WRECKED IN PORT.
A SERIAL STORY BY THE AUTHOR OF "BLACK SHEEP."

CHAPTER III. MARIAN.

THE little child who was so long prayed
for, and who came at last in answer to
James Ashurst's fervent prayers, had nothing
during her childhood to distinguish
her from ordinary children. It is scarcely
worthy of record that her mother had a
hundred anecdotes illustrative of her precocity,
of her difference from other infants,
of certain peculiarities never before noticed
in a child of tender years. All mothers say
these things, whether they believe them or
not, and Mrs. Ashurst, stretched on her
sick couch, did believe them, and found in
watching what she believed to be the abnormal
gambols of her child, a certain relief
from the constant dreary wearing pain
which sapped her strength, and rendered her
life void, and colourless, and unsatisfactory.
James Ashurst believed them fervently;
even if they had required a greater amount
of credulity than that which he was blessed
with, he, knowing it gave the greatest
pleasure to his wife, would have stuck to
the text that Marian was a wonderful,
"really, he might say, a very wonderful,
child." But he had never seen anything
of childhood since his own, which he had
forgotten, and the awakening of the commonest
faculties in his daughter came upon
him as extraordinary revelations of subtle
character, which, when their possessor had
arrived at years of maturity, would astonish
the world. The Helmingham people did not
subscribe to these opinions. Most of them
had children of their own, who, they considered,
were quite as eccentric, and odd,
and peculiar as Marian Ashurst. "Not
that I'm for 'lowin that to be pert and
sassy one minute, and sittin' mumchance
wi'out sa much as a word to throw at a
dog the next, is quite manners," they would
say among themselves, "but what's ye to
expect? Poor Mrs. Ashurst layin' on the
brode of her back, and little enough of that,
poor thing, and that poor feckless creature,
the schoolmaster, buzzed i' his 'ed wi' book
larnin' and that! A pretty pair to bring
up such a tyke as Miss Madge!"

That was in the very early days of her
life. As the "tyke" grew up she dropped
all outward signs of tykeishness, and seemed
to be endeavouring to prove that eccentricity
was the very last thing to be ascribed
to her. The Misses Lewin, whose
finishing school was renowned throughout
the county, declared they had never had
so quick or so hard-working a pupil as Miss
Ashurst, or one who had done them so
much credit in so short a time. The new
rector of Helmingham declared that he
should not have known how to get through
his class and parish work, had it not been
for the assistance which he had received
from Miss Ashurst, at times when—when
really—well, other young ladies would,
without the slightest harm to themselves,
be it said, have been enjoying themselves
in the croquet- ground. When the wardrobe
woman retired from the school to enter into
the bonds of wedlock with the drill-sergeant
(whose expansive chest and manly figure
when going through the "exercise without
clubs," might have softened Medusa
herself), Marian Ashurst at once took upon
herself the vacant situation, and resolutely
refused to allow any one else to fill it.
These may have been put down as eccentricities;
they were evidences of odd character
certainly not usually found in girls
of Marian's age, but they were proofs of a
spirit far above tykeishness. All her best