“Would you really be glad if Brenda were to leave us?” asked Josephine.
“I think I should—I should be mistress here then, and of course papa, who is so devoted to her, would give her a good wedding and that would be sport—and we’d have to have nice frocks for that, and that would be sport too!”
“Oh, yes—on the whole it would be nice for Brenda to go, only some one else horrid might take her place.”
“Well, don’t let’s sit here any longer in this choking hot room. Let us go into the garden: we have no lessons of any sort to-day. We can get out the frills of our muslins and continue hemming them.”
“I do wonder what is keeping Nina,” said Josephine. But Nina herself had forgotten her sisters, so great was the interest of this important occasion. To begin with—she had caught dear papa. She took dear papa by the button-hole and, slipping her hand through his arm, led him into his study. The Reverend Josiah was very hot, and the study was cool. Nina was well aware which was dearest papa’s most comfortable chair, and she placed him in it, put a pillow to his head and brought him some cold water to drink, and then sat down by him without talking.
She had a little shock head of very carroty hair. That hair neither waved nor curled. It stood in stubborn awkwardness round her small face; for it was thick and short and decidedly jagged. Her face was pale, except for its freckles, and her features had the appearance of being put on by the wide palm of a very flat hand. Her eyes were minute, and she was nearly destitute of eyelashes and eyebrows. Her mouth was a little slit without much colour, but, notwithstanding her decided plainness, there was a great deal of knowingness in Nina, and she might be as dangerous a woman by-and-by as was pretty Brenda herself at the present moment.
“Father,”—she said now—“why did you come back? I thought you were going out for the whole livelong day.”
“So I did, my dear; but I had not gone a mile before I discovered that Bess had cast a shoe and I was obliged to take her to the forge to be put right. The day is uncommonly hot, and I doubt if I shall begin to call on my parishioners until the evening.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you, papa darling,” said Nina. “The parishioners don’t care to be bothered in the morning—do they, papa?”
“That is not the question, my dear,” said the Reverend Josiah. “A clergyman’s visits ought not to be spoken of as bothers. The people ought to be truly glad to have spiritual ministrations offered to them.”