A sudden silence fell upon the party with my introduction. Miss Millington's eyes travelled over me from head to foot, taking an inventory of my dress. I made some remark upon the journey, and Mr. Romilly chimed in nervously, repeating my words and enlarging on them.
Then we moved towards the pony-carriage, and the boy in charge descended to greet us. His manner towards me was both more frank and more indifferent than that of the girls. Like Elfleda, he is small in make; and his delicate sharp features are his father's over again, but the slim figure is well-knit, and the blue eyes contain possibilities of unbounded mischief. The silky grey curls of the father are silken brown curls in the son, dropping over a forehead neither high nor broad, but white as alabaster. I have heard much about the singular beauty of this boy, and for the first time I could recall my friend's description with no sense of disparagement.
Mr. Romilly was talking, talking, in his little thin slow voice, about the weather, and about the danger of a chill, and about the need for a closed fly, and most of all about Thyrza's non-appearance. He was fretted and worried, and nothing could be arranged quite to his liking. Eustace offered to go for a fly, but Mr. Romilly could not possibly wait. Denham suggested a hunt for the missing Thyrza, but Mr. Romilly could not think of it. "If Thyrza did not care to come—er!" &c.
Then the question rose anew, who should drive and who should walk. My luggage was to be sent, and it was taken for granted that I must drive, a decision against which I protested vainly. Nobody so much as listened. Maggie stepped in after me, as a matter of course; and Mr. Romilly dallied long, with one little patent-leather boot on the step. He wanted Popsie and Pet with him; and he thought it unkind to permit Miss Millington to walk; and he was quite sure dear Elfie must be overdone; and he was so very sorry not to feel equal to the exertion himself. And everybody waited to know his decision, with, I am afraid, much more patience than I could feel.
Suddenly a girlish figure came swiftly round the corner of the station,—taller than Maggie, taller even than Nona, and thinner than either, with a grave set face, troubled, as it seemed to me, in a vexed fashion. I knew in a moment that this was Thyrza, even before her name was uttered by one after another of the group in varying accents of reproach. She walked straight up to us, bent her head to kiss the father who was shorter than herself, lifted it in like matter-of-fact wise to kiss the tall elder brother, and stood still.
I could hardly have told then what there was in this "dear difficult Thyrza" which interested me at first sight more than all the others. It was not beauty though my own immediate impression was that Thyrza would one day be the best-looking of the sisters. It was not attractiveness of manner, for she made no effort to seem agreeable. I think it must rather have been a certain indefinable something which spoke the presence of character—of that which even more than power of intellect, and far more than mere beauty of form or feature, stamps an individual as standing apart from the throng of his or her fellow-men.
Whatever Thyrza's faults might be, I knew at once that in her I should at least not meet with inanity or weakness. There might be misdirected force, but force there was. While these impressions swept through my mind, others were speaking.
"Thyrza, you never came after all, and father was so disappointed," complained Maggie.
"And you promised," put in Nona.
"Oh, Thyrza's promises are pie-crust," said Denham.