silently together; Esther giving however a side glance now and then at her companion.
"You have not been long in town?" she said then, by way of beginning.
"Only three weeks."
"Of course then you are quite a stranger. It is very disagreeable, isn't it, to be among a whole set of people that you don't know?" Esther said it with a little turn of her pretty head, that was – Matilda could not tell just what it was. It shewed the young lady very much at her ease in society, and it was not quite natural; that was all she could make out. Matilda answered, that she did not find anything disagreeable. Esther opened her eyes a little wider.
"Do you know all about the arrangements to-night?" she whispered.
"I suppose I do."
"Will there be dancing?"
"I have heard nothing about dancing," said Matilda. "I don't think there'll be much time for it. I don't see how there can be."
"Are you very fond of dancing?" Esther asked, with her eyes at the further end of the next room.
Matilda was conscious of feeling ashamed of her answer. Nevertheless she answered. "I do not know how to dance."
"Not dance!" said Esther, with a new glance at her. "Did you never dance? O there's nothing I care for at parties but to dance. And there are just enough here to night; not a crowd. Aunt Zara will send you to dancing-school, I suppose. But it isn't so pleasant to begin to learn when you are so old."
"Aunt Zara!" said Matilda. "Norton did not say you were his cousin."
"Norton's head was too full," said Esther with another movement of her head that struck Matilda very much; it was quite like a grown-up young lady; and gave Matilda the notion that she thought a good deal of Norton. "Yes; we are cousins; that is why he told me to take care of you."
Matilda was tempted to say that Norton would save her that trouble as soon as he was at leisure to take it upon himself; but she did not. Instead, she asked Esther how old she had been when she began to take dancing lessons?
"I don't know; three and a half, I believe."
The deficiency of Matilda's own education pressed upon her heavily. She was a little afraid to go on, for fear of laying bare some other want.
"Yes," said Esther after another interval of being absorbed in what was going on in the next room; – "yes; of course, you know I began to learn to dance as soon as I began to wear – stays," she uttered in a whisper, and went on aloud. "The two things together. O yes; I was almost four years old."
Here she broke off to speak to some one passing, and Matilda was lost in wonderment again. A little uneasy too; for though the young lady kept her post at the side of the charge Norton had given her, and evidently meant to keep it, Matilda thought she had an air of finding her office rather a bore. A young lady who had danced and worn stays from the time she was four years old, must necessarily know so much of life and the world that a little ignoramus of a country girl would be a bore.
"What are they going to do then to-night, if we are not to dance?" resumed Esther when her friend had passed on. "Just have the Christmas tree and nothing else?"
Nothing else but a Christmas tree! Here was an experience!
"Norton and David are going to make a play," said Matilda; "acting a proverb."
"Oh!" said Esther. "A proverb! David is a good player, and Norton too; excellent; that will be very good. I thought I heard something about a witch; what is that?"
"What is what?" said Judy, who found herself near.
"About the witch?" said Esther.
"It' – mystery."
"Then is there to be a witch?"
"Certainly."
"Who will it be?"
"Part of the mystery," said Judy. "Upon my word I don't know. I couldn't find out. And I tried, too."
"What is she going to do?"
"That's the rest of the mystery. Without being a witch myself, how am I going to tell?"
"I have heard sometimes that you were," said Esther.
"Ah! But there are witches and witches," said Judy; "black and white, you know, and good and bad. I'm a black witch, when I'm any. It's not my business to get people out of trouble."
"I shall never ask you," said Esther shaking her head. "But where is the witch to be? and when will she appear?"
"She won't appear. She will be in her den. All who want to see her will go to her den. So much I can tell you." And Judy ran off before another question could be asked.
The elder ladies came in now, and there was a fresh stir. Mrs. Laval introduced Matilda to several boys and girls in the company before many minutes had gone; but there was time for little else beside an introduction, for the boys were ready to play; and all the guests were assembled in one room to leave the other free for their operations and give a good view of them. In that room the lights were lowered too, to make the scene of the play more brilliant by comparison.
The play was a great success. Matilda laughed for very delight, as well as at the fun of the thing. David, who personated the poor man who had come to sell a piece of ground, talked so admirably like a countryman, and was so oddly crochety and cross and gruff and impossible to make terms with; and then Norton, who was the rich man he had come to see and who wanted the land, coaxed him so skilfully, and ordered all sorts of good things to be brought to him, when he found he had come a good way and was hungry; and the imaginary banquet was very funny, David making inquiries and comments over the dishes he did not know and Norton supplying him with others, till he was satisfied. Then, in soothed good humour, David was easy to deal with, and let his land go a bargain. The acting was really extremely good; both the boys being clever and without any sort of embarrassment or any even shy affectation. The proverb which Matilda and Judy were to have played was given up for want of time. The boys' proverb was guessed by one of the elder ladies – "It is ill talking between a full man and a fasting." Matilda was very glad, for her part, that she and Judy were let off.
A hush of expectancy fell now upon the little company. It was time for the tree to be displayed. Even talking hushed, while all eyes were upon the folding doors leading to the last drawing-room to be thrown open. Matilda was at the back of the crowd, but even there she could see the blaze of light beyond as soon as this was done; and the whole company pressed forward and peeped in. Such a beautiful sight then, her eyes had never beheld. The tree was a generous, large, tall young fir, set in a huge green tub; but whereas in the wood where it grew it had green branches, with fringy, stiff, prickly leaves, now its branches were of every colour and as it were fringed with light. From the lowest bough to the topmost shoot it was a cone of brilliancy and a pyramid of riches. Lights glittered from every twig, and among the lights, below them and above them, near the stem and out at the tips of the bending boughs and covering the moss which covered the tub, were trinkets or toys or articles of wear or packages done up in white or coloured paper and made gay with coloured ribbands. So bountiful a tree, so elegant a tree, one so rich in its resources of pleasure, perhaps no eyes there had ever seen; for when Mrs. Lloyd did anything she was accustomed to do it thoroughly; and she had on this occasion two backers. One burst of admiration from the whole little crowd was followed by accents of delight and murmurs of expectation.
The tree stood in the middle of the large drawing-room, and the bright crowd which formed round it was surely a pretty sight. A sight for the elders alone; no child had eyes for anything but the tree. Eager eyes; glad eyes; sparkling and glowing with delight and expectation; a little, soft, rustling, hustling crowd, swaying gently, agitated, moved here and there, to and fro, but all fastened to that brilliant centre of a Christmas tree, as much as ever the planets to their centre. At the very back of the crowd, as she was, Matilda stepped on an ottoman to see better; and for her even expectation was almost lost in bewildered fascination. In truth the Christmas tree was a beautiful spectacle. The fairy-like beauty was what Matilda thought of at first; then she began gradually to notice how its branches were laden with other things besides lights, and how the little company was all on tiptoe with eagerness.