“Take me,” said Janey, “I have a good appetite too; and then I’m a girl, which is a great deal more useful. I could keep your house. Oh, Reginald! mayn’t we go out and see it? I want to see it. I have never once been over the College—not in all my life.”
“We might as well go, don’t you think, Ursula?” he said, appealing to her with a delightful mixture of helplessness and supremacy. Yesterday, he had not been able to assert any exclusive claim to sixpence. Now he had a house—a house all his own. It pleased him to think of taking the girls to it; and as for having one of them, he was ready to have them all to live with him. Ursula thought fit to accede graciously to this suggestion, when she had looked after her numerous household duties. Janey, in the meantime, had been “practising” in one of her periodical fits of diligence.
“For, you know, if Reginald did really want me to keep house for him,” said Janey, “(you have too much to do at home; or, of course, he would like you best), it would be dreadful if people found out how little I know.”
“You ought to go to school,” said Ursula, gravely. “It is a dreadful thing for a girl never to have had any education. Perhaps Reggie might spare a little money to send you to school; or, perhaps, papa—”
“School yourself!” retorted Janey, indignant; but then she thought better of it. “Perhaps just for a year to finish,” she added in a doubtful tone. They thought Reginald could do anything on that wonderful two hundred and fifty pounds a year.
The College was a picturesque old building at the other side of Carlingford, standing in pretty grounds with some fine trees, under which the old men sat and amused themselves in the summer mornings. On this chilly wintry day none of them were visible, except the cheerful old soul bent almost double, but with a chirruppy little voice like a superannuated sparrow, who acted as porter, and closed the big gates every night, and fined the old men twopence if they were too late. He trotted along the echoing passages, with his keys jingling, to show them the chaplain’s rooms.
“The old gentlemen is all as pleased as Punch,” said Joe. “We was a feared as it might be somebody foreign—not a Carlingford gentleman; and some parsons is queer, saving your presence, Mr. May; but we knows where you comes from, and all about you, as one of the old gentlemen was just a-saying to me. Furnished, Miss? Lord bless you, yes! they’re furnished. It’s all furnished, is College. You’ll think as the things look a bit queer; they wasn’t made not this year, nor yet last year, I can tell you; and they ain’t in the fashion. But if so be as you don’t stand by fashion, there they is,” said Joe, throwing open the door.
The young people went in softly, their excitement subdued into a kind of awe. An empty house, furnished, is more desolate, more overwhelming to the imagination, than a house which is bare. For whom was it waiting, all ready there, swept and garnished? Or were there already unseen inhabitants about, writing ghostly letters on the tables, seated on the chairs? Even Janey was hushed.
“I’d rather stay at home, after all,” she whispered in Ursula’s ear under her breath.
But after awhile they became familiar with the silent place, and awoke the echoes in it with their voices and new life. Nothing so young had been in the College for years. The last chaplain had been an old man and an old bachelor; and the pensioners were all solitary, living a sort of monastic life, each in his room, like workers in their cells. When Janey, surprised by some unexpected joke, burst into one of her peals of laughter, the old building echoed all through it, and more than one window was put up and head projected to know the cause of this profanation.
“Joe!” cried one portentous voice; “what’s happened? what’s the meaning of this?”
“It’s only them a-laughing, sir,” said Joe, delighting in the vagueness of his rejoinder. “They ain’t used to it, that’s the truth; but laugh away, Miss, it’ll do you good,” he added benignly. Joe was of a cheerful spirit, notwithstanding his infirmities, and he foresaw lightsome days.
Somewhat taken aback, however, by the commotion produced by Janey’s laugh, the young party left the College, Ursula carrying with her sundry memoranda and measurements for curtains and carpets. “You must have curtains,” she said, “and I think a carpet for the study. The other room will do; but the study is cold, it has not the sunshine. I wonder if we might go and look at some, all at once.”
Here the three paused in the road, and looked at each other somewhat overcome by the grandeur of the idea. Even Reginald, notwithstanding his Oxford experience, held his breath a little at the thought of going right off without further consideration, and buying carpets and curtains. As for Janey, she laughed again in pure excitement and delight.
“Fancy going into Holden’s, walking right in, as if we had the Bank in our pockets, and ordering whatever we like,” she cried.
“I suppose we must have them!” said Reginald, yielding slowly to the pleasure of acquisition. Ursula was transformed by the instinct of business and management into the leader of the party.
“Of course you must have them,” she said, with the air of a woman who had ordered curtains all her life, “otherwise you will catch cold, and that is not desirable,” and she marched calmly towards Holden’s, while Janey dropped behind to smother the laughter which expressed her amazed delight in this new situation. It is doubtful whether Holden would have given them so good a reception had the Miss
