Not Like Other Girls

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

Sir Harry watched them with a secret chuckle. “He must put a stop to all that presently,” he said; but just at first it amused him to see it all. “It was so pretty and plucky of them,” he thought.

He would saunter into the work-room in the morning, and watch them for an hour together as he sat and talked to them. After the first they never minded him, and his presence made no difference to them. Nan measured and cut out, and consulted Phillis in her difficulties, as usual. Dulce sang over her sewing-machine, and Phillis went from one to the other with a grave, intent face. Sometimes she would speak petulantly to him, and bid him not whistle or tease Laddie: but that was when one of her fits of impatience was on her. She was generally gracious to him, and made him welcome.

When he was tired of sitting quiet, he would take refuge with Aunt Catherine in her little parlor, or go into the vicarage for a chat with Mattie and her brother: he was becoming very intimate there. Sometimes, but not often, he would call at the White House; but, though the Cheynes liked him, and Magdalene was amused at his simplicity, there was not much in common between them.

He had taken a liking to Colonel Middleton and his daughter, and would have found his way to Brooklyn over and over again, only the colonel gave him no encouragement. They had met accidentally in the grounds of the White House, and Mr. Cheyne had introduced them to each other; but the colonel bore himself very stiffly on that occasion and ever after when they met on the Parade and in the reading-room. In his heart he was secretly attracted by Sir Harry’s blunt ways and honest face; but he was a cousin of those Challoners, and intimacy was not to be desired: so their intercourse was limited to a brief word or two.

“Your father does not want to know me,” he said once, in his outspoken way, to Miss Middleton, when they met at the very gate of Brooklyn, and she had asked him, with some little hesitation, if he were coming in. “It is a pity,” he added, regretfully, “for I have taken a fancy to him: he seems a downright good sort, and we agree in politics.”

Elizabeth blushed; for once her courtesy and love of truth were sadly at variance.

“He does like you very much, Sir Harry,” she said; and then she hesitated.

“Only my cousins sew gowns,” he returned, with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes, “so he must not encourage me,—eh, Miss Middleton?—as we are all in the same boat. Well, we must allow for prejudice. By and by we will alter all that.” And then he gave her a good-natured nod, and sauntered away to tell his old friend Mattie all about it; for he had a kindly 302 feeling towards the little woman, and made her his confidante on these occasions.

Phillis still called him Alcides, to his endless mystification: but she privately wondered when his labors were to begin. After that first afternoon he did not speak much of his future intentions: indeed, he was a little reserved with the girls, considering their intimacy; but to his aunt he was less reticent.

“Do you know, Aunt Catherine,” he said one day to her, “that that old house of yours—Glen Cottage, is it not?—will soon be in the market? Ibbetson wants to get off the remainder of the lease.”