Dolores by Ivy Compton-Burnett Page A

are shown with the Hutton family. It was the day of Dolores’ final coming from school; and the trap which formed the provision of its kind at the parsonage had been driven to meet her by her brother; the father’s tutored domestic instinct precluding any form of personal eagerness on his daughter’s return to his roof. She was topass the summer at the parsonage, and enter in the autumn a college for women. She seconded her stepmother’s view that her future support should not be expected of her father, and was to be fitted for the teaching to which she looked forward with her brother. We may watch her, as she walks up the country road—a tall, rather gaunt-looking woman—for the nameless suggestions of girlhood had lingered but a little while with Dolores,—angular and large of limb; with a plainness of dress that almost spoke of heedlessness, and a carriage not without dignity in its easy energy of motion. Her face is turned to her brother’s, lit up with humour and life; a face with a healthful sallowness of skin, exaggerated aquiline features, and grey eyes innocent of beauty of lash or colour, looking under nervous eyebrows, and a forehead already showing its furrows. She was fresh from the modern public school, where as student and student - teacher she had grown from the early maturity of the girl of thirteen to tolerant womanhood. It had been a helpful sphere for her early needs—rich in fellowship, in nurture for the charity which mellowed her nature’s primary sternness. It was not without cost that she put away what it gave, as childish things, and crossed its bound with her face held to the future.
    With her face held thus, she greeted herbrother with the humorous affection of their long comradeship; uttered no word of the day as lived by herself; and lent her ear to his tale of the home routine; showing his father’s and stepmother’s lots as they were to themselves, and summoning an eagerness for his boyish hopes which should prove that there was one who cared for them greatly. For Dolores in her dealings with others suppressed any pain that was her own; and had only cheer for the creatures she saw as having no need of further saddening. Her brother found that she filled the wants of his life; and in giving his troubles of the present and hopes for the future to her keeping, hardly knew that her present and future were things of which he heard little; or that her life held its own crushed sorrows, and duties that were hard and binding.
    â€œI told father I had made up my mind to teach,” he said, as they paused in the hedge-bound road for the trap to pass; “but he does not try to understand the meaning the decision has for me. He remarked that he supposed it was a passable choice, as I had no desire for the Church, and no aptitude for law or medicine. It seems the thing to talk about teaching as a work for feeble youths, who have no chance of another livelihood.”
    â€œYes, I believe it does,” said Dolores, with a sound of laughter in her full-toned, rather impressivevoice; “and I daresay, as many do it, father has put it fitly—the best thing for people with no aptitude for the Church or law or medicine. But you choose it as it is in itself.”
    â€œIt is a comfort to hear a sane remark,” said Bertram. “The talk that goes on at home, Dolores! It is invariably bounded by the doings and misdoings of the parish, or of Uncle James—misdoings in the latter case. And the mater is for ever put out about some little trifling thing that cannot possibly matter. We never have a day of peace.”
    â€œHer married life has hardly been all she expected, I am afraid,” said Dolores. “She is fretted by little things, that cannot be avoided any more than they can seem to be worth worrying about. How are the children, Bertram?”
    â€œOh—well, I suppose,” said Bertram. “Evelyn is fretful as usual; and