‘The boys were very good boys!’ said Kate. ‘If they are silly, they can’t help it. Of course they were not as clever as you—no one is; and Bertie, you know—little Bertie, my Bertie—ought to think more of what he is going to do. But they were very nice, as boys go. We can’t expect them to be like us. Ombra, do come and try a run for the top.’
‘What a foolish child you are!’ said Ombra, suffering her portfolio to be taken out of her hands; and then her youth vindicated itself, and she started off like a young fawn up the little path. Kate could have won the race had she tried, but was too loyal to outstrip her princess. And thus the cobwebs were blown away from the young thinker’s brain.
CHAPTER XVII.
It will be seen, however, that, though Kate’s interpretation of the imperfections of ‘the boys’ was more genial than that of Ombra, yet that still there was a certain condescension in her remarks, and sense that she herself was older, graver, and of much more serious stuff altogether than the late visitors. Her instinct for interference, which had been in abeyance since she came to the Cottage, sprung up into full force the moment these inferior creatures came within her reach. She felt that it was her natural mission, the work for which she was qualified, to set and keep them right. This she had been quite unable to feel herself entitled to do in the Cottage. Mrs. Anderson’s indulgence and tenderness, and Ombra’s superiority, had silenced even her lively spirit. She could not tender her advice to them, much as she might have desired to do so. But Bertie Hardwick was a bit of Langton, one of her own people, a natural-born subject, for whose advantage all her powers were called forth. She thought a great deal about his future, and did not hesitate to say so. She spoke of it to Mr. Eldridge, electrifying the excellent Rector.
‘What a trouble boys must be!’ she said, when she ran in with some message from her aunt, and found the whole party gathered at luncheon. There were ten Eldridges, so that the party was a large one; and as the holidays were not yet over, Tom and Herbert, the two eldest, had not returned to school.
‘They are a trouble, in the holidays,’ said Mrs. Eldridge, with a sigh; and then she looked at Lucy, her eldest girl, who was in disgrace, and added seriously, ‘but not more than girls. One expects girls to know better. To see a great creature of fifteen, nearly in long dresses, romping like a Tom-boy, is enough to break one’s heart.’
‘But I was thinking of the future,’ said Kate, and she too gave a little sigh, as meaning that the question was a very serious one indeed.
The Rector smiled, but Mrs. Eldridge did not join him. Somehow Kate’s position, which the Rector’s wife was fond of talking of, gave her a certain solemnity, which made up for her want of age and experience in that excellent woman’s eyes.
‘As for us,’ Kate continued very gravely, ‘either we marry or we don’t, and that settles the question; but boys that have to work—— Oh! when I think what a trouble they are, it makes me quite sad.’
‘Poor Kate!’ said the laughing Rector; ‘but you have not any boys of your own yet, which must simplify the matter.’