Harriet Wesden is holding Mattie at arm"s length, and looking steadily at her--the stationer"s daughter is taller by a head than the stray.
"And you, Mattie, have been improving, I see--learning all the lessons that I set you before I went away--becoming of help to father and mother, and thinking of poor _me_ sometimes."
"Ah! very often of "poor me.""
"Oh! how tired I am!--how glad I shall be to find myself in my room!
Now, Mr. Sidney, I"m going to bid you good night at once, thanking you for all past services."
"Very well, Miss Harriet."
"And, goodness me!--I did not notice those things before! What!
spectacles, Sidney--at your age?"
The tall young man colours and laughs--keeping his position at the door-post all the while.
"Can"t afford to have weak eyes yet, and so have sacrificed all my personal charms for the sake of convenience in matters of business. You don"t mean to say that they look so very bad, though?"
"You look nearer ninety than nineteen," she replies. "Oh! I wouldn"t take to spectacles for ever so much."
"That"s a very different affair," remarks Sidney.
"Why?"
"Oh! because it _is_--that"s all. Well, I think I"ll say good night now--shall I take that box up-stairs for you, Miss Harriet?"
"Ann and I can manage it, Mr. Hinchford," says Mattie.
"Yes, and put a rib out, or something. Can"t allow the gentler s.e.x to be black slaves during my sojourn in Great Suffolk Street. Good night all."
"Good night."
He closes the shop door, seizes the box which has been deposited in the shop, swings it round on his shoulders, and marches up-stairs with it two steps at a time, and whistling the while. On the landing, outside the sitting-room, and double-bedded room, which his father occupies, Ann Packet, domestic servant, meets him with a light.
"Lor a mussy on us!--is that you, Master Sidney?"
"Go a-head, up-stairs, wench, and let us find a place to put the box down. This is Miss Harriet"s box."
"Orful heavy, ain"t it, sir?"
"Well--it"s not so light as it might be," a.s.serts Master Sidney; "forward, there."
Meanwhile, too tired to repair to her room for any toilette arrangements at that hour of the night, Harriet Wesden sits down between her mother and father, holding her bonnet on her lap. Mr. and Mrs. Wesden regard her proudly, as well they may, Harriet being a girl to be proud of--tall, graceful, and pretty, something that makes home bright to the parents, and has been long missed by them. No one is aware of all that they have sacrificed in their desire to make a lady of their only child--or of one-half of the hopes which they have built upon concerning her.
"This always seems such an odd, _little_ box to come back to after the great Brighton school," she says, wearily; "oh, dear! how tired I am!"
"Get your supper, my dear, at once, and don"t sit up for anybody to-night," suggests the mother.
"I don"t want any supper. I--I think I"ll go up-stairs at once and keep all my little anecdotes of school and schooling till the morrow. Shall I?"
"By all means, Harriet, if you"re tired," says the father, "but after a long journey I would take something. You don"t feel poorly, my dear?"
"Who?--I--oh! no," she answered, startled at the suggestion; "but I have been eating biscuits and other messes all the journey up to London, and therefore my appet.i.te is spoiled for the night. To-morrow I shall be myself again--and we will have a long talk about all that has happened since I left here last year--by to-morrow, we shall have settled down so comfortably!"
"I hope so."
She looks timidly towards her father, but he is smoking his pipe, and placidly surveying her. She kisses him, then her mother, lastly Mattie, and leaves the room;--the instant afterwards Mattie remembers the unwieldy box, which Master, or Mr. Hinchford has carried up-stairs.
"She"ll never uncord the box--I should like to help her, if you can spare me."
"Knots always did try the dear girl," affirms Mrs. Wesden, "go and help her by all means--my dear."
Mattie needs no second bidding; she darts from the room, and in a few minutes is at the top of the house; in her forgetfulness inside the room without so much as a "By your leave, Miss Wesden."
"Oh! dear, I forgot to knock--and oh! dear, dear!" rushing forward to Harriet sitting by the bedside and rocking herself to and fro, as though in pain, "what is the matter?--can I help you?--what has happened!"
CHAPTER II.
A GIRL"S ROMANCE.
Miss Wesden continued to rock herself to and fro and moan at frequent intervals, after Mattie had intruded so unceremoniously upon her sorrows. She had reached the hysterical stage, and there was no stopping the tears and the little windy sobs by which they were varied--and Harriet Wesden in tears, the girl whom Mattie had reverenced so long, was too much for our small heroine.
"Oh! dear--what has happened?--shall I run and tell your father and mother?"
"Oh! for goodness sake, don"t think of anything of the kind!" cried the startled Harriet; "I--I--I shall be better in a minute. It"s only a spasm or something--it"s nothing that any one--can--help me--with!"
"I know what it is," remarked Mattie, after a moment"s reflection.
"You--_you_ do, Mattie!"
"It"s the wind," was the matter-of-fact reply; "you"ve been eating a heap of nasty buns, and then come up here without your supper--and it"s brought on spasms, as you say."
"How ridiculous you are, child!" said this woman of seventeen, parting her fair hair back from her face, and making an effort to subdue her agitation; "don"t you see that I am very, very miserable!"
"In earnest?"
"Are people ever really, truly miserable in fun, Mattie?" was the sharp rejoinder.
"Not truly miserable, I should fancy. But you--oh! Miss Harriet, you miserable, at your age!"
"Yes--it"s a fact."
"Perhaps you have been robbed," suggested the curious Mattie; "I know that they used to send them out from Kent Street to hang about the railway stations. Never mind, Miss Harriet, I have been earning money, lately; and if you don"t want your father to know how careless you have been----"
"Always unselfish--always thinking of doing some absurd action, that shall benefit any one of the name of Wesden. No, no, Mattie, it"s not money, it"s not that--that vulgar complaint you mentioned just now. Oh!