Arrived at Hetherton Place, the young lady criticised things generally with an unsparing tongue. Every thing was so simple and plain, especially in Reinette’s room. Of course it was pleasant, and neat, and cool, and airy, but why did Phil get matting for the floor, and that light, cheap-looking furniture. There was a lovely pattern of Brussels carpeting at Enfair’s for a dollar fifty a yard and a high black walnut bedstead and dressing bureau at Trumbull’s; and why didn’t he get a wardrobe with a looking-glass door, so Reinette could see the bottom of her dresses. Then she inspected the pictures, and asked where he found those dark-looking photographs, and that woman in the clouds with her eyes rolled up, and so many children around her. Why didn’t he get those lovely pictures, “Wide Awake” and “Fast Asleep?” They would brighten up the room so much!
Phil bit his lips, but maintained a very grave face while he explained to the young lady that what she called photographs were fine steel engravings, which he found in Frankfort, one a landscape after Claude Lorraine, and the other a moonlight scene on the Rhine, near Bingen, with the Mouse Tower and Ehrenfels in sight, while the woman with her eyes rolled up was an oil copy of Murillo’s great picture, the gem of the Louvre.
Anna Ferguson had been to boarding-school two or three quarters, and had botanies, and physiologies, and algebras laid away on the book-shelf at home; but for all that she was a very ignorant young lady, and guiltless of any knowledge of the Louvre or Murillo and Claude Lorraine. But she liked to appear learned, and had a way of pretending to know many things which she did not know; and now she hastened to cover her mistake by pretending to examine the pictures more closely, and saying, “Oh, yes, I see; lovely, aren’t they? and so well done! Why, Mr. Beresford, you here!” and she turned suddenly toward the door, which Arthur Beresford was just entering.
He was much better, and had ridden over to Hetherton Place with a friend who was going a few miles farther, and, hearing voices up stairs, had come at once to Reinette’s room, where he found Phil and Anna.
Just then a workman called Phil away, and Mr. Beresford was left alone with Anna, who was even better pleased to be with him than with her cousin, and who assumed her prettiest, most coquettish manners in order to attract the grave lawyer, whose cue she at once followed, praising the arrangement of the room generally, and finally calling his attention to the pictures, one of which, she said, was drawn by Mr. Lorraine, and the other by—she could not quite remember whom, but—the oil painting was the portrait of Murillo, whose hands and hair she thought so lovely. That came from Loo, in France, but the engravings were from somewhere in Kentucky—Frankfort, she believed.
Mr. Beresford was disgusted, as he always was with Anna, but did not try to enlighten her, and, as Phil soon joined them, they went over the rest of the house together. Only the upper and lower halls, the dining-room, the library, Mr. Hetherton’s and Reinette’s bedchambers, the kitchen and servants’ rooms had been renovated, and these were all in comfortable living order, with new matting on the floors, fresh paint and whitewash everywhere, and furniture enough to make it seem homelike and cozy. But it was in the grounds that the most wonderful change had been wrought, and Mr. Beresford could scarcely credit the evidence of his eyes when he saw what had been done. Weeds and obnoxious plants dug up by the roots; gravel walks cleaned and raked; quantities of fresh green sod where the grass had been almost dead; masses of potted flowers here and there upon the lawn and in the flower-garden; while the conservatory, which opened from the dining-room, was partly filled with rare exotics which Phil had ordered from Springfield.
In its palmy days Hetherton had been one of the finest places in the country, and, with some of its beauty restored, it looked very pleasant and inviting that summer afternoon; and Anna felt a pang of envy of her more fortunate cousin, for whom all these preparations were made, and of whom Phil talked so much. Anna was beginning to be jealous of Reinette, and, as she rode home with Phil, she asked him if he supposed he would make as much fuss for her if she were coming to Merrivale.
“Why, yes,” he answered her, “under the same circumstances I should, of course.”
“Yes, that’s just the point,” she retorted. “Under the same circumstances, which means if I were rich like her, and belonged to the Hethertons. I tell you what, Phil, ‘Money makes the mare go,’ and though this girl is not one whit better than I am, whose mother is a dressmaker and whose father keeps a one-horse grocery, you and that stuck-up Beresford, whom I hate because he is stuck-up, would run your legs off for her, when you, or at least he, would hardly notice me. You have to, because you are my cousin, but if you were not you would be just as bad as Beresford. Wouldn’t you now?”
Phil did not care to argue with his cousin, whose jealous nature he understood perfectly, so he merely laughed at her fancies and tried to divert her mind by asking her where she thought he could find a blue silk spread to lay on the foot of the bed in Reinette’s chamber.