“Oh, Mattie! what a figure you look! I am positively ashamed that any one should see you. That hat is only fit to frighten the birds.”
“Oh, it will do very well for the mornings,” returned Mattie, perfectly undisturbed at these compliments. “Nobody looks at me: so what does it matter?” But this remark, which she made in all simplicity, only irritated him more.
“If you have no proper pride, you might at least consider my feelings. Do you think a man in my position likes his sister to go about like an old beggar-woman? You are enough to try any one’s patience, Mattie; you are, indeed!”
“Oh, never mind me and my things,” returned Mattie coaxingly; “and don’t go on writing just yet,” for Archie had taken up his pen again with a great show of being busy. “I want to tell you something that I know will interest you. There are some new people come to the Friary.”
“What on earth do you mean?—what Friary? I am sure I never heard of such a place.”
“Dear me, Archie, how cross you are this morning!” observed Mattie, in a cheerful voice, as she fidgeted the papers on the table. “Why, the Friary is that shabby little cottage just above us,—not a stone’s throw from this house.”
“Indeed? Well, I cannot say I am much interested in the movements of my neighbors. I am not a gossip like you, Mattie!”—another fling at poor Mattie. “I wish you would leave those papers alone. You know I never allow my things to be tidied, as you call it, and I am really very busy just now. I am in the middle of accounts, and I have to write to Grace and––”
“Well, I thought you would like to know.” And Mattie looked rather crestfallen and disappointed. “You talked so much about those young ladies some weeks ago, and seemed quite sorry not to see them again; and now––” but here Archie’s indifference vanished, and he looked up eagerly.
“What young ladies? Not those in Milner’s Library, who asked about the dressmaker?”
“The very same,” returned his sister, delighted at this change of manner. “Oh, I have so much to tell you that I must sit down,” planting herself comfortably on the arm of an easy-chair near him. Another time Archie would have rebuked her for 111 her unlady-like attitude, and told her, probably, that Grace never did such things; but now his interest was so excited that he let it pass for once. He even suffered her to take off her old hat and deposit it unreproved on the top of his cherished papers. “I was over at Crump’s this morning, to speak to Bobbie about weeding the garden, when I was surprised to see a railway-van unloading furniture at the Friary.”