But by that time Elma's soul had soared far above the heights or depths of triumph or pettiness in connection with the sojourn of Miss Grace. Life had been moving swiftly and wonderfully. Jean indeed came home from hotel life, full of stories of its inimitable attractions; and nobody, although longing to be, had really been much impressed. Jean served to mark the milestone of their own development, that was all. She had left at one stage and come back at another. Where she had imagined their standing quite still, they had been travelling new roads, looking back on their childish selves with interest.
Mabel and Elma had been thrown much together, and Mabel had grown to depend on the silent loyalty with which Elma invariably supported her in the trying time now experienced in connection with Mr. Meredith. Where Jean, bolt outright, complained that already Mabel had known him for a month or two, and yet no hint of an engagement could be discovered, Elma sympathized with Mabel's horror of any engagement whatever.
"It would be lovely to have a ring, and all that kind of thing," Mabel had confided. "But fancy having to talk to papa and mamma about it!"
It did not impede her friendship with Mr. Meredith however. He had found a flower which he intended to pluck, and he guarded it to all intents and purposes as one from which he would warn off intruders. But the reserve which made Mabel sensitive in regard to anything definite, her extreme youth, above all the constant espionage of her parents and sisters, led him to a tacit understanding of his privileges, a situation appalling to the business-like Jean.
"If I had had my hair up, I should have had two proposals at Buxton," said she, and the remark became historic.
Cuthbert put it in his notebook. Whenever he wanted to overcome the authority of Jean he produced and read it. She found her family a trifle trying on her arrival. She wanted to be able to inform them how they should dress, and had a score of other things ready to retail to them. Yet most of them fell quite flat, just as though she had had no special advantages in being at Buxton.
Mr. and Mrs. Leighton talked this over together.
"It makes me think," said Mrs. Leighton, "that you are not altogether wrong in crowding them up at home here. Jean got variety, but she seems to have lost a little in balance."
"Still, that is just where experience teaches its lesson," said Mr. Leighton. "To get balance, one must have the experience. Yet Mabel, in an unaccountable manner, seems to be perfectly balanced before she has received any experience at all."
"Ah! I expect she will still have her experiences," said Mrs. Leighton in her pessimistic way. "No girl gets along without some unpleasant surprise. Betty is longing for one. Betty complains that in story books something tragic or something wonderful happens to girls whenever they begin to grow up, but that nothing happens in this place. Nobody loses money--if you please--and nobody gets thrown out on the world in a pathetic manner to work for a living, for instance."