Volume I Part 6 (1/2)
”Yes, my dears,” were her words as Rose joined the circle, ”blue was always my colour. You see I am fair--'like a lily,' the young men used to tell me I was,” and she made a flourish with her fan. ”But that was years ago,” and she blew a sigh which made her chest heave like a portly bellows. ”And then I had a colour--like a Cheeny-rose, the haverels would have it; but the Scotch gentlemen are great hands to blaw in the lugs of silly girls. Not that I was ever the wan to let my head be turned with their nonsense--but still they had grounds for what they said.”
”You were a beauty,” said Lettice Deane--”I can see that;” and the girls exchanged glances br.i.m.m.i.n.g with amus.e.m.e.nt and incredulity, such as those feel whose bloom is still in the present tense, when one of the have-beens puts in her claim to personal charms.
”Yes, my dear, I was admired--in my day,” and the double chin went up with a snap, to join the rest of the self-complacent countenance.
”Don't say was, Mrs Wilkie,” Lettice answered. ”You are a dangerous woman still. It is well that mamma is with us here, to look after the old man, or--or---- n.o.body knows what might happen. These old gentlemen are very susceptible.”
”I don't think I am acquainted with your papaw, my dear,” said the old woman, looking round the t.i.ttering circle with rising colour, and bridling as if the jest perhaps contained more truth than the scoffer wot of. ”But I never was a flirt; and now, in my poseetion, one has to be careful, and set an example of propriety. But, as I was saying--and it's well for young people to know these things--you don't take proper care of yourselves in this country. You should see our Scotch complexions when we're young. Strawberries and crame--that's what we look like. But then we take a hantle care of our chairms; and we live healthy. It would be good for some Yankee girls if they were put through a course of proper conduck”--and she looked straight at Lucy Naylor, the most flagrant of the t.i.tterers--”and simple living, by one of our old Scotch grandmothers. You're for ever drinking icewater and hot tea, out here; and how can you expeck your insides to be healthy after that? And you're all the time at candies or pickles, not to speak of hot bread, and beef-steaks and pitaities for breakfast, as if ye had a day's ploughing before you--and you just lounging on soffies and easy-chairs the whole forenoon, with some bit silly novel in your hands, and nothing to exercise either the body or the intelleck. My son, the Deputy Minister of Edication, says you're just destroying yourselves.”
”Tell us about _him_, dear Mrs Wilkie,” said Lettice, cutting short the prelection. ”We know our faults already, though I fear we are not likely to mend them. Tell us about the young man. That will be far more interesting. What do you call his profession? Something very long-winded and grand, I know.”
”He is the Deputy Minister of Edication, for the Province. And it _is_ a grand poseetion for so young a man, or for any man--whatever you may think. And as for being 'long-winded,' you don't understand. He doesna preach, my dear--though he could do that too, if there was occasion.
It was that I bred him to. But this pays better. He has his handsome income for just sitting still in his chair and seeing that his inferiors work hard enough. And then, there's what the opposeetion papers, with their ill-sc.r.a.pet tongues, call pickin's! Oh yes! there's fine pickin's. But I mustna be telling tales out o' school.”
”He must be a bishop, then, Mrs Wilkie, if he does not preach. We call boss ministers bishops. Do you call them deputies in Canada? How odd of you! And yet I danced with him last night. Think of dancing with a bishop! It sounds positively profane. What a country Canada must be!”
”The la.s.sie's in a creel! My Peter's no that kind of minister avaw. I _bred_ him for a minister, it's true--a minister of the Gospel, and very far from the same kind with your bishops, and their white gowns, and red things hanging down their backs. It's a U.P. he would have been, if I had had my way. But Peter preferred being a minister of the Crown; and there's no denying it _pays_ better. There's no vows laid on a minister of the Crown. They may dance, or do anything they like--and very queer things some of them do like, it seems to me. But Mis-ter Wilkie's very circ.u.mspeck. He's Deputy Minister, you see.
'Deputy' means that all the pickin's”--and she winked, poor soul--”go to _him_; though sometimes he has to give a share to the chief--quietly, you understand, my dears, for the chief is responsible to Parliament, and there would be a scandal if it came out. They're fond of having a scandal in Canada when politics are dull. Then the chief has to resign, but the deputy just sits still. He's a servant of the Crown, you see; so he goes on drawing his pay just the same, whatever chief the politeetians may appint over him. That comes of our having a Crown in Canada. It's a fine inst.i.tution, and troubles n.o.body. It would be telling you Yankees if you had wan. Ye wouldn't be turned out of your comfortable offices every four years, then; and more, it would keep you steady. Ye have no respeck and no reverence here, and no nothing;” and again she looked severely in Lucy Naylor's face--that ill-regulated young person having fallen a-laughing worse than ever.
”It must be nice to be married to a Deputy Minister of the Crown,”
Lettice observed, demurely.
”Ye may say that; and there's more than you thinks it, I can tell you, my dear. The young girls where we come from are just pulling caps to see who is to be the wan. It's really shameless the way they behave, and many's the good laugh me and Mis-ter Wilkie has at their ongoings.”
”I suppose you are to choose the successful candidate?”
”A mother must know the kind that will suit her boay best. But it's a sore responsibeelity, my dears. It would be terrible if the expurriment didn't answer; and he's very hard to please, and terrible fond of his own way.”
”Couldn't you say a good word for one of us here, dear Mrs Wilkie?”
asked Lettice with her most winning smile. ”Just see what a lot of us there are!--and we have all to find husbands yet: every variety of girl you can think of--tall and short, dark and fair. Surely one of us might answer. It would be a gain to all. If one were provided for, the chance would be better, by so much, for all the rest when the next _parti_ came along.”
”Peter must have intelleck, he says, and high culture. I'm fear'd ye wouldn't just answer, my dear--though you're a nice girl, I'll allow, and--well--and comely.”
Lettice coloured to the temples, and her well-arched eyebrows contracted into something approaching to a frown. It is eminently provoking, when one fancies one has been rather successful in drawing out an oddity, and making sport, to find the tables suddenly turned, and one's self made the b.u.t.t.
”I was not thinking of myself,” she said, and there was a tremor of crossness in her voice, which made her discomfiture more amusingly evident to the rest--”or any one else, for that matter. I know I would not take a gift of the fellow, with his washy grey eyes, and stiff priggish pomposity.”
”The grapes are sour, my dear. Did you never hear tell of the story of the fox? But never you mind. There's a man appinted for you, I make no doubt; and if there is, ye'll get him, for as long as he is about appearing.”
There was a scream of laughter, and Lettice, too angry to trust her voice with a retort, turned on her heel and went out, while the old lady sniffed vindictively and pursed her lips, as if she could have said much more, had the offender allowed her time.
”The impident monkey!” she muttered at last. ”Does she think she is to make sport of _me_, without getting as good as she gives?” ”That's a forward girl,” she added aloud. ”It isn't becoming for a young woman to be putting in for a gentleman in that barefaced way. And ye needn't laugh, my dears; some of you are not much better. As for Mis-ter Wilkie, ye may keep your minds easy; he can get better than any of you where we come from, just for the raising of his finger.”
”Poor Lettice!” said Rose. ”Are you not a little hard on her? I am sure she did not mean to be provoking.”
”If _you_ say that, my dear, I am willing to suppose it. But really, I'm just bothered with young girrls trying to catch my son, every place I go. It's like the way bees come bizzing round a sugar-bowl; or wasps, I might say,” and she flung an angry glance at Lucy Naylor, caught laughing again. ”You are the young lady, if I'm not mistaken, that saved the man's life this morning? It was a n.o.ble ack; and you're an example to us women, that are more given to hang about a man till he sinks, than to bear him up when he's in trouble. You'll be staying here, like the rest of us?”
”Yes; I am here with Mrs Deane and her daughter.”