Part 43 (2/2)

”I'm good now,” she remarked.

”Where's your pocket-handkerchief?” said her father, with magisterial dignity.

The infant replied that she had lost it, and straightway asked to borrow his.

John lent the article, and having made use of it, she pushed it back with all good faith into his breast-pocket, and repeating, ”I'm good now,” received the coveted kiss, and presently after a donation of b.u.t.tered toast, upon which she became as happy as ever.

In ordinary life it devolves on the mother to lend a handkerchief; but if children have none, there are fathers who can rise to such occasions, and not feel afterwards as if heroic sacrifices had been demanded of them.

John Mortimer felt that Miss Fairbairn had never before greeted him with so much _empress.e.m.e.nt_. They sat down, and she immediately began to talk to him. A flattering hope that he had known of her presence, and had come at once to see her, gave her just the degree of excitement that she wanted to enable her to produce her thoughts at their best; while he, accustomed by experience to caution, and not ready yet to commit himself, longed to remark that he had been surprised as well as pleased to see her. But he found no opportunity at first to do it; and in the meantime Emily sat and looked on, and listened to their conversation with an air of easy _insouciance_ very natural and becoming to her.

Emily was seven-and-twenty, and had always been accustomed to defer to Miss Fairbairn as much older as well as wiser than herself; and this deference did not seem out of place, for the large, fair spinster made the young matron look slender and girlish.

John Mortimer remembered how Emily had said a year ago that he could not do better than marry Justina. He thought she had invited her there to that end; and as he talked he took care to express to her by looks his good-humoured defiance; whereupon she defended herself with her eyes, and punished him by saying--

”I thought you would come to-day perhaps and see my little house. Do you like it, John? I have been in it less than three months, and I am already quite attached to it. Miss Fairbairn only came last night, and she is delighted with it.”

”Yes,” said Justina, ”I only came last night;” and an air of irrepressible satisfaction spread itself over her face--that Mr. Mortimer should have walked over to see her this very first morning was beyond her utmost hopes. She had caused Emily to invite her at that particular time that she might often see John; and here he was.

”Emily thinks it a pointed thing, my coming at once,” he cogitated. ”She reminds me, too, that friends.h.i.+p for her did not bring me. Well, I was too much out of spirits to come a month ago.”

Emily's eyes flashed and softened when she saw him out of countenance, and a little twist came in her lips where a smile would like to have broken through. She was still in c.r.a.pe, and wore the delicate gossamer of her widow's cap, with long, wing-like streamers falling away at her back; and while she sat at work on a c.u.mbersome knitted shawl she listened with an air of docility to Justina's conversation, without noticing that a touch of dismay was beginning to show itself in John's face; for Miss Fairbairn had begun to speak of Italian literature, a subject she had been getting up lately for certain good reasons of her own. She dared to talk about Dante, and John was almost at once keenly aware that all this learning was sham--it was the outcome of no real taste; and he felt like a fool while one of the ladies did the wooing and the other, as he thought, amused herself with watching it. He was accustomed to be wooed, and to be watched, but he had been trying for some time to bring his mind to like the present wooer. While away from her he fancied that he had begun to succeed, and now he knew well that this sort of talk would drive him wild in a week. It represented nothing real. No; the thing would not do. She was a good woman; she would have ruled his house well; she would have been just to his children; and if he had established her in all comfort and elegance over his family, he might have left her, and attended to those prospective Parliamentary duties as long as he liked, without annoying her. She was a lady too, and her mother, old Lady Fairbairn, was a pleasant and unexceptionable woman. But she was making herself ridiculous now. No; it would not do.

Giving her up then and there, he suddenly started from his seat as if he felt relieved, and drawing himself to his full height, looked down on the two ladies, one of whom, lifting her golden head, continued the wooing with her eyes, while the other said carelessly and with a dispa.s.sionate air--

”Well, I cannot think how you or John or any one can like that bitter-hearted, odious, cruel Dante.”

”Emily,” exclaimed Miss Fairbairn, ”how can you be so absurd, dear?”

”I wonder they did not tear him into little bits,” continued Emily audaciously, ”instead of merely banis.h.i.+ng him, which was all they did--wasn't it, John?”

”I cannot imagine what you mean,” exclaimed Miss Fairbairn, while John laughed, and felt that at least here was something real and natural.

”You cannot? That's because you don't consider, then, what we should feel if somebody now were to write a grand poem about our fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles, and dear friends deceased, setting forth how he had seen them all in the nether regions; how he had received their confidences, and how penitent most of them were. Persecuted, indeed! and misunderstood! I consider that his was the deadliest revenge any man ever took upon his enemies.”

Miss Fairbairn's brow, on hearing this, contracted with pain; for John laughed again, and turning slightly towards Emily as he stood leaning against the window-frame, took the opportunity to get away from the subject of Italian literature, and ask her some question about her knitting.

”It must be something to give away, I am sure. You are always giving.”

”But you know, John,” she answered, as if excusing herself, ”we are not at all sure that we shall have any possessions, anything of our own, in the future life--anything, consequently, to give away. Perhaps it will all belong to all. So let us have enough of giving while we can, and enjoy the best part of possession.”

”Dear Emily,” said Miss Fairbairn kindly, ”you should not indulge in these unauthorised fancies.”

”But it so chances that this is not for a poor person,” observed Emily, ”but for dear Aunt Christie.”

”Ah, she was always very well while she lived with me,” said John; ”but I hear a very different account of her now.”

”Yes; she has rheumatism in her foot; so that she is obliged to sit up-stairs. John, you should go and see her.”

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