“My dears,” said Mrs Grey, “has Miss Young done with you for to-day?”
“Oh yes, mamma. It is just six o’clock. We have been out of school this hour almost.”
“Then come in, and make yourselves neat, and sit down with us. I should not wonder if the Miss Ibbotsons should be here now before you are ready. But where is Sydney?”
“Oh, he is making a pond in his garden there. He dug it before school this morning, and he is filling it now.”
“Yes,” said the other; “and I don’t know when he will have done, for as fast as he fills it, it empties again, and he says he cannot think how people keep their ponds filled.”
“He must have done now, however,” said his mother. “I suppose he is tearing his clothes to pieces with drawing the water-barrel, and wetting himself to the skin besides.”
“And spoiling his garden,” said Fanny. “He has dug up all his hepaticas and two rose-bushes to make his pond.”
“Go to him, my dears, and tell him to come in directly, and dress himself for tea. Tell him I insist upon it. Do not run. Walk quietly. You will heat yourselves, and I do not like Mrs Rowland to see you running.”
Mary informed her brother that he was to leave his pond and come in, and Fanny added that mamma insisted upon it. They had time to do this, to walk quietly, to have their hair made quite smooth, and to sit down with their two dolls on each side the common cradle, in a corner of the drawing-room, before the Miss Ibbotsons arrived.
The Miss Ibbotsons were daughters of a distant relation of Mr Grey’s. Their mother had been dead many years; they had now just lost their father, and were left without any nearer relation than Mr Grey. He had invited them to visit his family while their father’s affairs were in course of arrangement, and till it could be discovered what their means of living were likely to be. They had passed their lives in Birmingham, and had every inclination to return to it, when their visit to their Deerbrook relations should have been paid. Their old schoolfellows and friends all lived there: and they thought it would be easier and pleasanter to make the smallest income supply their wants in their native town, than to remove to any place where it might go further. They had taken leave of their friends as for a very short time, and when they entered Deerbrook, looked around them as upon a place in which they were to pass a summer.