“That is very true; and it was very dull. We don’t bring up our children like that nowadays,” said Mrs. Rushton, with that ironical superiority which the mother of a family always feels herself justified in displaying to a childless contemporary. Mrs. Ford had no children to get the advantage of the new rule. “And,” she added, “one feels for a dear child like Lucy, who has no mother, that one is doubly bound to do one’s best for her. How poor dear Mrs. Trevor would have watched over her had she been spared! a motherless girl has a thousand claims. And, Lucy,” continued her indulgent friend, “this is Ray’s party. It is he that is to manage it all; he took it into his head that you would like to see the Abbey again.”
“Oh, yes,” said Lucy, surprised that they should show so much thought for her, but quite ready to be pleased and grateful too.
“He and his sister will come and fetch you at two o’clock,” she continued; “it will be quite hurriedly got up, what I call an impromptu—but all the better for that. There will be just our own set. Mrs. Stone of course it would be useless to ask, now that school has begun again; but if there is any friend whom you would like to have—”
It was as if in direct answer to this half-question that at that moment the door opened and Katie Russell, all smiles and pleasure, came in. “Lucy,” she cried, “Bertie has come, as I told you; he wants so much to see you; may I bring him in? Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ford, I did not see that you were here.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Mrs. Ford, grimly; “most folks do the same.”
“Is it your brother, the author?” said Mrs. Rushton, excited. She was so far out of the world, and so little acquainted with its ways, that she felt, and thought it the right thing to show that she felt, an interest in a real living novelist. “Lucy, we must have him come to the picnic,” she cried.
But she was not so enthusiastic when Bertie appeared. His success had made a great difference in Bertie’s outward man; he was no longer the slipshod youth of Hampstead, by turns humble and arrogant, full of boyish assurance and equally boyish timidity. Even in that condition he had been a handsome young fellow, with an air of breeding which must have come from some remote ancestor, as there was no nearer way by which he could have acquired it. When he walked into the room now, it was as if a young prince had suddenly appeared among these commonplace people. It was not his dress, Mrs. Rushton soon decided, for Raymond was as well dressed as he—nor was it his good looks, though it was not possible to deny them; it was—more galling still—something which was neither dress nor looks, but which he had, and, alas! Raymond had not. Mrs. Rushton gazed at him open-eyed, while he came in smiling and gracious, shaking hands with cordial grace.
“It is not my own boldness that brings me,” he said, “but Katie’s. I am shifting the responsibility off my own shoulders on to hers, as you ladies say we all do; but for Katie’s encouragement, I don’t know if I would have ventured.”
“I am very glad to see you,” Lucy said; and then they all seated themselves, the central interest of the group shifting at once to the new-comer, the young man of genius, the popular author. He was quite sensible of the duties of his position, treated the ladies round him en bon prince with a suitable condescension to each and to all.
“I have a hundred things to say to you from my mother,” he said; “she wishes often that you could see her in her new house, where she is very comfortable. She thinks you would be pleased with it.” This was said with a glance of confidential meaning, which showed Lucy that, though Katie was not aware of it, her brother knew and acknowledged the source from which his mother’s comfort came. “And it is very kind of you to admit us at this untimely hour,” he said to Mrs. Ford, looking at her purple silk with respect as if it had been the most natural morning-dress in the world. “Katie is still only a school-girl, and is guided by an inscrutable system. I stand aghast at her audacity; but I am very glad to profit by it.”