“I am glad you were not in the park,” said Lady Emma.
“But we did come through it after meeting him,” said Frances. “It would have been affected to do otherwise just because he is staying at the house, and I suppose, as he was walking our way, he could scarcely have avoided walking on beside us. He asked me if he might call to say good-bye to you, mamma, to-morrow afternoon?”
The last words, unfortunately as it turned out, were overheard by Mr Morion as he entered the room. His wife, taught by long experience, made no reply, so the message remained uncommented upon, unless a doubtful grunt from the depths of the arm-chair where the master of the house had settled himself could have been taken as referring to it.
Silence, not an unusual state of things at Fir Cottage, ensued, and as soon as the two younger girls could escape from the room they hastened to their own quarters, a small and in wintertime decidedly dreary little chamber, which in old days had been used as their schoolroom. It looked out to the side of the house and was ill lighted. But its propinquity to the kitchen was, practically speaking, in cold weather no small boon, preventing its ever becoming very chilly, for, though it boasted a fireplace, the restrictions as to fuel formed one of the most disagreeable economies in practice at Fir Cottage. In summer, on the other hand, the schoolroom was apt to become unbearably hot; but in summer, if it is anything like a normal season, and in the country, life usually presents itself under a very different aspect. Such things as fires and chilblains do not enter into one’s calculations; one’s own room, in nine cases out of ten, is a pleasant resort, and even if not so, are there not out-of-doors boudoirs by the dozen?
Dreary enough, though, the little room looked this evening, when by the light of one candle Betty and Eira established themselves as comfortably as circumstances allowed of, that is to say, on two little low basket-chairs, dismissed from the drawing-room long ago as too shabby, which had been one of their few luxuries in lessons days. Just now, also, the extraordinary possibilities which they were about to discuss so filled their imaginations that the uninviting surroundings over which they often groaned would have passed unnoticed had they been ten times worse. And worse they might have been most assuredly! For one fairy gift was shared alike by the three sisters—the gift of dainty orderliness; and where this reigns one may defy poverty to do its worst, for with such a background the tiniest attempt at prettiness or grace is trebled in pleasing effect.
“Eira,” said Betty in an almost awe-struck whisper, “do you really, really mean what you said? Do you think it possible? And—” with a touch of hesitation, quaint and almost touching in its contrast to the outspoken treatment of such subjects by the typical maiden of to-day, “if—if he had—fallen in love with Frances, could she ever care for him, I wonder?”
A dreamy questioning came into her eyes as she spoke.
“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” said Eira. “Of course neither you nor I can picture to ourselves any man being good enough for Frances, so we need not expect the impossible. But taking that for granted, I don’t see why she mightn’t get to care for this man. Indeed, she has liked him from the beginning, and stuck up for him against you. And as men go—of course we really don’t know any, but I suppose some books are more or less true to life?—as men go, I suppose any one would consider him very attractive.”
“Perhaps,” said Betty gently, for she was already beginning to see her bête noire through very different spectacles, “perhaps. And then,” she added, with an amusing little air of profound worldly wisdom, “he must be rich, and made a good deal of, and all that sort of thing, and for a man of that kind to find out what a girl really is, in spite of her plain simple life, and way of dressing, and all that—though, of course, nobody can say that Francie is not good-looking, far more than merely pretty—don’t you think, Eira, that that of itself shows that he must have a great deal of good in him?”
“Yes,” Eira agreed, “I do. Though it doesn’t do to be too humble, Betty, even about external things. Remember, however poor we are, that as far as family and ancestry go we could scarcely be better. No one need think it a condescension to marry a Morion.”