“I SHOULD like to live here,” said Desirée, looking out of the window of the manse parlor, with a little sigh.
Katie Logan looked up at her with some little doubt. She had come by herself to the manse, in advance of Joanna, who had been detained to accompany her sister. The two girls had been invited some time before to “take tea” at the manse—and Desirée had been very curious and interested about her first visit to her white house on the hill. Now that she had accomplished it, however, it subdued her spirit a little, and gave the little Frenchwoman for once a considerable inclination to get “low,” and cry. The house and the room were very unlike any house she had ever known—yet they were so homelike that Desirée’s thoughts grew tender. And Katie Logan looked at her doubtfully. Desirée’s impulsive little heart had clung to Katie every time she saw her. She was so sweet and neat—so modest and natural—so unlike Patricia and Joanna, and all the womankind of that sloven house of Melmar. The girl, who had a mother and an elder sister, and was far from home, yearned to Katie—but the little mistress of the manse looked with doubt upon the French governess—principally, to tell the truth, because she was French, and Katie Logan, with all her good sense, was only a country girl, and had but a very, very small experience of any world beyond Kirkbride.
“Mamma came from this country,” said Desirée, again, softly. She had a letter in her pocket—rather a sentimental letter—from mamma, which perhaps a wiser person might have smiled at a little—but it made Desirée’s heart expand toward the places which mamma too had seen in her youth, and remembered still.
“Indeed! then you are a little bit Scotch, you are not all French,” said Katie, brightening a little; “is it very long since your mamma went away?—is she in France now? Is she likely to come back again?”
Desirée shook her head.
“I should like to be rich, and buy this house, and bring her here—I love this house,” cried the girl.
A little cloud came upon Katie’s face. She was jealous of any inference that some time or other the manse might change hands. She could not bear to think of that—principally because Katie had begun to find out with painful anxiety and fear, that her father was growing old, that he felt the opening chill of winter a great deal more than he used to do—and that the old people in the village shook their heads, and said to themselves that the minister was “failing” every time he passed their doors.
“This house can never be sold,” said Katie, briefly—even so briefly as though the words were rather hard to say.
“It is not like Melmar,” said Desirée. “I want the air and the sun to come into that great house—it can not breathe—and how the people breathe in it I do not know.”
“But they are very kind people,” said Katie, quickly.
Desirée lifted her black eyes and looked full at her—but Katie was working and did not meet the look.
“Joanna is fond of you,” said Desirée, “and I like her—and I am fond of the old lady whom they call Aunt Jean.”
This distinct summary of the amount of her affection for the household amused Katie, who was half afraid of a governess-complaint against her employers.
“Do you like to be so far from home?” she said.
“Like!” Desirée became suddenly vehement. “I should like to live with mamma—but,” cried the girl, “how could you ask me?—do not you know?”
“I have no mother,” said Katie, very quietly; “boys are always eager to leave home—girls might sometimes wish it too. Do you know Cosmo Livingstone, whom you saw in Edinburgh, has gone abroad for no reason at all that I know—and his brothers have both gone to work, and make their fortunes if they can—and my little brothers speak already of what they are going to do when they grow men—they will all go away.”
“In this country, people always talk of making fortunes. I should like to make a fortune too,” said Desirée, “but I do not know what to do.”
“Girls never make fortunes,” said Katie, with a smile.
“Why?” cried the little governess, “but I wish it—yes, very much—though I do not know how to do it; here I have just twenty pounds a year. What should you do if you had no papa, and had to work for yourself.”
Katie rose from her chair in trouble and excitement.
“Don’t speak so—you frighten me!” she cried, with an involuntary pang. “I have all the children. You do not understand it—you must not speak of that.”
“Of what?” asked Desirée, with a little astonishment. But she changed the subject with ready tact when she saw the painful color on Katie’s face. “I should like mamma to see you,” she said in a vein of perfectly natural and sincere flattery. “When I tell her what kind of people I live among, I do not speak of mademoiselle at Melmar, or even of Joanna—I tell her of you, and then she is happy—she thinks poor little Desirée is very well where she is with such as these.”
“I am afraid you are too good to me,” said Katie, with a half conscious laugh—“you don’t know me well enough yet—is it Patricia whom you call mademoiselle?”
Desirée shrugged her little shoulders slightly; she gave no other answer, but once more looked out from the window down the pretty brae of Tyne, where all the cottages were so much the clearer from the winterly brown aspect of the trees, stripped of their foliage. It was not like any other scene familiar to Desirée, still it did seem familiar to her—she could not tell how—as if she had known it all her life.
“Does Cosmo Livingstone, whom you spoke of, live near?” asked Desirée, “and will you tell me of his mother? Is she by herself, now that all her boys are gone?—is she a lady? Are they great people or are they poor? Joanna speaks of a great old castle, and I think I saw it from the road. They must be great people if they lived there.”
“They are not great people now,” said Katie, the color warming in her cheek—“yet the castle belonged to them once, and they were different. But they are good people still.”
“I should like to hear about them,” said Desirée, suddenly coming up to Katie, and sitting down on a stool by her feet. Katie Logan was slightly flattered, in spite of herself. She thought it very foolish, but she could not help it. Once more a lively crimson kindled in her cheek. She bent over her work with great earnestness, and never turned her eyes toward the questioning face of the girl.
“I could not describe the Mistress if I were to try all day,” said Katie at last, in a little burst, after having deliberated. Desirée looked up at her very steadily, with grave curiosity.
“And that is what I want most,” said the little Frenchwoman. “What! can you not tell if she has black eyes or blue ones, light hair or dark hair?—was she pretty before she grew old—and does she love her boys—and did her husband love her? I want to know all that.”
Desirée spoke in the tone of one who had received all these questions from another person, and who asked them with a point-blank quietness and gravity, for the satisfaction of some other curiosity than her own; but the investigation was half amusing, half irritating to Katie. She shook her head slightly, with a gesture expressing much the same sentiment as the movement of her hand, which drew away the skirts on which Desirée almost leaned. Her doubt changed into a more positive feeling. Katie rather feared Desirée was about to fulfill all her unfavorable anticipations as to the quality of French governesses.
“Don’t go away,” said Desirée, laying her little white hand upon the dress which Katie withdrew from her touch. “I like to sit by you—I like to be near you—and I want to hear; not for me. Tell me only what you please, but let me sit here till Joanna comes.”
There was a little pause. Katie was moved slightly, but did not know what to say, and Desirée, too, sat silent, whether waiting for her answer or thinking, Katie could not tell. At last she spoke again with emotion, grasping Katie’s dress.
“I like Joanna,” said Desirée, with tears upon her eyelashes—“but I am older than she is—a great deal older—and no one else cares for me. You do not care for me—it is not likely; but let me sit here and forget all that house and every thing till Joanna comes. Ah, let me! I am far away from home—I am a little beggar girl, begging at your window—not for crumbs, or for sous, but for love. I am so lonely. I do not think of it always—but I have thought so long and so often of coming here.”
“You must come oftener then,” said Katie, who, unused to any demonstration, did not quite know what to say.
“I can not come often,” said Desirée, softly, “but let me sit by you and forget all the others—only for a very, very little time—only till Joanna comes. Ah, she is here!”
And the little Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders, and ran to the window to look out, and came back with a swift gliding motion to take Katie’s hand out of her work and kiss it. Katie was surprised, startled, moved. She did not half understand it, and she blushed, though the lips which touched her hand were only those of a girl; but almost before she could speak, Desirée had sprung up again, and stood before her with a smile, winking her pretty long eyelashes to clear them of those wayward April tears. She was very pretty, very young, with her little foreign graces. Katie did not understand the rapid little girl, who darted from one thought to another, so quickly, yet with such evident truthfulness—but her heart was touched and surprised. Joanna came in immediately, to put an end to any further confidences. Joanna, loudly indignant at Patricia’s selfishness, and making most audible and uncompromising comparisons between Melmar and the manse, which Desirée skillfully diverted, soothed, and gradually reduced to silence, to Katie’s much amazement. On the whole, it was a very pleasant little tea-party to everybody concerned; but Katie Logan, when she stood at the door in the clear frosty moonlight, looking after her young guests, driving away in the double gig which had been sent for them, still doubted and wondered about Desirée, though with a kindly instead of an unfavorable sentiment. What could the capricious little foreigner mean, for instance, by such close questions about Norlaw?