



Produced by Al Haines








[Illustration: Cover art]




[Frontispiece: _THE TWO MAIDEN AUNTS._]





TWO MAIDEN AUNTS


BY

MARY H. DEBENHAM



AUTHOR OF 'MISTRESS PHIL' 'A LITTLE CANDLE ETC.


_WITH TWO FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS_

_BY GERTRUDE D. HAMMOND_




LONDON

NATIONAL SOCIETY'S REPOSITORY

BROAD SANCTUARY, WESTMINSTER

NEW YORK: THOMAS WHITTAKER, 2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE


[All rights reserved]


1895




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_


  THE MAVIS AND THE MERLIN.  Price 2s.
  MY GOD-DAUGHTER.  Price 2s.
  MOOR AND MOSS.  Price 2s. 6d.
  FOR KING AND HOME.  Price 2s. 6d.
  MISTRESS PHIL.  Price 2s.
  A LITTLE CANDLE.  Price 3s. 6d.
  FAIRMEADOWS FARM.  Price 2s.
  ST. HELEN'S WELL.  Price 2s.


NATIONAL SOCIETY'S DEPOSITORY,

SANCTUARY, WESTMINSTER. S.W.




[Illustration: Contents headpiece]


CONTENTS


CHAPTER

    I.  THE AUNTS
   II.  THE NEPHEW
  III.  THE FIRST DAY
   IV.  A HEART OF OAK
    V.  THE WRONG END
   VI.  CHRISTMAS AT OAKFIELD
  VII.  HERO AND HEROINES
 VIII.  IN THE CHANNEL
   IX.  IN PORT


[Illustration: Contents tailpiece]




[Illustration: Illustrations headpiece]


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE TWO MAIDEN AUNTS................ (_Frontispiece_)

'WHAT USEFUL THINGS SHALL I DO,' HE ASKED (missing from book)


[Illustration: Illustrations tailpiece]




[Illustration: Chapter I headpiece]




TWO MAIDEN AUNTS


CHAPTER I

THE AUNTS

'Child, be mother to this child.'--E. B. BROWNING.


It was seven o'clock on an autumn morning nearly a hundred years ago.
A misty October morning, when the meadows looked grey with the heavy
dew, and the sky was only just beginning to show pale blue through the
haze which veiled it.

There was a certain little hamlet, just a few cottages clustered
together beside a country road, where the world seemed hardly yet
awake.  The road ran across a wide common, where the cows and horses
and geese wandered about pretty much as they chose, and the
blackberries grew as they grow only on waste ground.  The blackberry
season was pretty nearly over, and the damp had taken the taste out of
those which the village children had left, but the dewy nights were
still warm enough to bring up the mushrooms like fairy tables in all
directions, and there was at least one gatherer from the village who
had been astir an hour ago, for the common was a well-known mushroom
ground, and early birds had the best chance.  He was coming back now
with a goodly basketful, shaking showers of dew off the grass at every
step and leaving a track of footmarks behind him.  Through the mist he
looked a sort of giant, but he was only a tall, sturdy lad of
seventeen, in a fustian jacket and the wide hat which countrymen used
to wear in the days of our grandfathers.  He turned off the common
before he reached the village and went down a little lane, at the end
of which stood a small gabled house, in a garden where the autumn
flowers hung their heads under the heavy dew.  There was a paddock
behind the house where a cow was feeding, and a gate led through a yard
to the back door, and thither the boy was turning when he noticed a
little girl in homespun frock and sun-bonnet leaning over the garden
gate, looking up rather wistfully at the shuttered windows of the
house.  She gave a great start as the boy came behind her and laid his
hand suddenly on her shoulder.

'Now then, Nance,' he said severely, 'what are you about, disturbing
the place at this time in the morning?'

The little girl shook his hand off with an impatient shrug.

'What be you about, Pete, starting me like that?  I'm not doing nothing
nor disturbing nobody.  I can look at the cottage, I suppose, without
you to call me up for it?'

'Mother'll be fine and angry when she hears what you've been at,' said
the boy, 'peeping and prying on the young ladies, and them in trouble.'

Nancy put up her pretty lip with the injured look of a spoilt child.
'I'm not peeping nor prying nor hurting nobody, and, if I am, what are
you doing, I should like to know?'  Then, as she noticed his basket,
she clapped her hands with a little triumphant laugh.

'I know what 'tis you're after,' she cried; 'you've been off and got
them mushrooms, and you've brought them for the young ladies so as you
can see Penny or maybe Miss Betty herself, and hear whether it's really
true.  And haven't I got some eggs, my own hen's eggs, here for them,
and only just waiting till they open the shutters to take them in?'

'Well, why don't you go round to the back door, as is the proper place
for you,' said the stern elder brother, 'instead of staring at
gentlefolks' houses like a great gawky?'

'Well, come to that, I know which is the biggest gawky of us two,' said
pert little Nance; 'and, if you must know, I was just waiting for the
chance of Miss Betty coming down, seeing Penny might be in one of her
tantrums and not tell me a word.'  Then, as the front door of the house
suddenly opened, she exclaimed, joyously,

'Look, if she isn't there,' and was darting in at the gate, when her
brother caught her and held her back.  'Come away, will you, ye
interfering little hussy!' he was beginning hastily, when the girl who
had opened the door caught sight of the two and came down the garden
path towards them.  Spoilt Nancy shook herself free, and with a
triumphant glance at her big brother she ran to meet the young lady,
and Peter could do nothing but follow her; and, indeed, if the truth
must be told, he was not at all sorry to do it, and, perhaps, just a
little grateful to naughty Nancy for showing the way.

The early riser from the cottage was a girl of thirteen, a very pretty
little girl, with a fair, fresh face, sunshiny hazel eyes, and hair of
that golden brown colour which the bracken wears in autumn.  She seemed
to have dressed in rather a hurry, for her long black frock was not
quite perfectly fastened, the muslin scarf round her shoulders was just
a little crooked, and the black ribbon which tied the bright hair had
not managed to catch it all, so that a few curly locks came tumbling
out at the side.  She had shut the house door very quietly, and she
held up her finger for a sign of silence as she came down the path; and
Nancy, who had started off running to meet her, stopped as if a sudden
feeling of shyness had come over her, a feeling, it must be owned,
which didn't often trouble Nancy, certainly not towards Miss Betty
Wyndham, whom she had known ever since she could remember.  But then
she had never seen Miss Betty look quite like this before, in her black
frock and with such a grave look in her merry eyes, a look that was
rather sad, and yet, perhaps, more serious than sad, and that somehow
made Nancy stop and curtsey and Peter pull off his hat with that sort
of shy respect which the most careless among us must pay to a fresh
sorrow or loss.  But, in spite of her grave look, Miss Betty seemed
very pleased to see them.

'Good morning, Pete; good morning, Nancy,' she said.  'How kind of you
to come so early!  Did you guess I should be down?'

'I thought maybe you would, miss,' said Nancy, 'only the shutters being
up I thought you must be asleep still.'

'I dressed in the dark,' said Miss Betty, giving her scarf a little tug
which didn't straighten it much, 'because I didn't want to wake Angel.
Poor Angel, she was so late coming to bed last night; I'd been asleep
ever so long and woken up again while she was talking to Penny.'

And then she stopped and looked from one to the other with a
questioning look in her eyes.

'You know, don't you?' she said at last; 'you've heard about the sad
thing that's happened?'

For once in a way Nancy left her brother to answer.

'We haven't heard nothing for certain, Miss Betty,' he said, 'only
people talked, and we knew Penny had gone to fetch you home; but father
said we weren't to say nothing till we knew for certain.'

'It's quite true,' said Miss Betty gravely,' quite dreadfully true,
Pete.  Our brother, Mr. Bernard, has been killed in the West Indies,
and we are very poor now; we have left school and come home to live.'

I fear that the last piece of news so much did away with the sadness of
the first that Nancy's face broadened into a delighted smile, and she
only just cut short an exclamation of joy.  Luckily Miss Betty was not
looking at her, and she saw Peter's frown and felt a little ashamed of
herself.

'I want to tell you everything,' Miss Betty went on; 'it was very nice
of your father not to want people to talk, but now we should like every
one to know because we are very proud of my brother, and we want our
friends to be.  Will you come into the arbour and I'll tell you?' and
she led the way across the garden while Peter and Nancy followed
willingly enough.  The arbour was that sort of bower which we see in
old-fashioned pictures and sing about in old songs.  There had been
roses climbing over it all the summer, and a few blossoms hung there
still, pale and fragrant, among a tangle of clematis and everlasting
peas.  On the little grass plot just outside the arbour there was a
stone figure, not like the nymphs and Cupids and water-carriers which
we find in trim old-fashioned gardens and stately pleasure grounds, but
the chipped worn figure of a lady, lying with folded hands and a quaint
head-dress and straight falling hair.  No one quite knew where that
statue came from, except that it must have lain once upon a tomb in
some church or monastery chapel, and in evil days, when men had
forgotten their reverence for holy ground and the quiet dead, the tomb
must have been destroyed, and the figure defaced and thrown out as
rubbish.  Then some one later on had brought her to the cottage and set
her up as an ornament to the garden, leaning against a tree, and
looking very strange and uncomfortable.  When Betty and her