The Last of the Mortimers: A Story in Two VoicesOliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
The Last of the Mortimers: A Story in Two Voices
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Fiction
“But Lizzie must go with us,” said I. “I have taken very much to the
strange creature. You and I are God’s orphans too. We have a right to be
good to her; and it is not all on one side--don’t think it, Harry; she
is very good to me. She helps me with all her might, and stands by me
whenever I want, or tries to do it. I had rather have her than
half-a-dozen common servants. Leave this to me.”
“But consider, Milly, what you are making yourself responsible for,”
cried Harry.
I stopped his mouth; I would not let him speak; and danced away with
baby all in my joy and comfort to put him to bed. We met Mrs. Saltoun on
the stairs in the dark, and as she kissed the child, I kissed my good
old lady out of the fulness of my heart. “We are going away, but it is
only to Chester; we shall be together still,” I said in her ear. I never
thought how strange she would think it that I should be pleased to leave
her, or how she might wonder at my spirits getting up so easily. I was
very happy that night.
Lizzie was putting all baby’s things away when I went into the room. She
folded and laid them all aside more nicely than I could have done it
myself; not, so far as I know, because orderliness came natural to her,
but because, with all her heart, she had wanted to please me, and saw
with her quick eyes how it was to be done best. When anybody looked at
Lizzie, and she knew it, she was just as awkward as ever. How I had
laboured to make her hands and her feet look as if they belonged to her,
without twisting up or going into angles! but it was all of no use.
Whenever anybody looked at Lizzie, she would stand on one foot, and seek
refuge of an imaginary pinafore for her hands; but just now, in the
firelight, when you could only half see her, you cannot think how tidily
and nicely the uncouth creature was going about her work.
I paused before the fire after the child was in bed. “Lizzie,” said I,
standing in the warm light, and looking down into it, “do you like
Edinburgh very much?” I did not look round for her answer, I waited till
she should come to me; and yet felt pleased to see her, with “the tail
of my eye,” as Mrs. Saltoun would have said, flitting about after one
thing and another, through the pleasant darkness, with the firelight all
glimmering and shooting gleams of reflection into it, shining in the
drawers, and chairs, and furniture, which Lizzie’s hands had rubbed so
bright. I could not help thinking, with a little pride and
self-complacency, that it was all my doing. If I had not taught her, and
taken pains with her--but then, to be sure, if she had not been
wonderfully clever and capable; the one thing had just as much to do
with it as the other. But, between her exertions and my own, I had been
very successful in my little maid.
“Edinburey?” said Lizzie, coming up to me, with a lingering sound in
that genuine Edinburgh tone of hers, “eh, mem, isn’t it rael bonnie?
They say there’s no such another bonnie town in the world.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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