“You had much better tell me what you have got on your mind, Eira,” she said. “I can feel that you are working yourself up, though really unnecessarily, about it all.”
With this encouragement Eira flung her papers on the table and herself into a chair.
“It has just struck me, Francie,” she ejaculated, “that, supposing—supposing, you know, for he must have seen how peculiar papa is, that he went first to him in the old-fashioned way, and that he—you know how astonished he’d be—on the first shock of such a thing—negatived it before he had given himself time to think it over, and take in that nobody could object to him, that he is quite un—exceptional—no, unexceptionable I mean! Wouldn’t it be awful? For, once he had committed himself, there is no moving him. Don’t laugh at me, I am really frightened.”
“I am quite sure,” said Frances, “that you need not dread anything of the kind. Even at the risk of any possible difficulty with papa, he—Horace, I mean—your personal pronouns are really too chaotic, Eira!—would not set about things in that way. But if you are feeling so worried, leave these Scaling Harbour papers just now, and go out. You may very likely meet Betty, and as you don’t know that there is any one in the library, you can do no harm.”
Off flew Eira, delighted to be free, and full of excellent resolutions as to the discretion with which she would act should need arise.
There was no Betty in the garden, nor, without asking a direct question, which under the circumstances she thought it best to avoid, could Eira satisfy herself that Mr Littlewood had really come. So she strolled along the road towards the church, her perseverance being rewarded before long by the sight of Betty seated calmly on a very ancient moss-covered tombstone, meditating apparently, with somewhat eccentric inappropriateness, present circumstances considered, rather on the end of life than on the changes which it was on the point of bringing to her.
“Oh, Betty!” exclaimed Eira, “what are you doing there? You might have stayed in the garden, or at least told me if you meant to come up here.” For by this time the younger sister’s excitement was in danger of lapsing into the cross stage. And it was very hot!
“I am thinking,” replied Betty coolly. “There’s no place like a churchyard for it, and this is a very comfortable seat. And it is nice to remember about all the people that have once been alive and have now got out of it all!”
“Tastes differ,” said Eira, rather sharply. “I shouldn’t call this exactly the time for a new edition of Young’s ‘Night Thoughts’ or Grey’s ‘Elegy,’ whichever suits you best, just when—when other people,” with marked emphasis, “are feeling very anxious about you, and wondering—”
Betty looked up at her with irritating composedness in her eyes.