“Yes,” the girl replied, “a morning like this makes one echo the ‘very good,’ with all one’s heart, as far as Nature is concerned.”
Then a little sigh made itself heard.
“Winifred,” she said, “you will be very sorry—papa is not well. He had one of his bad attacks yesterday. He is better, but of course very weak, as usual.”
“He must have been doing something imprudent,” said Winifred, with a touch of asperity which, with many people, is the expression of real anxiety. “He has been so well lately.”
“It has been leading up to it, I fear,” said Louise. “There has been a great deal of extra work, and I am afraid more of it has fallen on him than should have been the case, though I have done my best—I am not so clever or clear-headed as Winifred,” she added, with a smile, to Miss Norreys, “and in a large prop—”
An exclamation from her companion interrupted her.
“What a beautiful old house! A perfect Sleeping Beauty’s palace,” cried Miss Norreys. “Do tell me whose it is. It must be a show place.”
It never occurred to her that the great white house, seen to peculiar advantage from their present point of view, as it rose among the trees, its many latticed windows glistening in the sunshine—a sort of fairy dignity brooding over all—could be the Maryons’ home. For though she felt that she had been, it seemed to her, inexcusably misled by Winifred as to her family’s social position and means, she could not all at once have realised how “very pleasant” were the material places in which their lines were laid.
Again Louise smiled, but this time with a surprised and almost reproachful glance of interrogation at her sister.
“Has not Winifred told you about our dear old home?” she said. “We think there is nothing like it in the world. Winifred, have you never described it to Miss Norreys?”