The Gold of Chickaree Part 67

'Why!'?said Mrs. Coles with a burdened breath, 'you should remember what is due to your position.'

'What is my position?'

'Do, Prue, let him alone!' said Primrose. 'Do you think he doesn't know what he is about?'

'He does not seem to know his position,' said her sister. 'Why you and your wife ought to be leaders of Society, Dane.'

'I have no objection,' said Rollo imperturbably. 'I will lead Society?if Society will follow me.'

'But if you want to lead Society, you must please Society,' said Mrs. Coles.

'That is a.s.suming that you know which way I want Society to go.'

'Prue, you can't lead Duke,' said Primrose laughing. 'Don't you know that?'

Mrs. Coles looked puzzled and stayed her questions. Rollo was putting some engravings into their frames, and in the intervals of the work displaying them to the admiration of herself and Prim.

Prim's enjoyment of them was very hearty; Mrs. Coles looked on with a divided and impatient, as well as curious mind. By and by she broke forth again.

'Have you taken Hazel to hear Sacchi-sussi, the new prima donna?'

'No.'

'I can't find out that you have done anything! Well, tell me one thing, and I'll forgive you; are you and your wife going to give a grand entertainment by and by, and ask all these people you have been slighting? Of course, I do not mean _here;_ you could not do it here; but at home; by and by, at Chickaree. Will you do that?'

'I see one difficulty in the way,' said Dane, adjusting and arranging a lovely photograph of Ischl, and speaking with a negligent regard of the other subject in hand which greatly provoked his mentor.

'What can that difficulty be? You have everything?'

'One thing more than you have reckoned. I have the poor, and the maim, and the halt and the blind to look after.'

'What has that to do with the point?'

'Prior claim,?that is all.'

'But you have rich neighbours too.'

'Yes. But they are not in so much need of me.'

'My dear Dane! you are absurd.'

'Prove it'?said Dane quietly, laying Ischl out of his hands and taking up another photograph, beautifully executed, of Monteverde's marble "Genius of Franklin." This so excited Primrose's interest and curiosity, that Mrs. Coles for a little while could not get in a word. She sat, no doubt mentally cursing the fine arts, and photography which had come to multiply the fruits of them.

'Dane,' she began with restrained impatience as soon as she saw a chance, 'why cannot you attend to the rich, as well as to the poor?'

'For the way you want me to attend to the rich, time fails. And money. And I may add, strength.'

'You and Hazel have no end of money,' said Mrs. Coles impatiently.

'It will not do all we want it to do, with the best economy.'

Mrs. Coles was silent a minute, remembering her two silks, one of which she had on at this very time, and how handsome they were; and her thought glanced to Prim's trunk, and the new secretaries, and the library carpet. She spoke with a somewhat lowered tone.

'Won't you ask anybody to your house, Dane, if he happens to be rich?'

'Not unless I have some other reason for asking him.?Heinert went off to-day, Hazel,'?Dane added with a change of tone.

'But Dane,' Mrs. Coles said despairingly, 'you are flying in the face of Society.'

'Mistaken, Prue; _my_ face is turned in quite another direction,' said Dane with a slight glance at his wife which conveyed very merry and sweet private intelligence. He had just received a small parcel from Byrom, and was unrolling it in his hands; which also drew Mrs. Coles' attention and stopped the flow of her arguments. When the last fold of soft paper came off, there appeared a tiny clock; so tiny that at first n.o.body understood what it was; but as Dane set it upon the mantelpiece it struck the hour. The notes were like silver bells, so liquid, clear and musical, that there was a general exclamation of delight.

'My dear Dane? what is that?' exclaimed his interlocutor.

'Hazel's travelling clock.'

"Hazel's travelling clock!?Where is she going?'

'Wherever I go,' said Dane coolly.

'But where are _you_ going? I thought your hands were full with your mills.'

'Just now they are rather full.'

'Won't they be full a long time, Duke?' said Primrose.

'Perhaps. But when I get things in order, then I shall go, if I can.'

'Where?' asked Mrs. Coles.

'In general?to see the midnight sun, and the moonlight on Milan.'

'You have been there before.'

'Just why I want to go there again,' said Rollo, while his eye came furtively over to Wych Hazel with a sparkle in it. And he went on.?'I know a little lake in the Bavarian mountains. It lies in the midst of the tall stems of ancient forest trees. The water is so clear that you can see the small stones at the bottom, sixty feet down.

Above the lake and above the tops of the trees, you eye can reach the mountain walls of rock towering thousands of feet up, bearing their everlasting snow fields. Then if you look down, you see in the water the reflection of a cross that stands on the summit of one of the mountains; the Zug-spitze. And the whole little lake, to use the expression of an enthusiastic German , is "as green as the dewdrop on a lettuce leaf." '

'My dear Dane!' said Mrs. Coles in bewilderment. '_Where_ is it?'

'In Bavaria.'

'That's in Germany, isn't it? Have you ever been there?'

'How else should I know how green it is?' said Dane, who had now got into his manner of lazy apathy.

'And why do you want to take Hazel there?' Mrs. Coles went on.

'I would like her to see how green it is. I shall not take her to the place where the cross stands on the Zug-spitze?though I have been there too; for her head might turn. But I will take her a half- day's walk from Windisch-matrei to G' schloss, instead.'