“That’s the piano. You know, Maudie, you would have a good one. And by-the-bye,” she added, letting her remark fly into the air like a bombshell, “and by-the-bye, if either of us gets married before the piano is paid for, will the other poor wretch have to finish off the payments by herself?”
“Well, even if she does,” said Maudie, “the one that has to finish off the payments will have the piano.”
CHAPTER XII
TWOPENNY DINNERS
Possession to some natures seems always to demand value in what is possessed; to others it has exactly the opposite effect.
Julia duly implanted in her parents’ minds the preliminary idea that a change from Ye Dene might be desirable. But the Whittakers did not leave the Park just then, for it was only a few days after the conversation between the two girls on the subject of removal, that quiet, unoriginal Maudie cast a veritable bombshell into the family circle. For Maudie got engaged to be married.
I have spoken earlier in this story of a house in the immediate neighborhood of Ye Dene which was called Ingleside, and I have just mentioned a family of the name of Marksby. The Marksbys lived at Ingleside, and Ingleside was almost exactly opposite to Ye Dene; the Marksbys, indeed, were next-door neighbors of the M’Quades. They had not very long been in possession of that desirable residence, and, mind you, Ingleside was a most desirable residence, one of the best to be found in the length and breadth of the Park. The family consisted of the father and mother, two daughters and a son. Mr. Marksby, as far as the Park was concerned, was that mysterious “something in the city” which covers such a multitude of sins, or if not sins, at least of blemishes, social and otherwise. They did themselves and their neighbors extremely well, kept good-class servants, had the smartest window curtains and flower-boxes in the Park, went to church regularly, gave largely in charity and entertained freely. What wonder that, in their case, people did not too closely inquire into the exact definition of “something in the city.”
From the very first it had been Maudie rather than Julia who had caught on with the Marksbys. The Marksby girls were quiet and singularly unassuming, and as Maudie Whittaker grew older she was attracted, perhaps because of Julia’s excessive energy, by quietness rather than the reverse, and was indeed herself a girl of singularly few words. But if the Marksby girls were quiet, then young Harry Marksby did not share their nature. He was himself the gayest of the gay, one who, a century ago, would have been called an “agreeable rattle;” indeed he was a young man who prided himself on stirring things up. He by no means approved of the fact that his father and mother had turned their backs upon convenient Bayswater in favor of the more distant Park. He was a young man who worked hard when he worked, and who abandoned himself to amusement when he was not working. But he was a sensible young man and did not see the force of burning the candle at both ends, so that he stayed a great deal more at home in the evenings than many a young man of his age and general proclivities would have done; and thus it was that he came somehow to fall in love with Regina Whittaker’s eldest girl. And, as I said, the news fell upon the Whittaker family like a bombshell.