cheerful since Ursula had come home. The fire, no longer choked with cinders, burned clear and red. The lamp, though it was a cheap one, and burned paraffin oil, did not smell. The old curtains were nicely drawn, and the old covers smoothed over the chairs. All this did not make them look less old; but it made their antiquity natural and becoming. Johnnie, the schoolboy, was learning his lessons on the rug before the fire. Reginald sat writing, with a candle all to himself, at a writing-table in a corner. Ursula and Janey were working at the centre table by the light of the lamp. They had no time, you may imagine, for fancywork. Janey, with many contortions of her person, especially of her mouth, with which she seemed to follow the movements of her needle, was stitching up a sleeve of her new frock which Miss Dorset had sent her, and which a poor dressmaker, who “went out,” was at this moment making up in the schoolroom; while Ursula was still busy with the basket of stockings which she had found awaiting her on their return. What Reginald was doing at the writing-table was probably a great deal less useful, but the girls respected his occupation as no one ever thought of respecting theirs, and carried on their conversation under their breath, not to interrupt him. The little children had gone to bed, tea was over, and several hours of the long winter evening still before them. Janey had given over lessons, partly because there was no one to insist upon her doing them. Once in a week or so her father gave her a lecture for her ignorance, and ordered her into his study to do a long sum in arithmetic out of the first old “Colenso” that could be picked up; and about once a week too, awakening suddenly to a sense of her own deficiencies, she would “practise” energetically on the old piano. This was all that was being done for Janey in the way of education. She was fifteen, and as Johnnie, and Amy, and Robin were at an age when school is a necessity, the only retrenchment possible was to keep Janey at home. Ursula had got what education she possessed in the same irregular way. It was not much. Besides reading and writing, she had pretty manners, which came by nature like those other gifts. A girl is not so badly off who can read and write and has pretty manners. Janey possessed the two first faculties, but neither had nor apparently could acquire the third. The two dark brown heads were close together as they worked—Ursula’s shining and neat, and carefully arranged, Janey’s rough with elf-locks; but they were more interesting than Reginald, though he was so much better informed. As for Johnnie, he lay extended on the rug, his head slightly raised on his two hands, his book on a level with the rest of his person, saying over his lesson to himself with moving lips. And now and then, when the girls’ whispered chatter was silent, the sound of Reginald’s pen scratching across the paper would fill up the interval; it was a sound which filled them all with respect.
This peaceful domestic scene was broken in upon by the entry of Mr. May. From the moment that he closed the hall-door behind him, coming in, a little thrill ran through the family party. The girls looked at each other when they heard that sound, and Johnnie, without stopping his inward repetition, shifted himself and his book adroitly, with the cleverness of practice, to the side instead of the front of the fire. Reginald’s pen stopped its scratching, and he wheeled round on his chair to give an appealing glance at his sisters.
“What is it now?” he said hurriedly. Everyone knew that when the door was closed like that it meant something like a declaration of war. But they had not much time to wait and wonder. Mr. May came in, pushing the door wide open before him, and admitting a gust of chill air of the January night. He looked at the peaceable domestic scene with a “humph” of dissatisfaction, because there was nothing to find fault with, which is as great a grievance as another when one is in the mood for grievances. He had come in cross and out of sorts, with a private cause for his ill-temper, which he did not choose to reveal, and it would have been a relief to him had he found them all chattering or wasting their time, instead of being occupied in this perfectly dutiful way—even Johnnie at his lessons, repeating them over under his breath. What was the world coming to? Mr. May was disappointed. Instead of leading up to it gradually by a general battue of his children all round, he had to open upon his chief subject at once, which was not nearly so agreeable a way.
“What are you doing, Reginald?” he asked, roughly, pulling his chair to the other side of the fire, opposite the corner to which Johnnie had scuffled out of the way. “I have come in especially to speak to you. It is time this shilly-shallying was done with. Do you mean to accept the College chaplaincy or not? an answer must be given, and that at once. Are you so busy that you can’t attend to what I say?”
“I am not busy at all, sir,” said Reginald, in a subdued voice, while his sisters cast sympathetic looks at him. Both the girls, it is true, thought him extremely foolish, but what of that? Necessarily they were on his side against papa.
“I thought as much; indeed it would be hard to say what you could find to be busy at. But look here, this must come to an end one way or another. You know my opinion on the subject.”
“And you know mine, sir,” said Reginald, rising and coming forward to the fire.
