“In the Wars of the Roses, perhaps,” suggested Chris, wildly, feeling that she must say something, and that it didn’t much matter what it was.
Young Mr. Browne quite caught at the notion.
“Very likely,” said he, waking up into vivid interest. “Any national convulsion like that causes the great families to shift from their old places, and distribute themselves over the country. I daresay such disturbances do some hidden good in that way; don’t you think so?”
“Oh, no doubt,” answered Chris, feebly, wishing that she were on the arm of the brother who could waltz better than anybody else.
The next partner she had was a little man, nearly a head shorter than herself, as dark as young Mr. Browne was fair. He was of a different type, too—the type that goes up to town now and then, and thinks it the proper thing to speak of the place it lives in as “this hole.” In essentials, however, there was a stronger resemblance between young Mr. Cullingworth’s way of looking at life and young Mr. Browne’s than the former would have been ready to admit.
“Do you like this place?” was his first, almost contemptuous question.
“Yes, I like it better than any place I have ever lived in,” answered Chris, exuberantly. “I don’t seem ever to have known before what fresh air was.”
“Oh, fresh air—yes,” replied young Mr. Cullingworth, his tone betraying several degrees more of disdain than before. “One gets a little too much of that; but of most of the other things which help to make life endurable one gets next to nothing down here. It really is the slowest hole you ever were in, and I shall be obliged to think much worse of you than I should like to do if you don’t heartily wish yourself out of it before very long.”
“I’m horribly afraid I shall have, then, to reconcile myself to that fall in your estimation,” said Chris, smiling. “I like this place much, much better than London. London is only pleasant when you’re rich enough to get out of it whenever you like. Now we were not rich enough—my mother and I—so we were very glad to come down here.”
“Awfully lucky for us down here,” said Mr. Cullingworth, without enthusiasm. For he was not so deeply buried in the provinces as to fall in love with every pretty face he met. “Wonder what on earth made this Bradfield take it into his head to settle down here, don’t you?”