At the close of the evening, after the girls had retired, Mrs. Hazleton affirmed that really Miss Churchill was quite passable, and that if her manners only had a little of the Ninnybrain air—as, for instance, Julia’s or her own—one would hardly suspect that she had never been accustomed to good society! Upon which wondrous conclusion of his lady, Mr. Hazleton shrugged his shoulders and went to bed.
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CHAPTER IV.
COUSIN FRANK
Alice and Julia were soon good friends—and by degrees Alice became the confidante of a little episode in the life of her cousin which she feared might bear heavily upon her future happiness, unless her affections were as the wind-kissed lakelet—disturbed only on the surface—the heart-depths unmoved.
At first Julia only spoke of “Cousin Frank” as being such a “dear, merry soul,” “so pleasant,” “so kind”—she next admitted that she loved him “dearly, very dearly,” indeed she did—and that he loved her just as well, poor fellow!—and finally, blushing like a rose, she acknowledged that both hand and heart were pledged to “dear Cousin Frank!”
But did ma’ma know any thing about it? Not she indeed! A pretty fuss she would make to find out she loved Frank—a poor midshipman in the navy, that had not even a drop of the Ninnybrain blood to compensate for want of fortune! No indeed! But they had vowed to be faithful, and that was enough—Cousin Frank was too proud to say a word to ma’ma until he had won laurels as well as money—poor fellow! and so Julia cried one moment and laughed the next.
It appeared they had become acquainted at the house of a mutual relative in the village where Julia had been placed at school by her youthful mother. Cousins are without doubt a very dangerous allotment of the human family, as it proved in this case, for Frank Reeve came near losing his examination before the navy-board, while Julia, instead of treasuring up the wisdom of Mrs. Rulem, was filling her little brain with love, and such nonsense—just as naughty girls will sometimes do for their cousins!
Mrs. Hazleton would indeed have made a fuss had she known of this. Far different views had she for her daughter, and she would have spurned the poor midshipman’s love as most presumptuous.
It was now the joyous season of the holydays—when happiness and mirth, pleasure and folly trip hand in hand, gladdening this once a year the beggar and the bondman, and sweeping triumphantly through the halls of wealth and fashion. Parties and balls followed each other in rapid succession, and on the topmost wave of this tumultuous sea giddily floated Mrs. Hazleton. How the money fled from the well-lined pockets of Mr. Hazleton into the hands of tradesmen and milliners—smooth hard dollars, and soft silky scraps of paper exchanged for rings and bracelets, that the dress of both mother and daughter might be all as fine as money could purchase or fashion form. Alice seldom accompanied her aunt and cousin into these gay scenes. A short essay in fashionable life sufficed for her quiet tastes and habits, and she preferred therefore remaining at home with her uncle, who was no less pleased to have her do so, as with her he could talk over the scenes of his early life, and he loved too to listen to her own artless details of mother and home. Nor was Mrs. Hazleton sorry for Alice’s decision. She was often surprised to find that her modest pretty face, and her unaffected manners, attracted nearly or quite as much attention as the brilliant charms of Julia, so that on the whole she rather countenanced her remaining tête-à-tête with her uncle. “O you dear, quiet little soul,” she would often say, “you must marry a country parson, and knit stockings.”