LADY WILLIAM

LADY WILLIAM

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK
1894
All rights reserved
First Edition (3 Vols. Crown 8vo) January 1894
Reprinted February 1894
Second Edition (1 Vol. Crown 8vo) May 1894

I

The village of Watcham is not a village in the ordinary sense of the word, and yet it is a very pretty place, with a charming picturesque aspect, and of which people say, ‘What a pretty village!’ when they come upon its little landing-place on the riverside, or drive through its old-fashioned green, where some of the surrounding houses look as if they had come out of the seventeenth century, and some as if they had come out of the picture-books of Mr. Randolph Caldecott. It is a village of genteel little houses where a great many people live who have pretensions, but are poor: and some who have no pretensions and yet are poor all the same, and find the little, fresh, airy villa houses, with their small rooms and little gardens, a wonderful relief from London, even from the suburbs which are almost as rural as Watcham. Watcham, however, has various advantages over Hampstead or Wimbledon. It is close by the river, where a little quiet boating may be had without any fear of plunging into the mob of excursionists from London on one side, who make some portions of that river hideous, or the more elegant mob of society on the other, who do not add to its charm. But I need not linger on the attractions of this little place, with which the reader will, no doubt, if he (or she) has patience enough, become well acquainted in time.

The church in Watcham is a pretty church of very old foundation, low in stature and small in size, its porch covered with climbing roses, its modest little spire rising out of a mantle of ivy. Inside I have always felt that there was a faint breath of generations past, perhaps not so desirable as the traces of them left on the walls—which mingled with the breath of the congregation, and the whiff of incense, which was now and then added to the composite atmosphere. For the Rector was ‘High,’ and, though he never laid himself open to troublesome proceedings, was watched with great attention by a little band of parishioners very anxious to be aggrieved, who kept an eye upon all he did, in the hope of some day catching him at an unguarded moment, in the act of lighting a candle or donning a vestment which exceeded the rubric. But Mr. Plowden was quite aware of this watch, and delighted in keeping his critics up to the highest mark of vigilance without ever giving them the occasion they desired. The Rectory was an old red-brick house showing rather high and narrow above its garden wall, and the Plowden family consisted, besides the Rector, of his wife, a son, and two daughters, to whose credit the floral decorations, for which the church was famous, were laid, undeservedly, by the strangers and visitors who frequented the place—though this was always indignantly contradicted by the inhabitants, to whom it was well known that Miss Grey was the real artist who made the church so beautiful, and seemed to invent flowers when none were to be had by other persons, for the adornment of the little sanctuary. There were a few houses dotted about in their gardens in the neighbourhood of the church which contained the aristocracy of the place. These were generally very small, but, on the other hand, they were very refined, and contained old china and dainty pieces of old furniture such as might have made a dozen connoisseurs happy. They, however, were inhabited chiefly by ladies, though there was an old soldier and an old clergyman among them who stood out very strongly on the feminine background. The old clergyman, indeed, was no better than an old lady himself, and so considered in the place, which sent him on errands, and set but little store by his opinion; but the General! the General was very different. He had seen a great deal of service; and on occasions when he went at strictly-regulated intervals to a levée or other great function, with all his medals upon his ancient bosom, he was a sight to see. It was believed generally in the village that he had won several victories with his own right hand, and the sword which hung in his room was believed to have been bathed in blood on many terrible occasions; but, as was to be expected, the old soldier bore no terrible aspect, but was very amiable and gentle to his neighbours. The Archdeacon, of whom nobody stood in any awe, was on occasion ten times more severe.

It will be perceived that society in Watcham was not without dignitaries. But the person who was of highest rank in the place, whom all the ladies had to acknowledge as unmistakably their superior, who had the undoubted right to walk out of a room and into a room before them all, was a lady who lived in one of the smallest of those little houses which were as Belgravia to the population of the village. Such a little house! It had a pretty little garden all round it, with a privet hedge and green gate, which in their insignificance, yet complete enclosure and privacy, were a sort of symbol of their owner and her position. For it could not be denied that she was Lady William, sister-in-law to a marquis, connected (by marriage) with half the aristocracy; and yet not only was she very poor, but she was of herself, so to speak, nobody, which was the exasperating particular in the tale. Nobody at all, the Rector’s sister, once a governess, whose elevation by her marriage—and such a marriage!—over the heads of the best people in Watcham was an affront which they never got over, though these ladies were too well bred to make any quarrel, or to be anything but observant of the necessities of the situation. I do not pretend for a moment that it was ever suggested to Lady William in any way that her precedence annoyed her neighbours, and that to have to walk humbly behind that governess-woman, as Mrs. FitzStephen, the General’s wife, had hastily called her on her return to Watcham, was an accident of fate which made them furious. She was a woman full of perception, however, and she was quite aware of the fact, and derived from it a certain amusement. Above all was Lady William amused by it in respect to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Plowden, who, as a married woman, and the Rector’s wife, not to speak of her own connections, had been vastly superior to Emily Plowden in her earlier days when that young woman was a governess and of no consequence at all. The first time Lady William dined at the General’s, and was taken out by him before all the rest, the sight of Mrs. Plowden’s face was almost too much for her gravity. Her elevation had cost her dear, and had brought her little, except that empty honour; but she was a woman with a fine sense of the ludicrous, and that moment compensated her for many troubles. She was the first lady in Watcham, where she had received many snubs once upon a time, and this was at once a balm and an amusement to her of the most agreeable kind.

But Lady William was very poor. They were none of them rich in that little society, but Lady William had less than any, less even than Miss Grey. The small annuity given her by her husband’s family, given very grudgingly, and sometimes in arrears, was all she had to depend upon. She had, as people said severely, as if it had been her fault, nothing of her own. The Plowdens were not rich, and all that Emily Plowden had had been bestowed upon a prodigal brother, who had disappeared in the wilds of Australia, and never had been heard of more. What she had thus lost would not have added fifty pounds a year to her income; but fifty pounds a year when you have only two hundred is a great addition, and she was very much reproached for having made this sacrifice ‘to that good-for-nothing boy,’ the neighbours said. I am afraid she thought it very foolish herself when she came to be what she was, middle-aged, with Mab growing up, and so little, so very little, nothing at all, so to speak, to keep her little household upon. Sometimes she would calculate to herself how much better off she would have been if she had still possessed the interest of her thousand pounds which poor Ned had carried with him, and which probably only enabled him to ruin himself more quickly. Sometimes she would amuse herself by speculating how much it would have brought in. Thirty-five pounds perhaps, or possibly forty-five if she had been very lucky: and how many comforts that might have got during the year; or she might have taken a little off it—two hundred pounds or so—for Mab’s education. And Mab had really got no education, poor child. However, these were nothing but speculations, and had no bitterness in them. She did not grudge her money to poor Ned. Poor Ned! How often is there one in a family who is never spoken of but with that prefix, and how often he is the one who is the best beloved!

Lady William was quite worthy in externals of her elevation, being of what is called an aristocratic appearance, though it is an appearance which is to be found impartially in all classes, and I have often seen a young woman in a shop who was much more like a duchess than the owners of that title sometimes are. Perhaps it would be better to say that Lady William was conventionally correct in every way, with a rather tall and slight figure, an oval face, a deportment which strangers thought distinguished, and fine hands and feet, which are always considered to betoken gentle blood. But Mab, alas! who ought to have possessed more of these attractions, had none of them. She was rather short, and at seventeen she was certainly too stout. Stumpy was what Mrs. Plowden at the Rectory said, and there can be no doubt that there was truth in that unlovely phrase. Her nose turned up, her face was round and her features blunt, her hair no colour in particular. As for waist the poor girl had none, and her feet were good useful beetle-crushers, which she encased by preference in square-toed shoes without heels. In short, it was impossible even for Mab herself to entertain any illusions as to her personal appearance. She was a plain and homely girl. ‘Ah!’ said the people who disliked the Plowdens, and those who did not know anything about it, except that her mother had been a governess; ‘the common blood bursting out.’ But, as a matter of fact, it was the noble family to which her father belonged whom Mab resembled. She was as like the present Marquis as it was possible for a girl to be like an elderly man. None of his daughters (heaven be praised, they said) were half so like him as the niece whom he barely acknowledged. Mab was the very quintessence of that distinguished man. She had very light hair of a faint greenish tinge, eyes equally light, but bluish. To see her beside her graceful mother was wonderful. And she did not show her blood like the Princess in the fairy tale by feeling the pea that was underneath two mattresses. Mab might have lain upon peas, and she would never have been any the wiser. Her perceptions were not delicate. She was not sensitive. In short she was the most perfectly robust and contented little soul there was in Watcham, and met all her little privations with a broad smile.

You could not imagine a more minute drawing-room than that in which this mother and daughter spent the greater part of their life. There was nothing poetical or romantic about the house. The door was exactly in the middle, with a window on each side, which indicated the two sitting-rooms, and three windows which represented as many bedrooms above. The reader will perceive that it was the rudimentary house designed by infantile art in its first command of a slate or other pencil with which to express its ideas. The narrow passage into which the outer door opened, and from which you entered the sitting-rooms, was scarcely capable of containing two persons at once. By dint of having the smallest specimens possible of those pieces of furniture, Lady William had contrived to have a sofa and a piano in the drawing-room. There were also some low chairs and two or three of those little tables which are so useful in this tea-drinking age, but which are chiefly remarkable as handy things to throw down. You could scarcely throw down Lady William’s tables, however, for there was not room enough for them to fall. The ladies were sitting together in this little room with a large basket on the floor between them, in which it was their habit to put their work if it was not suitable to be beheld by visitors. They were both engaged at this particular moment in the making of a dress, of a kind which is generally described by novelists as ‘some kind of light woollen material.’ Shopkeepers say simply ‘material,’ leaving the light woollen to the imagination. I think, as I love to be particular, that it was biège. There was a fashion-book, or perhaps a copy of the Lady’s Pictorial—but I think the scene occurred before the commencement of that excellent periodical—lying among the folds of the stuff, half hidden by them. And this was Mab’s spring dress, which her mother was making, aided by the less skilled yet patient efforts of Mab herself. ‘Do you think you like that sleeve?’ Lady William was saying, looking at it in her hand, with her head a little on one side, as an artist looks at his picture; ‘these puffs are apt to look a little fantastic, especially when they are home-made——’

‘You mean when they are on a fat little girl like me, mother.’

‘Well, Mab, you are a little—stout,’ Lady William said. She did not take it so lightly as Mab did, but half resented, half lamented, this unfortunate development.

‘Don’t say stout, please,’ said Mab. ‘Stout sounds such a determined thing. Call me fat, mother: it’s nicer—it might be accidental: or I might, as Mrs. FitzStephen says, fine down.’

Lady William shook her head with a suppressed sigh. She knew Mab would not fine down. ‘Never mind about words,’ she said, ‘but tell me——’

Here she was interrupted by a rattle of small shots, as of pebbles, on the door. She knew very well what it was. It was the knuckles of Patty, the little girl who was groom of the chambers, and head footman, and kitchenmaid, and general aid to the woman-of-all-work at the cottage. She opened the door when she had delivered this volley, and thrust in a curly head at about the height of the keyhole. ‘Please, my lydy,’ she said, breathless, ‘it’s Missis and the young lydies from the Rectory. I thought as you’d like to know——’

‘Are they coming here, Patty?’

‘Leastways, I think so, my lydy,’ Patty said.

‘Thank you, Patty; as soon as you’ve let them in, bring tea.’

There was no thought of closing the door to these privileged visitors. But the dress was carefully and swiftly disposed of in the big basket, which was thrust under the sofa. ‘They’ve nothing to do with your new frock,’ said Lady William, in an apologetic parenthesis. Mab, who required no apology, who had seen this little feat of legerdemain accomplished more often than she could count, required no explanation; but she did not take up any other work. Lady William, on the other hand, had a piece of knitting provided for such occasions, and was working at it as if it were the chief occupation of her life when the Rectory ladies were ushered in. Mrs. Plowden had reversed the order which ruled in Lady William’s house, for it was she who was short and stout, while her daughters were of the Plowden type, long and thin, like, and yet not like, their aunt, who was slim and tall, words that mean the same thing with a difference. The three figures came in like an army, filling the small room.

‘Well, Emily, busy, as usual?’ Mrs. Plowden said, a little breathless from her walk. ‘And Mab idle, as usual?’ she added, after she had taken breath.

‘Just as we always are, aunt,’ said Mab with a laugh, conscious of the half-finished dress.

‘You might come, now and then, to the Sewing Society, Mabel,’ said Emmy, her cousin. ‘It’s quite amusing, and it would show you how nice a quiet hour’s sewing can be.’

‘But Mab does not like parish things—and neither do I,’ said the other, the heterodox daughter, under her breath.

‘I wonder,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘that you don’t set her in some way of employing herself systematically, Emily. Doing things by fits and starts loses half of the advantage. What should I ever have done with Emmy and Florry if I had not gone on in the most systematic way?’

‘And look what examples we are,’ said Florry, as usual under her breath.

‘Haven’t we made up our minds to agree to differ on these points?’ said Lady William. ‘I am sure you had something more amusing to tell me than the way you brought up your girls and how I have spoiled Mab.’

‘I don’t know if you will think it amusing. There was something else I had to tell you. Have you heard that Mrs. Swinford and her son have come back to the Hall?’

‘The Swinfords!’ said Lady William, with a start of excitement. ‘Have they come back? I thought they were never coming back any more.’

‘I don’t know what reason you had for such an idea. I never heard of it, and as James is the clergyman, and knows most about his parishioners—but, at all events, they have come back: and I want to know what your ideas are about calling. People stood a little aloof, I have always been told; but it’s a long time ago, and naturally the people here will take great notice of what you and I do, Emily. It will all depend upon what we do how Mrs. Swinford is received. Do you think you shall call?’

‘Call!’ cried Lady William. A little colour had come upon her face, a little agitation into her usual calm. The exclamation seemed like a kind of reply, but whether it meant ‘Call! of course I shall call!’ or ‘Call! how could you expect me to do such a thing?’ her sister-in-law could not tell; neither did she follow up that monosyllable with any further elucidation. She said, after a momentary pause, ‘How long it is ago, and how many things have happened since then!’

‘That is very true—but it’s always like that when people have been away for more than twenty years. Half the people that were living then are dead, of course: and other things—why, none of the children were born.’

‘Nor dreamt of,’ said Lady William. It gave her a great deal to think about; but after a while Mrs. Plowden grew tired of waiting for some definite response to her question, and took up the theme on her own account.

‘As I am a new person here since her time it would be silly of me to keep up old prejudices. I know nothing about any old story. I am quite justified in saying so, for, of course, I was not even here. We had only a curacy, and your father was still alive: James did not get the living till a year after: and then, of course, I was a very young woman, thinking of none of these things. Your mother had a prejudice—but why should I take up her prejudices? And they are rich, and the son is an agreeable young man, people say; and probably they will entertain a good deal. It would be sinning against a merciful Providence if one refused to take advantage of what is brought to your very door. Everybody says that they will entertain, and probably a great deal.’

‘And Leo will want a wife,’ said Lady William.

‘Good gracious, Emily! don’t talk in that way before my girls! I keep all such ideas out of their minds. But what I meant to say was, if you think of going don’t you think we might go together? It would have a very good effect, and be an example for the parish. I suppose they have got quite French being so long away, and I have been so long out of the way of speaking it that—— But you are quite a linguist, Emily.’

‘You don’t suppose Mrs. Swinford will have forgotten her native tongue?’ Lady William said, with a laugh.

‘Well, if you think not—oh! I suppose not; but one gets so rusty in a language one never uses. Look at me! I spoke both French and German like a native when I left school; but, for want of practice, you could put me out completely by a single question. So I think, as you have always kept it up, I should feel more comfortable. And as they can’t all go, suppose we take the eldest. You and I and Emmy—three are quite enough to make a call. Don’t you see?’

‘I see,’ Lady William said; but it was not for a long time that Mrs. Plowden could get her to say more.

II

‘The Swinfords come back,’ Lady William said to herself, as she sat on the little sofa in the twilight by the light of the little fire. She had been very silent after the Plowdens withdrew, saying little except on the subject of the frock, which was resumed as soon as these ladies were gone. And when Mab went out, as she had a way of doing when the light began to fail, Lady William put the work away, and sat down in the corner of the sofa, which was the cosiest spot in the little room, almost out of reach of the draught. This is an extremely difficult thing to attain in small rooms where the doors and windows are at right angles, and you never can get far enough off from one of them to avoid the stream of cold air which pours in under the door, or from the window, or somewhere else in the sweet uncertainty of cottage architecture. But that end of the sofa was nearly out of the way from them all: and there she sat when she did not go out, at that wistful hour when it is neither night nor day. Lady William was not old enough to like that wistful hour. She was young enough to prefer taking a run with Mab, being, though she was Mab’s mother, quite as elastic and strong, and as fond of fresh air and exercise as she: and she was philosopher enough to take care not to think more than was absolutely necessary; for I do not disguise that there were episodes in her past life which were not pleasant to go back upon, and that the future, when she gazed into it closely, was too precarious and alarming to inspect. But to-day Lady William’s mind had been stirred, and so many things had come up which forced themselves to be remembered that she had no resource but to allow herself to think. The Swinfords! They were the great people of the place. Their house was close to Watcham, its gates opening upon the road a little beyond the village—and they had in her early days exercised a great influence upon Emily Plowden’s life. A flood of recollections poured back upon her, a succession of scenes one after another—scenes in the house, in the park, and in the conservatory, all about the place. She remembered even the looks of certain eyes, glances that had been cast at herself, or even at others, swift changes of aspect, vicissitudes of sun and shade which were more rapid than the shadows upon the hills. What a thing it is to recollect over twenty years and more the way one look succeeded another on a face, perhaps gone into dulness and decay, or perhaps only changed out of knowledge, but equally separated from us and the scenes in which we remembered it! Lady William sat and recollected, and saw again the very light of the days that were past, how it came through a long window and fell upon—sometimes her own face, which was as changed as any of the others, sometimes other faces fixed in eager regard upon hers. How strange to think that she was the girl that stood then on the threshold of life, so full of many emotions, so easily touched one way or another, smiles and tears chasing each other over her face. And to think it was all over, and everything connected with that time was as a dream! She had met her husband there; a great many things had befallen her there; and now here was Jane Plowden coming to ask her to call—to call, of all things in the world, on Mrs. Swinford, as if she were an ordinary neighbour, as if there was nothing between them that could not be told over the tea-table among the afternoon visitors! And she had consented to do it, which was more strange still—half for the wonder of it, half because now they had come back, she was curious to see how things looked across the abyss which separated now from then. Oh, as she thought of it there rose a hundred things she wanted to know! Her busy fancy figured how the patroness of her youth would look; what she would say; the questions she would ask. ‘So you have settled in Watcham again—in Watcham, after all? And you have a little girl? And you never see or hear of—— Oh, but that is impossible—you must hear of them constantly, for it is in the papers.’ All these things she heard Mrs. Swinford say with the little foreign accent which was one of that lady’s peculiarities. Then Lady William paused with a foreboding and asked herself whether she could not avoid the meeting—whether she could have a bad headache, or go off on a visit, or simply sit still and refuse to move. Alas! going off on a visit is not so easy—you want money for that, and there was nowhere she could go except for a day or two. Neither would a bad headache last beyond a day: and as for sitting still, that would be equally ineffectual, for if she did not go to Mrs. Swinford, Mrs. Swinford would probably come to her. She considered that but one of two things could be done—either to go away altogether from Watcham while the Swinfords remained there, which was, of course, impossible—or to call with Jane as was proposed to her. She laughed at this softly, with a little secret fright, yet sense of the ludicrous—to call with Jane! walking in over the ashes of volcanoes (so to speak), over the dragons’ teeth that had been sown in their time and produced such harvests, with that incarnation of the commonplace by her side. No doubt the ashes would be covered with Persian carpets, and Jane would think of nothing but the future parties to be given there, and whether perhaps young Mr. Swinford—— Lady William could not be supposed to be particularly happy during this review of the things that had been and the things that would have to be, but she laughed to herself again. That eternal question could never be left out, she said to herself.

‘What are you laughing at, mother?’ said Mab, as she came in, bringing with her a rush of cold, and that smell of the fresh air which changes the whole atmosphere of a little room in a moment. Her whole person was breathing it out. Her hat, which she took off when she came in, was full of it, sending the mingled fragrance and chill into every corner of the tiny little fire-lit room. Lady William shivered a little.

‘You have brought in the draught with you, Mab, like a gale at sea.’

‘I am sorry,’ said the girl, turning back to shut the door. And she came to the fire and knelt down before it, and repeated, with the pertinacity of youth, ‘What were you laughing at, mother?’

‘Nothing very much—chiefly at Aunt Jane and this new thing she has got in her head!’

‘Oh, Aunt Jane,’ said Mab carelessly, as if that was a subject already exhausted. Then, however, she added, still pertinacious, ‘but what is the new thing she has got into her head?’

Lady William thought of a certain baby in a book who wanted to see ‘the wheels go wound,’ and laughed a little once more.

‘How do you know that I can tell you?’ she said.

‘Don’t you tell me everything, mammy?’ said Mab, rubbing her head against her mother’s arm like an affectionate puppy: and Lady William stroked her child’s hair, which glistened with a drop or two of cold dew upon it from the dripping branches outside.

‘You have pretty hair, Mab,’ she said softly, with praise, which was a caress.

‘Have I? Oh, I don’t think there’s anything pretty about me,’ said the girl. ‘What a little fool I was not to take after you, mother! It is you who are the pretty one: and Emmy has the impudence to be a little like you—Emmy, and not me! But never mind. What has Aunt Jane got in her head?’

‘The pertinacious child! She has this in her head, that she wants to drag me to-morrow to go with her and call at the Hall.’

‘Oh, is that all?’ said Mab. She felt that her lively curiosity, which was a pleasant sensation, had been wasted. But then she added, ‘Is there anything that makes it of importance that she should call at the Hall?’

How the child swept over the ashes of the volcanoes, raising a little pungent dust, which got into her mother’s throat: but she laughed a little, for Aunt Jane was always fair game.

‘Do you remember the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice,’ she said, ‘and the commotion there was when Mr. Bingley first came?’

These ladies were great readers of novels, which held perhaps the first place among the amusements of their lives: and they were happy enough to possess an old edition of Miss Austen, which kept them, as much perhaps from their good luck as from good taste, familiar with all she has added to our knowledge of life, and fully prepared with an example for most emergencies that could occur in their little world.

‘Yes,’ said Mab, a little wondering. And then she said, ‘Oh, I see. Aunt Jane is like Mrs. Bennet, and Emmy—But Emmy is not half so nice as Jane. And Mr. Bingley is—Oh, I see, I see——’

‘Don’t see too much,’ said Lady William, ‘for it is all in embryo; but I should not wonder if your aunt were at present in her imagination arranging Emmy’s trousseau, and thinking over what hymns should be sung at the wedding. “The voice that breathed o’er Eden” is a little common. It was sung for Susan Green only last week, who said, “No, my lady; we ain’t got nothing to do with gardens nor apples, nor folks going about without no clo’es.”’

It is very probable that this story was told by the artful mother with the intention of throwing dust in the child’s eyes and leading her away from a subject on which explanations were difficult; but, if so, she reckoned without her Mab. The girl owned the fact of the anecdote with a little laugh just proportioned to the occasion.

‘Is Mr. Swinford quite—young?’ said Mab doubtfully. ‘And then there is his mother, who lives with him——’

‘Well, yes, I suppose that is the right way of putting the case,’ said Lady William. ‘He lived with his mother when I knew them—and as for his age, I remember him a little boy.’

‘Oh,’ said Mab, with partial satisfaction, ‘but you were young yourself then. I think I saw somebody in the village just now who may have been—this gentleman. He was in a big coat, all fur, and shiny shoes—fancy shiny shoes for going through the mud at Watcham! And he was as old, I should think, as—as old as—Uncle James’s last curate, the one who was locum tenens, and who did not stay—Oh, over thirty at the least. Now Mr. Bingley cannot have been more than twenty-five. I am sure he was not more than twenty-five—and I don’t call that very young.’

‘Leo Swinford must be over thirty, as you say. He was about nine or ten when I was eighteen—a great difference then, but perhaps, as you say, not so great a difference now. Who is that, Mab, at the gate?’ It showed how Lady William had been roused and disturbed by this afternoon’s intelligence that she should be thus moved by the idea of any one at the gate.

‘If you please, my lady,’ said Patty, the little maid, putting in her curly head once more; ‘it’s a gentleman as I never see before. Nayther the Rector, nor the Curate, nor the General, nor nobody as I know; and he has got fur round his neck like a female,’ said Patty, with a cough which covered a laugh. ‘It’s just like the thing as they call a victorine. I never see it on nobody but a female before.’

‘Let him come in, Patty,’ said Lady William. She gave a swift glance at the candles on the mantelpiece, and then she decided not to light them. ‘Mab, get up and take a seat like a rational creature. You will soon have your curiosity satisfied, it appears.’

She said to herself that she did not care for Leo Swinford, not a bit! It was his mother, not he, who had affected her former life. He had been a boy, and now he would be a man, just like the others. It showed that they meant to be civil that she should send him so soon. This was the only point of view in which Lady William regarded the visit; but that was the point of view which affected her mind most. She cared no more for Leo Swinford in himself than for any curate in the diocese—which was almost the only other specimen of young man which she was likely to see. She drew back into her corner, which was so near the fire that it was deep in shade, the reflection going quickly through her mind that her first question would be, How does she look? is she much altered? does she look old? That was what his mother would want to know. But she should be baulked in that desire at least. The firelight flickered about, making a pleasant ruddy half-light in the little room. It danced about Mab, coming and going, giving a note of colour to her light hair, and showing the round youthful curve of her cheeks without any insistence upon the overfulness of her chubby, childish figure. It was very favourable to the child, this ruddy, picturesque, uncertain light. These thoughts flashed through Lady William’s mind in the moment that elapsed before Patty threw open the door again, and with a loud voice announcing, ‘The gentleman, my lydy,’ shut it again smartly upon herself and the sudden chilly draught from outside. And then the scene changed, and the principal figure became, not Lady William and her thoughts any longer, but a solid shadow in the midst of the firelight, a man, unaccustomed intruder here, bringing with him a faint odour of cigars, and that sort of contradictory atmosphere which comes into a feminine household with the very breath of an unknown being of this unhabitual kind. It was an embarrassing position for a stranger; at least, it would have been an embarrassing position for most men. But Leo Swinford was not one of those who allow themselves to be affected by circumstances. He made a bow vaguely directed towards the corner, drawing his heels together after the manner of France, and then spoke in the easiest tone, though his words expressed the embarrassment which he did not at all feel.

‘I am under a double disadvantage,’ he said, ‘and how am I to come out of it? I came prepared to say that I feared you would not remember me, and now you cannot even see me. Never mind. I am Leo Swinford, and you cannot have forgotten altogether that name.’

‘No,’ said Lady William. She held out to him from the shade a hand which looked very white in the ruddy light. ‘I heard this afternoon that you had come home,’ she said, ‘and your name was on our lips.’

‘What a good thing for me,’ he said, ‘save that it does not at all test your recollection, which I had pleased myself with thoughts of trying. But it is all the same. Do not send for lights, and as you cannot see me, next time we meet I can put my question with equal force.’

‘I see you very well,’ said Lady William, ‘and I should not have known you. How could I? You were a child, and now you are a man. And I was a girl, and now I am an old woman. Your mother will see innumerable changes. How is she? It was kind of her to send you to see me so soon.’

‘Ah!’ said the visitor, ‘I said I was at a double disadvantage, but it seems there are more. She did not send me to see you, dear lady. I came on my proper feet, and by my proper will. Mamma is not changed, but she no longer sends little Leo on her errands. He has certain instincts of his own.’

‘Well, then, it was a kind instinct that brought you here,’ said Lady William.

‘I am not so sure of that—an instinct very kind to myself: I foresee little pleasure in the society of home, you will not be offended if I say so. But there was one quarter in which I knew I could indemnify myself, so long as you permit it, madame.’

He spoke very much like a Frenchman throughout, Mab thought, who sat breathlessly looking on, rather hostile but exceedingly curious, thinking it was as good as a play; but the ‘madame’ was altogether French, not that harsh ‘madam’ of the English, which comes at you like a stone, and which may mean more animosity than respect.

‘We have not, indeed, much variety here,’ said Lady William; ‘you will soon exhaust our little resources. But then we are not very far from town, and I advise you to keep the house full. After Paris, Watcham! It is perhaps rather too much of a difference, unless you have a very strong head.’

‘My head is indifferent strong. I can stand a good deal in the way of change, from ten degrees below zero to twenty over it. Ah! I forgot you go by that other impossible standard of Fahrenheit here. You have not presented me to the young lady whom I see by glimpses, as if we were all in a fairy tale.’

‘My daughter, Mab; and, as you have already divined Mab, the gentleman whom we were talking of, and who remains in my mind ten years old, in a velvet suit, with lace, and, I believe, curls——’

He waved his hand. ‘Spare me the curls, they were the supplice of my early days. Picture to yourself, Miss Mab—Mab! how curious to put Miss before that name! One might as well say Miss Titania.’

‘One does sometimes in this day of fantastic names. There are Miss Enids and Miss Imogenes.’

‘I was saying, picture to yourself a very plain little boy, with very common hair, exactly like every other little boy’s, only worse—in long curls upon his wretched shoulders! they made my life a burden to me. Mamma is a most interesting woman—not at all like other people—I am exceptionally happy in having had such a companion for my life—but so long as I was a child there were drawbacks. By degrees things right themselves,’ he added after a brief dramatic pause. ‘I have no longer curls, nor am I sent to call, and we have solved the problem of having two independent rulers in one house.’

There was another pause, which Lady William did not herself wish to break. Perhaps his voice, the atmosphere about him, produced recollections that were too strong for her: or perhaps Leo Swinford by himself did not interest Lady William. It was Mab who blurted forth suddenly, with a juvenile instinct of relieving the tension of the silence, a piece of information.

‘I saw you just now in the village, Mr. Swinford. I wondered if it was you. We don’t see many strangers in the village—at least at this time of the year. I said to myself: unless it is some one from the Hall, I don’t know who it can be.’

‘Some one from the Hall is very vague, Miss Mab—Queen Mab, if I may say so. I hope you had heard of me, myself, an individual, before that vague conjecture arose.’

‘No, I can’t say I had,’ said Mab bluntly. ‘Mother said something to-day to Aunt Jane about Leo wanting a wife; but then, you see, I didn’t know who Leo was.’

‘If that is the only attitude in which I am to be presented to my new world! but I don’t want a wife,’ he added plaintively, addressing himself to the dark corner in which Lady William was seated. ‘However, I am Leo,’ he added, turning to the girl again with such a bow as Mab had never seen before.

III

Many messages passed between the Rectory and the Cottage the next morning on the subject of the visit to the Hall. How shall we go? Would it be best to get the fly, as there is a prospect of rain? Would it do to go in the pony-carriage, as the clouds were making a lift? Finally, when the sun came out, would it be best to walk? Emmy and Florry Plowden were running to and fro all the morning with notes and messages. Emmy (who was going) was anxious and serious on this great subject. It would be such a pity to get wet. ‘It is true it is nearly the end of the winter, and our dresses are not in their first freshness; but it is so disagreeable to go into a new house feeling mouldy and damp. First impressions are of so much consequence. Don’t you think so, aunt? and Mrs. Swinford is Parisian, and accustomed to everything in the last fashion.’

‘You might as well go draggled as not,’ said Florence, ‘if that is what you are thinking of: for she will see there is not much of the last fashion about you.’

‘Aunt always looks as if she were the leader of the fashion wherever she goes,’ said Emily proudly. She it was who was conscious of being the only one who was like her aunt.

‘Thank you for such a pretty compliment,’ said Lady William; ‘but Florry is right, I am sorry to say. We shall all be so much below her standard at our best, that a little more or less doesn’t matter. Still, without reference to Mrs. Swinford or her impressions, it is unpleasant to get wet.’

‘Then you vote for the fly,’ said Emmy with satisfaction, ‘that is what I always thought you would do. One does not get blown about, one comes out fresh, without having one’s hair all wild and marks of mud upon one’s shoes. Thanks, Aunt Emily, you always decide for what is best.’

In an hour, however, they returned, Florry, who was not going, leading the way. ‘Mamma thinks as it’s so much brighter our own pony-chaise will do. It’s much nicer being in the air than boxed up in a fly. And she thinks it would make so much fuss, setting all the village talking, if the fly was ordered, and it was known everywhere that she was going to the Hall.’

‘I thought she wished it to be known.’

‘Oh, of course,’ said Emmy, who was the aggrieved party, ‘mamma wishes everything to be known. She says a clergyman’s family should always live in a glass house and all that sort of thing. And to have the pony-chaise out, and everybody seeing where we are going, will be just the same thing.’

‘At all events it’s your own private carriage, and not a nasty hired fly,’ said Florence. ‘“Mrs. Plowden’s carriage at the door,” and you needn’t explain it’s a shandrydan.’

And the unfeeling girl laughed, as was her way: for it was not she who was going to have her fringe disarranged, and the locks at the back blown about by driving in the pony-carriage in the whistling March breeze.

‘Tell your mother I think the pony-chaise will do quite well if she likes it; everybody knows what sort of a carriage a country clergyman can afford to keep.’

‘But you are not a country clergyman, Aunt Emily.’

‘Heaven forbid!’ that lady said.

Next time it was Emily alone who ran ‘across,’ as they called it. ‘Mamma thinks on the whole we might walk. The roads have dried up beautifully, and it’s not far. And walking is always correct in the country, isn’t it, aunt?’

‘It is always correct anywhere, Emmy, when you have no other way to go.’

‘Ah, but we have two other ways to go! There is the fly, which I should prefer, as it protects one most, and there’s our own pony-chaise. It cannot be supposed to be for the want of means of driving, Aunt Emily, if we pleased.’

‘Of course not,’ said Lady William with great gravity. ‘And there is a gipsy van somewhere about. I have always thought I should like to drive about the country in a gipsy van.’

Emmy gave her aunt a look of reproach: but by this time her sister had arrived with Mrs. Plowden’s ultimatum. ‘If the sun comes out mamma will call for you at the door, if you will please to be ready by three; but if it is overcast she will come in the fly. So that is all settled, I hope.’

Mab had maintained a great calm during all these searchings of heart. She was not going, and had she been going it would have been a matter of the greatest indifference to her, consciously a plain, and what is still more dreadful to the imagination, a fat girl, whether her hair was blown about or not, and what first impression Mrs. Swinford or even Leo Swinford might form of her. As for Leo Swinford, indeed, in face of the fact that he had called at the Cottage the night before, she felt for him something of that familiarity which breeds contempt: and how it could matter to anybody what he thought was to Mab’s youthful soul a wonder not to be expressed.

‘What are you so anxious about, after all?’ she said. ‘If your hair is untidy, what of that? Everybody in Watcham knows exactly how your hair looks, Emmy, whether it is just newly done and tidy, or whether it is hanging about your ears.’

‘I hope it never hangs about my ears,’ said Emmy primly, yet with indignation. If there was one thing upon which she prided herself, it was the tidiness in which she stood superior over all her peers.

‘Oh, I’ve seen it, after an afternoon at tennis, just as wild as other people’s,’ said Mab, ‘and everybody in the village has seen it too.’

‘But then,’ said the other sister, ‘these are not people in the village; they’re new people, and there’s a great deal in a first impression—at least, so Emmy thinks.’

‘A first impression—upon whom?’ said Mab, with all the severity of her age. Seventeen, being as yet scarcely in it, is a severe critic of the ages over twenty which are in possession of the field.

There was a pause, which Florence broke by one of her disconcerting laughs.

‘Mab, you are too much of a baby. Don’t you know the Swinfords are going to entertain? Perhaps you don’t know what that means. They are going to give all sorts of parties, and we’ll not be asked if—we don’t please.’

‘Whom?’ said Mab again.

And then there came another laugh from Florence, and an offended ‘What can you mean, Mab? Mrs. Swinford, to be sure. It is only she who could invite girls to make the house pleasant, and,’ said Emily, with a little dignity, ‘it is as much for you as for me.’

‘Oh! I thought it might be Leo Swinford,’ said the audacious Mab, ‘who wants a wife, mother says. But he says himself no, he doesn’t want anything of the kind.’

‘Mab!’ said Lady William, in a warning tone from behind.

‘He didn’t say it in any secret,’ said Mab, ‘not the least. He didn’t tell you “But this is between ourselves,” or “You won’t mention it,” or anything of the kind, as people say when they confide in you. He said it right out.’

‘Who said it right out?’ cried Emily. It was their turn to question now, and they looked at each other after they had looked, in consternation, at Mab—asking each other, with their eyes, awe-stricken, what could this little minx mean, and how did she know?

‘As for Leo Swinford, I don’t think anything at all of him,’ said Mab. ‘He was got up in a fur coat yesterday, when it was not cold at all, only blustering; and he had shiny shoes on and red socks showing, as if he were got up for the evening—to walk about the Watcham roads.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ said Emily severely, crushing these pretensions in the bud, ‘that you have seen Mr. Swinford, Mab? And how did you know it was Mr. Swinford—it might have been some excursionist or other down here by a cheap train.’

‘A Marshall and Snelgrove young man,’ said Florence. ‘Absurd! red socks and evening shoes and a fur coat.’

‘And we have always understood Mr. Swinford was a gentleman,’ Emily said. ‘But it is not at all wonderful at Mab’s age to take up such a foolish idea. For a new person in the village always looks as if there was an adventure behind him, doesn’t he, aunt?—and Mab is such a child still.’

‘However,’ said Lady William, ‘I don’t know how it came about, but it was Leo Swinford, my dear. I knew him very well when he was a child, and he sought me out because, I suppose, he didn’t know any one else here.’

There was another pause of consternation and disappointment: for to think that Mab had seen this new personage before any of them, and that he had seen Mab, was very disconcerting and disagreeable to these young ladies. But then they reflected that Mab did not count—a little fat, roundabout thing, looking even younger than her age, and that if it was ordained that they should be forestalled by any one, better Mab than another. The horrid little thing! But then it was a good sign for future intimacy that he knew Aunt Emily, and had come in this way at once to her house.

‘I am sure,’ said Emmy, ‘he might have come to the Rectory. Papa would have been very glad to see him, and the clergyman is generally the first person—unless when there is a squire. And of course he is the squire himself. But then Aunt Emily is the highest in rank, everybody knows.’

‘My rank had not much to do with it. All that Leo knows of me was as Emily Plowden, the Rector’s daughter, just as you are now, Emmy,’ said Lady William, with a little laugh. She was going out of the room as she spoke, and turned her head to give them one glance from the door. If it occurred to Lady William that the second Emily Plowden was not precisely like the first, she did not give vent to that opinion. But it was a little ludicrous from her point of view to be told, as she was told so often, that Emily was ‘her very image’—‘just what I remember you at her age.’ It was with, perhaps, a little glance of satire in her eyes that she flung this parting word at her niece. But the Emily Plowden of the present generation understood no jest. She blushed a little with conscious pleasure and pride, and threw up her head. Now, Lady William had a throat like a swan, but Emily’s could be described no otherwise than as a long neck, at the top of which her head jerked forward with a motion not unlike the darting movement of a hen.

‘So you have really seen him, Mab? Think of having a man, a real man, a young man in Watcham! Were you much excited? Had you presence of mind enough to note any particulars as to eyes and hair and height, and so forth—as well as the red socks and the shiny shoes?’

‘Oh, he’s fair, I think,’ said Mab indifferently, ‘a sort of no-coloured hair like mine, and the rest to correspond. He was very talky and jokey with mother, just as if she had been a young lady. But he said little to me.’

‘It was not to be expected,’ said Emily, ‘that a gentleman and a man of the world like Mr. Swinford would find much to say to you; and I wonder that he should have remembered Aunt Emily. I have never heard that men like that cared much for old ladies: but no doubt it was because he knew nobody else, and just to pass the time.’

‘Mother is not an old lady,’ said Mab; ‘if I were a man I should like her better than all of you girls put together. You are, on the whole, rather silly things. You don’t talk out of your own heads, but watch other people’s eyes to see what will please them. I don’t call that talking! You never would have found out what would please that man if you had looked into his eyes for a year. Now mother never minds—she says what comes into her head: and if any one contradicts her she just goes on saying the other thing.’

This somewhat vague description seemed to make a certain impression upon the young ladies, who probably were able to fill up the outlines for themselves. Emily gave a little sigh.

‘Conversation’s quite a gift,’ she said, ‘and it’s always difficult with a new person till you know their tastes. I suppose Mr. Swinford knows about pictures and that sort of thing, and unless you’ve somebody to tell you when you go to the exhibitions it’s so hard to know which are really the good ones. Then books—Mudie never sends us any of the best. He puts all the common novels into the country parcels. At the Hall they will get everything that comes out.’

‘He said nothing about books or pictures either,’ said Mab—‘Yes, by the bye, he’s going to lend mother some—but they’re French ones——’

‘French ones!’ said the cousins; and then there was a pause of consternation. ‘Papa once said if he had his will no French novel should ever come into the parish.’

‘Ah!’ said Mab, ‘but then I suppose Mr. Swinford didn’t write and ask uncle what he should bring.’

Emily remained gazing out of the window with a troubled air.

‘We shall never know what to say if that is the sort of thing; and as for going to their parties, if they are all made up of—— Mamma, too, who never read a French book in her life. We had a little practice in the schoolroom, when we had Fräulein, don’t you remember, Flo—— Who was it we read? It was all long speeches, and one could never make out what they were about.’

‘And they sounded exactly like German when Fräulein read them. I never could tell which was which. But I know where the books are, and perhaps if you learned one of the speeches and said it to Mr. Swinford, he might like it, don’t you know.’

‘I was not, of course, thinking of Mr. Swinford, but of Mrs. Swinford,’ said Emily, frowning.

‘And you think you will get a chance of talking to her with mamma and Aunt Emily there?’

‘Well,’ said Emily, ‘at least I can show her that I know my place, and how an English girl behaves.’

‘I wish you would not wrangle,’ said Mab; ‘it was rather fun listening to mother and him: they said no speeches out of books—I believe after all what they said was chiefly chaff. Mother is a wonderful hand at chaff. She looks so quiet all the time, and goes on till you are nearly jumping. But he liked it, and laughed, and gave her as good. There was one thing he said,’ added Mab demurely, ‘which wasn’t chaff, and which you might like to hear. He said at once he didn’t want——’

‘What! I’m sure I don’t care what he wants or doesn’t want—a gardener perhaps? and papa has just heard of one he wanted to recommend.’

‘A wife!’ cried Mab, her blue eyes quickening a little with mischief. ‘Mother asked if he did, and he said he didn’t. Perhaps she had some one she wanted to recommend.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Florence, coming to her sister’s aid; ‘that is the way in France, the parents arrange it all. I shouldn’t mind at all—that. I give my consent. It would be nice to be the bride’s relations and always about the house. If you’ll promise to ask nice people and always us to meet them—and be kind about sending the carriage for us, and that sort of thing, for papa hates a bill for flys—I shall give my consent.’

‘Me!’ cried Mab, indignant, ‘I would not marry Leo Swinford, not if—— I’d rather marry the silliest of the curates. I’d rather——’ She stopped short breathless, unable to find a stronger alternative.

‘Then what a good thing for you,’ said Florry, ‘that he doesn’t want a wife!’

‘If you think it is nice,’ said Emily, ‘for young girls to talk about gentlemen, and whether they want wives or not, as if wives were sold at the shop at so much a pound—I am not of that kind of mind: and Aunt Emily would not like it any more than mamma. Good-bye, you two. I have got to go home and get ready, whatever you may have to do.’

And thus Emily retired with the honours of war. If there was any one who had formed plans on the subject of Leo Swinford it was she; not plans, indeed, which are dreadful foreign things, but just a floating idea such as an English girl might entertain, that if a young man and a young woman are thrown much together, why, then certain consequences might follow. One never could tell what might happen, as Mrs. Plowden herself, who was the very essence of propriety, did not hesitate to say.

IV

The road was a little muddy, but not much; and it was quite possible by taking a little trouble in walking to keep your boots quite clean. Under the trees in the avenue this was not so easy, for it was more sheltered, and the wind could not get in to sweep through and through every opening. There is a pond, or lake, in the grounds, as everybody knows, which had been the delight of the neighbourhood for the skating in winter, all the long time the Swinfords had been absent.

‘I wonder if they will still let us skate now they are at home,’ said Emily, as they walked round the bank over the crisped and extremely living water, which did not look under the breeze as if it had ever been bound by chains of frost.

‘Winter is a long way off,’ said Mrs. Plowden, who was a little blown by her walk. She desired her companions to pause a little and look at the view. ‘I don’t want,’ she said, panting, ‘to go in out of breath. These sort of people have quite advantage enough over one in their fine houses without going in panting like a washer-woman.’ She added, ‘Winter’s a long way off, and, as we never knew whether they gave permission at all, or if it was only Howell at the gate, I wouldn’t say anything about it, Emmy, if I were you.’

Mrs. Plowden’s loss of breath partly proceeded from the fact that she had been talking all the way. She had no want of subjects: the past history of Mrs. Swinford, whom they were going to visit, which she did not know; but that made little difference; and the character of her son, which nobody in Watcham knew; and the precautions to be taken in arranging their intercourse with the family so as to get all that might be advantageous out of that intercourse without in any way compromising themselves in respect to that which might be unsatisfactory. ‘If there should be any matrimonial entanglement,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘or that sort of thing, of course it would be for the girl’s family to make every inquiry. But I daresay as he’s half a Frenchman, and not at all one of our sort, nothing of that kind will happen: and it is time enough to take it into consideration when it does.’

‘Quite time enough,’ said Lady William, very decidedly, ‘especially as nothing can be more unlikely.’

‘That is just what I say. Of course when young people are thrown together one never knows what may happen: and it is to be hoped that Mr. Swinford may see how much better it would be to settle down with a nice English wife than to bring over a French mademoiselle, who never would understand English ways. But it will be time enough, don’t you think so, Emily? for I always acknowledge you know better than me when it is anything French that is in question—with your languages, you know, and all that.’

‘My languages won’t help me much with Leo Swinford, who is just as English as I am—nor with his mother, who is cosmopolitan, and of no country at all.’

‘That’s just one of your sayings, Emily, for how could a woman be of no country at all? What I’m most concerned for is whether they will come to church: and I can see it’s much on James’s mind, though he never says anything; for a great house like that, almost the only great house in the parish, sets such a dreadful example if they don’t go to church. One hears of it all through the place. If the people at the Hall don’t go, why should we? I tell them it’s quite different—that the people at the Hall have many opportunities, and are deeply interested all the same, and all that; whereas if poor people don’t pay attention to their religious duties, what is to become of them? But often they don’t seem to see it.’

‘I shouldn’t see it if I was in their place. I thought that in Christianity there was no respect of persons.’

‘Oh! my dear Emily, you ought to know better than to bring up that common argument against us, and your brother the Rector of the parish. Of course there’s no respect of persons! But if Mrs. Swinford comes to church she will be shown into the Hall pew, and old Mrs. Lloyd will just find a place for herself, if she is early enough, in the free seats. How could anybody do otherwise? We must be practical. Old Mary Lloyd would be very uncomfortable if she were to sit down with you or me. She is much more at home in the free seats. And with the poor people it is only their individual selves that are in question, whereas the great lady sets such an example: and there are all the servants and the servants’ families, and one doesn’t know how many——’

‘I think you may set your mind at ease, Jane. Mrs. Swinford will come to church.’

‘You take a load off my mind, Emily; but it is many, many years since you have seen her, and people change a great deal. I sometimes feel even myself, you know, an inclination to stay in bed on Sunday mornings. It is a thing to be crushed in the bud. If you give in to a headache once, there is no telling where it may land you in the end.’

‘But, mamma dear,’ said the sympathetic Emmy, ‘your headaches are so bad!’

‘Hum!’ said Mrs. Plowden doubtfully. ‘Yes, my headaches are bad sometimes: but it is a thing that one should set one’s face against. It ought to be crushed in the bud—on Sundays, I mean; it does not matter so much on other days. And Mr. Swinford, Emily. I hear that you have seen him already. Now, I wonder what made him go to see you——’

‘Why shouldn’t he?’ said Lady William, with a laugh.

‘Oh, well, you know! I should have thought a gentleman would have looked up the Rector, or the Archdeacon, or the General, instead of a lady just living in a small way by herself, like you.’

‘Mamma, you forget Aunt Emily’s rank,’ Emmy said in dismay.

‘Oh, I never forget her rank!’ cried Mrs. Plowden, with a little irritation. ‘I hear enough of it, I am sure.’

‘The Rector and the Archdeacon and the General are all very important persons. The only thing is that Leo Swinford did not know them, and he knew me.’

‘I have always observed that people in that sort of position know everybody,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘and, my dear Emily, I don’t want to seem censorious, but do you think it is quite nice to talk of a young man like that by his Christian name? I don’t even know his Christian name. It may be Leonard or it may be Lionel, or it may be——’

‘Oh! Leopold, mamma!’

‘I don’t see what you have got to do with it, Emmy. If your aunt knows him so well as that, you don’t know him—and perhaps never will if he is that kind of man!’

‘Don’t you think,’ said Lady William, with that perfect composure of which she was mistress, ‘that we might stop for a moment again and look at the view——’

‘Oh, if you feel the hill, Emily—it is a little steep—I don’t mind sitting down for a moment, if you feel you want it. It is very pretty here,’ said Mrs. Plowden, panting; ‘the water—through the trees—and the lodge—in the distance—with the wisteria just beginning to shoot.’

The pause made here was a few minutes in duration, for Mrs. Plowden had heated herself much by her argument and by clambering up the ascent—which was, indeed, only a very gentle ascent. At last, however, the party reached the door. As they came up sounds were audible inside, which disclosed themselves, when the door was hastily opened, as produced by a game of billiards, played by Mr. Leo Swinford, and—oh! terrible sight—his butler: though for the first moment Mrs. Plowden’s eager intelligence had not taken in this fact. She said, politely, that she was afraid they had driven the gentleman away——

‘Oh!’ said Leo with a laugh, ‘it’s only Morris—let me fulfil his functions and take you to my mother.’ He offered the Rector’s wife his arm, but she drew modestly back.

‘My sister-in-law, Mr. Swinford. Oh, I hope I know what is comme-il-faut. I could not go before Lady William.’ Mrs. Plowden had a flash of exultation in thinking of that word—comme-il-faut. It was something like an inspiration that brought it to her lips in the very nick of time.

The drawing-room at the Hall was a large room in three divisions, divided with pillars of sham marble with gilded capitals. It was too bright, notwithstanding the heaviness of the decorations. Large windows almost from the roof to the floor poured in floods of afternoon light, and shone pitiless upon the lady who rose languidly to meet her visitors, keeping her back to the light. She was a tall woman, exceedingly worn and thin, but with a great deal of grace in her movements, though she was old. Her age was the first thing which the eager rural visitors noted, for it was a sort of age which had never come under their observation before. She was dressed picturesquely in dark velvet with such folds and cunning lines as they had never dreamed of, and which plunged them into anxious questioning whether that might be the latest fashion. If so, it was unlike anything that Miss Singer had in her books and papers, or even Madame Mantz, who was Miss Singer’s great example in town; and her hair, which had not a white thread in it, was uncovered. No cap on her head! and approaching seventy, Mrs. Plowden thought, making a rapid calculation upon the facts she knew. Mrs. Swinford stepped forward a little with a faint cry of ‘Emily’ when Lady William appeared, and took her, with every appearance of cordiality, into her arms, and they kissed, or at least Mrs. Swinford touched Lady William’s cheeks one after the other, while the Plowdens made a respectful circle round and looked on. ‘This is indeed kind,’ Mrs. Swinford said. The ladies were so bent upon the aspect of the mistress of the Hall that they did not observe how pale Lady William was, or how little part she took in the embrace. ‘And though, of course, she could not take us into her arms,’ Mrs. Plowden said after, ‘never having set eyes on us before, she was quite as cordial, and hoped she would see a great deal of us, and that it was so nice to feel that one was coming among people who felt like old friends.’ ‘I have heard so much of you through Emily,’ was what Mrs. Swinford really did say; to which Emily was so disagreeable as to make no reply. And then they all sat down, and Mrs. Plowden began to make conversation, as in duty bound.

‘We are so glad to see you in your own house, Mrs. Swinford. The Rector has always said it was so cold like to feel that there was no one in the Hall. A squire’s house makes such a difference. The poor people think so much of it, and the middle people are always looking out for an example; and of course the higher class, it is yourself—so you being here is, if I may say so, of the greatest consequence to everybody, and I do hope it will be agreeable to you.’

‘You are very good,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a motion of her head. ‘It never occurred to me that it could be of any importance except to ourselves.’

‘Oh, I assure you it is of the greatest consequence. What we want in England is the higher classes to set a good example, to keep back those horrid democratic ways, and show us how we ought to behave. We are very loyal to a good example in England, Mrs. Swinford. You have been so long away, perhaps you may not remember how in a well-ordered parish the people are taught to look up to those who are above them——’

‘But suppose we do not set a good example?’ said the lady, with a languid smile. She was looking at Lady William, who sat by, saying little, and who was in the full flood of the light, which she was quite able to bear. The elder woman, who was not, bestowed an interested attention upon the friend whom she had greeted so warmly—not even a look or movement, nor even a fold of the very plain black dress, which showed how little means of adornment the other possessed, yet how little it mattered to her whether she was adorned or not, escaped her. Mrs. Swinford was very deeply learned in all these arts, in all that tended to preserve beauty and enhance it. She had been a beauty herself in her day, and was very reluctant to part with it. She looked at her old friend with an eager, yet veiled attention, observing all that was in her favour, and the few things against her. Poorly dressed, but looking none the worse, the black being in its way a kind of veil even of its own imperfections: the charm of the face enhanced by sorrow and trouble and many experiences, the outlines uninjured, the cheek almost as purely oval as in youth, the eyes as sweet, the hair—it had a touch of gray, perhaps, but that is no harm to such a woman, a woman not standing upon her appearance, perhaps not thinking much of it—at least, giving herself the air of not thinking of it at all. Mrs. Swinford did not believe that any woman was ever indifferent to her appearance, or not thinking of it. It did not matter much to herself at the present moment, when there was no one she cared to affect or charm, no one worth the lifting of a finger; and yet she was not indifferent to her own aspect, and why should Lady William be? Lady William? A strange smile crossed the elder lady’s face as she remembered what was now Emily Plowden’s name. She said to her in the middle of Mrs. Plowden’s speech, to which she paid no attention, with a way that women of the world have, ‘How strange it is to think of you, Emily, by that name!’

The entire company pricked up its ears. Mrs. Plowden stopped short, much discomfited, in her explanation of what was the Rector’s opinion, in which Mrs. Swinford had interrupted her with such absolute indifference as to what she was saying. And Emmy raised her long neck, remembering always keenly that it was she who was now Emily Plowden; and even young Mr. Swinford, who had been talking to Lady William, raised his head with sudden attention, glancing from her to his mother. Lady William herself coloured suddenly, and with an unusual air asked, ‘What name?’

‘What but your married name, my dear?’ Mrs. Swinford said, and laughed low, but very distinctly, with her eyes fixed upon her guest.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Lady William, returning the look, ‘you are more used to my husband’s name than mine.’

Nobody had the least idea what this passage of arms meant—not even Mr. Swinford, who kept looking from his mother to Lady William with a questioning look. As for the other ladies, they stared severely, and did not attempt to understand. Mrs. Swinford was a little rude, and so was Lady William. They did not show the fine manners which ought to belong to fine ladies. On the whole, Mrs. Plowden thought it might have been better for her to make her first call alone. Mrs. Swinford had talked to her quite sweetly, she said afterwards, but Emily and she did not seem to be on such good terms. It is always a mistake, Mrs. Plowden thought, to depend upon any one else in the way of introduction. The Rector’s wife in her own parish is the equal of any one. And as for French, in which Emily was believed to be so superior, French was no more wanted, she reported to the Rector, ‘than between you and me.’

‘I daresay,’ she said, when this little sensation was over, ‘that you find our poor Emily much changed. Such a difference for her to come from the society in which she was, and everybody so superior, to our little village again: but, of course, all these things are little to the loss of a dear husband, which is the greatest a woman can have to bear——’

‘You speak most eloquently, Mrs. Plowden,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘the very greatest a woman can be called upon to bear.’

‘It is very kind of you,’ said Lady William, ‘to feel so much for me.’

‘Yes, yes, the very greatest: and she has taken it so well. But naturally it makes a great difference. My daughter Emmy is considered by everybody to be extremely like her aunt,’ said Mrs. Plowden, directing with a look the attention of the party to Emmy, who bridled and drew up her long neck with that little forward movement which was like a peck, but did not at all mean anything of the kind.

Mrs. Swinford gave poor Emmy a look—one of those full, undisguised looks which again women of the world alone permit themselves; but she made no remark—which was very eloquent, more so than many remarks. She said, after a time, with the air of a person who has been puzzling her brains to keep up a conversation:

‘You have other daughters?’ adding to her question a smile of great sweetness, as if there was nothing in the world she was more interested in.

‘One,’ said Mrs. Plowden, much gratified, ‘Florence, named after another aunt, and more like my side of the house. And I have a son, who we hoped would have gone into the Church; but he is like so many young men of the present day, he has religious difficulties. And the Rector thinks it is not right to force his inclinations, especially into a sacred profession. I have great confidence in my husband’s judgment, but I don’t quite agree with him on this point; for I think if you only use a little pressure upon them when they are young, they are often most truly grateful to you afterwards, when they begin to understand the claims of life. I wonder,’ said Mrs. Plowden, with a glance at Leo, who was once more leaning over Lady William’s chair, ‘whether you agree with me? I should like to have the support of your opinion, for you must have experience in dealing with the young.’

Mrs. Swinford had delicately intimated her entire indifference to the homily of the clergyman’s wife for some time past, but she was recalled by this appeal, which amused her.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I have a son; but I do not think I have attempted to force his inclinations,’ she added, after a pause.

‘Ah, then you would agree with James! I am sorry, for it would have been a great support to me; but we must all judge for ourselves in these matters—and in such a question as entering a sacred profession——’

‘Leo,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘we are forgetting: our habits are not yet quite English. Offer Lady William some tea.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Plowden, with a start, ‘let me pour it out! Or Emily will do so, I am sure, with pleasure, if you will permit. It is so awkward for a gentleman——’

‘Pray do not trouble yourself. Leo can manage it very well, or he can ring for some one if he wants help. And you, Emily, have a daughter, too?’

‘Yes, I have a daughter.’

‘Quite young? She can scarcely be grown up. I do not remember many dates, but there are two or three—— Eighteen perhaps, or a little less, or more?’

‘She will not be eighteen for some months.’

‘And pretty? Like you? Do you see anything of the family? Do they take any notice of the child?’

‘To tell the truth,’ said Lady William, ‘my child and I have been very happy in our cottage, and we have not thought much of any family—save our own very small family of two.’

She had flushed with suppressed anger, but with an evident desire to keep her feelings concealed, answered the questions very deliberately and in a tone of studied calm.

‘Ah, I recognise you in that! always proud: but not prudent. One must not despise a family, especially when it has a fine title. You ought to consider, my dear Emily, how important it may be for the child; your excellent sister-in-law,’ said Mrs. Swinford, turning with her wonted smile to Mrs. Plowden, ‘thoroughly recognises that.’

Mrs. Plowden, thus unexpectedly referred to, was taken in an undignified moment, when she had just begun to sip her first mouthful of very hot tea. She had felt that a second interruption in the very midst of what she had been saying was too much to be forgiven; but on being appealed to in this marked manner she changed her mind, and perceived that it was only Mrs. Swinford’s way. She swallowed the hot tea hastily, to her great discomfort, in her haste to respond.

‘Indeed I do,’ she said fervently, coughing a little. ‘Indeed I do—— I tell Emily often I would put my pride in my pocket, and insist on having Mab invited to make acquaintance with her father’s family. And she’s such a Pakenham, more like the Marquis than any daughter he has.’

‘Oh, she’s such a Pakenham!’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a faint laugh.

‘I think, Jane,’ said Lady William, ‘that you are forgetting we walked here, and that it is time we were going back.’

‘Oh, please, let these dear ladies finish their tea. Leo, Miss Plowden will take some cake. I am more interested than I can tell to hear that your child does not take after you, but is like the Pakenhams.’ The laugh was very soft, quite low, most ladylike, and, indeed, what is called poetically, silver in tone. ‘What an ill-advised little mortal!’ she said.

V

‘Well,’ said Florence to Mab, ‘we two are left alone. We’re the young ones, we have to keep out of the way. But I am sure the Swinfords would rather have seen you and me than Emmy. We are the youngest and we are the most amusing.’

‘Oh, please speak for yourself,’ said Mab, ‘I am not amusing at all.’

Florence looked at her with an air of consideration. ‘Well, perhaps that is true,’ she said; ‘you have a turn-up nose, and you ought to be lively, but appearances are very deceiving. I wonder what that army of observation will do to-day? I call them our army of observation because they have gone to spy out the land, and decide upon what are the proper lines of strategy. It’s quite new to us in Watcham to have a squire’s family: and then it is not even a common squire’s family. They are such superior people, and their ways are so unlike ours. Shouldn’t you say it would be a nice thing in Watcham to have people whose ways are not as our ways?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mab, with the indifference of extreme youth, ‘we are well enough as we are.’

‘It is easy for you to speak, with only Aunt Emily to think of, and your own way—and seventeen,’ said Florry, with a sigh. ‘I would give something to be seventeen again.’

‘Why?’ said Mab. ‘It is the most ridiculous age—too old to be a child, too young to be anything else. One cares no more for dolls and that sort of thing, and one doesn’t care either for what the old people talk about. How they go on and on and talk! as if anybody minded.’

‘You shouldn’t listen,’ said Florry.

‘Sometimes one can’t help it. Sometimes there’s a bit of story in it, and then it’s nice—only in that case they say, ‘You remember so-and-so: what a tragedy that was!’ and then the other wags his or her head, and they shut up, not reflecting that you’re dying to know.’

‘There’s something of that sort about Mrs. Swinford,’ said Florence; ‘there was quite a talk about calling before mamma made up her mind. Mrs. FitzStephen came in about a week or two ago, and she said, “I have come to know what you’re going to do?” And mamma said, without even asking what she meant, “I am very much perplexed, and I don’t know in the least.” And then papa, standing in front of the fire, with his coat-tails on his arms, you know, grumbles out—“You had better let it alone.” “Let what alone?” mamma called out quickly, and he just stared and said nothing. At this mamma said, “They are sure to entertain a great deal; they are people that can’t live without company.” And Mrs. FitzStephen, she said, “Oh, I don’t care for such company.” And then mamma replied, with her grand Roman matron air, “You have no young people to think of, Mrs. FitzStephen.”’

Florence was a tolerable mimic, and she ‘did’ those characters, with whom Mab was intimately acquainted, in an exceedingly broad style, and with considerable effect.

‘Florry, you oughtn’t to take off your own father and mother.’

‘Who then?’ cried Florry. ‘I must take such as I have; I don’t know such lots of people. Wait till the Swinfords come on the scene and I’ll do them.’

‘Ah, he’s not so easy to do. The others you’ve known all your life, and they are all the same kind of people: but you never saw any one like—that gentleman. The General would give you no clue to him, nor anybody you know here. He is like nobody you ever saw; he is—I don’t know what to say.’

‘You are always thinking of that fur coat of his and patent leather shoes. I wonder if they will see him to-day? They had much better have taken you and me, Mab. Emmy may be the eldest, but she will never make any impression. A man like that will never look twice at her.’

‘Why should he?’ said Mab, raising her eyebrows, ‘or what does it matter whether he does or not?’

‘Oh, Mab, you silly little thing,’ said Florence, ‘you must know, however silly you may be, that it matters a great deal. Think only what it would matter! To have a girl settled like that—rich, able to do what she pleased, one’s sister; only think; or still more if it was one’s self. We’ve got twenty pounds a year each for our clothes, fancy! And Mrs. Swinford will have hundreds—she will have just as much as she likes, and whatever she likes, and a grand house where she could ask the Queen herself: and power—power to get Jim settled somehow, to make him sure of his living: perhaps to get something better for papa, and save mamma some of the anxiety she has. And if anything happened to them, why, there would be a home for—for—the other one, don’t you see? Oh!’ said Florence, with a deep-drawn breath that seemed to come from the very depth of her being, ‘it would matter so much that it is wicked, it is dreadful, to think that a man could make such a change in another creature’s life only by looking at her and throwing his handkerchief. It’s immoral to dangle a chance like that under a poor girl’s very nose.’

Mab was not unimpressed with this terrible truth. She felt also that to contemplate the differences that might ensue if one of the daughters of the Rectory became Mrs. Swinford of the Hall was more than words could say. The very possibility caught at her breath. She made a momentary pause of awe, and then she said, ‘But he never will, he never will!’

‘Emmy, no,’ said Florence; ‘no—she’s too—she’s not enough—oh! she’s impossible, and I can see that very well for myself. Emmy is—she’s one’s sister, and she is as nice as ever was. You know she is a nice girl! But she was never made for that; whereas if they had taken you and me——’

‘Don’t say me, please,’ said Mab, reddening all over that blunt-featured and irregular little face, which was unfortunately so like the Pakenhams. The flush was quite hot, and discomposed her. ‘I’m impossible, too—much more impossible,’ she said.

‘Oh! you stand upon your family,’ said Florence, ‘and upon your mother’s position, and all that; but you may take my word for it, that if you were the Marquis’s own daughter instead of a disrep—— I mean instead of his brother’s, you would have to do the very same thing. If it is because you’re not pretty, that’s true enough; but there’s never any telling what may take a man like that, and you’ve got plenty of “go” in you, Mab, though I don’t want to flatter you: and even in looks a year or two may make a great difference——’

‘Will you stop! will you stop, please!’ said Mab; ‘Florry, stop! You make me ashamed. You make me feel as if——’

‘You were going in for it, too?’ said Florence calmly. ‘It makes me crazy, too, sometimes to think that—— But so long as girls are poor, and a man, just because they please him, can change everything for them—how can we help it? Even if you were to work, as people say, what difference would it make? I could perhaps make my living—and Emmy—— But dear, dear, to think of the Hall beside any little breadwinning of ours——’

‘Don’t talk so, please,’ cried Mab, with a shiver. She was not a visionary at all, nor had she any sentiment to speak of. But she was very young, still something between a girl and a boy, and ashamed to hear those revelations which she only half understood; or, rather, did not understand at all.

‘Well, one needn’t talk,’ said Florry, with a slight emphasis on the word. ‘But though you mayn’t talk of it, you can’t stop a thing from being true.’

‘Let’s go out for a walk,’ said Mab, ‘a long walk, down by the Baron’s Wood and up by Durham Hill; or let’s go out on the river for a pull. Let us do something—one can’t stay quiet all this bright afternoon.’

‘I want so much to see them when they come back,’ said Florry. ‘I want to know what they think of him—if they saw him: and whether Emmy made any impression, and what happened.’

‘What could happen? Do you expect her to come home engaged to him?’ said Mab. ‘However well things may go, they could not go so quickly as that.’

‘I am not a fool,’ said Florry, with indignation. She stood at the little gate looking out wistfully along the road by which the ladies had gone. The great trees hung over the wall which bounded there the nearest corner of the demesne of the Swinfords; the lodge and gate were just round the corner out of sight. It was too soon to expect them to come back. ‘Unless Mrs. Swinford had been out,’ said Florry. ‘She might be out, you know, and then they’d be back directly.’

‘She never goes out,’ said Mab; ‘it’s too cold for her here.’

‘Or she might not receive them very well, and then they would only stay a few minutes. You are so indifferent, you don’t care a bit what has happened: and I am on pins and needles till I know.’

‘Then I shall go for a walk by myself.’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Florry, putting out her hand to stay her cousin. She stood thus for a moment with her head turned towards the Hall, but her hand clutching Mab, gazing in one direction while her person inclined towards the other. She drew a long breath, and turned at last from her fixed gaze. ‘They must,’ she said, sighing again, ‘have stayed to tea. Yes, I’ll go on the river if you like; but let us go round home on the way and fetch Jim.’

‘Jim!’ said Mab. ‘He’ll want to scull, and I prefer to scull myself.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t mind. He is as lazy as—— He’ll steer and let us pull as long as ever you please. I don’t know anybody so lazy as Jim.’

‘We should be better by ourselves,’ said Mab; ‘not that heavy weight in the stern of the boat. When we go by ourselves it’s no weight at all.’

‘He’ll steer,’ said Florry; ‘it’s better to have some one to steer. And don’t you see it will keep him out of mischief for one afternoon.’

‘You have always another reason behind,’ said Mab. ‘It never is just the thing you think of, but something at the back of it.’

‘Well,’ said Florry soothingly, ‘it’s always so, don’t you know, where there’s a family. You are so lonely, you have no brothers and sisters. If you do well, then everything is all right. But our being right depends upon so many things: First, if papa is in good humour, and if Jim is going straight. Emmy and I have little questions between ourselves, of course, but these are the chief ones. Now, you have only Aunt Emily to think of, and she neither gets into rages nor goes wrong.’

‘I should hope not,’ said Mab, indignantly.

‘It is all very well for you to throw up your head like that; but we cannot do it. We must manage the best we can. Mab, I do often wish there could be a change.’

This was said when she had at last torn herself away from the road to the Hall, and the two girls were walking towards the Rectory and the river.

‘What sort of change?’

‘Oh! anything. That Jim should go away, or that he should do something dreadful that couldn’t be forgiven—or that Emmy should marry. I would even marry myself—any one! to make a change in the family and get away.’

‘I should think, however bad things may be, that they would be worse if you were all separated and not knowing what happened to each other. And what is there so very bad? You are all happy enough for anything one can see.’

‘That is the worst of it,’ said Florry, ‘we are all pretending about everything. It’s just one big lie all round—and it isn’t right to tell lies, or at least the Bible says so. There is papa breaks every one of the commandments, you know.’

‘Florry, don’t tell stories of Uncle James; I am very fond of him, and I won’t have it.’

‘It’s true all the same. I don’t say it’s his fault, it’s Jim’s fault. Papa swears—he does, he can’t help it, at Jim, and then pretends it’s something else—the gardener, or the overseer, or the poor people, or even poor Dash—that makes him so angry. Isn’t that lying? Then mamma pretends Jim has doubts and won’t go in for the Church because of them, when she knows very well what it is really he has been sent down for. And Jim pretends that he is going back to Cambridge next term, and that he is quite friendly with all the dons, and came down to read—I’ve heard him say that.’

‘It may not be true,’ said Mab, doubtfully, ‘but I shouldn’t call that lying—why should we all go and tell that poor Jim has not been good? What have the other people to do with it? Mother says we’re not called upon to give them any information—and she just says the same as you do: but that is not to lie.’

‘We are all pretending, every one,’ said Florry. ‘Emmy and I are by way of knowing nothing at all. I believe Jim thinks we don’t know anything. So we have to pretend not only to other people, but to him in our very own house, and papa too. I have heard papa say, “Thank Heaven, the girls at least know nothing,” and mamma, the dreadful, dreadful liar that she is, thanks Heaven too, though she knows very well that we knew as soon as she did, and that she couldn’t keep anything from us two. If you think of that, Mab, and just imagine how we go on pretending to each other, and to everybody.

‘Now, if Jim were to go off to a ranche, as people advise, we should all be very wretched, and probably it would be his ruin, but it would be a little relief all the same. Or if Emmy were to get hold of this man—oh, it may be odious, and you may cry out, but it would be a great relief. There would be her wedding to think about, and her things, and altogether it would be a change for everybody; and then she could do something for Jim.’

‘Her husband could, you mean?’

‘It is the same thing: he would, for his own sake, not to have an idle brother always about. It is killing all of us. One could bear it, perhaps; but four all bearing it—all pretending something different, as I tell you; Emmy and I not to know; mamma and papa that it’s another thing altogether that vexes them. Oh! we get exasperated sometimes to that degree, we could tear each other to pieces just to make a change.’

‘You are so exaggerated, Florry; mother always says so. You make a mountain out of a molehill.’

‘I just wish Aunt Emily had our molehill for a little while—just for a little while—to see how she liked it. What a lucky woman she is to have only a girl! Nothing very bad can ever happen to you, Mab, or come to her through you. You may be dull, perhaps, just two women, one opposite to the other——’

‘Dull! mother and I? Never. We don’t know what it is to be dull!’

‘Ah, that’s very well just now,’ said Florence, ‘you’re only seventeen; but wait a bit till you are older, especially if you don’t marry, and year goes on after year, and nothing ever happens. See whether you are not dull then. I don’t know which is worst,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘to have men in the family that make you miserable, or to have no men at all about to make any variety, but just women together, who never do any harm, but kill you with dulness. I really don’t know which is the worst.’

Mab was a little overwhelmed by this point of view. She was at the same time still indignant and resentful of the unexpected accusation. ‘When we begin to be dull,’ she said, ‘I’ll let you know—but I don’t see any reason for being so miserable. Poor Jim has never done anything so very bad. Sometimes he is silly——’

‘There you are quite wrong,’ said Florence, with great decision—‘he is not silly: I wish he were, then one might think he didn’t know any better; but even papa allows he is very clever. It is not from want of brains or sense either, if he would only be as good as he knows how—— ’

‘Oh, if that is your opinion! Mother thinks he is only weak, and does what people ask him.’

‘Aunt Emily is just as far out of it as you are. Does he ever do anything that we ask him? There is papa at him for ever—is he any the better for it? Weak! that is what people say, thinking it’s a kind of an excuse. I call it strong—to resist everything you ought to attend to, and take up everything you ought not. How can that be weak?’

‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Mab; ‘I don’t understand about boys. Jim is the only one I ever knew intimately. But mother thinks if some one were to get hold of him in the right sort of way——’

‘What is the right sort of way? I suppose Aunt Emily thinks papa doesn’t know—nor any of us who have it to do; that is just the way with people. You are always thinking of a thing, thinking, and puzzling, and troubling: and then somebody comes in who has never spent ten minutes on it altogether, and says you are not taking the right way! Perhaps we are not; but who are they to pretend to know better? and since they are so wise, why don’t they tell us which is the right way?’

‘I am sure,’ cried Mab, ‘I never meant to make you angry, and mother is not one to interfere. She only said it to me. But since you’re so full of this, Florry, I think I had better go, and not trouble you any more, for I only wanted some fun, and you are thinking of nothing but trouble. I’ll run down to the water, and jump into a boat and have a little spin by myself.’

‘Oh, Mab, don’t,’ cried Florence, clutching her once more. ‘Here we are at our gate, just come in and ask him. He will come far more readily for you than for me.’

But it was with an ill grace that Mab followed her cousin through the Rectory kitchen garden, between the borders which veiled the lines of potatoes and cabbages. It might be flattering to suppose her capable of it, but she had not any desire to fill the place of missionary and guiding influence to her cousin Jim.

VI

The Rectory was a red house standing in a garden, which its inhabitants, one and all, energetically declared not to be damp; from which the stranger might gather that they were not so certain on the subject as it would be well to be. Its doors were quite level with the ground, so that you walked in, without the interval even of a step to raise you above the drippings of the rain: and as the drawing-room windows also opened down to the ground, it was rather a trying business in wet weather, and kept both the housemaid and the family much on the alert. The two girls went in through the open window, for the afternoon was quite bright and fair, and no fear of rain: but they found nobody in the drawing-room, which was low and rather dark, notwithstanding those two good-sized French windows, which somehow seemed to keep the light within themselves, and did not distribute it to the further side of the drab-coloured wall; this, unornamented with pictures or any variety, afforded a dingy background for the somewhat dingy couches and easy-chairs, which were covered with brownish chintz, intended to keep clean, or in franker language, ‘not to show the dirt’ for as long a period as possible. Chintzes and wall papers, and even dresses, which were calculated not to show the dirt, were very popular at the time Mrs. Plowden married, as means of economy, and her daughters had been brought up in that tenet of faith. Accordingly everything in the room was more or less of this dingy drab complexion, which was not exhilarating to the spirits. There were signs that the room had been recently occupied by the untidiness of the loose cover of one of the sofas, which bore evident signs that some one had been lying there, and had jumped up hastily, and apparently fled, since the old novel he or she had been reading lay open on its face on the floor, and the antimacassars with which the sofa had been adorned were huddled up in limp bundles, and lay here and there where restless shoulders or limbs had left them. Florence gave her cousin a look as she picked up the book and spread out the forlorn adornments on the arm and back of the sofa. ‘They were put on quite fresh two days ago, and look at them!’ said poor Florry; they were chiefly in crochet, and the work of her own hands.

‘He has been here,’ she said, ‘and papa has called him to see if he was at work. Papa might just as well let it alone, for he is never at work; but that is what they will not learn,’ said Florence, impatient of the blindness of her parents. ‘We,’ she added, ‘have to put the room tidy after him a dozen times a day; but I prefer him to be in the drawing-room, for at least he can’t smoke here——’

‘If he is out,’ said Mab, ‘let us go, Florry: we have lost half the afternoon already.’

‘I don’t believe he is out—he is being “jawed,” as he calls it, in papa’s study: don’t you hear them? Papa is at it hot! and what good will it do? He will only say the same thing over and over—I could say it all myself off by heart, everything papa says—and, of course, so could Jim, and what good can that do? Come and stop it, Mab. Jim will be so thankful to you: and poor papa won’t be sorry either,’ Florence said, with a more sympathetic perception, ‘for he knows it’s useless; but when he once begins he can’t stop himself.’

‘Oh,’ said Mab, ‘I can’t go and disturb Uncle James.’

‘When he’ll be so thankful to be disturbed!’ said Florry, ‘and you much better than me, for you will have the air of not knowing what it all means. No; don’t go to the study door. Go round by the garden, to the window where he can see you coming. Walk slowly, and make a little noise to attract their attention, so that you may not take them unawares. You might ring, or whistle, or something—or call to Dash—and then papa would see you, and have time to make up a face.’

These domestic diplomacies were unknown to Mab, but she took to them with the natural instinct of femininity. There was a certain element of fun, too, in stopping what she still called ‘a scolding,’ and in getting the culprit off—even though the culprit did not commend himself very warmly to her partiality. She carried out the programme accordingly, while Florence waited just out of sight of the study window. It was not a French window like those in the drawing-room, and it looked out upon the dullest portion of the surroundings—a bit of grass where the water lay treacherous during the long winter months in the slight concave of the ground, with shrubs cruelly green and unchanging around it, and a dead wall which they only partially veiled behind. Mab began to call Dash loudly as she walked round the corner to this sanctuary, scattering the gravel with her feet.

The scene that might have been seen inside the Rector’s window at that moment was this: a tall youth seated on a chair presenting nothing more responsive than the crown of his head, supported on his hands, to his father’s remarks, and saying never a word; while the Rector, who had risen from his own seat at his writing-table in his impatience, stood pouring out the vials of his wrath. He was putting before Jim all the enormities of which he had been guilty—his debts, the expense he had been to his parents, the disappointment, the disgrace. When, however, Mr. Plowden held up his hands to heaven and earth in grief and disappointment that it should be ‘my son’ who had been sent down by his college, it is to be feared that Jim was making angry comments in his mind to the effect that all his father cared for was that—‘not me, or anything about me.’ He knew the circumstances very well—far better than his father could tell him; and was it likely his conscience would be more tender for being dragged over the same ground again and again? When the Rector cried, ‘What is the use of talking to an impenitent cub like you?’ his son felt deeply inclined to reply, ‘There is none.’ He had, indeed, been wound up to the pitch of saying, ‘Why do you go on like that when you’re so sure it will make no difference?’—a profoundly sensible utterance, but one, perhaps, which it does still less good to say.

When ‘Dash, Dash! come here, old fellow—get ready to come out for a walk,’ sounded into the study, that home of anything but retired leisure, the Rector came to a sudden stop. ‘There’s some confounded visitor or other,’ he said in vexation, but not without relief.

‘It isn’t a visitor, it’s Mab.’

‘Don’t contradict me, sir! Who is she but a visitor, a silly girl breaking in where your mother herself—— Don’t think I’ve done with you because I’m interrupted. Don’t let me see you stir from your book till dinner. Try whether you can’t do something like your simple duty, for once in a way, just for the variety of the thing! Eh!—yes, my dear, you can come in if you really want to, if you have anything to say to me, but you know I’m always busy.’

‘Open the window, please, uncle,’ said Mab. ‘Is Jim there? We want him to come out with us, out on the river. The weeds are coming up already in the backwater, and we don’t want to risk going over the weir. It would be a wetting, and it might be a drowning, don’t you know: and we want Jim.’

The weeds and the weir were the invention of the moment, and Mab felt rather proud of her skill; for of course the most obstinate of backwaters is not choked with weeds in March, and the girls, who were used to the river, were not so foolish at that season as to approach the weir. The Rector looked out upon his niece, of whom he was proud, with a look of helplessness; for even from his sister he had kept the secret (knowing nothing of Florry’s indiscretions) of the sad state of affairs with Jim.

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘it is quite true that Jim is here: but he’s busy, almost as busy as I am, reading up, don’t you know, for his examination. You really must not tempt him to-day. I am sure you know the river so well, you will take care not to go near the weir.’

‘But, Uncle James, it is getting near four o’clock, we shan’t be more than an hour. Don’t you think he will get on much better with his work when he comes back?’

Jim had gradually expanded himself while this conversation was going on; his father’s back being turned he actually, not metaphorically, kicked up his heels a little in secret demonstration of his joy. Then he rose, and appeared exceedingly composed and respectful behind his father, who was leaning out of the open window. ‘Since it is a question of the girls’ comfort, sir,’ said Jim, ‘an hour won’t make very much difference. I can get up that Sophocles just as well after dinner as now.’

‘I don’t put much faith in you after dinner,’ said the Rector, without turning his head.

‘Oh, but why shouldn’t you, uncle?’ said Mab, ‘I’ll answer for him! Of course he’ll work! Why there’s nothing to do after dinner. Uncle says you may come, Jim.’

‘I don’t say anything of the kind,’ said Mr. Plowden. But his eyes went from Mab outside to Jim within. They were both of them so young, and surely if there could be anything innocent in this world it would be an hour on the river with your sister and your cousin, both interested in keeping a boy straight. What was Sophocles after all (in which Jim took so little interest) in comparison with a more healthy rule of habit and purified nature? If only he would but be good, what would it matter about Sophocles? The Rector sighed with perplexity and impatience. It was all very well to attempt to keep Jim back, to say he was busy. Would all that keep him at his book a moment longer than his father’s eye was on him? And if Jim escaped and stole out by himself, how could it be known whether his companions would be as innocent as Mab and Florry? Was it not even a good point in the boy, showing at bottom some traces of early innocence, that it was with Florry and Mab that he wished to go? Mr. Plowden turned in from the window and looked at his boy. He was the only boy of the house, and no doubt he had been petted and spoiled, and taught to think that everything was to give way to him. The Rector looked at him with that longing of disappointed love, the father’s dreadful sense of impotence, the intolerable feeling that a touch given somewhere somehow, at the right moment, might bring all right if he only could tell when and how to give it. What did it matter that all his plans and arrangements should be put out the moment he had made them, if the right effect could be produced anyhow? Perhaps this little girl, with her childish innocent mind—who could tell? And at least how innocent it all was, the boy and the two girls! They would bring no harm to him, and perhaps—who could tell?