Her own way

"THE girls are late to-day."

"You mean that Hannah is late, mother; for there is no saying when Juliet will choose to appear, and they never come together. It is a strange thing for Hannah to be behind her time."

Mrs. Tracy sighed as she looked anxiously between the flower-pots which adorned the window-ledge, and rather obscured the view from where she sat in her low easy-chair.

The window looked into a grassy enclosure, too small to be dignified by the name of garden, though there was a fine show of primroses and wallflowers in the narrow bed beside the gravel path, and ferns were growing tall and strong in the rockery below the windows. On the farther side of the strip of grass, just within the iron railing that enclosed it from the road, stood three tall, leafy poplars, screening the house from the busy suburban thoroughfare in which it stood, and giving it its name.

As Mrs. Tracy looked forth, she caught glimpses through the trees of passing omnibuses and tramcars. The din of the traffic made itself heard, though the window was closed. Some of her acquaintance had tried to persuade Mrs. Tracy that the trees shut out air from the house, and it would be wiser to cut them down; but she always felt that it would be unendurable to live so near the high road without the slight shelter which their thick trunks and soaring boughs afforded. And the comparatively low rent asked for that old-fashioned residence, known as The Poplars, suited her narrow purse, and constrained her to endure its inconveniences as best she could.

Mrs. Tracy was a frail-looking little woman, with a face which had once been pretty and was still pleasant to look upon. It wore a somewhat careworn, anxious expression, but without a trace of fretfulness. As she rested in her low easy-chair, with her knitting lying in her lap, she had the air of one to whom exertion of any kind is distasteful. She was dressed in a manner perfectly becoming her fifty years, but the lace falling so prettily about her neck, and her dainty little lace head-dress with its cunning knot of pink ribbon, showed that she was by no means indifferent to the appearance she presented. Her small, soft, white hands glittered with handsome rings; the little feet outstretched on hassock were clothed with neat velvet slippers with bright jet buckles. At fifty Mrs. Tracy had not outlived her love for pretty things.

The daughter who stood near, and who was engaged in putting sundry finishing touches to the table which was prepared for their midday dinner, did not in the least resemble her mother. Salome Grant was a tall, well-grown young woman of seven-and-twenty. She had sandy hair, pale blue eyes with very light lashes, and a rather high complexion. Her abundant hair was brushed very smooth, and arranged in the neatest fashion. Her whole appearance, indeed, was severely neat. Her serge gown fitted her well, but it entirely lacked what dressmakers term "style," and no touch of colour relieved its sombre hue. One might have credited Salome with excellent qualities, but assuredly no one at first sight could have found her interesting, or felt eager to pursue her acquaintance.

"Here comes Hannah," she said, glancing through the window, as she heard the gate swing back.

And the next minute, Hannah entered the room. She was barely two years older than Salome, and resembled her sister far more than she did her mother. She was better-looking than Salome; her hair was darker, her complexion less high-coloured, her features stronger, and her eyes a deeper blue. Her ample square forehead, from which the hair was rigorously brushed back, seemed to denote considerable intellectual power, whilst the firm lines of mouth and chin showed a strength of will which might degenerate into obstinacy. She looked a strong, capable, energetic woman as she came quickly into the room, her countenance wearing a slightly harassed expression.

She was one of the staff of mistresses belonging to a large high school established in the North London suburb in which Mrs. Tracy lived. She had worked hard, and improved her position considerably since she entered the school, having won the character of a most efficient teacher and thorough disciplinarian. She and Salome were the daughters of Mrs. Tracy's first marriage with a sober, hard-working Glasgow man of business. They resembled their shrewd, staid, matter-of-fact Scotch father far more than they did the pretty, loving little Englishwoman, whom, with a strange lack of his usual prudence, he had taken to wife.

"I am sorry to be late, mother," Hannah said in clear, incisive tones, "but it is not my fault. I saw Juliet in the playground with that horrid Chalcombe girl, so I went to ask her if she were ready to come home. Juliet was in one of her tiresome moods, and was not too polite to me. At first, she would not say what she would do; but finally I understood her to say that she would come. However, after I had waited for ten minutes, I saw her walking away in the opposite direction with her new friend."

"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Tracy, a flush suffusing her delicate face.

"Did you really tell Juliet, mother, that she was not to make a friend of that girl?"

"Oh yes, dear, I spoke to her about it; but she seemed to think it hard that they could not be friendly when they were in the same form, and I thought that Juliet would soon be leaving school, and after that they are not likely to see much of each other, you know."

"But, meanwhile, there is time for Juliet to get a great deal of harm," replied Hannah. "However, if you like her to associate with the daughter of an actor, I have nothing more to say."

"My dear! I do not like it. You should not say that. Is the girl's father really an actor?"

"Well, I do not know that he acts," said Hannah deliberately; "I think someone said that he was the lessee of a theatre at Bow. He has a son who sings at music halls."

"What people for Juliet to take up with!" exclaimed Salome, in a tone of disgust. "She will be wanting to become an actress next. There is no accounting for what Juliet will do. She seems to have no sense at all."

"Don't make her out worse than she is," pleaded her mother. "She knows nothing of the father and son, and I daresay the girl is not so bad; Juliet seems very fond of her."

"I only wish you could see her!" said Hannah. "She dresses in the most extreme style, wears flashy jewellery, and is generally vulgar. Her complexion is frightfully got up. As for her work, their form-mistress tells me it could hardly be worse. We all wish she had not come to the school, for she will do us no credit."

"Juliet should be forbidden to have anything to say to her," remarked Salome.

"It is easy to say that," replied her mother, "but you know it does not do to take extreme measures with Juliet. Once drive her into defiance, and you can do nothing with her. I believe she is persisting in this intimacy just because she knows you are set against it."

"That is likely enough," said Hannah, in a bitter tone. "Well, I only hope that you may never regret that you have not taken more extreme measures with Juliet. You will not wait dinner for her, mother?"

Mrs. Tracy made a sign of dissent, and in a few minutes they were seated at the dinner-table. The mother was depressed, and ate with little appetite.

She stood in some awe of her elder daughters, with their exemplary conduct and correct views. She always felt that they had had some right to resent her marriage with Captain Tracy, a gay, dashing Irish officer, some years younger than herself. Hannah and Salome had been mere children at the time, but they had not failed to show their resentment. When, shortly after his marriage, the captain's regiment was ordered to India, a relative of their father offered to take charge of the two girls during their mother's absence abroad. Mrs. Tracy was well pleased with this arrangement.

She had been absent for seven years when she came back to England with her pretty though faded face, framed by a widow's sombre veil, and bringing with her a wilful, fascinating little girl, with sunny hair and violet eyes. The gay captain had met with an accident at a polo-match, from the effects of which he had died shortly afterwards. His widow mourned him sincerely, though he had been but a sorry husband, sublimely indifferent to her comfort and welfare, as long as he could squander her money on his own pleasures. But the indifference had been delicately veiled, and only on rare occasions had Mrs. Tracy, with a bitter heart-pang, suspected its existence. Captain Tracy pursued his extravagances in a gentlemanly manner, and never failed to treat his wife with lover-like, caressing tenderness, so that she loved him passionately to the last, and paid his debts of honour, time after time, with but faint remonstrance.

But the large sums she had realised for this purpose, in spite of every objection raised by the Scotch solicitor who managed her affairs, were a serious drain on her resources. She came home to find the property her first husband had left her considerably diminished, and to learn that it behoved her for the rest of her life, by rigid economy and self-denial, to make amends for Captain Tracy's extravagance. The lesson was a painful one, embittered by her sense that her elder girls had a right to reproach her with careless neglect of their interests.

By this time, Hannah and Salome were almost women. The high-bred, irreproachable, somewhat narrow-minded Scotch cousin in whose home they had been living had left her stamp on them. They hardly seemed like her own daughters to Mrs. Tracy now. They were far more orderly and methodic in their habits than she was herself, and held stricter views with regard to the expenditure of time and money. The mother felt half afraid of these very wise girls. She was thankful that they were so good, but she could not help wishing that they had been a little less strong-minded, and could have made some allowance for the faults of their pretty, perverse half-sister.

Then, with a sigh, she would remind herself that it was only natural that they should be hard upon poor little Juliet, and resent her presence in their home. And the mother's heart clung the more passionately to the child who seemed so much more her own than these others. The girls were quick to see that their mother loved Juliet best, and their minds were not too high-toned to admit of jealousy. Juliet became a constant thorn in their sides. They looked upon her as the disturber of the peace of their home. But Juliet was her mother's darling, though, in truth, a very naughty darling.

For a year or two after her return from India, Mrs. Tracy had a hard struggle to maintain a little home. But Hannah studied with an assiduity which astonished her mother, whose own education had been of the old-fashioned, superficial order; she passed one examination after another with honours, and finally attained the immediate goal of her ambition by being appointed assistant-mistress in a high school. Then it was that Mrs. Tracy felt justified in taking The Poplars as her residence, which had now been their home for over eight years.