"Not that there can be any comparison between them. Essie has none of the ponderous Highness in her--only the Serenity."
"Yes, there is a very pleasant air of innocent candour about their faces--"
"Just what it does a man good to look at. It is like going out into the country on a spring morning. And there is very real beauty too--"
"Yes, Kencroft monopolises all the good looks of the family. What a fine fellow the dear old Friar has grown."
"If you bring out those two girls this year, you will take the shine out of all the other chaperons!"
"I wonder whether your aunt would like it."
"She never made any objection to Jessie"s going out with you."
"No. I should like it very much; I wonder I had not thought of it before, but I had hardly realised that Essie and Ellie were older than Babie, but I remember now, they are eighteen and seventeen."
"It would be so good for you to have something human and capable of a little consideration to go out with," added Bobus, "not to be tied to the tail of a will-of-the-wisp like that Elf--I should not like that for you."
"I am not much afraid," said Caroline. "You know I don"t stand in such awe of the little donna, and I shall have my Guardsman to take care of me when we are too frivolous for you. But it would be very nice to have those two girls, and make it pleasanter for my Infanta, who will miss Sydney a good deal."
"I thought the Evelyns were to be in town."
"Yes, but their house is at the other end of the park. What are Jock and the Infanta looking at?"
Jock and Babie, who were on a good way in advance in very happy and eager conversation, had come to a sudden stop, and now turned round, exclaiming "Look, mother! Here"s the original Robin Goodfellow."
And on the walk there was a most ludicrous shadow in the moonlight, a grotesque, dancing figure, with one long ear, and a hand held up in warning. It was of course the shadow of the Midas statue, which the boys had never permitted to be restored to its pristine state. One ear had however crumbled away, but in the shadow this gave the figure the air of c.o.c.king the other, in the most indescribably comical manner, and the whole four stood gazing and laughing at it. There was a certain threatening att.i.tude about its hand, which, Jock said, looked as if the ghost of old Barnes had come to threaten them for the wasteful expenditure of his h.o.a.rds. Or, as Babie said, it was more like the ghastly notion of Bertram Risingham in Rokeby, of some phantom of a murdered slave protecting those h.o.a.rds.
"I don"t wonder he threatens," said Caroline. "I always thought he meant that audacious trick to have forfeited the h.o.a.rds."
"Very lucky he was balked," said Bobus, "not only for us, but for human nature in general. Fancy how insufferable that Elf would have been if she had been dancing on gold and silver."
"Take care!" muttered Jock, under his breath. "There"s her swain coming; I see his cigar."
"And we really shall have it Sunday morning presently," said his mother, "and I shall get into as great a sc.r.a.pe as I did in the old days of the Folly."
It was a happy Sunday morning. The Vicar of Woodside had much improved the Church and services with as much a.s.sistance in the way of money as he chose to ask for from the lady of Belforest, though hitherto he had had nothing more; but he and his sister augured better things when the lady herself with her daughter and her two youngest sons came across the park in the freshness of the morning to the early Celebration. The sister came out with them and asked them to breakfast. Mrs. Brownlow would not desert Allen and Bobus, but she wished Armine to spare himself more walking. Moreover, Babie discovered that some desertion of teachers would render their aid at the Sunday School desirable on that morning.
This was at present her ideal of Sunday occupation, and she had gained a little fragmentary experience under Sydney"s guidance at Fordham. So she was in a most engaging glow of shy delight, and the tidy little well-trained girls who were allotted to her did not diminish her satisfaction. To say that Armine"s positive enjoyment was equal to hers would not be true, but he had intended all his life to be a clergyman, and he was resolved not to shrink from his first experience of the kind.
The boys were too much impressed, by the apparition of one of the young gentlemen from Belforest, to comport themselves ill, but they would probably not have answered his questions even had they been in their own language, and they stared at him in a stolid way, while he disadvantageously contrasted them with the little ready-tongued peasant boys of Italy. However, he had just found the touch of nature which made the world kin, and had made their eyes light up by telling them of a scene he had beheld in Palestine, ill.u.s.trating the parable they had been repeating, when the change in the Church bells was a signal for leaving off.
Very happy and full of plans were the two young things, much pleased with the clergyman and his sister, who were no less charmed with the little, bright, brown-faced, l.u.s.trous-eyed girl, with her eager yet diffident manner and winning vivacity, and with the slender, delicate, thoughtful lad, whose grave courtesy of demeanour sat so prettily upon him.
Though not to compare in numbers, size, or beauty with the Kencroft flock, the Belforest party ranged well in their seat at Church, for Robert never failed to accompany his mother once a day, as a concession due from son to mother. It was far from satisfying her. Indeed there was a dull, heavy ache at her heart whenever she looked at him, for however he might endeavour to conform, like Marcus Aurelius sacrificing to the G.o.ds, there was always a certain half-patronising, half-criticising superciliousness about his countenance. Yet, if he came for love of her, still something might yet strike him and win his heart?
Had her years of levity and indifference been fatal to him? was ever her question to herself as she knelt and prayed for him.
She felt encouraged when, at luncheon, she asked Jock to walk with her to Kenminster for the evening service, after looking in at Kencroft, Robert volunteered to be of the party.
Caroline, however, did not think that he was made quite so welcome at Kencroft as his exertion deserved. Colonel and Mrs. Brownlow were sitting in the drawing-room with the blinds down, presumably indulging in a Sunday nap in the heat of the afternoon, for the Colonel shook himself in haste, and his wife"s cap was a little less straight than suited her serene dignity, and though they kissed and welcomed the mother, they were rather short and dry towards Bobus. They said the children had gone out walking, whereupon the two lads said they would try to meet them, and strolled out again.
This left the field free for Caroline to propose the taking the two girls to London with her.
"I am sure," said Ellen, "you have always been very kind to the children. But indeed, Caroline, I did not think you would have encouraged it."
"It?--I don"t quite understand," said Caroline, wondering whether Ellen had suddenly taken an evangelically serious turn.
"There!" said the Colonel, "I told you she was not aware of it," and on her imploring cry of inquiry, Ellen answered, "Of this folly of Robert."
"Bobus, do you mean," she cried. "Oh!" as conviction flashed on her, "I never thought of _that_."
"I am sure you did not," said the Colonel kindly.
"But--but," she said, bewildered, "if--if you mean Esther--why did you send her over last night, and let him go out to find her now."
"She is safe, reading to Mrs. Coffinkey," said Ellen. "I did not know Robert was at home, or I should not have let her come without me."
"Esther is a very dear, sweet-looking girl," said Caroline. "If only she were any one else"s daughter! Though that does not sound civil! But I know my dear husband had the strongest feeling about first cousins marrying."
"Yes, I trusted to your knowing that," said the Colonel. "And I rely on you not to be weak nor to make the task harder to us. Remembering, too,"
he added in a voice of sorrow and pity that made the words sound not unkind, "that even without the relationship, we should feel that there were strong objections."
"I know! My poor Bobus!" said Caroline, sadly. "That makes it such a pity she is his cousin. Otherwise she might do him so much good."
"I have not much faith in good done in that manner," said the Colonel.
Caroline thought him mistaken, but could not argue an abstract question, and came to the personal one. "But how far has it gone? How do you know about it? I see now that I might have detected it in his tone, but one never knows, when one"s children grow up."
"The Colonel was obliged to tell him in the autumn that we did not approve of flirtations between cousins," said Mrs. Brownlow.
"And he answered--?"
"That flirtation was the last thing he intended," said the Colonel. "On which I told him that I would have no nonsense."
"Was that all?"
"Except that at Christmas he sent her, by way of card, a drawing that must have cost a large sum," said the Colonel. "We thought it better to let the child keep it without remark, for fear of putting things into her head; though I wrote and told him such expensive trumpery was folly that I was much tempted to forbid. So what does he do on Valentine"s Day but send her a complete set of ornaments like little birds, in Genoa silver--exquisite things. Well, she was very good, dear child. We told her it was not nice or maidenly to take such valuable presents; and she was quite contented and happy when her mother gave her a ring of her own, and we have written to Jessie to send her some pretty things from India."
"She said she did not care for anything that Ellie did not have too,"
added her mother.
"Then you returned them?"
"Yes, and my young gentleman patronisingly replies that he "appreciates my reluctance, and reserves them for a future time.""
"Just like Bobus!" said Caroline. "He never gives up his purpose! But how about dear little Esther? Is she really untouched?"
"I hope so," replied her mother. "So far it has all been put upon propriety, and so on. I told her, now she was grown up and come home from school she must not run after her cousins as she used to do, and I have called her away sometimes when he has tried to get her alone. Last evening, she told me in a very simple way--like the child she is--that Robert would walk home with her in the moonlight, and hindered her when she tried to join the others, telling me she hoped I should not be angry with her. He seems to have talked to her about this London plan; but I told her on the spot it was impossible."