“Sarah, are you making a gown?”
“Yes. Is it a handsome one?”
“Beautiful! Get the coffee ready. I’ll finish cutting out that sleeve for you, and I’ll give you some trimming for it. I have some narrow satin ribbon of a colour that will just match it.”
“You’re very kind, miss.”
“Be quick; there’s a good girl. But first put your master’s shoes on the hearth: he will take his boots off when he comes in. I hear him; he is coming.”
“Miss, you are cutting the stuff wrong.”
“So I am; but it is only a snip. There is no harm done.”
The kitchen door opened; Mr. Moore entered, very wet and cold. Caroline half turned from her dressmaking occupation, but renewed it for a moment, as if to gain a minute’s time for some purpose. Bent over the dress, her face was hidden; there was an attempt to settle her features and veil their expression, which failed. When she at last met Mr. Moore, her countenance beamed.
“We had ceased to expect you. They asserted you would not come,” she said.
“But I promised to return soon. You expected me, I suppose?”
“No, Robert; I dared not when it rained so fast. And you are wet and chilled. Change everything. If you took cold, I should – we should blame ourselves in some measure.”
“I am not wet through: my riding coat is waterproof. Dry shoes are all I require. There – the fire is pleasant after facing the cold wind and rain for a few miles.”
He stood on the kitchen hearth; Caroline stood beside him. Mr. Moore, while enjoying the genial glow, kept his eyes directed towards the glittering brasses on the shelf above. Chancing for an instant to look down, his glance rested on an uplifted face, flushed, smiling, happy, shaded with silky curls, lit with fine eyes. Sarah was gone into the parlour with the tray; a lecture from her mistress detained her there. Moore placed his hand a moment on his young cousin’s shoulder, stooped, and left a kiss on her forehead.
“Oh!” said she, as if the action had unsealed her lips, “I was miserable when I thought you would not come. I am almost too happy now. Are you happy, Robert? Do you like to come home?”
“I think I do – tonight, at least.”
“Are you certain you are not fretting about your frames, and your business, and the war?”
“Not just now.”
“Are you positive you don’t feel Hollow’s Cottage too small for you, and narrow, and dismal?”
“At this moment, no.”
“Can you affirm that you are not bitter at heart because rich and great people forget you?”
“No more questions. You are mistaken if you think I am anxious to curry favour with rich and great people. I only want means – a position – a career.”
“Which your own talent and goodness shall win you. You were made to be great; you shall be great.”
“I wonder now, if you spoke honestly out of your heart, what recipe you would give me for acquiring this same greatness; but I know it – better than you know it yourself. Would it be efficacious? Would it work? Yes – poverty, misery, bankruptcy. Oh, life is not what you think it, Lina!”
“But you are what I think you.”
“I am not.”
“You are better, then?”
“Far worse.”
“No; far better. I know you are good.”
“How do you know it?”
“You look so, and I feel you are so.”
“Where do you feel it?”
“In my heart.”
“Ah! You judge me with your heart, Lina: you should judge me with your head.”
“I do; and then I am quite proud of you. Robert, you cannot tell all my thoughts about you.”
Mr. Moore’s dark face mustered colour; his lips smiled, and yet were compressed; his eyes laughed, and yet he resolutely knit his brow.
“Think meanly of me, Lina,” said he. “Men, in general, are a sort of scum, very different to anything of which you have an idea. I make no pretension to be better than my fellows.”
“If you did, I should not esteem you so much. It is because you are modest that I have such confidence in your merit.”
“Are you flattering me?” he demanded, turning sharply upon her, and searching her face with an eye of acute penetration.
“No,” she said softly, laughing at his sudden quickness. She seemed to think it unnecessary to proffer any eager disavowal of the charge.
“You don’t care whether I think you flatter me or not?”
“No.”
“You are so secure of your own intentions?”
“I suppose so.”
“What are they, Caroline?”
“Only to ease my mind by expressing for once part of what I think, and then to make you better satisfied with yourself.”
“By assuring me that my kinswoman is my sincere friend?”
“Just so. I am your sincere friend, Robert.”
“And I am – what chance and change shall make me, Lina.”
“Not my enemy, however?”
The answer was cut short by Sarah and her mistress entering the kitchen together in some commotion. They had been improving the time which Mr. Moore and Miss Helstone had spent in dialogue by a short dispute on the subject of “café au lait,” which Sarah said was the queerest mess she ever saw, and a waste of God’s good gifts, as it was “the nature of coffee to be boiled in water,” and which mademoiselle affirmed to be “un breuvage royal,” a thousand times too good for the mean person who objected to it.
The former occupants of the kitchen now withdrew into the parlour. Before Hortense followed them thither, Caroline had only time again to question, “Not my enemy, Robert?” And Moore, Quaker-like, had replied with another query, “Could I be?” And then, seating himself at the table, had settled Caroline at his side.
Caroline scarcely heard mademoiselle’s explosion of wrath when she rejoined them; the long declamation about the “conduite indigne de cette méchante créature” sounded in her ear as confusedly as the agitated rattling of the china. Robert laughed a little at it, in very subdued sort, and then, politely and calmly entreating his sister to be tranquil, assured her that if it would yield her any satisfaction, she should have her choice of an attendant amongst all the girls in his mill. Only he feared they would scarcely suit her, as they were most of them, he was informed, completely ignorant of household work; and pert and self-willed as Sarah was, she was, perhaps, no worse than the majority of the women of her class.
Mademoiselle admitted the truth of this conjecture: according to her, “ces paysannes anglaises étaient tout insupportables.” What would she not give for some “bonne cuisinière anversoise,” with the high cap, short petticoat, and decent sabots proper to her class – something better, indeed, than an insolent coquette in a flounced gown, and absolutely without cap! (For Sarah, it appears, did not partake the opinion of St. Paul that “it is a shame for a woman to go with her head uncovered;” but, holding rather a contrary doctrine, resolutely refused to imprison in linen or muslin the plentiful tresses of her yellow hair, which it was her wont to fasten up smartly with a comb behind, and on Sundays to wear curled in front.)
“Shall I try and get you an Antwerp girl?” asked