"Oh no, not Mr. Pryor's. I shouldn't fancy there were any Parisian slides in his. But I suspect you have a magic lantern of your own which shows it to you whenever you please."
"Pretty often," she confessed.
The dialogue was interrupted by a tardy request for some music from Mr. Masters. Barbara went obediently to the piano, and Reynold followed her. She would rather he had stayed by the fireside; his conscientious attempts to turn the leaf at the right time confused her dreadfully, and she dared not say to him, as she might have done to another man, "I like to turn the pages for myself, please." Suppose he should be hurt or vexed? She was learning to look upon him as a kind of thundercloud, out of which, without a moment's warning, came flashes of passion, of feeling, of resolution, of fury, of scorn. She did not know what drew them down. So she accepted his attentions, and smiled her gratitude. If only ("Yes, please!" in answer to an inquiring glance)—if only he would always be too soon, or always a little too late! Instead of which he arrived at a tolerable average by virtue of the variety of his failures. Worst of all was a terrible moment of uncertainty, when, having turned too soon, he thought of turning back. "No, no!" cried Barbara.
"I'm very stupid," said Harding, "I'm afraid I put you out." "No, no," again from Barbara, while her busy fingers worked unceasingly. "Couldn't you give me just a little nod when it's time?" A brief pause, during which his eyes are fixed with agonised intensity on her head, a fact of which she is painfully conscious, though her own are riveted on the page before her. She nods spasmodically, and Reynold turns the leaf so hurriedly that it comes sliding down upon the flying hands, and has to be caught and replaced. As usual, displeasure at his own clumsiness makes him sullen and silent, and he stands back without a word when the performance is over. Mr. Masters thanks, applauds, talks a little in the style which for the last forty years or so he has considered appropriate to the young ladies of his acquaintance, and finally says good night, and bows himself out of the room.
Mr. Hayes stands on the rug, and hides a little yawn behind his little hand. "Is Masters trying to make himself agreeable?" he asks. "Let me know if I am to look out for another housekeeper, Barbara."
Barbara has no brilliant reply ready. The hackneyed joke displeases her. As her uncle speaks, she can actually see Littlemere, the village where the small squire lives; a three-cornered green, tufted with rushy grass, with a cow and half-a-dozen geese on it; a few cottages, with their week's wash hung out to dry; a round pond, green with duckweed; a small alehouse; a couple of white, treeless roads, leading away into the world, but apparently serving only for the labourers who plod out in the morning and home at night; an ugly little school-house of red brick and slate; and Littlemere Hall, square, white, and bare, set down like a large box in the middle of a dreary garden. She cannot help picturing herself there, with Mr. Masters, caught and prisoned; the idea is utterly absurd, but it is hideous, as hateful as if an actual hand were laid on her. She shrinks back and frowns. "You needn't get anybody just yet," she says.
"Very good," her uncle replies. "Give me a month's warning, that's all I ask." He yawns again, and looks at his watch. Reynold takes the hint, and his candle, and goes.
"Good riddance!" says the little man on the rug. "Of all the ill-mannered, cross-grained fellows I ever met, there goes the worst! A Rothwell! He's worse than any Rothwell, and not the genuine thing either! Can't he behave decently to my friends at my own table? What does he mean by his confounded rudeness? Masters is a better man than ever he will be!"
Barbara shuts the piano, and lays her music straight. Poor little Barbara, trying with little soft speeches and judicious silences to steer her light-winged course among these angry men, is sorely perplexed sometimes. Now as Mr. Hayes mutters something about "an unlicked cub," she thinks it best to say, "Well, uncle, it isn't for very long. Mr. Harding will soon be going away."