Part 24 (1/2)

He looked round the table as he sate down. ”Nothing here,” said he.

”Isn't there some cold game-pie? I'll ring for that.”

Molly was trying to reconcile the ideal with the real. The ideal was agile, yet powerful, with Greek features and an eagle-eye, capable of enduring long fasting, and indifferent as to what he ate. The real was almost effeminate in movement, though not in figure; he had the Greek features, but his blue eyes had a cold, weary expression in them. He was dainty in eating, and had anything but a Homeric appet.i.te. However, Molly's hero was not to eat more than Ivanhoe, when he was Friar Tuck's guest; and, after all, with a little alteration, she began to think Mr. Osborne Hamley might turn out a poetical, if not a chivalrous hero. He was extremely attentive to his mother, which pleased Molly, and, in return, Mrs. Hamley seemed charmed with him to such a degree that Molly once or twice fancied that mother and son would have been happier in her absence. Yet, again, it struck on the shrewd, if simple girl, that Osborne was mentally squinting at her in the conversation which was directed to his mother. There were little turns and 'fioriture' of speech which Molly could not help feeling were graceful antics of language not common in the simple daily intercourse between mother and son. But it was flattering rather than otherwise to perceive that a very fine young man, who was a poet to boot, should think it worth while to talk on the tight rope for her benefit. And before the afternoon was ended, without there having been any direct conversation between Osborne and Molly, she had reinstated him on his throne in her imagination; indeed, she had almost felt herself disloyal to her dear Mrs. Hamley when, in the first hour after her introduction, she had questioned his claims on his mother's idolatry. His beauty came out more and more, as he became animated in some discussion with her; and all his att.i.tudes, if a little studied, were graceful in the extreme.

Before Molly left, the squire and Roger returned from Canonbury.

”Osborne here!” said the Squire, red and panting. ”Why the deuce couldn't you tell us you were coming home? I looked about for you everywhere, just as we were going into the ordinary. I wanted to introduce you to Grantley, and Fox, and Lord Forrest--men from the other side of the county, whom you ought to know; and Roger there missed above half his dinner hunting about for you; and all the time you'd stole away, and were quietly sitting here with the women. I wish you'd let me know the next time you make off. I've lost half my pleasure in looking at as fine a lot of cattle as I ever saw, with thinking you might be having one of your old attacks of faintness.”

”I should have had one, I think, if I'd stayed longer in that atmosphere. But I'm sorry if I've caused you anxiety.”

”Well! well!” said the Squire, somewhat mollified. ”And Roger, too,--there I've been sending him here and sending him there all the afternoon.”

”I didn't mind it, sir. I was only sorry you were so uneasy. I thought Osborne had gone home, for I knew it wasn't much in his way,”

said Roger.

Molly intercepted a glance between the two brothers--a look of true confidence and love, which suddenly made her like them both under the aspect of relations.h.i.+p--new to her observation.

Roger came up to her, and sat down by her.

”Well, and how are you getting on with Huber; don't you find him very interesting?”

”I'm afraid,” said Molly, penitently, ”I haven't read much. Miss Brownings like me to talk; and, besides, there is so much to do at home before papa comes back; and Miss Browning doesn't like me to go without her. I know it sounds nothing, but it does take up a great deal of time.”

”When is your father coming back?”

”Next Tuesday, I believe. He cannot stay long away.”

”I shall ride over and pay my respects to Mrs. Gibson,” said he. ”I shall come as soon as I may. Your father has been a very kind friend to me ever since I was a boy. And when I come, I shall expect my pupil to have been very diligent,” he concluded, smiling his kind, pleasant smile at idle Molly.

Then the carriage came round, and she had the long solitary drive back to Miss Brownings'. It was dark out of doors when she got there; but Miss Phoebe was standing on the stairs, with a lighted candle in her hand, peering into the darkness to see Molly come in.

”Oh, Molly! I thought you'd never come back. Such a piece of news!

Sister has gone to bed; she's had a headache--with the excitement, I think; but she says it's new bread. Come upstairs softly, my dear, and I'll tell you what it is! Who do you think has been here,--drinking tea with us, too, in the most condescending manner?”

”Lady Harriet?” said Molly, suddenly enlightened by the word ”condescending.”

”Yes. Why, how did you guess it? But, after all, her call, at any rate in the first instance, was upon you. Oh, dear Molly! if you're not in a hurry to go to bed, let me sit down quietly and tell you all about it; for my heart jumps into my mouth still when I think of how I was caught. She--that is, her ladys.h.i.+p--left the carriage at 'The George,' and took to her feet to go shopping--just as you or I may have done many a time in our lives. And sister was taking her forty winks; and I was sitting with my gown up above my knees and my feet on the fender, pulling out my grandmother's lace which I'd been was.h.i.+ng. The worst has yet to be told. I'd taken off my cap, for I thought it was getting dusk and no one would come, and there was I in my black silk skull-cap, when Nancy put her head in, and whispered, 'There's a lady downstairs--a real grand one, by her talk;' and in there came my Lady Harriet, so sweet and pretty in her ways, it was some time before I remembered I had never a cap on. Sister never wakened; or never roused up, so to say. She says she thought it was Nancy bringing in the tea when she heard some one moving; for her ladys.h.i.+p, as soon as she saw the state of the case, came and knelt down on the rug by me, and begged my pardon so prettily for having followed Nancy upstairs without waiting for permission; and was so taken by my old lace, and wanted to know how I washed it, and where you were, and when you'd be back, and when the happy couple would be back: till sister wakened--she's always a little bit put out, you know, when she first wakens from her afternoon nap,--and, without turning her head to see who it was, she said, quite sharp,--'Buzz, buzz, buzz! When will you learn that whispering is more fidgeting than talking out loud? I've not been able to sleep at all for the chatter you and Nancy have been keeping up all this time.' You know that was a little fancy of sister's, for she'd been snoring away as naturally as could be. So I went to her, and leant over her, and said in a low voice,--

”'Sister, it's her ladys.h.i.+p and me that has been conversing.'

”'Ladys.h.i.+p here, ladys.h.i.+p there! have you lost your wits, Phoebe, that you talk such nonsense--and in your skull-cap, too!'

”By this time she was sitting up--and, looking round her, she saw Lady Harriet, in her velvets and silks, sitting on our rug, smiling, her bonnet off, and her pretty hair all bright with the blaze of the fire. My word! sister was up on her feet directly; and she dropped her curtsey, and made her excuses for sleeping, as fast as might be, while I went off to put on my best cap, for sister might well say I was out of my wits to go on chatting to an earl's daughter in an old black silk skull-cap. Black silk, too! when, if I'd only known she was coming, I might have put on my new brown silk one, lying idle in my top drawer. And when I came back, sister was ordering tea for her ladys.h.i.+p,--our tea, I mean. So I took my turn at talk, and sister slipped out to put on her Sunday silk. But I don't think we were quite so much at our ease with her ladys.h.i.+p as when I sat pulling out my lace in my skull-cap. And she was quite struck with our tea, and asked where we got it, for she had never tasted any like it before; and I told her we gave only 3_s._ 4_d._ a pound for it, at Johnson's--(sister says I ought to have told her the price of our company-tea, which is 5_s._ a pound, only that was not what we were drinking; for, as ill-luck would have it, we'd none of it in the house)--and she said she would send us some of hers, all the way from Russia or Prussia, or some out-of-the-way place, and we were to compare and see which we liked best; and if we liked hers best, she could get it for us at 3_s._ a pound. And she left her love for you; and, though she was going away, you were not to forget her. Sister thought such a message would set you up too much, and told me she would not be chargeable for the giving it you. 'But,' I said, 'a message is a message, and it's on Molly's own shoulders if she's set up by it. Let us show her an example of humility, sister, though we have been sitting cheek-by-jowl in such company.' So sister humphed, and said she'd a headache, and went to bed. And now you may tell me your news, my dear.”

So Molly told her small events; which, interesting as they might have been at other times to the gossip-loving and sympathetic Miss Phoebe, were rather pale in the stronger light reflected from the visit of an earl's daughter.

CHAPTER XV.

THE NEW MAMMA.