It was very imprudent of Mrs. Dallas, and she knew it immediately, and was beyond measure vexed with herself. But the subject was started.
"Poor Esther!" said Pitt thoughtfully. "Mamma, I can"t understand how you and my father should have lost sight of those people so."
"They went out of our way."
"But you sometimes go to New York."
"Pa.s.sing through, to Washington. I could not have time to search for people whose address I did not know."
"I cannot understand why you did not know it. They were not the sort of people to be left to themselves. A hypochondriack father, who thought he was dying, and a young girl just growing up to need a kind mother"s care, which she had not. I would give more than I can tell you to find her again!"
"What could you possibly do for her, Pitt? You, reading law and living in chambers in the Temple,--in London,--and she a grown young woman by this time, and living in New York. No doubt her father is quite equal to taking care of her."
Pitt made no reply. His mother repeated her question. "What could you do for her?"
She was looking at him keenly, and did not at all like a faint smile which hovered for a second upon his lips.
"That is a secondary question," he said. "The primary is, Where is she?
I must go and find out."
"Your father thinks they have gone back to England. It would just be lost labour, Pitt."
"Not if I found that was true."
"What _could_ you do for them, if you could discover them?"
"Mother, that would depend on what condition they were in. I made a promise once to Colonel Gainsborough to look after his daughter."
"A very extraordinary promise for him to ask or for you to give, seeing you were but a boy at the time."
"Somewhat extraordinary, perhaps. However, that is nothing to the matter."
There was a little vexed pause, and then Mrs. Dallas said:
"In the meanwhile, instead of busying yourself with far-away claims which are no claims, what do you think of paying a little attention to a guest in your own house?"
Pitt lifted his head and seemed to p.r.i.c.k up his ears.
"Miss Frere? You wish me to take her to drive? I am willing, mamma."
"Insensible boy! You ought to be very glad of the privilege."
"I would rather take you, mother."
The drive accordingly was proposed that very day; did not, however, come off. It was too hot, Miss Frere said.
She was sitting in the broad verandah at the back of the house, which looked out over the garden. It was an orderly wilderness of cherry trees and apple trees and plum trees, raspberry vines and gooseberry bushes; with marigolds and four o"clocks and love-in-a-puzzle and hollyhocks and daisies and larkspur, and a great many more sweet and homely growths that n.o.body makes any account of nowadays. Sunlight just now lay glowing upon it, and made the shade of the verandah doubly pleasant, the verandah being further shaded by honeysuckle and trumpet creeper which wreathed round the pillars and stretched up to the eaves, and the scent of the honeysuckle was mingled with the smell of roses which came up from the garden. In this sweet and bowery place Miss Frere was sitting when she declared it was too hot to drive. She was in an India garden chair, and had her embroidery as usual in her hand. She always had something in her hand. Pitt lingered, languidly contemplating the picture she made.
"It _is_ hot," he a.s.sented.
"When it is hot I keep myself quiet," she went on. "You seem to be of another mind."
"I make no difference for the weather."
"Don"t you? What energy! Then you are always at work?"
"Who said so?"
"I said so, as an inference. When the weather has been cool enough to allow me to take notice, I have noticed that you were busy about something. You tell me now that weather makes no difference."
"Life is too short to allow weather to cut it shorter," said Pitt, throwing himself down on a mat. "I think I have observed that you too always have some work in hand whenever I have seen you."
"My work amounts to nothing," said the young lady. "At least you would say so, I presume."
"What is it?"
Miss Betty displayed her roll of muslin, on the free portion of which an elegant line of embroidery was slowly growing, multiplying and reproducing its white buds and leaves and twining shoots. Pitt regarded it with an unenlightened eye.
"I am as wise as I was before," he said.
"Why, look here," said the young lady, with a slight movement of her little foot calling his attention to the edge of her skirt, where a somewhat similar line of embroidery was visible. "I am making a border for another gown."
Pitt"s eye went from the one embroidery to the other; he said nothing.
"You are not complimentary," said Miss Frere.
"I am not yet sure that there is anything to compliment."
The young lady gave him a full view of her fine eyes for half a second, or perhaps it was only that they took a good look at him.
"Don"t you see," she said, "that it is economy, and thrift, and all the household virtues? Not having the money to buy tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, I am manufacturing it."
"And the gown must be trimmed?"
"Unquestionably! You would not like it so well if it were not."
"That is possible. The question remains"--
"What question?"
"Whether Life is not worth more than a bit of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g."
"Life!" echoed the young lady a little scornfully. "An hour now and then is not Life."
"It is the stuff of which Life is made."
"What is Life good for?"
"That is precisely the weightiest question that can occupy the mind of a philosopher!"