'Well,' said Felix, rather hastily, 'it is of no use pulling reins too tight. Don't keep those poor children waiting, or you'll make them all too late.'
Wilmet had to obey, with the fretted sense that she had not been met as she expected, and that her alarms were injudiciously made light of; and Geraldine meantime tried to explain Edgar's bitter mischief as pain of heart; but it grieved her, whatever it was, and her spirits sank the more for the physical exhaustion of yesterday's violent laughter. But Edgar, looking in to see whether the little girls were ready, and finding her alone, leaning against the window disconsolately, came up, and putting his arm round her, said, 'So I scandalize you, Gerald? I can't give my carcase to be battened on by the ghools, were they the best family ghools in the world.'
'Edgar!'
'Besides, you know all this was diligently fostered by old Blunderbore's duteous intermeddling; and as it was not my fault that I furnished a spectacle for gods and men then, I will not now.'
'Only, Edgar, if you do care for Felix, do not, pray do not spoil his comfort in Lance!'
'If I don't, nature will, Cherry. That boy is not the stuff to make a journeyman stationer, at Wilmet's orders. Oh! if you could but have seen her, when she surprised us with our pipes last night! I couldn't get her to stand still, or she would have been a perfect study for Antigone. She is a magnificent creature with her hair down!—Ha! little kids, we must scamper for it for the train!'
And off he went, leaving Geraldine not much less unhappy for his apology. The long day alone with Felix was a better consolation. She could not leave the house in such cold as the present; and Felix was dressed as soon as breakfast was over, and came into the drawing-room, where after their home service, and when he had proved his freedom from cough by reading a grand sermon of Newman's, his reserve gave way in the Sunday calm, and he asked, 'Did Edgar say anything to you, Chérie?'
She repeated the saying about the ghools, as it was evidently meant for circulation among those respectable parties.
Felix smiled, and said, 'I thought so,' and told in return Edgar's defiant reception of the tidings.
'I don't think,' said Cherry, 'that I was ever more uncomfortable than through his fun. It felt like laughing-gas; it forced one on, and yet it was so unreal. He wants to treat it on the hawk-gone-down-the-wind principle.'