"Thank you, Uncle Hugh," warmly repeated Frank, rising, his face flushing with pleasure as he met the doctor's hand. "Of course you understand that it must not yet be talked of: I must first of all speak to Mrs. St. Clare."
"I shall not be likely to talk of it," replied Dr. Raynor.
[CHAPTER X.]
MAJOR AND MRS. RAYNOR
The windows of Spring Lawn stood open to the afternoon sun. It was a small, pretty white house, half cottage, half villa, situated about three miles from Bath. A latticed portico, over which crept the white clematis, led into a miniature hall: Major Raynor could just turn round in it. On either side was a small sitting-room, the dining-room on the left, the drawing-room on the right.
The scrambling midday dinner was over. Somehow all the meals seemed to be scrambling at the major's, from the utter want of order, and of proper attendance. Only two servants were kept, a cook and a nurse: and they could not always get their wages paid. When Edina was there, she strove to bring a little comfort out of the chaos: but that was only a chance event; a brief and rare occasion, occurring at long intervals in life. Some wine stood on the old table-cover, with a plate of biscuits. On one side of the table sat the major; a tall and very portly man, with a bald head and a white moustache, looking every day of his nine and-sixty years. He had been getting on for fifty when he married his young wife; who was not quite eight-and-thirty yet: a delicate, fragile-looking woman, with a small fair face and gentle voice, mild blue eyes, a pink colour, and thin light brown hair quietly braided back from it. Mrs. Raynor looked what she was: a gentle, yielding, amiable, helpless woman; one who could never be strong-minded in any emergency whatever, but somehow one to be loved at first sight.
She sat half turned from the table—as indeed did the major opposite, their faces towards the window—her feet on a footstool, and her hands busy with work, apparently a new frock she was making for one of her younger children. She wore a faded muslin gown, green its predominant colour; a score of pins, belonging to the work in process, in her waistband.
They were talking of the weather. The major was generally in a state of heat. That morning he had walked into Bath and back again, and got in late for dinner, puffing and steaming, for it was an up-hill walk. He liked to have a fly one way at least; but he had not always the money in his pocket to pay for it.
"Yes, it was like an oven in the sun, Mary," continued he, enlarging upon the weather. "I don't remember any one single year that the heat has come upon us so early."
"That's why I have a good deal of sewing to do just now," observed Mrs. Raynor. "We have had to take to our summer things before they were ready. Look at poor dear little Robert! The child must be melted in that stuff frock."