It was at this moment that the two ladies appeared who considered the summerhouse their special property. They were tall women with pronounced features and a continual smile—in dresses which had a way of looking scanty, and were exactly the same. Their necks were long and their noses large, both which characteristics they held to be evidences of family and condition. They followed each other, one always a step in advance of the other with a certain pose of their long necks and turn of their shoulders which made some people think of the flight of two long-necked birds. Mr. Mildmay Vernon, who pretended to some scholarship, called them the Cranes of Ibycus. They arrived thus at the peaceful spot all chequered with morning light and shade, as with a swoop of wings.
“Dear lady!” said Miss Matilda, “we should have waited till we could make a formal call and requested the pleasure of making your acquaintance as we ought; but when we saw you in our summerhouse, we felt sure that you did not understand the distribution of the place, and we hurried out to say that we are delighted to see you in it, and quite glad that you should use it as much as ever you please.”
“Oh!” cried Mrs. John, much disturbed, “I am so sorry if I have intruded. I had not the least idea—”
“That we were sure you had not—for everybody knows that Mrs. John Vernon is a lady,” said the other. “It is awkward to have no one to introduce us, but we must just introduce each other. Miss Martha Vernon-Ridgway, Mrs. Vernon; and I am Matilda,” said the spokeswoman, with a curtsey. “We are very glad to see you here.”
At this Mrs. John made her curtsey too, but being unready, found nothing to say: for she could not be supposed to be glad to see them, as everybody knew the sad circumstances in which she had returned to her former home: and she seated herself again after her curtsey, wishing much that Hester was with her. Hester had a happy knack of either knowing or suggesting something to say.
“We hope you will find yourself comfortable,” said the two ladies, who by dint of always beginning to speak together had the air of making their remarks in common; but Miss Matilda had better wind and a firmer disposition than her sister, and always carried the day. “You are lucky in having the end house, which has all the fresh air. I am sure we do not grudge you anything, but it always makes us feel how we are boxed up; that is our house between the wings. It is monotonous to see nothing but the garden—but we don’t complain.”
“I am sure I am very sorry,” Mrs. John began to say.
“Your favourable opinion of the end houses is very complimentary,” said Mr. Mildmay. “I wish it were founded on fact. My windows look into the pool and draw all the miasma out of it. When I have a fire I feel it come in. But I say nothing. What would be the good of it? We are not here only to please ourselves. Beggars should not be choosers.”
“I hope, Mr. Mildmay Vernon, that you will speak for yourself,” said the sisters. “We do not consider that such an appellation applies to us. We are not obliged, I beg to say,” Miss Matilda added, “to live anywhere that does not suit us. If we come here as a favour to Catherine Vernon, who makes such a point of having all her relations about her, it is not that we are beggars, or anything of the sort.”
“Dear, dear me!” said Mrs. John, clasping her hands, “I hope nobody thinks that is the case. For my poor dear husband’s sake, and for Hester’s sake, I could never submit—; Catherine offered the house out of kindness—nothing but that.”
“Oh, nothing but that,” said Mr. Mildmay Vernon, with a sneer.
“Nothing at all but that,” said the Miss Vernon-Ridgways. “She said to us, I am sure, that it would be a favour to herself—a personal favour. Don’t you remember, Martha? Nothing else would induce us, as you may suppose, Mrs. John—my sister and me, who have many friends and resources—to put up with a little poky place—the worst, quite the worst, here. But dear Catherine is very lonely. She is not a person, you know, that can do with everybody. You must understand her before you can get on with her. Shouldn’t you say so? And she is perhaps, you know, a little too fond of her own way. People who can’t make allowances as relatives do, are apt not to—like her, in short. And it is such a great standby for her—such a comfort, to have us here.”
“I should have thought she was very—independent,” said Mrs. John, faltering a little. She did not even venture to risk an opinion; but something she was obliged to say. “But I can scarcely say I know her,” she added, anxiously, “for it is thirty years since I was at Redborough, and people change so much. She was young then.”
“Young! she must have been nearly forty. Her character must have been what one may call formed by that time,” said Mr. Mildmay; “but I know what you mean. Our dear Catherine whom we are all so fond of—”
“You are quite right,” said Miss Matilda, emphatically, “quite right, though perhaps you mean something different, for gentlemen are always so strange. We are very fond of dear Catherine. All the more that so many people misunderstand her, and take wrong ideas. I think indeed that you require to be a relation, to enter into the peculiarities of
