“I should much rather you had the second one, Anne.”
“I dare say! as if there was any question about me. I shall have what I require when my time comes. Don’t you know we are going to be well off now?”
“Oh, Anne! it is rather poor to think of being well off only as a way of getting new frocks.”
“It is a great deal more than that, of course, but still it is that too. It is nice to have new frocks when one wants them, instead of waiting and waiting till one can have the cheapest possible thing that will do. We have always had things that would do. Now we are to have what we require—what we like. I wish Wat and you, Ally, would see it as mother and I do. Perhaps it may be nice to be the chief people of one’s name, and be able to snub all the rest, even Cousin Alicia, but—”
“I never wished to snub any one, much less Cousin Alicia,” cried Ally, with indignation.
“That is really what it comes to. We wanted to be the grandest of the family, to be able to say to Mrs. Russell Penton, ‘Stand aside, you’re only a woman, and let Sir Edward walk in.’ And why should she be disinherited because she’s a woman? I am going in for women, for the woman’s side. I don’t believe father is as clever as she is. Oh, to be sure I like father a great deal better. How could you ask such a question? But he rather looks up to her; he is not so clever; he couldn’t set one down as she does, only by a look out of her eyes. No, no, no; a new frock when one wants it, and to go to town for the day, and even to the theater, or to have a dance at home—all that is far, far better than snubbing Cousin Alicia. But,” added Anne, with sudden gravity, “for you that have got to go and stay there, it is rather dreadful after all.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PRIMROSE PATH.
Walter Penton had been the most satisfactory of sons and brothers. He had not rebelled much even against the discipline of reading aloud. He was only twenty, and there was nothing to do in the neighborhood of the Hook, especially in the evening, so that circumstances had helped to make him good. He had, to tell the truth, taken a great interest in the novels, so much as to be tempted often to carry off the current volume and see “how it ended” by himself, which the girls thought very mean of him. But very rarely, except in summer, or when there was some special attraction out-of-doors, had he declined to aid the progress of the pinafores, in his way, by reading. But lately he had not been so good. Perhaps it was because there was a moon, and the evenings had been particularly bright; but he had not asked the girls to share his walks, as formerly it had been so natural to do. Sometimes he did not come into the drawing-room at all after tea, but would intimate that he had “work” to do, especially now, when, if he were really going to Oxford, it was necessary for him to rub up his Greek a little. Nobody could say that this was not perfectly legitimate and in fact laudable; and though the ladies were disappointed they could make no complaint, especially as in the general quickening of the family life there was, for the moment, many things to talk of, which made reading aloud less necessary. For instance, on the evening of the day which they had spent in town there was no occasion for reading. The most exciting romance could not have been more delightful than the retrospect of that delightful day. They all went up together by the early train. Mr. Penton himself had said that he thought he might as well go too, and accompany Walter to the tailor’s, as that was a place in which ladies were inadmissable; and accordingly they parted at the railway, the mother and the girls going one way, and the father and his boy another—both parties with a sense of the unusual about them which made their expedition exhilarating. To spend money when you feel (and that for the first time) that you can afford it is of itself exhilarating, especially (perhaps) to women who have little practice in this amusement, and to whom the sight of the pretty things in the shops is a pleasure of a novel kind. It was a matter of very serious business indeed to the ladies, carrying with it a profound sense of responsibility. Two evening dresses, for a girl who had never had anything better than the simplest muslin! and a “costume” for morning wear of the most complete kind, with everything in keeping, jacket and hat and gloves. The acquisition of this could scarcely be called pleasure. It was too solemn and important, a thing the accomplishment of which carried with it a certain sensation of awe; for what if it should not be quite in the fashion? what if it should be too much in the fashion? too new, too old, not having received the final approval of those authorities which rule the world? Sometimes a thing may be very pretty, and yet not secure that verdict; or it may be mal porté, as the French say, worn first by some one whose adoption of it is an injury. All these things have to be considered: and when the purchasers are country people, ignorant people who do not know what is going to be worn! So that the responsibility of the business fully equaled its pleasantness, and it was only when the more important decisions were made, and the attention of the buyers, at too high a tension in respect to other articles, came down to the lighter and easier consideration of ribbons and gloves, that the good of the expedition began to be fully enjoyed. And then they all had luncheon together, meeting when their respective business was executed. Mr. Penton took them to a place which was rather a dear place, which he had known in his youth, when all the places he had known were dear places. It was perhaps, a little old-fashioned too, but this they were not at all aware of. And the lunch he had ordered was expensive, as Mrs. Penton had divined. She said as much to the girls as they drove from their shop to the rendezvous. She said, “I know your father will order the very dearest things.” And so he had; but they enjoyed it all the more. The extravagance itself was a pleasure. It was such a thing as had never happened in all their previous experience; a day in town, a day shopping, and then a grand luncheon and a bottle of champagne. “If we are going to be so much better off they may as well get the good of it,” Mr. Penton replied, in answer to his wife’s half-hearted remonstrance. For she too found a pleasure in the extravagance. Her protest was quite formal; she too was quite disposed for it once in a way—just to let them know, in the beginning of their mended fortune, what a little pleasure was.
And when they came home, bringing sugar-plums and a few toys for the little ones, they were all a little tired with this unusual, this extraordinary dissipation. After tea the pinafores did not make much progress; they were too much excited to care to go on with their reading. They wanted to talk over everything and enjoy it a second time more at their leisure. They had shaken off the sense of responsibility, and only felt the pleasure of the holiday, which was so rare in their life. Mr. Penton himself was seduced into making comparison of the London of which they had thus had a flying glimpse with the London he had known in the old days, and into telling stories of which somehow the point got lost in the telling, but which had been, as he said, “very amusing at the time;” while the girls listened and laughed, not at his stories so much as out of their own consciousness that it had all been “fun,” even the inconveniences of the day, and the prosiness of those inevitable tales. Mrs. Penton was the one who subsided most easily out of the excitement. But for a little look of complacence, an evident sense that it was she who had procured them all this pleasure, there was less trace in her than in any of the others of the day’s outing. She drew her work-basket to her as usual after tea. She was not to be beguiled out of her evening’s work; but she smiled as she went on with her darning, and listened to the father’s stories, and the saucy commentaries of the girls, with a happy abandonment of all authority in consideration of the unusual character of the day. The only thing that brought a momentary shadow over the party was that Walter was not there.
“There is no moon to-night, but Wat is off again for one of his walks. I wonder what has made him so fond of walks, just when we want him at home?” the girls cried. And then a little mist came over his mother’s eyes. She said, “Hush! he is probably at his Greek;” but whether she believed this or not nobody could say.