Phoebe, Junior Part 25

said Phoebe. "But don't let us say that to grandpapa. How odd people are!

he knows you are not Croesus, but still he has a sort of feeling that you are a young prince, and do him the greatest honour in coming to his house; and yet, all the same, he thinks that money is the very grandest thing in existence. See what prejudice is! He would not allow that he had any cla.s.s-reverence, and yet he can no more get rid of it--"

"Miss Beecham, it is very difficult for me to say anything on such a subject."

"Very difficult, and you show your delicacy by not saying anything. But you know, apart from this, which is not gratifying, I am rather proud of grandpapa's way of looking at some things. About saying out your opinions in public, and yet bearing no malice, for instance. Now, Mr.

Northcote is the very Antipodes to you; therefore you ought to know him and find out what he means. It would be better for you both. That is what I call enlarging the mind," said Phoebe with a smile; which was, to tell the truth, a very pretty smile, and filled with a soft l.u.s.tre the blue eyes with which she looked at him. Whether it was this, or the cogency of her argument, that moved the young Anglican, it would be hard to say.

"If you are to be the promoter of this new science, I don't object to studying under you," he said with a great deal of meaning in his voice.

Phoebe gave him another smile, though she shook her head; and then she turned to the hero on the other side.

"Is it genuine, Mr. Northcote? is it as fine as I thought? There now, I told you, grandmamma! Have you been telling Mr. Northcote how you picked it up? I am sure you will present him with a cup and saucer for his collection in return for his praises."

"Not for the world," said Northcote, with profound seriousness; "break a set of cream Wedgwood! what do you take me for, Miss Beecham? I don't mean to say that I would not give my ears to have it--all; but to break the set--"

"Oh, I beg your pardon! I was not prepared for such delicacy of feeling--such conscientiousness--"

"Ah!" said Northcote, with a long-drawn breath, "I don't think you can understand the feelings of an enthusiast. A set of fine China is like a poem--every individual bit is necessary to the perfection of the whole.

I allow that this is not the usual way of looking at it; but my pleasure lies in seeing it entire, making the tea-table into a kind of lyric, elevating the family life by the application of the principles of abstract beauty to its homeliest details. Pardon, Miss Beecham, but Mrs.

Tozer is right, and you are wrong. The idea of carrying off a few lines of a poem in one's pocket for one's collection--"

"Now that's what I call speaking up," said Mrs. Tozer, the first time she had opened her lips, "that's just what I like. Mr. Northcote has a deal more sense than the like of you. He knows what's what. Old things like this as might have been my granny's, they're good enough for every day, they're very nice for common use; but they ain't no more fit to be put away in cupboards and h.o.a.rded up like fine china, no more than I am.

Mr. Northcote should see our best--that's worth the looking at; and if I'd known as the gentleman was coming--but you can't put an old head on young shoulders. Phoebe's as good as gold, and the trouble she takes with an old woman like me is wonderful; but she can't be expected to think of everything, can she now, at her age?"

The two young men laughed--it was the first point of approach between them, and Phoebe restrained a smile, giving them a look from one to another. She gave Reginald his cup of tea very graciously.

"Mr. Northcote prefers the Wedgwood, and Mr. May doesn't mind, grandmamma," she said sweetly. "So it is as well to have the best china in the cupboard. Grandpapa, another m.u.f.fin--it is quite hot; and I know that is what you like best."

"Well, I'll say that for Phoebe," said Tozer, with his mouth full, "that whether she understands china or not I can't tell, but she knows what a man likes, which is more to the purpose for a young woman. That's what she does; and looks after folk's comforts as I never yet saw her match.

She's a girl in a thousand, is Phoebe, junior. There be them as is more for dress," he added, fond and greasy, looking at her seated modestly in that gown, which had filled with awe and admiration the experienced mind of Mrs. Sam Hurst; "and plays the pianny, and that sort of style of girl; but for one as minds the comforts of them about her----" Tozer turned back to the table, and made a gulp of his last piece of m.u.f.fin.

Eloquence could have no more striking climax; the proof of all his enthusiasm, was it not there?

"Don't you play, Miss Beecham?" said Reginald, half-amused, half-angry.

"A little," said Phoebe, with a laugh. She had brought down a small cottage piano out of the drawing-room, where n.o.body ever touched it, into a dark corner out of reach of the lamp. It was the only accomplishment upon which she prided herself. She got up from the table, when she had poured out another cup of tea for her grandfather, and without saying a word went to the little piano. It was not much of an instrument, and Reginald May was very little of a _connoisseur_.

Northcote, who knew her gifts, gave himself up to listening, but the Tozers looked on, shaking their heads, and it was only after some time had pa.s.sed, that Reginald began to understand that he was listening to something which he had never heard before. Ursula's school-girl tunes had never interested him very much; he did not know what this was which seemed to creep into his heart by his ears. He got up by and by, and stole towards the piano bewildered.

"It'll soon be over, sir," said Tozer, encouragingly. "Don't you run away, Mr. May. Them are queer tunes, I allow, but they don't last long, and your company's an honour. As for the playing, it'll soon be over; you needn't run away."

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE HALL.

It is unnecessary to say that the dinner party in the Hall bore very little resemblance to those simple amus.e.m.e.nts in No. 6, Grange Lane.

There were three or four people to meet Mr. May, who, as an orator and literary man, had greater reputation even such a little way from home than he had in his own town. He was a very good preacher, and those articles of his were much admired as "thoughtful" papers, searching into many mental depths, and fathoming the religious soul with wonderful insight. Ladies especially admired them; the ladies who were intellectual, and found pleasure in the feeling of being more advanced than their neighbours. The Rector's wife of the parish in which the Dorsets lived applied herself with great vigour to the art of drawing him out. She asked him questions with that air of delightful submission to an intellectual authority which some ladies love to a.s.sume, and which it pleases many men to accept. His daughters were not at all reverential of Mr. May, and it soothed him to get marks of devotion and literary submission out of doors. Even Sophy Dorset had gone through the phase of admiration for her cousin. This had been dissipated, it is true, long ago; but yet she did not laugh, as she usually did, at the believers in him. She listened to Mrs. Rector plying him with eager questions, asking his advice on that point and the other, and smiled, but was charitable.

As for Cousin Anne, she was charitable by nature, and all the world got the advantage of it. Little Ursula was one of her prime favourites--a motherless girl, who was the eldest, and who had to work for the family, was of all others the thing which moved her sympathies most. The little Indian children had long ere this yielded to the charms of Aunt Anne.

They followed her wherever she went like little spaniels, hanging on by her dress. She had to go up to the nursery to hear them say their prayers before she dressed for dinner.

"You see, this is a proof that with children one should never be discouraged," she said; "for they did not take to me at first;" and she turned her mild countenance, beaming with soft light, upon Ursula. To be hampered by these babies clinging about her, to have them claiming imperiously her attention and her time, however she might be engaged; to give up to them the moments of leisure in which otherwise she might have had a little quiet and repose, this was what Anne Dorset considered as her recompense.

"Oh, I wish I could be as good to Amy and Robin! But I feel as if I should like to shake them often," cried Ursula, "even though I love them with all my heart. Oh! Cousin Anne, I don't think there is any one like you."

"Yes, that is what she thinks her reward," said Sophy. "I should like something better, if it was I. Don't copy her, Ursula. It is better to have children of your own, and get other people to nurse them. Anne, you see, likes it. I want you to marry, and get all the good things in this life. Let us leave the self-denials to her; she likes them, you perceive."

"I don't know why you should always talk of marrying to me, Cousin Sophy," said Ursula with gentle reproach. "I hope I am not a girl to think of such things."

"And why not? Is it not the first duty of woman, you little simpleton?"

said Sophy Dorset, with a laugh.

But Ursula could not imagine that it was only in this general way that her cousin spoke. She could not but feel that this big Clarence Copperhead, with the diamond b.u.t.tons, and that huge expanse of s.h.i.+rt-front, had something to do with Sophy's talk. There was six feet of him, which is a thing that goes a long way with a girl; and he was not bad-looking. And why did he come to Carlingford, having nothing in the world to do with the place? and coming to Carlingford, why was papa sought out, of all people, to be his tutor? Certainly the circ.u.mstances were such as invited conjecture, especially when added on to Sophy's allusions. He took Ursula in to dinner, which fluttered her somewhat; and though he was much intent upon the dinner itself, and studied the _menu_ with a devotion which would have made her tremble for her housekeeping, had she been sufficiently disengaged to notice it, he yet found time to talk a little between the courses.

"I did not expect, when I saw you in London, that we were to meet again so soon, Miss May," was the perfectly innocent remark with which he opened the conversation.

Ursula would have said it herself had he not said it, and all she could do was to answer, "No, indeed," with a smile.

"And I am coming to your father to be coached," continued the young man.

"It is a funny coincidence, don't you think so? I am glad you came to that ball, Miss May. It makes me feel that I know you. I don't like starting off afresh, all at once, among people I don't know."

"No," said Ursula; "I should not like it either. But there are other people you know in Carlingford. There is the lady who was at the ball--the young lady in black, I used to call her--Miss Beecham; you must know her better than you know me."

"Who? Phoebe? really!" he said, elevating his eyebrows. "Phoebe in Carlingford! By Jove! how the governor will laugh! I should like to know," with a conscious smile on his countenance, "what _she_ is doing there."

"Her grandmamma is ill, and she is nursing her," said Ursula simply, at which young Copperhead laughed again.

"Oh, that is how it is! Very good of her, don't you think? Shouldn't suppose she would be amusing, the old granny, and Phoebe likes to be amused. I must go to see her as soon as I can get there. You know, we are Dissenters at home, Miss May. Good joke, isn't it? The governor will not hear a word against them. As a matter of fact, n.o.body does go to chapel in our rank of life; but the governor sometimes is as obstinate as an old pig."

"I suppose he likes it best," said Ursula, gently; and here a new course came round, and for the moment Clarence had something else to do. He resumed after the _entrees_, which were poor, as he made a mental note.

"Is there anything to do at Carlingford, Miss May? I hope you skate. I am not much in the hunting way; nor your father, I suppose? for, to be sure, a hunting parson would never do. I am too heavy a weight for most horses, and the good of galloping over the country all day, after a poor brute of a fox!--but we must not say that before Sir Robert. I suppose it is dull?" he said, somewhat pathetically, looking in her face.

"We don't think it dull, Mr. Copperhead. It may be, perhaps, for a gentleman."

"That's it," said Clarence. "I don't know if it's because women have more resources, or because they want less; but you always get on better than we do, somehow; very lucky for you. You don't expect so much. I believe that's what it is."

"Then that shows we are the most sensible," said Ursula, roused, and a little indignant.

He paused, to make his choice between the inevitable turkey and the inevitable beef.

"I hope it's braised," he said, in a devout undertone. "You don't expect so much, Miss May, that's what it is; you're always in the house. You don't care for exercise. Bless you, if I didn't take exercise, I should be fifteen stone before you could turn round. How much are you? about eight, perhaps; not much more. That makes a deal of difference: you don't require to keep yourself down."

Ursula did not make any answer. She was prepared to look upon him very favourably, and accept what he said as full of originality and force; but the tone the conversation had taken was not entirely to her mind.

Phoebe could have managed it; but Ursula was not Phoebe. She was more disposed to take offence at the young man's tone than to guide it into better ways.

"I hope your mother is well," she said at last, falteringly, after a long pause. Ursula thought her companion would remark this pause, and think her displeased. She might have saved herself the trouble, for it was the braised turkey which kept Clarence quiet, not offence.