'My dear! you did not seem unhappy. We thought you enjoyed yourself.'
'I did. I was only unhappy once. I liked things very much and shall more, now I have time. It was such a bustle and whirl; and I felt so obliged to make the most of it, that it seemed to wear my senses. Don't you see, it was like snatching at flowers; and now I can sit down to make up my nosegay, and see what I have gained.'
Cherry almost expected Wilmet to decline, in her hatred of finery and her general dissatisfaction; but Wilmet's love of Alda was too strong for her not to long to be with her at such a crisis of her life, and she was eager to accept the invitation, without fearing that the effects of her absence would be as direful as in the previous year.
The party at home were not by any means disconsolate. Felix was very busy, for Charles Froggatt had come home, a repentant prodigal, and slowly sinking under the disease that had carried off his more worthy brothers; and the father could seldom persuade himself to leave him for long together, and besides, needed cheering and comfort from his young friends. But Lance and young Lamb were working well and helpfully; and William Harewood spent almost as much time at Bexley as his brother had done.
He had passed his examination with flying colours, and had previously matriculated at Oxford; and thus being emancipated from the choir, which had kept him close at home, he seemed to think it liberty to be always at Bexley. As a Harewood, Wilmet let him do as he would—sleep in the barrack, and be like one of their own boys; and Lance's neighbourhood seemed to be all he wanted, though little of Lance's company was to be had, except in walking to see him bathe in early morning, and in long walks after seven in the evening—and for these the long July days gave ample verge. Robina, Angel, and Bernard often benefited by these expeditions into the dewy fields, redolent of hay, and came home to that delightful twilight that seems as if it would never be darkness.
Bill professed perfect content in the day hours. He was a voracious reader, and would remain for hours in the reading-room intent on some pursuit; and what perhaps was a still greater attraction, he could talk, and find listeners.
Cherry only now understood what Lance had always maintained—that that shock-headed boy was full of thought, poetry, and ability. He had shed his school-boy slough; and he had moreover adopted the Underwoods, and for the first time learnt what an appreciative woman could be.
His poem of this year was so good, that Lance and Robin thought Felix shockingly blind because he refused to put it bodily into the Pursuivant, though allowing that it was much better than anything that would appear instead; and short pieces that the lad was continually striking off were only too good for the poet's corner, where, however, they gave an infinity of pleasure and satisfaction to two households at least. The poet—March Hare, as he signed himself—was an odd mixture of his father's scholarly tastes with his mother's harum-scarum forgetfulness; and the consequence was such abstraction at one moment, such slap-dash action at another, that he was a continual good-natured laughing-stock. To talk and read to Cherry seemed to be one of his great objects in life. He began it with Robina; but gradually Cherry, partly as critic and sub-editor of the Pursuivant, partly on her own merits, became the recipient of ten thousand visions, reflections, aspirations, that were crowding upon the young spirit, while she tried to follow, understand, and answer, with a sense that her powers were being stretched, and her eyes opened into new regions.
And then, if a stranger appeared, he sank into the red-headed lout; or if he had a message or commission, he treated it senselessly. Lance used to send Bernard up—as he said, to see him into the right train; and in the home party in the evening, his wit and drollery were the cause of inexhaustible mirth—Willie, as Robin and Angela agreed, was better fun than all the weddings, and even all the sights that London could give. Sometimes they were weary with laughing at him, sometimes with the lift he gave their minds; for even Angel understood and followed, and was more susceptible than her elders gave her credit for; and certainly she had never been so good as she was this summer, though it was still a flighty odd sort of goodness.
And all this time there was not a word between him and Robin of that evening walk. Whether he thought of it or not she knew not; but with her the recollection had a strength that the moment had not had. It seemed to be growing up with her. It was a memory that went deeper—far deeper than was good for her, poor child, since there was no surface chatter to carry it off; but the maidenliness of fifteen shrank with a sort of horror and dismay from the bare consciousness that she had allowed herself to think that those words of his could be serious, even while they had formed in her a fixed purpose of striving for him; and every mark of kindness or of preference assumed a value unspeakable and beyond her years, while her whole self was so entirely the good, plodding, sensible, simple child, that no one detected the romance beneath. Did the object of it, himself?