MR. TRINDER’S VISIT.
The next few days passed far too quickly for Nan’s pleasure, and Dick’s last morning arrived. The very next day the Maynes were to start for Switzerland, and Longmead was to stand empty for the remainder of the summer. It was a dreary prospect for Nan, and in spite of her high spirits her courage grew somewhat low. Six months! who could know what might happen before they met again? Nan was not the least bit superstitious, neither was it her wont to indulge in useless speculations or forebodings; but she could not shake off this morning a strange uncanny feeling that haunted her in spite of herself—a presentiment that things were not going to be just as she would have them,—that Dick and she would not meet again in exactly the same manner.
“How silly I am!” she thought, for the twentieth time, as she brushed out her glossy brown hair and arranged it in her usual simple fashion.
Nan and her sisters were a little behind the times in some ways; they had never thought fit to curl their hair en garcon, or to mount a pyramid of tangled curls in imitation of a poodle; no pruning scissors had touched the light-springing locks that grew so prettily about their temples; in this, as in much else, they were unlike other girls, for they dared to put individuality before fashion, and good taste and a sense of beauty against the specious arguments of the multitude.
“How silly I am!” again repeated Nan. “What can happen, what should happen, except that I shall have a dull summer, and shall be very glad when Christmas and Dick come together;” 42 and then she shook her little basket of housekeeping keys until they jingled merrily, and ran downstairs with a countenance she meant to keep bright for the rest of the day.
They were to play tennis at the Paines’ that afternoon, and afterwards the three girls were to dine at Longmead. Mrs. Challoner had been invited also; but she had made some excuse, and pleaded for a quiet evening. She was never very ready to accept these invitations; there was nothing in common between her and Mrs. Mayne; and in her heart she agreed with Lady Fitzroy in thinking the master of Longmead odious.
It was Mr. Mayne who had tendered this parting hospitality to his neighbors, and he chose to be much offended at Mrs. Challoner’s refusal.
“I think it is very unfriendly of your mother, when we are such old neighbors, and on our last evening, too,” he said to Nan, as she entered the drawing-room that evening bringing her mother’s excuses wrapped up in the prettiest words she could find.
“Mother is not quite well; she does not feel up to the exertion of dining out to-night,” returned Nan, trying to put a good face on it, but feeling as though things were too much for her this evening. It was bad enough for Mr. Mayne to insist on them all coming up to a long formal dinner, and spoiling their chances of a twilight stroll; but it was still worse for her mother to abandon them after this fashion.
The new novel must have had something to do with this sudden indisposition; but when Mrs. Challoner had wrapped herself up in her white shawl, always a bad sign with her, and had declared herself unfit for any exertion, what could a dutiful daughter do but deliver her excuses as gracefully as she could? Nevertheless, Mr. Mayne frowned and expressed himself ill pleased.