“The course of true love never did run smooth,” said the greatly interested Miss Annie. “My dear Mrs Laurie, I am afraid you must have had some other, perhaps more ambitious views, or you could not possibly—with your experience, too—speak with so little interest of your dear child’s happiness.”
Here Menie ventured to glance out. The lady of the house swayed lightly back and forward, with one foot on the ground and another on the close turf of the little lawn, switching the yew-tree playfully with a wand of hawthorn; and the wind blew Miss Annie’s long ringlets against her withered cheek, and fluttered the lace upon her arm, with a strange contempt for her airy graces, and for the levity so decayed and out of date which Menie felt herself blush to see. Opposite, upon the grass, stood Mrs Laurie, the sun beating down upon her snowy matron-cap, her healthful cheek, her sober household dignity. But the sun revealed to Menie something more than the natural good looks of that familiar face. Mrs Laurie’s cheek was flushed a little. Mrs Laurie’s fine clear dark eye wandered uneasily over the garden, and Mrs Laurie’s foot patted the grass with a considerable impatience. Half angry, disconcerted, abashed, annoyed, Menie’s mother could but half-conceal an involuntary smile of amusement, too.
“Yes, my child’s happiness is very dear to me,” said Mrs Laurie, with half a shade of offence in her tone. “But Menie is very young—I am in no haste to part with her.”
“Ah, my dear, youth is the time,” said Miss Annie, pathetically—“the first freshness, you know, and that dear, sweet, early susceptibility, of which one might say so many charming things. For my part, I am quite delighted to think that she has given her heart so early, so many experiences are lost otherwise. I remember—ah, I remember!—but really, Mrs Laurie, you surprise me. I see I must give my confidence to Menie. Poor little darling—I am afraid you have not encouraged her to confide all her little romantic distresses to you.”
“I have always respected Menie’s good sense,” said Mrs Laurie hastily. Then she made a somewhat abrupt pause, and then glanced up with her look of disconcertment and confusion, half covered with a smile. “I am Menie’s mother, and an old wife now, Miss Annie. I am afraid I have lost a great deal of that early susceptibility you spoke of—and I scarcely think my daughter would care to find it in me—but we are very good friends for all that.”
And Mrs Laurie’s eye, glistening with mother pride, and quite a different order of sentiment from Miss Annie’s, glanced up involuntarily to Menie’s window. Menie had but time to answer with a shy child’s look of love out of her downcast eyes—for Menie shrank back timidly from the more enthusiastic sympathy with which her grand-aunt waited to overpower her—and disappeared into the quiet of her room to sit down in a shady corner a little, and wind her maze of thoughts into some good order. The sun was drawing towards the west—it was time to descend to the shady drawing-room of Heathbank, where Randall by-and-by should be received for the first time as Miss Annie Laurie’s guest.
CHAPTER XII.
It is very pleasant here, in the shady drawing-room of Heathbank. Out of doors, these grassy slopes, which Menie Laurie cannot believe to be the heath, are all glowing with sunshine; but within here, the light falls cool and green, the breeze plays through the open window, and golden streaks of sunbeams come in faintly at one end, through the bars of the Venetian blind, upon the pleasant shade, touching it into character and consciousness. It is a long room with a window at either end, a round table in the middle, an open piano in a recess, and pretty bits of feminine-looking furniture straying about in confusion not too studied. The walls are full of gilt frames, too, and look bright, though one need not be unnecessarily critical about the scraps of canvass and broad-margined water-colour drawings which repose quietly within these gilded squares. They are Miss Annie Laurie’s pictures, and Miss Annie Laurie feels herself a connoisseur, and is something proud of them, while it cannot be denied that the frames do excellent service upon the shady drawing-room wall.
Mrs Laurie has found refuge in the corner of a sofa, and, with a very fine picture-book in her hand, escapes from the conversation of Miss Annie, which has been so very much in the style of the picture-book that Menie’s mother still keeps her flush of abashed annoyance upon her cheek, and Menie herself lingers shyly at the door, half afraid to enter. There is something very formidable to Menie in the enthusiasm and sympathy of her aunt.
“My pretty darling!” said Miss Annie—and Miss Annie lifted her dainty perfumed fingers to tap Menie’s cheeks with playful grace. Menie shrank back into a corner, blushing and disconcerted, and drooped her head after a shy girlish fashion, quite unable to make any response. “Don’t be afraid, my love,” said the mistress of the house, with a little laugh. “Don’t fear any jesting from me—no, no—I hope I understand better these sensitive youthful feelings—and we shall say nothing on the subject, my dear Menie—not a word—only you must trust me as a friend, you know, and we must wait tea till he comes—ah, till he comes, Menie.”