CHAPTER XX.
Was this “little Fanny?” this tall, graceful creature of seventeen, the little thing who bade him good-by at Mrs. Chubb’s door, ten years since, with her pinafore stuffed in the corner of her eye? “Little Fanny,” with that queenly presence? Cousin John almost felt as if he ought to ask leave to touch her hand; ah—she is the same little Fanny after all—frank, guileless, and free-hearted. She flies into his arms, puts up her rosy lips for a kiss, and says “Dear Cousin John.”
“God bless you,” was all he could find voice to say, for in truth, she was Mary’s own self.
Yes—Fanny was very lovely, with those rippling waves of silken hair, and the light and shadow, flitting like summer clouds over her speaking face. Cousin John held her off at arm’s length. Yes, she was very lovely. “How much she had changed!”
“And you, too,” said Fanny, seating herself beside him. “You look so much better; the stoop in your shoulders is quite gone; you are bronzed a little, but all the better for that.”
“Thank you,” said Cousin John, “more especially as I could not help it, not even to please ‘little Fanny.’”
“Ah—but I am no longer little Fanny,” she said, blushing slightly. “I have crammed a great many books into my head since I saw you, and done considerable thinking beside.”
“And what has your thinking all amounted to?” asked Cousin John, half playfully, half seriously.
“Just to this—that you are the very best cousin in the world, and that I never can repay you for all you have been to the poor, little friendless orphan,” said Fanny, with brimming eyes.
“God bless you,” said Cousin John. “I am more than repaid in these last ten minutes.”
Hours flew like seconds, while Percy narrated his adventures by sea and land, and listened to Fanny’s account of herself; the old duenna, meanwhile, walking uneasily up and down the hall, occasionally making an errand into the sitting-room, and muttering to herself as she went out, that she had heard before of boarding-school “cousins,” and that he was altogether too handsome a man to be allowed such a long tête-à-tête with Miss Fanny; and so she reported at head-quarters, but the Principal being just then unfortunately engaged in examining a new French teacher, who had applied for employment, could not give the affair the attention Miss Miffit insisted upon.
Mr. Thurston Grey, too, was on the anxious seat; for the mischievous Kate had informed him “that Fanny was holding a protracted meeting in the best parlor, with the handsomest man she ever saw.”
Nothing like a rival to precipitate matters! The declaration which had so long been trembling on Mr. Grey’s lips, found its way into a billet-doux, and was forwarded to Fanny that very night, and presented by Kate in the presence of Cousin John, “to test,” as she said, “the quality of his cousin-ship.”
Cousin John was not jealous of “little Fanny!” how absurd! Little Fanny! whom he had carried in his arms, who had slept on his breast. In fact he laughed quite merrily at the idea, louder than was at all necessary to convince himself of the nonsense of the thing, when he read Mr. Grey’s proposal; (for Fanny had no secrets from “Cousin John.”) True he wound up his watch twice that morning, and put on odd stockings, and found it quite impossible to decide which of his cravats he should wear that day, and looked in the glass very attentively for some time, and forgot to smoke, but he wasn’t jealous of little Fanny. Of course he wasn’t!