The Clever Woman of the Family

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Yonge Charlotte Mary. The Clever Woman of the Family

CHAPTER I. IN SEARCH OF A MISSION

CHAPTER II. RACHEL’S DISCIPLINE

CHAPTER III. MACKAREL LANE

CHAPTER IV. THE HERO

CHAPTER V. MILITARY SOCIETY

CHAPTER VI. ERMINE’S RESOLUTION

CHAPTER VII. WAITNG FOR ROSE

CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN’S MISSION DISCOVERED

CHAPTER IX. THE NEW SPORT

CHAPTER X. THE PHILANTHROPIST

CHAPTER XI. LADY TEMPLE’S TROUBLES

CHAPTER XII. A CHANGE AT THE PARSONAGE

CHAPTER XIII. THE FOX AND THE CROW

CHAPTER XIV. THE GOWANBRAE BALL

CHAPTER XV. GO AND BRAY

CHAPTER XVI. AN APPARITION

CHAPTER XVII. THE SIEGE

CHAPTER XVIII. THE FORLORN HOPE

CHAPTER XIX. THE BREWST SHE BREWED

CHAPTER XX. THE SARACEN’S HEAD

CHAPTER XXI. THE QUARTER SESSIONS

CHAPTER XXII. THE AFTER CLAP

CHAPTER XXIII. DEAR ALEXANDER

CHAPTER XXIV. THE HONEYMOON

CHAPTER XXV. THE HUNTSFORD CROQUET

CHAPTER XXVI. THE END OF CLEVERNESS

CHAPTER XXVII. THE POST BAG

CHAPTER XXVIII. VANITY OF VANITIES

CHAPTER XXIX. AT LAST

CHAPTER XXX. WHO IS THE CLEVER WOMAN?

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The will, which not only Rachel but her mother thought strangely unguarded, had been drawn up in haste, because Sir Stephen’s family had outgrown the provisions of a former one, which had besides designated her mother, and a friend since dead, as guardians. Haste, and the conscious want of legal knowledge, had led to its being made as simple as possible, and as it was, Sir Stephen had scarcely had the power to sign it.

During this drive, Grace and Rachel had the care of the elder boys, whom Rachel thought safer in her keeping than in Coombe’s. A walk along the cliffs was one resource for their amusement, but it resulted in Conrade’s climbing into the most break-neck places, by preference selecting those that Rachel called him out of, and as all the others thought it necessary to go after him, the jeopardy of Leoline and Hubert became greater than it was possible to permit; so Grace took them by the hands, and lured them home with promises of an introduction to certain white rabbits at the lodge. After their departure, their brothers became infinitely more obstreperous. Whether it were that Conrade had some slight amount of consideration for the limbs of his lesser followers, or whether the fact were—what Rachel did not remotely imagine—that he was less utterly unmanageable with her sister than with herself, certain it is that the brothers went into still more intolerable places, and treated their guardian as ducklings treat an old hen. At last they quite disappeared from the view round a projecting point of rock, and when she turned it, she found a battle royal going on over an old lobster-pot—Conrade hand to hand with a stout fisher-boy, and Francis and sundry amphibious creatures of both sexes exchanging a hail of stones, water-smoothed brick-bats, cockle-shells, fishes’ backbones, and other unsavoury missiles. Abstractedly, Rachel had her theory that young gentlemen had better scramble their way among their poor neighbours, and become used to all ranks; but when it came to witnessing an actual skirmish when she was responsible for Fanny’s sons, it was needful to interfere, and in equal dismay and indignation she came round the point. The light artillery fled at her aspect, and she had to catch Francis’s arm in the act of discharging after them a cuttlefish’s white spine, with a sharp “For shame, they are running away! Conrade, Zack, have done!” Zack was one of her own scholars, and held her in respect.

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“Oh, no, not now! That was in the first years.”

“It was not always so.”

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