Janet's Love and Service

by Margaret M. Robertson

“My dear Harry! Why, in all the world, should I make believe not well ‘to get rid of it,’ as you so elegantly express it? Such great folks, too!”

“Harry, don’t be cross,” said Fanny. “I am sure I heard you say, a day or two since, that Rose was looking thin.”

“Harry, dear!” said Rose, with effusion, “give me your hand. I forgive you all the rest, for that special compliment. I have had horrible fears lately that I was getting stout—middle-aged looking, as Graeme says. Are you quite sincere in saying that, or are you only making believe?”

“I didn’t intend it as a compliment, I assure you. I didn’t think you were looking very well.”

“Did you not? What would you advise? Should I go to the country; or should I put myself under the doctor’s care? Not our big friend, whom you were going to beat,” said Rose, laughing.

“I think you are a very silly girl,” said Harry, with dignity.

“You told me that once before, don’t you remember? And I don’t think you are at all polite,—do you, Fanny? Come up-stairs, Graeme, and I will do your hair. It would not be proper to let Harry go alone. He is in a dreadful temper, is he not?” And Rose made a pretence of being afraid to go past him. “Mr Millar, cannot you do or say something to soothe your friend and partner?”

Harry might understand all this, but Graeme could not, and she did not like this mood of Rose at all. However, she was very quiet; as she dressed her sister’s hair, and spoke of the people they had seen in the afternoon, and of the exercises at the college, in her usual merry way. But she did not wish to go out; she was tired, and had a headache, listening to two or three things at one time, she said, and if Graeme could only go this once without her, she would be so glad. Graeme did not try to persuade her, but said she must go to bed, and to sleep at once, if she were left at home, and then she went away.

She did not go very cheerfully. She had had two or three glimpses of her sister’s face, after she had gone to the other side of the hall with Harry, before Miss Goldsmith had commenced her whispered confidences to Rose, and she had seen there a look which brought back her old misgivings that there was something troubling her darling. She was not able to put it away again. The foolish, light talk between Rose and Harry did not tend to re-assure her, and when she bade her sister good-night, it was all that she could do not to show her anxiety by her words. But she only said, “good-night, and go to sleep,” and then went down-stairs with a heavy heart. She wanted to speak with Harry about the sharp words that had more than once passed between him and Rose of late; but Mr Millar walked with them, and she could not do so, and it was with an anxious and preoccupied mind that she entered Mr Roxbury’s house.

The drawing-room was very handsome, of course, with very little to distinguish it from the many fine rooms of her friends. Yet when Graeme stood for a moment near the folding-doors, exchanging greetings with the lady of the house, the remembrance of one time, when she had stood there before, came sharply back to her, and, for a moment, her heart grew hot with the angry pain and shame that had throbbed in it then. It was only for a moment, and it was not for herself. The pain was crossed by a thrill of gladness, for the more certain knowledge that came to her that for herself she was content, that she wished nothing changed in her own life, that she had outlived all that was to be regretted of that troubled time. She had known this before, and the knowledge came home to her joyfully as she stood there, but it did not lighten her burden of dread of what might lie in the future for her sister.