She also protested that she had read nothing at all scarcely; but Throckmorton came to find out that, for want of the every-day modern literature, she was perfectly at home in the English classics, and knew her Scott and Thackeray like a lesson well learned. He began to find this gentle intelligence and cordiality amazingly pleasant after the cold shyness of the girls and the unmistakable keep-your-distance air of the older women. They sat together so long that Mr. Morford began to scowl, and think that Mrs. Beverley, after all, was rather a frivolous person, and with every moment Judith became brighter, gayer, more her natural charming self.
Meanwhile Jack Throckmorton had carried Jacqueline off for a quadrille, and was getting on famously. First they remarked on the similarity of their names, which seemed a fateful coincidence, and Jacqueline complained that the servants and some other people, too, often shortened her liquid three syllables with “Jacky,” but she hated it. Jack, who had a sweet, gay voice, and was an inveterate joker, which Jacqueline was not, amused both her and himself extremely.
“Will you look at the major?” he whispered. “Gone on the pretty widow—I beg your pardon,” he added, turning very red.
“You needn’t apologize,” calmly remarked Jacqueline. “Judith is a pretty widow, and the best and kindest sister in the world, besides. It is all mamma. Mamma loved my brother better than anything, and wants us all to think about him as much as she does.”
Jack, rather embarrassed by these family confidences, parried them with some confidences of his own.
“I shall have to go over soon and break the major up. You see, there isn’t but twenty-two years’ difference between us, and the major is a great toast among the girls still, which is repugnant to my filial feelings.”
Jacqueline listened gravely and in good faith.
“So, when I see him pleased with a girl, I generally sneak up on the other side, and manage to get my share of the girl’s attention, and call the major ‘father’ every two minutes. A man hates to be interfered with that way, particularly by his own son, which doesn’t often happen. The major has got a cast in one eye, and, whenever he is in a rage, he gets downright cross-eyed. Sometimes I work him up so, his eyes don’t get straight for a fortnight.”
“But doesn’t he get very mad with you?” asked Jacqueline in a shocked voice.