Wych Hazel Part 87

'He has taught that creature to stand still,' said Mrs. Coles, looking at her.

'That must afford him immense satisfaction! Rather hard upon the bay, though.'

'He stands as still as a mountain,' Prudentia went on, carrying on meanwhile privately a mental speculation about Wych Hazel;--'he stands like a glossy statue, without being held, too; and comes when Dane snaps his fingers to him.'

'It only shews what unexpected docility exists in some natures,' said Miss Kennedy with an unreadable face.

'Come, Prudens--tell your story and have done!' said Dr.

Arthur, speaking now. 'I have an appointment.'

'I am quite ready,' said Mrs. Coles starting up. 'Dear me! we have stayed an unconscionable time, but Miss Kennedy will forgive us, being country people and going back to the country to-morrow. Prim says Dane is coming down before long.'

'Tell your story!'

'Miss Kennedy won't care for it, and it will ruin Dane with Mr. Falkirk. He has introduced something like English penny readings at Morton Hollow,' said Prudentia, putting on her bonnet and turning towards Wych Hazel's guardian.

'What are penny readings?' said Mr. Falkirk.

'They had their origin in England, I believe; somebody set them on foot for the benefice of the poorer cla.s.ses, or work people; and Dane has imported them. He receives the employes of the mills,' said Prudentia, chuckling,--'whoever will come and pay a penny; his own workmen and the others. The levee is held on Sat.u.r.day nights; and Dane lays himself out to amuse them with reading to them and singing. Fancy it! Fancy Dane reading all sorts of things to those audiences! and the evenings are so interesting, I am told, that they do not disperse till eleven o'clock. I believe he has it in contemplation to add the more material refreshment of sandwiches and coffee as soon as he gets his arrangements perfected. And he is going to build, as soon as the spring opens, O, I don't know what!'

'Fools build houses, and other people live in them,' said Mr.

Falkirk.

'O, it's not houses to live in--though I have a notion he is going to do that too. He lives with old Gyda pretty much of the time.'

'Well,' said Dr. Arthur, looking at Mr. Falkirk but speaking to Wych Hazel, 'I need only add, that my father thoroughly approves of all Rollo's work.'

'Work?--does he call it "work"?' said Wych Hazel, looking up.

'It is not exactly play, Miss Kennedy!'--

But the soft laugh that answered that, no one could define.

'He won't find it play by the by,' said Mr. Falkirk.

CHAPTER XLI.

A LESSON.

This visit and talk gave Hazel a great deal to ponder. The work, and--the doer of it; and--did he ever think of her, she questioned, in the doing? And did he expect to make _her_ 'stand, as he had the bay'? and come, if he but 'snapped his fingers'? On the whole, Miss Wych did not feel as if _she_ were developing any hidden stores of docility at present!--not at present; and one or two new questions, or old ones in a new shape, began to fill her mind; inserting themselves between the leaves of her Schiller, peeping cunningly out from behind 'reason' and 'instinct' and 'the wings of birds'; dancing and glimmering and hiding in the firelight. Mr. Falkirk might have noticed, about this time, that Miss Wych was never ready to have the gas lit.

The gas was lit, however, and the tea-tray just brought in, when one evening a few nights after the visit last recorded, Rollo himself was announced. Notwithstanding all Mrs. Coles had prognosticated, he seemed very much like himself both in face and manner; he came in and talked and took his place at the table, just as he had been used to do at Chickaree. Not even more grave than he had often been there.

It was not the first time Wych Hazel had confessed to herself that tea trays are a great inst.i.tution; nor the first time she had found shelter behind her occupation. Very demurely she poured out the tea, and listened sedately to the talk between the gentlemen; but it was with extra gravity that she at last put her fingers in. She never could guess afterwards how she had dared.

'Do you think he looks _much_ like a ruined man, Mr. Falkirk?'

she said, in one of the pauses of their talk.

A flash of lightning quickness and brightness came to her from Rollo's eyes. Mr. Falkirk lifted his dumbly, not knowing how to take the girl. He had not, so far in the talk, touched the subject of Mrs. Coles' communications, though no doubt they had not been out of his mind for one instant. But somehow, Mr.

Falkirk had lacked inclination to call his younger coadjutor to account, and probably was hopeless of effecting any supposable good by so doing. Now he stared wonderingly up at Wych Hazel. She was looking straight at him, awaiting an answer; but fully alive to the situation, and a little bit frightened thereat, and with the fun and the confusion both getting into her face in an irresistible way. Mr. Falkirk's face went down again with a grunt, or a growl; it was rather dubious in intent. Rollo's eyes did not waver from their inquisition of Wych Hazel's face. It was getting to be hot work!--Hazel touched her hand bell, and turned away to give orders, and came back to her business; sending Mr. Falkirk a cup of tea that was simply scalding. Her bravery was done for that time.

'What have you been doing this winter?' Mr. Falkirk finally concluded to ask.

'Investing in new stock,' Rollo answered carelessly.

'Don't pay, does it?'

'I think it will. Money is worth what you can get out of it, you know.'

'Pray, if I may ask, what do you expect to get out of it in this way?'

'Large returns'--said Rollo very calmly.

'I don't see it,' said Mr. Falkirk. 'I hope you do; but I can't.'

'You have not the elements to make a perfect calculation.'

Rollo, it was plain, understood himself, and was in no confusion on the subject. Mr. Falkirk, either in uncertainty or in disgust, declined to pursue it. He finished his tea, and then, perhaps, feeling that he had no right to keep watch over his brother guardian, much to Wych Hazel's discomfiture, he took up his book and marched away.

Rollo left the table and came round then to a seat by her side.

'What have _you_ been doing this winter?' he asked, putting the question with his eyes as well as with his words.

'Making old stock pay,'--said the girl, looking down at her folded hands; she was not of the calm sisterhood who hide themselves in crochet.

'Perhaps you will be so good as to enlarge upon that.'

Hazel sent back the first answer that came to her tongue, and the next: it was no part of her plan to have herself in the foreground.

'This is a fair average specimen of our tea-drinkings,' she said. 'And the mornings are hardly more eventful. Just lately, Mr. Falkirk has been a good deal disturbed about you. Or else he was easy about you, and disturbed about your doings,--he has such a confused way of putting things. But we heard you had copied my "hurricane track," ' said Miss Wych, folding her hands in a new position.

'And were you disturbed about my doings?'

'I? O no. I am never disturbed with what you do to anybody but me.'

Rollo did not choose to pursue that subject. He plunged into another.

'I should like to explain to you some of my doings; and I must go a roundabout way to do it. Miss Hazel, do you read the Bible much?'

'Much?' she said with a sudden look up. 'What do you call "much?" '

He smiled at her. 'Are you in the habit of studying it?'

'As I study other things I do not know?--Not often. Sometimes,'

said Wych Hazel, thinking how often she had gone over that same ninety-first Psalm.