“Ah! but talking is a different thing, and more—difficult—and more—personal. Well!” said Phoebe, with a laugh and a blush, taking the chair, “I will try, but you must begin; and I cannot promise, you know, for a whole hour.”
“After you have given that fellow two! and such a fellow! If it was Northcote, I might be equally jea—displeased, but I could understand it, for he is not a fool.”
“I think,” said Phoebe, looking towards the other end of the room, where Northcote was occupied as usual close to Ursula’s workbasket, “that Mr. Northcote manages to amuse himself very well without any help of mine.”
“Ah!” cried Reginald, startled; for of course it is needless to say that the idea of any special devotion to his little sister had never entered his mind. He felt disposed to laugh at first when the idea was suggested to him, but he gave a second look, and fellow-feeling threw a certain enlightenment upon the subject. “That would never do,” he said gravely; “I wonder I never thought of it before.”
“Why would it not do? She is very nice, and he is clever and a rising man; and he is very well off; and you said just now he was not a fool.”
“Nevertheless it would never do,” said Reginald, opposing her pointedly, as he had never opposed her before; and he remained silent for a whole minute, looking across the room, during which long interval Phoebe sat demurely on the chair where he had placed her, looking at him with a smile on her face.
“Well?” she said at length, softly, “it was talk you said you wanted, Mr. May; but you are not so ready to tune up your violin as Mr. Copperhead, though I wait with my fingers on the piano, so to speak.”
“I beg your pardon!” he cried, and then their eyes met, and both laughed, though, as far as Reginald was concerned, in an embarrassed way.
“You perceive,” said Phoebe, rising, “that it is not nearly so easy to please you, and that you don’t know half so exactly what you want, as Clarence Copperhead does, though you abuse him, poor fellow. I have got something to say to Ursula! though, perhaps, she does not want me any more than you do.”
“Don’t give me up for one moment’s distraction; and it was your fault, not mine, for suggesting such a startling idea.”
Phoebe shook her head, and waved her hand as a parting salutation, and then went across the room to where Ursula was sitting, where Horace Northcote at least found her very much in his way. She began at once to talk low and earnestly on some subject so interesting that it absorbed both the girls in a way which was very surprising and unpleasant to the young men, neither of whom had been able to interest the one whose attention he was specially anxious to secure half so effectually. Northcote, from the other side of the table, and Reginald from the other end of the room, gazed and gloomed with discomfited curiosity, wondering what it could be; while Clarence strutted uneasily about the piano, taking up his fiddle now and then, striking a note, and screwing up his strings into concord, with many impatient glances. But still the girls talked. Was it about their dresses or some nonsense, or was it a more serious subject, which could thus be discussed without masculine help? but this matter they never fathomed, nor have they found out till this hour.
XXXI
Society
Notwithstanding such little social crosses, however, the society at the Parsonage, as thus constituted, was very agreeable. Mr. May, though he had his faults, was careful of his daughter. He sat in the drawing-room every evening till she retired, on the nights their visitors came, and even when it was Clarence only who remained, an inmate of the house, and free to go and come as he pleased. Ursula, he felt, must not be left alone, and though it is uncertain whether she fully appreciated the care he took of her, this point in his character is worth noting. When the young party went out together, to skate, for instance, as they did, for several merry days, Reginald and Janey were, he considered, sufficient guardians for their sister. Phoebe had no chaperon—“Unless you will take that serious office upon you, Ursula,” she said, shrugging her shoulders prettily; but she only went once or twice, so well was she able, even when the temptation was strongest, to exercise self-denial, and show her perfect power of self-guidance. As for old Tozer and his wife, the idea of a chaperon never entered their homely head. Such articles are unnecessary in the lower levels of society. They were anxious that their child should enjoy herself, and could not understand the reason of her staying at home on a bright frosty day, when the Mays came to the door in a body to fetch her.
“No, if they’d have gone down on their knees, nor if I had gone down on mine, would that girl have left me,” cried the old lady, with tears in her eyes. “She do behave beautiful to her old granny. If so be as I haven’t a good night, no power on earth would make that child go pleasuring. It’s ’most too much at her age.”
But Phoebe confided to Ursula that it was not altogether anxiety about her grandmother.
“I have nobody of my own to go with. If I took grandpapa with me, I don’t think it would mend matters. Once or twice it was possible, but not every day. Go and enjoy yourself, dear,” she said, kissing her friend.
Ursula was disposed to cry rather than to enjoy herself, and appealed to Reginald, who was deeply touched by Phoebe’s fine feeling. He took his sister to the ice, but that day
