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Clive And Ethel Newcome
by
When this little party had gone out smiling to take its walk on the sea shore, the Colonel from his balcony watched the slim figure of pretty Ethel, looked fondly after her, and as the smoke of his cigar floated in the air, formed a fine castle in it, whereof Clive was Lord, and Ethel Lady. “What a frank, generous, bright young creature is yonder!” thought he. “How cheering and gay she is; how good to Miss Honeyman, to whom she behaved with just the respect that was the old lady’s due. How affectionate with her brothers and sisters! What a sweet voice she had! What a pretty little white hand it is! When she gave it me, it looked like a little white bird lying in mine.”
Thus mused the Colonel, upon the charms of the young girl who was henceforth to occupy the first place in his affection.
His admiration for her might have been still further heightened had he been at Lady Ann’s breakfast table some four or five weeks later, when Lady Ann and her nursery had just returned to London, little Alfred being perfectly set up by a month of Brighton air. Barnes Newcome had just discovered an article in the Newcome Independent commenting warmly upon a visit which Colonel Newcome and Clive had recently paid to Newcome, the object of that visit having been the Colonel’s desire to gladden the eyes of his old nurse Sarah with a sight of him. Inhabitants of Newcome, feeling that the same Sarah Mason, who was a much respected member of the community, was much neglected by her rich and influential relatives in London, took great delight in commenting upon the Colonel’s attention to the aged woman. The article in the Independent on that subject was anything but pleasing to the family pride of Mr. Barnes, who remarked in a sneering tone, “My uncle the Colonel, and his amiable son, have been paying a visit to Newcome. That is the news which the paper announces triumphantly,” said Mr. Barnes.
“You are always sneering about our uncle,” broke in Ethel, impetuously, “and saying unkind things about Clive. Our uncle is a dear, good, kind man, and I love him. He came to Brighton to see us, and went out every day for hours and hours with Alfred; and Clive, too, drew pictures for him. And he is good, and kind, and generous, and honest as his father. Barnes is always speaking ill of him behind his back; and Miss Honeyman is a dear little old woman too. Was not she kind to Alfred, mamma, and did not she make him nice jelly?”
“Did you bring some of Miss Honeyman’s lodging-house cards with you, Ethel?” sneered her brother, “and had we not better hang up one or two in Lombard Street; hers and our other relation’s, Mrs. Mason?”
“My darling love, who is Mrs. Mason?” asks Lady Ann.
“Another member of the family, ma’am. She was cousin–“
“She was no such thing, sir,” roars Sir Brian.
“She was relative and housemaid of my grandfather during his first marriage. She has retired into private life in her native town of Newcome. The Colonel and young Clive have been spending a few days with their elderly relative. It’s all here in the paper, by Jove!” Mr. Barnes clenched his fist and stamped upon the newspaper with much energy.
“And so they should go down and see her, and so the Colonel should love his nurse and not forget his relations if they are old and poor!” cries Ethel, with a flush on her face, and tears starting in her eyes. “The Colonel went to her like a kind, dear, good brave uncle as he is. The very day I go to Newcome I’ll go to see her.” She caught a look of negation in her father’s eye. “I will go–that is, if papa will give me leave,” says Miss Ethel, adding simply, “if we had gone sooner there would not have been all this abuse of us in the papers.” To which statement her worldly father and brother perforce agreeing, we may congratulate good old nurse Sarah upon adding to the list of her friends such a frank, open-hearted, high-spirited young woman as Miss Ethel Newcome.