Part 32 (1/2)

”Isn't he an anachronism?” laughed Kate, ”I often tell him the reason he has not married is he has never been able to find any one sufficiently Early Victorian for him. Imagine preaching a doctrine of 'Thou shalt not write' to women to-day! Every woman her own auth.o.r.ess is the accepted thing.”

”Ah well,” said Hugh, ”I know a better thing.” But though Kate pressed him he might not tell to these two spinsters that ”Every woman a mother” was in his thoughts.

”I will say good-night,” said Miss Bibby, ”come children--at once, if you please.” She shook hands with Kate and this time only bowed to Hugh.

”Did you give her her present?” asked Kate when the gate closed and the grey figure and the little running ones were merged in the grey of the tender dusk.

”No,” said Hugh, ”I'll have to find a better chance; I evidently put my foot in it, didn't I?” He pondered over the keen eye-glance that had met his once or twice.

”I tell you what it is, Kate,” he said, when, his cigar finished, they went into the house, ”that girl will never really forgive me for the interview, however much she may think she does.”

CHAPTER XXIII

THE PICNIC AT THE FALLS

The morning rose in mist; the sun moved upwards and still the mist lingered, as if anxious to drape and hide the rough edges of this oddly-arranged picnic.

Sometimes the wagonette in front was lost to sight by a rolling curtain of gauze; sometimes a wind swept the road clear and then the children waved hats and kissed hands to each other.

Dora and Beatrice were visions of beauty and fas.h.i.+on in smartly-cut linen gowns and the latest thing in stocks and belts and shoes and hats and gloves and parasols; not over-dressed in the least, but so correct, so up-to-date, so ”well-planned,” Miss Bibby involuntarily drew a heavy sigh as she looked at them.

In their turn the two young girls pleasantly patronized Miss Bibby. It was the first time they had seen her, though they had heard of her often, and indeed were a little anxious to meet her, for Mrs. Gowan had teased Hugh before them, ever since the interview, about the ”fair and mysterious Miss Bibby.” But this figure in its plain blue serge and its out-of-date, if spotless, cuffs and collar! This gentle, tired face with faint lines at the eye corners and its brown hair simply waved back from the forehead instead of bulging out on a frame as Fas.h.i.+on insisted!

”We need not have been afraid,” they whispered to each other.

Effie and Florence, second and third in age of the five little Gowans and mustering some fifteen years between them, sat up on the box next the driver and whispered together. All the way they hardly moved their eyes from the wagonette in front, where the faces of their loved little friends appeared and disappeared like flowers of the vapour.

The driver was an unemotional man, long used to being squeezed up on his seat by more people than that seat was ever built to accommodate; used, too, to having his ears filled with every sort and condition of conversation. City men talked to each other beside him of stocks and shares; tourists compared the views along the roads with New Zealand views, and American ones and German and Swiss: mothers babbled of their babies and their servants; girls whispered to girls of ”Jack” and ”Jim”--lovers--and these allowed him more seat s.p.a.ce--of love.

Why should he lend a more than quarter ear as usual to the chatter of two little bits of girls? How should he know the demure holland frocks beside him covered revolutionists?

Hugh started off his first party, Paul and Lynn, m.u.f.fie and Max and Miss Bibby.

The children besought him to come, too.

”It will be just a common picnic, if you don't,” Pauline said, looking disparagingly round her family party.

Hugh promised to divide his time equally between his two sets of guests.

”Let the boys bring your basket down with the other things, Miss Bibby,”

he said, seeking to relieve her of a tiny basket she carried, ”then you will have your hands free when you come to the ladder.”

”Thank you, it is very light, I can manage it quite well,” said Miss Bibby, holding fast to the handle.

”It's her lunch,” volunteered the ever ready m.u.f.fie, ”she doesn't eat things like you've got. But we do,--and we're getting hungry now, aren't we, Paul?”

”Rather!” said Paul. ”Can we begin to set the tables as soon as we get down?”