“Shall I try and get you an Antwerp girl?” asked Mr. Moore, who, stern in public, was on the whole very kind in private.
“Merci du cadeau!” was the answer. “An Antwerp girl would not stay here ten days, sneered at as she would be by all the young coquines in your factory;” then softening, “You are very good, dear brother – excuse my petulance – but truly my domestic trials are severe, yet they are probably my destiny; for I recollect that our revered mother experienced similar sufferings, though she had the choice of all the best servants in Antwerp. Domestics are in all countries a spoiled and unruly set.”
Mr. Moore had also certain reminiscences about the trials of his revered mother. A good mother she had been to him, and he honoured her memory; but he recollected that she kept a hot kitchen of it in Antwerp, just as his faithful sister did here in England. Thus, therefore, he let the subject drop, and when the coffee service was removed, proceeded to console Hortense by fetching her music book and guitar; and having arranged the ribbon of the instrument round her neck with a quiet fraternal kindness he knew to be all-powerful in soothing her most ruffled moods, he asked her to give him some of their mother’s favourite songs.
Nothing refines like affection. Family jarring vulgarizes; family union elevates. Hortense, pleased with her brother, and grateful to him, looked, as she touched her guitar, almost graceful, almost handsome; her everyday fretful look was gone for a moment, and was replaced by a “sourire plein de bonté.” She sang the songs he asked for, with feeling; they reminded her of a parent to whom she had been truly attached; they reminded her of her young days. She observed, too, that Caroline listened with naïve interest; this augmented her good-humour; and the exclamation at the close of the song, “I wish I could sing and play like Hortense!” achieved the business, and rendered her charming for the evening.
It is true a little lecture to Caroline followed, on the vanity of wishing and the duty of trying. “As Rome,” it was suggested, “had not been built in a day, so neither had Mademoiselle Gérard Moore’s education been completed in a week, or by merely wishing to be clever. It was effort that had accomplished that great work. She was ever remarkable for her perseverance, for her industry. Her masters had remarked that it was as delightful as it was uncommon to find so much talent united with so much solidity, and so on.” Once on the theme of her own merits, mademoiselle was fluent.