Round the Corner in Gay Street

by Grace S. Richmond

Mrs. Townsend said no more until, crossing the Hildreth lawn an hour later, she caught sight of Marian Hille. At the first opportunity thereafter, she said in Shirley's ear, "Miss Cockburn certainly did not advise Marian to cling to the schoolgirl style of dressing. If that is not a French frock she is wearing, my eyes deceive me. She is charming in it, too, and not at all overdressed. That rose-covered hat is exquisite, and quite girlish enough."

Shirley smiled, a protesting little smile, but she did not argue the question further. To her mind, "Marie Anne" looked like a Parisian fashion-plate, and her manner was certainly that of a young person of considerable social experience. Shirley did not like it. Her eye went from Miss Marian Hille to Mrs. Murray Townsend, and rejoiced at the contrast. The two were close together, taking their seats for the outdoor musicale, which was about to begin. No fault could possibly be found with Jane's attire, but in it she looked, beside Marian, like a dainty gray pigeon beside a golden pheasant.

"I beg your pardon, but may I ask what you are staring at so intently?" said a voice beside her, and Shirley turned to confront the interested gaze of Brant Hille, Marian's elder brother. "I 've been standing beside you here all of three minutes, waiting for you to come back to earth and recognise me. Do you realise we have n't met since you and Marian came back? And won't you let me find you a chair over on the edge of the crowd, where we can talk?"

This suited Shirley, and she let him establish her in a corner where a clump of shrubbery screened the two from a part of the audience. Until the music began, young Hille plied her with questions about her experiences at Miss Cockburn's school, evidently enjoying the fact that her point of view seemed decidedly to differ from that of his sister.

"I should n't know you had been at the same place," was his whispered comment, as the first notes of the initial number on the programme smote the summer air and caused a partial hush to fall upon the assemblage. He had been noting, with interest, the change in her. He had known Shirley since their earliest days, but beyond the friendly liking she had always inspired in him, as in everybody, by her girlish good humour and love of sport, he had not thought her especially attractive. Now, however, as Peter Bell had done, he found himself discovering in her qualities distinctly noteworthy.

"So they took you to a lot of old churches and cathedrals," he began suddenly to Shirley, after an interval during which they had listened politely to Miss Antoinette Southwode's truly "searching" soprano and Mr. Burnham-Brisbane's astonishingly "wabbly" tenor, intermingled in an elaborate Italian duet. "Did n't you find that sort of thing deadly dull?"

"Not a bit," denied Shirley, promptly. "It was such fun to hear the dear old vergers proudly recite the histories of the antiquities. And the antiquities themselves! In one very, very old church there was a tablet of a man and his six wives, all kneeling before a shrine. He knelt first and they came after, all in profile. The poor dears were all dressed alike--they must have worn the same dress, handed down. One's head was gone--that made her more touching than the others. You could n't help feeling that her husband had been harder on her than on the rest. He looked that sort, you see."

"No doubt he was," agreed Hille, laughing. "Did you see anything else equal to that?"

"No end of things. Of course there was ever so much that was dignified and beautiful, but one could n't help being glad to find something funny now and then. One tablet in another ancient chapel showed three men, one above another on their painted wooden tombs, all lying sidewise and half rising on their elbows, and staring right down at you with their eyes wide open. They had pink cheeks and black hair. They were father, son, and grandson, and the father looked the youngest. Their wives were all lying quietly asleep at one side. It did n't seem fair for the men to be so wide awake, while the poor wives had to slumber and see nothing.--Oh, there goes Mr. Brisbane again! Why does his voice shake so much harder than when I heard him last?"

"He 's that much more celebrated," said Hille. "See here, are n't you and Marian about the same age."