the girl replied, holding up a pair of small and naturally pretty, but for the moment sadly disfigured hands, while a gleam, half of amusement, half of reproach, came into her bright blue eyes.
“Really,” said her mother, “it is very provoking! I don’t know how you manage to get them, and you so strong. If it were Betty now, I shouldn’t be so surprised.”
And certainly her youngest daughter, little hands excepted, looked the picture of health. She had the thoroughly satisfactory and charming complexion, a tinge of brown underlying its clearness, which is found with that beautiful shade of hair which some people would describe as red, though in reality it is but a rich nut-brown. Betty, on the contrary, was pale, and looked paler than she actually was from the contrast with darker eyes and dusky hair. The family legend had it that she “took after” her mother, whose still remaining good looks told of Irish ancestry. And for this reason, possibly, it was taken for granted that the second girl was her mother’s favourite, though, even if so, the favouritism was not of a nature or an amount to rouse violent jealousy on the part of her sisters, had they been capable of it, for Lady Emma Morion had certainly never erred on the side of over-indulgence of her children. She was a good woman, and meant to be and believed herself to be an excellent mother, but under no circumstances in life could she have fulfilled more than one rôle, and the rôle which she had adopted since early womanhood had been that of wife. It simply never occurred to her that her daughters could have any possible cause of complaint, beyond that of the very restricted condition in which the family were placed by the prosaic fact of limited means.
That she or her husband could have done aught to soften or improve these for their children would have been a suggestion utterly impossible for her to digest. The privations, such as they were, she looked upon as falling far more hardly on herself and their father than on the daughters, who, when all was said and done, had youth and health and absence of cares.
That their youth was passing; that absence of cares may on the other side mean absence of interest; that the due supply of mere physical necessities can or does ensure health in the fullest sense of the word to eager, capable natures longing for work and “object” as well as enjoyment, never struck her. Nor, had such considerations been put before her in the plainest language, could she have understood them, for she was not a woman of much intellect or, what matters more in a mother, of any width of sympathy.
Greater blame, had he realised the position, would have lain at her husband’s door. He was a cultivated, almost a scholarly man, but the disappointments of life had narrowed as well as soured him. His was a sad instance of the dwarfing and stunting effects of self-pity, yielded to and indulged in till it comes to pervade the whole atmosphere of a life.
The brighter morning had cheered the sisters half-unconsciously, and Frances felt sorry at any friction beginning again between her mother and Eira. For though Lady Emma was not sympathising by temperament, she was not indifferent to annoyances, and that chilblains should be described by any stronger term she would have thought an exaggeration. Yet the fact of them worried her, and Frances felt about in her usual way for something to smooth the lines of irritation on her mother’s face.
“I have often heard, mamma,” she said, “that strong people suffer quite as much from chilblains as delicate ones, and they sometimes are worse the first cold weather than afterwards.”
“I believe they come from want of exercise,” said Lady Emma, in a somewhat softened tone. “If this bright dry weather lasts, you must go some good long walks, Eira.”
Eira made a wry face.
“I am sure I’ve no objection, mamma,” she said; “there’s nothing I like better than walking, but it’s a vicious circle, don’t you see? I dare say my not walking makes my circulation worse, but then again the chilblains make walking, for the time being, simply impossible.” Perhaps it was lucky that at this juncture Betty’s voice made a sudden interruption. Betty, though the quietest of the three, was rather given to sudden remarks.
“Papa,” she said, “have you possibly heard any sort of news about Craig-Morion?”
Her father glanced at her sharply over his eyeglasses.
“What do you mean, child?” he said. “News about Craig-Morion! What sort of news?”
“Oh, that it’s going to be sold or let, or something of that kind,” replied Betty calmly.
“Going to be sold, Craig-Morion!” exclaimed her father, his voice rising to a thin, high pitch. “What on earth has put such a thing in your head? Of course not.” But the very excitement of his tones testified to a certain unacknowledged uneasiness.
“Oh, well,” said Betty, “I didn’t really suppose it was going to be sold. But none of its present owners ever care to come there, so I thought perhaps there was to be a change of some kind.”
“And why should you suppose there was to be a change of any kind?” repeated Mr Morion, with a sort of grim repetition of her words, decidedly irritating, if his daughters had not been inured to it.
Betty flushed slightly.
“It was only something we noticed last night,” she replied, going on to relate the incidents that had attracted their attention. Her father would not condescend to comment on her information, but Lady Emma did not conceal her interest, and cross-questioned both her daughters. And from behind his newspaper her husband listened, attentively enough.
“It is curious,” she said. “If you pass that way to-day, girls, try to see old Webb and find out if anything has happened. Can any of the Morions possibly be coming down, Charles, do you suppose?”
Mr Morion grunted.
“Any of the Morions! How many of them do you think there are?” he said ironically. “You know very well that the present man was an only son, and his father before him the same.”
“Yes,” replied Lady Emma meekly, “but there were sisters in both cases. When I spoke of the Morions I meant any members of the family. Though I suppose it is very unlikely that any of them would suddenly come down here, when they care nothing about the place, and have got homes of their own.”
“That to me,” said Betty, speaking again abruptly, “is the aggravating part of the whole affair. If people lived at the big house who enjoyed it and appreciated it, it would be quite different. One couldn’t grudge it to them, but to see it empty and deserted year in and year out, when – ” she stopped short, a touch on her foot from Frances’, under the table, warning her that it would scarcely be wise to dwell further on what was a sore subject.
Mr Morion rose, pushing back his chair with a rasping sound on the thin, hard carpet, and left the room.
“I hope the fire in his study is all right,” said Lady Emma anxiously.
“Yes,” said Frances; “I glanced in on my way. Is there anything you want us to do this morning, mamma?” she added.
“I cannot possibly say till I have seen the cook,” her mother replied. “There is pretty sure to be something forgotten – servants are so stupid – if you are going to the village.”
“It’s my morning for reading to old Gillybrand,” said Frances rather drearily, “so while I am there Betty can do any messages there are – that’s to say if you care to come with me, Betty.”
“Tell me before you start, then,” said their mother, as she, in her turn, left the room for her kitchen interview. Poor woman! Housekeeping at the Firs was no sinecure, for Mr Morion was, like all hypochondriacs, difficult to please in the matter of food, firmly believing that his life depended on a special dietary. And such a state of things, when there is no financial margin, taxes invention and ingenuity sorely enough.
“What are you going to do to-day, Eira?” asked Frances. “You can’t possibly go out, I’m afraid.”
For all reply Eira extended first one foot and then the other, both encased in woolly slippers, each of which was large enough to have held two inmates at once, under ordinary circumstances.
“You poor child,” said her elder