"I must give you a bit of the season, Nancy, and you shall be presented at a May Court."
"Oh! no, no, please no!"
"Well, you know, you will have to make your curtsey to your sovereign, some time! Shall we say on your marriage?"
Nancy made no immediate reply, but the cheek nearest to her friend, was unusually pink—Why? She appeared to be engrossed in watching a long string of clumsy, heavily-laden camels. Nothing to blush at there!
"After June, we will go down to the Court," resumed Mrs. De Wolfe; "it is such a dear old place, you will love it."
"How can you desert it, as you do?"
"That is what my neighbours ask, but I don't mind their remonstrances, I yield to the Wanderlust. The Court is too large for one old woman, and though I am attached to it,—it holds agonizing memories, and I cannot endure it, unless it is packed,—so to speak,—to the roof, when my guests and their doings monopolize my attention, and distract my thoughts from the long illness, and death of my dear husband, the parting with my two sons,—who never came back to me. One was killed at Magersfontein, the other died of typhoid in India. The Court is full of reminders, of Freddy, and Hugh. Their bedrooms, with their personal belongings, are precisely as they left them, with their pictures, books, birds' eggs, and butterflies. The gardens they worked in, are still kept up, and planted with their favourite flowers; their old pony, Barkis, only died two years ago, at an immense age. I often ask myself, why the lives of those two promising young men should be cut short? and a useless old woman, their mother, still cumbers the ground?"
To this question Nancy—who had a large lump in her throat—could make no reply, and there fell a long silence.
"I wonder what you see in me, my dear?" began Mrs. De Wolfe suddenly. "My life is now behind me, you are young and stand upon its threshold,—a radiant, and expectant figure."
"Radiant! I'm afraid not; you are too partial, and as for expectations—they are strictly moderate."