“Oh, Tony’s quite a tame cat here,” said Tory, manifestly mimicking some one. “He’s always round. My lady has him about a great deal, and he’s useful, he’s got a little money. His wife ran away from him—his fault I dare say; and now they’re di—”
“Tory!” interposed Una, starting up from her lounging attitude, “be quiet directly, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I won’t have it!”
“You can’t help Amethyst getting to know things,” said Tory in her slowest drawl; but she gave in, and swung herself off the end of the sofa, calling Kattern to come out in the garden.
Una let herself drop back on the sofa, it was characteristic of her that she never sat upright a moment longer than she could help it, and looked furtively round under her hair at her sister. Amethyst, however, had encountered children before, possessed of a desire to shock their betters, and took Tory’s measure according to her lights; which were to take no notice of improper remarks, especially as Una had shut the little one up so effectually.
“Well, I must go and write to auntie,” she said; “and then shall we go out too, Una?”
“Yes, if you like,” said Una, and with a sudden impulse she put up her face to Amethyst’s, and kissed her.
During the next week or ten days Amethyst was so much taken up with her own family that the various introductions in the neighbourhood made very little impression on her. The result on her mind of these first days of intercourse was curious. She did not by any means think her home perfection. She had indeed been vaguely prepared for much that was imperfect; and she had far too clear and definite a standard not to know that her sisters really were “neglected,” and was too much accustomed to good sense not to be aware that Lady Haredale talked nonsense. But there was a glamour over her which, perhaps happily, softened all the rough edges. Amethyst fell in love with her new “mamma,” and Una conceived a sudden and vehement devotion for the pretty, cheerful, chattering elder sister, who was so unlike any one in her previous experience. Amethyst forgot to criticise what her mother said or did, when the way of saying it or doing it was so congenial to one who shared the same soft gaiety of nature; and Una, suffering, poor child, in many ways, from the “neglect” of which Tory had too truly spoken, followed all Amethyst’s suggestions, and clung to her with ever-increasing affection.
A lady was recommended by Miss Riddell to come every morning and teach the three girls, and though Amethyst did not exactly share in the lessons, she talked about them, and helped in the preparation of them, and made them the fashion, and Tory at least began, as she had said, to find education interesting. This home-life went on as a background during all the ensuing weeks, when outer interests began to assert themselves, and the flood of life for Amethyst rolled on fast and full.
But all along, and at first especially, there were many intervals filled up with teaching her sisters the delights of country walks and primrose-pickings; with reading her favourite books to them, stirring them up about their lessons, and, all unintentionally, in giving them something else to think of than the vagaries of their elders’ life.
A “school-room” had really been provided for them, high up in one of the corners of the house, with a window in its angle which caught the sun all day, and looked over the pretty, rough open country in which Cleverley lay. Here, with flowers and books and girlish rummage, was the most home-like spot the Haredale girls had ever known; and here late one sunny afternoon lounged Una, curled up in the corner of an old sofa—doing, as was still too often the case, absolutely nothing.