Between Winchester and Romsey there lies a region of gentle hills and grassy slopes shadowed by fine old yew trees, a land of verdure, lonely and exceeding fair; and in a hollow of this undulating district nestles the village of Kingthorpe, with its half-dozen handsome old houses, its richly cultivated gardens, and quaint old square-towered church. It is a prosperous, well-to-do little settlement, where squalor and want are unknown. Its humbler dwellings belong chiefly to the labourers on the Wendover estate, and those are liberally paid and well cared for. An agricultural labourer's wages at Kingthorpe might seem infinitely small to a London mechanic; but when it is taken into account that the tiller of the fields has a roomy cottage and an acre of garden for sixpence a-week, his daily dole of milk from the home farm, as much wood as he can burn, blankets and coals at Christmas, and wine and brandy, soup and bread from the great house, in all emergencies, he is perhaps not so very much worse off than his metropolitan brother.
There was an air of comfort and repose at Kingthorpe which made the place delightful to the eye of a passing wanderer—a spot where one would gladly have lain down the burden of life and rested for awhile in one of those white cottages that lay a little way back from the high road, shadowed by a screen of tall elms. There was a duck-pond in front of a low red-brick inn which reminded one of Birkett Foster, and made the central feature of the village; a spot of busy life where all else was stillness. There were accommodation roads leading off to distant farms, above which the tree-tops interlaced, and where the hedges were rich in blackberry and sloe, dog-roses and honeysuckle, and the banks in spring-time dappled with violet and primrose, purple orchids and wild crocus, and all the flowers that grow for the delight of village children.
Ida Palliser sat silent in her corner of the large landau which was taking Miss Wendover and her schoolfellows from Winchester station to Kingthorpe. Miss Rylance had accepted a seat in the Wendover landau at her father's desire; but she would have preferred to have had her own smart little pony-carriage to meet her at the station. To drive her own carriage, were it ever so small, was more agreeable to Urania's temper than to sit behind the over-fed horses from The Knoll, and to be thus, in some small measure, indebted to Bessie Wendover.
Ida Palliser's presence made the thing still more odious. Bessie was radiant with delight at taking her friend home with her. She watched Ida's eyes as they roamed over the landscape. She understood the girl's silent admiration.
'They are darling old hills, aren't they, dear?' she asked, squeezing Ida's hand, as the summer shadows and summer lights went dancing over the sward like living things.
'Yes, dear, they are lovely,' answered Ida, quietly.
She was devouring the beauty of the scene with her eyes. She had seen nothing like it in her narrow wanderings over the earth—nothing so simple, so beautiful, and so lonely. She was sorry when they left that open hill country and came into a more fertile scene, a high road, which was like an avenue in a gentleman's park, and then the village duck-pond and red homestead, the old gray church, with its gilded sun-dial, marking the hour of six, the gardens brimming over with roses, and as full of sweet odours as those spicy islands which send their perfumed breath to greet the seaman as he sails to the land of the Sun.
The carriage stopped at the iron gate of an exquisitely kept garden, surrounding a small Gothic cottage of the fanciful order of architecture,—a cottage with plate-glass windows, shaded by Spanish blinds, a glazed verandah sheltering a tesselated walk, sloping banks and terraces, on a very small scale, stone vases full of flowers, a tiny fountain sparkling in the afternoon sun.
This was Dr. Rylance's country retreat. It had been a yeoman's cottage, plain, substantial and homely as the yeoman and his household. The doctor had added a Gothic front, increased the number of rooms, but not the general convenience of the dwelling. He had been his own architect, and the result was a variety of levels and a breakneck arrangement of stairs at all manner of odd corners, so ingenious in their peril to life and limb that they might be supposed to have been designed as traps for the ignorant stranger.
'Don't say good-bye, Ranie,' said Bessie, when Miss Rylance had alighted, and was making her adieux at the carriage door; 'you'll come over to dinner, won't you, dear? Your father won't be down till Saturday. You'll be dreadfully dull at home.'
'Thanks, dear, no; I'd rather spend my first evening at home. I'm never dull,' answered Urania, with her air of superiority.
'What a queer girl you are!' exclaimed Bessie, frankly. 'I should be wretched if I found myself alone in a house. Do run over in the evening, at any rate. We are going to have lots of fun.'
Miss Rylance shuddered. She knew what was meant by lots of fun at The Knoll; a romping game at croquet, or the newly-established lawn-tennis, with girls in short petticoats and boys in Eton jackets; a raid upon the plum-trees on the crumbling red brick walls of the fine old kitchen-garden; winding up with a boisterous bout at hide-and-seek in the twilight; and finally a banquet of sandwiches, jam tarts, and syllabub in the shabby old dining-room.
'I'll come over to see Mrs. Wendover, if I am not too tired,' she said, with languid politeness, and then she closed the gate, and the carriage drove on to The Knoll.
Colonel Wendover's house was a substantial dwelling of the Queen Anne period, built of unmixed red brick, with a fine pediment, a stone shell over the entrance, four long narrow windows on each side of the tall door, and nine in each upper story, a house that looked all eyes, and was a blaze of splendour when the western sun shone upon its many windows. The house stood on a bit of rising ground at the end of the village, and dominated all meaner habitations. It was the typical squire's house, and Colonel Wendover was no bad representative of the typical squire.
A fine old iron gate opened upon a broad gravel drive, which made the circuit of a well-keptparterre, where the flowers grew as they only grow for those who love them dearly. This gate stood hospitably open at all times, and many were the vehicles which drove up to the tall door of The Knoll, and friendly the welcome which greeted all comers.
The door, like the gate, stood open all day long—indeed, open doors were the rule at Kingthorpe. Ida saw a roomy old hall, paved with black and white marble, a few family portraits, considerably the worse for wear, against panelled walls painted white, a concatenation of guns, fishing-rods, whips, canes, cricket-bats, croquet-mallets, and all things appertaining to the out-door amusements of a numerous family. A large tiger skin stretched before the drawing-room door was one memorial of Colonel Wendover's Indian life; a tiger's skull gleaming on the wall, between a pair of elephant's ears, was another. One side of the wall was adorned with a collection of Indian arms, showing all those various curves with which oriental ingenuity has improved upon the straight simplicity of the western sword.
It was not a neatly kept hall. There had been no careful study of colour in the arrangement of things—hats and caps were flung carelessly on the old oak chairs—there was a licentious mixture of styles in the furniture—half Old English, half Indian, and all the worse for wear: but Ida Palliser thought the house had a friendly look, which made it better than any house she had ever seen before.
Through an open door at the back of the hall she saw a broad gravel walk, long and straight, leading to a temple or summer-house built of red brick, like the mansion itself. On each side of the broad walk there was a strip of grass, just about wide enough for a bowling-green, and on the grass were orange-trees in big wooden tubs, painted green. Slowly advancing along the broad walk there came a large lady.
'Is that you mother?' asked Ida.
'No, it's Aunt Betsy. You ought to have known Aunt Betsy at a glance. I'm sure I've described her often enough. How good of her to be here to welcome us!' and Bessie flew across the hall and rushed down the broad walk to greet her aunt.
Ida followed at a more sober pace. Yes, she had heard of Aunt Betsy—a maiden aunt, who lived in her own house a little way from The Knoll. A lady who had plenty of money and decidedly masculine tastes, which she indulged freely; a very lovable person withal, if Bessie might be believed. Ida wondered if she too would be able to like Aunt Betsy.
Miss Wendover's appearance was not repulsive. She was a woman of heroic mould, considerably above the average height of womankind, with a large head nobly set upon large well-shaped shoulders. Bulky Miss Wendover decidedly was, but she carried her bulkiness well. She still maintained a waist, firmly braced above her expansive hips. She walked well, and was more active than many smaller women. Indeed, her life was full of activity, spent for the most part in the open air, driving, walking, gardening, looking after her cows and poultry, and visiting the labouring-classes round Kingthorpe, among whom she was esteemed an oracle.
Bessie hung herself round her large aunt like ivy on an oak, and the two thus united came up the broad walk to meet Ida, Bessie chattering all the way.
'So this is Miss Palliser,' said Aunt Betsy heartily, and in a deep masculine voice, which accorded well with her large figure. 'I have heard a great deal about you from this enthusiastic child,—so much that I was prepared to be disappointed in you. It is the highest compliment I can pay you to say I am not.'
'Where's mother?' asked Bessie.
'Your father drove her to Romsey to call on the new vicar. There's the phaeton driving in at the gate.'
It was so. Before Ida had had breathing time to get over the introduction to Aunt Betsy, she was hurried off to see her host and hostess.
They were very pleasant people, who did not consider themselves called on to present an icy aspect to a new acquaintance.
The Colonel was the image of his sister, tall and broad of figure, with an aquiline nose and a commanding eye, thoroughly good-natured withal, and a man whom everybody loved. Mrs. Wendover was a dumpy little woman, who had brought dumpiness and a handsome fortune into the family. She had been very pretty in girlhood, and was pretty still, with a round-faced innocent prettiness which made her look almost as young as her eldest daughter. Her husband loved her with a fondly protecting and almost paternal affection, which was very pleasant to behold; and she held him in devoted reverence, as the beginning and end of all that was worth loving and knowing in the Universe. She was not an accomplished woman, and had made the smallest possible use of those opportunities which civilization affords to every young lady whose parents have plenty of money; but she was a lady to the marrow of her bones—benevolent, kindly. thinking no evil, rejoicing in the truth—an embodiment of domestic love.
Such a host and hostess made Ida feel at home in their house in less than five minutes. If there had been a shade of coldness in their greeting her pride would have risen in arms against them, and she would have made herself eminently disagreeable. But at their hearty welcome she expanded like a beautiful flower which opens its lovely heart to the sunshine.
'It is so good of you to ask me here,' she said, when Mrs. Wendover had kissed her, 'knowing so little of me.'
'I know that my daughter loves you,' answered the mother, 'and it is not in Bessie's nature to love anyone who isn't worthy of love.'
Ida smiled at the mother's simple answer.
'Don't you think that in a heart so full of love some may run over and get wasted on worthless objects?' she asked.
'That's very true,' cried a boy in an Eton jacket, one of a troop that had congregated round the Colonel and his wife since their entrance. 'You know there was that half-bred terrier you doted upon, Bess, though I showed you that the roof of his mouth was as red as sealing-wax.'
'I hope you are not going to compare me to a half-bred terrier,' saidIda, laughing.
'If you were a terrier, the roof of your mouth would be as black as my hat,' said the boy decisively. It was his way of expressing his conviction that Ida was thoroughbred.
The ice being thus easily broken, Ida found herself received into the bosom of the family, and at once established as a favourite with all. There were two boys in Eton jackets, answering to the names of Reginald and Horatio, but oftener to the friendly abbreviations Reg and Horry. Both had chubby faces, liberally freckled, warts on their hands, and rumpled hair; and it was not easy for a new comer to distinguish Horatio from Reginald, or Reginald from Horatio. There was a girl of fourteen with flowing hair, who looked very tall because her petticoats were very short, and who always required some one to hug and hang upon. If she found herself deprived of human support she lolled against a wall.
This young person at once pounced upon Ida, as a being sent into the world to sustain her.
'Do you think you shall like me?' she asked, when they had all swarmed up to the long corridor, out of which numerous bedrooms opened.
'I like you already,' answered Ida.
'Do thoo like pigs?' asked a smaller girl, round and rosy, in a holland pinafore, putting the question as if it were relevant to her sister's inquiry.
'I don't quite know,' said Ida doubtfully.
''Cos there are nine black oneths, tho pwutty. Will thoo come and thee them?'
Ida said she would think about it: and then she received various pressing invitations to go and see lop-eared rabbits, guinea-pigs, a tame water-rat in the rushes of the duck-pond, a collection of eggs in the schoolroom, and the new lawn-tennis ground which father had made in the paddock.
'Now all you small children run away!' cried Bessie, loftily. 'Ida and I are going to dress for dinner.'
The crowd dispersed reluctantly, with low mutterings about rabbits, pigs, and water-rats, like the murmurs of a stage mob; and then Bessie led her friend into a large sunny room fronting westward, a room with three windows, cushioned window-seats, two pretty white-curtained beds, and a good deal of old-fashioned and heterogeneous furniture, half English, half Indian.
'You said you wouldn't mind sleeping in my room,' said Bessie, as she showed her friend an exclusive dressing-table, daintily draperied, and enlivened with blue satin bows, for the refreshment of the visitor's eye.
While the girls were contemplating this work of art the door was suddenly opened and Blanche's head was thrust in.
'I did the dressing-table, Miss Palliser, every bit, on purpose for you.'
And the door then slammed to, and Bessie rushed across the room and drew the bolt.
'We shall have them all one after another,' she said.
'Don't shut them out on my account.'
'Oh, but I must. You would have no peace. I can see they are going to be appallingly fond of you.'
'Let them like me as much as they can. Do you know, Bessie, this is my first glimpse into the inside of a home!'
'Oh, Ida, dear, but your father,' remonstrated Bessie.
'My father has never been unkind to me, but I have had no home with him. When my mother brought me home from India—she died very soon after we got home, you know'—Ida strangled a sob at this point—'I was placed with strangers, two elderly maiden ladies, who reared me very well, no doubt, in their stiff business-like way, and who really gave me a very good education. That went on for nine years,—a long time to spend with two old maids in a dull little house at Turnham Green,—and then I had a letter from my father to say he had come home for good. He had sold his commission and meant to settle down in some quiet spot abroad. His first duty would be to make arrangements for placing me in a high-class school, where I could finish my education; and he told me, quite at the end of his letter, that he had married a very sweet young lady, who was ready to give me all a mother's affection, and who would be able to receive me in my holidays, when the expense of the journey to France and back was manageable.'
'Poor darling!' sighed Bessie. 'Did your heart warm to the sweet young lady?'
'No, Bess; I'm afraid it must be an unregenerate heart, for I took a furious dislike to her. Very unjust and unreasonable, wasn't it? Afterwards, when my father took me over to his cottage, near Dieppe, to spend my holidays, I found that my stepmother was a kind-hearted, pretty little thing, whom I might look down upon for her want of education, but whom I could not dislike. She was very kind to me; and she had a baby boy. I have told you about him, and how he and I fell in love with each other at first sight.'
'I am horribly jealous of that baby boy,' protested Bessie. 'How old is he now?'
'Nearly five. He was two years and a half old when I was at LesFontaines, and that was before I went to Mauleverer Manor.'
'And you have been at Mauleverer Manor more than two years without once going home for the holidays,' said Bessie. 'That seems hard.'
'My dear, poverty is hard. It is all of a piece. It means deprivation, humiliation, degradation, the severance of friends. My father would have had me home if he could have afforded it; but he couldn't. He has only just enough to keep himself and his wife and boy. If you were to see the little box of a house they inhabit in that tiny French village, you would wonder that anybody bigger than a pigeon could live in so small a place. They have a narrow garden, and there is an orchard on the slope of a hill behind the cottage, and a long white road leading to nowhere in front. It is all very nice in the summer, when one can live half one's life out of doors, but I am sure I don't know how they manage to exist through the winter.'
'Poor things!' sighed Bessie, who had a large stock of compassion always on hand.
And then she tied a bright ribbon at the back of Ida's collar, by way of finishing touch to the girl's simple toilet, which had been going on while they talked, and then, Bessie in white and Ida in black, like sunlight and shadow, they went downstairs to the drawing-room, where Colonel Wendover was stretched on his favourite sofa, reading a county paper. Since his retirement from active service into domestic idleness the Colonel had required a great deal of rest, and was to be found at all hours of the day extended at ease on his own particular sofa. During his intervals of activity he exhibited a large amount of energy. When he was indoors his stentorian voice penetrated from garret to cellar; when he was out of doors the same deep-toned thunder could be heard across a couple of paddocks. He pervaded the gardens and stables, supervised the home farm, and had a finger in every pie.
Mrs. Wendover was sitting in her own particular arm-chair, close to her husband's sofa—they were seldom seen far apart—with a large basket of crewel-work beside her, containing sundry squares of kitchen towelling and a chaos of many-coloured wools, which never seemed to arrive at any result.
The impression which Mrs. Wendover's drawing-room conveyed to a stranger was a general idea of homeliness and comfort. It was not fine, it was not aesthetic, it was not even elegant. A great bay window opened upon the garden, a large old-fashioned fireplace, with carved wooden chimney-piece faced the bay. The floor was polished oak, with only an island of faded Persian carpet in the centre, and Indian prayer rugs lying about here and there. There were chairs and tables of richly carved Bombay blackwood, Japanese cabinets in the recesses beside the fire-place, a five-leaved Indian screen between the fire-place and the door. There was just enough Oriental china to give colour to the room, and to relieve by glowing reds and vivid purples the faded dead-leaf tint of curtains and chair covers.
The gong began to boom as the two girls came into the room, and the rest of the family dropped in through the open windows at the same moment, Aunt Betsy bringing up the rear. There was no nursery dinner at The Knoll. Colonel Wendover allowed his children to dine with him from the day they were able to manage their knives and forks. Save on state occasions, the whole brood sat down with their father and mother to the seven o'clock dinner; as the young sprigs of the House of Orleans used to sit round good King Louis Philippe in his tranquil retirement at Claremont. Even the lisping girl who loved pigs had her place at the board, and knew how to behave herself. There was a subdued struggle for the seat next Ida, whom the Colonel had placed on his right, but Reginald, the elder of the Winchester boys, asserted his claim with a quiet firmness that proved irresistible. Grace was said with solemn brevity by the Colonel, whose sum total of orthodoxy was comprised in that brief grace, and in regular attendance at church on Sunday mornings; and then there came a period of chatter and laughter which might have been a little distracting to a stranger. Each of the boys and girls had some wonderful fact, usually about his or her favourite animal, to communicate to the father. Aunt Betsy broke in with her fine manly voice at every turn in the conversation. Ripples of laughter made a running accompaniment to everything. It was a new thing to Ida Palliser to find herself in the midst of so much happiness.
After dinner they all rushed off to play lawn tennis, carrying Ida along with them.
'It's a shame,' protested Bessie. 'I know you're tired, darling. Come and rest in a shady corner of the drawing-room.'
This sounded tempting, but it was not to be.
'No she's not,' asserted Blanche, boldly. 'You're not tired, are you,Miss Palliser?'
'Not too tired for just one game,' replied Ida. 'But you are never to call me Miss Palliser.'
'May I really call you Ida? That's too lovely.'
'May we all call you Ida?' asked Horatio. 'Don't begin by making distinctions. Blanche is no better than the rest of us.'
'Don't be jealous,' said Miss Palliser, laughing. 'I am going to be everybody's Ida.'
On this she was borne off to the garden as in a whirlwind.
There were some bamboo chairs and sofas on the grass in front of the bay window, and here the elder members of the family established themselves.
'I like that schoolfellow of Bessie's,' said Aunt Betsy, with her decided air, whereupon the Colonel and his wife assented, as they always did to any proposition of Miss Wendover's.
'She is remarkably handsome,' said the Colonel.
'She is good and thorough, and that's of much more consequence,' said his sister.
'She takes to the children, and that is so truly nice in her,' murmuredMrs. Wendover.
The next day was fine. The children had all been praying for fine weather, that they might entertain Miss Palliser with an exploration of the surrounding neighbourhood. Loud whoops of triumph and sundry breakdown dances were heard in the top story soon after five o'clock, for the juvenile Wendovers were early risers, and when in high spirits made themselves distinctly audible.
The eight o'clock breakfast in the old painted dining-room—all oak panelling, but painted stone colour by generations of Goths and Vandals—was even more animated than the seven o'clock dinner.
Such a breakfast, after the thick bread and butter and thin coffee at Mauleverer. Relays of hot buttered cakes, and eggs and bacon, fish, honey, fresh fruit from the garden, a picturesque confusion of form and colour on the lavishly-furnished table, and youthful appetites ready to do justice to the good cheer.
'What are you going to do with Miss Palliser?' asked the Colonel. 'Am I to take her for a drive?'
'No, father, you can't have Miss Palliser to-day. She's going in the jaunting-car,' said Reginald, talking of the lady as if she were a horse. 'We're going to take her over to the Abbey.'
The Abbey was the ancestral home of the Wendovers, now in possession of Brian Wendover, only son of the Colonel's eldest brother, and head of the house.
'Well, don't upset her oftener than you can help,' replied the father. 'I suppose you don't much mind being spilt off an outside car, Miss Palliser? I believe young ladies of your age rather relish the excitement.'
'She needn't be afraid,' said Reginald; 'I am going to drive.'
'Then we are very likely to find ourselves reposing in a ditch before the day is over,' retorted Bessie. 'I hope you—or the pony—will choose a dry one.'
'I'll risk it, ditches and all,' said Ida, good-naturedly. 'I am longing to see the Abbey.'
'The rich Brian's Abbey,' said Bessie, laughing. 'What a pity he is not at home for you to see him too! Do you think Brian will be back before Ida's holidays are over, father?'
'I never know what that young man is going to do,' answered the Colonel. 'When last I heard from him he was fishing in Norway. He doesn't care much about the sport, he tells me; indeed, he was never a very enthusiastic angler; but he likes the country and the people. He ought to stay at home, and stand for the county at the next election. A young man in his position has no business to be idle.'
'Is he clever?' asked Ida.
'Too clever for my money,' answered the Colonel. 'He has too much book-learning, and too little knowledge of men and things. What is the good of a man being a fine Greek scholar if he knows nothing about the land he owns, or the cattle that graze upon it, and has not enough tact to make himself popular in his own neighbourhood? Brian is a man who would starve if his bread depended on his own exertions.'
'He's a jolly kind of cousin for a fellow to have,' suggested Horry, looking up from his eggs and bacon. 'He lets us do what we like at the Abbey. By the way, Blanche, have you packed the picnic basket?'
'Yes.'
'What have you put in?'
'That's my secret,' answered Blanche. 'Do you think I am going to tell you what you are to have for lunch? That would spoil all the fun.'
'Blanche isn't half a bad caterer,' said Reg. 'I place myself in her hands unreservedly; I will only venture to hint that I hope she hasn't forgotten the chutnee, Tirhoot, and plenty of it. What's the good of having a father who was shoulder to shoulder with Gough in the Punjab, if we are to run short of Indian condiments?'
At nine o'clock the young people were all ready to start. The jaunting-car held five, including the driver; Bessie and her friend were to occupy one side, Eva, the round child who loved pigs, was to have a seat, and a place was to be kept for Miss Rylance, who was to be invited to join the exploration party, much to the disgust of the Winchester lads, who denounced her as a stuck-up minx, and distinguished her with various other epithets of an abusive character selected from a vocabulary known only to Wyckhamists. Blanche and Horatio and a smaller boy, called Ernest, who was dressed like a gillie, and had all the wildness of a young Highlander, were to walk, with the occasional charity of a lift.
The jaunting-car was drawn by a large white pony, fat and pampered, overfed with dainties from the children's tables, and petted and played with until he had become almost human in his intelligence, and a match for his youthful masters in cunning and mischief. This impish animal had been christened Robin Goodfellow, a name that was shortened for convenience to Robin. Robin's eagerness to depart was now made known to the family by an incessant rattling of his bit.
Reginald took the reins, and got into his seat with the quiet grandeur of a celebrity in the four-in-hand club. Ida and Bessie were handed to their places by Horatio, the chubby Eva scrambled into her seat, with a liberal display of Oxford blue stocking, under the shortest of striped petticoats; and off they drove to the cottage, Dr. Rylance's miniature dwelling, where the plate-glass windows were shining in the morning sun, and the colours of the flower-beds were almost too bright to be looked at.
Bessie found Miss Rylance in the dainty little drawing-room, all ebonized wood and blue china, as neat as an interior by Mieris. The fair Urania was yawning over a book of travels—trying to improve a mind which was not naturally fertile—and she was not sorry to be interrupted by an irruption of noisy Wendovers, even though they left impressions of their boots on the delicate tones of the carpet, and made havoc of the cretonne chair-covers.
Miss Rylance had no passion for country life. Fields and trees, hills and winding streams, even when enlivened by the society of the lower animals, were not all-sufficient for her happiness. It was all very well for her father to oscillate between Cavendish Square and Kingthorpe, avoiding the expense and trouble of autumn touring, and taking his rest and his pleasure in this rustic retreat. But her summer holidays for the last three years had been all Kingthorpe, and Miss Rylance detested the picturesque village, the busy duck-pond, the insignificant hills, which nobody had ever heard of, and the monotonous sequence of events.
'We are going to the Abbey for a nice long day, taking our dinner with us, and coming round to Aunt Betsy's to tea on our way home,' said Bessie, as if she were proposing an entirely novel excursion; 'and we want you to come with us, Ranie.'
Miss Rylance stifled a yawn. She had been trying to pin her thoughts to a particular tribe of Abyssinians, who fought all the surrounding tribes, and always welcomed the confiding stranger with a shower of poisoned arrows. She did not care for the Wendover children, but they were better than those wearisome Abyssinians.
'You are very kind, but I know the Abbey so well,' she said, determined to yield her consent as a favour.
'Never mind that. Ida has never seen it. We are going to show her everything. We want her to feel one of us.'
'We shall have a jolly lunch,' interjected Blanche. 'There are some lemon cheesecakes that I made myself yesterday afternoon. Cook was in a good temper, and let me do it.'
'I hope you washed your hands first,' said Horatio. 'I'd sooner cook had made the cheesecakes.'
'Of course I washed my hands, you too suggestive pig. But I should hope that in a general way my hands are cleaner than cook's. It is only schoolboys who luxuriate in dirt.'
'You'll come, Ranie?' pleaded Bess.
'If you really wish it.'
'I do, or I shouldn't be here. But I hope you wish it too. You ought to be longing to get out of doors on such a lovely morning. Houses were never intended for such weather as this. Come and join the birds and butterflies, and all the happiest things in creation.'
'I must go for my hat and sunshade. I wasn't born full-dressed, like the birds and butterflies,' replied Urania.
She ran away, leaving Bessie and Ida in the drawing-room. The younger children having rushed in and left their mark upon the room, had now rushed out again to the jaunting-car.
'A pretty drawing-room, isn't it?' asked Bess. 'It looks so neat and fresh and bright after ours.'
'It doesn't look half so much like home,' said Ida.
'Perhaps not. But I believe it is just the exact thing a drawing-room ought to be in this latter part of the nineteenth century; or, at least, so Dr. Rylance says. How do you like the blue china? Dr. Rylance is an amateur of blue china. He will have no other. Dresden and Sevres have no existence for him. He recognizes nothing beyond his own particular breed of ginger-jars.'
Miss Rylance came back, dressed as carefully as if she had been going for a morning lounge in Hyde Park, hat and feather, pongee sunshade, mousquetaire gloves. The Wendovers all wore their gloves in their pockets, and cultivated blisters on the palms of their hands, as a mark of distinction, which implied great feats in rowing, or the pulling in of desperate horses.
Now they were all mounted on the car, just as the church clock struck ten. Reginald gave the reins a shake, cracked his whip, and Robin, who always knew where his young friends wanted to go, twisted the vehicle sharply round a corner and started at an agreeable canter, expressive of good spirits.
Robin carried them joltingly along a lovely lane till they came to a gentle acclivity, by which time, having given vent to his exuberance, the pony settled down into a crawl. Vainly did Reginald crack his whip—vain even stinging switches on Robin's fat sides. Out of that crawl nothing could move him. The sun was gaining power with every moment, and blazing down upon the occupants of the car; but Robin cared not at all. He was an animal of tropical origin, and had no apprehension of sunshine; his eyes were so constructed as to accommodate themselves to a superfluity of light.
'I think we shall be tolerably well roasted by the time we get to the Abbey,' said Bessie. 'Don't you think if we were all to get down and push the back of the car, Robin might go a little faster?'
'He'll go fast enough when he has blown a bit,' said Reg. 'Can't you admire the landscape?'
'We could, if we were not being baked,' replied Ida.
Miss Rylance sat silent under her pongee umbrella, and wished herself in Cavendish Square; even though western London were as empty and barren as the great wilderness.
They were on the ridge of a hill, overlooking undulating pastures and quiet sheep-walks, fair hills on which the yew-trees cast their dark shadows, a broad stretch of pastoral country with sunny gleams of water shining low in the distance.
Suddenly the road dipped, and Robin was going downhill with alarming speed.
'This means that we shall all be in the ditch presently,' said Bessie. 'Never mind. It's only a dry bed of dock and used-up stinging nettles. We shan't be much hurt.'
After two or three miraculous escapes they landed at the bottom of the hill, and Ida beheld the good old gates of Kingthorpe Abbey, low iron gates that stood open, between tall stone pillars supporting the sculptured escutcheon of the Wendovers. There was a stone lodge on each side of the gate, past which the car drove in triumph into an avenue of ancient yew-trees, low and wide-spreading, with a solemn gloom that would better have become a churchyard than a gentleman's park.
It was a noble old park, richly timbered with oaks as old as those immemorial trees that make the glory of Stoneleigh. There was a lake in a wooded hollow in front of the Abbey, a long low pile of stone, the newest part of which was as old as the days of the last Tudor. Nor had much money been spent on the restoration or decorative repair of that fine old house. It had been kept wind and weather proof. It had been protected against the injuries of time; and that was all. There it stood, a brave and solid monument of the remote past, grand in its stern simplicity and its historic associations.
'Oh, what a dear old house!' cried Ida, clasping her hands, as the car came out of the yew-tree avenue into the open space in front of the Abbey; a wide lawn, where four mighty cedars of Lebanon spread their dense shadows—grave old trees—which were in somewise impostors, as they looked older than the house, and yet had been saplings in the days of Queen Anne. 'What a sweet old place!' repeated Ida; 'and how I envy the rich Brian!'
'Don't you think the rich Brian's wife will be still more enviable?' sneered Miss Rylance.
'That depends. She may be a Vere-de-Vereish kind of person, and pine amongst her halls and towers,' said Ida.
'Not if she had been brought up in poverty. She would revel in the advantages of her position as Mrs. Wendover of the Abbey,' asserted Miss Rylance.
'Would she? The Earl of Burleigh's wife had been poor, and yet did not enjoy being rich and great,' said Bessie. 'It killed her, poor thing. And yet she had married for love, and had no remorse of conscience to weigh her down.'
'She was a sensitive little fool,' said Ida; 'I have no patience with her.'
'Modern young ladies are not easily crushed,' remarked Miss Rylance; 'they make marrying for money a profession.'
'Is that your idea of life?' asked Ida.
'No; but I understand it is yours. I heard you say you meant to marry for money.'
'Then you must have been listening to a conversation in which you had no concern,' Ida answered coolly. 'I never said as much to you.'
The three girls, and the chubby Eva, had alighted from the car, which was being conveyed to the stables at a hand-gallop, and this conversation was continued on the broad gravel sweep in front of the Abbey. Just as the discussion was intensifying in unpleasantness, the arrival of the pedestrians made an agreeable diversion. Blanche and her two brothers had come by a short cut, across fields and common, had given chase to butterflies, experimented with tadpoles, and looked for hedge-birds' eggs in the course of their journey, and were altogether in a state of dilapidation—perspiration running down their sunburnt faces—their hats anyhow—their hands embellished with recent scratches—their boots coated with clay.
'Did ever anyone see such objects?' exclaimed Bessie, who had imbibed certain conventional ideas of decency at Mauleverer Manor: 'you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.'
'I daresay we ought, but we aren't,' retorted Horatio. 'I found a tadpole in an advanced stage of transmutation, Miss Palliser, and it has almost converted me to Darwinism. Given a single step and you may accept the whole ladder. If from tadpoles frogs, why not from monkeys man?'
'Go and be a Darwinian, and don't prose,' said Blanche, impatiently. 'We are going to show Ida the Abbey. How do you like the outside, darling?' asked the too-affectionate girl, favouring Miss Palliser with the full weight of her seven stone and three-quarters.
'I adore it. It is like a page out of an old chronicle.'
'Isn't it?' gasped Blanche; 'and you can fancy the fat old monks sitting on those stone benches, nodding in the sunshine. The house is hardly altered a bit since it was an actual abbey, except that half a dozen cells have been knocked into one comfortable bedroom. The long dark passages are just the same as they were when those sly old monks went gliding up and down them—such dear old passages, smelling palpably of ghosts.'
'Mice,' said Horatio.
'No, sir, ghosts. Do you suppose my sense of smell is of such inferior quality that I can't distinguish a ghost from a mouse?'
'Now, how about luncheon?' demanded Horatio. 'I propose that we all go and sit under that prime old cedar and discuss the contents of the picnic basket before we discuss the Abbey.'
'Why, it isn't half-past eleven,' said Bessie.
'Ah,' sighed Blanche, 'I'm afraid it's too early for lunch. We should have nothing left to look forward to all the rest of the day.'
'There'd be afternoon tea at Aunt Betsy's to build upon, said Horry. 'I gave her to understand we were to have something good: blue gages from the south wall, cream to a reckless extent.'
'Strawberry jam and pound-cake,' suggested Eva.
'If you go on like that you'll make me distracted with hunger,' said Blanche, a young person who at the seaside wanted twopence to buy buns directly after she had swallowed her dinner.
Bessie and Miss Rylance had been walking up and down the velvet sward beside the beds of dwarf roses and geraniums, with a ladylike stateliness which did credit to their training at Mauleverer. Ida was the centre of the juvenile group.
'Come and see the Abbey,' exclaimed Horry, putting his arm through Miss Palliser's, 'and at the stroke of one we will sit down to lunch under the biggest of the cedars—the tree which according to tradition was planted by John Evelyn himself, when he came on a visit to Sir Tristram Wendover.'
They all trooped into the Abbey, the hall door standing open, as in a fairy tale. Bessie and Urania followed at a more sober pace; but Ida had given herself over to the children, and they did what they liked with her, Blanche hanging on her bodily all the time.
They were now joined by Reginald, who appeared mysteriously from the back premises, where he had been seeing Robin eat his corn, having a fixed idea that it was in the nature of all grooms and stablemen to cheat horses.
The Abbey was furnished with a sober grandeur, in perfect tone with its architecture. Everything was solid and ponderous, save here and there, where in some lady's bower there appeared the spindle-legged tables and inlaid cabinets of the Chippendale period, which had an air of newness where all else was so old. The upper rooms were low and somewhat dark, the heavily mullioned windows being designed to exclude rather than to admit light. There was much tapestry, subdued in hue, but in good condition, and as frankly uninteresting in subject as the generality of old English needlework.
Below, the rooms were large and lofty, rich in carved chimney pieces, well preserved panelling, and old oak furniture. There were some fine pictures, from Holbein downwards, and the usual array of family portraits, which the boys and girls explained and commented upon copiously.
'There's my favourite ancestor, Sir Tristram,' cried Blanche pointing to a dark-eyed cavalier, with strongly-marked brow and bronzed visage. 'He was middle-aged when that picture was painted, but I know he was handsome in his youth. The face is still in the family.'
'Of course it is,' said Horatio—'on my shoulders.'
'Your shoulders!' ejaculated Blanche, contemptuously. 'As if my Sir Tristram ever resembled you. He fought in all the great battles, from Edgehill to Worcester,' continued the girl; 'and he was wounded seven times; and he was true to his master through every trial; and he had all the Wendover plate melted down; and he followed Charles the Second into exile; he mortgaged his estate to raise money for the king; and he married a very lovely French woman, who introduced turned-up noses into the family,' concluded Blanche, giving her tip-tilted nose a complacent toss.
'I thought it was a mercy that we were spared the old housekeeper,' saidUrania, 'but really Blanche is worse.'
'Ida doesn't know all about our family, if you do,' protested Blanche.'It is all new to her.'
'Yes, dear, it is all new and interesting to me,' said Ida.
'How much more deeply you would have been interested if Mr. Wendover had been here to expatiate upon his family tree,' said Urania.
'That might have made it still more interesting,' admitted Ida, with a frankness which took the sting out of Miss Rylance's remark.
The young Wendovers had shown Ida everything. They had opened cabinets, peered into secret drawers, sniffed at the stalepot-pourriin old crackle vases; they had dragged their willing victim through all the long slippery passages, by all the mysterious stairs and by-ways; they had obliged her to look at the interior of ghostly closets, where the ladies of old had stored their house linen or hung their mantuas and farthingales; they had made her look out of numerous windows to admire the prospect; they had introduced her to the state bedroom in which the heads of the Wendover race made a point of being born; they made her peep shuddering into the death-chamber where the family were laid in their last slumber. The time thus pleasantly occupied slipped away unawares; and the chapel clock was striking one as they all went trooping down the broad oak staircase for about the fifteenth time.
A gentleman was entering the hall as they came down. They could only see the top of his hat.
'It's father,' cried Eva.
'You little idiot; did you ever see my father in a stove-pipe hat on a week-day?' cried Reg, with infinite scorn.
'Then it's Brian.'
'Brian is in Norway.'
The gentleman looked up and greeted them all with a comprehensive smile.It was Dr. Rylance.
'So glad I have found you, young people,' he said blandly.
'Papa,' exclaimed Urania, in a tone which did not express unmitigated pleasure, 'this is a surprise. You told me you would not be down till late in the evening.'
'Yes, my dear: but the fine morning tempted me. I found my engagements would stand over till Monday or Tuesday, so I put myself into the eight o'clock train, and arrived at The Cottage just an hour after you and your friends had left for your picnic. So I walked over to join you. I hope I am not in the way.'
'Of course not,' said Bessie. 'I'm afraid you'll find us hardly the kind of company you are accustomed to; but if you will put up with our roughness and noise we shall feel honoured.'
'We are going to get lunch ready,' said Blanche. 'You grown-ups will find us under Evelyn's tree when you're hungry, and you'd better accommodate yourselves to be hungry soon.'
'Or you may find a dearth of provisions,' interjected Reg. 'I feel in a demolishing humour.'
The troop rushed off, leaving the three elder girls and Dr. Rylance standing in the hall, listlessly contemplative of Sir Tristram's dinted breast-plate, hacked by Roundhead pikes at Marston Moor.
The luncheon under Evelyn's tree took a cooler shade from Dr. Rylance's presence than from the far-reaching branches of the cedar. His politeness made the whole business different from what it would have been without him.
Blanche and the boys, accustomed to abandon themselves to frantic joviality at any outdoor feast of their own contriving, now withdrew into the background, and established themselves behind the trunk of the tree, in which retirement they kept up an insane giggling, varied by low and secret discourse, and from which shelter they issued forth stealthily, one by one, to pounce with crafty hands upon the provisions. These unmannerly proceedings were ignored by the elders, but they exercised a harassing influence upon poor little Eva, who had been told to sit quietly by Bessie, and who watched her brothers' raids with round-eyed wonder, and listened with envious ears to that distracting laughter behind the tree.
'Did you see Horry take quite half the cake, just now?' she whispered toBessie, in the midst of a polite conversation about nothing particular.
And anon she murmured in horrified wonder, after a stolen peep behind the tree, 'Reg is taking off Dr. Rylance.'
The grown-up luncheon party was not lively. Tongue and chicken, pigeon-pie, cheese-cakes, tarts, cake, fruit—all had been neatly spread upon a tablecloth laid on the soft turf. Nothing had been forgotten. There were plates and knives and forks enough for everybody—picnicking being a business thoroughly well understood at The Knoll; but there was a good deal wanting in the guests.
Ida was thoughtful, Urania obviously sullen, Bessie amiably stupid; but Dr. Rylance appeared to think that they were all enjoying themselves intensely.
'Now this is what I call really delightful,' he said, as he poured out the sparkling Devonshire cider with as stately a turn of his wrist as if the liquor had been Cliquot or Roederer. 'An open-air luncheon on such a day as this is positively inspiring, and to a man who has breakfasted at seven o'clock on a cup of tea and a morsel of dry toast—thanks, yes, I prefer the wing if no one else will have it—such an unceremonious meal is doubly welcome. I'm so glad I found you. Lucky, wasn't it, Ranie?'
He smiled at his daughter, as if deprecating that stolid expression of hers, which would have been eminently appropriate to the funeral of an indifferent acquaintance,—a total absence of all feeling, a grave nullity.
'I don't see anything lucky in so simple a fact,' answered Urania. 'You were told we had come here, and you came here after us.'
'You might have changed your minds at the last moment and gone somewhere else. Might you not, now, Miss Palliser?'
'Yes, if we had been very frivolous people; but as to-day's exploration of the Abbey was planned last night, it would have indicated great weakness of mind if we had been tempted into any other direction,' answered Ida, feeling somewhat sorry for Dr. Rylance.
The coldest heart might compassionate a man cursed in such a disagreeable daughter.
'I am very glad you were not weak-minded, and that I was so fortunate as to find you,' said the doctor, addressing himself henceforward exclusively to Ida and her friend.
Bessie took care of his creature-comforts with a matronly hospitality which sat well upon her. She cut thin slices of tongue, she fished out savouriest bits of pigeon and egg, when he passed, by a natural transition, from chicken to pie. She was quite distressed because he did not care for tarts or cake. But the doctor's appetite, unlike that of the young people on the other side of the cedar, had its limits. He had satisfied his hunger long before they had, and was ready to show Miss Palliser the gardens.
'They are fine old gardens,' he said, approvingly. 'Perhaps their chief beauty is that they have not a single modern improvement. They are as old-fashioned as the gardens of Sion Abbey, before the good queen Bess ousted the nuns to make room for the Percies.'
They all rose and walked slowly away from the cedar, leaving the fragments of the feast to Blanche and her three brothers. Eva stayed behind, to make one of that exuberant group, and to see Reg 'take off' Urania and her father. His mimicry was cordially admired, though it was not always clear to his audience which was the doctor and which was his daughter. A stare, a strut, a toss, an affected drawl were the leading features of each characterization.
'I had no opportunity of congratulating you on your triumphs the other day, Miss Palliser,' said Dr. Rylance, who had somehow managed that Ida and he should be side by side, and a little in advance of the other two. 'But, believe me, I most heartily sympathized with you in the delight of your success.'
'Delight?' echoed Ida. 'Do you think there was any real pleasure for me in receiving a gift from the hands of Miss Pew, who has done all she could do to make me feel the disadvantages of my position, from the day I first entered her house to the day I last left it? The prizes gave me no pleasure. They have no value in my mind, except as an evidence that I have made the most of my opportunities at Mauleverer, in spite of my contempt for my schoolmistress.'
'You dislike her intensely, I see.'
'She has made me dislike her. I never knew unkindness till I knew her. I never felt the sting of poverty till she made me feel all its sharpness. I never knew that I was steeped in sinful pride until she humiliated me.'
'Your days of honour and happiness will come, said the doctor, 'days when you will think no more of Miss Pew than of an insect which once stung you.'
'Thank you for the comforting forecast,' answered Ida, lightly. 'But it is easy to prophesy good fortune.'
'Easy, and safe, in such a case as yours. I can sympathize with you better than you may suppose, Miss Palliser. I have had to fight my battle. I was not always Dr. Rylance, of Cavendish Square; and I did not enter a world in which there was a fine estate waiting for me, like the owner of this place.'
'But you have conquered fortune, and by your own talents,' said Ida.'That must be a proud thought.'
Dr. Rylance, who was not utterly without knowledge of himself, smiled at the compliment. He knew it was by tact and address, smooth speech and clean linen, that he had conquered fortune, rather than by shining abilities. Yet he valued himself not the less on that account. In his mind tact ranked higher than genius, since it was his own peculiar gift: just as blue ginger-jars were better than Sevres, because he, Dr. Rylance, was a collector of ginger-jars. He approved of himself so completely that even his littlenesses were great in his own eyes.
'I have worked hard,' he said, complacently, 'and I have been patient. But now, when my work is done, and my place in the world fixed, I begin to find life somewhat barren. A man ought to reap some reward—something fairer and sweeter than pounds, shillings, and pence, for a life of labour and care.'
'No doubt,' assented Ida, receiving this remark as abstract philosophy, rather than as having a personal meaning. 'But I think I should consider pounds, shillings, and pence a very fair reward, if I only had enough of them.'
'Yes, now, when you are smarting under the insolence of a purse-proud schoolmistress; but years hence, when you have won independence, you will feel disappointed if you have won nothing better.'
'What could be better?'
'Sympathetic companionship—a love worthy to influence your life.'
Ida looked up at the doctor with naïve surprise. Good heavens, was this middle-aged gentleman going to drop into sentiment, as Silas Wegg dropped into poetry? She glanced back at the other two. Happily they were close at hand.
'What have you done with the children, Bessie?' asked Ida, as if she were suddenly distracted with anxiety about their fate.
'Left them to their own devices. I hope they will not quite kill themselves. We are all to meet in the stable yard at four, so that we may be with Aunt Betsy at five.'
'Don't you think papa and I had better walk gently home?' suggested Urania; 'I am sure it would be cruel to inflict such an immense party upon Miss Wendover.'
'Nonsense,' exclaimed Bessie. 'Why, if all old Pew's school was to march in upon her, without a moment's notice Aunt Betsy would not be put out of the way one little bit. If Queen Victoria were to drop in unexpectedly to luncheon, my aunt would be as cool as one of her own early cucumbers, and would insist on showing the Queen her stables, and possibly her pigs.'
'How do you know that?' asked Ida.
'Because she never had a visitor yet whom she did not drag into her stables, from archbishops downwards; and I don't suppose she'd draw the line at a queen,' answered Bessie, with conviction.
'I am going to drink tea with Miss Wendover, whatever Urania may do,' said Dr. Rylance, who felt that the time had come when he must assert himself. 'I am out for a day's pleasure, and I mean to drink the cup to the dregs.'
Urania looked at her father with absolute consternation. He was transformed; he had become a new person; he was forgetting himself in a ridiculous manner; letting down his dignity to an alarming extent. Dr. Rylance, the fashionable physician, the man whose nice touch adjusted the nerves of the aristocracy, to disport himself with unkempt, bare-handed young Wendovers! It was an upheaval of things which struck horror to Urania's soul. Easy, after beholding such a moral convulsion, to believe that the Wight had once been part of the mainland; or even that Ireland had originally been joined to Spain.
They all roamed into the rose-garden, where there were alleys of standard rose-trees, planted upon grass that was soft and springy under the foot. They went into the old vineries, where the big bunches of grapes were purpling in the gentle heat. Dr. Rylance went everywhere, and he contrived always to be near Ida Palliser.
He did not again lapse into sentiment, and he made himself fairly agreeable, in his somewhat stilted fashion. Ida accepted his attention with a charming unconsciousness; but she was perfectly conscious of Urania's vexation, and that gave a zest to the whole thing.
'Well, Ida, what do you think of Kingthorpe Abbey?' asked Bessie, when they had seen everything, even to the stoats and weasles, and various vermin nailed flat against the stable wall, and were waiting for Robin to be harnessed.
'It is a noble old place. It is simply perfect. I wonder your cousin can live away from it.'
'Oh, Brian's chief delight is in roaming about the world. The Abbey is thrown away upon him. He ought to have been an explorer or a missionary. However, he is expected home in a month, and you will be able to judge for yourself whether he deserves to be master of this old place. I only wish it belonged to the other Brian.'
'The other Brian is your favourite.'
'He is ever so much nicer than his cousin—at least, the children and I like him best. My father swears by the head of the house.'
'I think I would rather accept the Colonel's judgment than yours, Bess,' said Ida. 'You are so impulsive in your likings.'
'Don't say that I am wanting in judgment,' urged Bessie, coaxingly, 'for you know how dearly I love you. You will see the two Brians, I hope, before your holidays are over; and then you can make your own selection. Brian Walford will be with us for my birthday picnic, I daresay, wherever he may be now. I believe he is mooning away his time in Herefordshire, with his mother's people.'
'Is his father dead?'
'Yes, mother and father both, ages ago, in the days when I was a hard-hearted little wretch, and thought it a treat to go into mourning, and rather nice to be able to tell everybody, "Uncle Walford's dead. He had a fit, and he never speaked any more." It was news, you know, and in a village that goes for something.'
After a lengthy discussion, and some squabbling, it was decided that the children were to have the benefit of the jaunting-car for the homeward journey, and that Dr. Rylance and the three young ladies were to walk, attended by Reginald, who insisted upon attaching himself to their service, volunteering to show them the very nearest way through a wood, and across a field, and over a common, and down a lane, which led straight to the gate of Aunt Betsy's orchard.
Urania wore fashionable boots, and considered walking exercise a superstition of medical men and old-fashioned people; yet she stoutly refused a seat in the car.
'No, thanks, Horatio; I know your pony too well. I'd rather trust myself upon my own feet.'
'There's more danger in your high heels than in my pony, retorted Horatio. 'I shouldn't wonder if you dropped in for a sprained ankle before you got home.'
Urania risked the sprained ankle. She began to limp before she had emerged from the wood. She hobbled painfully along the rugged footpath between the yellow wheat. She was obliged to sit down and rest upon a furzy hillock on the common, good-natured Bess keeping her company, while Ida and Reginald were half a mile ahead with Dr. Rylance. Her delicate complexion was unbecomingly flushed by the time she and Bessie arrived wearily at the little gate opening into Miss Wendover's orchard.
There were only some iron hurdles between Aunt Betsy's orchard and the lawn before Aunt Betsy's drawing-room. The house was characteristic of the lady. It was a long red-brick cottage, solid, substantial, roomy, eschewing ornament, but beautified in the eyes of most people by an air of supreme comfort, cleanliness, and general well-being. In all Kingthorpe there were no rooms so cool as Aunt Betsy's in summer—none so warm in winter. The cottage had originally been the homestead of a small grass-farm, which had been bequeathed to Betsy Wendover by her father, familiarly known as the Old Squire, the chief landowner in that part of the country. With this farm of about two hundred and fifty acres of the most fertile pasture land in Hampshire and an income of seven hundred a year from consols, Miss Wendover found herself passing rich. She built a drawing-room with wide windows opening on to the lawn, and a bed-room with a covered balcony over the drawing-room. These additional rooms made the homestead all-sufficient for a lady of Aunt Betsy's simple habits. She was hospitality itself, receiving her friends in a large-hearted, gentleman-like style, keeping open house for man and beast, proud of her wine, still prouder of her garden and greenhouses, proudest of her stables; fond of this life, and of her many comforts, yet without a particle of selfishness; ready to leave her cosy fireside at a moment's notice on the bitterest winter night, to go and nurse a sick child, or comfort a dying woman; religious without ostentation, charitable without weakness, stern to resent an injury, implacable against an insult.
A refreshing sight, yet not altogether a pleasant one for Miss Rylance, met the eyes of the two young ladies as they neared the little iron gate opening from the orchard to the lawn. A couple of tea-tables had been brought out upon the grass before the drawing-room window. The youngsters were busily engaged at one table, Blanche pouring out tea, while her brothers and small sister made havoc with cake and fruit, home-made bread and butter, and jams of various hues. At the other table, less lavishly but more elegantly furnished, sat Miss Wendover and Ida Palliser, with Dr. Rylance comfortably established in a Buckinghamshire wickerwork chair between them.
'Does not that look a picture of comfort?' exclaimed Bessie.
'My father seems to be making himself very comfortable,' said Urania.
She hobbled across the lawn, and sank exhausted into a low chair, near her parent.
'My poor child, how dilapidated you look after your walk,' said Dr.Rylance; 'Miss Palliser and I enjoyed it immensely.'
'I cannot boast of Miss Palliser's robust health,' retorted Urania contemptuously, as if good health were a sign of vulgarity. 'I had my neuralgia all last night.'
Whenever the course of events proved objectionable, Miss Rylance took refuge in a complaint which she called her neuralgia, indicating that it was a species of disorder peculiar to herself, and of a superior quality to everybody else's neuralgia.
'You should live in the open air, like my sunburnt young friends yonder,' said the doctor, with a glance at the table where the young Wendovers were stuffing themselves; 'I am sure they never complain of neuralgia.'
Urania looked daggers but spoke none.
It was a wearisome afternoon for that injured young lady. Dr. Rylance dawdled over his tea, handed teacups and bread and butter, was assiduous with the sugar basin, devoted with the cream jug, talked and laughed with Miss Palliser, as if they had a world of ideas in common, and made himself altogether objectionable to his only child.
By-and-by, when there was a general adjournment to the greenhouses and stables, Urania contrived to slip her arm through her father's.
'I thought I told you that Miss Palliser was my favourite aversion, papa,' she said, tremulous with angry feeling.
'I have some faint idea that you did express yourself unfavourably about her,' answered the doctor, with his consulting-room urbanity, 'but I am at a loss to understand your antipathy. The girl is positively charming, as frank as the sunshine, and full of brains.'
'I know her. You do not,' said Urania tersely.
'My dear, it is the speciality of men in my profession to make rapid judgments.'
'Yes, and very often to make them wrong. I was never so much annoyed in my life. I consider your attention to that girl a deliberate insult to me; a girl with whom I never could get on—who has said the rudest things to me.'
'Can I be uncivil to a friend of your friend Bessie?'
'There is a wide distance between being uncivil and being obsequiously, ridiculously attentive.'
'Urania,' said the doctor in his gravest voice, 'I have allowed you to have your own way in most things, and I believe your life has been a pleasant one.'
'Of course, papa. I never said otherwise.'
'Very well, my dear, then you must be good enough to let me take my own way of making life pleasant to myself, and you must not take upon yourself to dictate what degree of civility I am to show to Miss Palliser, or to any other lady.'
Urania held her peace after this. It was the first deliberate snub she had ever received from her father, and she added it to her lengthy score against Ida.