Part 19 (2/2)

Doubtless the scene of the story was laid in France, but that fact hardly justified Canon Wrottesley in reading the whole of it in broken English. His knowledge of French had always been a matter of pride with him, and he enjoyed rolling out the foreign names with a perfect accent.

The number of listeners in the room had diminished considerably before the reading was finished. Good-nights were said on all sides, the Vicarage party drove away, and, the conscientious romping and jollity being over, it may have been felt by some of Miss Abingdon's guests that the duties of Christmas Day had not been altogether light, and that now perhaps enforced cheerfulness might be abandoned in favour of a more easy and natural frame of mind.

Kitty Sherard came into Jane's room in her dressing-gown, with her hair-brush in her hand, and deliberately relaxed after the fatigues of the evening. Most girls with such a profusion of curls as Kitty's would have been content to allow them to wander unrestrained over her shoulders; but Miss Sherard with her pa.s.sion for decoration would have dressed beautifully on a desert island, if her trunks had been washed ash.o.r.e with her; she had fastened a knot of rose-coloured ribbon in her hair, and wore it on one side just over her eye with an unstudied and perfectly successful effect.

'I suppose you know,' said Jane, 'that you are extraordinarily pretty, Kitty?'

'I spend a fortune on dresses which look cheap,' said Kitty, 'and so people think I am nice-looking.'

Jane thought such humility on the part of any one so pretty as Miss Sherard was a sign in her that she must be out of spirits; so she said, 'Oh, nonsense, Kitty!' in a very affectionate way, and begged that Miss Sherard would smoke a cigarette if she felt inclined.

'No,' said Kitty, 'I don't think I want to smoke.'

Jane drew her chair nearer the big chair on the hearth-rug, and, blowing out the candles, the two girls sat by the firelight.

Tenderness, as every one knows, is an ineradicable instinct of womanhood. Kitty Sherard might smoke cigarettes and drive in a very high dogcart, but just then her heart felt very nearly breaking, and she was so grateful to Jane for blowing out the lights and sitting near her that in defiance of her mood she began to laugh.

'What a moist party we were in church this morning!' she said, smiling broadly, and ignoring the fact that her eyes had tears in them. 'Miss Abingdon looked conscientiously tearful, and Mrs. Avory applied herself to her pocket-handkerchief as soon as the canon began his usual joyful Christmas message about empty chairs and absent friends.'

'Poor Mrs. Avory!' said Jane, 'weeping has become a sort of habit with her, and tears come very easily. If we had trimmed parasols and eaten tinned food for supper for a year or two, Kitty, I imagine we should become very tearful too.'

Miss Sherard unloosed the rose-coloured ribbon which bound her hair, and beginning to brush out her curls she said 'Yes,' slowly, and turned to other topics.

'Do you ever feel quite old, Jane?' she said at last. 'I do, especially during a long frost. I feel as if I had tried every single bit of pleasure that there is in the world and had come through it and out on the other side, and found that none of it was the least little bit of good.'

'Heaven send us a thaw soon!' exclaimed Jane.

'I quite adore my father,' said Kitty with emphasis, 'and I think he helps to keep me young; but it is rather pathetic, isn't it, that any one should think one so perfect as he thinks me?'

Jane rose ostentatiously from her place and opened the window and consulted a thermometer that hung outside.

'Still freezing hard,' she said, and returned to her seat again.

'You are rather a brick, Jane,' said Kitty.

'To-morrow,' said Jane, 'I shall certainly write to your father urging his immediate return before you begin to grow grey-haired.'

'You 've had a fairly odious Christmas Day,' said Kitty, not noticing the interruption. 'You 've had to dry Miss Abingdon's tears, and listen to Canon Wrottesley reading aloud, and you have had to be hearty to carol-singers and to waft holly-berries in the faces of mothers.

Why don't you throw something at me when I come to your room in the middle of the night as cross as a bear with a sore head, and begin to grumble at you?'

This remark Jane considered serious. 'The end of it will be, that you 'll get engaged to be married, Kitty,' she said, 'and then I shall jeer at you and recall to you every one of your past flirtations, and all your good resolutions about remaining single, and being happy ever after.'

'Is it really still Christmas Day?' said Kitty. 'I thought it began quite a week ago, and that we had had nights and nights of wa.s.sail bowls and old memories and Christmas-card cheerfulness.' She gathered up her hair-pins and brushes and gave a yawn. 'If it is nearly twelve o'clock I suppose I ought to go,' she said.

'I am not a bit sleepy,' quoth Jane.

'Apart from the fact of my winter being dull,' said Kitty, 'with my beloved parent in Rome, my temper is never proof against giving way when any one reads aloud to me. The story of the French vicomte is really answerable for my present horrible state of mind.'

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