was not only Mr. Hope’s broad daylight mood which was not to be trusted with this letter. In this hour of midnight a misgiving seized upon him that it was extravagant. He became aware, when he laid down his pen, that he was agitated. The door of his room opened into the garden. He thought he would look out upon the night. It was the night of the full moon. As he stood in the doorway, the festoons of creepers that dangled from his little porch waved in the night breeze; long shadows from the shrubs lay on the grass; and in the depth of one of these shadows glimmered the green spark of a glow-worm. It was deliciously cool and serene. Mr. Hope stood leaning against the door-post, with his arms folded, and was not long in settling the question whether the letter should go.
“Frank will think that I am in love,” he considered. “He will not understand the real state of my feeling. He will think that I am in love. I should conclude so in his place. But what matters it what he infers and concludes? I have written exactly what I thought and felt at the moment, and it is not from such revelations that wrong inferences are usually drawn. What I have written is true; and truth carries safely over land and sea—more safely than confidence compounded with caution. Frank deserves the simplest and freshest confidence from me. I am glad that no hesitation occurred to me while I wrote. It shall go—every word of it.”
He returned to his desk, sealed and addressed the letter, and placed it where it was sure to be seen in the morning, and carried to the post-office before he rose.
Chapter Eight.
Child’s Play.
The afternoon arrived when the children were to have their feast in the summer-house. From the hour of dinner the little people were as busy as aldermen’s cooks, spreading their table. Sydney thought himself too old for such play. He was hard at work, filling up the pond he had dug in his garden, having tried experiments with it for several weeks, and found that it never held water but in a pouring rain. While he was occupied with his spade, his sisters and the little Rowlands were arranging their dishes, and brewing their cowslip-tea.
“Our mamma is coming,” said Fanny to Matilda: “is yours?”
“No; she says she can’t come—but papa will.”
“So will our papa. It was so funny at dinner. Mr. Paxton came in, and asked whether papa would ride with him; and papa said it was out of the question; it must be to-morrow; for he had an engagement this afternoon.”
“A very particular engagement, he said,” observed Mary: “and he smiled at me so, I could not help laughing. Fanny, do look at Matilda’s dish of strawberries! How pretty!”
“There’s somebody coming,” observed little Anna, who, being too young to help, and liable to be tempted to put her fingers into the good things, was sent to amuse herself with jumping up and down the steps.
“There now! That is always the way, is not it, Miss Young?” cried Fanny. “Who is it, George? Mr. Enderby? Oh, do not let him come in yet! Tell him he must not come this half-hour.”
Mr. Enderby chose to enter, however, and all opposition gave way before him.
“Pray don’t send me back,” said he, “till you know what I am come for. Now, who will pick my pockets?”
Little Anna was most on a level with the coat pocket. She almost buried her face in it as she dived, the whole length of her arm, to the very bottom. George attacked its fellow, while the waistcoat pockets were at the mercy of the taller children. A number of white parcels made their appearance, and the little girls screamed with delight.
“Miss Young!” cried Fanny, “do come and help us to pick Mr. Enderby’s pockets. See what I have got—the very largest of all!”
When every pocket had been thoroughly picked without Miss Young’s assistance, the table did indeed show a goodly pile of white cornucopia—that most agitating form of paper to children’s eyes. When opened, there was found such a store of sweet things as the little girls had seldom before seen out of the confectioner’s shop. Difficulties are apt to come with good fortune; and the anxious question was now asked, how all these dainties were to be dished up. Miss Young was, as usual, the friend in need. She had before lent two small china plates of her own; and she now supplied the further want. She knew how to make pretty square boxes out of writing-paper; and her nimble scissors and neat fingers now provided a sufficiency of these in a trice. Uncle Philip was called upon, as each was finished, to admire her skill; and admire he did, to the children’s entire content.
“Is this our feast, Mr. Enderby?” inquired Mary, finally, when Anna had been sent to summon the company. “May we say it is ours?”
“To be sure,” cried Fanny. “Whose else should it be?”
“It is all your own, I assure you,” said Mr. Enderby. “Now, you two should stand at the head of the table, and Matilda at the foot.”
“I think I had better take this place,” said Sydney, who had made his appearance, and who thought much better of the affair now that he saw Mr. Enderby so much interested in it. “There should always be a gentleman at the bottom of the table.”
“No, no, Sydney,” protested Mr. Enderby; “not when he has had no cost nor trouble about the feast. March off. You are only one of the company. Stand there, Matilda, and remember you must look very polite. I shall hide behind the acacia there, and come in with the ladies.”
A sudden and pelting shower was now falling, however; and instead of hiding behind a tree, Mr. Enderby had to run between the house and the schoolroom, holding umbrellas over the ladies’ heads, setting clogs for them, and assuring Mrs. Grey at each return that the feast could not be deferred, and that nobody should catch cold. Mr. Grey was on the spot; to give his arm to Mrs. Enderby, who had luckily chanced to look in—a thing which “she really never did after dinner.” Mr. Hope had been seen riding by, and Mrs. Grey had sent after him to beg he would come in. Mr. Rowland made a point of being present: and thus the summer-house was quite full—really crowded.
“I am glad Mrs. Rowland keeps away,” whispered Mrs. Grey to Sophia. “She would say it is insufferably hot.”
“Yes; that she would. Do not you think we might have that window open? The rain does not come in on that side. Did you ever see such a feast as the children have got? I am sure poor Elizabeth and I never managed such a one. It is really a pity Mrs. Rowland should not see it. Mr. Rowland should have made her come. It looks so odd, her being the only one to stay away!”
The room resounded with exclamations, and admiration, and grave jokes upon the children. Notwithstanding all Uncle Philip could do, the ingenuous little girls answered to every compliment—that Mr. Enderby brought his, and that that and the other came out of Uncle Philip’s pocket. They stood in their places, blushing and laughing, and served out their dainties with hands trembling with delight.
Maria’s pleasure was, as usual, in observing all that went on.
She could do this while replying, quite to the purpose, to Mrs. Enderby’s praise of her management of the dear children, and to George’s pressing offers of cake; and to Mr. Rowland’s suspicions that the children would never have accomplished this achievement without her, as indeed he might say of all their achievements; and to Anna’s entreaty that she would eat a pink comfit, and then a yellow one, and then a green one; and to Mrs. Grey’s wonder where she could have put away all her books and things, to make so much room for the children. She could see Mr. Hope’s look of delight when Margaret declined a cup of chocolate, and said she preferred tasting some of the cowslip-tea. She saw how he helped Mary to pour out the tea, and how quietly he took the opportunity of getting rid of it through the window behind Margaret, when she could not pretend to say that she liked it. She observed Mr. Rowland’s somewhat stiff politeness to Hester, and Mr. Enderby’s equal partition of his attentions between the two sisters. She could see Mrs. Grey watching every strawberry