TEMPLE BAR.

APRIL 1874.

Patricia Kemball.

CHAPTER IX.

DORA DEMONSTRATES.

ATRICIA had been about a month at Abbey Holme, and things

PATRI

had not mended. She still filled the domestic atmosphere with sticks and straws, and still made poor Aunt's headaches greatly worse by her endeavours to make them better; fighting bravely the while against the material and moral inharmoniousness of her life, and refusing to confess to herself how unutterably lonely and misplaced she was. She had never greater need than now of all her courage and all her cheerfulness. Overheated rooms; no personal liberty; no fresh air; no exercise-for she did not call driving in a close carriage, with only one window open a couple of inches, either fresh air or exercise; the staple occupation of the day needle-work enlivened by novel-reading aloud-and the stories such trash! thought unimaginative Patricia, who had not matriculated in the college of light literature, and who cared for nothing that was not true;-cards in the evening-bézique, or three-handed whist-and she did not know a king from an ace, and could not learn the simplest rules; food a world too rich and too frequent for a girl brought up as she had been on the plainest fare, and who, naturally unsensual, had been taught asceticism over and above—a girl whose appetite for bread-and-butter, at its highest point, was never satisfied at a table, which gave everything but simplicity, cold water, and reasonable "rounds": all these things together were as much as her strong health could bear without breaking up under the change. Add to material circumstances so uncongenial, a life of moral repression, of lovelessness, and the sentiment of being always in disgrace, and it is easy to understand that if Patricia was not an acquisition, for her own part, to the new

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world which had received her, this new world was not of the kind to give her happiness or to bring out the best that was in her.

One day, after she had been making more than her usual amount of whirlwind in the drawing-room, and had been snubbed with even more than Aunt Hamley's usual amount of cold acerbity, she went upstairs to her own room to overcome a certain miserable sensation of loneliness and mistake which threatened to overcome her.

When she had gone Mrs. Hamley laid her work and her hands into her lap with a gesture of angry despair. Dora looked at her, and laid her work down too with a look of sympathetic annoyance.

Dora," said Mrs. Hamley severely, "I had hoped that you would have helped me in this affliction, this trial, as I may call it. For though she is my own niece, and I should wish to love her and do my duty by her, she is an affliction all the same, wretched child! I have been disappointed in you, Dora. You have shown less than your usual tact, and not the amiability I might have expected from you."

"I am sorry that I have failed in any way, dear," said Dora sweetly. "What can I do to help you? I will do anything I can, as you

know."

She spoke with her slight lisp and put on her prettiest air of feminine subjection; and Mrs. Hamley felt a little relief in remonstrating severely with so unresisting a creature. It soothed her, on the principle of passing it on.

"Why do you ask me what you are to do ?" she answered irritably. "Does not your own common-sense tell you? have you no conscience to dictate your duty? You ought to talk to her, Dora, and tell her not to be so noisy and officious, not to speak till she is spoken to, and not to take so much on herself. It will come easier from you than from me, and perhaps you will have more influence than I should have."

"I will tell her, of course, if you like, dear," said Dora, desperately troubled in spite of her suave manner. She did not want to wound Patricia any more than to offend Mrs. Hamley. For if it was difficult for her to refuse a request, or to stand up for her own rights, it was still more difficult to voluntarily offend. Face-to-face aggression was not in Dora Drummond's way, and she would have rather Mrs. Hamley had deprived her of every kind of enjoyment for a week than have bidden her do this thing.

"Yes, it will come better from you," said Mrs. Hamley.

"You horrid old coward!" thought dear Dora, with a timid, plaintive little smile that meant the sweetest, most complying submission.

"You are girls together, and can make her understand her position here and her duties better than I," continued the lady. "Take her out for a walk to-day. You can talk better when you are walking than driving. You have not been out for a walk, too, for a long

while, and it will do you good: you are looking quite pale for want of exercise, Dora; you sit far too much in the house-and then you can talk to her. But don't go beyond the town, and don't let her think that I have told you to speak to her. I want it to come as if naturally from yourself; as indeed it would have done if you had had as much common-sense as I always gave you credit for."

Very well, dear, I will go and I will do my best," said Dora with graceful obedience; very quiet in action but a little flushed, her eyes eager beneath their long, light, silky lashes as she put away her embroidery, deliberately, noiselessly, neatly, as she did all things.

She kissed Mrs. Hamley on her forehead, and saw that her ready obedience had dispersed the little cloud and reinstated her in her old place of prime favourite; then went to her own room, where she first wrote a short note very rapidly, and when this was finished ran lightly along the thickly-carpeted corridor to Patricia's room. She found her also writing-to Gordon Frere; not saying that she was unhappy, but unconsciously showing that she was so by the very pains she took to conceal it.

"Busy, dear?" said Dora, putting in her gracious head as if timidly asking permission through the half-opened door.

Oh, no, not if you want me!" cried Patricia, attentive, upright, alive at all points as usual. "Come in-do come in!" "Thanks. I came to ask you if you would go for a walk with me," said Dora, gliding forward and carefully shutting the door after her.

"Yes indeed, that I will," Patricia answered with unnecessary alacrity. "I am longing for a walk! It seems a year since I had a breath of fresh air."

"Good gracious! what do you call this ?" said Dora, shivering as she pointed to the open window. "Sitting with the window open, and no fire even, just before Christmas! I wonder it does not kill you!"

"No, it is the only thing that keeps me alive, I think. But I need not torture you, dear," said Patricia, shutting down the window as she spoke; and as she shut it with goodwill she did it somewhat noisily. "If you only knew, Dora, how I long sometimes for the great strong wind of Barsands !" she went on to say. "I feel as if I should like to sit on the top of an iceberg in a gale of wind after I have been down in the drawing-room for a few hours. How you and Aunt Hamley can bear the stifling heat and want of fresh air of your lives is more surprising to me than my open windows can be to you."

"Then you are not happy here?" said Dora, going nearer to her and laying her hand on her shoulder.

"Don't think me ungrateful—indeed, I am not that!" answered Patricia hastily; "but I do miss the boating and fresh air and freedom of the old life! This seems to me like being in a hot-house prison in comparison." She drew a long breath, and looked out on

the beds of coloured stone that rose up close against her window, surmounted by the grey stone wall which shut out all view of the country beyond; her eyes full of infinite yearning, and the brave, cheerful face saddened.

"We have been used to such a different life from yours," said Dora soothingly. "It must be strange to you."

Yes, it is," said Patricia simply, and sighing.

"I should like to make you happy," continued Mr. Hamley's cousin, her lips quivering slightly. She was skating round the central subject, and amiable coward as she was, she did not like it.

"If I could be always alone with you I should be happy," said Patricia. "I daresay it is my own fault that I do not get on so well with my aunt and Mr. Hamley as I ought. They don't seem to understand what I mean sometimes, and perhaps I do not understand them; but with you it is different-when we are alone," she added by an after-thought; "then I am quite happy!"

Dora kissed her with her butterfly kind of kiss. "You dear little thing, you know I like you, don't you?" she said to the tall girl who stood a couple of inches or more above her, and whose strong hand was like a man's compared with her own useless little compress of rose-leaves.

"I hope so,” answered Patricia, looking at her fondly.

"Hope!" remonstrated Dora.

"Sometimes I think you do, and sometimes I think you do not," said Patricia candidly. "At all events"-frankly, warmly—“ I love you, Dora, and would do anything in the world I could for you; and that you know."

"How can

Dora gave a graceful little deprecatory shrug. "But there is nothing in me to like," she said sweetly, glancing at herself in the glass and putting up her hand to smooth back her glossy hair. "Oh!" cried Patricia, who took everything literally. you say so, Dora! Why, you must know what a darling you are!" Dora cast up her blue eyes shyly. This love-making between girls seemed to her odd beyond measure; but she was glad of it, as it made her task so much the easier.

"Do you really think so? That is because you are so nice and good yourself," she said.

"No; it is because you are so nice and good," flung back Patricia as antistrophe.

"You dear thing!" breathed Dora. "If you think so, really and truly, and do not merely flatter me, you must let me be your guide and mentor here." She was looking at Patricia steadily enough for her, but lisping more than usual. "You see, dear, I am worlds older than you, and I can tell you some things, perhaps, you do not know." "Every kind of thing," said Patricia.