How different things might have been last year: but for "Millie!"
The contrast between Millie and Nellie is extraordinary. For Millie scents to go through life, making difficulties; Nellie goes through life, smoothing difficulties away. Millie is never happy unless she finds herself a centre of attention: Nellie is never so happy as in the background.
July 1. Thursday.—A few lines of shy and warm gratitude from Jeannie Millington have reached me. She says, "I can't persuade my sister to write, so I must, though of course she ought. We do really hope our dear Mother is better."
Millie will write yet—some day. I cannot but feel that she will.
July 19. Monday.—Why on earth a man does not speak out, when he has made up his mind, is a mystery to me. Here are Sir Keith and his mother, still at the Farm, staying on week after week. It is perfectly evident that Sir Keith has only one idea in life just now; that idea being Thyrza. It is almost equally evident that Thyrza, though she does her best womanfully to veil her feelings under a surpassing interest in Political Economy, has also only one idea in life, that idea being Sir Keith. Yet nothing definite comes of it all.
I thought he must surely have spoken to Mr. and Mrs. Romilly; but Mrs. Romilly says he has not. "Oh no, he will do nothing in a hurry," she said yesterday, when I at last questioned her. "He is a very cautious man. I don't suppose he has the least doubt about our consent, but he will not speak to Thyrza until he is perfectly certain of no rebuff."
Pride, no doubt. Well, caution is admirable enough at times, where it does not degenerate into faintheartedness. But I think I like better the impetuous outspokenness of—I mean, which does not calculate in quite a style its certainties or uncertainties.
Still, he is a delightful man. I have not a word to say against him.
July 21. Wednesday.—Nellie, Maggie, and Thyrza having a tennis party engagement at Beckbergh to-day,—not for the afternoon only, but for the greater part of the day,—Sir Keith kindly arranged to take the twins and me for a long drive in t' trap. Sir Keith of course ousted the dear old farmer, undertaking himself to drive.
It did not occur to me, when this plan was proposed, that he had any particular object in it, beyond giving us pleasure.