“Oh, hush, Rowley—nothing, nothing that is not good.”
“One would say—that there must be just a crowd of souls ready to put into the new little bodies, and that one must slip down before the other that ought to come;—like that vile cad, you know, that slipped into the pool of Siloam before the poor fellow that had no servant could shuffle down.”
“And that was all the better for your poor fellow as it turned out, Rowley, for he got his healing more sweetly out of the very hand—And, poor little spirit, if it was not intended for this body, I can’t think it has got very much by its deceit,” Mrs. Morgan said, with a little laugh.
But the captain did not laugh. There was consternation in his soul.
“A girl,” he said, “with her eyes open to all chances, looking out for a husband, and seriously thinking that is the right thing to do—to come from you and me, Mary—to come from you and me!”
The old lady gave him her hands that he might help her out of her chair, and when she stood upright, tottering a little—for she was not strong upon her legs—she gave him a little playful tap with her finger upon his old cheek.
“You are just a high-flown old sentimentalist,” she said. “There is no harm in her. She is only prose to your poetry—which I’ve always been all our lives, and you’ve said so many a day.”
“Don’t blaspheme, old woman, don’t blaspheme,” the captain said.
But next day, when Hester came in to give them the account—which she knew the old people would expect—of all that had happened, Emma lost no time in making her desires known.
“It must have been a very pretty party,” she said; “a conservatory lighted like that is always so nice. It is cool to sit in after you have got heated with dancing. I wish I could have seen you all enjoying yourselves. I am so fond of dancing, and I don’t get much; for Roland does not care for dancing parties, and at Waltham Elinor never had time. I suppose you had an invitation, grandmamma, though you are too old to go?”
Here Hester explained, wondering, that there were very few chaperons, and nobody asked but people who were known to dance.
“Ellen says it only tires the others, and what is the use?” Hester said.
“That is very true; she must be judicious—she must have right notions. When do you think my invitation will come, grandmamma? I suppose people will call when they know I am here?”
Here there was a little pause, for even Mrs. Morgan was taken aback by this question, and did not know what to say.
“I am sure,” said Hester blushing, after a minute’s silence, “that if Miss Ashton would—like it so very much—”
“Oh, I should, of course, very much. I want to know the Redborough people. I like to know the people wherever I go. It is so dull knowing no one,” Emma said. “And then it would be so convenient, you know, for I could go with—you—”
To this Hester did not know what to reply; but it was well in one way that the newcomer took it all for granted and gave no trouble. Emma made no account of embarrassed looks and hesitating replies. She did not even notice them, but pursued her own way deliberately, impervious to any discouragement, which was more equivocal than a flat “No.” She had been used to “noes” very flat and uncompromising, and everything less seemed to her to mean assent. When she had disposed, as she thought, of this question, she went on to another which was of still greater importance.
“But I cannot expect Cousin Catherine to call upon me,” she said composedly. “She is too old, and she is always treated as a kind of princess, Roland says. And you are too old to take me, grandmamma. Perhaps I could go with Hester. Would that be the right thing? For they all say I must not neglect Cousin Catherine.”
Hester looked aghast upon the young woman, who contemplated them so calmly over her knitting, and talked of neglecting Catherine, and being called upon by the sovereign of society, who left even the Redborough magnates out, and called only upon those who pleased her. Emma went on quite placidly, knitting with the ends of her fingers in that phlegmatic German way, which is an offence to English knitters. The stocking went on dropping in longer and longer lengths from her hands, as if twirling upon a leisurely wheel. She had explained that they were knickerbocker stockings, for Elinor’s boys, which she was always busy with.
“She gives me so much for them, for every dozen pairs—and the wool; I make a little by it, and it is much cheaper for her than the shops.”
“Your grandfather will take you—some day,” said Mrs. Morgan hastily.
“Oh, that will do very well, but it ought to be soon,” Emma said. She returned to the subject after Hester had given a further account of the merrymaking of the previous night.
“Are you all great friends?” said Emma, “or are there little factions as there generally are in families? Elinor and William’s wife used always to be having tiffs, and then the rest of us had to take sides. I never would. I thought it was wisest not. I was nobody, you know, only the youngest. And when one has to stay a few months here and a few months there, without any home of one’s own, it is best to keep out of all these quarrels, don’t you think, grandmamma? Roland said there were some old things living here, some old maids that were spiteful.”
Now it is curious enough that though the Miss Vernon-Ridgways were not at all approved by their neighbours, it gave these ladies a shock to hear an outsider describe them thus.
“Never mind that,” said Mrs. Morgan, almost impatiently. “Are you going further, Hester? If you want my
