The pencil sketches, dashed off impromptu, delighted Mrs. Maberley. There was Allumette sitting beside Eva’s couch with her eyes fixed on the lady’s face in eager attention; Allumette curled up in a corner with a book, her curls falling over her face; Allumette standing beside the piano, with a rapt expression of wonder and pleasure.
“It will be charming!” cried Mrs. Maberley, delighted. “I shall bring the story to read to you one day, and we will settle on the pictures. Some of these would almost do as they stand. You have quite a gift for drawing children, Cora.”
Allumette heard nothing of all this, which was passing in one corner of the studio; but she was deeply interested in another little scene going on elsewhere. She had noticed a little while before that Mr. Clayton, when he came in to show himself at his sister’s reception, brought with him two gentlemen (there were not many gentlemen in the room as compared with the number of the ladies), and the quick eyes of the child observed that Miss Madge’s face flushed a rosy red at the sight of them, and that almost at once one of the strangers came over towards where she stood at the tea-table, and seemed disposed to remain there.
She had made him useful, handing cups about for a time, after which he had come back to her side, and they were talking eagerly together.
Allumette had been dipping deep into fairy lore, and knew all about what princes and princesses did; and how the prince came and told the lady that he loved her, and that by-and-by they went off together and lived happily ever afterwards. Miss Madge had told her that in a different sort of way people did that still. Indeed Allumette had watched with the keenest excitement a wedding party from the next house, in which Miss Madge had played the part of bridesmaid. It had given Allumette quite a different idea about marriage from any she had had before, and she had heard the servants talking and saying that they supposed soon they would lose one of their young ladies, and wondering whether it would be Miss Cora or Miss Madge who would be first to go.
Somehow all this came back to the child’s mind as she saw the gentleman standing beside Miss Madge and talking to her.
“You know you have promised, Madge,” he said, in a rather louder tone. “You will not disappoint us?”
And Madge laughed as she made answer—
“Oh, yes, we will be as good as our word; we will pay a visit to Brooklands by-and-by. We shall all be glad of a change when the hot weather comes; for Hampstead is after all only a make-believe at country—and one likes the real thing sometimes.”
“I hope the country is not all the attraction!” said the young man, bending an intent look upon Madge’s blushing face.