“Yes, I remember it,” replied Mrs Western, “but I don’t like splendid places,” she added, with a little smile.
“Nor splendid people?” said Lilias, half mischievously. “Isn’t mother funny—odd I mean, in some ways—difficult to understand?” she said afterwards to Mary, “she seems so afraid of our ever going the least out of the jog-trot, stupid way.”
“She is over-anxious, perhaps,” said Mary.
“No, I don’t think it is that exactly,” said Lilias. “I think papa is the more anxious of the two. I sometimes wish mamma were a little more, not anxious exactly—I don’t know what to call it—a little more worldly, perhaps.” Mary laughed.
“You would have liked her to invite those fine people to luncheon last Sunday, and then, perhaps, they would have taken a fancy to us, and invited us to go to see them?” she said, inquiringly.
“Nonsense, Mary! Do leave off talking about those people. I am tired to death hearing about them,” replied Lilias, impatiently. “Invite them to luncheon—to roast mutton and rice pudding, and a dozen children round the table!—Mary, I wish you wouldn’t say such silly things.”
“You are difficult to please, Lilias. Only the other day you told me, if I would be silly sometimes I should be almost perfect,” said Mary, dryly.
And then Lilias kissed her, and called herself “cross,” and there was peace again. But somehow, after this, the subject of the strangers was scarcely alluded to.
And “next Sunday” came and went, and if Mary descried some little attempt at extra self-adornment on Lilias’s part, she was wise enough not to take notice of it; and if Mr Western preached his new sermon in the morning instead of the afternoon, I question if any one discovered the fact. For, with these possible exceptions, the day was not a marked one in any way, and with a little sigh, and a smile too at her own folly, Lilias decided, as she fell asleep, that as yet there was little prospect of a turning-point in her life being at hand.
The week that followed this uneventful Sunday was a date to be remembered, and that had been tremulously anticipated by one heart, at least, among those of the Rectory party. It was to see the eldest son started on his career in life, and calm enough though she kept herself to outward appearance, to the mother this parting was a painful crisis. Her “boy Basil” was leaving her forever, for “boy” she could not expect him to return. He was going up to town for a few months in the first place, having been lucky enough to obtain a junior clerkship in a great mercantile firm, with a prospect—the few months over—of being transferred to the branch house abroad, where his chances of success, said the authorities, “if he behaved himself,” were pretty certain in the long run, though not, in the mean time, bewilderingly brilliant. He was a good sort of a boy in his way, and family affection among the Westerns was fairly and steadily developed; but nevertheless, with the exception of his mother, none of the household lost a night’s rest on account of his approaching departure, and Lilias openly avowed her conviction that Basil was greatly to be envied, and that it would be far pleasanter for him to pay home visits now and then, when he knew something of the world, and could make himself entertaining, than to have a great hulking hobbledehoy always hanging about, and getting into mischief. Mary, too, agreed that “it was a very good thing for Basil,” and nobody cried when he said good-bye except poor Francie, whose seven years were innocent of philosophy or common sense, and who only realised that her big brother was going “far, far away.”