Away danced Rosie to the tune of her own song, with her light figure frisking from side to side of the long stone passage.
"Ah me! I fear we shall have trouble yet with that very thoughtless girl. She can only see the light side of everything. It is high time for her now; why before I was seventeen—But Frank, you don't look like yourself to-night!" The old lady went up to him, and pushed aside his hair, as crisp and curly as a double hyacinth. "I am almost sure, there is something on your mind. Your dear father had exactly that expression upon his face, at periods of his married life. But then it was always the times when he had rheumatics in his left shoulder blade; and I used to iron them out with brown paper, the darkest brown that you can get, and a sprinkle of vinegar underneath, as hot as ever you can bear it; in fact, until it begins to singe, and then——"
"Well, nobody will ever do that to me, thank God!" Frank spoke in a very reckless tone, and strictly avoided his mother's eyes.
"I will, my son, if I live long enough. Old Mrs. Horner used to say—not the present Mrs. John, you know, but her husband's mother——"
"Excuse me, dear mother, but I thought I heard a call. Shall I go, and knock at the young lady's door?"
"Frank, how can you ask such a question? Not that she is not in very pretty order, and fit for any one to look at her; with my dressing-gown on, as good as new, and the big picture-Bible on one side of her, and 'The Fashionable Lady's Vade Mecum' on the other."
"How queer she must look in your dressing-gown, mother! Quite an old frump, I suppose?"
"I am very much obliged to you, my son. But as it happens, Miss Christie Fox does not look at all like an old frump; though your poor mother would of course, and must expect it—though not perhaps quite to be told of it. On the contrary, Miss Fox looks very bright and blooming, with her eyes like the sky itself, and her lovely hair flowing all down her shoulders."
"I had better go and see whether she has knocked for something. I need not go in of course. In fact I should not think of it, only just to pop my head inside the door, and then——"
"No, you won't pop it, sir, in any place of the kind. Remember that it is a bedroom; and you are a gentleman—or ought to be."