He caught her expression, and threw back his head with one of his merry laughs:
“Oh, no, Aunt Catherine; you need not be afraid. I am not going to make love to one of my cousins; I know your views on the subject, and that would not suit my book at all. I am quite on your side there.”
“Surely you will tell me, my dear, if you are serious?”
“Oh, yes, when I have anything to tell; but I think I will have a good look round first.” And then, of his own accord, he changed the subject. He was a little sparing of his hints after that, even to his aunt.
It was shortly after this that he came into the Friary one evening and electrified his cousins by two pieces of news. He had just called at the vicarage, he said; but he had not gone in, for Miss Mattie had run downstairs in a great bustle to tell him her sister Grace had just arrived. Her brother had been down to Leeds and brought her up with him. Phillis put down her work; her face had become suddenly rather pale.
“Grace has come,” she half whispered to herself. And then she added aloud, “Poor Mattie will be glad, and sorry too! She will like to have her sister with her for the New Year; but in a few weeks she will have to pack up her own things and go home. And she was only saying the other day that she has never been so happy in her life as she has been here.”
“Why can’t she stay, then?” asked Sir Harry, rather abruptly. “I don’t hold with people making themselves miserable for nothing: that does not belong to my creed.”
“Oh, poor Mattie has not a choice in the matter,” returned Nan, who had grown very fond of her little neighbor. “Though she is thirty, she must still do as other people bid her. They cannot both be spared from home,—at least, I believe not,—and so her mother has recalled her.”
“Oh, but that is nonsense!” replied Sir Harry, rather crossly for him. “Girls are spared well enough when they are married. And I thought the Drummonds were not well off. Did not Phillis tell me so?”
“They are very badly off; but then, you see, Mr. Drummond does not want two sisters to take care of his house; and, though he tries to be good to Mattie, he is not so fond of her as he is of his sister Grace; and they have always planned to live together, and so poor Mattie has to go.”