But he used to go down to the vicarage with a very long face, and the result was that every afternoon, there were fresh, girlish faces gathering round Fay’s couch. Dora Spooner would come with one of her sisters or a Romney girl to help Erle amuse the invalid.
There were delightful little tea-parties every afternoon. Janet, who waited on them, thought her mistress never seemed happier. Fay was treated as though she were a little queen; Dora and Agnes Romney vied with each other in attentions; perhaps Erle’s pleasant face and bright voice were powerful inducements in their way; the girls never seemed to think it a trouble to plow their way through the snowy lanes—they came in with glowing faces to narrate their little experiences.
“Yes, it is very uncomfortable walking; but we could not leave you alone, Lady Redmond. Mr. Huntingdon begged us so hard to come,” Dora would say, and the hazel eyes looked at Erle rather mischievously.
Erle was up to his old tricks again. Fay used to take him to task when their visitors had gone.
“You are too fond of young ladies,” she would say to him, severely. “You will make poor Dora think you are in love with her if you pay her so much attention. Those are your London manners, I suppose, when you are with that young person who has the go in her, or with the other one with the pretty smile, of whom you say so little and think so much.”
“Come, now; I do call that hard on a fellow,” returned Erle, in an injured voice.
“You see I take an interest in you, my poor boy,” continued Fay, with quite a matronly air. “I can not allow you to make yourself so captivating to our country girls. What will Dora think if you go down to the vicarage every morning with that plausible little story that no one believes? I am not dull one bit. I am laughing from morning to night, and Mrs. Heron comes up and scolds me. No; Dora will believe that you admire hazel eyes and long lashes. Poor girl, she knows nothing about that young person with the go in her.”
“Oh, do shut up, Fay,” interrupted Erle quite crossly at this. “Why do you always speak of Miss Selby in this absurd fashion? She is worth a dozen Dora Spooners. Why, the girls who were here this afternoon could not hold a candle to her.”
“Oh, indeed!” was Fay’s response to this, as she lay and looked at Erle, with aggravating calmness.
“Why do you want to make out that girls are such duffers?” he went on in a still more ruffled tone, as though her shrewdness had hit very near the truth; “they have too much sense to think a fellow is in love with them because he has a little fun with them; you married women are so censorious,” he finished, walking off in a huff; but the next moment he came back with a droll look on his face.