‘It will be all company and horrid, and nobody will be allowed to make a noise!’ sighed Valetta to Fergus, as the waggonette, well shut up, drove to the door.
‘There’s cousin Bessie,’ said Fergus.
‘Oh, cousin Bessie is thirty-four, and that is as bad as being as old as grandmamma!’
And they hung back while the old lady was helped out, and brought across the hall into the warm drawing-room before her fur cloak was taken off. There was a quiet little person with her, and Val whispered, ‘She’ll be just like Aunt Jane.’
But the eyes that Bessie turned on her cousins were not at an like Aunt Jane’s little searching black ones. They were of a dark shade of grey, and had a wonderful softness and sweetness in them. Gillian knew her a little already, but very little, for there had always been the elder sisters at their former short meetings. Mamma lamented that there should be so few grandchildren at home to be shown, though, as she said, ‘the full number might have been too noisy.’
Grandmamma shook her head. ‘I like the house full,’ she said, ‘I’m all right, but it is a pity to see the nest emptied, like Stokesley, now. Nobody left at home but Susan and little Sally! Make the most of them while you have them about you!’
The old lady was quite delighted to find Primrose so nearly a baby, and to have one grandchild still quite as small or smaller than some of her great grandchildren whom she had never seen. Her great pleasure, however, soon proved to be in talking about her son Jasper, and hearing all his wife could tell her about his life in India; and as Lady Merrifield liked no other subject so well, they were very happy together, and quite absorbed.
Meanwhile Bessie made herself a companion to Gillian and Dolores, and though so much older, seemed to consider herself as a girl like them. Then, living for the most part in town, she could talk about London matters to Dolly, and this was a great treat, while yet she had country tastes enough to suit Gillian, and was not in the least afraid of a long walk to the fir plantations to pick up Weymouth pine cones, and the still more precious pinaster ones.
For the first time Gillian began to see Dolores as Uncle Reginald used to know her, free from that heavy mist of sullen dislike to everything and everybody. It seemed to bring them together, but, in spite of Bessie’s charms, they both continually missed Mysie, out of doors and in, in schoolroom and drawing-room, and, above all, in Dolly’s bedroom. She seemed to be, as Gillian told Bessie, ‘a sort of family cement, holding the two ends, big and little, together;’ and Bessie responded that her elder sister Susan was one of that sort.
The evenings now were quite unlike the usual ones. Dinner was late, and the two girls came down to it. Afterwards the young ones sat round the fire in the hall, where Bessie, who was a wonderful story-teller, kept Fergus and Valetta quiet and delighted, either with invented tales or histories of the feats of her own brothers and sisters, who were so much older than their Silverton first cousins as to be like an elder generation.