“You are very wicked,” said Marion, laughing in spite of herself.
“I am not, indeed,” he pleaded. “How can I feel amiably disposed to anything that will cause you so much trouble. But I won’t say it if it vexes you. I dare say you think me horribly unnatural, but how can I care for anything as I do for you?”
“Never mind,” she replied. “You’ll care quite enough when the time comes. And I never said I was going to work my fingers sore, you exaggerating creature.”
Then she brought out the five pound note she had that day received from Mrs. Allen, and set to work to calculate how far was the farthest to which the hundred shillings could be persuaded to extend themselves in her contemplated purchases.
Geoffrey’s Millington experience was applied to as a competent authority on the probable prices of various materials; but, to tell the truth, though he gave his most solemn attention to the subject under consideration, he failed to distinguish himself as might have been expected, and ended by getting himself called “a great stupid, who didn’t know the difference between linen and cotton, valenciennes and crochet.”
It was laughable enough in its way, this little domestic scene, I dare say. But pathetic too. Marion, through all her cheerfulness, was yet conscious of the peculiar loneliness of her position. Motherless, sisterless, her only confidante in these essentially womanly matters a man, whom, at first sight, one would hardly have selected as likely to excel in delicate adaptation of his strength to her weakness, his thorough manliness to her shrinking refinement. Yet, great rough ploughman as he called himself, few men were better fitted than Geoffrey Baldwin to be mother, sister, and friend, as well as husband, to the solitary girl who had no one but him to look to.
Christmas brought a letter from Harry, enclosing a cheque for ten pounds, “to buy Marion a winter bonnet,” he said. Since the news of their misfortune had reached him, Harry’s conduct had been beyond all praise. Not only had he at once cut down his already moderate personal expenses, but, by the strictest economy, he had succeeded in saving the little surplus he now sent to his sister as a Christmas-box. How welcome a one he little guessed! For it was, of course, at once appropriated to be spent in the same direction as the obstinate five pounds, which so resolutely-refused to behave themselves as ten.
“Don’t be unhappy about me,” wrote Marion’s brother. “I only wish I could see that you and Baldwin are as jolly as I. My pay is, as you see, more than enough for my expenses, and if all goes well, by the time we come home again, I have a very good chance of being made adjutant, which will enable me to manage without difficulty in England. By another Christmas I shall hope to be with you at home; Millington or anywhere, it doesn’t matter—wherever you two are is home to me.”
Some tears were shed over this letter. It was not in woman-nature—sister-nature—that it should be otherwise. Nevertheless, it added not a little to the cheerfulness of Mrs. Appleby’s two lodgers as they ate their modest Christmas dinner in the sitting-room looking into Brewer Street. A ponderous invitation to perform that same important ceremony in the presence and at the board of Mr. and Mrs. Baxter, had been received but civilly declined.
“Let us have a nice quiet Christmas-day together, in our own little room,” pleaded Marion; and Geoffrey was by no means loth to comply with the request.