The Clever Woman of the Family

but sat in the carriage reading the report of the Social Science Congress, until the travellers began to emerge, and Captain Keith (for he had had his promotion) came up to her with a young lady who looked by no means like his sister. She was somewhat tall, and in that matter alone realized Rachel’s anticipations, for she was black-eyed, and her dark hair was crêpé and turned back from a face of the plump contour, and slightly rosy complexion that suggested the patches of the last century; as indeed Nature herself seemed to have thought when planting near the corner of the mouth a little brown mole, that added somehow to the piquancy of the face, not exactly pretty, but decidedly attractive under the little round hat, and in the point device, though simple and plainly coloured travelling dress.

“Will you allow me a seat?” asked Captain Keith, when he had disposed of his sister’s goods; and on Rachel’s assent, he placed himself on the back seat in his lazy manner.

“If you were good for anything, you would sit outside and smoke,” said his sister.

“If privacy is required for swearing an eternal friendship, I can go to sleep instead,” he returned, closing his eyes.

“Quite the reverse,” quoth Bessie Keith; “he has prepared me to hate you all, Miss Curtis.”

“On the mutual aversion principle,” murmured the brother.

“Don’t you flatter yourself! Have you found out, Miss Curtis, that it is the property of this species always to go by contraries?”

“To Miss Curtis I always appear in the meekest state of assent,” said Alick.

“Then I would not be Miss Curtis. How horribly you must differ!”

Rachel was absolutely silenced by this cross fire; something so unlike the small talk of her experience, that her mind could hardly propel itself into velocity enough to follow the rapid encounter of wits. However, having stirred up her lightest troops into marching order, she said, in a puzzled, doubtful way, “How has he prepared you to hate us?⁠—By praising us?”

“Oh, no; that would have been too much on the surface. He knew the effect of that,” looking in his sleepy eyes for a twinkle of response. “No; his very reserve said, I am going to take her to ground too transcendent for her to walk on, but if I say one word, I shall never get her there at all. It was a deep refinement, you see, and he really meant it, but I was deeper,” and she shook her head at him.

“You are always trying which can go deepest?” said Rachel.

“It is a sweet fraternal sport,” returned Alick.

“Have you no brother?” asked Bessie.

“No.”

“Then you don’t know what detestable creatures they are;” but she looked so lovingly and saucily at her big brother, that Rachel, spite of herself, was absolutely fascinated by this novel form of endearment. An answer was spared her by Miss Keith’s rapture at the sight of some soldiers in the uniform of her father’s old regiment.

“Have a care, Bessie; Miss Curtis will despise you,” said her brother.

“Why should you think so?” exclaimed Rachel, not desirous of putting on a forbidding aspect to this bright creature.

“Have I not been withered by your scorn?”

“I⁠—I⁠—” Rachel was going to say something of her change of opinion with regard to military society, but a sudden consciousness set her cheeks in a flame and checked her tongue; while Bessie Keith, with ease and readiness, filled up the blank.

“What, Alick, you have brought the service into disrepute! I am ashamed of you!”

“Oh, no!” said Rachel, in spite of her intolerable blushes, feeling the necessity of delivering her confession, like a cannonball among skirmishers; “only we had been used to regard officers as necessarily empty and frivolous, and our recent experience has⁠—has been otherwise.” Her period altogether failed her.

“There, Alick, is that the effect of your weight of wisdom? I shall be more impressed with it than ever. It has redeemed the character of your profession. Captain Keith and the army.”

“I am afraid I cannot flatter myself,” said Alick; and a sort of reflection of Rachel’s burning colour seemed to have lighted on his cheek; “its reputation has been in better hands.”

“O Colonel Colin! Depend upon it, he is not half as sage as you, Alick. Why, he is a dozen years older!⁠—What, don’t you know, Miss Curtis, that the older people grow the less sage they get?”

“I hope not,” said Rachel.

“Do you! A contrary persuasion sustains me when I see people obnoxiously sage to their fellow-creatures.”

“Obnoxious sageness in youth is the token that there is stuff behind,” said Alick, with eagerness that set his sister laughing at him for fitting on the cap; but Rachel had a sort of odd dreamy perception that Bessie Keith had unconsciously described her (Rachel’s) own aspect, and that Alick was defending her, and she was silent and confused, and rather surprised at the assumption of the character by one who she thought could never even exert himself to be obnoxious. He evidently did not wish to dwell on the subject, but began to inquire after Avonmouth matters, and Rachel in return asked for Mr. Clare.

“Very well,” was the answer; “unfailing in spirits, everyone agreed that he was the youngest man at the wedding.”

“Having outgrown his obnoxious sageness,” said Bessie.

“There is nothing he is so adroit at as guessing the fate of a croquet-ball by its sound.”

“Now Bessie,” exclaimed Alick.

“I have not transgressed, have I?” asked Bessie; and in the exclamations that followed, she said, “You see what want of confidence is. This brother of mine no sooner saw you in the carriage than he laid his commands on me not to ask after your croquet-ground all the way home, and the poor word cannot come out of my mouth without⁠—”

“I only told you not to bore Miss Curtis with the eternal subject, as she would think you had no more brains than one of your mallets,” he said, somewhat energetically.

“And if we had begun to talk croquet, we should soon have driven him outside.”

“But