Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 125.djvu/458

444 he sighed again — "I was born with a bad French accent, and without a single tooth in my head, or out of it, while such was my weakness, that it took two strong men, both masters of arts, to drag me through the rudiments of the Latin grammar."

Anastasia's eyes filled with tears. It seemed so sad; the tender little heart had not gone yet into the question of seeming.

"They teached you the Latin grammar, did they?" said Bertram, who had also been listening, and was relieved to hear of something in this list of miseries that he could understand. "That's what Miss Crampton teaches me. I don't like it, and you didn't either, then. I'm six and three quarters; how old were you?"

Before Valentine had answered, John and Brandon, finding themselves before the party, had stopped and turned. Brandon was surprised to see how earnestly the two elder children, while he talked, had been looking at him, and then at their father and Valentine. At last, when this pause occurred, and the two groups met, Janie said —

"I am sure papa is a great deal prettier than Mr. Brandon, and cousin Val looks quite ugly beside him."

"Yes, Janie," said Bertram, with an air of high satisfaction, "papa's much more beautiful than either of the others.

"I shall ask Miss Crampton when I go in if she doesn't think so. You would like to know, what she thinks, wouldn't you, father?"

John had opened his mouth to say no, when his better sense coming to his aid, he forbore to speak. For this lady taught his children to perfection, but his friends always would insist that she wanted to teach him too — something that he wouldn't learn.

Aunt Christie, his constant friend and champion, presently spoke for him.

"No, children," she said, as soon as she had composed her voice to a due gravity, "it's natural ye should admire your father, good children generally do, but, now, if I were you, I would never tell anybody at all, not even Miss Crampton — do ye hear me, all of you? I would never tell anybody your opinion of him. If ye do, they will certainly think ye highly conceited, for ye know quite well that people say you four little ones are just as exactly like him as ye can be."

The children were evidently impressed.

"In fact," said Valentine, "now I take a good look at him, I should say that you are even more like him than he is himself — but — I may be mistaken."

"I won't say it then," said Bertram, now quite convinced.

"And I won't, and I won't," added others, as they ran forward to open a gate.

"Cheer up, John," said St. George, "let us not see so much beauty and virtue cast down. There's Miss Crampton looking out of the schoolroom window."

But though he laughed he did not deceive John Mortimer, who knew as well as possible that the loss of Dorothea Graham pressed heavily on his heart.

"You two are going to dine with me, of course," he said, when all the party had passed into the wilderness beyond his garden.

"On the contrary, with your leave," answered Valentine, "we are going to take a lesson of Swan in the art of budding roses. We cannot manage it to our minds. We dined early."

"And I suppose you will agree with Val," observed Brandon, " that a rose-garden is one of the necessaries of life."

"Dorothea must have one, must she, out in New Zealand? Well, Swan will be proud to teach you anything he knows or doesn't know, and he will give you an opinion if you ask it on any subject whatever."

Accordingly John went into the house to dine, and perhaps it was in consequence of this assertion that the two young men asked their old friend's opinion on various points not at all in his line. Valentine even told him that his brother intended to write a book, and asked him what he thought it had better be about; whereupon Swan, while deftly shaping his bud, shook his head gravely, and said that wanted a deal of thinking over.

"But if I was you, sir," he continued, speaking to Brandon, "I should get Mr. Mortimer — Mr. John — to help you, specially if there's going to be any foreign talk in it. My word, I don't believe there's any language going that Mr. Mortimer can't lay his tongue to!"

 

 From The Pall Mall Gazette.

the annual meetings of the shareholders in Paris, the actual financial position and prospects of 