"What a fascinating description!" laughed Archie. "Upon my word, Mattie, you are rather tremendous in your language. Well, and what did the navvy say to you?"
"Oh, he was not a navvy, really! Of course he was a gentleman. He could not help his big voice, and what he said was nice; but, I a.s.sure you, Archie, he nearly took my breath away;" and so on, and so on, to the end of her story.
But it was enough to surprise any one whose nerves were not of the strongest, when one lives in a lonely country road, and the master of the house is out, to see a gigantic specimen of manhood, not very carefully dressed, and with hair like a red glory, come suddenly striding through one"s open gate, without "by your leave," or waiting for any possible permission.
Mattie dropped her umbrella,--for she was dressed in her waterproof, and her oldest hat, ready for her district-work; and the stranger picked it up, and handed it to her promptly, and then he removed his hat politely.
"How do you do, cousin?" he said; and a broad, genial smile revealed a set of white teeth.
Mattie retreated a step in genuine affright.
"For you know, Archie," she explained afterwards, in her simple way, "we have no cousins worth mentioning, except Sophy Trinder, who is not our cousin at all, but mother"s; and so you see it sounded so very odd."
"Very odd indeed," muttered Archie.
"If you please, Mr. Drummond--that is my brother--is out, and I am going out too," faltered Mattie, who was not a specially heroic little person, and who decidedly had not got her wits about her just then.
"I do not want Mr. Drummond, whoever he may be. I never heard of him in my life. I only want my aunt and cousins. Which of them are you, eh? Why, you must be Nan, I suppose?" And the big man looked down at her with a sort of supercilious good nature. The name gave Mattie instant enlightenment.
"Nan!--Oh, you must mean the Challoners!" she exclaimed, with a little gasp of surprise.
"Yes, of course; I am a Challoner myself. Well, which of them are you, eh? You are a long time telling me your name." And the new-comer peered down at her still more curiously, as though he were surprised to find anything so small and ordinary-looking.
Mattie never looked to advantage in her waterproof. More than once her brother had threatened to burn the old rag of a thing.
"My name is Mattie Drummond," replied the bewildered Mattie, trying to speak with dignity,--she never would call herself Matilda, she hated it so,--"and I live with my brother, who is the clergyman of the parish. This is the vicarage: if you want the Friary, it is a little lower down the road."
"Where?" he asked, striding to the gate; and then he came back again, taking the few steps at a single bound,--so at least it appeared to Mattie. "Why--why--there is no house at all--only a miserable cottage, and----"
"That is the Friary," repeated Mattie, decidedly; "but it is not miserable at all: it is very nice and pretty. The Challoners are very poor, you know; but their house looks beautiful for all that."
"Oh, yes; I know all about it. I have been down to that place, Oldfield, where they lived; and what I heard has brought me here like an express train. I say, Miss Mattie Drummond, if you will excuse ceremony in a fellow who has never seen his father"s country before, and who has roughed it in the colonies, may I come in a moment and ask you a few questions about my cousins?"
"Oh, by all means," returned Mattie, who was very good-natured and was now more at her ease. "You will be very welcome, Mr. Challoner."
"Sir Henry Challoner, at your service," responded that singular individual with a twinkle of his eye, as Mattie became confused all at once. "You see," he continued, confidentially, as she led the way rather awkwardly to her brother"s study, hoping fervently that Archie would come in, "I have been making up my mind to come to England for years, but somehow I have never been able to get away; but after my father"s death--he was out in Australia with me--I was so lonely and cut up that I thought I would take a run over to the mother-country and hunt up my relations. He was not much of a father perhaps; but, as one cannot have a choice in such matters, I was obliged to put up with him;" which was perhaps the kindest speech Sir Francis"s son could make under the circ.u.mstances.
Mattie listened intelligently, but she was so slightly acquainted with the Challoners" past history that she did not know they possessed any relations. But she had no need to ask any questions: the new-comer seemed determined to give a full account of himself.
"So do you see, Miss Drummond, having made my fortune by a stroke of good luck, and not knowing quite how to spend it--the father and mother both gone,--and having no wife or chick of my own, and being uncommon lonely under the circ.u.mstances, I thought I would just run over and have a look at my belongings. I have a sort of fancy for Aunt Catherine; she used to write me such pretty letters when I was a little chap in Calcutta, and tell me about Nan, and Phillis, and--what was the baby"s name?--Dulce. I believe she and the poor old governor never hit it off: the old man had been a sad sinner in his day. But I never forgot those letters: and when he was gone, poor old boy! I said to myself, Now I will go and see Aunt Catherine."
"And you went down to Oldfield, Sir Henry?"
"Eh, what? meaning me, I suppose? but out there they called me Sir Harry, or Harry mostly, for what was the use of a t.i.tle there? Oh, yes, I went down and found out all about them from a chatty little woman, rather like yourself, and she sent me on here."
"Oh, dear, I am so glad!" exclaimed Mattie, who was now thoroughly herself: "they will be so pleased to see you, and you will think them all so charming. I am sure I never saw any one the least like them, except Grace, and she is not half so pretty as Nan; and as for Phillis, I admire her even more, she lights up so when she talks."
"Aunt Catherine used to be beautiful," observed Sir Harry, gravely; for then and afterwards he insisted on that form of address. He was not English enough or sufficiently stiff for Henry, he would say.
"Oh, dear, yes! she is quite lovely now,--at least Archie and I think so; and Dulce is the dearest little thing. I am ever so fond of them; if they were my own sisters I could not love them more," continued Mattie, with a little gush; but, indeed the girls" gentle high-bred ways had won her heart from the first.
Sir Harry"s eyes positively sparkled with delight; he had pleasant eyes which redeemed his other features, for it must be confessed he was decidedly plain.
"I must shake hands with you, Miss Drummond," he said, stretching out a huge hand, with a diamond ring on it that greatly impressed Mattie.
"We shall be good friends, I see that." And though poor Mattie winced with pain under that cordial grasp, she hid it manfully.
"Did they tell you at Oldfield how poor they are?" she said, when this ceremony had been performed, and Sir Harry"s face looked more like a sunset than ever with that benevolent glow on it.
"Oh, yes," he returned, indifferently; "but all that is over now."
"You know they have to work for their living; the girls are dressmakers," bringing out the news rather cautiously, for fear he should be shocked; a baronet must be sensitive on such points. But Sir Harry only laughed.
"Well, they are plucky girls," he said, admiringly; "I like them for that." And then he asked, a little anxiously, if his aunt sewed gowns too,--that was how he put it,--and seemed mightily relieved to hear that she did very little but read to the girls.
"I would not like to hear she was slaving herself at her age," he remarked, seriously. "Work will not hurt the girls: it keeps them out of mischief. But now I have come, we must put a stop to all this." And then he got up and threw back his shoulders, as though he were adjusting them to some burden; and Mattie, as she looked up at him, thought again of the brewer"s dray.
"I was afraid when he got off his chair he would touch the ceiling,"
she said, afterwards. "He quite stooped of his own accord going through the study doorway."
When Sir Henry had shaken himself into order, and pulled an end of his rough red moustache, he said, quite suddenly,--
"As you are a friend of the family, Miss Drummond, I think it would be as well if you would go with me to the Friary and introduce me in due form; for, though you would not believe it in a man of my size, I am painfully shy, and the notion of all these girls, unless I take them singly, is rather overwhelming." And, though this request took Mattie a little by surprise, she saw no reason for refusing to do him this kindness. So she a.s.sented willingly, for in her heart Mattie was fond of a scene. It gave her such a hold on Archie"s attention afterwards; and, to do him justice, when the Challoners were on the _tapis_, he made a splendid listener.
Sir Henry walked very fast, as though he were in a tremendous hurry; but he was nervous, poor fellow, and, though he did not like to own as much to a woman, he would almost have liked to run away, in spite of his coming all those thousands of miles to see his relations. He had pressed Mattie into the service to cover his confusion, but the little woman herself hardly saw how she was needed, for, instead of waiting for her introduction, or sending in his name or card by Dorothy, he just put them both aside and stepped into the first room that stood handy, guided by the sound of voices.
"How do you do, Aunt Catherine?" he said, walking straight up to the terrified lady, who had never seen anything so big in her life. "I am Harry,--Harry Challoner, you know,--to whom you used to write when I was a little slip of a boy."
A strange queen in a hive of bees could not have produced more confusion. Dulce stopped her sewing-machine so suddenly that her thread broke; Phillis, who was reading aloud, let her book fall with quite a crash; and Nan said, "Oh, dear!" and grew quite pale with surprise and disappointment: for a moment she thought it was d.i.c.k. As for Mrs. Challoner, who had a right to her nerves from years of injudicious spoiling and indulgence, and would not have been without her feelings for worlds, she just clasped her hands and murmured "Good heavens!" in the orthodox lady-like way.
"Why, yes, Aunt Catherine, I am Harry; and I hope you have not forgotten the existence of the poor little beggar to whom you were so kind in the old Calcutta days." And his big voice softened involuntarily in the presence of this dignified aunt.
"Oh, no, my dear!--no!" touched by his manner, and remembering the boyish scrawls that used to come to her, signed "Your affectionate nephew, Harry." "And are you indeed my nephew?--are you Harry?" And then she held out her slim hand, which he took awkwardly enough.
"Girls, you must welcome your cousin. This is Nan, Harry, the one they always say is like me; and this is Phillis, our clever one; and this is my pet Dulce." And with each one did their cousin solemnly shake hands, but without a smile; indeed, his aspect became almost ludicrous, until he caught sight of his homely little acquaintance, Mattie, who stood an amused spectator of this family tableau, and his red, embarra.s.sed face brightened a little.
"Aunt Catherine was such an awfully grand creature, you know," as he observed to her afterwards, in a confidential aside: "her manners make a fellow feel nowhere. And as for my cousins, a prettier lot of girls I never saw anywhere; and of course, they are as jolly and up to larks as other girls; but just at first, you know, I had a bull-in-a-china-shop sort of feeling among them all."
Mrs. Challoner, in spite of her fine manners, was far too nervous herself to notice her nephew"s discomfort. She had to mention a name that was obnoxious to her, for of course she must ask after his father. She got him into a chair by her at length, where he stared into his hat to avoid the bright eyes that seemed to quiz him so unmercifully.
"And how is Sir Francis?" she asked, uttering the name with languid interest.
"My father! Oh, did you not know, Aunt Catherine?--he died out in Sydney a year ago. Poor old fellow! he had a terrible illness. There was no pulling him through it."
Mrs. Challoner roused up at this:
"Your father dead! Then, Harry, you have come to the t.i.tle?"
But her nephew burst into a boisterous laugh at this:
"Yes,--a t.i.tle and an old ruin. A precious heritage, is it not? Not that I care what people call me. The most important part is that another fellow--Dalton they call him--and I made a grand hit out in Sydney. When I saw the money flowing in, I just sent for the poor old governor to join me; and we did not have a bad time of it, until the gout took him off. And then I got sick of it all, and thought I would have a look at England and hunt up my relations."