“Oh, how happy she must be!” responded Nan, softly, for to her no lot seemed sweeter than this. To be the centre and support of a large family circle,—the friend and trusted confidante of each! What a wonderful creature this Grace must be! and how could he speak of her in that pitying tone? “No life of her own!” Well, what life could she want better than this? To be the guide and teacher of her younger sisters, and to be loved by them so dearly! “Oh, I think she is to be envied! her life must be so full of interest,” she said, addressing the astonished Archie, who had certainly never taken this view of it. And when she had said this, she gave a slight signal to her sisters, which they understood at once; and then 178 they paced slowly down the beach, with their faces towards the town, talking as they went.
They did not walk four abreast, as they used to do in the Oldfield lanes; but Nan led the way with Mr. Drummond, and Phillis and Dulce dropped behind.
Archie was a little silent; but presently he said, quite frankly, as though he had known her for years,—but from the first moment he had felt strangely at home with these girls,—
“Do you know, you have thrown a fresh light on a vexed subject? I have been worrying myself dreadfully about Grace. I wanted her to live with me because there was more sympathy between us than there ever will be between my sister Mattie and myself. We have more in common, and think the same on so many subjects; and I knew how happy I could have made her.”
“Yes, I see,” returned Nan; and she looked up at him in such an interested way that he found no difficulty in going on:
“We had planned for years to live together; but when I accepted the living, and the question was mooted in the family council, my mother would not hear of it for a moment. She said Grace could not possibly be spared.”
“Well, I suppose not, after what you have told me. But it must have been a great disappointment to you both,” was Nan’s judicious reply.
“I have never ceased to regret my mother’s decision,” he returned, warmly; “and as for Grace, I fear she has taken the disappointment grievously to heart.”
“Oh, I hope not!”
“Isabel writes to my sister Mattie that Grace is looking thin and pale and has lost her appetite, and she thinks the mother is getting uneasy about her; and I cannot help worrying myself about it, and thinking how all this might have been averted.”