“How many societies is she chairwoman of?” said Lance. “I counted twenty-four pigeon-holes in her cabinet one day, and I believe there was a society for each of them; but I must say she is quiet about them.”
“It is fine to see the little hen-of-the-walk of Cocksmoor lower her crest to her!” said Gertrude, “when Ethel has not thought it worth while to assert herself, being conscious of being an old fogey.”
“And your Bishop?”
“Norman? I do believe he is coming home next year. I think he really would if papa begged him, but that he—my father, I mean—said he would never do so; though I believe nothing would be such happiness to him as to have Norman and Meta at home again. You know they came home on George’s death, but then those New Somersetas went and chose him Bishop, and there he is for good.”
“For good indeed,” said Clement; “he is a great power there.”
“So are his books,” added Geraldine. “Will Harewood sets great store by them. Ah! I hear our young folks—or is that a carriage?”
Emilia and Gerald came in simultaneously with Marilda, expanded into a portly matron, as good-humoured as ever, and better-looking than long ago.
She was already insisting on Gerald’s coming to a party of hers and bringing his violin, and only interrupted her persuasions to greet and congratulate Clement.
Gerald, lying back on a sofa, and looking tired, only replied in a bantering, lazy manner.
“Ah! if I asked you to play to the chimney-sweeps,” she said, “you would come fast enough, you idle boy. And you, Annie, do you know you are coming to me for the season when your uncle and aunt go out of town?”
“Indeed, Cousin Marilda, thank you, I don’t know it, and I don’t believe it.”
“Ah, we’ll see! You haven’t thought of the dresses you two are to have for the Drawing-Room from Worth’s, and Lady Caergwent to present you.”
Anna shook her head laughingly, while Gerald muttered—
“Salmon are caught with gay flies.”
They closed round the tea-table while Marilda sighed—
“Alda’s daughters are not like herself.”
“A different generation,” said Geraldine.
“See the Beggars Opera,” said Lance—
“‘I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter,
For when she’s drest with care and cost, and made all neat and gay,
As men should serve a cucumber, she throws herself away.’”
“Ah! your time has not come yet, Lance. Your little girls are at a comfortable age.”
“There are different ways of throwing oneself away,” said Clement. “Perhaps each generation says it of the next.”
“Emmie is not throwing herself away, except her chances,” said Marilda. “If she would only think of poor Ferdy Brown, who is as good a fellow as ever lived!”
“Not much chance of that,” said Geraldine.
Their eyes all met as each had glanced at the tea-table, where Emilia and Gerald were looking over a report together, but Geraldine shook her head. She was sure that Gerald did not think of his cousins otherwise than as sisters, but she was by no means equally sure of Emilia, to whom he was certainly a hero.
Anna had not heard the last of the season. Her mother wrote to her, and also to Geraldine, whom she piteously entreated not to let Anna lose another chance, in the midst of her bloom, when she could get good introductions, and Marilda would do all she could for her.
But Anna was obdurate. She should never see any one in society like Uncle Clem. She had had a taste two years ago, and she wished for no more. She should see the best pictures at the studios before leaving town, and she neither could nor would leave her uncle and aunt to themselves. So the matter remained in abeyance till the place of sojourn had been selected and tried; and meantime Gerald spent what remained of the Easter vacation in a little of exhibitions with Anna, a little of slumming with Emilia, a little of society impartially with swells and artists, and a good deal of amiable lounging and of modern reading of all kinds. His aunt watched, enjoyed, yet could not understand, his uncle said, that he was an undeveloped creature.
CHAPTER V. – A HAPPY SPRITE
Such trifles will their hearts engage,
A shell, a flower, a feather;
If none of these, a cup of joy
It is to be together.—ISAAC WILLIAMS.
A retired soldier, living with his sister in a watering-place, is apt to form to himself regular habits, of which one of the most regular is the walking to the station in quest of his newspaper. Here, then, it was that the tall, grey-haired, white-moustached General Mohun beheld, emerging on the platform, a slight figure in a grey suit, bag in hand, accompanied by a pretty pink-cheeked, fair-haired, knicker-bockered little boy, whose air of content and elation at being father’s companion made his sapphire eyes goodly to behold.
“Mr. Underwood! I am glad to see you.”
“I thought I would run down and look at the house you were so good as to mention for my sister, and let this chap have a smell of the sea.”
There was a contention between General Mohun’s hospitality and Lancelot’s intention of leaving his bag at the railway hotel, but the former gained the day, the more easily because there was an assurance that the nephew who slept at Miss Mohun’s for the sake of his day-school would take little Felix Underwood under his protection, and show him his curiosities. The boy’s eyes grew round, and he exclaimed—
“Foolish guillemots’ eggs?”
“He is in the egg stage,” said his father, smiling.
“I won’t answer for guillemots,” said the General, “but nothing seems to come amiss to Fergus, though his chief turn is for stones.”
There was a connection between the families, Bernard Underwood, the youngest brother of Lance, having married the elder sister of the aforesaid Fergus Merrifield. Miss Mohun, the sister who made a home for the General, had looked out the house that Lance had come to inspect. As it was nearly half-past twelve o’clock, the party went round by the school, where, in the rear of the other rushing boys, came Fergus, in all the dignity of the senior form.
“Look at him,” said the General, “those are honours one only gets once or twice in one’s life, before beginning at the bottom again.”
Fergus graciously received the introduction; and the next sound that was heard was, “Have you any good fossils about you?” in a tone as if he doubted whether so small a boy knew what a fossil meant; but little Felix was equal to the occasion.
“I once found a shepherd’s crown, and father said it was a fossil sea-urchin, and that they are alive sometimes.”
“Echini. Oh yes—recent, you mean. There are lots of them here. I don’t go in for those mere recent things,” said Fergus, in a pre-Adamite tone, “but my sister does. I can take you down to a fisherman who has always got some.”
“Father, may I? I’ve got my eighteenpence,” asked the boy, turning up his animated face, while Fergus, with an air of patronage, vouched for the honesty of Jacob Green, and undertook to bring his charge back in time for luncheon.
Lancelot Underwood had entirely got over that sense of being in a false position which had once rendered society distasteful to him. Many more men of family were in the like position with himself than had been the case when his brother had begun life; moreover, he had personally achieved some standing and