“Stay here and keep that child quiet,” said the vicar hastily. “I hear Miss Bulpit’s voice. I had better go in alone.”
“He is greatly to be pitied, poor Mr. Langrove! I think,” said Franceline, as she turned back with Miss Merrywig. “I think you all ought to write to the bishop for him.”
“Oh! that would be a scandal! Besides, you heard him say the bishop could not help him,” said the old lady.
“What a blessed thing it is to be a Catholic!” exclaimed Franceline, laughing. “We have no farmers’ boys or anybody else meddling with our priests; but then we have the Pope, who settles everything, and everybody submits. You ought to invite the Pope to come over and deliver you from all your troubles!”
The table was spread on the grass-plot in front of the cottage. Franceline had made it pretty with ferns and flowers, and then sat down under the porch, in her white muslin dress and pink sash, to converse with her doves while waiting for Sir Simon and his two friends. Her doves were great company to her; she had been so used to talking to them ever since she was a child, complaining to them of her small griefs and telling them of her little joys, that she came to fancy they understood her, and took their plaintive coo or their little crystal laughter as an intelligible and sympathetic response. One of the soft-breasted, opal-winged little messengers is upon her finger now, clutching the soft white perch sharply enough with its coral claws, and answering her caresses with that low, inarticulate sighing that sounds like the yearning of an imprisoned spirit. Franceline took some seed out of a box on the window-sill beside her, and began to feed it out of her hand, watching the little, pearly head bobbing on her palm with a smile of tenderest approval. At the sound of footsteps crunching the gravel at the back of the cottage she rose, still feeding her dove, to go and meet the gentlemen. But there was only one.
“I fear I am before my time,” said Mr. de Winton, “but I expected to find the others here before me.” (O Clide, Clide! what prevarication is this?) “They went out about half an hour ago, and told me to meet them in the Beech walk, where we were to come on together. Have I come too soon?”
“Oh! not at all,” said the young girl graciously; “my father will come out in a moment, and I am not very busy, as you see!”
“You are fond of animals, I perceive.”
“Animals! Oh! don’t call my sweet little doves animals,” retorted Franceline indignantly. “That’s worse than papa. When they coo too much and disturb him, and I take their part, he always says: ‘Oh! I’m fond of the birds, but they are noisy little things’! The idea of speaking of them as ‘the birds’! It hurts my feelings very much.”
“Then pray instruct me, so that I may not have the misfortune to do so too!” entreated Clide. “Tell me by what name I must call them.”