“Don’t be so horribly resigned! I hate people who are resigned when I am miserable!” said Chrissie sharply. “I want some nice girls, and I don’t care a rap about phonographs—silly, squeaky things! There was one on the parade at the seaside last year, and it irritated me beyond words! Besides, I don’t think it’s at all nice to make up to a person just because he is rich, and might leave you some money. I wouldn’t do it. It’s toadying; and if there is one thing I detest above anothah, it is—”
“I never said I would ‘make up’ to him. I never hinted at such a thing. We were not supposed to dream that he would leave us anything until he was dead, and then we would be overcome with surprise. I should hope I detest toadying as much as you! Toady, indeed!” and Kitty tossed her head and curled her lip in disdain. Both girls were upset by the sudden overthrow of their hopes, and therefore inclined to take offence more readily than usual. Christabel retired to the window in dignified displeasure, while Kitty wriggled into the corduroy jacket, stuck the Tam O’Shanter on her head at a rakish angle, and hitched her books under her arm in preparation to depart. Agatha’s expressive frowns and smiles were of no avail towards a reconciliation, and the parting took place in forced and chilly manner.
“Good by-ee!”
“Good by-ee!”
Then the door banged, and Kitty went stalking home, to drown her woes in afternoon tea, and to have her ruffled feathers smoothed down by her mother’s kindly sympathy.
Mrs Maitland regarded the disappointment from a personal standpoint, for the discovery that there was no Mrs Vanburgh was almost as great a blow to her as the absence of daughters had been to the schoolroom party. She agreed with Kitty that it was most officious of a solitary male to monopolise the Grange, and bemoaned the loss to the neighbourhood in a manner tragic enough to satisfy even her daughter’s requirements.
“Oh dear! oh dear! and I was looking to her for so many subscriptions! I had put her down for two five-pound notes, and half a dozen guineas. I meant her to take half my stall at the hospital bazaar, and to be the secretary of the Mission. How useful I had made that woman, to be sure! and now she has vanished into thin air before my eyes. I’m terribly disappointed, Kit; but we must make the best of it. Poor, lonely old man! He will be bored to death in that silent house. Lies on his back, you say, and is wheeled about in a chair? That means paralysis, I suppose, or very bad rheumatism. It’s sad to be old, and ill, and lonely.” Mrs Maitland stared thoughtfully before her, cup in hand, and her eyes grew suddenly moist. She was thinking how blessedly well off she was in her cheery, sunny little home, with husband and child to love her, and good health to enable her to do her work, and to find pleasure in the doing; and the picture of the strange old man lying on his couch in the dim oak-panelled halls seemed by comparison gloomier than ever.
“We’ll help him, Kit!” she said briskly. “We’ll help him, you and I! We’ll make his life brighter for him, and cheer him in every way we know!”
But, as it turned out, Mr Vanburgh was not anxious to be cheered, and Mrs Maitland found it more difficult than she expected to put her good resolves into practice.