‘Still, glad as I am for all your sakes, I cannot understand it on Cecily’s part, or how a girl of her tone of mind can marry where there can as yet be no communion of the highest kind. You would be sorry to see Phœbe do so.’
‘Very sorry. It is no example, but there may be claims from the mere length of the attachment, which seems to mark her as the appointed instrument for his good. Besides, she has not fully accepted him; and after such change as he has made, she might not have been justified in denying all encouragement.’
‘She did not seek such justification,’ said Honor laughing, but surprised to find Robert thus lenient in his brother’s case, after having acted so stern a part in his own.
CHAPTER XXVI
Then Robin Hood took them both by the hands,
And danced about the oak tree,
For three merry men, and three merry men,
And three merry men we be.—Old Ballad
The case of the three sisters remained a difficulty. The Bannermans professed to have ‘washed their hands of them,’ their advice not being taken, and Mr. Crabbe could not think
himself justified in letting them return to the protection that had so egregiously failed. Bertha was fretted by the uncertainty, and became nervous, and annoyed with Phœbe for not showing more distress—but going on from day to day in the confidence that matters would arrange themselves.
Phœbe, who had come of age during her foreign tour, had a long conference with her guardian when he put her property into her hands. The result was that she obtained his permission to inhabit with her sisters the Underwood, a sort of dowager-house belonging to Beauchamp, provided some elderly lady could be found to chaperon them—Miss Fennimore, if they preferred her.
Miss Fennimore was greatly touched with the earnestness of the united entreaties of her pupils, and though regretting the field of usefulness in which she had begun to work, could not resist the pleasure of keeping house with Phœbe, and resuming her studies with Bertha on safer ground. She could not, however, quit her employment without a half-year’s notice, and when Mervyn went down for a day to Beauchamp, he found the Underwood in such a woful state of disrepair, that turn in as many masons, carpenters, and paperers as he would, there was no hope of its being habitable before Martinmas. Therefore the intermediate time must be spent in visiting, and though the head-quarters were at the Holt, the Raymonds of Moorcroft claimed the first month, and the promise of Cecily’s presence allured Bertha thither, though the Fulmort mind had always imagined the house highly religious and dull. Little had she expected to find it ringing with the wild noise and nonsense of a joyous home party of all ages, full of freaks and frolics, laughter and merriment. Her ready wit would have made her shine brilliantly if her speech had been constantly at command, but she often broke down in the midst of a repartee, and was always in danger of suffering from over-excitement. Maria, too, needed much watching and tenderness. Every one was very kind to her, but not exactly knowing the boundary of her powers, the young people would sometimes have brought her into situations to which she was unequal, if Phœbe had not been constantly watching over her.
Between the two sisters, Phœbe’s visit was no sinecure. She was always keeping a motherly eye and hand over one or the other, sometimes over both, and not unseldom incurring Bertha’s resistance under the petulance of overwrought spirits, or anger at troublesome precautions. After Cecily’s arrival, however, the task became easier. Cecily took Bertha off her hands, soothing and repressing those variable spirits, and making a wise and gentle use of the adoration that Bertha lavished on her, keeping her cousins in order, and obviating the fast and furious fun that was too great a change for girls brought up like the Fulmorts. Maria was safe whenever Cecily was in the room, and Phœbe was able to relax her care and enjoy herself doubly for feeling all the value of the future sister.