“What do you think, my dear? you ought to be able to tell me. I suppose there is scarcely a room in the house so small as this?”
“I—don’t think I paid any attention.”
“No attention!—to a house which was to be our own house.”
“But no one thought then it was to be our own house,” cried Anne, coming to the rescue. “And you know Ally did not enjoy it, mother.”
“Oh, yes,” cried Ally, suddenly waking up, feeling once more the brightness of pleasure that had come with the sight of him; how he had found her neglected and made a princess of her, a little queen! Was it possible that she could ever have forgotten that?
“Well, not at first,” said Anne; “you didn’t like Cousin Alicia, which I don’t wonder at. Mab didn’t like her either. Mother, if Mab comes back and insists on coming to live with us, what shall you do?”
“I wish you would not be so nonsensical,” said Lady Penton, with a little vexation, “when I was talking of the furniture. Why should Mab—” she paused a moment, struck by a recollection, and then wound up with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Why should not Walter have a try?” The words came back to her mind vaguely, just clear enough to arouse a keener consciousness of the prevailing subject which her mind had put aside for the moment. Ah! poor Wat! poor Wat! how could his mother think or speak of anything while his fate hung in the balance? But then she reflected on the new agent who had been sent out into the world in search of him, a young man who knew the ways of young men. This reflection gave her more comfort than anything. She clung to the idea that young men spoke a language of their own among themselves, and that only they understood each other’s way. She resumed with another sigh.
“I don’t suppose we have anything in our possession that is fit to be put into the drawing-room, Ally. I remember it in old days, the very few times I ever was there: but they say it is far more splendid now than it was before. Do you think that chiffonier would do?” The chiffonier had been the pride of Lady Penton’s heart. It was inlaid, and had a plate-glass back. She looked at it fondly where it stood, not very brilliant in fact, but making the shabby things around look a little more shabby. She had always felt it was thrown away amid these surroundings, and that to see it in a higher and better sphere would be sweet and consolatory; but Lady Penton was aware that taste had changed greatly since that article was constructed, and that perhaps the decorations of the great drawing-room at Penton might be out of harmony with a meuble belonging to another generation, however beautiful it might be in itself.
“I—don’t know,” said Ally, looking at the well-known article with her dreamy eyes; “there was nothing like it—I think: I didn’t notice—”
“You don’t seem to have noticed anything, my dear,” her mother said.