"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 Miss Brownings with a protestation
that she never would call her "mamma." She did not feel drawn to her
new relation by their intercourse 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 floods 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.