“Come now, Betty,” said Frances, “don’t be untrue to your own belief. Beauty of any kind is always worth having. Let us be thankful that, living in the country, we never can be without the possibility of some, even in our indoor life. What would you do, Betty, if we lived in a grey—no, drab-coloured—street in some terrible town?”
“Do? I should die!” replied Betty.
“I shouldn’t,” said Eira. “I’d get to know some people, and that, after all, is more interesting than still life. But the present question is what shall I do with myself all this long morning?”
“You must stay in a warm room, whatever you do, if you want to cure those poor hands and feet. The only thing you can do is to read, and oh! by-the-by, I was forgetting—I got one or two books at the lending library yesterday that I want to look through before I read them aloud. I think they seem rather interesting. So if you can glance at one of them for me this morning it would really be a help.”
Eira brightened up a little at this, and before her sisters left her, they had the satisfaction of seeing her comfortably established on the old sofa.
“Yes,” she said, as they nodded good-bye from the doorway, “I repeat, things never are so bad but that they might be worse. We might have a dining-room without a sofa.”
Frances and Betty, despite their curiosity to spy the state of the land—that is to say, of the big house—at close quarters, had to make their way to the village this morning by the road, as one of their mother’s messages took them to the laundress’ cottage which stood at some little distance from the Craig-Morion grounds. Further on, however, they passed the lodge, and there for a moment they halted, on the chance of a word with the old gate-keeper. But she was evidently not there and the gates were still locked.
“What a good thing we didn’t come through the grounds,” said Betty. “But what can have become of old Webb and his wife? There must be something agog, Francie.”
“We shall see on our way back,” her sister replied; “they’re sure to come home for their dinner.”