“Very pretty verses. Lads and lasses, keep your feet still and attend to Miss Seyton, and—mind—I can hear ye,” a piece of information with which Virginia at any rate could well have dispensed.
But she was getting used to her rough uncle, and was grateful to Cheriton for the advice that he had given her, and so she told Alvar one day when they were all walking down to the vicarage, with the ostensible purpose of showing Nettie some enormous mastiff puppies, the pride of the vicar’s heart.
In the absence of her own brothers Nettie found Dick Seyton an amusing companion, “soft” though he might be; she began by daring him to jump over ditches as well as she could, and ended by finding that he roused in her unsuspected powers of repartee. Nettie found the Miss Ellesmeres dull companions; they were a great deal cleverer than she was, and expected her to read story books, and care about the people in them. Rupert and Dick found that her ignorance made her none the less amusing, and took care to tell her so.
So everything combined to make intercourse easy; and this was not the first walk that the six young people had taken together.
“Your brother,” said Virginia to Alvar, “was very kind to me. I should never have got on so well but for his advice.”
“My brother is always kind,” said Alvar, his eyes lighting up. “I cannot tell you how well I love him.”
“I am sure you do,” said Virginia heartily, though unable to help smiling.
“But in what was it that he helped you?” asked Alvar.
Virginia explained how he had persuaded her uncle to agree to her wishes about teaching the children.
“To teach the ignorant?” said Alvar. “Ah, that is the work of a saint!”