“My dear Miss Marjoribanks, if you have not been asked it has been from no want of—of goodwill,” said Mr. Lake anxiously. “I do not know what the girls can have been thinking of. You see Rose’s genius takes another line; and Barbara, naturally, has a great many things to think of; but in the future, I hope—”
“Oh, yes; I shall come without being asked,” said Lucilla. And when the tea came it was all she could do to keep herself quiet, and remember that she was a visitor, and not take it out of the incapable hands of Barbara, who never gave her father the right amount of sugar in his tea. To tell the truth, Barbara’s thoughts were occupied by a very different subject; and even Rose had but little attention to spare for her papa’s comforts at that special moment. But Lucilla’s larger mind embraced everything. She sat with her very fingers itching to cut the bread-and-butter for him, and give him a cup of tea as he liked it; and asked herself, with indignation, what was the use of that great creature, with her level eyebrows and her crimson bloom, who could not take the trouble to remember that three lumps was what Mr. Lake liked. Miss Marjoribanks had never taken tea with him before; but his second cup, had she dispensed it, would have been exactly to his taste—which was a thing Barbara had not learned to make it in all these years. No wonder that a certain sense of contemptuous indignation arose for one moment, even in the calm and impartial bosom of genius. Perhaps Rose would not have done much better; but then Rose was good for something else, which was always a set-off on the other side. Thus it will be seen that Lucilla had a respect for use, even of a kind which in her own person she did not much appreciate, as became a person of a truly enlightened mind; but a creature who was of no earthly good irritated her well-regulated spirit; for, to be sure, the possession of a fine contralto (which is, at the same time, not fine enough to be made use of professionally) is not a matter of sufficient moment in this world to excuse a young woman for not knowing how to give her father a comfortable cup of tea.
It was nearly nine o’clock before Mr. Lake went out for his walk, and by that time it was almost dark, and the lamp outside was lighted, which was not far from the door. Lucilla had taken a seat near the window, with the view of witnessing everything; and it cannot be denied that she felt a little excited when Barbara went out of the room after her father, leaving Rose alone with her guest. Miss Marjoribanks’s heart gave a beat or two the more in the first minute, though before the next had passed it had fallen into its usual measure. There were no candles as yet in the parlour, and Grove Street—or at least the bit of it which lay before the window, lighted by the lamp outside, and relieved against a little square of bluish-green sky which intervened between Miss Hemmings’s house and that of old Mr. Wrangle on the opposite side—was very clear to the interested spectator. There was nobody visible but an organ-man, who was grinding a popular melody very dolorously out of his box, in what Rose would have called the middle distance; and beyond, Miss Jane Hemmings looking out of the long staircase window, and three little boys in different attitudes below—that is, if one did not count a tall figure which, perhaps with the view of listening to the music of the organ, was coming and going in a limited circuit round the light of the lamp.
“How convenient it is to have the lamp so near,” said Lucilla. “Oh, don’t light any candles, please; it is so nice to sit in the dark. Where is Barbara, I wonder? Let us have some music, and put down that dreadful organ. I hope she has not gone out. And where are you, you sulky little Rose?”
“She has gone upstairs,” said Rose, who began to feel all the enormity of her conduct in thus betraying her sister. “I hate sitting in the dark. I hate being a spy; come in from the window, Lucilla, now you are here—”
“My dear Rose,” said Miss Marjoribanks, “I think you forget a little. For my part I do not understand what being a spy means. Barbara knows very well I am here. I should scorn to take an advantage of anybody, for my part. If she does not bring him past the very window, and under my eyes—Ah, yes, that is just what I thought,” said Lucilla, with gentle satisfaction. But by this time poor little Rose had roused herself into an innocent fury.
“What is just as you thought?” said Rose, laying an impatient grasp on Miss Marjoribanks’s arm. “Come in from the window, Lucilla, this moment—this moment! Oh, me, to think it should be my doing! Oh, Lucilla, don’t be so mean and shabby and wretched. I tell you to come in—come in directly! If you do not shut the window, and come and sit here in the corner, I will never, never speak to you again!”
Miss Marjoribanks, as was natural, took no notice of this childish fury. She was sitting just where she had been sitting all the evening, within sight of the street lamp and the organ-grinder, and Miss Jane Hemmings at the staircase window;—just where Barbara had placed her, and where that young woman calculated on finding her, when she made a promenade of triumph up the partially lighted street by the side of
