"Oh!" said Sophy, obviously making a mental note of the information.
"But he"s very silly about it. I"ve just said "Good-bye," to him--you know he goes up to Cambridge to-morrow?--and he did say a lot of silly things." She suddenly caught hold of Sophy and kissed her half a dozen times. "It"s a wonderful thing that"s happened. I"m so tremendously happy!" She set her little friend free with a last kiss and a playful pinch.
Neither caress nor pinch disturbed Sophy"s composure. She sat down on the gra.s.s.
"Something"s happened to me, too, to-day," she announced.
"Has it, Tots? What is it?" asked Julia, smiling indulgently; the great events in other lives are thus sufficiently acknowledged.
"I"ve left school, and I"m going to leave Mrs. James"s and go and live at the Hall, and be taught to help cook; and when I"m grown up I"m going to be cook." She spoke slowly and weightily, her eyes fixed on Julia"s face.
"Well, I call it a shame!" cried Julia, in generous indignation. "Oh, of course it would be all right if they"d treated you properly--I mean, as if they"d meant that from the beginning. But they haven"t. You"ve lived with Mrs. James, I know; but you"ve been in and out of the Hall all the time, having tea in the drawing-room, and fruit at dessert, and--and so on. And you look like a little lady, and talk like one--almost. I think it"s a shame not to give you a better chance. Cook!"
"Don"t you think it might be rather nice to be a cook--a good cook?"
"No, I don"t," answered the budding Mrs. Siddons, decisively.
"People always talk a great deal about the cook," pleaded Sophy. "Mr.
and Mrs. Brownlow are always talking about the cook--and the Rector talks about his cook, too--not always very kindly, though."
"No, it"s a shame--and I don"t believe it"ll happen."
"Yes, it will. Mrs. Brownlow settled it to-day."
"There are other people in the world besides Mrs. Brownlow."
Sophy was not exactly surprised at this dictum, but evidently it gave her thought. Her long-delayed "Yes" showed that as plainly as her "Oh"
had, a little while before, marked her appreciation of the social limits of "keeping company." "But she can settle it all the same," she persisted.
"For the time she can," Julia admitted. "Oh, I wonder what"ll be my first part, Tots!" She threw her pretty head back on the gra.s.s, closing her eyes; a smile of radiant antic.i.p.ation hovered about her lips. The little girl rose and stood looking at her friend--the friend of whom she was so proud.
"You"ll look very, very pretty," she said, with sober gravity.
Julia"s smile broadened, but her lips remained shut. Sophy looked at her for a moment longer, and, without formal farewell, resumed her progress down the avenue. It was hard on tea-time, and Mrs. James was a stickler for punctuality.
Yet Sophy"s march was interrupted once more. A tall young man sat swinging his legs on the gate that led from the avenue into the road.
The st.u.r.dy boy who had run home in terror on the night Enoch Grouch died had grown into a tall, good-looking young fellow; he was clad in what is nowadays called a "blazer" and check-trousers, and smoked a large meerschaum pipe. His expression was gloomy; the gate was shut--and he was on the top of it. Sophy approached him with some signs of nervousness. When he saw her, he glared at her moodily.
"You can"t come through," he said, firmly.
"Please, Mr. Basil, I must, I shall be late for tea."
"I won"t let you through. There!"
Sophy looked despairful. "May I climb over?"
"No," said Basil, firmly; but a smile began to twitch about his lips.
Quick now, as ever, to see the joint in a man"s armor, Sophy smiled too.
"If you"d let me through, I"d give you a kiss," she said, offering the only thing she had to give in all the world.
"You would, would you? But I hate kisses. In fact, I hate girls all round--big and little."
"You don"t hate Julia, do you?"
"Yes, worst of all."
"Oh!" said Sophy--once more the recording, registering "Oh!"--because Julia had given quite another impression, and Sophy sought to reconcile these opposites.
The young man jumped down from the gate, with a healthy laugh at himself and at her, caught her up in his arms, and gave her a smacking kiss.
"That"s toll," he said. "Now you can go through, missy."
"Thank you, Mr. Basil. It"s not very hard to get through, is it?"
He set her down with a laugh, a laugh with a note of surprise in it; her last words had sounded odd from a child. But Sophy"s eyes were quite grave; she was probably recording the practical value of a kiss.
"You shall tell me whether you think the same about that in a few years"
time," he said, laughing again.
"When I"m grown up?" she asked, with a slow, puzzled smile.
"Perhaps," said he, a.s.suming gravity anew.
"And cook?" she asked, with a curiously interrogative air--anxious apparently to see what he, in his turn, would think of her destiny.
"Cook? You"re going to be a cook?"
"The cook," she amended. "The cook at the Hall."
"I"ll come and eat your dinners." He laughed, yet looked a trifle compa.s.sionate. Sophy"s quick eyes tracked his feelings.
"You don"t think it"s nice to be a cook, either?" she asked.
"Oh yes, splendid! The cook"s a sort of queen," said he.
"The cook a sort of queen? Is she?" Sophy"s eyes were profoundly thoughtful.
"And I should be very proud to kiss a queen--a sort of queen. Because I shall be only a poor sawbones."
"Sawbones?"
"A surgeon--a doctor, you know--with a red lamp, like Dr. Seaton at Brentwood."
She looked at him for a moment. "Are you really going away?" she asked, abruptly.
"Yes, for a bit--to-morrow."