“I fancy they’ve come to stay a day or two,” put in Nellie, a little mischievously.
“Stay! I vow they shan’t! Take my message, do you hear? To think I should be worried in this way when I might be committing to paper my immortal thoughts! Where’s Lavinia?” he demanded. “She’ll take my messages ever so much better than you.”
“As I passed a window just now,” said Nellie, demurely, “I saw a figure swathed in thick shawls like a mummy, going towards the pond. It might have been Cousin Lavinia going to look for me. I dare say she’ll be back in half an hour.”
But at that very moment the door was pushed open, and the figure “swathed in thick shawls like a mummy” entered. It was, as Nellie supposed, Cousin Lavinia, and her features showed sharp and pinched with the cold, and her breath seemed all gone.
“I’ve been running—running everywhere—” she began.
The Professor turned sharply upon her.
“Now you two are going to begin, I suppose. I won’t have it; no, I tell you I’ll have no wrangling here. Is this my study, or is it not, I ask you? Will you oblige me by going downstairs to continue your discussion?” he said, almost at white heat now, and throwing back his door to expedite their departure.
They were no sooner on the doormat than the door was shut behind them, and the bolt sent into its socket with a pronounced clang.
“Heavens and earth,” they could hear him groan, “what it is to be the head of the family!”
Nellie and Cousin Lavinia looked at each other.
“There are visitors below,” said the latter. “I wanted to ask him whether I was to invite them to stay. Christmas is just at hand, and—”
“Oh, ask them by all means!” said Nellie, giving a mischievous look at the closed door, and with a vivid picture of the handsome Guy still in her mind’s eye. “I should tell them, if I were you, that Uncle John will be delighted if they’ll spend ten days or a fortnight with us.”
II
“I don’t admire her in the least, Mattie; she’s not at all my style,” said Nellie, addressing her pretty little maid, with whom, like most girls brought up without companions of their own age, she was on very confidential terms.
It was the evening of the day on which the newly-found cousins had arrived, and Nellie, as she dressed for dinner, was speaking her mind freely about them.
“I only saw her for a minute, Miss Nellie,” said Mattie, “and I thought she had on a lovely travelling-dress and hat.”
“Oh, I dare say she knows how to dress; although I think her hat was much too young for a woman of her age,” said Nellie, a little spitefully. “From what Uncle John said, she must be over thirty. Fancy a woman on the wrong side of thirty wearing a hat at all! I’m quite certain on the very day I’m twenty-nine—especially if I’m an old maid—I shall begin to wear prim all-round-the-face bonnets, tied with big ribbon bows under my chin.”
It may be mentioned in passing that Piers and Beatrix had seemed to get on remarkably well together during the short period of afternoon tea, and that Piers, at the request of the latter, had consented to put off his return to town.
“Your father was so good to my father at one time, when he was in great trouble, that I have always felt I should like to know you,” Beatrix had said, frankly, as she thanked him for his ready compliance with her wish.
Hair-brushing went on for a moment or two in silence. Then Mattie, who loved to make Nellie talk, in order to secure scraps of news to retail in the servants’ hall, began again.
“The gentleman isn’t thirty, Miss Nellie, is he?” she asked. “I met him as he crossed the gallery, on his way to his room, just now. I did think him handsome!”
“Thirty! no, not five-and-twenty. Handsome, I should think he was,” she added, enthusiastically. “Such eyes! I dare say he’s a trifle conceited. I caught him looking at himself in the glass, once or twice, and more than once or twice he seemed to be admiring his white hands and delicate fingernails. I wonder how many girls are in love with him!”
Then, as if to change the subject, she suddenly turned round, and faced Mattie with the question:
“How is Dick? Have you seen him this morning?”
Pretty Mattie flushed to the roots of her hair. “Only for five minutes, Miss Nellie; he was exercising the horses round the paddock, and—”
“Ah, it’s lucky for you our grounds join the Squire’s, or you wouldn’t see him half so often. Has Dick had any more offers of marriage, lately?”
“None, Miss Nellie, since the one I told you of, from that horrid widow at the livery stables. She’s forty-five, if she’s a day, Miss Nellie.”
“Ah! and that’s the third offer that young man has had! I think, Mattie, you’re a lucky girl. I’d give anything to have a lover that every other woman in creation wanted to marry.” She paused a moment, and then added, in a quieter tone, “Now, Mattie, tell me honestly, could you fancy any woman, old or young, falling desperately—mind, I say desperately—in love with my cousin Piers?”
“He’s a little grave and dignified, Miss Nellie,” began Mattie, stammering a little over her reply. “But—but I’m sure he’s devoted to you.”
“Oh, yes, I dare say he is, and that’s possibly why” She broke off abruptly. “I want a little extra jewellery tonight; my carbuncle and diamond set will do. I want to look particularly—ah! who is that?” For
