Part 57 (2/2)

Felix smiled as he answered, 'I'm afraid our house is not built yet.'

'Miss Pearson's maid for Miss Alice,' said Martha, at the door. 'Oh dear, how tiresome! but you'll tell me all about it tomorrow. How horrid it will be here when you are all gone!'

'We are not gone yet,' said Wilmet, repressively. 'And if you please, Alice, do not talk of this.'

'No,' said Felix, 'it must be entirely a family matter. I know we can trust to you.'

'Thank you. I'm so glad I was there. It is so nice to have a secret of yours--and this is a beauty! Why, you'll be a great man with a house in London, just like Mr. Underwood of Centry.'

'Pleasing ambition,' Cherry could not help muttering, with an ironical smile, as Alice laughed and nodded herself away.

'Ready sympathy is a pleasant thing,' returned Felix.

'You don't mean that you think this feasible?' said Wilmet, with a negative inflection in her voice.

'I think it ought to be considered before it is absolutely too late.'

Both were surprised, having always thought that he considered his destiny as fixed; and as Geraldine looked on while the other two discussed pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence, it was plain to her that he had an inclination to the change. The probability of rising, the benefit of lodging Edgar, the nearness to Alda, the probable openings for the younger lads, were advantages; but against these Wilmet set the heavy London house-rent, rates and taxes--from which they were free--the expense of living, the loss of her present situation, the dangers of deterioration of health. As to Edgar, his habits must be formed, he was already in a respectable family, and Lance and Bernard ought not to be risked for his sake. In fact Wilmet looked on London with a sage country girl's prudent horror of the great and wicked capital; and when that experienced man of the world, Felix, tried to prove that she did it injustice, he was met with a volley of alarming anecdotes. He hinted that ladies' schools might need teachers there, but was met by the difficulty of forming a new connection; and when he suggested that Cherry's talent might be cultivated, Wilmet hotly exclaimed, 'She could never go about to cla.s.ses and schools of art!'

'Not alone, certainly, said Cherry,' wistfully.

'Edgar is as good as n.o.body, and I should be of no use in places like that,' added Wilmet.

'I'm afraid you don't look very chaperonish,' said Felix, contemplating the fair exquisitely-moulded face, the more Grecian for the youthful severity that curved the lip and fixed the eye. 'If we could only turn her inside out, Cherry, she would be a dozen duennas in one!'

'And then the Pursuivant. You would not like to desert poor Pur,'

added Cherry.

'I could do that better in town in some ways.'

'Mr. Underwood would think that as bad as Edgar's drawing,' said Wilmet. 'No, no, Felix, you have learnt one business thoroughly, and it would be foolish to begin a fresh one now. Besides, how about Mr.

Froggatt?'

'Of course I should do nothing in such haste as to inconvenience Mr.

Froggatt,' said Felix;' and no one is more anxious for our real benefit, if this were possible.'

'But you see it won't do,' reiterated Wilmet.

'Perhaps not,' he answered, with more of a sigh than his sisters expected.

Rather nettled, Wilmet set to work with pencil and paper to calculate expenses, Geraldine looked up at Felix, who had taken up a book, and began to whistle, 'For a' that, an' a' that.'

Presently Wilmet, by way of making a.s.surance sure, went off for her account-book; when he looked up and said,' How should you have liked this, Cherry?'

'I don't know. I've not thought. Did you?'

'I hadn't time before our Pallas Athene settled it; and I believe she is right, if she would not lay it in quite so hard. It only seemed a pity to lose our last chance of a lift in life without at least considering it.'

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