"Confound it!" he observed, devoutly. "Who is it?"
"I don"t know," answered Dolly; "but you must let me go. Good-night, again."
He released her, and she ran in through the gate, and up the gravel walk, and so he was left to turn away and pa.s.s the intruder with an appearance of nonchalance. And pa.s.s him he did, though whether with successful indifference or not, one can hardly say; but in pa.s.sing him he looked up, and in looking up he recognized Ralph Gowan.
"Going to see her," he said, to himself, just as poor Mollie had said the same thing, and just with the same heartburn. "The dev--But, no," he broke off sharply, "I won"t begin again. It is as she says,--the blessed little darling!--it is shabby to be down on him because he has the best of it." And he went on his way, not rejoicing, it is true, but still trying to crush down a by no means unnatural feeling of rebellion.
CHAPTER X. ~ IN SLIPPERY PLACES.
THE wise one sat at the window and looked out. The view commanded by Bloomsbury Place was not a specially imposing or attractive one. Four or five tall, dingy houses with solitary scrubby shrubs in their small front slips of low-spirited looking gardens, four or five dingy and tall houses without the scrubby shrubs in their small front slips of low-spirited looking gardens, rows of Venetian blinds of various shades, and one or two lamp-posts,--not much to enliven the prospect.
The inhabitants of the houses in Bloomsbury Place were not p.r.o.ne to sitting at their front windows, accordingly; but this special afternoon, the weather being foggy, Aimee finding herself alone in the parlor, had left the fire just to look at this same fog, though it was by no means a novelty. The house was very quiet. "Toinette was out, and so was Mollie, and Tod was asleep, lying upon a collection of cus.h.i.+ons on the hearth-rug, with two fingers in his mouth, his round baby face turned up luxuriously to catch the warmth.
The wise one was waiting for Mollie, who had gone out a few hours before to execute divers commissions of a domestic nature.
"She might have been back in half the time," murmured the family sage, who sat on the carpet, flattening her small features against the gla.s.s.
"She might have done what she has to do in _less_ than half the time, but I knew how it would be when she went out. She is looking in at the shop windows and wis.h.i.+ng for things. I wish she would n"t. People stare at her so, and I don"t wonder. I am sure I cannot help watching her myself, sometimes. She grows prettier every day of her life, and she is beginning to know that she does, too."
Five minutes after this the small face was drawn away from the window-pane with a sigh of relief.
"There she is now. What a time she has been! Who is with her, I wonder?
I cannot see whether it is Phil or Mr. Gowan, it is getting so dark. It must be Mr. Gowan. "Toinette would be with them if it was Phil."
"Why, Mollie," she exclaimed, when the door opened, "I saw somebody with you, and I thought it was Mr. Gowan. Why did n"t he come in? Don"t waken Tod."
Mollie came in rather hurriedly, and going to the fire knelt down before it, holding out her hands to warm them. Her cheeks were brilliant with color and her eyes were bright; altogether, she looked a trifle excited.
"It was n"t Mr. Gowan," she answered. "Ugh! how cold it is,--not frosty, you know, but that raw sort of cold, Aimee. I would rather have the frost myself, would n"t you?"
But Aimee was not thinking of the weather.
"Not Mr. Gowan!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Who was it, then?"
Mollie crept nearer to the fire and gave another little shudder.
"It was--somebody else," she returned, with a triumphant little half-laugh. "Guess who!"
"Who!" repeated Aimee. "Somebody else! It was not any one I know."
"It was somebody Phil knows."
The wise one arose and came to the fire herself.
"It was some one taller than Brown!"
"Brown!" echoed Mollie, with an air of supreme contempt. "He is _twice_ as tall. Brown is only about five feet high, and he wears an overcoat ten times too big for him, and it flaps--yes, it _flaps_ about his odious little heels. I should think it wasn"t Brown. It was a gentleman."
The wise one regarded her pretty, scornful face dubiously.
"Brown is n"t so bad as all that implies, Mollie," she said. "His coat is the worst part of him. But if it was n"t Brown and it was n"t Mr.
Gowan, who was it?"
Mollie laughed and shrugged her shoulders again, and then looked up at her small inquisitor charmingly defiant.
"It was--Mr. Chandos!" she confessed.
Aimee gazed at her for a moment in blank amazement.
"But," she objected, "you don"t know him any more than I do. You have only seen him once through the window, and you have never been introduced to him."
"I have seen him twice," said Mollie. "Don"t you recollect my telling you that he picked up my glove for me the night I carried Dolly"s dress to Bra-bazon Lodge, and," faltering a little and dropping her eyes, "he introduced himself to me. He met me in town. I was pa.s.sing through the Arcade, and he stopped to ask about Phil. He apologized, of course, you know, for doing it, but he said he was very anxious to know when Phil would be at home, and--and perhaps I would be so kind as to tell him. He wants to see him about a picture. And--then, you know, somehow or other, he said something else, and--and I answered him--and he walked to the gate with me."
"He took a great liberty," said Aimee. "And it was very imprudent in you to let him come. I don"t know what you could be thinking of. The idea of picking up people in the street like that, Mollie; you must be crazy."
"I could n"t help it," returned Mollie, not appearing at all disturbed.
"He knows Phil and he knows Dolly--a little. And he is very nice. He wants to know us all. And he says Mr. Gowan is one of his best friends.
I liked him myself."
"I dare say you did," despairingly. "You are such a child. You would like the man in the moon or a Kaffre chief--"
"That is not true," interposed the delinquent. "I don"t know about the man in the moon. He might be well enough--at any rate, he would be travelled and a novelty, but Kaffre chiefs are odious. Don"t you remember those we saw last winter?"
"Mollie," said Aimee, "you are only jesting because you are ashamed of yourself. You _know_ you were wrong to let that man come home with you."
Then Mollie hung her head and made a lovely rebellious move.
"I don"t care," she said; "if it was n"t exactly correct, it was nice.
But that is always the way," indignantly, "nice things are always improper."
Here was a defection for you. The oracle quite shuddered in her discreet disapproval.
"If you go on in that way," she said, "you will be ending by saying that improper things are always nice."
"Never mind how I end," observed the prisoner at the bar. "You have ended by wakening Tod;" which remark terminated the conversation somewhat abruptly.
A day or so later came Chandos--upon business, so he said, but he remained much longer than his errand rendered necessary, and by some chance or other it came to pa.s.s that Phil brought him into the parlor, and introduced him to their small circle, in his usual amiable, informal manner. Then he was to be seen fairly, and prepossessing enough he was.
Mollie, sitting in her corner in the blue dress, and looking exquisite and guileless, was very demurely silent at first; but in due time Aimee began to see that she was being gradually drawn out, and at last the drawing out was such a success, subtle as it was, that she became quite a prominent feature in the party, and made so many brilliant speeches without blus.h.i.+ng, that the family eyes began to be opened to the fact that she was really a trifle older than she had been a few years ago, after all. The idea had suggested itself to them faintly on one or two occasions of late, and they were just beginning to grasp it, though they were fully as much startled as they would have been if Tod had unexpectedly roused himself from his infantile slumbers, and mildly but firmly announced his intention of studying for the ministry or entering a political contest.
Aimee was dumbfounded. She had not expected this. She was going to have her hands full, it was plain. She scarcely wondered now at her discovery of two evenings before. And then she glanced slyly across the room again, and took it all in once more,--Mollie, bewitching in all the novelty of her small effort at coquetry; Chandos, leading her on, and evidently enjoying the task he had set himself intensely.
It was quite a new Mollie who was left to them after their visitor was gone. There was a touch of triumph and excitement in the pretty flushed face, and a ghost of defiance in the brown eyes. She was not quite sure that young Dame Prudence would not improve the occasion with a short homily.
So she was a trifle restless. First she stood at the window humming an air, then she came to the table and turned over a few sketches, then she knelt down on pretence of teasing Tod.
But impulse was too much for her. She forgot Tod in a few minutes and fell into a sitting position, folding her hands idly on the blue garment.