“Why shouldn’t you call her ‘mamma’? I’m sure she means to do the duty of a mother to you. We all may make mistakes, and her ways may not be quite all at once our ways; but at any rate let us start with a family bond between us.”

What would Roger say was right?—that was the question that rose to Molly’s mind. She had always spoken of her father’s new wife as Mrs. Gibson, and had once burst out at the Miss Brownings’ with a protestation that she never would call her “mamma.” She did not feel drawn to her new relation by their intercourse of that evening. She kept silence, though she knew her father was expecting an answer. At last he gave up his expectation, and turned to another subject; told about their journey, questioned her as to the Hamleys, the Brownings, Lady Harriet, and the afternoon they had passed together at the Manor-house. But there was a certain hardness and constraint in his manner, and in hers a heaviness and absence of mind. All at once she said—

“Papa, I will call her ‘mamma’!”

He took her hand, and grasped it tight; but for an instant or two he did not speak. Then he said—

“You won’t be sorry for it, Molly, when you come to lie as poor Craven Smith did to-night.”

For some time the murmurs and grumblings of the two elder servants were confined to Molly’s ears; then they spread to her father’s, who, to Molly’s dismay, made summary work with them.

“You don’t like Mrs. Gibson’s ringing her bell so often, don’t you? You’ve been spoilt, I’m afraid; but, if you don’t conform to my wife’s desires, you have the remedy in your own hands, you know.”

What servant ever resisted the temptation to give warning after such a speech as that? Betty told Molly she was going to leave, in as indifferent a manner as she could possibly assume towards the girl whom she had tended and been about for the last sixteen years. Molly had hitherto considered her former nurse as a fixture in the house; she would almost as soon have thought of her father’s proposing to sever the relationship between them; and here was Betty coolly talking over whether her next place should be in town or country. But a great deal of this was assumed hardness. In a week or two Betty was in a flood of tears at the prospect of leaving her nursling, and would fain have stayed and answered all the bells in the house once every quarter of an hour. Even Mr. Gibson’s masculine heart was touched by the sorrow of the old servant, which made itself obvious to him, every time he came across her, by her broken voice and her swollen eyes.

One day he said to Molly, “I wish you’d ask your mamma if Betty might not stay, if she made a proper apology, and all that sort of thing.”

“I don’t much think it will be of any use,” said Molly, in a mournful voice. “I know she is writing, or has written, about some under-housemaid at the Towers.”

“Well!—all I want is peace and a decent quantity of cheerfulness when I come home. I see enough of tears at other people’s houses. After all, Betty has been with us sixteen years—a sort of service of the antique world. But the woman may be happier elsewhere. Do as you like about asking mamma; only, if she agrees, I shall be quite willing.”

So Molly tried her hand at making a request to that effect to Mrs. Gibson. Her instinct told her she would be unsuccessful; but surely favour was never refused in so soft a tone.

“My dear girl, I should never have thought of sending an old servant away—one who has had the charge of you from your birth, or nearly so. I could not have had the heart to do it. She might have stayed for ever for me, if she had only attended to all my wishes; and I am not unreasonable, am I? But, you see, she complained; and, when your dear papa spoke to her, she gave warning; and it is quite against my principles ever to take an apology from a servant who has given warning.”