"He has certainly aged very much of late. I was quite pained the other day to see him so worn and anxious-looking. I wish he would take a couple of months' rest right away from business."
John smiled.
"I know him better than you do, Mr. Clement. He would be miserable away from the Bank. But when Mr. Avison returns there will be no necessity for him to work so hard; and you must talk to him seriously about his health."
When John had finished his modest cup of tea he took up the poker and gave four loud taps with it on the back of the grate. Presently there came four taps in response, and a few minutes later Mr. Kittaway, John's next door neighbor, came in, followed by a servant girl carrying his violoncello in its case.
Mr. Kittaway was a retired wine merchant. He was a little, high-dried, bald old gentleman, with gold-rimmed spectacles, and an enormously high and stiff white cravat, above which his puckered face peered out as though he were gazing at one over a wall.
"What can have become of Frank?" queried John, presently. "It must be more than a week since he was here last. He's not ill, or I should have missed him from the office."
No one save Clement noticed the vivid blush that dyed Hermia's cheek. Fortunately the question was addressed to Miss Brancker.
"When he was here last he was all agog to join the New Spanish class at the Institute," responded the latter. "He has a great idea about reading 'Don Quixote' in the original."
"Frank is always agog after something new," said John, with a laugh, "which more often than not comes to nothing in the end. He's as changeable as the moon, as I've told him many a time. Still, he might have given us a look-in before now."
"If you were to walk as far as the 'Crown and Cushion'--not that it would be worth anyone's while to do so," remarked Mr. Kittaway, in his dryest manner--"I have no doubt you would find Master Frank at the present moment practising the spot-stroke, with the stump of a cigar between his teeth, and his hat very much at the back of his head."
It was known to all those present that there was no love lost between the ex-wine merchant and Frank Derison.
"There are four of us--just a comfortable quartete," resumed the little man--"which, in my opinion, is much preferable to a quintete; more especially when one of the five happens to keep execrable time."
This was another hit at the absent Frank.
"Come, come, friend Nathan," said John, slapping him lightly on the knee. "Frank's not quite so bad as you try to make out. He may be fond of a game of billiards--nowadays most young men seem to be--but where's the harm? I've often wished I could handle a cue; but I don't think I could if I were to try for a hundred years. And as for the bad time Frank keeps when he plays, I put that down to pure carelessness."
"There ought to be no carelessness where music is in question," interrupted the little man, hotly. "Music calls forth, and will be content with nothing less than the highest faculties of a man's nature; and where those are not given ungrudgingly, the result is a farce, sir--a wretched farce." He emphasized his last words with a vicious twang of one of the strings of his 'cello.
John laughed, but said nothing. He was too accustomed to his friend's tirades to attempt any confutation of them.
And so the little concert began. Hermia sat down to the piano, John brought out his beloved flute, Clement screwed up the strings of his fiddle, while Mr. Kittaway settled his spectacles and gave a preliminary scrape or two on his 'cello. Miss Brancker fixed herself in a corner near the fire with her knitting and a kitten on her lap.
Charlotte Brancker was two years younger than John, and was a feminine copy of him. She had the same homely features, somewhat softened in their outlines, but charged with goodness in one case as in the other. There was the same pleasant smile, the same ever-cheerful manner, the same thoughtfulness for the comfort of others. Two more thoroughly unselfish people than John Brancker and his sister it would have been hard to find.
Hermia Rivers, their orphan niece, had lived with them since she was three years old. She was now turned twenty, and was a very lovely girl. Her hair was the color of ripe corn in sunlight; her eyes were of the hue of violets when they first open their dewy lids to the morn; her face was instinct with thought and refinement.
It is almost needless to say that Clement Hazeldine was very much in love with her, although he had grave reasons for fearing that her heart was already given to Frank Derison. That there was some secret understanding between the two, his eyes, rendered keen by love, had not failed to convince him; and a secret understanding between two young people can, as a rule, have but one termination. Greatly he feared the worst; but there was a stubbornness of disposition about him which would not allow him to give up while a grain of hope was left to sustain him.
Meanwhile, he found it impossible to keep away from Nairn Cottage. Two or three evenings a week found him there, and he was always made welcome. The ostensible object of his visits was to form one in the little musical gatherings which, every Monday and Thursday evenings, wooed "the heavenly maid" in Miss Brancker's sitting-room.
CHAPTER IV.
A LAGGARD IN LOVE.
As Hermia sat playing this evening all the attention she was obliged to give to the music could not keep her uncle's words from ringing in her ears: "He is as changeable as the moon, as I have told him many a time." What if Frank had changed towards her, and were never to come and see her more!
She knew, or thought she knew, the reason why Frank Derison had kept away from Nairn Cottage for upwards of a week. On the occasion of his last visit, when she was at the piano, and he was turning over her music, there being no one but themselves in the room, he had suddenly stooped and imprinted a kiss on her cheek. She had started up in a flame of indignation, and the result had been a short but sharp passage of arms between the two. There was a sort of half-engagement between them (of which more hereafter), sufficiently binding, however, in Frank's opinion, to allow of his stealing a kiss "without a fellow being called over the coals for it as if he had committed some awful crime." But Hermia took a totally opposite view, and Frank was made to understand that, on no account, must he attempt to take such a liberty again. Thereupon, the young fellow had flung out of the cottage in a huff, and had not been near since; while Hermia, as a matter of course, had locked herself in her bedroom, and had a good cry all to herself.
The concert this evening went on for upwards of an hour. Then came an interruption. Dr. Hazeldine was wanted in haste by one of his patients.
"My father would fain have made a doctor of me," remarked Mr. Kittaway, parenthetically, "but I said, 'Give me a business that will leave me my own master at night, and that will ensure me from being called out of bed to go tramping through the rain or snow at all sorts of hours.'"
"It's nothing when you are used to it," said Clement, with a laugh.
"It seems to me very inconsiderate of people to be taken ill in the middle of the night," remarked the old gentleman, as he peered into his snuff-box; "matters ought to be arranged differently somehow." Mr. Kittaway stayed about half an hour after Clement's departure. After partaking of a small mug of warm elder wine and a soft biscuit, he, too, took his leave.
"I think I will walk as far as Strong's, and see whether he is likely to turn up on Sunday," said John, a few minutes later.
John was organist at the parish church, and Strong was the man who blew the bellows for him.
"It is rather late for you to go out," observed Miss Brancker.
"The night is fine, and the walk will do me good. Besides, if Strong is no better, I must look out for a substitute to-morrow."
Charlotte followed her brother to the garden gate.
"It seems to blow very like for rain," she said, as she held up her hand to ascertain the way of the wind. "Had you not better