To his surprise, Jim turned from him with a pained expression, and leaning against the window, murmured:
“Lad, lad! Do you think I’d take aught from you?”
“It wouldn’t be from me, really,” persisted Austin. “It would be only having what’s rightfully yours. Well, there! Don’t mope, Jim! Come on and give us another lesson in shoeing. I believe I’ll soon be able to tackle a gee all by myself. Won’t it be larks when I can!”
Austin presently realized his ambition; and a fine dray-horse was proudly shod by a young gentleman in spotless flannels, while his admiring elder brother looked on to prompt and praise. Mrs. Morland was spared the knowledge of this achievement; but Austin confided it to Frances without hesitation. Frances’s native love of consistency moved her to vindicate her chosen position by a hot reproof of Austin for his unconventional conduct.
“Well!” said the boy, profoundly bored, “you don’t stick to your own opinions, Miss Frances. Wasn’t it you who used to talk about any honest work being noble and beautiful, and all that tommy-rot? Now I don’t say shoeing horses is noble work, or beautiful, or anything. I just say it’s first-rate fun!”
And Austin turned on his heel and went off.
“There!” thought Frances bitterly, “he has gone away; he never stays with me now. He isn’t a bit my boy any longer. He’s Jim’s. Oh, how I wish we never had come to Woodend! But Jim says his grandfather always managed to know where we lived. How horrid it seems! I wish I’d been different to Jim. He looked so sorry. I think—I think I hurt him. I wish I were brave, and didn’t feel ashamed for people to know I had a blacksmith for a brother! I hate to think of anyone pitying us about Jim, and sneering at his funny clothes and way of speaking! I know I’m a ‘snob’, and that Miss Cliveden would scorn me now; but I can’t help it.”
Doubt of herself made Frances doubtful of others, and she began to show signs of developing that unlucky sort of suspicion which searches motives with intent to prove itself in the right. Her common-sense told her that the best of her girl-friends could not despise her for conduct of which they knew nothing; yet she, who had been above all things frank and sincere, now continually imagined slights and offences on the part of her favourite comrades. But Frances had been too well liked to be readily regarded as an outsider by any of Muriel Carlyon’s brightest and busiest lassies.
It was not until, in a mood of hopeless discontent, she carried out her purpose of deserting the flourishing Society she had founded with so much energy and success, that a deputation of alarmed and amazed damsels pursued Miss Carlyon into her private sitting-room, and demanded that she should, then and there, tell them what could be the matter with Frances.
“She called a meeting in the schoolroom after hours!” cried Florry Fane breathlessly; “it was to let us know that she wasn’t going to be our leader any more! She said we should do better without her, and she proposed that I should be the Altruist secretary—as though any one could take Frances’s place!”