Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 6/The Admiral's daughters - Part 2
Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/39 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/40 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/41 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/42 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/43 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/44 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/45 Page:Once a Week Dec 1861 to June 1862.pdf/46 Ellen paid the man his fare, and then ushered them into the dining-room.
“That is Susan, mother, and the other is poor Mary.”
“Glad to see you, Miss,” said Mrs. Bates to Susan, “and you, too, dear Miss Mary. I've heard of that unfortunate affair of Mr. Blackwood, my dear, you have my sympathy. I was twice served in that way before I married Mr. Bates, my dear.”
“Now, Ellen, dear, which room can mamma have while she stays? I think that the room you girls sleep in now would be the best, and then Charley could have the little dressing closet that leads out of it, you know.”
“There is the spare room.”
“That I use as a dressing-room, Ellen, dear.”
But why waste my readers’ patience—have not the sorrows of Lovell been written by a great master? It is enough. Admiral Newton married Mrs. Lake, and Mrs. Lake’s mamma and her brother lived in the house—what need to say how the monthly dinner became bi-monthly, and with Mrs. Bates at the table—then a tri-monthly dinner, and then disappeared from the list of feasts altogether. What need to relate that out of the savings of the Admiral’s household expenses Master Bates was sent to a most expensive classical academy? What need to say that the two girls endured all that two high-spirited girls could endure under the reign of such tyrants, and only waited for the arrival of their brother to discuss some plan by which to escape an existence only endured so long as there was hope of its coming to a speedy end.
They watched and waited for Henry, and Henry at last came, and they felt when they saw his sunburnt face at the door, that the time of their deliverance was at hand.
(To be continued.)