Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 2.pdf/129

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CONDUCTED BY ""
 * No. 32..
 * SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1869.
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lives of the two girls at Lady Caroline's were so completely happy, that they were induced to doubt whether they had ever really lived before. The difference between their racketty, disorderly, Bohemian existence while their father was alive, the pinched and poverty-stricken home which they shared with their mother until her death, and the refined comforts and luxuries which awaited them at their uncle's, was, of course, very great. But they were too young to feel it at the time, and they had come to look upon Woolgreaves as their home, and until Marian Ashurst entered upon it as its Mistress, as an epitome of everything that was charming. Lady Caroline's house was much smaller than Woolgreaves; her income, probably, was nothing like their uncle's; and yet about her house and her servants, her carriage, and everything she has, there was a stamp of refinement and of good taste, springing from high breeding, such as they had never witnessed, even under Mrs. Creswell's régime; and whatever other fault the girls found with Mrs. Creswell, they invariably allowed her the possession of good taste. And Lady Caroline herself was so different, so immeasurably superior to any woman they had ever seen. With the exception of Lady Churchill, they had known no one save the village people and the wives of the principal manufacturers at Brocksopp, who had been daughters of other principal manufacturers at Shuttleworth and Combcardingham, and might have been made in one mould, or punched out of one piece; and Lady Churchill was a stupid old woman in a brown front, who, as Gertrude knew, said "obleege," and "apurn" for apron, and "know-ledge," and nearly drove you mad by the way in which she stared at you and rubbed her nose with a knitting-needle, while you were attempting to find conversation for her. But, in the girls' eyes. Lady Caroline was perfection; and it would have been indeed odd had they not thought her so, as, for reasons best known to herself, she went in more determinedly to make herself agreeable to them than she had done to any one for some years previous.

One reason was that she liked the girls, and was agreeably disappointed in them; she had expected to find them provincial parvenues, thrown upon her by their quarrel with a person of similar position and disposition with themselves, and had found them quiet lady-like young women, unpretentious, unobtrusive, and thoroughly grateful to her for the home which she had offered them in their time of need. From the step which she had taken so chivalrously Lady Caroline never shrank, but she told the girls plainly, in the presence of Mr. Joyce, that she thought it highly desirable that the fact of their being there as her guests should be officially made known to Mr. Creswell, to whom every consideration was due. As to Mrs. Creswell, there was no necessity to acknowledge her in the matter; but Mr. Creswell was not merely their nearest blood relation, but, until adverse influences had been brought to bear upon him, he had proved himself their most excellent friend, and even at the last, so far as Lady Caroline could gather from Gertrude, had made some feeble kind of fight against their leaving