“Ah, you are cunning, Mr. Drummond. You found me disposed to take the offensive in the matter of church-going, and now you are on another track. There is a lecture somewhere in the background. How doth the little busy bee, etc. Now, don’t frown,”—as Mr. Drummond knitted his brows and really looked annoyed: “I will not refuse to be catechised.” 123
“I should not presume to catechise you,” he returned, hastily. “I appeal to Miss Mewlstone if my question were not a very innocent one.”
“Just so; just so,” replied Miss Mewlstone; but she looked a little alarmed at this appeal. “Oh, very innocent; oh, very so.”
“With two against me I must yield,” returned Mrs. Cheyne, with a curl of her lip. “What do we do with our time, Miss Mewlstone? Your occupation speaks for itself: it is exquisitely feminine. Don’t tell Miss Mattie, Mr. Drummond, but I never work. I would as soon arm myself with a dagger as a needle or a pair of scissors. When I am not in the air, I paint. I only lay aside my palette for a book.”
“You paint!” exclaimed Archie, with sudden interest. It was the first piece of information he had yet gleaned.
“Yes,” she returned, indifferently: “one must do something to kill time, and music was never my forte. I sketch and draw and paint after my own sweet will. There are portfolios full of my sketches in there,”—with a movement of her hand towards a curtained recess. “No, I know what you are going to say: you will ask to see them; but I never show them to any one.”
“For what purpose, then, do you paint them?” were the words on his lips; but he forbore to utter them. But she read the question in his eyes.
“Did I not say one must kill time?” she returned, rather irritably: “the occupation is soothing: surely that is reason enough.”
“It is a good enough reason, I suppose,” he replied, reluctantly, for surely he must say a word here; “but one need not talk about killing time, with so much that one could do.”
Then there came a gleam of suppressed mischief in her eyes: