“What is wrong, Lew?” said the mother.
“Nothing,” he answered. “I have only been thinking.”
“But what about, my boy?”
Mrs. Gilroy seldom petted her children, she seldom used loving words to them; but then her touch was a caress. She laid her hand now upon the lad’s shoulder; he looked up into her kindly firm face; and the shadow fell from his own.
“It’s just nothing,” he cried. “I ought to be ashamed of myself. Don’t ask me at the present moment, mother. I have a fit of the blues, that’s all.”
“Well, and I have a fit of the cheerfuls,” said Mrs. Gilroy.
“What do you mean, mother?” Llewellyn was all life and spirits in a moment. “Has anything good happened; have you got another post? Are you to be made sub-editor on one of the great dailies; that, you know, is your ambition, your great passionate ambition, little mother.”
“Nothing of the kind at present, Lew, dear. I am just where I always was. I have plenty of work, and I am paid fairly well; but I have good news all the same. I will tell you afterwards. It has to do with Leslie. It will be the finest thing in all the world for her, simply the making of her.”
Llewellyn’s face once more looked downcast. He did not want his mother to observe it, however, and he went slowly to the door.
“I had better let Kitty and Mabel know that you are in,” he said.
He went into the little hall and shouted his sisters’ names. The next moment two trim, neatly-dressed little girls, with long hair hanging down their shoulders, in dark-blue frocks and white pinafores, came tripping in.
“Mother’s come,” said Llewellyn; “she wants tea. Sound the gong when it is ready.”
He bounded up the narrow stairs three at a time to his own special den at the top of the house. There, big, handsome, overgrown boy that he was, he shed some tears. He was ashamed of his tears; they scalded right down into his heart.
“I wish I didn’t feel it so much,” he said to himself. “I just had a wild hope for a moment, when mother spoke about good news, that it had something to do with me. But it’s only Leslie. Well, dear old girl, why shouldn’t it be about her? What a brute I am to grudge it to her. She is mother’s right hand, and about the very best girl in the world. There, I shall hate myself if I give way another moment. I’ll just tell mother right out, and put an end to the thing. She’ll be a bit surprised, but I guess she’ll be only too glad to consent. It’s good-by to daydreams, that’s all; but a fellow can’t think of them when his mother is in the question.”
Meanwhile the girls downstairs were quickly preparing the tea. Kitty went to the kitchen to fetch the tray with the cups and saucers; Mabel laid the white cloth, which was made of the finest damask, on the center table. Kitty then knelt down before the fire to make an apparently unlimited supply of buttered toast; Mabel put the right amount of tea into the old teapot. There were many relics of bygone respectability, nay, of bygone wealth, in the Gilroys’ humble house. The silver teapot was one – it was real silver, not electroplate. It was very thin and of an antique shape, and the children were often heard to declare that nothing would induce them to have their tea made in anything else. The cups and saucers, too, were of rare old china and of a quaint pattern. They were neither cracked nor broken, because the girls themselves washed them and looked after them, and put them away in the little pantry.
The small maid of all work, Elfreda, was never allowed to go near the pantry. She only did the rough work under severe superintendence from Kitty; but the house was perfectly organized, and no one felt unduly fatigued.
The tea, when it was ready, consisted of fresh eggs, honey in the comb, hot cakes which Mabel had been secretly watching for the last half-hour, a pile of buttered toast, bread both brown and white, delicious country butter, tea, and even cream.
When everything was in order, Mabel sounded the gong, and Llewellyn came down.
He had scarcely taken his place at the table before there was the click of a latchkey in the hall door, and light steps, the steps of a young girl, were heard in the passage outside.
“There’s Leslie,” said Mrs. Gilroy. She was seated at the head of her table pouring out tea. She paused now, and a look of considerable expectancy filled her eyes. Llewellyn watched her; the others, engaged in their own chatter, took no special notice.
“Leslie, late as usual,” said Mabel. Just at that moment Leslie poked in her head.
“Oh, do just keep a nice hot cup of tea for me,” she called out. “I am starving. There has been such a cold wind blowing, and I had to walk half the way, as every omnibus was full. I’ll just run upstairs to tidy up. Please keep a right good tea for me; I’ll trust you, Mabel.”
“Yes, you may,” shouted out Mabel. “I am keeping back the crispest of the hot cakes, and there is buttered toast in a covered dish by the fire.”
Leslie’s steps were heard running quickly upstairs, and a minute or two later she entered the room. She was a tall girl, with quantities of golden-brown hair, large brown eyes, a complexion of cream and roses, and straight regular features. It needed but a glance to show that she was a beautiful girl, with beauty above the average; but it was not only the regularity of her features and the clearness of her complexion which made Leslie’s face so specially attractive. It was the marked and wonderful intelligence on her open brow, the speaking, thoughtful expression in her eyes, the firm, proud outline of her beautiful lips.
Mrs. Gilroy just glanced up when her eldest daughter came into the room. That one glance showed that the girl was the mother’s special idol; that she loved her with a worship which was almost idolatry, that she was a shade more proud of her and dreamt more daydreams about her than about any of the others.
Llewellyn, who could read his mother like a book, who loved her passionately, saw all these thoughts now in her eyes. He suppressed a sigh, and attacked the loaf with vigor.
“Come, Leslie,” said her mother, “here is your place by me as usual. Now, have a good tea, my darling, for we have much to talk of afterwards. I want all of you children to be present too; you must all hear my good news.”
“Good news, mother. That’s cheering,” said Leslie. “I have had such a cross day.”
“Cross – what do you mean?” said Kitty. “Do tell us, Leslie, what can have happened. Didn’t you get on with your pupils?”
“No, they were contrary; they would play and would not learn. I didn’t seem to have any control over them. Mother, dear, I am sick of teaching!”
“What rot!” cried Llewellyn. “One must go on with a thing whether one is sick or not.”
“Oh, I know, Lew, dear old boy, and I really don’t mean to grumble; only I felt cross and I am owning to it. I don’t feel cross now,” added the girl.
She helped herself to brown bread and butter. Kitty put a quantity of honey on her plate. Tea came to an end presently, and then the children in orderly file began to remove the tea-things.
In less than a quarter of an hour the little parlor – they always sat in the parlor in the evenings – was looking as snug and comfortable as a room could look. The lamp, beautifully trimmed and burning clearly, stood on the center table, the red curtains were drawn round the windows; a fire, blazing merrily, gave a final touch of cheerfulness to the pleasant room.
“Now, then, mother, get into your own special chair and tell us the news,” said Leslie. – “Llewellyn, you are not going away, are you?”
“No,” said Llewellyn.
“But before you begin, mother, do wait for us,” cried Mabel. “Kitty and I must go upstairs to turn down the beds, and then I must see Elfreda in order to get her to put the fish in soak for to-morrow’s breakfast. She does forget things so dreadfully.”
“Yes, and I have got to wash the tea-things; it’s my turn, I’m