As she spoke, a knock, not at the house, but at the room door, made them both start, and impel their chairs to a more ordinary distance, just as Rachel Curtis made her entrance, extremely amazed to find, not Mr. Touchett, but a much greater foe and rival in that unexpected quarter. Ermine, the least disconcerted, was the first to speak. “You are surprised to find a visitor here,” she said, “and indeed only now, did we find out that ‘our military secretary,’ as your little cousins say, was our clear old squire’s nephew.”
There was a ring of gladness in the usually patient voice that struck even Rachel, though she was usually too eager to be observant, but she was still unready with talk for the occasion, and Ermine continued: “We had heard so much of the Major before-hand, that we had a sort of Jupiter-like expectation of the coming man. I am not sure that I shall not go on expecting a mythic major!”
Rachel, never understanding playfulness, thought this both audacious and unnecessary, and if it had come from any one else, would have administered a snub, but she felt the invalid sacred from her weapons.
“Have you ever seen the boys?” asked Colonel Keith. “I am rather proud of Conrade, my pupil; he is so chivalrous towards his mother.”
“Alison has brought down a division or two to show me. How much alike they are.”
“Exactly alike, and excessively unruly and unmanageable,” said Rachel. “I pity your sister.”
“More unmanageable in appearance than in reality,” said the colonel: “there’s always a little trial of strength against the hand over them, and they yield when they find it is really a hand. They were wonderfully good and considerate when it was an object to keep the house quiet.”
Rachel would not encourage him to talk of Lady Temple, so she turned to Ermine on the business that had brought her, collecting and adapting old clothes for emigrants.—It was not exactly gentlemen’s pastime, and Ermine tried to put it aside and converse, but Rachel never permitted any petty consideration to interfere with a useful design, and as there was a press of time for the things, she felt herself justified in driving the intruder off the field and outstaying him. She succeeded; he recollected the desire of the boys that he should take them to inspect the pony at the “Jolly Mariner,” and took leave with—“I shall see you to-morrow.”
“You knew him all the time!” exclaimed Rachel, pausing in her unfolding of the Master Temples’ ship wardrobe. “Why did you not say so?”
“We did not know his name. He was always the ‘Major.’”