Arabella

Arabella had drawn Sophia’s attention to the picture of a velvet pelisse trimmed lavishly with ermine, no one paid any heed to her, and she presently relapsed into silence, merely sniffing from time to time, and staring resentfully at her two eldest sisters.

They presented a charming picture, as they sat poring over their book, their dark ringlets intermingled, and their arms round each other’s waists. They were very plainly dressed, in gowns of blue kerseymere, made high to the throat, and with long tight sleeves; and they wore no other ornaments than a knot or two of ribbons; but the Vicar’s numerous offspring were all remarkable for their good looks and had very little need of embellishment. Although Arabella was unquestionably the Beauty of the family, it was pretty generally agreed in the neighbourhood that once Sophia had outgrown the over-plumpness of her sixteen years she might reasonably hope to rival her senior. Each had large, dark, and expressive eyes, little straight noses, and delicately moulded lips; each had complexions which were the envy of less fortunate young ladies, and which owed nothing to Denmark Lotion, Olympian Dew, Blood of Ninon, or any other aid to beauty advertised in the society journals. Sophia was the taller of the two; Arabella had by far the better figure, and the neater ankle. Sophia looked to be the more robust; Arabella enchanted her admirers by a deceptive air of fragility, which inspired one romantically-minded young gentleman to liken her to a leaf blown by the wind; and another to address a very bad set of verses to her, apostrophizing her as the New Titania. Unfortunately, Harry had found this effusion, and had shown it to Bertram, and until Papa had said, with his gentle austerity, that he considered the jest to be outworn, they had insisted on hailing their sister by this exquisitely humorous appellation.

Betsy, brooding over her wrongs, found nothing to admire in either sister, and was weighing the advantage of cosseting from old Nurse against the possibility of being called upon to amuse Baby Jack, were she to remove herself to the nursery, when the door burst open, and a stout boy of eleven years, in nankeens and a frilled shirt, and with a mop of curly hair, precipitated himself into the room, exclaiming loudly: “Hallo! Such a kick-up! Mama is with Papa in the study, but I know what it’s all about!”

“Why, what has happened?” exclaimed Sophia.

“Don’t you wish you knew!” said Harry, drawing a piece of twine from his pocket, and beginning to tie it into a complicated knot. “Watch me tie this one, Meg! I know six of the chief knots now, and if Uncle James does not get Captain Bolton to take me on his next commission it will be the most infamous, swindling thing I ever heard of!”

“But you didn’t come to tell us that!” said Arabella. “What is it?”

“Nothing but one of Harry’s hums!” said Margaret.

“No such thing!” retorted her brother. “Joseph Eccles has been down to the White Hart, and brought back the post with him.” He perceived that he had succeeded in riveting his sisters’ attention on himself, and grinned at them. “Ay, you may stare! There’s a letter from London, for Mama. Franked by some lord, too: I saw it.”

Margaret’s book slipped from her fingers to the floor; Sophia gave a gasp; and Arabella flew up out of her chair. “Harry! Not—oh, not from my godmother?”

“Oh, ain’t it?” said Harry.

“If it comes from London, it must be from Lady Bridlington!” declared Sophia. “Arabella, I do believe our fortunes are in a way to being made!”

“I dare not suppose it to be possible!” said Arabella, quite faintly. “Depend upon it, she has written to say she cannot invite me!”

“Nonsense!” replied her practical sister. “If that were all, pray why should Mama take the letter to my father? I regard the matter as settled already. You are going to London for the Season.”

“Oh, if it could be so indeed!” said Arabella, trembling.

Harry, who had abandoned knot-making in favour of trying to stand on his head, overbalanced at this moment, and fell in a heap on the floor, together with a chair, Sophia’s work-box, and a hand-screen, which Margaret had been painting before succumbing to the superior attraction of The Ladies’ Monthly Museum. Beyond begging him not to be such an ape, none of his sisters censured his clumsiness. He picked himself up, remarking scornfully that only a girl would make such a fuss about a mere visit to London. “The slowest thing!” he said. “I should like to know what you think you would do there!”

“Oh, Harry, how can you be so stupid? The balls! The theatres! Assemblies!” uttered Arabella, in choked accents,

“I thought you were going there to form an eligible connection,” said Betsy. “That is what Mama said, for I heard her.”

“Then you had no business to be listening!” said Sophia tartly.

“What’s an eligible connection?” demanded Harry, beginning to juggle with several reels of sewing-silk, which had spilled out of the work-box on to the floor.

“I’m sure I don’t know!”

“I do,” offered the invalid. “It’s a splendid marriage, of course. And then Bella will invite Sophy and Meg and me to stay with her in London, and we shall all find rich husbands!”

“That I shall certainly not do, miss!” declared Arabella. “Let me tell you that no one will invite you anywhere until you have a little more conduct!”

“Well, Mama did say it,” argued Betsy, in a whining voice. “And you need not think I do not know about such things, because—”

Sophia interrupted her ruthlessly. “If, Betsy, you do not desire me to tell Papa of your shocking lack of delicacy, I advise you to take yourself off to the nursery—where you belong!”

This terrible threat did not fail of its object. Complaining that her sisters were disagreeable cats, Betsy, went as slowly from the room as she dared, trailing her shawl behind her.

“She is very sickly,” said Arabella, in an excusing tone.

“She is a precocious brat!” retorted Sophia. “One would have thought that she would have had more elegance of mind than to be thinking of such things! Oh, Bella, if only you were to be so fortunate as to make a Splendid Marriage! And if Lady Bridlington is to bring you out I am sure I do not see how you can fail to! For,” she added nobly, “you are by far the prettiest girl I have ever seen!”

“Hoo!” interpolated Harry, adding his mite to the conversation.

“Yes,” agreed Margaret, “but if she must have diamond buttons, and tiaras, and—and those things you spoke of, I don’t see how it can be done!”

A damped silence greeted her words. Sophia was the first to recover herself. “Something,” she announced resolutely, “will be contrived!”

No one answered her. Arabella and Margaret appeared to be dubiously weighing her pronouncement; and Harry, having discovered a pair of scissors, was pleasurably engaged in snipping short lengths off a skein of darning-wool. Into this pensive silence walked a young gentleman just emerging from adolescence into manhood. He was a handsome youth, fairer than his elder sister, but with something of her cast of countenance; and it was manifest, from the alarming height of his shirt collar, and the disorder of his chestnut locks, that he affected a certain modishness that bordered on dandyism. The Knaresborough tailor who enjoyed his patronage could not aspire to the height of art achieved by Weston or Stultz, but he had done his best, and had indeed been greatly assisted by the admirable proportions of his client. Mr. Bertram Tallant set off a coat to advantage, and was blessed with a most elegant pair of legs. These were at the moment encased in a pair of buckskin breeches, but their owner cherished in one of his chests of drawers a pair of yellow pantaloons which he had not yet dared to display to his Papa, but which, he rather fancied, turned him into a veritable Tulip of Fashion. His top-boots, on which he expended much thought and labour, were as refulgent as could be expected of boots belonging to a gentleman whose parents were unhappily unable to supply their second son with the champagne indispensable for a really good blacking; and the points of his shirt-collars, thanks to the loving hands of his sisters, were so stiffly starched that it was only with great difficulty that he could turn his head. Like his elder brother James, at present up at Oxford, prior to taking Orders, he had been educated at Harrow, but he was at present domiciled at home, working under his father’s guidance with a view to passing Smalls during the Easter Vacation. This task he had embarked on without enthusiasm, his whole ambition being to obtain a cornetcy in a Hussar regiment. But as this would cost not a penny less than eight hundred pounds, and the termination of the long war with Bonaparte had made promotion unlikely, unless by expensive purchase, Mr. Tallant had decided, not unreasonably, that a civil occupation would prove less ruinous than a military career. He intended that Bertram, once provided with a respectable degree,