“I will recollect your advice when the time comes,” replied Archie rather audaciously at this, as he laughed and stroked his beard.
It pleased him to see the old fun brimming over again, fresh and sparkling; but, as he answered her in the same vein of pleasantry, she colored up in her dark corner and shrank back into herself, and all the rest of the evening he could hardly win a smile from her.
“My dear, I think Mr. Drummond comes very often,” Mrs. Challoner said to her eldest daughter that night. “He is very gentlemanly, and a most excellent young man: but I begin to 365 be afraid what these visits mean.” But Nan only laughed at this.
“Poor mother!” she said, stroking her face. “Don’t you wish you had us all safe at Glen Cottage again? There are so few young men at Oldfield.”
“I cannot bear young men,” was the somewhat irritable answer. “What is the use of having children, when just when they grow up to be a comfort to you, every one tries to deprive you of them? Dick has robbed me of you,”—and here Mrs. Challoner grew tearful,—“and Dulce is always with the Middletons; and I am not at all sure that Captain Middleton is not beginning to admire her.”
“Neither am I,” observed Nan, a little gravely; for, though they seldom talked of such things among themselves, “son Hammond’s” attentions were decidedly conspicuous, and Dulce was looking as shy and pretty as possible.
No; she could not give her mother any comfort there, for the solemn-faced young officer was clearly bent on mischief. Indeed, both father and son were making much of the little girl. But as regarded Mr. Drummond there could be no question of his intentions. The growing earnestness, the long wistful looks, were not lost on Nan who knew all such signs by experience. It was easy to understand the young vicar: it was Phillis who baffled her.
They had never had any secrets between them. From their very childhood, Nan had shared Phillis’s every thought. But once or twice when she had tried to approach the subject in the gentlest manner, Phillis had started away like a restive colt, and had answered her almost with sharpness:
“Nonsense, Nannie! What is it to me if Mr. Drummond comes a dozen times a day?” arching her long neck in the proudest way, but her throat contracting a little over the uttered falsehood; for she knew, none better, what these visits were to her. “Do you think I should take the trouble to investigate his motives? Don’t you know, Nan,” in her sweet whimsical voice, “that the masculine mind loves to conjugate the verb ‘to amuse’? Mr. Drummond is evidently bored by his own company; but there! the vagaries of men are innumerable. One might as well question the ebbing tide as inquire of these young divinities the reason of all their eccentric actions. He comes because we amuse him, and we like to see him because he amuses us: and when he bores us, we can tell him so, which is better than Canute and the waves, after all.” And of course, after this, Nan was compelled to drop the subject.
But she watched Phillis anxiously; for she saw that the girl was restless and ill at ease. The thoughtful gray eyes had a shadow in them. The bright spirits were quenched, and only kindled by a great effort; and, as the time for their leaving the Friary grew closer day by day, until the last week approached, she flagged more, and the shadow grew deeper. 366