The White House at Inch Gow, etc

Front matter

Uniform with this Work. A Sweet Girl Graduate. By L. T. Meade. The White House at Inch Gow. By Sarah Pitt. The King's Command. A Story for Girls. By Maggie Symington. Lost in Samoa. A Tale of Adventure in the Navigator Islands. By E. S. Ellis. Tad ; or, " Getting Even" with Him. By E. S. Ellis. Polly : A New-fashioned Girl. By L. T. Meade. The Palace Beautiful. A Story for Girls. By L. T. Meade. For Fortune and Glory. A Story of the Soudan War. By Lewis Hough. " Follow my Leader ; " or, The Boys of Templeton. By Talbot Baines Reed. The Cost of a Mistake. By Sarah Pitt. Plates. A World of Girls. The Story of a School. By L. T. Meade. Lost Among White Africans. A Boy's Adventures on the Upper Congo By David Ker. On Board the " Esmeralda " ; or, Martin Leigh's Log. By John C. Hutcheson. In Quest of Gold; or, Under the Whanga Falls.

By Alfred St. Johnston. Cassell & Company, Limited, Ludgate Hill, London, E.C. 17— 9-9i THE WHITE HOUSE AT INCH GOW. '"i don't like being called a woman,' sobbed nell" {seep. 28). THE WHITE HOUSE AT INCH GOW. BY SARAH PI T/T, Author of "The Cost of a Mistake," "Bear and Forbear," -Fritters, " Dick's Hero" etc. WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY JOHN H BACON CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited: LONDON, PARIS 6- MELBOURNE. 1891. [all rights reserved.] CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. "A Long Time Ago" 9 II. " How She found the World was Hollow" . . 25 III. "And her Doll was Stuffed with Straw" . . 39 IV. "The Ringing Grooves of Change" . . . .49 V. "To the Sound of Marriage Bells" . . . .64 VI. Settling Down 73 VII. "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?" . . 92 VIII. "Where the Brook and River Meet" . . .101 IX. "The Auld Hoose at Hame" 123 X. Outside the Pale 140 XI.

"Freedom is a Noble Thing" 150 XII. How Gilbert vindicated his Freedom .... 170 XIII. "Far from the Madding Crowd" 1S4 XIV. New Connections 19S XV. "The Brave Knight rode away" .... 206 XVI. Sisters by Law 214 XVII. Finis 229 XVIIL Nell's Chance 249 XIX. Too Late 267 XX. "In the Wind and the Rain" LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. I Don't Like Being Called a Woman,' Sobbed Nell" Frontispiece. Nell Lifted a Tear-Stained Face from the Wall " To face page 42 'So This is Little Nell?'" „ 53 'Mother, Mother! Are You III?'" ... ,. 100 'He Isn't Coming Any More,' Sobbed Nell" . ,, 146 Drinking Tea in the Quaint Old Sitting-Room" „ 190 Gilbert and Christian Had Their First Quarrel" ,, 237 The Two Plighted Their Troth for the Second Time" ,,285

Chapter I

" A LONG TIME AGO." One of Nell Sage's earliest recollections was of a funeral — not a grand one by any means. There were no coaches and waving plumes, or bunches of white ribbons to brighten it up : just a plain black coffin carried by half-a-dozen working men in their Sunday clothes, and a young man, and a little girl in a stiff black frock walking behind it. Nell stood on the middle bar of the garden gate, and watched the procession file past with great in terest. " Somebody else going to be buried," she announced to her brother, who was lying face down wards on the grass under the walnut-tree, doing some thing to a rusty toy pistol ; " and there's such a pretty little girl at it. Nobody ever takes me to funerals," she added, in a rather injured tone. Gilbert got up lazily, and came to look on like wise.

The churchyard — kirkyard it is termed in the regions north of the Tweed — was close at hand. Only a low stone wall separated one neglected corner of it from Nell's own particular patch of garden ground, and it formed a convenient short cut into the woody glen beyond, when Gilbert was bent upon a surrep titious fishing expedition. " I know whose funeral that is," remarked Gilbert, leaning his elbows on the top of the gate: "it's Geordie Henderson's. He got knocked over the other week with that stone-breaker." " Did that kill him ? " from Nell. " Of course it did. It's no joke being knocked about by a thing like that. If it had gone over him, he wouldn't have needed a funeral at all : it would just have ground him to powder." Gilbert went back to his pistol ; Nell kept her perch. By-and-by the procession came back, on the side walk now instead of the road, the men walking and talking together, the little girl dragging wearily behind.

As they passed the gate, with a sudden impulse she neither understood nor reasoned about, Nell stretched out her hand and softly patted the little mourner's hair. The girl gave her an astonished stare and hurried on. Nell drew back rather abashed. " What did you do that for ? " demanded Gilbert, who had viewed the proceeding from behind. " I don't know. She looked so tired and dull by herself," was the lucid explanation. " Well, don't do it again. People don't like to be interfered with at funerals. Run indoors and get me another bit of clean rag, and the oil-bottle if you can find it." " Mrs. Burnett won't let me bring it out. She was dreadfully cross the last time you wanted it." " I didn't tell you to ask her for it. Find it quietly, and be quick. I'm waiting." Nell went rather reluctantly.

The garden was too bright and sunny to lightly run the risk of being A Foraging Expedition. 11 kept indoors, and Mrs. Burnett had an aggravating trick of inquiring about unlearnt lessons or unfinished handkerchiefs, and if she did that now, Nell's doom was sealed. Her lessons never were learnt until the very last minute, her handkerchiefs never were finished. Nell envied the heathen on that account often ; no unhemmed handkerchiefs ever clouded their horizon. Surely that item alone more than made up for many privations. Fortune favoured her this time ; she got the rag, the oil-flask also, and escaped back to the shade of the walnut-tree unmolested. " That's a good girl ! " said Gilbert approvingly. He was not at all too proud to commend his sister when he considered that she deserved it, and how dear these commendations were, only Nell knew.

She sat down on the grass and watched him con tentedly. Gilbert rubbed away energetically at the rusty pistol. It was one he had bartered his best grey rabbit for, and he was beginning to think that the other fellow had made the better bargain. Presently he glanced up at his sister. " I say, Nell ; you know Ralph Patterson ? " " Yes ; he always looks over the gate as he goes past. I don't like him." " Don't like him ? " echoed Gilbert impatiently. " But you've got to like him. I've been thinking it's time you had some lad of your own, instead of bothering after me so much." Nell stared at him blankly. " I don't bother you, Gilbert ; and I don't want other lads to talk to." " Who wants you to talk to them ? leave that to me. I am going to look aster somebody at once, and he will have to make himself useful when he comes.

He could feed the rabbits when I was too tired, and make flies, and dig up the garden. It wants it badly, and I've no time ; besides, he would be safe to have some money of his own, and we could borrow it." Gilbert grew quite eloquent'as he enumerated all the advantages to be reaped therefrom. " You shall have one at once, Nell. I wish I'd thought of it sooner." Nell's round face looked completely mystified. " What have I got to do with it, Gilbert ? I don't know any boys." " Oh, you stupid ! Don't I know lots ? I shall manage it all. You've only got to pretend you like the one I choose, better than any of the others, and do what he tells you." " Oh ! " Nell pondered over this version of her duties for a minute or two. " Would he be a nice boy, Gilbert ? " " Of course he would. I was talking to two this morning about it.

One's that Ralph Patterson." " But he looks so — dirty," interrupted Nell. " What does that matter ? He makes tip-top flies, rods too, and he knows all about rabbits, and he's always got some coppers in his pocket, even if he won't lend them. Besides, I owe him fourpence, and he'll not trouble about that if we take him. There's David Finch, too, but I think" — Gilbert put his head on one side, and looked serious, as befitted the subject — " I think, on the whole, we had better say Ralph. We can try him for a week, at any rate, and see. If we don't like him then, we can easily drop him, and get someone else. I'll bring him up to-morrow night. Captain Sage. ■3 He's doing something at the railway now, so he's sure to have lots of money." Nothing was said to Mrs. Burnett when they went into the house concerning this arrangement.

Time had taught them a certain amount of discretion in their dealings with her. Nell sat over her lessons half the evening, feeling quite weighed down under the prospect of her coming responsibilities. It was not always easy to please Gilbert ; still Gilbert was Gilbert, and her own brother ; but a big rough lad with grimy hands and a shock of black hair was a different matter. She wondered rather uneasily what her father would say about it when he came home. But Captain Sage was not expected home for many months to come. Truth to tell, he was a somewhat shadowy personage to his family. His home life was largely made up of long voyages, and brief intervals. Sailing orders came before the children had more than grown accustomed to his presence about the house, and then for long afterwards father would be represented solely by letters and messages from distant ports.

They talked a good deal about him, and exhibited the curious presents that arrived in rough wooden cases, with some pride, and a feeling of vague distinction, to such of their juvenile acquaint ance as could be introduced into the house without the housekeeper's knowledge. Nell had no remembrance of any other habitation than the White House and the present regime. She had come to it a toddling infant, and all her ideas of the world in general were constructed upon its foundation, and bounded by Gilbert's opinions. Perched on the garden wall, she sketched out endless pictures of a blissful future, when she and he should be grown up and able to inhabit the White House by them two selves, untroubled by rules and regulations, lessons, or housekeepers. He was to be sole master, she sole mistress, and father was to come home as usual at various intervals, and continue to send famous cases of pretty things when he was on his travels.

Gilbert was three or four years older,' and could date back to quite an antediluvian period — the period when they both lived in England, and had a mother of their own : a bright, pretty mother too, with curly hair and blue eyes. He could remember distinctly how she used to look through the shipping news day by day for any notice of the vessel, and the joyful ex citement that reigned over all when the Seagull came into port : how mother used to deck him out in tiny velvet suits, and take him down to the bustling pier head, to watch for the first sign of the big grey ship being towed up the river, in the wake of a fussy little steam-tug. Sometimes the ship did not come, with all their watching, and then they would go soberly home again, and put away the velvet suit till to-morrow ; but sooner or later mother was sure to discover the Seagull's masts out of the forest of other masts, and then — Gilbert was not altogether clear about the exact details now, though he related them very fluently for Nell's edification and instruction — then father would suddenly leap upon the pier close beside them, and hug mother close, and hoist Gilbert on his shoulder, and they would all drive home in a grand carriage.

" It was something like a time then ! " he would wind up the narrative regretfully ; " there Mother Burnett. 15 was no Mother Burnett to bother about things then, and we might have been there yet, instead of coming to this old place, if only mother hadn't died. It's never been the same since." For those famous times were all ended and done with. The Seagull came gallantly up the river one sunny June morning, but there was no pretty mother watching on the pier for it : only a strict nurse, and a little lad with a black ribbon round his hat. Mother was lying in the cemetery, on the hill behind the lighthouse, and Nell, a few months' old baby, was left at home in the dreary house. There was no fun or laughter that day when Captain Sage came ashore ; he had scarcely cared even to look at the children.

There were strangers about the place, and anxious consultations behind closed doors, and Gilbert was sent off out of the way to amuse him self. He found his small sister very indifferent com pany in those days, and rather given to resent his well-meant attempts to teach her any accomplish ments. She had greatly improved since then. Gil bert had little fault to find with her on that score now. And then other changes had followed, and not for the better. Mrs. Burnett appeared upon the scene, and took up the reins of government Mrs. Sage had laid down, and they had left the busy seaport and broad river, with its crowds of shipping, and come up to the White House, and the dull manufacturing town. Gilbert adapted himself to it very comfortably in course of time : he was not given to fretting after the unattainable ; but there hovered always a kind of glamour over those faint early days for him.

England was his El Dorado, the embodiment of all perfection. Some of Gilbert's hottest fights at school arose out of the patronising attitude he assumed towards the institutions of the country he had been obliged to adopt. It was not in Scottish boy nature to put up with national slights, and many a miniature battle had been waged over it, in the secluded depths of the glen beyond the kirkyard. Mrs. Burnett was another heavy cross in Gilbert's lot. With the best intentions, she was not exactly a motherly kind of woman. It did not make much difference to Nell : she had never known anything else, and took it as a matter of course ; but Gilbert had. Consequently he considered himself justified in maintaining a perpetual guerilla warfare against her authority, though he extracted a good many con cessions from her that Nell would never have dreamed of asking for herself.

Gilbert carried out his brotherly project on Nell's behalf to the letter. The very next evening Ralph Patterson, washed and brushed, and with his shock of hair carefully flattened down for once in his life, presented himself at the garden gate, and received a cordial welcome from Gilbert as master of the cere monies. He did not come empty-handed ; he was laden with a quantity of vegetables — his own growing — for the rabbits, a paper of flies for Gilbert, and a gaily-painted pincushion upholstered in magenta velvet for Nell. " It's rather pretty," she remarked, turning over her first love gift admiringly — it had probably cost her lover sixpence ; but the real worth of an offerinn* does not lie entirely in its money value. " What is that man doing on it ? " Nell's First Suitor. ■7 " Why, that's Sayers, the prize-fighter," explained Ralph.

" Dinna you see him squaring his fists ? That's just what I'll do by any other fellow that comes hanging about here now." "Don't talk nonsense!" interrupted Gilbert peremptorily. " Remember you promised to dig up that garden to-night ; you'd better make haste and begin it." It was a little hard to be set to the grindstone in the middle of his first speech, but Ralph was not a sentimental person, and he was capable of any amount of hard work. Gilbert had undoubtedly had an eye to business when he selected him to head the list of Nell's suitors. This lower corner of the garden was given over entirely to the children ; the man who came at irregular intervals to " sort up " the rest of the ground never interfered with that patch. Of course Gilbert had appropriated the lion's share : he owned the big square behind the walnut-tree, chiefly remarkable for stones.

He was going to do great things with that square — when he had time. Nell's was the triangular corner between the hedge and the wall of the churchyard. The triangle boasted a straggling white rose bush, a round clump of grey sage — her namesake — and two noble leeks that had run to seed, and reared their tall puffy heads like sentinels at either side. In the small owner's mind the leeks ranked much higher than the rose-bush ; there was a stately dignity about the tall smooth stem and broad ribbon-like leaves that left the prickly rose-bush completely in the shade. Nell did not find her new ties in any way B oppressive ; her suitor took very little notice of her. Unless she asked a question — and Nell was great at questions — he never spoke directly to her. He con structed a new rabbit-hutch out of two old ones, rolled out Gilbert's piece of ground, till it was like a chess-board for neatness and baldness, and reduced the turf under the walnut-tree to almost the same plight, with a pair of rusty shears.

As far as work went, there was no fault to be found in him, but in social matters he left much to be desired : he argued with and contradicted Gilbert in a manner altogether unbecoming his position ; also he flatly refused to do anything in the money-lending line. He could use his money quite well himself, he declared ; and if he did not borrow from Gilbert, Gilbert had no right to borrow from him. Before the week of probation had nearly run out, it became evident that the situation was getting strained. " I've been quite disappointed in him," Gilbert told Nell, in confidence ; " he thinks far too much of himself, and there's no more work to be done just now, so we may as well tell him he needn't come here any more, and we will find someone who can do as he is told, next time." But Ralph declined to be disposed of in that simple fashion ; he spoke his mind pretty freely about the whole proceeding, and it came to something very like a free fight on the Saturday afternoon.

The son of the blacksmith came off best, to Gilbert's unmiti gated disgust. " It serves me right for ever letting you come in here at all," he said, when the brief skirmish was over A Skirmish. 19 and the champion putting on his jacket again. '■ Nell never liked you, and she wasn't far wrong for once. You're not sit to go to any gentleman's house." " I dinna ken vera much about gentlemen," returned the victor defiantly ; " and if they're all like you I'm no anxious to ken any mair ; it's all take and no give, and I've had about enough of it. As for Nell there " — he turned his flushed face and ruffled locks towards the corner whence she had looked on at the fray — " as for Nell, she's nae mind but yours the now ; she kens naething better." " That'll do," said Gilbert loftily. " We don't want to ' ken ' any more about you after this.

It's a great pity I ever asked you to come here at all." " Well, I wouldna be saying that you've lost by it altogether," retorted the other. " It's me, maybe, that might begin to count the cost, if anybody did. The game hasna been worth the candle, for any good I've got out of it." Gilbert declined further controversy on that head ; he was hardly in a position to deny that there might be some solid foundation for Ralph's assertion. There are seasons when dignified silence is almost the only alternative ; and Gilbert took that alternative. He marched into the house, and shut to the door with a resounding bang, leaving Nell to stand or retreat, as she thought fit. Ralph glowered down at her from under his heavy brows. "So you never liked me, either," he said gruffly. " You just let him make a catspaw of you as he pleases."

" That was only because you always looked so 1; black and dirty," explained Nell, with great candour ; " but you haven't been nearly as bad as I thought you would. I shan't mind a bit about the next boy that comes." " Oh ! there's going to be another, is there ? " " Yes, there has to be. Gilbert says he can't go on, without somebody to help him. Look what a lot of work you've had to do this last week, Ralph " — with a quick change of tone, and a shadow of doubt creep ing across her small face — " you won't want to have that pincushion back, will you ? I should like to keep it ; nobody ever gave me one before." " I dinna give things for the sake of taking them back again," he answered. " You're welcome to it, though I'll no trouble you with my company." " Thank you," said Nell, with a sigh of relief that might have referred cither to the pincushion, or his bodily presence, as the visitor chose to take it.

" Perhaps you'd better be going now, Ralph; Gilbert's sure to be coming out again in a minute." Ralph flung out of the garden with a smothered growl. Nell looked after him in some surprise, wondering what had made him turn cross again all in an instant, and just when he had been beginning to talk quite nicely ; however, she was to keep the pincushion : that was the great point. She went into the house to tell Gilbert about it, in a jubilant state of satisfaction. Alas ! for Nell ; she had more than Ralph to reckon with. Gilbert took a very different view of the transaction ; there was a principle involved in it, he declared ; it was not to be thought of for a moment. " But he said I might keep it," pleaded Nell. Suitor Number Two. 21 " But I say you are not to keep it ! " cried Gilbert, greatly shocked at her lack of pride and self-respect.

" Who wants his wretched old pincushion ? Give it to me at once, and I'll pitch it in at his door, the first time I'm down that way." " But you eat up all his apples, and there were those carrots the rabbits had, and I'd nothing but this." " And do you think I would keep his apples, or carrots either, if they had not been eaten ? " de manded Gilbert, with righteous indignation. " I thought you had more spirit, Nell : I did, indeed. Give me that pincushion, and don't bother." Nell reluctantly produced it from the depths of her small pocket. She did not cry, but she felt very like it, as she watched Gilbert roll up her one present in a stiff leaf torn out of a copy-book, and sally forth with it on Monday morning. He looked back at her disconsolate face. " Never mind, Nell. I'm going to bring David Finch back with me after school ; he'll give you any thing you like ta ask him for.

You'd better rig up a decent pinafore before he comes — that thing's all holes — and make your hair tidy." Nell pattered off obediently, but she hardly allowed for the lapse of time till after school ; by then her curls were as rough as ever, and if her pinafore had no holes, it had a good many spots and splashes that did not belong to the original design. Minor details did not affect Nell's peace of mind in the very least in those days. She perched herself on the gate quite complacently, to watch for the arrival of lover number two. He was of a different type from the first : whereas Ralph had been of the severely practical order, David erred in the opposite direction. Nell, surveying him critically from her post, thought him the very prettiest boy she had seen. He was not as tall as Gilbert, but he had yellow hair and pink cheeks that Gilbert could lay no claim to ; he was neatly dressed too, and carried a silk umbrella, which was an article utterly unknown on a week-day, in her circle of acquaintance.

" Come down from that ! " ordered Gilbert, as they came up to the gate. " That's Nell, David. She's not so bad when she is tidy. Now, Nell, remember there's to be no quarrelling this time. I have had quite enough trouble with your affairs." Gilbert stalked on into the house to deposit his school books, with an air of having conscientiously done his duty. The pair by the gate stood still, shyly glancing at each other. It was Nell who opened the conversation. " You're not very big," she remarked. " The last boy was twice your size." "That Patterson? I don't think much of him — great rough fellow ! You ought never to have spoken to him at all." " He was rather rough," acknowledged the lady ; " but he did a lot in the garden, and he brought us presents too : he gave me a lovely pincushion. Gilbert made me send it back, though."

" I should think so. I shouldn't have liked you to keep his things. I've got a nice little pincushion at home, that mother made for me ; I'll bring you that instead." Master Finch. 23 " Has it pictures on it ? " " Pictures ! no. What do you want with pictures on a pincushion ? It's only to stick pins in." " The other one had pictures," said Nell. " It was too hard to stick pins in ; but I never had any, so it didn't matter. Do you always take that umbrella to school ? Won't it get worn out very quick ? " " I take it when it rains. I have another one for church on Sundays." " Two umbrellas ! " echoed Nell ; " why, Gilbert never had one in his life." " Oh, Gilbert's different. It doesn't much matter about his clothes whether " "Now then," interrupted Gilbert, "you're not to stop talking here all the time.

We're going fishing to-night ; have you any hooks ? " " No," answered Master Finch, looking rather uneasy. " Mother doesn't like me to go so near the water ; she is afraid of my feet getting wet." Gilbert looked down at them in some amazement. " And what harm would it do if they did ? Well, if you haven't hooks, have you got any money ? " " Oh yes ; " and the visitor produced a neat little purse from his pocket. " That will do nicely," said Gilbert, with much satisfaction. " We'll go and get some at once ; and perhaps we'd better get a line too. I've got a stick and plenty of worms." It tvas doubtful if Master Finch shared in the satisfaction, but it was not easy to raise objections at such an early stage of the connection ; so he meekly submitted to have his reserve fund completely cleared out.

From the shop he was taken to the burnside, to dance attendance upon Gilbert's performance with the stick and the hooks, buoyed up with the vain hope of a basket of trout to take home to his mother. Finally, the fortunate young lover, damp and tired, and considerably the poorer for his promotion, went home in a very subdued frame of mind. -5

Chapter II

" HOW SHE found the world was hollow." It was in the early summer that Gilbert in augurated the acquaintance with David, and with various ups and downs it lasted into late autumn. It could not be said to be a time of unalloyed happiness for him. He was made to work hard in the way of fagging, most of his pocket-money was confiscated the moment he received it, and in all their disputes Nell invariably took Gilbert's side. David was used to milder treatment at home, and nothing but his fear of and deep respect for Gilbert kept him from open rebellion. He bore a good deal more from the young Sages than he did from anyone else, but sooner or later the turning-point had to come. " I say," Gilbert began suddenly one chilly after noon, when they were all three idling on the garden wall, deploring the dearth of amusement, " I've been thinking it's time you two got married."