“He looks like a man in a parable,” said Agnes, in the same tone. “One could think he was gliding away mysteriously to do something wrong. See, now, he has gone into the shadow. I cannot see him at all—he has quite disappeared—it is so black. Ah! I shall think he is always standing there, looking over at us, and plotting something. I wish Charlie would come home—how long he is!”
“Who would plot anything against us?” said innocent Marian, with her fearless smile. “People do not have enemies now as they used to have—at least not common people. I wish he would come out again, though, out of that darkness. I wonder what sort of man he could be.”
But Agnes was no longer following the man; her eye was wandering vaguely over the pale illumination of the sky. “I wonder what will happen to us all?” said Agnes, with a sigh—sweet sigh of girlish thought that knew no care! “I think we are all beginning now, Marian, every one of us. I wonder what will happen—Charlie and all?”
“Oh, I can tell you,” said Marian; “and you first of all, because you are the eldest. We shall all be famous, Agnes, every one of us; all because of you.”
“Oh, hush!” cried Agnes, a smile and a flush and a sudden brightness running over all her face; “but suppose it should be so, you know, Marian—only suppose it for our own pleasure—what a delight it would be! It might help Charlie on better than anything; and then what we could do for Bell and Beau! Of course it is nonsense,” said Agnes, with a low laugh and a sigh of excitement, “but how pleasant it would be!”
“It is not nonsense at all; I think it is quite certain,” said Marian; “but then people would seek you out, and you would have to go and visit them—great people—clever people. Would it not be odd to hear real ladies and gentlemen talking in company as they talk in books?”
“I wonder if they do,” said Agnes, doubtfully. “And then to meet people whom we have heard of all our lives—perhaps Bulwer even!—perhaps Tennyson! Oh, Marian!”
“And to know they were very glad to meet you,” exclaimed the sister dreamer, with another low laugh of absolute pleasure: that was very near the climax of all imaginable honours—and for very awe and delight the young visionaries held their breath.
“And I think now,” said Marian, after a little interval, “that perhaps it is better Charlie should be a lawyer, for he would have so little at first in papa’s office, and he never could get on, more than papa; and you would not like to leave all the rest of us behind you, Agnes? I know you would not. But I hope Charlie will never grow like Mr Foggo, so old and solitary; to be poor would be better than that.”
“Then I could be Miss Willsie,” said Agnes, “and we should live in a little square house, with two bits of lawn and two fir-trees; but I think we would not call it Killiecrankie Lodge.”