Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/35

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CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 2..
 * SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1868.
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little child who was so long prayed for, and who came at last in answer to James Ashurst's fervent prayers, had nothing during her childhood to distinguish her from ordinary children. It is scarcely worthy of record that her mother had a hundred anecdotes illustrative of her precocity, of her difference from other infants, of certain peculiarities never before noticed in a child of tender years. All mothers say these things, whether they believe them or not, and Mrs. Ashurst, stretched on her sick couch, did believe them, and found in watching what she believed to be the abnormal gambols of her child, a certain relief from the constant dreary wearing pain which sapped her strength, and rendered her life void, and colourless, and unsatisfactory. James Ashurst believed them fervently; even if they had required a greater amount of credulity than that which he was blessed with, he, knowing it gave the greatest pleasure to his wife, would have stuck to the text that Marian was a wonderful, "really, he might say, a very wonderful, child." But he had never seen anything of childhood since his own, which he had forgotten, and the awakening of the commonest faculties in his daughter came upon him as extraordinary revelations of subtle character, which, when their possessor had arrived at years of maturity, would astonish the world. The Helmingham people did not subscribe to these opinions. Most of them had children of their own, who, they considered, were quite as eccentric, and odd, and peculiar as Marian Ashurst. "Not that I'm for 'lowin that to be pert and sassy one minute, and sittin' mumchance wi'out sa much as a word to throw at a dog the next, is quite manners," they would say among themselves, "but what's ye to expect? Poor Mrs. Ashurst layin' on the brode of her back, and little enough of that, poor thing, and that poor feckless creature, the schoolmaster, buzzed i' his 'ed wi' book larnin' and that! A pretty pair to bring up such a tyke as Miss Madge!"

That was in the very early days of her life. As the "tyke" grew up she dropped all outward signs of tykeishness, and seemed to be endeavouring to prove that eccentricity was the very last thing to be ascribed to her. The Misses Lewin, whose finishing school was renowned throughout the county, declared they had never had so quick or so hard-working a pupil as Miss Ashurst, or one who had done them so much credit in so short a time. The new rector of Helmingham declared that he should not have known how to get through his class and parish work, had it not been for the assistance which he had received from Miss Ashurst, at times when—when really—well, other young ladies would, without the slightest harm to themselves, be it said, have been enjoying themselves in the croquet-ground. When the wardrobe woman retired from the school to enter into the bonds of wedlock with the drill-sergeant (whose expansive chest and manly figure when going through the "exercise without clubs," might have softened Medusa herself), Marian Ashurst at once took upon herself the vacant situation, and resolutely refused to allow any one else to fill it. These may have been put down as eccentricities; they were evidences of odd character certainly not usually found in girls of Marian's age, but they were proofs of a spirit far above tykeishness. All her best