“I am sorry,” I said, gently.
Papa’s face brightened at once, and this made it easier for me to master myself. We were just at Fuller’s by this time. I went in with papa and mamma, and after a minute or two I found it was not difficult to talk as usual, and to feel really interested in the papers. Papa and mamma chose very nice ones for the dining- and drawing-rooms, and I was asked my opinion about them all, especially about the schoolroom one. Then came the bedroom ones, most of which were quickly decided upon. I grew very anxious indeed when mamma asked to see the pale-grey-with-roses one, which had been in the window a week or two ago. Fuller’s man knew it at once and brought it out.
“It is beautiful,” he said, “a French paper, but expensive.”
And so it was, dearer than the one chosen for the dining-room! But papa glanced at it and then at me with a smile.
“Yes,” he said, “I will have that one for the bedroom to the right—the room off the passage up the first stair.”
“Oh, papa, thank you,” I said earnestly. And I meant it.
I have told all these little things to make you understand as well as I can, the mixture of feelings I had about the Whyte children even before I ever saw them. Now I will skip a bit of time, and go on to tell about how things actually turned out.
Things almost never turn out as one expects, the older one gets the more one sees this, especially about things one has thought of and planned a good deal. I had planned the first seeing the Whytes ever so many times in my own mind, always in the same way, you know, but with little additions and improvements the more I thought it over. The general idea of my plan was this. It was to be a lovely day: I was to ride over with papa one morning, Hoppie was to be looking his sweetest, and as we rode up to the house I was to see (and pretend not to see, of course) a lot of heads peeping out of a window to admire the little girl and her pony. Then we should be shown into the drawing-room, which I had furnished in my own mind rather shabbily and stiffly, and Captain and Mrs Whyte would come in and begin thanking papa for all his kindness, and would speak to me very nicely and rather admiringly, and Mrs Whyte would sigh a very little as if she wished her daughters were more like me. She would say how very much they wanted to know me, and she would beg papa to stay a few minutes longer while she called them. She would be very kind, but rather fussy and anxious. Then the girls would come in, looking very eager but shy. They were to be smaller than I, and younger-looking, very shabbily dressed, but nice, and very admiring. I would talk to them encouragingly, and they would tell me how beautiful they thought the rose paper, and that Lady Honor had told them I had chosen it—at least, perhaps it should be Lady Honor, I was not quite sure—sometimes I planned that papa should smile and it should come out by accident, as it were. Then this should lead us to talk of flowers, and I would tell them how they might make winter nosegays to brighten up the drawing-room a little, and I would promise them some flowers out of our conservatory, and papa would ask Mrs Whyte to let them come to have tea with me the next day, and they would look delighted though half afraid, and they would all come to the door to see me mount, and, and—on and on I would go for hours, in my fancies, of which “I” and “we” were always the centre, the pivot on which everything else revolved!
Now I will tell what really happened.