“I had a great deal to say to you, dear,” she said. “I don’t grudge you being away when you are enjoying yourself, but I had many things to say. It is not likely that Harry Vernon would sit with me for hours for nothing.”
“I suppose,” said Hester, from the midst of her curls, “that he finds it dull now without Ellen at the White House?”
“I could tell you a great deal about that,” said her mother quickly, eager to seize an opening. But Hester yawned with discouraging demonstrations of fatigue.
“Don’t you think it will keep till tomorrow, mother? We had a long walk, and I am sleepy. I think Harry can’t be very urgent. Tomorrow will be time enough.”
“Oh, Hester, how strange you are,” cried Mrs. John, “so pleased with those old people, ready to listen to all their old stories; but when I begin to talk to you of a thing that is of the greatest importance—”
“Nothing concerning Harry Vernon can be of great importance to me,” cried the perverse girl; and then she tried to turn off her wilfulness with a laugh. “The beauty of the captain’s stories is that they are of no importance, mother. You can have them when you please. It is like going to a theatre, or reading a book.”
“I am not so clever as the captain to interest you,” Mrs. John said.
There was a plaintive tone in her voice with which Hester was very well acquainted, and which betokened an inclination to tears. She came and kissed her mother, and gave her a few of those half-impatient caresses which generally soothed the poor lady. The girl did not in the least know that any consciousness was in Mrs. John’s mind of the superficial character of those kindnesses. She was not without love for the tender domestic creature who had been hers to use at her pleasure since ever she could recollect, but she bestowed these kisses upon her, as she would have given sweetmeats to a child.
“Go to bed, mother. Don’t mind me. I will shut the door; you shall not have the light in your eyes to keep you from sleeping. Go to bed, mammy darling.”
Mrs. John had liked this caressing talk when Hester was a child. She was soothed by it still, though a faint sense that there was something like contempt in it had got into her mind: and she could not struggle against a will which was so much stronger than her own. But she could not sleep, though she allowed herself to be put to bed. She could not help crying in the night, and wondering what she could do to be more respected, to be more important to her child; and then she prayed that she might be able to put Harry before her in the best light, and stopped and wondered whether it were right to pray about a young man. Altogether Mrs. John had not a tranquil night.
But next morning she made a great effort to dismiss her anxiety, to present herself at breakfast with a cheerful aspect, and to get rid of that plaintive tone which she was herself aware of, which she had so often tried to remedy. Instead of it she tried a little jauntiness and gaiety, for extremes are always easy. It is the juste-milieu which it is so difficult to attain.
“I am afraid I scolded you last night, Hester. I was cross when you came back. One can’t help being cross when one has a great many things to say and no audience,” she said with a laugh.
“I am very sorry, mamma. I did not mean to stay so late.”
“Oh, it was nothing, my dear. I had Harry. He sat with me a long time. He is—really—very—entertaining when you have him to yourself.”
“Is he?” said Hester demurely. “I should not have expected that: but I am very glad, mother, for your sake.”
“Because I am likely to see a great deal of him in the future? Oh yes, my dear. I hope so, at least. He is very kind to me. Nobody has spoken so nicely of me for many a year.”
“I like him for that,” said Hester honestly, yet with a blush of self-consciousness; for perhaps though she liked him for it, it did not improve her opinion of Harry’s intellect, that he should find her mother’s company so congenial.
“Oh, you would if you knew him better, Hester. He feels for me in my changed circumstances. You don’t know how different things used to be, what a great deal people used to think of me when I was young. I don’t complain, for perhaps it was silly of them; but it is a great change. But living where he does in my house, you know, Harry feels that: he says it is there I ought to be—in the White House. Even though nothing should ever come of it, it is nice that somebody should think so.”
“Unfortunately nothing can ever come of it,” said Hester. “However nice people may be they do not give up their house to you, or their living; for you would need his money as well, to be able to live in the White House.”
“You say unfortunately, dear,” said her mother, with eagerness. Mrs. John blushed like a girl as she began her attempt to hint out Harry’s love-tale to her daughter. She was innocent and modest, though she was silly. No talk about lovers, no “petty maxims” about marriage, had ever offended Hester’s ears. Her mother blushed and trembled when she felt herself broaching the subject to her child. “Oh, Hester, it would be easy, very easy, to cease to be unfortunate—if you choose, dear. All that part of our life might fly away like a cloud—if you choose.
