Part 16 (1/2)

'And what kind of dog is he?'

'That is what no one--not even himself--has ever been able to make out,'

returns Margaret, with a smile. 'Sometimes he thinks that he is a Yorks.h.i.+re terrier, and sometimes he does not. I bought him at the Dogs'

Home, because he was the most miserable little dog there, and because I was quite certain that if I did not, n.o.body else would. He has grown so uppish now that sometimes I have to remind him of his origin--have not I, Minky?'

'Mammy had a Yorks.h.i.+re terrier once,' says Miss Harborough thoughtfully--'John Talbot gave it her--but he died. She had him stuffed: he looks horrid now!'

Talbot writhes. It seems to him as if he had never before tasted the full degradation of his position. He makes a clumsy plunge at changing the conversation by inquiring after Prue.

'She is lying down,' replies Peggy, while he sees a furrow come upon her white forehead. 'The heat tries her; at least'--her eye meeting his with a sort of appeal--'she is very easily tired; and she has been waiting all afternoon with her habit on. She was engaged to go out riding at three, and now it is five; people ought not to make engagements if they are not prepared to keep them!'

'I am afraid he had forgotten all about it,' answers Talbot sadly.

Margaret's only answer is a dispirited shrug; and Lily having by this time scampered off to visit the fox; if possible, with safety, pull his brush; eat anything that is eatable in the kitchen-garden; and make friendly advances to the stable-boy--Miss Lambton again takes up the hose.

'This,' says she, looking at it affectionately, 'is the one solid good I have ever got from the Big House!'

He does not answer. Though he certainly does not cla.s.s himself under the head of a solid good, her words give him a vague chill.

'It sounds ungrateful,' pursues Peggy; 'but I often wish we could move this acre of ground, with everything that is on it, fifty miles farther away.'

'Do you?'

'Of course,' pursues she gravely, 'we get a great deal more society here than we should anywhere else; but I often think that that is a doubtful good. We grow to know people whose acquaintance we should be far better without.'

He winces. Does he himself come under this category? But she means no offence.

'You can have no notion how our lives are cut up,' she continues. 'We live in a whirl of tiny excitements, that would not be excitements to anybody but us. We never can settle to any serious occupation; the moment we take up a book there is a note: ”Prue, come out riding;”

”Peggy, come and look over the accounts of the Boot and Shoe Club;”

”Peggy and Prue, come and dine to meet the--the----”'

Harboroughs is the name which rises to her lips, and which she suppresses out of politeness to him.

He knows, too, that the plural p.r.o.noun which she has employed throughout has been used only as a veil for Prue's weakness; that the picture she has drawn has no likeness to her own steady soul.

'I sometimes think seriously of moving,' she says presently. 'It would be a wrench'--looking round wistfully. 'The only two big things that ever happened to me have happened here: Prue was born here, and mother died here. Yes, it would be a wrench.'

He listens to her in a respectful silence. It would be impertinent in him to express overt sympathy in her trouble, the trouble she has never put into words.

'Sometimes I think that we should do better in London,' she goes on, looking at him almost as if appealing to him for counsel; 'there would be more to interest and distract us in London.'

'What, and leave the garden?' says he, lifting his eyebrows.

'She does not care really about the garden,' answers Margaret, forgetting herself, and using the singular p.r.o.noun which she might have employed all along. 'And as for me'--with a little laugh--'I would grow mignonette in a box; and buy a load of hay, as I heard of one country-sick lady doing, and make myself a hayc.o.c.k in the back-yard.'

'I cannot fancy you in a town,' says he, almost under his breath.