"Oh, Mr. Lake! I did not know you were there."
"Just another, Anna."
"I cannot sing for you. I know only old songs."
"They are better than the new ones. The one you have just sung, 'Ye banks and braes,' is worth any ten that have been issued of late years."
"I feel quite ashamed to sing them before people; I am laughed at when I do. Lady Ellis stopped her ears this morning. Papa loved the old songs, and he did not care that I should sing new ones; so I never learnt any."
He took up a book of music much worn, "Old songs," as Anna called them. Her mother used to sing them in her youth, and the Reverend James Chester had learnt to love them. "Robin Adair," "The Banks of Allan Water," "Pray Goody," "The Baron of Mowbray," "She never blamed him," "The Minstrel-boy," and many others.
It was in his hand, and Anna stood looking over his shoulder, laughing at what Mrs. Chester sometimes called the "ancient bygones." On the table lay a drawing that Anna had done, betraying talent; the more especially when it was remembered that she could never sit to that, or anything else, for five minutes at a time. Up and down continually: called by Mrs. Chester, called by the children, called by the servants. She had never had a lesson in drawing in her life, she had never learnt to sing; what she did do was the result of native aptitude for it.
Mr. Lake had the drawing in his hand when the party entered, trooping in unceremoniously through the window, the children first. Lady Ellis's black-lace shawl was draped around her in its usual artistic fashion, and she wore a bonnet that could not by any stretch of imaginative politeness be construed into a widow's. Clara was with her, her refined face bright and radiant. The two were evidently on good terms with each other.
Mrs. Chester did not enter with them. Her household cares worried her, now that things must wear a good appearance for the new inmate, Lady Ellis. She came in presently from the hall, a cross look on her face, and spoke sharply to Anna. Selfish naturally, made intensely so by her struggle to get along, Mrs. Chester appeared to think that for her step-daughter to be in the drawing-room and not in the kitchen, though it were but for a few minutes in the day, was a heinous crime.
"Robert," she said, addressing her brother, "I wish you'd come up to my room while I take my bonnet off. I have a letter to show you."