THE GIRL'S OWN PAPER

[Transcriber's Note: This Table of Contents was not present in the original.]

"OUR HERO." THE MESSAGE OF THE MARGUERITES. ABOUT SOME NORMANDY DAIRIES. SOME PRACTICAL HINTS ON COSMETIC MEDICINE. PREPARATION FOR MARRIAGE. AUTUMN. LILIAN'S FELLOW-TRAVELLER. INVALID COOKERY. ART IN THE HOUSE. A NEW PRIZE COMPETITION. VARIETIES. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

"OUR HERO."

A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.

By AGNES GIBERNE, Author of "Sun, Moon and Stars," "The Girl at the Dower House," etc.

All rights reserved.]

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CHAPTER I.

IF WAR SHOULD BREAK OUT.

"You don't mean to say it, my dear sir! You're absolutely jesting. I'm compelled to believe that you are pleased to talk nonsense. To take the boy! Impossible!"

"I never was more sober in my life, I do assure you, ma'am."

"The thing is incredible. No, sir, I cannot believe it. 'Tis bad enough that you should be going abroad at all at this time, you and your wife. But to place an innocent babe of eleven years in the power of that wicked Corsican——Close upon thirteen, say you? Well, well, twelve years old! 'tis much the same. My dear sir, war is a certainty. We shall be embroiled with France before six weeks are ended."

"That is as may be. We intend to be at home again long before six weeks are gone by. A fortnight in Paris; nothing more. The opportunity is not to be lost; and as you know, all the world is going to France just now. So pray be easy in your mind."

Colonel Baron adjusted his rigid stock, and held his square chin aloft, looking over it with a benevolent though combative air towards the lady opposite. Mrs. Bryce was a family friend of long standing, and she might say what she chose; but nothing was farther from his intentions than to alter his plans, merely because Mrs. Bryce or Mrs. Anybody-Else chose to volunteer unasked advice. There was a spice of obstinacy in the gallant Colonel's composition.

Despite civilian dress—swallow-tailed coat, brass buttons, long flapped waistcoat, white frilled shirt-front, and velvet knee-breeches, with silk stockings, the Colonel was a thorough soldier in appearance. He had not yet left middle age behind, and he was still spare in figure, and upright as a dart.

Mrs. Bryce, a lively woman, in age perhaps between thirty and thirty-six, had bright twinkling eyes. She was dressed much a la mode, in the then fashionable figured muslin, made long and clinging, her white stockings and velvet shoes showing through it in front. The bonnet was of bright blue; and a silk spencer, of the same colour, was cut low, a large handkerchief covering her shoulders. A short veil descended below her eyes. She used her hands a good deal, flirting them about expressively as she talked.

Upon an old-fashioned sofa, with prim high back and arms and a long "sofa-table" in front, sat the Colonel's wife, Mrs. Baron, a very graceful figure, young still, and in manner slightly languishing. Though it was early in the afternoon, she wore a low-necked frock, with a scarf over it; and her hands toyed with a handsome fan. A white crape turban was wound about her head. Beside her was Mr. Bryce, a short man, clothed in blue swallow-tailed coat and brass buttons—frock-coats being then unknown. His face was deeply scored and corrugated with small-pox.

The wide low room, with its large centre-table and ponderous furniture, had one other inmate; and this was a lovely young girl, in a short-waisted and short-sleeved frock of white muslin. A pink scarf was round her neck; dainty pink sandalled shoes were on her small high-instepped feet; long kid gloves covered the slender round arms; a fur-trimmed pink pelisse lay on a chair near; and from the huge pink bonnet on her head tall white ostrich-feathers pointed skyward. Polly Keene was on a visit to the Barons, and she had just come in from a stroll with Mr. and Mrs. Bryce. Young ladies, ninety years ago, did not commonly venture alone beyond the garden, but waited for proper protection. Polly had the softest brown velvet eyes imaginable, a delicate blush-rose complexion, and a pretty arch manner.

Upon a side table stood cake and wine, together with a piled-up pyramid of fruit, for the benefit of callers. Afternoon tea was an unknown institution; and the fashionable dinner-hour varied between four and half-past five o'clock.

"A fortnight in Paris! And what of Nap meanwhile?" vivaciously demanded Mrs. Bryce. "What of old Boney? That is the question, my dear sir. What may not that wicked tyrant be after next?"

In those days even old friends and relatives used the terms "sir" and "madam" very often one to another.

"Buonaparte has a good deal to answer for, ma'am, but really I do not imagine that he will have the responsibility of hindering this little scheme of ours," Colonel Baron replied.

Mrs. Bryce turned herself briskly towards the sofa.

"If I were you, Harriette, I'd refuse to go. Then, at least, you wouldn't have it on your conscience if everything gets into a muddle."

Mrs. Baron's large languid grey eyes opened rather more widely than their wont.

"My dear Harriette, wake up, I entreat of you. Pray listen to me. Doubtless all the world is going to France. Nothing more likely, since half the world consists of idiots, and another half of madmen. That is small reason why you two need comport yourselves like either."

"Do you really suppose there will be war again so soon?" asked Mrs. Baron incredulously.

"Do I suppose? Why, everybody knows it. Jim knows it. Your husband knows it. There can't be any reasonable doubt about the matter. The treaty of Amiens is practically at an end already. Nap has broken his pledges again and again. And this last demand of his—why, nothing could be more iniquitous."

"Dear me; has he made any fresh demand?" Mrs. Baron's eyes went in appeal to her husband, for she had no very great faith in Mrs. Bryce's judgment. The Colonel had no chance of responding.

"Even you can't surely have forgot that, my dear Harriette. He desires that we should give over to his tender mercies the unfortunate Bourbon Princes, who have fled to us for refuge: and no doubt in the end he would demand all the refugees of the Revolution. He might as well demand England herself. And he will demand that, in no long time. 'Tis an open secret that he is already making preparations for the invasion of our country."

"Boney doesn't believe that England, single-handed, will dare to oppose him," remarked Mr. Bryce. "He thinks a nation of seventeen million inhabitants is certain to go down before a nation of forty millions."

"Let him come, and he'll soon learn his mistake," declared Mr. Bryce's valiant better half. "But you, Harriette—with public affairs in this state—you positively intend to let your crazy husband drag you across the Channel?"

"But I do not think my husband crazy, and I wish very much to go," she said, slightly pouting. "I have never been out of England. The wars have always hindered me."

"And you absolutely mean to take the young ones too!"

"We intend to take Roy," the Colonel said, as his wife's eyes once more appealed to him. Children in those days seldom travelled, unless as a matter of necessity; therefore the Colonel's voice was proportionately determined.

"I never heard such a scheme in my life. To take the boy away from his schooling——"

"No; his school has just broken up for some weeks. Several cases of small-pox; so it is considered best. Roy has not been in the way of any who have sickened; therefore he is all right. We mean to have him with us."

"And Molly? Not Molly too?"

"No, not Molly. One will be enough."

Colonel Baron did not wish to betray that he had strenuously opposed the plan, and had given in with reluctance to his wife's entreaties.

"I thought the two never had been parted?"

"That has been folly. It is time such fantasies should be broken through. Roy must go to a boarding-school in the autumn; and this will pave the way."

Mrs. Baron lifted a lace handkerchief to her eyes.

"My dear heart—a school five miles off. You will think nothing of it when the time arrives," urged the Colonel, who till then had gone against his own better judgment, keeping the boy at home and allowing him to attend a day-school. He had won his wife's consent to the boarding-school in the autumn only that morning, by yielding to her wish that Roy should go to Paris. The Colonel's graceful wife was something of a spoilt child in her ways; and resolute as he could show himself in other directions, he seldom had the will to oppose her seriously.

"Indeed, I should say so too," struck in Mrs. Bryce. "You don't desire to turn him into a nincompoop; and between you and Molly, my dear Harriette,{3} he hasn't a chance. School will make a man of him. And what's to become of Molly?"

Mrs. Baron was still gently dabbing her eyes with the square of lace, and the Colonel answered—

"My wife's step-mother wishes to have Molly in Bath for a visit. She will travel thither with Polly early next week."

"Too much gadding about. Not the sort of way I was brought up, nor you either. But everything is turned upside-down in these days. And you've persuaded Captain Ivor to go too?"

"He will go with us to Paris."

"And you're quite content to put yourselves into the clutches of that miserable Boney!"

"My dear madam, the First Consul does not wage war on unoffending travellers. Even supposing that hostilities should break out sooner than may reasonably be expected, we have then but to hasten home."

"Boney doesn't care what he does, so long as he can get his own way."

"He will, at least, act in accordance with the laws of civilised nations."

"Not he! Boney makes his own laws to suit himself."

"Well, well, my dear madam, we view these things differently. And since I have fully made up my mind, all this discussion is a waste of good breath. My wife has never been into France, and I desire that she should go. We may not have another opportunity for many years to come."

"Likely enough—while the Corsican lives!" muttered Mrs. Bryce.

The end window opened upon a kind of verandah, and just outside this window, which had been thrown wide open—for it was an unusually hot spring day—a boy lay flat upon the ground, shaping a small wooden boat with his penknife. At the first mention of his name, a fair curly head popped up and popped down again. A recurrence of the word "Roy" brought up the head a second time, and two wide grey eyes stared eagerly over the low sill into the room. He might have been seen easily enough, but that people were too busy to look that way. Then again the head vanished, and its owner lay motionless, apparently listening for two or three minutes, after which he rolled away to a short distance, jumped up, and scampered off to the schoolroom at the back of the house.

It was a good-sized house, with a nice garden, in the then outskirts of London—a much more limited London than the great metropolis of the present day, though even then Englishmen were wont to describe it as "vast." Where Colonel Baron's house stood, with fields and hedges near at hand, miles of streets now extend in all directions. Trafalgar Square and Regent Street were unbuilt; Pimlico and Moorfields alike consisted mainly of bare rough ground; and the City was still a fashionable place of residence. These facts serve to show how small a London existed in those days.

Roy Baron was a handsome well-set-up lad of about twelve, and he had on a blue cloth jacket, with trousers and waistcoat of the same material. Knickerbockers were unknown. Children and bigger boys wore loose trousers, while tights and uncovered stockings were reserved for grown-up gentlemen. In a few weeks Roy would exchange his cloth waistcoat and trousers for linen ditto, either white or striped. Boys' hair was not cropped so closely in the year 1803 as in the Nineties, and a mass of close little curls grew all over Roy's head.

The year 1803. Think what that means.

Napoleon Buonaparte was alive—not only alive, but in full vigour; and he had entered on his career of conquest, and the world was in terror of his name. Nelson was alive, and five years earlier he had won the great battle of the Nile; two years earlier the great battle of Copenhagen; though his crowning victory of Trafalgar had not yet finally established British supremacy over the ocean. Wellington was alive, but his then name of Sir Arthur Wellesley had not yet become widely famous, and no one could guess that one day he would be the Iron Duke of world-wide celebrity. Sir John Moore, the future Hero of Coruña, was alive, and, though not yet knighted, was already "the most renowned military character of his age."[A]

Napoleon was not yet Emperor of the French. He was only climbing towards that goal, and thus far he had not advanced beyond being First Consul in the Republic. By English people generally he was viewed with a mingling of detestation and disgust, dread and disdain, varied in some quarters by a certain amount of admiration.

The peace between England and France, lasting somewhat over twelve months, had been hardly more than an armed and uncertain truce, a mere slight break in long years of intermittent warfare. As the old king, George III., remarked at the time, it was "an experimental peace," and few had hopes of its long continuance. For the Firebrand was still in Europe, and barrels of gunpowder lay on all sides. Both before the peace began, and also while it continued, Napoleon indulged in many speculative threats of a future invasion of England, and preparations were at this date said to be actually begun.

England alone of all the nations stood upright, and fearlessly looked the tyrant in the face. And Great Britain, with all her pluck, had then but a small army, no volunteers, and few fortifications, while her chief defence, the fleet, though splendidly manned, was weak indeed, compared with the mighty armament which she now possesses.

Whether the peace should last, or whether it should speedily end, depended mainly on the will of one man, an ambitious and reckless despot, who cared not a jot what rivers of French and English blood he might cause to flow, nor how many thousands of French and English widows might break their hearts, so long only as he could indulge to the full his lust of conquest, and could obtain plenty of what he called "glory." Another and truer name might easily have been found for the commodity in question.

Yet it is impossible not to accord admiration to this man's transcendent genius, and even Napoleon was not altogether bad. Perhaps, in the bitterness of incessant war, even he sometimes was more harshly judged than he fully deserved. But if so, he brought the evil upon himself.

(To be continued.)

THE MESSAGE OF THE MARGUERITES.

(See Coloured Frontispiece.)

This "ladie fayre" ascending the stairway of the old Castle of Blois in France gives us a glimpse of the prevailing fashion of towering head-dress worn in the fifteenth century. Addison satirically remarks that, "Women in all ages have taken more pains than men to adorn the outside of their heads." This adornment surely reached its culmination when ladies adopted these wonderful erections called fontanges, which, we are told by an ancient writer, were "like pointed steeples, with loose kerchiefs atop hanging down sometimes as low as the ground."

As we look at the cooing doves in the castle window, we see an indication of a weighty matter which rests upon the lady's mind. She is gazing out over the distant woods to catch a glimpse of her lover returning from the chase. She would fain believe that her true knight cares for no one but herself, but how can she be sure?

In the castle garden she has culled a bunch of marguerites, and now she is on her way to her own secret bower there to try her fortune. As she pulls to pieces the fateful flowers she will murmur softly, "He loves me a little, he loves me much, he loves me passionately, he loves me not."

Let us hope the message will be propitious, and that when she descends the stairs it will be to receive her lover with a smiling trustful face, and that he will prove worthy of one so fair and sweet.

GIRL'S OWN PAPER. Orford Smith, Ld. St. Albans. LONDON.

The message of the Marguerites.

From the Painting by COMTE.

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ABOUT SOME NORMANDY DAIRIES.

By LADY GEORGINA VERNON.

Soft grey days, with rolling misty clouds, southerly winds crooning pathetic farewells to the departing summer; such is October in Normandy, alternated with brilliant days, flashing golden glory over the myriad tinted orchards, such a strange mixture of grey and gold, of fading pasture and scarlet leaves, early mornings calm and still with every blade of grass heavy with dew, while the burning mid-day glows with summer splendour, and days like these in autumn have a brilliancy and a power of touching one's heart that no summer day possesses; and in Normandy Nature seems to paint her beauties with more lavish hand than in our northern climes. Scarlet and amber, crimson and madder deck each tree and hedge, and even if there are grey days they only seem to bring out more vividly the autumnal glories. October is a busy month for farmer and dairy-man here, because one of the chief industries, that of soft cheese-making, can only be sparingly carried on during the hot summer months; and in October the manufacture of Camemberts especially is at its height.

I should strongly advise any one who is interested in dairy-work to make a trip to Normandy during this month, for they could pass a delightful time studying the various methods of soft cheese-making.

This is an industry I have long wished to see carried to greater perfection in England. It is work so eminently suited for women, and could be undertaken by any one with a dairy, of even eight or ten cows, with very little expense. I have lately been making a very careful study of this work, and visiting many of the largest dairies round Lisieux, which is the centre of the Camembert and Pont Evêque cheese factories, and I have been much struck by the simplicity of the process and the slight expense that the plant would cost for the production of these and kindred cheeses.

There are great difficulties in the way of thoroughly mastering the subject, because as a rule the whole process is carried on by "rule of thumb." There are no thermometers, and they boast that they never use one. The very important subject of the heat of the milk at various stages of manufacture, the temperature of the rooms for ripening the cheeses, are carried out by guess-work and feeling, and I think that this is one cause that these cheeses vary so much in different localities. I should strongly urge that any one desirous of becoming an adept at this work should endeavour to get herself taken as a pupil at one of the smaller farms. They will not take pupils at the large manufactories, as it is not worth their while, but at some of the smaller places, I think, if a pupil was willing to pay a premium, she might get taken on. I spoke to one farmer who makes about four hundred to six hundred Camemberts daily in his small dairy, and he thought it was quite a possible plan. An intending pupil should provide herself with two thermometers, one to hang

up in the dairy and one to test the heat of the milk. My own feeling inclines me to advise the taking up of the Pont Evêque cheeses more than the Camembert; they are not so difficult to ripen, and I think are more suitable to English taste, and should command a ready sale.