It is not, however, to be supposed that the Beechhurst people spited themselves so far as to keep away from the rector's school-treat because they did not love the rector. (By the by, it was not his treat, but only buns and tea by subscription distributed in his grounds, with the privilege of admittance to the subscribers.) The orthodox gentility of the neighborhood assembled in force for the occasion when the sun shone upon it as it shone to-day, and the entertainment was an event for children of all classes. If the richer sort did not care for buns, they did for games; and the Carnegie boys were so eager to lose none of the sport that they coaxed Bessie to take time by the forelock, and presented themselves almost first on the scene. Mrs. Wiley, ready and waiting out of doors to welcome her more distinguished guests, met a trio of the little folks, in Bessie's charge, trotting round the end of the house to reach the lawn.
"Always in good time, Bessie Carnegie," said she. "But is not your mother coming?"
"No, thank you, Mrs. Wiley," said Bessie with prim decorum.
"By the by, that is not your name. What is your name, Bessie?"
"Ah! yes; now I remember--Elizabeth Fairfax. And is your uncle pretty well? I suppose we shall see him later in the day? He ought to look in upon us before we break up. There! run away to the children in the orchard, and leave the lawn clear."
Bessie accepted her dismissal gladly, thankful to escape the catechetical ordeal that would have ensued had there been leisure for it. She was almost as shy of the rector's wife as of the rector. Mrs. Wiley had a brusque, absent manner, and it was a trick of hers to expose her young acquaintance to a fire of questions, of which she as regularly forgot the answers. She had often affronted Bessie Fairfax by asking her real name, and in the next breath calling her affably Bessie Carnegie, the doctor's step-daughter, niece or other little kinswoman whom he kept as a help in his house for charity's sake.
Bessie had but faint recollections of the rectory as her home, for since her father's death she had never gone there except as a visitor on public days. But the tradition was always in her memory that once she had lived in those pleasant rooms, had run up and down those broad sunny stairs, and played on the spacious lawns of that mossy, tree-shadowed garden. In the orchard had assembled, besides the children, a group of their ex-teachers--Miss Semple and her sister, the village dressmakers, Miss Genet, the daughter at the post-office, and the two Miss Mittens--well-behaved and well-instructed young persons whom Mr. Wiley's predecessors had been pleased to employ, but for whom Mrs. Wiley found no encouragement. She had the ordering of the school, and preferred gentlewomen for her lay-sisters. She had them, and only herself knew what trouble in keeping them punctual to their duty and in keeping the peace amongst them. There was dear fat Miss Buff, who had been right hand in succession to Mr. Fairfax, Mr. Roebuck and Mr. Hutton, who adored supremacy, and exercised it with the easy sway of long usage; she felt herself pushed on one side by that ardent young Irish recruit, Miss Thusy O'Flynn, whose peculiar temper no one cared to provoke, and who ruled by the terror of it with a caprice that was trying in the last degree. Miss Buff gave way to her, but not without grumbling, appealing, and threatening to withdraw her services. But she loved her work in the school and in the choir, and could not bear to punish herself or let Miss Thusy triumph to the extent of driving her into private life; so she adhered to her charge in the hope of better days, when she would again be mistress paramount. And the same did Miss Wort--also one of the old governing body--but from higher motives, which she was not afraid to publish: she distrusted Mr. Wiley's doctrine, and she feared that he was inclined to truckle to the taste for ecclesiastical decoration manifested by certain lambs of his flock who doted on private theatricals and saw no harm in balls. She adhered to her post, that the truth might not suffer for want of a witness; and if the rising generation of girls in preposterous hats had taken her for their pattern of a laborious teacher, true to time as the school-bell itself, Mrs. Wiley's preference for young ladies over young persons would have been better justified, and Lady Latimer would not have been able to find fault with the irregular attendance of the children, to express her opinion that the school was not what it might be, and to throw out hints that she must set about reforming it unless it soon reformed itself.