“The socks? Oh, I had forgotten them! But there is very little to do. I’ll read a while if you like; but I know I don’t read so well as you.”
She took the book, however, and another hour passed rapidly away. She shut the book with a sigh when Claude moved.
This was the first of many such readings. During the hours when Claude was asleep and Clement under the immediate superintendence of Martha, Miss Gertrude brought her book into the green room and shared the pleasure it gave her with her little brother’s nurse. And at other times, too, when the little boys were amusing themselves together in the garden, they read and discussed their books, sitting in the cedar walk, or under the shadow of the locust-tree. And a very pleasant month they had. Christie had great enjoyment in all this; and apparently Miss Gertrude had no less; for she refused several invitations, and broke more than one engagement with her aunt, rather than interfere with these new arrangements.
But one day Miss Gertrude came into the green room with a cloud upon her brow. It was plain that something was the matter.
“It has been a great deal too pleasant to last long,” she said, throwing down a letter which she held in her hand. “Here is papa coming home immediately. I wouldn’t mind his coming,” she added, checked by the look of surprise on Christie’s face. “I shall be very glad to see him; and he won’t make much difference—he is so seldom at home. Besides, he will let me please myself about things. He has no fancy for my going here and there at everybody’s bidding. But Mr Sherwood is coming with him—Mrs Seaton’s cousin—a very disagreeable person; at least, I think so. Mamma thinks him wonderfully good, and he is a great favourite with papa, too. I am sure I don’t know why. I think he is conceited; and he is an Englishman, besides.”
Christie laughed.
“That’s not a very good reason.”
“Perhaps not. But he has such a cool, indifferent way of asserting the superiority of the English over all other nations, as though the question need not be discussed. ‘It must be quite evident to everybody,’ his manner seems to say.”
After a pause, Miss Gertrude continued:
“And that is not all. He is very meddlesome. He is always telling mamma what ought to be expected from a young lady like me, and getting her to annoy me about lessons and other things; at least, I think so. I know he thinks me quite childish; and sometimes he interferes between Clement and me. What do you think he had the impertinence to say to me once? That no one was fit to govern who had not learned to obey. That it would be wiser for me to learn the lesson of obedience myself, than to attempt to teach it to my little brother.”