he repeated, shaking hands with each in turn, “but – it need not be ‘Good-bye,’ as I don’t leave till the day after to-morrow. Do you think Lady Emma would allow me to look in some time in the afternoon?”
“Y-yes, I will tell her,” was Frances’ rather ambiguous reply; and as the young man re-entered the park, his thoughts busied themselves with the glimpse, the almost pathetic glimpse, he had had into these young lives.
Chapter Six
“Not at Home.”
“What in the world,” said Betty, “what in the whole world, Frances, did you get to talk about to him, all that long way across the park?”
“Really, Betty,” said Frances, for her, almost crossly, “you are too bad! Did I elect to have a tête-à-tête with Mr Littlewood? If it were worth while I might blame you and Eira seriously for the way you behaved – like two – ”
Betty was on the point of interrupting with some vehement repetition of the dislike she had taken, and that not causelessly, to their uninvited visitor, when a significative tug at her sleeve from Eira startled her into silence, though thereby Frances’ intended lecture made no further way, as the interruption came from Eira instead.
“You are not to say ‘silly school-girls,’” she exclaimed. “I know that’s what you were going to say. We simply walked on because three women and one man seem – are – so stupid. Why does it always seem as if there were too many women?”
“In a family where there are no brothers it couldn’t very well seem anything else,” replied Frances, rather shortly; but she did not resume her remonstrances, for by this time they were by the front door, and she hurried into the drawing-room, where, as she expected, tea, and a somewhat ruffled Lady Emma, were awaiting them.
“You are very late, why – ” were the words that greeted her; but before hearing more, Eira softly closed the door, holding back Betty for a moment’s confabulation in the hall.
“What is it, Eira?” said Betty impatiently. “You tug my sleeve, and then you pull me back when I’m tired and want some tea. What is it you want to say?”
“We had better leave our cloaks outside,” said Eira, rapidly unbuttoning her own garment as she spoke. “What I want to say can’t be said in a moment, it is something too tremendous! I only felt that I must give you a hint to be more careful in your way of speaking about Mr Littlewood.”
“Why?” asked Betty, opening her dark eyes to their widest.
“Because,” said Eira, “I am not at all sure but what a most wonderful thing is going to happen, or, for that matter, has happened. Betty, suppose – just suppose – that he has fallen in love with Frances.”
Betty gasped, unable for a moment to articulate.
“That man!” she at last ejaculated.
“Well, why not?” returned Eira. “You’ve taken a dislike to him of some kind, or you fancy you have, and of course I don’t mean to say that I think he’s good enough, but still – but I can’t speak about it just now, only take care!”
She had certainly succeeded in taking Betty’s breath away. The girl would scarcely have been capable of a coherent reply, but she was not called upon for one. The drawing-room door opened, and their elder sister’s voice was heard.
“Do come in to tea,” she said, “and, Eira, you run and tell papa it is ready. I had no idea it was so late,” she went on. “Poor mamma has been wondering what was keeping us,” she added, in a deprecatory tone, as Betty followed her into the room.
“We can’t blame Mr Littlewood for it,” said Betty eagerly; “we were walking almost all the time we were talking to him, so he can’t have delayed us!”
“Mr Littlewood?” repeated Lady Emma, in the high-pitched tone which with her was one of the signs of disturbed equanimity. “Mr Littlewood? What is she talking about? You don’t intend to say that you have been a walk with a – perfect stranger! Frances, what does this mean? I insist on your telling me.”
“I have not the very least objection to telling you, mamma,” said Frances. “In fact, I have a message for you from Mr Littlewood, which I was just going to deliver.”
Her tone was absolutely respectful, but there was a touch of coldness in it, not without its effect on her mother. In her heart Lady Emma not only trusted her eldest daughter entirely, but looked up to her in a way which showed her own involuntary consciousness of the superiority in many ways of the girl’s character to her own. But any approach to acknowledgment of this real underlying admiration and respect would have seemed to her so strange and paradoxical, considering their mutual relations, as to be almost equivalent to a reversal of the fifth commandment.
She contented herself with replying in a calmer tone, “Did you meet Mr Littlewood, then? Naturally I can’t understand things till you explain them.”
“Yes,” Frances replied, “we met him on our way home, not in the park, but in the little copse on the Massingham road.”
“I am glad you were not in the park,” said Lady Emma.
“But we did come through it after meeting him,” said Frances. “It would have been affected to do otherwise just because he is staying at the house, and I suppose, as he was walking our way, he could scarcely have avoided walking on beside us. He asked me if he might call to say good-bye to you, mamma, to-morrow afternoon?”
The last words, unfortunately as it turned out, were overheard by Mr Morion as he entered the room. His wife, taught by long experience, made no reply, so the message remained uncommented upon, unless a doubtful grunt from the depths of the arm-chair where the master of the house had settled himself could have been taken as referring to it.
Silence, not an unusual state of things at Fir Cottage, ensued, and as soon as the two younger girls could escape from the room they hastened to their own quarters, a small and in wintertime decidedly dreary little chamber, which in old days had been used as their schoolroom. It looked out to the side of the house and was ill lighted. But its propinquity to the kitchen was, practically speaking, in cold weather no small boon, preventing its ever becoming very chilly, for, though it boasted a fireplace, the restrictions as to fuel formed one of the most disagreeable economies in practice at Fir Cottage. In summer, on the other hand, the schoolroom was apt to become unbearably hot; but in summer, if it is anything like a normal season, and in the country, life usually presents itself under a very different aspect. Such things as fires and chilblains do not enter into one’s calculations; one’s own room, in nine cases out of ten, is a pleasant resort, and even if not so, are there not out-of-doors boudoirs by the dozen?
Dreary enough, though, the little room looked this evening, when by the light of one candle Betty and Eira established themselves as comfortably as circumstances allowed of, that is to say, on two little low basket-chairs, dismissed from the drawing-room long ago as too shabby, which had been one of their few luxuries in lessons days. Just now, also, the extraordinary possibilities which they were about to discuss so filled their imaginations that the uninviting surroundings over which they often groaned would have passed unnoticed had they been ten times worse. And worse they might have been most assuredly! For one fairy gift was shared alike by the three sisters – the gift of dainty orderliness; and where this reigns one may defy poverty to do its worst, for with such a background the tiniest attempt at prettiness or grace is trebled in pleasing effect.
“Eira,” said Betty in an almost awe-struck whisper, “do you really, really mean what you said? Do you think it possible? And – ” with a touch of hesitation, quaint and almost touching in its contrast to the outspoken treatment of such subjects by the typical maiden of to-day, “if – if he had – fallen in love with Frances, could she ever care for him, I wonder?”
A dreamy questioning came into her eyes as she spoke.
“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” said Eira. “Of course neither you nor I can picture to ourselves any man being good enough for Frances,