“Like the tramp you let into the house, while we were out, to steal our last half-dozen silver spoons! He, I remember, ‘had a good face, a really intellectual face’!” remarked Belle, gibingly. Her good nature was now quite restored by the pleasure of finding some excuse for teasing Beatrice, who liked to tease them all.
“There, Motherkin! Isn’t that ‘sweetly pretty’? Can you not work him into a landscape of trees and cows and clouds and other country things?” demanded Bonny, ignoring her sister, and laying the really clever little sketch in her mother’s lap.
“How do you get on with your singing, dear?” asked that lady, smiling, and taking time from her work to pat the soft cheek of her merry daughter.
“Badly. There is a terrible discrepancy between my chest notes and my head notes. When T try to stretch one up and the other down, something appears to give way—cr-r-rick-crac-c-k-screech! Shall I illustrate, Mother dear?”
“No, no, I beg! My nerves are in bad condition to-day. But if you’ll sing something without nonsense, I shall be glad to hear you. It would rest me, I think.”
Beatrice’s gay face sobered instantly, and Isabelle laid down her book. “Are you so tired, Motherkin?”
“Oh! no, indeed! Only it is a bit monotonous stitching, stitching all day with nobody to talk to. Never mind. Here comes Roland. I wonder why so early.”
The inquiry was in her eyes as she raised them to meet her son’s when he entered, full three hours before his usual time of home-coming. But she saw instantly that he was not ill, and, that anxiety allayed, she smiled brightly upon him. “Well, my boy! what good fortune has given you a holiday?”
“Ill, not good fortune, Mother. I—I have been discharged. I have lost my place.”
Then, indeed, did a significant silence fall upon the family group. Lost his place! Could anything have been more unfortunate!