"GROWING UP." CHAPTER I. THEY ARE AT HOME. "THE mail has come in, children. They have sent up papa's bag. And here is a letter from Little Dene." "What does that nasty cross Aunt Carly say, then?" Mrs Casserly smiled. "See, dearie," she said, "the letter is still closed. I know you always like to know all you can about Aunt Carly, so I brought it to read it aloud.” "I would rather nurse my doll, mamma," said the elder of the lady's two little girls. "Go up, dolly," she went on. "I'll sing what mamma used to sing to little Bee there, when Bee was a baby and mamma dressed her. One little footie, up on mammy's breast, There, mamma! You see how my dolly walked up me, and walked down again; a clever little dolly, she was! that she was !"—when dolly had two or three kisses, and a good hug-" and I'm sure that's a great deal better than hearing anything about old Aunt Carly!" "Yes, mamma," cried the other little girl, "and I shall nurse my dolly, and sing some songs to it, like Leonora does. Only they are your songs, you know, that you used to sing to me myself; the word dolly just changed to baby, that's all, to fit. Chick chicky, chick chup, Chick chicky, chick chin, Come, dolly, wake up ! -when Beatrice, to be quite certain her dolly shouldn't sleep any longer, caught it up out of its little cradle, and threw it to the other end of the room. “Oh, very well,” said Mrs Casserly, "then I shall read the letter all to myself, that is all. I shall begin at the envelope; here it is; 'Mrs Casserly, Golden Edge, Blue Mountain View, St Catherine's, Jamaica ;' and I shall go all through. You don't want the postage stamp, of course?" "But, yes, mamma, we do!" cried both her little daughters, at once. "We want all the English things we can get! All English things are nice, because you are English, mamma! And you are so very, very nice!" "And isn't Aunt Carly English ?" "Yes, mamma," said Leonora. Only when you were a little tiny little girl no bigger than Bee here, and you were left in her care, she shouldn't have been cross to you!" "And yes, mamma," said Beatrice, "and when you grew a little bigger, as big as Lee here,"--Lee was the short for Leonora; Mrs Casserly's two little daughters were always Lee and Bee to one another," and when you grew bigger still, she shouldn't have kept on being cross for ever!" "Well," said Mrs Casserly, "perhaps I was naughty like you two, and threw my doll about, and was not polite enough to listen to what people brought to me." "Oh no, mamma!" cried Lee and Bee, speaking both together again. "You never were naughty in all your life! Never! never! You are our own, own, own dear mamma! As the little girls had sprung to their mother and were kissing her, giving her a kiss for almost every word they spoke, she took the opportunity of letting them know they must keep their places beside her quietly; and drawing the letter from its envelope, she began to read it. There was a great deal in it about Little Dene itself, which was a very pretty country house, just outside Hayle, in Cornwall; and there was a great deal about how Aunt Carly was going to take lodgings in the Scilly Isles, getting to them by a steamer from Land's End, past Penzance; and how she had been staying at Marazion, and rowing from there, in a boat, across to St Michael's Mount, where she had seen so many rabbits run out of the sand-holes, and scamper over the grass, she had been quite surprised. This surprised Mrs Casserly's little girls also, who interrupted her, with their eyes full of wonder. "Rabbits, mamma!" cried Lee. "Rabbits, mamma!" cried Bee; for being born in Jamaica, -being Jamaicans, as the word is, it was quite curious to these young Casserlys to find there could be rabbits in England, the same as in their own island; and their mother had to stop and explain. She explained other things, too, as other things came; but at last all the reading and all the explaining were done, and she had come to an end. "Your affec-tion-ate aunt, Caroline Brydie," said Leonora Casserly, then, reading the last line,-"Mamma!” "Yes, dear." "Is Aunt Carly, is Miss Caroline Brydie of Little Dene so very, very old?" "What would be 'very very' old, Leonora?" "Why, ninety-six, like Cookie's old mother over in the huts, down by Roaring River. Is Aunt Carly ninety-six next birthday?" Mrs Casserly laid her hand on Leonora's curly black hair, and stroked it. "You little goose," she said, with a kiss, "Aunt Carly is exactly sixty; and she is as upright as papa's sugar-canes, as strong as a yam, as able to go where she likes as the Ocho Rios River or the Yallahs, and as—” Mrs Casserly stopped; which made Bee cry out, "Go on, mamma," and which made Lee cry out, "Go on, mamma, only that Lee said something more, as well. "I know what you were going to say, mamma," it was. "I heard you telling papa the other day that the Blue Mountains always reminded you of Aunt Carly, because they were so still and so stony, and that yet the mosquitoes reminded you of her, because they always came to you and left their sting! I know!" "Did I say that, Leonora dear?" said Mrs Casserly, looking very concerned. "And did you hear me? If so, I am very sorry, and I ought not to have said so much. For when my dear mother died, who was— "As nice as you, mamma? "A great deal better than I," answered Mrs Casserly, "and a great deal better even than you think me to be; for she never would say anything unkind of anybody, and I am afraid I let you hear things sometimes that you should not hear. But listen to me now, and always remember it. When my dear mother died, and her half-sister, my Aunt Carly, had to take care of me, she did her very, very best to make me an obedient, patient, truthful, and honest girl." "But then she used to say you must keep everything you had," said Leonora, "because you wanted it, every bit. And that you hadn't enough to give anything away to anybody; and that God helps those who help themselves." "Yes; she did." "And what was the verse your own dear mamma had taught you before? Something about—something about—” "I know!" cried Bee, since her sister was hesitating, and was seeming to be hunting about in every corner of her brain-cupboard to find what was wanted. "It was We must shear the little sheep, God's lesson is to love." Both Lee and Mrs Casserly prevented Beatrice saying any more by giving a hearty laugh. "Oh you, oh you, 'diculous little individual!" cried Leonora; who, because she was thirteen months and three weeks older than Beatrice (as she used to reckon up, proudly), thought she was very much her superior; and who, besides, was very fond of using long words. "Shear and sheep!" she went on; "it wasn't anything about shearing sheep at all! That's just like you telling us the other day you had the toothache in the ceiling of your mouth! Mamma dear! Please! oh, do tell us the real right words, and make Bee ashamed!" "Tell her yourself, my little daughter,” said Mrs Casserly, looking comic. “I—I—don't recollect them!" faltered the little lady Leonora, knowing very well what her mother meant by her comic look. "Then will not you be ashamed as well as my bonny Beatrice?" asked Mrs Casserly, with one arm round each little girl, and looking right into Leonora's eyes. "For did not Bee-bee, who was my last baby, try to recollect, which was doing her best, whilst Leonora, for all she is the elder, didn't venture to try at all?" There was no occasion for an answer, in words, to this. It |