Such was Mr. Jubber's ingenious contrivance for turning to good pecuniary account the ignominious defeat which he had suffered at the hands of Dr. Joyce.
After much patient reasoning and many earnest expostulations, Mrs. Joyce at last succeeded in persuading Mr. Blyth that he might carry little Mary upstairs to her bed, without any danger of awakening her. The moonbeams were streaming through the windows over the broad, old-fashioned landings of the rectory stair-case, and bathed the child's sleeping face in their lovely light, as Valentine carefully bore her in his own arms to her bedroom. "Oh!" he whispered to himself as he paused for an instant where the moon shone clearest on the landing; and looked down on her--"Oh! if my poor Lavvie could only see little Mary now."
They laid her, still asleep, on the bed, and covered her over lightly with a shawl--then went down stairs again to wait for Mrs. Peckover.
The clown's wife came in half an hour, as she had promised. They saw sorrow and weariness in her face, as they looked at her. Besides a bundle with the child's few clothes in it, she brought the hair bracelet and the pocket-handkerchief which had been found on little Mary's mother.
"Wherever the child goes," she said, "these two things must go with her." She addressed Mr. Blyth as she spoke, and gave the hair bracelet and the handkerchief into his own hands.
It seemed rather a relief than a disappointment to Mrs. Peckover to hear that the child was asleep above stairs. All pain of parting would now be spared, on one side at least. She went up to look at her on her bed, and kissed her--but so lightly that little Mary's sleep was undisturbed by that farewell token of tenderness and love.
"Tell her to write to me, sir," said poor Mrs. Peckover, holding Valentine's hand fast, and looking wistfully in his face through her gathering tears. "I shall prize my first letter from her so much, if it's only a couple of lines. God bless you, sir; and good-bye. It ought to be a comfort to me, and it is, to know that you will be kind to her--I hope I shall get up to London some day, and see her myself. But don't forget the letter, sir: I shan't fret so much after her when once I've got that!"
She went away, sadly murmuring these last words many times over, while Valentine was trying to cheer and reassure her, as they walked together to the outer gate. Doctor Joyce accompanied them down the front-garden path, and exacted from her a promise to return often to the Rectory, while the circus was at Rubbleford; saying also that he and his family desired her to look on them always as her fast and firm friends in any emergency. Valentine entreated her, over and over again, to remember the terms of their agreement, and to come and judge for herself of the child's happiness in her new home. She only answered "Don't forget the letter, sir!" And so they parted.
Early the next morning, Mr. Blyth and little Mary left the Rectory, and started for London by the first coach.
CHAPTER VII.
MADONNA IN HER NEW HOME.
The result of Mr. Blyth's Adventure in the traveling Circus, and of the events which followed it, was that little Mary at once became a member of the painter's family, and grew up happily, in her new home, into the young lady who was called "Madonna" by Valentine, by his wife, and by all intimate friends who were in the habit of frequenting the house.
Mr. Blyth's first proceeding, after he had brought the little girl home with him, was to take her to the most eminent aural surgeon of the day. He did this, not in the hope of any curative result following the medical examination, but as a first duty which he thought he owed to her, now that she was under his sole charge. The surgeon was deeply interested in the case; but, after giving it the most careful attention, he declared that it was hopeless. Her sense of hearing, he said, was entirely gone; but her faculty of speech, although it had been totally disused (as Mrs. Peckover had stated) for more than two years past, might, he thought, be imperfectly regained, at some future time, if a tedious, painful, and uncertain process of education were resorted to, under the direction of an experienced teacher of the deaf and dumb. The child, however, had such a horror of this resource being tried, when it was communicated to her, that Mr. Blyth instinctively followed Mrs. Peckover's example, and consulted the little creature's feelings, by allowing her in this particular--and indeed in most others--to remain perfectly happy and contented in her own way.
The first influence which reconciled her almost immediately to her new life, was the influence of Mrs. Blyth. The perfect gentleness and patience with which the painter's wife bore her incurable malady, seemed to impress the child in a very remarkable manner from the first. The sight of that frail, wasted life, which they told her, by writing, had been shut up so long in the same room, and had been condemned to the same weary inaction for so many years past, struck at once to Mary's heart and filled her with one of those new and mysterious sensations which mark epochs in the growth of a child's moral nature. Nor did these first impressions ever alter. When years had passed away, and when Mary, being "little" Mary no longer, possessed those marked characteristics of feature and expression which gained for her the name of "Madonna," she still preserved all her child's feeling for the painter's wife. However playful her manner might often be with Valentine, it invariably changed when she was in Mrs. Blyth's presence; always displaying, at such times, the same anxious tenderness, the same artless admiration, and the same watchful and loving sympathy. There was something secret and superstitious in the girl's fondness for Mrs. Blyth. She appeared unwilling to let others know what this affection really was in all its depth and fullness: it seemed to be intuitively preserved by her in the most sacred privacy of her own heart, as if the feeling had been part of her religion, or rather as if it had been a religion in itself.
Her love for her new mother, which testified itself thus strongly and sincerely, was returned by that mother with equal fervor. From the day when little Mary first appeared at her bedside, Mrs. Blyth felt, to use her own expression, as if a new strength had been given her to enjoy her new happiness. Brighter hopes, better health, calmer resignation, and purer peace seemed to follow the child's footsteps and be always inherent in her very presence, as she moved to and fro in the sick room. All the little difficulties of communicating with her and teaching her, which her misfortune rendered inevitable, and which might sometime have been felt as tedious by others, were so many distinct sources of happiness, so many exquisite occupations of once-weary time to Mrs. Blyth. All the friends of the family declared that the child had succeeded where doctors, and medicines, and luxuries, and the sufferer's own courageous resignation had hitherto failed--for she had succeeded in endowing Mrs.