At
Kirkham there were no long-accumulated neglects to reform as there was
at Morte, and to Morte Mr. Fairfax forbade her to go. She had a liberal
allowance, and not half ways enough to spend it, so she doubled her
allowance to Miss Hague on behalf of her former pupils, Geoffry and
Frederick; Laurence paid his own.
She was not a girl of many wants, and her taste did not incline to idle
expenditure. She had seen thrift and the need of thrift in her early
home, and thought money much too valuable to be wasted in buying things
she did not require. Where she saw a necessity she was the freest of
givers, but she had experience, gained in her rides with Mr. Carnegie,
against manufacturing objects of sentimental charity.
Her resource for a little while was the study of the house and
neighborhood she lived in. There was a good deal of history connected
with Kirkham. But it was all contained in the county gazetteer; and when
Macky had instructed her in the romance of the family, and the legends
attached to the ruins by the river and the older portions of the
mansion, all was learnt that there was to know, and the sum of her
reflections announced aloud was, that Abbotsmead was a very big house
for a small family. Macky shook her head in melancholy acquiescence.
The December days were very long, and the weather wild and stormy both
by land and sea. Bessie conjectured sometimes when her uncle Frederick
would come home, but it appeared presently that he was not coming.
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