Nellie was right, when she said that Beatrix Harley knew how to dress; but she was undoubtedly wrong, if she imagined that in her dress, costly and tasteful, though it might be, lay her chief attraction. Dressed in fustian, or in velvet, Beatrix would still have been a charming woman; charming by reason of her vivacity and grace of manner, as much as by reason of her personal appearance. In figure, she was tall and stately, and owned to the brightest of brown hair and eyes, and a delicate complexion. Vivacity, and love of fun, were perhaps more than anything else impressed upon her features; one had only to look at her, to be sure that the account she had given of herself was a true one, and that she must be always moving and doing, “going in for something or other,” as she so often phrased it, or life would have been an impossibility to her.
If Nellie had spoken out all the truth in her confidences with Mattie, she would have said, “Somehow, beside her I feel myself small and insignificant, indifferently dressed, and lacking in manner; and that’s why I’m not prepared to be very cordial with her.”
The feeling deepened in Nellie’s mind as Beatrix, after a moment’s critical survey of Nellie’s toilet, said, in a caressing tone:
“What a sweet little blossom she will be in a year or two!”
Nellie tossed her head, and began, hurriedly, to put on as much jewellery as her small hands, arms, and throat could reasonably carry.
Beatrix clasped her fifth bracelet for her. “Finished now, aren’t you?” she said. “Now, Nellie, I want you to show me Cousin John’s door; I’m going to rouse him out of his lair, in other words, make him take me down to dinner tonight.”
“Oh, impossible!” cried Nellie. “Not to be thought of! If he doesn’t come down we never dare disturb him. Oh, you don’t know the state of mind he’s in today.”
“State of mind!” repeated Beatrix, arching her brows.
“I mean,” corrected Nellie, “the state of mind he would be in if he were disturbed. Oh, if you only knew how much better it is for him to be locked in.”
Beatrix laughed. “My dear, he wouldn’t believe I was in the house if I didn’t make my presence felt.”
“Oh, you’ve no idea how he’ll storm.”
“Then he must be taught not to storm,” laughed Beatrix. “It was always good fun teaching Cousin John. Come along, Nellie, show me his door. To think”—this was said half to herself—“that, after fifteen years’ absence from England, Cousin John shouldn’t be one of the first to give me a welcome!”
After his stormy interviews with his young relatives, the Professor had found it a little difficult to get into vein for his work again. It was a rule of the house, that if he did not appear at the dinner-table he was on no account to be disturbed; so he confidently counted on a good five or six hours’ work before bedtime came round. The first of those hours he spent in mending his pen and muttering over and over again to himself the opening words of his treatise on “Philosophy as an aid to the control of the emotions.” The second was passed in collecting certain references in Plato and Aristotle, which he had marked for quotation. It was not till the third of those hours was halfway through that he found his thoughts flowing easily from the nib of his pen once more; and lo, just as he was beginning to feel that after all he would have something to show for his day’s work, soft and low there came another rap at his door, and a voice, which had not fallen upon his ear for over fifteen years, was heard, saying, “Cousin John, may I come in?”
The Professor changed to all sorts of colours; he glanced at his bolt, and then began to write away harder than ever. “He’s pretending not to hear,” whispered Beatrix to Nellie. “We’ll rap in turns, my knuckles are getting sore,” and slowly and steadily the raps increased in strength and rapidity.
Between the pauses of their rappings they could, by listening closely, hear the Professor’s pen scratching away hard and fast.
“I wonder if he has tied his pocket-handkerchief over his ears,” said Beatrix. “I remember at one time he had a trick of doing that when he didn’t want to hear outside noises. Give up rapping, dear, and let us sing; he won’t be able to shut that out.”
“Sing!” cried Nellie. “What on earth can we sing that’ll charm the bolt back?”
“Do you know the air of ‘Sweet Jenny Jones’? Well, sing these words to it:
How charming is divine philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed as some dull fools suppose.
You take soprano, I’ll sing seconds.”
“The words won’t go, something wrong with the syllables,” Nellie whispered back.
“Make them go. Put in an Albani-like trill when you’re short of a syllable,” said Beatrix.
And then together they suddenly broke into the oddly-joined words and melody.
The Professor gave a groan and dropped his pen.
“It’s more than flesh and blood can bear,” he exclaimed. “She is evidently as active as ever. Yes, I must open the door a crack to get rid of her. Coming, coming!” he shouted, for the voices of the singers seemed gradually to be reaching a high pitch. “But she shan’t come in here; and no power on earth shall get me downstairs to be engulfed in all sorts of distractions when I might be coining golden thoughts for all ages!”
But he did both the things against which he vowed so strenuously, and that in the easiest and most natural way in the world.
Directly the door opened a crack and the Professor peeped out, Beatrix gave it a little push with her foot
