'Is it wrong?' said Norah, stealing behind her mother's chair with a coaxing arm round her neck. 'I never saw anything like it. I should like, just this once. Our old little parties were such baby affairs, mamma. That donkey-chair, what fun it was! And oh! do you remember how it always ran away, and that time when little Jenny fell asleep? But this will be grand—something to see. And you will like the drive; it is such a pretty drive; and the woods will be lovely. I never was there in October before.'
'You coaxing child, as Miss Jane says; you want to go.'
'Yes, please, mamma.'
And Norah dropt a little curtsey demurely, like the child she was no longer. And yet as she stood there in her gray frock, she was so very like a child that Helen had to rub her eyes and ask herself what was this wonderful difference. Yesterday or so Norah had trudged along among the boys, taking her share, pushing them about, carrying her own basket in all the bon camaraderie of childhood. Now she was the princess, drawing their wistful looks after her, breaking poor Ned's heart, attracting the other hero out of his natural sphere. How was it? The mother sighed a little, wondering, and smiled, with a sense that the world, which had so long neglected her, was offering to her, to herself, not to Norah, the sweetest, strangest flatteries. She was anxious as to how it might all end, and sometimes was unhappy; and yet she was pleased—what mother ever was otherwise?—'to see her bairn respected like the lave.'
And then Mr Rivers came back for his cup of tea. What did he want, haunting the old house? He came back for the answer, he said; and called himself Mrs Burton's man, and the penny-post, and made very merry over the whole transaction. But in all this he made it very apparent that any excuse for coming was sweet to him. And Norah laughed at the joke, and cast down her pretty eyes, and her colour went and came like the wind. What did he mean? Did he mean anything? Or was it for mere amusement that on every pretext possible he came to the Gatehouse?
CHAPTER XIII.
There was, however, another point to be considered before Wednesday, and that was the question of dress, which convulses a poor household when unusual festivities are in progress. Mrs Drummond's black silk was, as Mrs Dalton said, 'always nice.' It had lasted from Helen's prosperous days till now; it had changed its form half-a-dozen times, and now, thanks to the beneficent fashion which prevailed, short walking dresses had 'come out quite fresh,' as Norah declared in triumph. But Norah did not possess that toilette fraîche which is indispensable for a young lady at a picnic. Her gray frock was very pretty at home; but amid all the shining garments of the great young ladies, their perfect ribbons, and hats, and boots, and gloves, all those wonderful accessories which poor people cannot hope for, how could she look anything but a poor little Cinderella? 'My dress would do, mamma—it is not the dress,' Norah said, looking at herself in dismay in the old-fashioned long glass in its ebony frame, as they discussed this matter; 'and all that I have is well enough; good enough, you know, very nice for common wear. Short dresses are a blessing, but then they show one's boots; and the cuffs, and the collars, and the ribbons! Perhaps we ought not to have said we would go.'
'That is what I feared,' said Helen. 'It is hard you should not have a little amusement when it comes in your way; and then there are other things to think of; but to live among people who are richer, much richer than one is one's self——'
'What are the other things that have to be thought of?' said Norah, with that sudden fantastic jealousy of ulterior motives which affects the young.