With the two eldest Misses Richards, Helen was on that sort of intimate footing which a very sweet-tempered, unpretending girl of nineteen, who knows she is of some consequence from her station, and is terribly afraid of being supposed to be proud, is sure to be with young ladies of nearly her own age, blessed with most exuberant animal spirits, and desirous of making themselves as agreeable to her as possible.
Louisa and Charlotte Richards were fine, tall, showy young women, with some aspirations after the reputation of talent; but they were neither of them at all like their mother, who was at least six inches shorter than either of them, and aspired to nothing in the world but to make her three children happy.
Little Mary, as her sisters still persisted to call her, approached much nearer to the stature, person, and character of Mrs. Richards; she was not quite so mignonne in size, but she
"Had her features, wore her eye,
Perhaps some feeling of her heart,"
and was, spite of all the struggles which her mother could make to prevent it, the darling of her eyes and the hope of her heart. Moreover, little Mary was, as we have before hinted, the especial friend of Fanny Mowbray.
The delights of a balmy evening in the flowery month of June—the superadded delights of a hay-field, and above all, the supreme delight of unexpectedly meeting a party of friends, were all enthusiastically descanted upon by the two tall Misses Richards. They had each taken one of Helen's slight arms, and borne her along over the stubble grass with a degree of vehemence which hardly left her breath to speak.
"I do not think mamma is going any farther," she continued to utter, while Miss Louisa stopped to tie a shoe-string.
"Oh, but you must!" screamed Miss Charlotte, attempting to drag her onward singly.
"Stop, Charlotte!... stop!" cried the eldest sister, snapping off the shoe-string in her haste—"you shall not carry her away from me. What a shame! Isn't it a shame, when it is such an age since we met?"
There is nothing against which it is so difficult to rally, as the exaggerated expression of feelings in which we do not share. The quiet Helen could not lash herself into answering vehemence of joy, and having smiled, and smiled till she was weary, she fairly slipped from her companions, and hastened back with all the speed she could make to the tranquil party that surrounded her mother.