“Well—unless I had a trade, and could make shoes or chairs, or something. The people are all too well off, too well educated, to want me. They condescend to me as a foolish individual without information or experience. They tell me my family has always been on the right side in politics, with a scornful consciousness that I don’t know very well what they mean by the right side. My humble possessions are all in admirable order. There are not even any trees to cut down. What am I to do? Visit the poor? There are no poor—”
“Oh, Mr. Erskine!” cried both the girls in a breath.
“I poveri vergognosi, who require to be known and delicately dealt with, perhaps—fit subjects for your delicate hands, not for mine.”
“If you begin talking of delicate hands, you defeat us altogether: the age of compliments is over,” said Edith, with some heat; while Nora cast a furtive glance at the hands both of herself and her friend. They were both sufficiently worthy of the name—ladies’ hands which had known no labour, neither in themselves nor their progenitors. Edith’s were the better shaped—if the tapering Northern fingers are to be considered better than the blunter Greek—but Nora’s the whiter of the two. This reflection was quite irrelevant; yet how much of our thinkings would be silenced if all that was irrelevant was put out of account?
“I mean no compliment. Suppose that I were to go into the nearest village and offer charity—that would be my brutal way of proceeding. What would they do to me, do you think? Pitch me into the river! tar and feather me! No; if there is anything to be done in that way, it must be done with knowledge. It is in vain you mock me with reproaches for doing nothing—I am a man out of work.”
“So long as they do not ask for money,” said Nora, demurely, “mamma says every man should be helped to get work. And then we ask, what is his trade?”
“Ah! that is the question—if the wretch hasn’t got one?”
“It is very difficult in that case. Then he must take to helping in the garden, or harvest-work, or—I don’t know—hanging on (but that is so very bad for them) about the house.”
“Clearly that is what I am most fit for. Do you remember how you used to engage me reading aloud? They all made sketches except myself, Miss Barrington. Beaufort—do you recollect what capital drawings he made? And I read—there’s no telling how many Tauchnitz volumes I got through: and then the discussions upon them. I wonder if you recollect as well as I do?” said John to Edith, with a great deal of eager light in his eyes.
Nora had a great mind to get up and walk away. She was not at all offended, nor did she feel left out, as might have happened. But she said to herself calmly, that it was a pity to spoil sport, and that she was not wanted the least in the world.
“I remember very well; but there are reasons,” said Edith, dropping her voice, and bending a little towards him, “why we don’t talk of that much. Oh, it does not matter to me! but mamma and Car—have a—feeling. Don’t say anything to them of these old times.”
“So long as I may talk of them now and then—to you,” said John, in the same undertone. He was delighted to have this little link of private recollections between them; and the pleasure of it made his eyes and his countenance glow. At this Nora felt actually impelled to do what she had only thought of before. She rose and wandered off from them on pretence of gathering some primroses. “How lovely they are! and nobody sees them. Will you lend me your basket, Mr. Erskine, to carry some home?” She took it up with a smile, bidding them wait for her. She felt gently benignant, protecting, patronising, like a quite old person. Why should not they have their day? Edith, too, rose hastily, following her friend’s example, as if their easy repose was no longer practicable. She had a sense, half delightful, half alarming, of having suddenly got upon very confidential terms with John Erskine. She rose up, and so did he. But it would have been foolish to copy Nora’s whim and gather primroses, or even to follow her, as if they were afraid of each other. So Edith stood still, and John by her side.
“I cannot forget that summer,” he said, in the same low tone, which was now totally unnecessary, there being nobody at hand to overhear.
“I remember it too,” said Edith, softly, “almost better than any other. It was just before—anything happened: when we were so poor. I have my little grey frock still that I used to wear—that I went everywhere in. What expeditions we had—Car and I! I daresay you thought us very wild, very untamed. That was what mamma always used to say.”
“I thought you,” John began hurriedly—then stopped, with a little unsteady laugh. “You might object if I put it into words. It was my first awakening,” he added a moment after, in a still lower tone.
Edith gave him a curious, half-startled glance. She thought the word a strange one. Awakening! What was the meaning of it? But he said no more; and they stood together in the sweet silence, in that confusion of delightful sound which we call silence, because our human voices and noises have nothing to do with its harmony. There were birds singing, one would have said, on every twig, pouring forth their experiences with a hundred repetitions, flitting from one branch to another telling their several tales. On every side were mysterious depths of shadow, cool hollows, and long withdrawing vistas—a soft
