“Besides, even if somebody were to pass here who wanted lodgings, they could never think of looking through the gate; and if they did, I doubt whether they could see the card.”
“I have thought of that; and when I got up this morning I tied the card to the gate itself. Nobody can fail to see it there.”
“Oh, Marion! It is almost as if we were setting up a shop.”
“Everybody is more or less a shopkeeper,” replied Marion philosophically. “Some people sell rank, others beauty, others cleverness, others their souls to the devil: we might do worse than sell house-room to those who want it.”
“Oh, my dear!”
“Bless your dear heart! you’ll think nothing of it, once the lodgers are in the house,” rejoined the girl, kissing her mother’s cheek.
They went down to breakfast: it was a pleasant morning; the sky was a tender blue, and the eastern sunshine shot through the dark limbs of the cedar of Lebanon, and fell in cheerful patches on the floor of the dining-room, and sent a golden shaft across the white breakfast cloth, and sparkled on the silver teapot—the same teapot in which Fanny Pell had once made tea for handsome Tom Grantley in the year 1768. Marion was in high spirits: at all events, she adopted a lightsome tone, in contrast to her usual somewhat grave preoccupation. She was determined to make her mother smile.
“This is our last solitary breakfast,” she declared. “To-morrow morning we shall sit down four to table. There will be a fine old gentleman for me, and a handsome young man for you; for anybody would take you to be the younger of us two. The old gentleman will be impressed with my masculine understanding and knowledge of the world; we shall talk philosophy, and history, and politics; he will finally confess to a more than friendly interest in me; but I shall stop him there, and remind him that, for persons of our age, it is most prudent not to marry. He will allow himself to be persuaded on that point; but he has a vast fortune, and he will secretly make his will in my favor. Your young gentleman will be of gentle blood, a sentimentalist and an artist; his father will have been in love with you; the son will have the good taste to inherit the passion; he will entreat you to let him paint your portrait; but, if he becomes too pressing in his attentions, I shall feel it my duty to take him aside, and admonish him like a mother. He will be so mortally afraid of me, that I shall have no difficulty in managing him. In the course of a year or two—”
“Is not that somebody? I’m sure I heard—”
“La, mother, don’t look so scared!” cried Marion, laughing, but coloring vividly: “it can’t be anything worse than an executioner with a warrant for our arrest.” She turned in her chair, and looked through the window and across the grass-plot to the gate.