



Produced by Sandra Laythorpe






MAGNUM BONUM

or, Mother Carey's Brood

By Charlotte M. Yonge





LIST OF CONTENTS.


I. JOE BROWNLOW'S FANCY

II. THE CHICKENS

III. THE WHITE SLATE

IV. THE STRAY CHICKENS

V. BRAINS AND NO BRAINS

VI. ENCHANTED GROUND

VII. THE COLONEL'S CHICKENS

VIII. THE FOLLY

IX. FLIGHTS

X. ELLEN'S MAGNUM BONUMS

XI. UNDINE

XII. KING MIDAS

XIII. THE RIVAL HEIRESSES

XIV. PUMPING AWAY

XV. THE BELFOREST MAGNUM BONUM

XVI. POSSESSION

XVII. POPINJAY PARLOUR

XVIII. AN OFFER FOR MAGNUM BONUM

XIX. THE SNOWY WINDING-SHEET

XX. A RACE

XXI. AN ACT OF INDEPENDENCE

XXII. SHUTTING THE STABLE DOOR

XXIII. THE LOST TREASURE

XXIV. THE ANGEL MOUNTAIN

XXV. THE LAND OF AFTERNOON

XXVI. MOONSHINE

XXVII. BLUEBEARD'S CLOSET

XXVIII. THE TURN OF THE WHEEL

XXIX. FRIENDS AND UNFRIENDS

XXX. AS WEEL OFF AS AYE WAGGING

XXXI. SLACK TIDE

XXXII. THE COST

XXXIII. BITTER FAREWELLS

XXXIV. BLIGHTED BEINGS

XXXV. THE PHANTOM BLACKCOCK OF KILNAUGHT

XXXVI. OF NO CONSEQUENCE

XXXVII. THE TRAVELLER'S JOY

XXXVIII. THE TRUST FULFILLED

XXXIX. THE TRUANT

XL. EVIL OUT OF GOOD

XLI. GOOD OUT OF EVIL

XLII. DISENCHANTED





MAGNUM BONUM

OR, MOTHER CAREY'S BROOD




CHAPTER I.--JOE BROWNLOW'S FANCY.



     The lady said, "An orphan's fate
     Is sad and hard to bear."--Scott.


"Mother, you could do a great kindness."

"Well, Joe?"

"If you would have the little teacher at the Miss Heath's here for the
holidays. After all the rest, she has had the measles last and worst,
and they don't know what to do with her, for she came from the asylum
for officers' daughters, and has no home at all, and they must go away
to have the house purified. They can't take her with them, for their
sister has children, and she will have to roam from room to room before
the whitewashers, which is not what I should wish in the critical state
of chest left by measles."

"What is her name?"

"Allen. The cry was always for Miss Allen when the sick girls wanted to
be amused."

"Allen! I wonder if it can be the same child as the one Robert was
interested about. You don't remember, my dear. It was the year you were
at Vienna, when one of Robert's brother-officers died on the voyage out
to China, and he sent home urgent letters for me to canvass right and
left for the orphan's election. You know Robert writes much better than
he speaks, and I copied over and over again his account of the poor
young man to go with the cards. 'Caroline Otway Allen, aged seven years,
whole orphan, daughter of Captain Allen, l07th Regiment;' yes, that's
the way it ran."

"The year I was at Vienna, and Robert went out to China. That was eleven
years ago. She must be the very child, for she is only eighteen. They
sent her to Miss Heath's to grow a little older, for though she was at
the head of everything at the asylum, she looks so childish that they
can't send her out as a governess. Did you see her, mother?"

"Oh, no! I never had anything to do with her; but if she is daughter to
a friend of Robert's--"

Mother and son looked at each other in congratulation. Robert was the
stepson, older by several years, and was viewed as the representative of
sober common sense in the family. Joe and his mother did like to feel
a plan quite free from Robert's condemnation for enthusiasm or
impracticability, and it was not the worse for his influence, that he
had been generally with his regiment, and when visiting them was a good
deal at the United Service Club. He had lately married an heiress in a
small way, retired from the army, and settled in a house of hers in a
country town, and thus he could give his dicta with added weight.

Only a parent or elder brother would, however, have looked on "Joe" as
a youth, for he was some years over thirty, with a mingled air of
keenness, refinement, and alacrity about his slight but active form,
altogether with the air of some implement, not meant for ornament but
for use, and yet absolutely beautiful, through perfection of polish,
finish, applicability, and a sharpness never meant to wound, but
deserving to be cherished in a velvet case.

This case might be the pretty drawing-room, full of the choice artistic
curiosities of a man of cultivation, and presided over by his mother,
a woman of much the same bright, keen, alert sweetness of air and
countenance: still under sixty, and in perfect health and spirits--as
well she might be, having preserved, as well as deserved, the exclusive
devotion of her only child during all the years in which her early
widowhood had made them all in all to each other. Ten years ago, on his
election to a lectureship at one of the London hospitals, the son had
set up his name on the brass plate of the door of a comfortable house in
a once fashionable quarter of London; she had joined him there, and
they had been as happy as affection and fair success could make them.
He became lecturer at a hospital, did much for the poor, both within
and without its walls, and had besides a fair practice, both among the
tradespeople, and also among the literary, scientific, and artistic
world, where their society was valued as much as his skill. Mrs.
Brownlow was well used to being called on to do the many services
suggested by a kind heart in the course of a medical man's practice, and
there was very little within, or beyond, reason that she would not have
done at her Joe's bidding. So she made the arrangement, exciting much
gratitude in the heads of the Pomfret House Establishment for Young
Ladies; though without seeing little Miss Allen, till, from the Doctor's
own brougham, but escorted only by an elderly maid-servant, there came
climbing up the stairs a little heap of shawls and cloaks, surmounted by
a big brown mushroom hat.

"Very proper of Joe. He can't be too particular,--but such a child!"
thought Mrs. Brownlow as the mufflings disclosed a tiny creature,
angular in girlish sort, with an odd little narrow wedge of a face,
sallow and wan, rather too much of teeth and mouth, large greenish-hazel
eyes, and a forehead with a look of expansion, partly due to the crisp
waves of dark hair being as short as a boy's. The nose was well cut,
and each delicate nostril was quivering involuntarily with emotion--or
fright, or both.

Mrs. Brownlow kissed her, made her rest on the sofa, and talked to her,
the shy monosyllabic replies lengthening every time as the motherliness
drew forth a response, until, when conducted to the cheerful little room
which Mrs. Brownlow had carefully decked with little comforts for the
convalescent, and with the ornaments likely to please a girl's eye, she
suddenly broke into a little irrepressible cry of joy and delight. "Oh!
oh! how lovely! Am I to sleep here? Oh! it is just like the girls' rooms
I always _did_ long to see! Now I shall always be able to think about
it."

"My poor child, did you never even see such a room?"

"No; I slept in the attic with the maid at old Aunt Mary's, and always
in a cubicle after I went to the asylum. Some of the girls who went home
in the holidays used to describe such rooms to us, but they could never
have been so nice as this! Oh! oh! Mrs. Brownlow, real lilies of the
valley! Put there for me! Oh! you dear, delicious, pearly things! I
never saw one so close before!"

"Never before." That was the burthen of the song of the little bird with
wounded wing who had been received into this nest. She had the dimmest
remembrance of home or mother, something a little clearer of her sojourn
at her aunt's, though there the aunt had been an invalid who kept her in
restraint in her presence, and her pleasures had been in the kitchen and
in a few books, probably 'Don Quixote' and 'Evelina,' so far as could
be gathered from her recollection of them. The week her father had spent
with her, before his last voyage, had been the one vivid memory of her
life, and had taught her at least how to love. Poor child, that happy
week had had to serve her ever since, through eleven years of unbroken
school! Not that she pitied herself. Everybody had been kind to
her--governesses, masters, girls, and all. She had been happy and
successful, and had made numerous friends, about whom, as she grew more
at home, she freely chatted to Mrs. Brownlow, who was always ready to
hear of Mary Ogilvie and Clara Cartwright, and liked to draw out the
stories of the girl-world, in which it was plain that Caroline Allen had
been a bright, good, clever girl, getting on well, trusted and liked.
She had been half sorry to leave her dear old school, half glad to go
on to something new. She was evidently not so comfortable, while Miss
Heath's lowest teacher, as she had been while she was the asylum's
senior pupil. Yet when on Sunday evening the Doctor was summoned and the
ladies were left tete-a-tete, she laughed rather than complained. But
still she owned, with her black head on Mrs. Brownlow's lap, that she
had always craved for something--something, and she had found it now!

Everything was a fresh joy to her, every print on the walls, every
ornament on the brackets, seemed to speak to her eye and to her soul
both at once, and the sense of comfort and beauty and home, after the
bareness of school, seemed to charm her above all. "I always did want to
know what was inside people's windows," she said.

And in the same way it was a feast to her to get hold of "a real