“You dear old John! You haven’t altered a bit,” she exclaimed, linking her arm in his. “I knew you would open your door directly you realised who we were outside. Oh, what a comfortable study you have! Now why should you trouble to come downstairs and dine with us? Let us come up and dine with you instead. Tell the servants to wheel that big table into the middle of the room, and let them clear that writing-table for a sideboard, and the thing’s done!”
The Professor went downstairs arm-in-arm with her at once.
III
It was the last day of the old year, and, there could be no denying the fact, Nellie was in a very bad temper indeed.
The self-invited guests had now been a fortnight in the house, and during that fortnight, to Nellie’s fancy, Beatrix had turned things generally upside down. She had taken entire possession of the Professor, and had altogether made a new creature of him. It was funny to see her driving him in the little pony-cart into the village, or anywhere else she chose to go, and entertaining him meanwhile with light talk as if he were an ordinary beef-eating individual instead of one who had walked in converse with the Muses from his earliest years. It was funnier still to see him at the close of such drives and talks walking calmly up to his study and saying a pleasant word to anyone who chanced to be near before shutting himself in, instead of, as of yore, rushing frantically up the stairs as if he were being pursued by ten thousand fiends, and informing the household generally, as he clanged to his door, that he was “The sport of fate, and that his relatives, one and all, were thorns in his side and scourges to his flesh.”
All this might be very well, Nellie admitted; but what was not so well was the change which had come over Piers during this fortnight. As long as he and she had known each other he had been her devoted slave; and, let her snub him as she would, he rarely broke into rebellion, or if, in a brief moment of anger, he had packed up his portmanteau and departed, it had always been to return in a day or so more humble and submissive than ever. But now things were reversed with a vengeance. Morning, noon, and night found him in Beatrix’s society, and for the whole of this fortnight he had not said one civil thing to her. On Christmas morning he had even forgotten to wish her a happy Christmas; and when, later on in the day, a quiet dinner to elderly neighbours had been followed by elderly games of whist, he had persistently chosen Beatrix for his partner, and had let Nellie fall to the lot of anyone who chose to take her.
Piers’s seemingly eccentric conduct, however, admitted of a very simple explanation. Beatrix, at a glance, had seen the state of affairs between him and Nellie, and characteristically had set herself to arrange matters properly for the young people.
“You are too devoted! Take my word for it,” she had said to Piers, “I know more about girls than you do. ‘Keep her at arm’s length, and you may beckon her with your finger,’ says one of our Spanish proverbs, and if you act upon it you will find Nellie as tame and tractable as a dove. How are you to begin? Oh, it’s easy enough; just transfer your devotion from Nellie to me, in other words carry on an outrageous flirtation with me from morning till night, and the thing is done. By the way, just to set your mind at rest, I may tell you that when I leave here I am going straight to London to marry a man to whom I’ve been engaged for the past ten years. Now, we’ll begin at once; we’ll invariably converse in the lowest of tones, and, directly Nellie comes near us, we’ll stop talking in the very middle of a sentence.”
But it was not only Piers’s and Nellie’s future, that Beatrix set herself to arrange, she boldly attacked the Professor as to what he would do when the two were married.
“To all appearance,” said the Professor grimly, “that desirable event is not likely to take place.”
“Oh, yes, it is; and forewarned is forearmed. Are you going to advertise for a housekeeper, and be generally preyed upon by some greedy creature, intent on pocketing five pounds out of every twenty you give her? Or are you going to ask that dear little old maid, who manages your house so well, to marry you; she only loses her temper where Nellie is concerned; and, consequently, when Nellie is out of the house, she will have no excuse for so doing.”
The Professor started aghast, and fled hurriedly. But, all the same, Beatrix noticed that, from that time forward, he treated Cousin Lavinia with a studied attention, which seemed to imply that she had suddenly grown to occupy a more important position in his mind.
And a casual remark to Cousin Lavinia sent the worthy little spinster’s thoughts running in the same direction.
“I’ve done my duty in the house whatever comes of it all, I vow I have!” she exclaimed one morning, as she watched the exasperating Nellie at the hall-door, allowing Guy to hold her hand in his, and fasten every one of the nineteen buttons her glove owned to.
“Well, and when Nellie is married, I suppose you will continue to do your duty in the house, and not allow Cousin John to marry his cook, or advertise for a housekeeper?” said Beatrix.
“What do you mean?” cried Cousin Lavinia, blushing like a girl in her teens. But though she didn’t wait for Beatrix’s answer, she subsequently broke out into uncommonly smart cap-ribbons, and wonderfully-embroidered neckties.
Beatrix treated Guy’s and Nellie’s flirtation very nonchalantly.
“It means nothing, absolutely nothing,” she said to
