Mrs. Stokes laughed: "I am only half in sympathy with you. Why did you discourage that fascinating Mr. Cecil Burleigh? A young lady is never really occupied until she is in love."
Bessie colored slightly. "Well," she said, "I am in love—I am in love with my two little boy-cousins. What do you advise? My grandfather has never mentioned them. It seems as if it would be easier to set them before him than to speak of them."
"I should not dare to do that. What does Mr. Laurence Fairfax say? What does his wife say?"
"Not much. My grandfather is treating them precisely as he treated my father and my mother—just letting them alone. And it would be so much pleasanter if we were all friends! I call it happiness thrown away. I have everything at Abbotsmead but that. It is not like a home, and the only motive there was for me to try and root there is taken away since those boys came to light."
"Your future prospects are completely changed. You bear it very well."
"It is easy to bear what I am truly thankful for. Abbotsmead is nothing to me, but those boys ought to be brought up in familiarity with the place and the people. I am a stranger, and I don't think I am very apt at making humble friends. To enjoy the life one ought to begin one's apprenticeship early. I wonder why anybody strains after rank and riches? I find them no gain at all. I still think Mr. Carnegie the best gentleman I know, and his wife as true a gentlewoman as any. You are smiling at my partiality. Shall you be shocked if I add that I have met in Woldshire grand people who, if they were not known by their titles, would be reckoned amongst the very vulgar, and gentry of old extraction who bear no brand of it but that disagreeable manner which is qualified as high-bred insolence?"
Mrs. Stokes held all the conventionalities in sincere respect. She did not understand Miss Fairfax, and asked who, then, of their acquaintance was her pattern of a perfect lady. Bessie instanced Miss Burleigh. "Her sweet graciousness is never at fault, because it is the flower of her beautiful disposition," said she.
"I should never have thought of her," said Mrs. Stokes reflectively. "She is very good. But to go back to those boys: do nothing without first speaking to Mr. Fairfax."
Bessie demurred, and still believed her own bolder device the best, but she allowed herself to be overruled, and watched for an opportunity of speaking. Undoubtedly, Mr. Fairfax loved his granddaughter with more respect for her independent will than he might have done had they been together always. He had denied her no reasonable request yet, and he granted her present prayer so readily that she was only sorry she had not preferred it earlier.
"Grandpapa, you will give me a Christmas gift, will you not?" she said one evening after dinner about a week before that festive season.