“No.”
“And is he a very old man?” Miss Bowen asked, less interested in money matters than in this Uncle Brian, whose name so constantly floated across his nephew's conversation.
“Fifteen years in the colonies makes a man old before his time. And he was not very young, probably full thirty, when he went out But I could go on talking of Uncle Brian for ever; you must stop me, Agatha.”
“Not I—I like to hear,” she answered, beginning to feel how sweet it was to sit talking thus confidentially, and know herself and her words esteemed fair and pleasant in the eyes of one who loved her. But as she looked up and smiled, that same witching smile put an effectual stop to the chronicle of Brian Harper.
“And I have to go back to Canada so soon!” whispered Nathanael to himself, as his gaze, far less calm than heretofore, fell down like a warm sunshine over his betrothed, “The time of my stay here will soon be over, and what then—Agatha?”
She did not wholly comprehend the question, and so let it pass. She was quite content to keep him talking about things and people in whom her interest was naturally growing; of Kingcombe Holm, the old house on the Dorset coast, where the Harpers had dwelt for centuries; of its present owner, Nathanael Harper, Esquire, of that venerable name so renowned in Dorsetshire pedigrees, that one Harper had refused to merge it even in the blaze of a peerage. Of the five Miss Harpers, of whom one was dead, and another, the all-important “married sister,” Mrs. Dugdale, lived in a town close by. Of Eulalie, the pretty cadette who was at some future time going to disappear behind the shadows of matrimony; of busy, housekeeping Mary, whom nobody could possibly do without, and who couldn't be suffered to marry on any account whatever. Last of all, was the eye, ear, and heart of the house, kept tenderly in its inmost nook, from which for twenty years she had never moved, and never would move until softly carried to the house appointed for all living—Elizabeth, the eldest—of whom Nathanael's soft voice grew softer as he spoke. His betrothed hesitated to ask many questions about Elizabeth. The one of whom she had it in her mind always to inquire, and whose name somehow always slipped past, was Miss Anne Valery.
All this conversation—wherein the young lover bore himself much more bravely than in regular “love-making”—a manufacture at which he was not au fait at all, caused the morning to pass swiftly by. Agatha thought if all her life were to move so smoothly and pleasantly, she need never repent trusting its current to the guidance of Nathanael Harper. And when, soon after he departed, Emma Thornycroft came in, all smiles, wonderings, and congratulations, Miss Bowen was in a mood cheerful enough to look the happy fiancée to the life; besides womanly and tender enough to hang round her friend's neck, testifying her old regard—until Master James testified his also, and likewise his general sympathy in the scene, by flying at them both with bread-and-buttery fingers.
“Ah, Agatha, there is nothing like being a wife and mother! you see what happiness lies before you,” cried the affectionate soul, hugging her unruly son and heir.
Miss Bowen slightly shuddered; being of a rather different opinion; which, however, she had the good taste to keep to herself, since occasionally a slight misgiving arose that either she was unreasonably harsh, or that the true type of infantile loveableness did not exist in the young Thornycrofts.
As a private penance for possible injustice, and also out of the general sunniness of her contented heart, she was particularly kind to Master James that day, and moreover promised to spend the next at the Botanic Gardens—not the terrific Zoological!—with Emma and the babies.