“No, you silly boy; but if we take the one that is furnished, don’t you see, for little while, and the one that is not furnished for a permanency, then we can be comfortable in the one house while we furnish the other; ain’t that clever?” said Nancy, laughing. “I can’t fancy anything more delightful. Make haste with your luncheon, Arthur. Oh, yes, I will sit down with you, I will take a morsel; but I am in such a hurry. I do hope you will like them as much as I do. It is so nice to think of having a ’ome, as mother says.”
Arthur did not make any reply; after so much stormy weather as there had been, it grieved him to destroy all this sunshine by any remonstrances. He was glad to bask in it a little and put off the next difficulty. It was a bright winter afternoon when they sallied forth together, the red sun descending towards the west, and throwing up all the leafless trees beyond Mr. Eagles’ great house as on a crimson background, against which every branch and twig stood out—the Green more brilliantly green than usual from the many rains and from the afternoon redness which enhanced its colour—the red-brick houses all ruddy and warm in the light. Even to Arthur, whose heart was heavy, it was a pleasant walk to Glenfield Road. They were alone, and Nancy was in the gayest humour, full of satisfaction with herself. Though she had lost her confidence in the Paris dresses, which had much disappointed her mother and sisters, and was afraid that her travelling costume looked dreadfully dowdy (which was Sarah Jane’s opinion)—yet the sense of being at home, able to dazzle all her old companions with her good fortune, and to feel that her house and husband, and all her possessions, would be admired and to envied by the right people, had calmed all Nancy’s susceptibilities and raised her spirits to the highest point. She all but danced along the street, holding Arthur’s arm in a way which may be old-fashioned, but still comes natural to a bride. She was about to have a house of her own, a house fit for a lady, where obsequious tradesmen, once her equals, or better than she, would come for orders. She was about to have servants of her own—not a “girl,” as in the Bates’ establishment, but a cook and housemaid, as good as the Vicar or any of the fine people on the Green. And all these fine people would call upon her, Nancy thought; who was there among them equal to Mrs. Arthur Curtis, a baronet’s daughter-in-law, some time or other to be Lady Curtis—a baronet’s wife?—and who could speak familiarly of other baronets, Denham, for instance, as an intimate friend. And then there was Durant.
“Who is Durant,” she said, “Arthur? Is he anybody, is his father anybody? I had a long talk with him here once. I was angry—But on the whole I liked Durant.”
“He is—my oldest friend; and the man in all the world who knows most about me,” said Arthur, laughing in spite of himself; “but further information would not enlighten you, Nancy—”
“You mean that I don’t know your peerages, and that sort of thing,” said Nancy, piqued a little.
This time Arthur laughed with good will. “I don’t think the peerages would help you much,” he said. “Lewis Durant is a clergyman’s son, Nancy.”
“Only a clergyman?” She was disappointed. “But they must have been very rich or something, Arthur, or such proud folks as your people would not have let Durant be so intimate with you.”
“My people,” said Arthur with some haste, “would not have thought of interfering with my school friends to ask whose sons they were; and Lewis’s family, were rich—but they are not rich now. Call him Lewis, if you please, when you speak of him, Nancy; but don’t say Durant. It sounds fast; and you never will be fast, I hope.”
“Oh, it sounds fast, do you think?” Nancy was mollified. When he had made the same request before, she had thought it a stigma upon her as not knowing how a lady should talk, but this was a lesser offence. “Well then, Mr. Durant—if I must say Mr. Durant—isn’t he rich now?”
“No, not at all rich.”