NEXT day that change upon Sarah’s whole appearance continued, and throughout the whole week. She was like herself once more. Carson made no more stealthy expeditions out of doors before my sister set out on her drive. Sarah did not stir in her chair and eye me desperately when the door opened. She even seemed to fall deaf again with that old, soft, slight hardness of hearing which I used to suspect in her. There was no pressure on her heart to startle her ears.

While I in the meantime tried my best to think nothing about it, tried to turn a blank face towards what might happen, and to take the days as they came. I have not come to be fifty without having troubles in plenty. For the last dozen years, to be sure, there had been only common embarrassments. The fewer people one has to love, the fewer pleasures and joys are possible, the less grow our sorrows. It is cold comfort, but it is a fact notwithstanding. Grief and delight go hand in hand in full lives; when we are stinted down into a corner both fall off. We suffer less, we enjoy less; we suffer nothing, we enjoy nothing in time, only common pricks and vexations, which send no thrill to the slumbering heart. So we had been living for years; happy enough, nothing to disturb us; or not happy at all, if you choose to take that view of the subject; true either way. Not such a thing as real emotion lighting upon our house, only secondary feelings; no love to speak of, but kindness; no joy, but occasional pleasure; no grief, but sometimes regret. A very composed life, which had been broken in upon quite suddenly by a bewildering shadow,—tragic fear, doubt, alarm,—sudden mystery no ways explainable, or madness explainable but hopeless. In this pause of dismay and doubt, while the dark, unknown, inexplicable figure had turned away from the door a little, it was hard to turn from its fascination and go quietly back to that quiet life.

Little Sara Cresswell came much about me in the library in those days; she interested herself in my business much; she{144} tried to interfere with my work and help me, as the kitten called it. All the outlays on the estate, the works that were going on, the improvements I loved to set a-going—which did not all come to anything,—and the failures, of which to be sure there were plenty—pleased the impatient creature mightily. I was considered rather speculative and fanciful among the Cheshire squires; they did not approve of my goings on; they thought me a public nuisance for preserving no game, and making a fuss about cottages. But I am sorry to say little Sara did not agree with the squires. She thought my small bits of improvements very slow affairs indeed; she grew indignant at my stinginess and contracted ideas. She thought any little I did were just preliminary attempts not worth mentioning. When was I to begin the work in earnest she wanted to know?

“What work, Sara?”

“What work? Why, here are you, godmamma, an old lady—you will never grow any wiser or any better than you are,” cried the intolerable child. “You can’t get any more good out of all that belongs to the Park than just your nice little dinners, and teas, and the carriage, and the servants, and, perhaps, half-a-dozen dresses in the year,—though I do believe three would be nearer true,—and to keep all these farms, and fields, and meadows, and orchards, and things, all for godmamma Sarah and you! Don’t you feel frightened sometimes when you wake up suddenly at night?”

“You saucy little puss!—why?” cried I.

“To think of the poor,” said Sara, with a solemn look. She held herself straight up, and looked quite dignified as she turned her reproving eyes on me. “Quantities of families without any homes, quantities of little children growing up worse than your pigs, godmamma, quantities of people starving, and living, and crowding, and quarrelling in black streets not as broad as this room, with courts off from them, like those horrid, frightful places in Liverpool. While out here you are living in your big rooms, in your big house, with the green park all round and round you, and farmers, and gardeners, and cottagers, and servants, and all sorts of people, working to make you comfortable; with more money than you know what to do with, and everything belonging to yourself, and nobody to interfere with you. And why have you any right to it more than them?”

Little Sara’s figure swelled out, and her dark eyes shone bright as she was speaking. It took away my breath. “Are you a Chartist, child?” I cried.{145}

“I think I am a Socialist,” said Sara, very composedly; “but I don’t quite know. I think we should all go shares. I have told you so a dozen times, godmamma. Suppose papa has twelve hundred a year,—I do believe he has a great deal more,—isn’t it dreadful? and all, not out of the ground like yours, but from worrying people into lawsuits and getting them into trouble. Well, suppose it was all divided among a dozen families, a hundred a year. People can live very comfortably, I assure you, godmamma, upon a hundred a year.”

“Who told you, child?” said I.

“The curate has only eighty,” said Sara; “his wife dresses the baby and makes all its things herself, and they have very comfortable little dinners. The window in my old nursery—the end window you know—just overlooks their little parlour. They look so snug and comfortable when the baby is good. To be sure it must be a bore taking one’s dinner with the baby in one’s lap; and I am sure she is always in a fright about visitors coming. I think it would be quite delightful to give them one of papa’s hundreds a year.”

“In addition to their eighty?” said I. “Why, then, there is an end of going shares.”

Sara coughed and stammered for a moment over this, quite at ............