to keep, to dream only of him. 
 
 When some faint echo of the arguments reached 
 Harry Stubbs he put an end to them in a summary 
 fashion by volunteering the statement that ho could 
 not care a hang for a woman who suffered him to 
 make such a jolly great ass of himself. 
 
 But the cookery-school did not end with Fanny 
 Brandon's much-needed lessons. Its useful Work 
 had considerably impressed various members of the 
 little community, notably Harriet and Pie. If they 
 could not be amateur nurses they could be amateur 
 cooks in order to help their fellow-creatures. For 
 one gain of Harriet Cotton's illness and close associ- 
 ation with Pie Stubbs, and of both the girls making 
 the Brandon sisters' acquaintance, was that Harriet 
 had resolved with all the force of her natural strength 
 of character to renounce the dawdling habits which 
 she had never really enjoyed. As for Pie, as it has 
 been said, she had always had a craze to be helpful 
 and " oosef ul," like the child Mary Carpenter. 
 
 Long protracted cold weather in spring in the 
 middle of hard times supplied a motive and an 
 impetus to the girls in putting their aspirations into
 
 254 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 practice. One of the many out buildings of the 
 manor house, which had served for a brewery in the 
 days of domestic brewing, was fitted up as a kitchen, 
 and there twice a week Harriet and Pie concocted 
 their dishes. Village girls out of work were invited 
 to assist and learn in their turn. Older women 
 were asked to come and carry off supplies for their 
 hungry children, for the old father or mother sitting 
 in the chimney-corner, or for the invalid member of 
 the family. The receivers of the freely-conferred 
 benefits might not be altogether above hearing a 
 word in season even from two slips of young ladies, 
 as to the advantage of pot-b^-the-fire, and the clear 
 loss of subjecting vegetables to but half or quarter 
 the boiling they ought to get. 
 
 Sometimes Mrs. Walls or the Stubbs' old cook 
 would look in and glance askance at what was 
 going on when their young ladies played at cooking. 
 For though Mrs. Walls honestly wished her young 
 mistress to take the reins in the home govern mem, 
 and privately backed her to any extent in the oper 
 ation, the housekeeper was not prepared for Miss 
 Harry's going out of the way to cook with her own 
 pretty hands for the purpose of aiding in feeding 
 " them handless, shiftless village folks, that ought 
 to know how to look after ihernselves."
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 255 
 
 " Fine messes Miss Pie will make ! " chimed in 
 Mrs. Walls' ally, turning up her nose at the amateur 
 work. " I'd just like to see Master Harry a-eating 
 of them." 
 
 But the two experts grew interested in the 
 i \perimenters and their experiments, thawed in 
 time, doled out valuable practical amendments of 
 what might be regarded as journeymen's jobs, and 
 even condescended to deal, in their own persons, 
 fine finishing touches which often cleared up mud- 
 dles and brought wholesome conclusions out of 
 crude beginnings. 
 
 " I don't like no new-fangled ways for the bairns," 
 grumbled one short-sighted mother. "What was 
 good enough for me should be good enough for they. 
 No, I bain't oonthankful ; I'm glad enough they 
 should have their bite and sup. But set 'em up 
 with their soups and their fried 'taties. What is 
 the world coming to, I'd like to hear tell ? " 
 
 "It is rank pisen," snarled a cross-grained old 
 woman. " I wants my dish of tea if I'm to have 
 aught of the saucy young madams' charity. I'm 
 for none of this flummery." But when she heard it 
 was her own grand-daughter "Mamy" who had 
 mixed the flummery, the speaker was willing to take 
 it into consideration and find it not so bad after 
 all.
 
 256 GIRL NEIGHBORS 
 
 " I allers holds by bacon beans and bacon, when 
 I can get them two, in course," announced one old 
 gentleman, dogmatically. Yes, he admitted, he had 
 not a tooth in his mouth, and the business of masti- 
 cation was done very ineffectuall}' by his gums ; still 
 he would have gone on pinning his faith to the 
 beans and bacon, had not his wife tasted the succu- 
 lent morsel provided as a substitute, and become such 
 a convert to its merits that he had no choice save to 
 test them for himself, were it only to silence her by 
 his overwhelming testimony against her bad taste, a 
 testimony which became conspicuous by its absence. 
 
 Upon the whole the village of Maidsmeadows, 
 though it had its opinions, to which it was perfectly 
 entitled, its flat skepticism, its rude mockery here 
 and there, which it would have been more to its 
 credit if it had spared, was edified, enlivened, and 
 benefited by Harriet and Pie's honest halting excur- 
 sions into the wide field of national cookery during 
 the hard unprosperous spring-time. 
 
 The whole thing was an extension of the Miss 
 Fullers' dabblings in their still-room, where they 
 made, in easy and elegant privacy their washes and 
 pomatums, sweet waters, prescriptions for coughs and 
 colds, cuts and burns, which the fair practitioners 
 dispensed, as it were, at armVlength, to their hum- 
 ble neighbors.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 257 
 
 Harriet's dress had long approximated to Pie's in 
 texture and hue, nay, sometimes the rich young lady 
 was tempted to exaggerate in her own dainty per- 
 son her companion's plain toilet ; but Pie always 
 opposed the exaggeration vehemently, for she took 
 a far greater pride and delight in Harriet's pretty 
 frocks and hats than Harriet, on whom they had 
 palled, could be brought to feel.
 
 258 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A LADIES' COLLEGE. 
 
 WHEN that third spring had advanced as far as a 
 late and fine Easter, an extraordinary episode, or 
 rather series of episodes, happened in relation to 
 what had grown to be a close alliance between the 
 manor house and the cottage. Harry Stubbs, who 
 had largely thrown off the consequences of his 
 smart attack of small-pox, and was about as well 
 favored as he had ever promised to be, was at home 
 for his vacation and shared in the excitement of the 
 episodes. It did not render them less interesting to 
 Pie and Harry that the two were, for some good and 
 sufficient reason, shut out of them ; on the contrary, 
 the incidents became on that very account breath- 
 lessly interesting. 
 
 The brother and sister were too nearly grown 
 up and had too much self-respect either to feel an 
 inordinate craving to have secrets of their own, or 
 to entertain a burning resentment at not being 
 taken into the secrets of other people. But while
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 259 
 
 Harry and Pie would not pry, they were not above 
 noticing, wondering, comparing notes, and arriving 
 at conclusions, some of them madly erroneous, on 
 the behavior of the world at large. 
 
 Through the summer snow of the wild cherry 
 blossoms, falling in flakes from the trees nearly 
 meeting overhead, past the hyacinth border and 
 the " pavilions of stately green " of the lily of the 
 valley in the old bed made by Squire Fuller under 
 his invalid sister's window, came an elderly gentle- 
 man and an elderly lady, both of them decidedly 
 agitated, asking if Mrs. Stubbs were engaged, and 
 proposing to speak alone with her. The gentleman 
 was Mr. Cotton, the lady was a stranger, one of a 
 party staying at the manor house whom the 
 Stubbses had not seen before. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs consented to be privately interviewed. 
 Afterward she pursed up her mouth and preserved 
 a mysterious silence. If she said anything to the 
 husband of her bosom she certainly made no more 
 pointed remark to her children, on the alert to hear 
 what she had to say on the subject, than to moralize 
 in a general way, and tritely for her, on the changes 
 which were constantly coming to pass in the world, 
 and the weakness, not to say the folly, of men and 
 women in the mass.
 
 260 GIRL NKIQHBORS. 
 
 Next Harriet Cotton made her appearance, march- 
 ing with her head erect, and clear, shining eyes 
 looking straight before her, as if she were wound 
 up to the pitch of taking her own fate or somebody 
 else's into her hands, and doing what she would 
 with it. Carefully avoiding an encounter with her 
 friends, Pie and Harry, Harriet too, asked for Mrs. 
 Stubbs, and begged to see her for five minutes by 
 herself. 
 
 This interview also passed, and still Mrs. Stubbs 
 vouchsafed no sign, though she glanced furtively at 
 her children and sighed as if she had something on 
 her mind. What was in the wind ? What extraor- 
 dinary plot could be hatching, what momentous 
 event impending ? 
 
 " Can Harriet have had an offer? Can there be 
 any idea of her getting married ? " cried Pie under 
 her breath, blushing furiously from sympathy. " All 
 the other Cottons married young, I believe, though 
 not quite so young as Harriet is. I have not the 
 ghost of a notion who the gentleman can be, if 
 there is a gentleman. She has stolen a march upon 
 us, and kept her own counsel with a vengeance, if I 
 am right." 
 
 " Why will girls talk such rot ? " cried Harry 
 angrily. " That Miss Brandon not my Miss
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 261 
 
 Brandon, the silly one I mean has infected 
 you. There is nothing save marriages in your 
 heads." 
 
 " Harry," protested Pie in righteous indignation, 
 " when did I mention the word marriage to you 
 before ? " 
 
 " 1 never said you did," Harry turned upon her 
 in hardened impenitence, at the same time reliev- 
 ing his mind by advancing from the porch in which 
 the couple were standing, picking up a stone and 
 aiming it at a flock of unoffending sparrows. " But 
 you seem to think that nothing can occur in this 
 workaday world which is not connected with a 
 marriage. I daresay Mr. Cotton has come to grief 
 in his business everybody is calling out about bad 
 times or one of his married daughters is dead, or 
 has run away from her husband, or something," he 
 ended with grand vagueness. 
 
 " It cannot be that Mr. Cotton has lost money- 
 much money," retorted Pie, " for I heard him talk- 
 ing only last night of taking a run to the Riviera. 
 He did not speak of taking Harriet with him, though 
 no doubt he will. We should all hear if any of the 
 married Miss Cottons were dead. Their father and 
 sister wouldn't be going about calling on anybody. 
 As to running away from their husbands, I am
 
 262 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 surprised at your saying such a thing. I should 
 as soon dream of my mother's running away from 
 my father." 
 
 " In that case the madre would have to run back 
 to him in double-quick time, for you could not man- 
 age two men, you Pie." 
 
 In spite of Harry Stubbs' disdain, there was a 
 projected marriage at the bottom of the ferment ; 
 but poor Harriet was not the bride to be. Mr. 
 Cotton had told Mr. Stubbs that he had been so 
 much put about during the past year, what with 
 his own illness, what with Harriet's attack of small- 
 pox and the cause which led to it, though it was 
 innocent enough, and he blamed nobody, unless 
 himself, for not sooner adopting the resolution 
 which he had now to announce, he had determined 
 to marry again. The lady was a friend of many 
 years' standing. He would provide himself with a 
 companion of his own age. He would furnish Harry 
 since she had lost the companionship and support 
 of her elder sisters, with a proper and permanent 
 chaperon a guide in health, a nurse in sickness 
 without trespassing farther on the good-will of their 
 neighbors. He had brought over the lady who had 
 done him the honor to consent to be the second 
 Mrs. Cotton, in order to introduce her to Mrs.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 263 
 
 Stubbs, with the double purpose of bespeaking her 
 good offices in what he dimly comprehended was 
 likely to cause a difficulty with Harriet, and of 
 justifying himself by proving, on personal ob- 
 servation, that Miss Alexa Thorpe was in every 
 way eligible for the position of mistress of the 
 establishment at the manor house. He could 
 not well recount her virtues to her face ; he could 
 only hint them broadly and confidently affirm 
 that time would indicate the excellence of his 
 choice. 
 
 The poor lady who was thus exhibited and tick- 
 eted off, was too much overcome to do herself 
 justice. But so far as Mrs. Stubbs no mean judge 
 could see, Miss Thorpe was a harmless, well-mean- 
 ing woman, who had her own task before her, the 
 matron and arbitrator added grimly. There was 
 not merely Harriet Cotton in the exceedingly awk- 
 ward and trying position of a deposed sovereign ; 
 there were Mr. Cotton's married daughters after the 
 disagreeable surprise of the advent of a step- 
 mother at this late date, coming to pay visits and 
 pick holes in the domestic coat. 
 
 "Oh, dear! is that it?" cried Pie the moment she 
 was informed, when her mother and she were sit- 
 ting in the twilight together by one of the parlor
 
 364 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 windows. " "Who would have thought a nice kind 
 man like Mr. Cotton, so fond of Harriet too, could 
 go and do such a thing ? Poor, poor Harriet ! she 
 has been meaning to manage so well, and make her 
 father so comfortable and happy in his old age ! " 
 
 " You see ' meaning ' in itself won't do, Pie," said 
 Mrs. Stubbs, " though we are so apt to think it will. 
 Very often the end of our best intentions is to find, 
 before they can be fulfilled, that they are too late. 
 Take this marriage of Mr. Cotton's for instance. If 
 he had not hesitated and doubted about it all these 
 years, but, on the contrary, had married within a 
 decent time of his first wife's death, it would have 
 been all very well probably the wisest course he 
 could have pursued. As it is, after Harriet is nearly 
 grown up, and he was so rash as to suffer her to be 
 very much her own mistress, and to consider her- 
 self the mistress of his house, the position is 
 altered. At the same time I do not imagine that 
 Harriet would have renounced matrimony on her 
 own account for her father's sake. In a year or two 
 probably she would have left him in the lurch. After 
 all, I believe it is on the whole the best thing that 
 could have happened for Harriet," ended Mrs. 
 Stubbs composedly. 
 
 " Oh, mother," protested Pie, " to have a step-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 265 
 
 mother in her own mother's place ! another woman 
 a favored rival in her father's confidence and affec- 
 tion!" 
 
 " Don't talk sentimental stuff, child, as selfish as 
 it is lackadaisical. Keep your hair on and don't go 
 into a fit, as Harry says don't exaggerate and 
 misrepresent the truth. There, you spoke of Mr. 
 Cotton a moment ago as if he were in his old age. 
 You had no right to do that. His daughter had no 
 call to regard him in such a light. His very attack 
 of fever, which he threw off so easily, might have 
 shown you that he is a hale man of sixty, with ten 
 or fifteen good years of life before him. A step- 
 mother ! " exclaimed Mrs. Stubbs, taking up another 
 expressive epithet. " I have lived a number of 
 years in the world, and I have come to see that 
 almost any kind of mother step-mother or mother- 
 in-law is bad, indeed, if she is not better than no 
 mother, where a young girl is concerned." 
 
 " As a poor substitute, perhaps," said Pie reluc- 
 tantly. 
 
 Her mother went on without heeding her. 
 " Harriet Cotton was little more than a child when 
 her own mother died ; and as the latter was a con- 
 firmed invalid for years, Harriet can hardly remem- 
 her at the head of the household; so that tho
 
 266 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 daughter's feelings need not be sorely aggrieved by 
 seeing it under the rule of her successor. For that 
 matter, I have been told the late Mrs. Cotton was a 
 weak simple little woman, like her daughter Mrs. 
 Parry, and could never be said to rule her family. 
 Mr. Cotton had neither the time nor the peculiar 
 qualifications to rule for her, as Mr. Parry rules for 
 his wife, so the whole Cotton family suffered con- 
 siderably from the absence of proper control and 
 management." 
 
 " But none of that was Harriet's fault," pleaded 
 Pie ; " and she has been trying so hard so very hard 
 lately ; and then for this bitter mortification and 
 disappointment to fall upon her ! " 
 
 " Depend upon it, Pie, nothing Harriet tried to 
 do will be lost," said Mrs. Stubbs more gently. " I 
 saw it this very morning when I was speaking with 
 her. I have been accustomed to think and talk 
 of her as a great deal too independent and self- 
 assured for her years ; but I am bound to tell you 
 her friend, that I was not only astonished, I was 
 greatly pleased and touched by the force she put 
 upon herself and the self-restraint she showed. It 
 would have been admirable in a woman twice her 
 age." 
 
 Pie blushed with pride and pleasure at the com-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS 267 
 
 menclation, which she would have prized highly for 
 herself, thus freely bestowed on Harriet. 
 
 " She was good enough to tell me she had learned 
 to trust me ; yet she did not say a single undutiful, 
 unkind, or unbecoming word where her father was 
 concerned ; she did not utter one pert, spiteful criti- 
 cism on the lady whom he has selected for his 
 second wife, such as many another girl ay, most 
 girls, I fear would have spoken by the dozen." 
 
 " Dear Harriet ! " said Pie warmly, u she has not 
 a particle of meanness in her. There is something 
 large minded and large hearted about her. I have 
 long known it. I am so glad you have found it out 
 for yourself, mother." 
 
 " I said," explained Mrs. Stubbs, " that if the 
 match were for her father's happiness she ought, as 
 a good daughter, to submit and make the best of it, 
 and render everything as easy as she could for him 
 and the now Mrs. Cotton. The sooner Harriet 
 hears the lady called so, and gives over wincing, the 
 better for both. I told her I was sure however 
 little she might appreciate it at present that her 
 father had her interest at heart in the act he was 
 about to commit. She acquiesced with a desperate 
 quietness, I daresay, but not as if she were merely 
 echoing my words. She only allowed herself to say
 
 268 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 that she had been hurt to find that she was not 
 sufficient for her father, as he was for her. But 
 when I reminded her how much older he was, 
 how many experiences he had gone through that 
 she could not share, which the lady he was about 
 to marry was at least old enough to sympathize 
 with, she was perfectly reasonable, and owned the 
 truth of what I said." 
 
 " Harriet is always so reasonable ! " said Pie 
 ecstatically. 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs shook her head and smiled in her 
 superior sense and wisdom. " When I told her that, 
 even supposing her father had not married, the day 
 would have come when she would either have left 
 him alone, or placed somebody else before him, she 
 was as incredulous as girls who don't know what 
 lies before them always are. But I am thinking of 
 the coming Mrs. Cotton. It is her own matter, of 
 course, still one cannot help blaming and pitying 
 her. There she is, grown into an old maid, with 
 fixed habits and opinions as well as tastes of her 
 own, which she supposes can be rooted up in a day 
 by the magic of a wedding ring ! And she is willing 
 that they should be rooted up for the glory of wear- 
 ing the wedding ring, and in response to a few flat- 
 tering words from an elderly widower with four
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 269 
 
 daughters one of them still to marry, only in her 
 teens, and yet a good deal wiser than the woman 
 who proposes to become her mother by marriage 
 banns and a parson's blessing. Oh, Pie, the silli- 
 ness of us women ! " 
 
 " I cannot think of anybody except my dear poor 
 Harriet," lamented Pie. 
 
 The next time Pie and her mother talked 
 together on the subject Pie volunteered the valuable 
 piece of information that her brother was very 
 angry because Harriet Cotton had this slight put 
 upon her, and because her father was going to make 
 such a fool of himself. 
 
 " Don't you two make fools of yourselves," Mrs. 
 Stubbs took her children to task. " Mr. Cotton is 
 quite justifiable in what he is about to do, and it 
 may turn out an excellent arrangement for every- 
 body concerned. I should like to hear any person 
 hint to Harriet Cotton that her father was making 
 a fool of himself. She asked me yesterday what I 
 thought of her going away for a time whether 
 that would make it less trying for them all, or 
 whether it might not appear sulky and defiant on 
 her part." 
 
 " Going away ! " echoed Pie in fresh consterna- 
 tion. " How I shall miss her ! But I suppose it
 
 270 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 will only be on a visit to one of her sisters for not 
 more than a couple of months at the farthest." 
 
 " She does not talk of going to any of her sisters, 
 and she is proposing to be away from home for 
 longer than a couple of months, or a couple of years 
 either." 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Pie aghast, and unable to say a 
 word more. 
 
 " She is thinking of one of the colleges for 
 Avomen," went on Mrs. Stubbs. " Harriet is under 
 the impression that if she studies hard throughout 
 the summer her father's marriage is not to take 
 place till autumn she may gain a scholarship or 
 pass an examination and get admission. She would 
 take the whole college course then, and be little at 
 home for some years to come. In fact, she is pro- 
 posing a new career for herself." 
 
 " And do you think it would be for her good ? " 
 asked Pie wistfully, feeling herself left miles behind. 
 " I know Harriet is very clever, and would distin- 
 guish herself in whatever she set herself to do, 
 which is always something. But then she is not 
 strong." 
 
 "Dr. Sanders says she has something of wiry 
 elasticity in her constitution, and may outgrow any 
 girlish delicacy, especially since it has been shown
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 271 
 
 that she received no permanent injury to her spine 
 when her horse threw her," replied Mrs. Stubbs. 
 " What I fear for her is the drifting away from 
 home ties and duties. I don't like that for a girl," 
 the speaker ended thoughtfully. 
 
 " And I should miss her terribly. For that mat- 
 ter we all should," remarked Pie dolefully. " But 
 perhaps it is selfish to think of that, and we must 
 learn to do without her, though it is a loss, and 
 Maidsmeadows will be duller than I ever knew it 
 before. We are so near, we have grown so intimate, 
 and, when she takes a thing up, she so throws her- 
 self into it, she is the life and soul of it. Still, if it 
 is for Harriet's good, if you think so," said Pie 
 reluctantly. 
 
 " Upon the whole I do think so," declared Mrs. 
 Stubbs with her usual emphasis. " I believe she is 
 right to go in the meantime. Her instinct is correct ; 
 it is more, it is considerate to her father and his wife 
 as well as just to herself. I must say I respect 
 Harriet Cotton for it. But do you know, Pie," 
 added Mrs. Stubbs with an effort, " Harriet does not 
 wish to go alone, naturally, poor girl ! she is very 
 anxious that your father and I should consent to 
 your accompanying her, and should make arrange- 
 ments for that purpose. She says that her father
 
 272 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 would be perfectly satisfied in that case, and she 
 would not ask anything better I suppose she means 
 as matters now stand." 
 
 Pie had been struck dumb ; at last she found a 
 voice. " I ! " she faltered. " I thought my education 
 was finished. I am not clever enough. You and 
 my father would miss me." 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs answered the last objection first in a 
 manner that warmed Pie's chilled heart and brought 
 tears to her bright young eyes. 
 
 " Yes, child, I am glad, for all our sakes, to say 
 that we should miss you a good deal more, if you 
 can fancy it, even than you would miss your friend 
 Harriet. But as you said just now, we must learn 
 to do without you, for a time, if it be for your 
 good." 
 
 " How can it be for my good to leave you and all 
 I ought to do here ? " protested Pie, ready to break 
 down. 
 
 " Now, don't be silly and self complacent, Pie ! " 
 Her mother pulled Pie up, feeling it necessary to 
 brace both herself and her daughter by a little 
 judicious sharpness. " You are not a baby, and we 
 are not in our dotage ; you are not going to the ends 
 of the earth, and the world will go on without you 
 for awhile even at Maids meadows. To tell the
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 273 
 
 truth, my dear," she said, softening again, " your 
 father and I have been talking it over, and we are 
 rather inclined to make the sacrifice ; for it will be a 
 sacrifice on our part you need not doubt that." 
 
 "But, mother," gasped Pie, "you have always 
 held that girls should stay at home and find their 
 work there." 
 
 Mrs. Stubbs nodded. " Yes ; I acknowledge I 
 have been tempted to ridicule the recent outcry 
 about higher education for women, ladies' colleges, 
 and so forth. I thought it was taking girls out of 
 their proper path in life out of the round of nat- 
 ural-obligations which are safest and sweetest and 
 surest for them in the end. I don't admit that I've 
 been altogether in the wrong. There was that 
 Brandon girl, going with her pink gloves, that 
 would disgust any sane creature but platform ladies. 
 Yet I can't pretend that she was unfeminine, while 
 she was certainly useful in her line ; and her sister 
 Emily was what Harry calls 'a trump.' No ; I don't 
 deny that I also learned something from the Bran- 
 dons." Mrs. Stubbs contradicted herself flatly 
 sooner than fail in candor. " And now that the op- 
 portunity is in my power, I am not certain that the 
 old situation of the fox and the grapes had not 
 something to do with my objections to the higher
 
 274 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 education of women, and to ladies' colleges all 
 along. Your father and I would grieve to deprive 
 you of any advantage we could procure for you. 
 Something in that girl Harriet Cotton, with all her 
 faults, has made me suspect that we ought not to 
 deny a girl, any more than a boy, a wider horizon 
 than that of her home and her parish good as 
 these are if she can command it. She had better 
 try her wings, at least." 
 
 Pie sat silent, too bewildered and overwhelmed 
 even to attempt to thank her mother because she 
 and Pie's father wished to do the best they could 
 for their daughter, no less than for their son. 
 
 " Besides, Pie," reasoned Mrs. Stubbs, " these are 
 anything but prosperous and settled times. One 
 never knows in what direction reverses and adver- 
 sity may not come. It is doubly one's duty to cul- 
 tivate every available resource, and have it at hand 
 if wanted. ' Can do is easily carried about with 
 you.' Even if the exercise of any particular gift is 
 never called for as a necessity, the more you know on 
 all subjects, Pie, the more complete your training, 
 the better you will do whatever falls to your lot in 
 life, though it may seem under totally different con- 
 ditions." 
 
 " But I am not clever like Harriet." Pie still
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 275 
 
 held back nervously from the chance offered her. 
 " I should not be able to pass an examination ; I 
 should disgrace myself, and you, and my father, and 
 Harry." 
 
 " Not at all, if you tried your best. There is such 
 a thing as an honorable defeat as well as a glor- 
 ious victory. Indeed the one ranks next to the 
 other. Nobody is entitled to expect you to put forth 
 powers which you do not possess. Your father and 
 I are not unreasonable tyrants, as Harry can bear 
 witness. However who can tell what you are able 
 to do till you try ? " 
 
 " Well, since you say so," said Pie excitedly, giv- 
 ing the reins to her imagination, " though I should 
 be awfully sorry to be much away from my father 
 and you, and Harry when he is here, and from 
 Maidsmeadows, for the next two or three years, I 
 should be very glad to be with Harriet. I should 
 be just as -proud as I was fit to be if I could learn 
 what she learned, and be fully equipped and equal 
 to anything that might befall us." 
 
 "What are you saying, Pie ? " inquired her father 
 as he entered the room and came and stood and 
 looked down upon her with shining yet softening 
 eyes. " Equal to anything that even to-morrow 
 may bring forth ! Have you forgotten Albert
 
 276 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Diirer's picture of the winged woman in her noble 
 sorrow over all the great learned inventions of her 
 day, which yet could not prevent one soul from 
 sinning or one heart from breaking? " 
 
 Pie sat rebuked. It was not often that her 
 father spoke like this, though all who knew him 
 well were aware that though his tongue jibed 
 sometimes, he was a man reverent and devout in the 
 depths of his spirit. 
 
 " Let us be thankful," he said, in the same quiet, 
 almost matter-of-fact tone ; " there is a way which 
 the wise king saw at last, and a greater than 
 Solomon made still plainer, the straight and narrow 
 way. Milton's virtuous young lady and Dryden's 
 'youngest virgin daughter of the skies' trod it 
 ' with Mary and with Ruth.' It only wants the 
 help of Heaven, which is infinitely better than all 
 philosophy, which is in fact divine philosophy 
 and may be had for the honest asking, to enable the 
 simplest lass to walk in without stumbling, like the 
 wayfaring man we read of in the Bible." 
 
 Harriet Cotton's half-desperate suggestion came 
 to pass. Pie had either modestly underrated her 
 abilities, or the entrance examination of the college 
 aimed at was less "stiff" than she had expected. 
 By dint of studying several hours a day all the 
 summer, stimulated by Harriet's company, often
 
 OIRL NEIOI1BOUS. 277 
 
 bestowed in the twin arbor, and aided by the liberal 
 assistance in the shape of efficient teachers which 
 Mr. Cotton insisted on lavishing on the candidates, 
 Pie, no less than Harriet, surmounted with credit 
 the entrance test. The girls were enrolled students 
 of the college, and set off together to dwell for a 
 season within its bounds, obey its rules, and, if pos- 
 sible, become mistresses of its treasures. 
 
 It was, as Mrs. Stubbs had said, a new career 
 which was opening for the pair, or to speak more 
 truly, as they understood their privileges, the girls 
 were obtaining entrance to an armory that would 
 furnish them with every variety of weapons, and 
 these weapons would qualify their bearers to do 
 double service, into what ever field of the world's 
 work they were called. 
 
 The munificence which had founded the college 
 had been well-nigh royal in its generosity. Every 
 provision, not only for the health and comfort, but 
 for the highest enjoyment of the students, had been 
 made. They were summoned to the diligent exer- 
 cise of their intellectual faculties; and the girl 
 graduates were also provided with a glorious abun- 
 dance of innocent, refreshing recreations. 
 
 It was like a dream of a palace of art, far grander 
 and more exquisite than a fairy palace, to wander
 
 278 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 through the cloisters, courts, and gardens, the libra- 
 ries, picture-galleries, and music rooms, the spacious 
 corriders and drawing-rooms, and return to the cozy 
 private studies and dainty bedrooms. There, if ever 
 students were to find peace and strength to bring their 
 brain fruit to perfection and to sleep soundly after the 
 worthy task was accomplished, the deed could be 
 done without cramming or forcing, without unspar- 
 ing toil or ungranted play, without injured physiques 
 or starved hearts. 
 
 Harriet and Pie made the inspection not only en- 
 tranced but humbled by the extent of the boon 
 granted to them. They looked with enthusiastic 
 admiration and respect at the great staff of teachers 
 some of them famous as well as gifted, and with 
 happy interest and expectation at the small crowd 
 of girls like themselves who were to be their fit and 
 intimate associates for years. Then the couple of 
 friends turned to each other and thought how those 
 at home would delight in their experience, and were 
 comforted in the middle of their home-sickness. 
 
 "It will put Harry on his mettle for the honor of 
 his old college," said Harriet. 
 
 " If we could but show ourselves not merelv grate- 
 
 v O 
 
 ful for these heaps of good things, but deserving of 
 them," murmured Pie,
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 279 
 
 " What women have done women may do," said 
 Harriet ; " that is what the founder says to us, and 
 we'll do our possible, as the French say, our very 
 best possible, sha'n't we, Pigeon ? " 
 
 And what became of Pie Stubbs and Harry Cot- 
 ton ? Did they fulfill their dreams in every respect? 
 Was the girls' stay at the great college as rich in 
 gain as they had hoped it would be ? 
 
 Yes, with the reservation that, like our stay in 
 the school of life, they did not learn some things 
 they had intended to learn, and they acquired much 
 which they had not thought of acquiring. Certainly 
 their career was honorable and happy, and they re- 
 turned to the world, as Mrs. Stubbs had predicted, 
 twice as well equipped for its work. 
 
 Pie was no longer at a loss for illustrations in her 
 village classes. Harry Cotton brought back with 
 her so many pursuits into which she not merely 
 dipped, but whose depths she had sounded and 
 would always delight to sound, that she ceased to 
 mind that there was another lady at the head of her 
 father's establishment. The fact was a relief to her 
 after she saw how well the second Mrs. Cotton was 
 cut out for the post, and how comfortable and happy 
 her husband was in her elderly companionship. It 
 was not that his Harry was less the light of his
 
 280 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 eyes, but she was no longer a burden on his mind, 
 and he was released from the obligation of supple- 
 menting her efforts at every point. He was proud 
 too, of her behavior toward her stepmother ; and 
 that excellent, mild-tempered lady was very proud 
 of it also, as soon as she got over the nervous ap- 
 prehension with which she had looked on Harry to 
 begin with. Harry herself was a little proud of the 
 manner in which she had dealt with a difficult re- 
 lationship. It needed only a little delicacy of health 
 on the part of Mrs. Cotton, and her occasional de- 
 pendence on her stepdaughter's good offices, to con- 
 vert the mutual good feeling into a sincere attach- 
 ment between the two. 
 
 But though Harry Cotton grew to have an honest 
 esteem and even a considerable fondness for her sup- 
 planter, there was not between them the close in- 
 timacy made up of strong respect and familiar 
 affection that can afford to play with the objects of 
 its regard, which existed between Harry Cotton and 
 Mrs. Stubbs. Why, the other Harry and Pie could 
 not use more freedom with the apparently despotic 
 and severe mistress of the cottage than Harry 
 Cotton could at all times. She was not Harry Cotton 
 always. There were two Harry Stulihscs, and yet, 
 marvelous to relate, there was somehow never any 
 confusion between them.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 281 
 
 Haderezer the second was not outdone by the 
 girls ; he took his degree with great credit. Then 
 he was spurred on to attempt still higher academic 
 flights, but his vaulting ambition had soared beyond 
 the range of his powers ; he failed by no means 
 ignobly but still he failed, and had to submit 
 to having his wings clipped. It was then that 
 beautiful, intellectual Harry Cotton stepped in 
 and comforted him not by teaching him to fly 
 higher, for in truth he had already outstripped 
 the girls, but by honoring his pluck and manliness 
 in defeat as Avell as in victory. 
 
 Pie might have married too, but it was not the 
 will of God. He who should have been her hus- 
 band was called to a higher service. But her life- 
 long love for him and her mourning for him, which 
 in time lost all its bitterness, were not waste and 
 loss. They lent to what might have been rectangu- 
 lar and cut and dry in Pie's conscientious, dutiful 
 nature, a certain tender grace, a breath of the at- 
 mosphere of another and a better world, which never 
 left her. Her happiness and her sorrow both, taught 
 her more forbearance and sympathy, together with 
 a goodness which is beyond rules and is a law unto 
 itself. She was the most faithful and devoted of 
 daughters; she was the dear friend of the two
 
 282 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 Harrys and their children, who would have laughed 
 to scorn the idea of eminently sensible, serenely 
 bright, unfailingly helpful Aunt Pie living too near 
 or coming too often to them. 
 
 Is there any one who supposes that the lady- 
 nurse and the lady -cook who had crossed the two 
 girls' paths to some purpose in their girlish days, 
 passed clean out of their lives and left no traces be- 
 hind them ? Does any one we have ever really 
 known come and go in such a fashion ? Are not 
 our histories made up of individual threads closely 
 interwoven, disapppearing for a time, possibly be- 
 cause of the exigencies of the main pattern, but 
 for the most part reappearing at the most unex- 
 pected times and places and blending once more in 
 the wonderful human fabric ? 
 
 It might seem on a cursory glance that Emily 
 Brandon and her sister Fanny did little for Pie 
 Stubbs and Harry Cotton, and had not much con- 
 cern with their history. Emily did not turn out to 
 be the daughter of a great nobleman, who took a 
 fancy to the girls and introduced them, for good 
 or evil, to the higher walks of society. Neither had 
 she, in the course of her hospital experiences, be- 
 come the recipient of family secrets in which the 
 Stubbses and the Cottons were vitally interested.
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 283 
 
 Fanny Brandon did not poison by mistake any 
 member of either of the families. She did not so 
 convey her culinary art to Pie that the latter, 
 practicing it for the benefit of a dyspeptic misan- 
 throphic millioniare, suddenly found herself invested 
 by him with his enormous fortune in return for 
 supplying him with a soup which he could digest 
 and a fricassee which left no arrierepensee. 
 
 But in the time of Pie's greatest need, when her 
 father and mother were gone before her and one more 
 who had belonged to another generation was gone, 
 when the two Harrys were unavoidably abroad, and 
 she was alone and desolate, Emily Brandon came 
 for her to work under her, at a pinch, as a volun- 
 teer in a great London hospital, and helped her 
 over the season of her sorest anguish, by calling 
 upon her to do what she could to relieve the misery 
 of her neighbors. 
 
 Years afterward Mrs. Harry Stubbs and Pie 
 were at the seaside together not a little anxious and 
 careworn for the husband and brother Harry. 
 There had been a long interval of bad trade, and 
 Mr. Cotton's firm, into which Harry Stubbs had 
 entered, of which he was now one of the principal 
 representatives, was compelled after half a century 
 of prosperity to struggle for its life in deep waters,
 
 284 OIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 and could barely keep its head above the adverse 
 flood. 
 
 The two women were striving to do their part in 
 sparing and saving. They had not even the heart 
 to spend what was justly theirs, and could not be 
 missed in the general call for ready money. At this 
 period of denying themselves lawful pleasures and 
 cutting down innocent outlay, the sisters they 
 always called themselves sisters in later years 
 chanced to come across Fanny Brandon, whose love- 
 letters they had been invited to read in former days, 
 at whose marriage they had been asked to act as 
 bridesmaids. Fanny was in full-blown prosperity, 
 able to maintain a cook at a wage we shall not men- 
 tion, who was not half such a native genius as her 
 mistress, and it was one of the mistress' few crosses 
 that she dared not contradict that very dignified 
 and important personage. The gentleman who had 
 permitted himself to write ''dearest" so many times 
 on one page of letter-paper, had been as successful 
 in business as if he had been the most reticent of 
 men in caressing terms. 
 
 At first both Harry and Pie had a half-mortified, 
 half-comical impression that the lady cook of old, 
 looked askance at their shabby frocks and jackets, 
 and did not care to acknowledge them as earlier ac-
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 285 
 
 quaintances. But they did her great wrong, or else 
 she thought better of it, for it is one thing not to 
 have any mind except on a single subject, and 
 another to be heartless. She was prepared to over- 
 whelm them with kindness. She put herself, her 
 servants, her carriages at their disposal. She in- 
 sisted on introducing them afresh to her husband, 
 become potent, and on carrying the latter to call on 
 Harry Stubbs when he joined his womankind. 
 Fagged and dispirited as Haderezer the second was, 
 he bore his troubles gallantly. He welcomed the 
 intruder hospitably. He declared that the rich man 
 whose epistolary offenses he had long ago forgotten, 
 was not half a bad fellow ; and Fanny Brandon's 
 husband on his part showed that she who had been 
 so often dearest as a maiden, was still dear as a wife, 
 dear enough for him to cultivate her friends. He had 
 so entirely overcome his jealousy of the heroes of her 
 dreams that he was not even jealous of her friends. 
 He made them his friends to the extent of inducing 
 Harry Stubbs to enter into business confidences 
 with him, when Fanny Brandon's husband was so 
 convinced of the mercantile and personal integrity 
 of the son of one of her old employers as to supply 
 him with a timely loan which proved the aid, at a 
 perilous crisis, that prevented the good old firm from.
 
 <<286 GIRL NEIGHBORS. 
 
 foundering. Harry Stubbs was not long in repay- 
 ing the loan, and he and his paid much more back 
 in heartfelt gratitude and lasting good-will. 
 
 No, none of us drift altogether apart from each 
 other, unless sheer selfishness cuts the cables. We 
 cease to hang together, simply because we are top- 
 heavy with our own affairs, in a fair way to be sub- 
 merged by them, so we can neither recall the absent 
 nor feel with the present. It was not thus with Pie 
 and the two Harrys. 
 
 THE END.
 
 THE FIRESIDE SERIES FOR GIRLS. 
 
 Uniform cloth binding. Price $ 1 .OO per copy. 
 
 A carefully selected series of books for girls written 
 by authors of acknowledged reputation. The stories 
 are deeply interesting in themselves, and have a moral 
 charm that emanates from the principal characters; 
 they teach without preaching, are of lively interest 
 throughout, and will wiu the hearts of all girl readers. 
 
 ESTHER. By ROSA NOUCHETTE CAKEY. Illustrated. Price, 
 
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 A WORLD OF GIRLS : The Story of a School. By L. T. 
 
 M^ADE. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, 
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 THE STORY OF A SHORT LIFE. By JULIANA HORATIO 
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 A SWEET GIRL GRADUATE. By L. T. MEADE. Illus- 
 trated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 OUR BESSIE. By ROSA NOUCHETTE CARET. Illustrated. 
 Price, $1.00. 
 
 SIX TO SIXTEEN : A Story for Girls. By JULIANA HORA- 
 TIO EWING. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST. By CHARLOTTE. 
 M. YONGE. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 GI ANN ETTA : A Girl's Story of Herself. By ROSA MUL- 
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 JAN OF THE WINDMILL : A Story of the Plains. By 
 JULIANA HORATIO EWING. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 AVERIL. By ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY. Illustrated. Price, 
 $1.00. 
 
 ALICE IN WONDERLAND AND ALICE THROUGH A 
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 CARROLL. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 MERLE'S CRUSADE. By ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY. Illus- 
 trated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 GIRL NEIGHBORS; or, The Old Fashion and the New. 
 By SARAH TYTLER. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 POLLY : A New Fashioned Girl. By L. T. MEADE. Illus- 
 trated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 AUNT DIANA. By ROSA N. CAREY. Illustrated. Price, $1.00. 
 
 For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of price, 
 by the publisher, A. L. HUKT, 6G Reade St., New lorfc,
 
 
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