“Introduced?” said Mrs. Lenny, with a little awe, “to her Majesty—her very self? Tell me how she looked, and all about her. Dear lady! what I’d give to hear a word out of her mouth!”
“I did not mean that,” said Alice, feeling important and splendid; “introduced means going out into society. I was presented too—of course I had to be presented. Oh, there are the children down that opening—do you see them? It is holiday time, and they are all together.”
Mrs. Lenny looked round with eager interest, again swaying the little carriage to one side.
“Are you the eldest?” she said; “and you have two little brothers?—only these two?”
She looked quite anxiously in Alice’s face.
“Only these two—except Paul—and we are three girls—just the same number of each.”
“Who is Paul?”
“Who is Paul?” said Alice, laughing; “that is the strangest question here. Paul is the eldest of all—he is my brother. We all come in pairs. There is Harry and Bell, Roland and Marie—and Paul is mine. He is not very much at home now,” she said, her face clouding with the recollection. “He is grown up—he is at Oxford. In the holidays he does not always come home like the little ones. No one could expect him to be like the little ones. He is a man.”
To a cooler observer Alice’s eager explanations would have betrayed the family anxiety, of which Paul was the object. But Mrs. Lenny had other thoughts in her mind. She clasped her hands together in her lap, and said, “Dear me, dear, dear me!” with suppressed dismay. This suddenly reawakened all the girl’s fears. Had it been a mistake, a pretence after all? Was it no old connection, nothing to do with papa’s business? (what could papa’s business matter, it would not go to any one’s heart like the other) but after all some new evil that was threatening Paul?
“Mrs. Lenny,” she cried, “oh tell me first, for I can bear it; is it about Paul? Has he got into any trouble? Is it something about him you have really come to tell us! Oh, tell me, tell me! and keep it from mamma.”