Good-night was said, and Dr. May put his arm round Ethel, and gave her the kiss that she had missed for seven nights. It was very homelike, and it brought a sudden flash of thought across Ethel! What had she been doing? She had been impatient of her father’s monopoly of her!
She parted with Flora, and entered the room she shared with Meta, where Bellairs waited to attend her little mistress. Few words passed between the two girls, and those chiefly on the morrow’s dress. Meta had some fixed ideas—she should wear pink. Norman had said he liked her pink bonnet, and then she could put down her white veil, so that he could be certain that she was not looking; Ethel vaguely believed Flora meant to wear—something—
Bellairs went away, and Meta gave expression to her eager hope that Norman would go through it well. If he would only read it as he did last Easter to her and Ethel.
“He will,” said Ethel. “This nervousness always wears off when it comes to the point, and he warms with his subject.”
“Oh! but think of all the eyes looking at him!”
“Our’s are all that he really cares for, and he will think of none of them, when he begins. No, Meta, you must not encourage him in it. Papa says, if he did not think it half morbid—the result of the shock to his nerves—he should be angry with it as a sort of conceit!”
“I should have thought that the last thing to be said of Norman!” said Meta, with a little suppressed indignation.
“It was once in his nature,” said Ethel; “and I think it is the fault he most beats down. There was a time, before you knew him, when he would have been vain and ambitious.”
“Then it is as they say, conquered faults grow to be the opposite virtues!” said Meta. “How very good he is, Ethel; one sees it more when he is with other people, and one hears all these young men’s stories!”
“Everything Norman does not do, is not therefore wrong,” said Ethel, with her usual lucidity of expression.