“Well, me child!” she began, “I hadn’t a minute since dinner to come and see you. The doorstep’s worn out with the world and his wife coming to ask how you are; and Louisa doesn’t know whether she’s on her head or her heels with all the clean cups she’s had to bring in!”
“Well, I wish to goodness I’d been downstairs to help her,” said Francie, whirling her feet off the sofa and sitting upright; “there’s nothing ails me to keep me stuck up here.”
“Well, you shall come down to-morrow,” replied Charlotte soothingly; “I’m going to lunch with the Bakers, so you’ll have to come down to do your manners to Christopher Dysart. His mother said he was coming to inquire for you to-morrow. And remember that only for him the pike would be eating you at the bottom of the lake this minute! Mind that! You’ll have to thank him for saving your life.”
“Mercy on us,” cried Francie; “what on earth will I say to him?”
“Oh, you’ll find plenty to say to him! They’re as easy as me old shoe, all those Dysarts; I’d pity no one that had one of them to talk to, from the mother down. Did you notice at the picnic how Pamela and her brother took all the trouble on themselves? That’s what I call breeding, and not sitting about to be waited on like that great lazy hunks, Miss Hope-Drummond! I declare I loathe the sight of these English fine ladies, and my private belief is that Christopher Dysart thinks the same of her, though he’s too well-bred to show it. Yes, my poor Susan,” fondling with a large and motherly hand the cat that was sprawling on her shoulder; “he’s a real gentleman, like yourself, and not a drop of dirty Saxon blood in him. He doesn’t bring his great vulgar bull-dog here to worry my poor son—”
“What did Mr. Lambert say, Charlotte?” asked Francie, who began to be a little bored by this rhapsody. “Was he talking about the accident?”
“Very little,” said Charlotte, with a change of manner; “he only said that poor Lucy, who wasn’t there at all, was far worse than any of us. As I told him, you, that we thought was dead, would be down to-morrow, and not worth asking after. Indeed we were talking about business most of the time—” She pressed her face down on the cat’s grey back to hide an irrepressible smile of recollection. “But that’s only interesting to the parties concerned.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Francie felt an unexpected weakness in her knees when she walked downstairs next day. She found herself clutching the stair-rail with an absurdly tight grasp, and putting her feet down with trembling caution on the oil-cloth stair covering, and when she reached the drawing-room she was thankful to subside into Charlotte’s arm-chair, and allow her dizzy head to recover its equilibrium. She thought very little about her nerves; in fact, was too ignorant to know whether she possessed such things, and she gave a feeble laugh of surprise at the way her heart jumped and fluttered when the door slammed unexpectedly behind her. The old green sofa had been pulled out from the wall and placed near the open window, with the Dublin Express laid upon it; Francie noticed and appreciated the attention, and noted, too, that an arm-chair, sacred to the use of visitors had been planted in convenient relation to the sofa. “For Mr. Dysart, I suppose,” she thought, with a curl of her pretty lip; “he’ll be as much obliged to her as I am.” She pushed the chair away, and debated with herself as to whether she should dislodge the two cats who, with faces of frowning withdrawal from all things earthly, were heaped in simulated slumber in the corner of the sofa. She chose the arm-chair, and, taking up the paper, languidly read the list of places where bands would play in the coming week, and the advertisement of the anthem at St. Patrick’s for the next day.
How remote she felt from it all! How stale appeared these cherished amusements! Most people would think the Lismoyle choir a poor substitute for the ranks of white surplices in the chancel of St. Patrick’s, with the banners of the knights hanging above them, but Francie thought it much better fun to look down over the edge of the Lismoyle gallery at the red coats of Captain Cursiter’s detachment, than to stand crushed in the nave of the cathedral, even though the most popular treble was to sing a solo, and though Mr. Thomas Whitty might be waiting on the steps to disentangle her from the crowd that would slowly surge up them into the street. A heavy booted foot came along the passage, and the door was opened by Norry, holding in her grimy hand a tumbler containing a nauseous-looking yellow mixture.