“Has it all begun already?” he said, when they came close up to him, but without perceiving him, Ursula’s face inspired with the pleasure of talking, as Janey’s was with the eager delight of listening. The house was built in the ecclesiastical style, with gables and mullioned windows, which excluded the light, at least, whether or not they inspired passersby with a sense of correct art, as they were intended to do. It was next door to the church, and had a narrow strip of shrubbery in front, planted with somewhat gloomy evergreens. The gate and door stood always open, except when Mr. May himself, coming or going, closed them momentarily, and it cannot be denied that there were outward and visible signs of a large, somewhat unruly family inside.
“Oh, Reginald!” cried Ursula. “You have come home!”
“Yes—for good,” he said with a half-laugh, half-sigh. “Or for bad—who can tell? At all events, here I am.”
“Why should it be for bad?” cried Janey, whose voice was always audible halfway up the street. “Oh, Ursula, something very nice has happened. He is to be warden of the old college, fancy! That is being provided for, papa says; and a beautiful old house.”
“Warden of the old college! I thought it was always some old person who was chosen.”
“But papa says he can live at home and let the house,” cried Janey. “There is no reason why it should be an old gentleman, papa thinks; it is nice, because there is no work—but look at Reginald, he does not like it a bit; he is never satisfied, I am sure, I wish it was me—”
“Come in,” said Reginald hastily, “I don’t want all my affairs, and my character besides, to be proclaimed from the housetops.” Janey stopped indignant, to make some reply, and Ursula, grasping her arm, as she feared, with an energetic pinch, went in quickly. Little Amy had been playing in the little square hall, which was strewed with doll’s clothes, and with two or three dolls in various stages of dilapidation. Some old, ragged schoolbooks lay in a corner, the leaves out of one of which were blowing about in the wind. Even ten days of Anne Dorset’s orderly reign had opened Ursula’s eyes to these imperfections.
“Oh, what a muddle!” she cried; “I don’t wonder that Reginald does not care for living at home.”
“Oh, I wish papa heard you!” cried Janey loudly, as Ursula led the way into the drawing-room, which was not much tidier than the hall. There was a basket-full of stockings to be mended, standing on the old worktable. Ursula felt, with a sinking of the heart, that they were waiting for her arrival, and that Janey had done nothing to them. More toys and more old schoolbooks were tossed about upon the faded old carpet. The table-cover hung uneven, one end of it dragging upon the floor. The fire was burning very low, stifled in dust and white ashes. How dismal it looked! not like a place to come home to. “Oh, I don’t wonder Reginald is vexed to be made to live at home,” she said once again to herself, with tears in her eyes.
“I hope you have enjoyed yourself,” her brother said, as she dropped wearily into the old easy-chair. “We have missed you very much; but I don’t suppose you missed us. London was very pleasant, I suppose, even at this time of the year?”
“Oh, pleasant!” said Ursula. “If you had been with me, how you would have liked it! Suffolk Street is only an inn, but it is a very nice inn, what they call a private hotel. Far better than the great big places on the American principle, Sir Robert says. But we dined at one of those big places one day, and it was very amusing. Scores of people, and great mirrors that made them look hundreds. And such quantities of lights and servants; but Sir Robert thought Suffolk Street very much the best. And I went to two theatres and to a ball. They were so kind. Sophy Dorset laughs at me sometimes, but Anne is an angel,” said Ursula fervently. “I never knew anyone so good in my life.”
“That is not saying much,” said Janey, “for none of us are very good, and you know nobody else. Anne Dorset is an old maid.”
“Oh, Janey! how dare you?”
“And, for that matter, so is Sophy. Papa says so. He says she was jilted, and that she will never get a husband.”
“Hold your tongue,” said Reginald fiercely, “if we are to hear what my father says at second hand through an imp like you—”
“Oh, yes,” said Janey, mocking, “that is because you are not friends with papa.”
“Janey, come and help me to take off my things,” said Ursula, seeing that Reginald would probably proceed to strong measures and box his sister’s ears. “If you were older, you would not talk like that,” she said, with dignity, as they went upstairs. “Oh, dear Janey, you can’t think how different Cousin Anne and Sophy are, who are not girls, like us. They never talk unkindly of other people. You would get to think it childish, as I do, if you had been living with Cousin Anne.”
“Stuff!” said Janey. “Papa is not childish, I hope. And it was he who said all that. I don’t care what your fine Cousin Anne does.”
Notwithstanding, the reproof thus administered went to Janey’s heart; for to a girl of fifteen, whose next
