Ethel gave a private glance towards the clock, taking care that Tom should not see. She was bent upon making this a pleasant visit to him, not letting him see how very much she would have preferred to be somewhere else. Some girls would have been glum and flat under the circumstances; but Ethel was not. She exerted herself to be bright, made Tom tell her all about the one kangaroo hunt which had been a leading event in his existence, and when he came back to the inevitable herbarium she submitted without a sigh to be lectured upon "the Australian flora."
Tom was quite a botanist in a small way; and he dearly liked to air his knowledge before a good listener. Ethel loved flowers intensely, yet she was no botanist. She made friends of her plants, studied their ways, and was delighted to know how they grow, how they bore flowers, what manner of soil suited them, whether they preferred heat or cold, sunshine or shade. But she detested classifications and Latin names, and would have nought to do with what Lance irreverently termed "Tom's genuses and specieses." She cared not one rap whether a blossom had stamens which adhered to the corolla or sprang from the calyx; whether the anthers opened inwards or outwards; whether the petals were in multiples of twos or of threes.
The Elveys were not as a family scientifically inclined, and Ethel's tastes had never been cultivated in that direction. Tom, on the other hand, delighted in rolling off his tongue this or that lengthy Linnean "—andria," or Natural History "—aceæ"; and Ethel submitted with the utmost sweetness.
Tom was charmed. He thought Ethel one of the most agreeable girls he had ever seen. She was immensely improved, he thought—"really quite intelligent, and capable of growing into a well-informed young woman, with proper supervision." Who so fitted to give the needed supervision as Tom himself? He began to think that a long visit at the Rectory would be no bad plan. Something had been said about it. Yes, he would accept the invitation; and then he could take Ethel's higher education in hand. Mr. Elvey was a very able man, no doubt, a man indeed of considerable attainments, but "classical—merely classical": Tom decided pityingly. Ethel would never gain any scientific bias from her father.
So it was full time that Tom should step forward and bestir himself, with perhaps a view to future possibilities. Who could tell what might come of it? Tom was young still, under thirty, and not bad-looking, though of awkward make. He would be a well-to-do man out in Australia one of these days. Even now he could afford to enjoy life, and to indulge himself in an occasional bout of sight-seeing—more correctly, of specimen-hunting.
In due time he would require a wife to look after him, to sew on his buttons, to pour out his tea, to attend generally to his needs. Tom had come to England with the vague idea of finding a wife before he went back. He began to wonder whether Ethel might not do. Those dainty little fingers of hers would be invaluable for arranging dried flowers upon the pages of his herbariums. Tom's own fingers being thick, and by no means dainty in action, there was the more need that he should choose a wife to supply his own deficiencies.
Thus a new thought grow into existence, as the afternoon waned—a short afternoon to Tom, though a long one to Ethel. But Tom's mental processes were always slow; and he gave no sign of what was brewing.
Mrs. Elvey made her appearance downstairs for a space, and Tom regaled her with sumptuous descriptions of the eucalyptus. Mrs. Elvey sighed, and said "How nice!" to everything.
By-and-by she vanished, and again Ethel found it difficult to hide her recurring yawns. Mr. Elvey had a succession of engagements all day, therefore he could not give help; and the boys always fled from Tom, in dread of Tom's perpetual outpour of "information."
So Ethel had nothing in the way of assistance from others, and talk began to flag irresistibly. They had gone through the herbarium from end to end. They had done any amount of Australian kangaroos and plants. Ethel had shown Tom everything in the house worth seeing. She had taken him round the garden for a stroll, and had proposed "a good ramble," which Tom to her disappointment had declined. His bodily action was like his mental action, somewhat slow; and though he could walk any amount with an object—in search of a "specimen," for instance—he scorned exercise for the sake of exercise. Ethel loved it, and she thought it would be so much easier to get on out-of-doors than indoors; if only Tom would have consented. Would the afternoon never end? Was Malcolm ever coming back?