Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/36

 friends, except of course the members of her family, whose views regarding her were naturally extremely circumscribed, noticed in the girl an exceedingly great desire for the acquisition of knowledge, a power of industry and application quite unusual, an extraordinary devotion to anything she undertook, which suffered itself to be turned away by no temptation, to be wearied by no fatigue. Always eager to help in any scheme, always bright-eyed and clear-headed and keen-witted, never unduly asserting herself, but always having her own way while persuading her interlocutors that she was following their dictates, the odd shy child grew up into a girl less shy indeed, but scarcely less odd. And certainly not loveable; those who fought her battles most strongly—and even in that secluded village there were social and domestic battles, strong internecine warfare, carried on with as much rancour as in the great city itself—were compelled to admit there was "a something" in her which they disliked, and which occasionally was eminently repulsive.

This something had developed itself strongly in the character of the child, before she emerged into girlhood, and though it remained vague as to definition, while distinct as to impression in the minds of others, Marian herself understood it perfectly, and could have told any one, had she chosen, what it was that made her unlike the other children, apart from her being brighter and smarter than they, a difference which she also perfectly understood. She would have said, "I am very fond of money, and the others are not; they are content to have food and clothes, but I like to see the money that is paid for them, and to have some of it, all for myself, and to heap it up and look at it, and I am not satisfied as they are, when they have what they want—I want better things, nicer food, and smarter clothes, and more than them, the money. I don't say so, because I know papa hasn't got it, and so he cannot give it to me, but I wish he could. There is no use talking and grumbling about things we cannot have; people laugh at you, and are glad you are so foolish when you do that, so I say nothing about it, but I wish I was rich."

Marian would have made some such answer to any one who should have endeavoured to get at her mind to find out what that was lurking there, never clearly seen, but always plainly felt, which made her "old fashioned," in other than the pathetic and interesting sense in which that expression has come to be used with reference to children, before she had entered upon her teens.

A clever mother would have found out this grave and ominous component of the child's character—would have interpreted the absence of the thoughtless extravagance, so charming, if sometimes so trying, of childhood—would have been quick to have noticed that Marian asked, "What will it cost?" and gravely entered into mental calculation on occasions when other children would have demanded the purchase of a coveted article clamorously, and shrieked if it were refused. But Mrs. Ashurst was not a clever mother, she was only a loving, indulgent, rather helpless one, and the little Marian's careful ways were such a practical comfort to her, while the child was young, that it never occurred to her to investigate their origin, to ask whether such a very desirable and fortunate effect could by possibility have a reprehensible, dangerous, insidious cause. Marian never wasted her pennies, Marian never spoiled her frocks, Marian never lost or broke anything ; all these exceptional virtues Mrs. Ashurst carefully noted and treasured in the storehouse of her memory. What she did not notice was, that Marian never gave anything away, never voluntarily shared any of her little possessions with her playfellows, and, when directed to do so, complied with a reluctance which all her pride, all her brave dread of the appearance of being coerced, hardly enabled her to subdue, and suffered afterwards in an unchildlike way. What she did not observe was, that Marian was not to be taken in by glitter and show; that she preferred, from the early days in which her power of exhibiting her preference was limited by the extent of the choice which the toy-merchant—who combined hardbake and hairdressing with ministering to the pleasures of infancy—afforded within the sum of sixpence. If Marian took any one into her confidence, or asked advice on such solemn occasions—generally ensuing on a protracted hoarding of the coin in question—it would not be by the questions, "Is it the prettiest?" "Is it the nicest?" but, "Do you think it is worth sixpence?" and the child would look from the toy to the money, held closely in the shut palm of her chubby hand, with a perturbed countenance, in which the pleasure of the acquisition was almost neutralised by the pain of the payment—a countenance