Elvira’s gesture would in any other child have seemed a sulky thrust of the elbow, but in her it was more like the flutter of the wing of a brilliant bird.
“You must,” she repeated; and when he hesitated with “If Mrs. Gould,” she broke away, dashed the flowers, shell and all, into the middle of a clump of rosemary, and rushed out of sight like a little fury.
“You will excuse her, Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mrs. Gould, much annoyed. “She has been sadly spoilt, living among negro servants and having her own way, so that she is sometimes quite ungovernable.”
“Nay, nay, she is a warm-hearted little thing if you don’t cross her,” said the old farmer; “and the young gentleman has been very kind to her.”
Mrs. Gould looked as if she thought she knew her niece better than grandpapa did, but she was too wise to speak; and the little girls, having assisted Allen in the recovery of the shell and the flowers, he tendered them again to her.
“You had better keep them, Mr. Brownlow,” she said. “The shell is her own, and if you did not take it she is so tenacious that she would be sure to smash it to atoms.”
Allen accepted perforce and proceeded with his farewells, but as he was stooping down to kiss little five-year-old Kate Gould, something wet, cold, and sloppy came with great force on them both, almost knocking them down and bespattering them both with black drops. The missile proved to be a dripping sod pulled up from the duck-pond in the next field, and a glimpse might be caught of Elvira’s scarlet legs disappearing over the low wall between.
Over poor Mrs. Gould’s apologies a veil had best be drawn. Mother Carey pitied her heartily, but it was impossible not to make fun at home over the black tokens on Allen’s shirt-collar. His brothers and sisters laughed excessively, and Janet twitted him with his Undine, till he, contrary to his wont, grew so cross as to make his mother recollect that he was still a suffering patient, and insist on his lying quiet on the sofa, while she banished every one, and read Tennyson to him. Poetry, read aloud by her, was Allen’s greatest delight, but not often enjoyed, as Bobus and Jock scouted it, and Janet was getting too strong-minded and used to break in with inopportune, criticisms.
So to have Mother Carey to read “Elaine” undisturbed was as great an indulgence as Allen could well have, but she had not gone far before he broke out—
“Mother, please, I wish you could do something for that girl. She really is a lady.”