‘Oh, nothing at all. I know that little men are just as nice, sometimes nicer, than big ones; but you know what we always thought: and he is not the least like it—not one little bit.’
Emmy looked as if she were going to cry; for the fact was that Mr. Swinford had been, by a piece of girlish romance not very uncommon among such unsophisticated girls as those of the Rectory, the hero of an entirely visionary castle in the air on the part of this young lady. Florence was more wise; she had the ideas of her century, and was very strongly convinced that for her sister to marry well was a thing most essential at the present crisis of the family fortunes; but she had been very indulgent to Emmy’s romance, possibly from the conviction that this was the only way in which her sister could be moved to take such a step—and partly because she had herself a sentimental side, and was deeply convinced that no true marriage could be made without love.
‘Well,’ she said soothingly, ‘never mind; he may be everything that is delightful in himself, even though he is short and not handsome.’
‘I never said he was not handsome,’ said Emmy, with some indignation, ‘nor yet short. How exaggerated you are! I said he was not tall. He is very nice-looking. Not the way we used to think; not dark-haired and with deep dark eyes as we used to imagine—and not fair either, which is perhaps better: but yet very nice—in his own way.’
‘Brown!’ cried Florence, ‘sober, sensible, common brown—like most people. After all, that must be the best and safest since Providence makes the most of us of that hue.’
‘If you think he is common,’ said Emmy indignantly, ‘you are making the greatest mistake. He is not heroic—in appearance: but unusual—to a degree.’ Emmy’s powers of language were not great, but her feeling was unmistakable. ‘I never saw any one at all like him,’ she said. ‘If he is not like a man in a poem or on the stage, he is just as little like the ordinary man you meet. Fancy, it was he who made the tea! His mother said he always did it. The way she calls Leo at every moment is the most curious thing. She has a sweet voice, but it is so imperious, as if she never thought it possible that any one could resist her; and, though it is quite low, he hears her before she has half called him, whatever he may be doing.’
‘All that is very interesting,’ said Florence, ‘but’—she seized her sister’s hands and looked anxiously into her face—‘of course you can’t see how things are to go the first time—but, Emmy, oh, tell me——!’
Emmy shook her head; she withdrew her hands; her eyes drooped before her sister’s gaze. ‘How can you ask?’ she said, ‘how could anybody tell? He was very nice, of course—as he would have been to the housemaid if we had sent her, or to Mrs. Brown at the school.’
‘Mamma said he was exceedingly nice to you, and not so nice to Aunt Emily.’
‘Ah, that was Mrs. Swinford she was thinking of. Mamma naturally thinks of her. No, no, Flo, we must not deceive ourselves; it was all the other way. If there is any one here whom Mr. Swinford thinks it worth his while to talk to and make friends with, it will neither be you nor me.’