Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/135

 on the felicitous condition which rendered it easy to indulge such impulses. Here was another instance, and in her favour, of the value of money.

"It has made more than one difference to me," she thought that night, when she was alone, and looked round the dismantled study; "it has made me like old Mr. Creswell, and hitherto I have only envied him."

"Do be persuaded, dear Mrs. Ashurst," said Maud Creswell, in a tone of sincere and earnest entreaty. She had made her appearance at the widow's house early on the day which succeeded her uncle's visit, and had presented, in her own and in her sister's name, as well as in that of Mr. Creswell, a petition, which she was now backing up with much energy. "Do come and stay with us. We are not going to have any company; there shall be nothing that you can possibly dislike. And Gerty and I will not tease you or Miss Ashurst; and you shall not be worried by Tom or anything. Do come, dear, dear Mrs. Ashurst; never mind the nasty lodgings; they can go on getting properly aired, and cleaned, and so on, until you are tired of Woolgreaves, and then you can go to them at any time. But not from your own house, where you have been so long, into that little place, in a street, too. Say you will come, now do."

Mrs. Ashurst was surprised and pleased. She recognised the girl's frank affection for her; she knew the generous kindness of heart which made her so eager to do her uncle's bidding, and secure a long visit to the splendid home he had given his nieces, to those desolate women. Nothing but a base mean order of pride could have revolted against the offer so made, and so pressed. Mrs. Ashurst yielded, and Maud Creswell returned to her uncle in high delight to announce that she had been successful in the object of her embassy.

"How delightful it will be to have the dear old lady here, Gerty," said Maud to her sister. "The more I see of her the better I like her, and I mean to be so kind and attentive to her. I think Miss Ashurst is too grave, and she always seems so busy and preoccupied: I don't think she can rouse her mother's spirits much."

"No, I think not," said Gertrude. "I like the old lady very much too; but I don't quite know about Miss Ashurst; I think the more I see of her, the less I seem to know her. You must not leave her altogether to me, Maud. I wonder why one feels so strange with her? Heigh-ho!" said the girl with a comical look, and a shake of her pretty head, "I suppose it's because she's so superior."

On the following day, Mrs. Ashurst and Marian took leave of their old home, and were conveyed in one of Mr. Creswell's carriages to Woolgreaves.

pearls have again come into fashion. The revival of the public taste in their favour may be attributed, partly to the recent failure of the Manaar fisheries in Ceylon, partly to the cheapness of the western gem, and in some measure, perhaps, to the fact that large quantities of Scottish pearls have been purchased by Queen Victoria and the Empress Eugenie. Some fifteen years ago, these pearls were scarce and lightly esteemed; but, owing to the exertions of a German merchant, and the care taken by him to select and exhibit the best specimens, the trade, which had languished for about a century, has very largely revived, and is now recognised as a legitimate branch of the business of the dealer in precious stones.

People are so much accustomed, when pearls are spoken of, to picture to themselves the Persian Gulf and its swart eastern divers, that they rarely think of the produce of their own shores, or imagine that the fine, delicate, pink-hued treasures which they admire in the windows of the jewellers, have been fished up out of their own native rivers. And yet this is not only so; but the practice of wading in the streams to fish for the mussels containing the pearl, dates back almost to antiquity. Long before the jeweller's art had become so common as to place ornaments for bodily decoration within reach of the multitude, pearls of great size and beauty were to be found in Scotland, in the possession of the humble, who, though they could not fail to admire them, were quite ignorant of their value. Rather more than a century ago, some artist, cunning in the detection of precious stones, proclaimed their worth, and a brisk trade in pearls sprang up between the bleak north of Scotland and the wealthy marts of the English metropolis. The fishing was confined to Perthshire and one or two counties beyond the Grampians; but the chief seat of the industry was at the head waters of the river Tay.

For a time the dwellers on the banks of the Tay were zealous, and pearls worth thousands of pounds were sent up to the London jewellers; but for a hundred years—between 1761 and 1861—either from lack of zeal on the part of the fishers, or from a falling off in the supply of the shell-fish, the fisheries were allowed to fall into disuse. During that long interval, Scotch pearls, which had before been plentiful, were only to be found in certain