CHAPTER XI
Rosamond’s Apologue
Pray, sir, do you laugh at me?
—Title of Old Caricature
Was Cecil’s allegiance to Dunstone, or was it to the heiress of Dunstone? Tests of allegiance consist in very small matters, and it is not always easy to see the turning-point. Now Cecil had always stood on a pinnacle at Dunstone, and she had found neither its claims nor her own recognized at Compton. One kind of allegiance would have remained on the level, and retained the same standard, whether accepted or not. Another would climb on any pinnacle that any one would erect for the purpose, and become alienated from whatever interfered with such eminence.
So as nobody seemed so willing to own Cecil’s claims to county supremacy as Lady Tyrrell, her bias was all towards Sirenwood; and whereas such practices as prevailed at Dunstone evidently were viewed as obsolete and narrow by these new friends, Cecil was willing to prove herself superior to them, and was far more irritated than convinced when her husband appealed to her former habits.
The separation of the welfare of body and soul had never occurred to the beneficence of Dunstone, and it cost Cecil a qualm to accept it; but she could not be a goody in the eyes of Sirenwood; and besides, she was reading some contemporary literature, which made it plain that any religious instruction was a most unjustifiable interference with the great law, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” and so, when she met Anne with a handful of texts neatly written out in printing letters, she administered her warning.
Cecil and Anne had become allies to a certain extent, chiefly through their joint disapproval of Rosamond, not to say of Julius; and the order was so amazing that Anne did not at first take it in; and when she understood that all mention of religion was forbidden, she said, “I do not think I ought to yield in this.”
“Surely,” said Cecil, “there is no connection between piety and cutting out.”
“I don’t know,” said Anne; “but it does not seem to me to be right to go on with a work where my Master’s Name is forbidden.”
“Religion ought never to be obtruded,” said Cecil.
“The Word ought to flavour everything, in season or out of season,” said Anne, thoughtfully.
“Oh! that’s impossible. It’s your narrow view. If you thrust preaching into everything, we can never work together.”
“Oh, then,” said Anne, quickly, “I must give it up!” And she turned away with a rapid step, to carry her texts back to her room.
“Anne!” called Cecil, “I did not mean that!”
Anne paused for a moment, looked over the baluster, and repeated firmly, “No, Cecil; it would be denying Christ to work where His Name is forbidden.”
Perhaps there was something in the elevation and the carved rail that gave the idea of a pulpit, for Cecil felt as if she was being preached at, and turned her back, indignant and vexed at what she had by no means intended to incur—the loss of such a useful assistant as she found in Anne.
“Such nonsense!” she said to herself, as she crossed the hall alone, there meeting with Rosamond, equipped for the village. “Is not Anne going to-day?” she said, as she saw the pony-carriage at the door.
“No. It is so vexatious. She is so determined upon preaching to the women, that I have been obliged to put a stop to it.”
“Indeed! I should not have thought it of poor Anne; but no one can tell what those semi-dissenters think right.”
“When she declared she ought to do it in season or out of season, what was one to do?” said Cecil.
“I thought that was for clergymen,” said Rosamond, hitting the right nail on the head in her ignorance, as so often happened.
“She sees no difference,” said Cecil. “Shall I drive you down?” she added graciously, according to the fashion of uniting with one sister-in-law against the other; and Rosamond not only accepted, but asked to be taken on to Willansborough, to buy a birthday present for her brother Terry, get stamps for an Indian letter, and perform a dozen more commissions that seemed to arise in her mind with the opportunity. Her two brothers were to spend the Christmas holidays with her, and she was in high spirits, and so communicative about them that she hardly observed how little interest Cecil took in Terry’s achievements.
“Who is that,” she presently asked, “with those red-haired children? It looked like Miss Vivian’s figure.”
“I believe it was. Julius and I often see her walking about the lanes; but she passes like—like a fire-flaught, whatever that is—just bows, and hardly ever speaks.”
“She is a strange girl,” said Cecil. “Lady Tyrrell says she cannot draw her into any of her interests, but she will go her own way.”
“Like poor Anne?”
“No, not out of mere moping and want of intellect, like Anne. But Lady Tyrrell says she feels for her; she was brought a great deal too forward, and was made quite mistress of the house at Rockpier, being her father’s darling and all, and now it is trying to her, though it is quite wholesome, to be in her proper place. It is a pity she is so bitter over it, and flies off her own way.”
“That boy!” said Rosamond; “I hope she does something for his good.”
“She teaches him, I believe; but there’s another instance of her strange ways. She was absolutely vexed when Lady Tyrrell took him into the house, though he was her protégé, only because it was not done in her way. It is a great trial to Camilla.”
“I could fancy a reason for that,” said Rosamond. “Julius does not like the tone of the household at all.” But she added hastily, “Who could those children be? They did not look quite like poor children.”
“Ah! she is always taking up with some odd person in her own away,” said Cecil. “But here we are. Will you drive on to the hotel, or get out here?”
When, at the end of two hours, the sisters-in-law met at the work-room, and Rosamond had taken a survey of the row of needle-women, coming up one by one to give their work, be paid and dismissed, there was a look of weariness and vexation on Cecil’s face. She had found it less easy to keep order and hinder gossip, and had hardly known how to answer when that kind lady, Mrs. Miles Charnock, had been asked after; but she would have scorned to allow that she had missed her assistant, and only politely asked how Rosamond had sped.
“Oh! excellently. People were so well advised as to be out, so I paid off all my calls.”
“You did not return your calls without Julius?”
“There’s nothing he hates so much. I would not have dragged him with me on any account.”
“I think it is due to one’s self.”
“Ah! but then I don’t care what is due to myself. I saw a friend of yours, Cecil.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Duncombe,” said Rosamond. “I went to Pettitt’s—the little perfumer, you know, that Julius did so much for at the fire; and there she was, leaning on the counter, haranguing him confidentially upon setting an example with sanatory measures.”
“Sanitary,” corrected Cecil; “sanitas is health, sano to cure. People never know the difference.”
“Certainly I don’t,” said Rosamond. “It must be microscopic!”
“Only it shows the difference between culture and the reverse,” said Cecil.
“Well, you know, I’m the reverse,” said Rosamond, leaning sleepily back, and becoming silent; but Cecil was too anxious for intelligence to let her rest, and asked on what Mrs. Duncombe was saying.
“I am not quite sure—she was stirring up his public spirit, I think, about the drainage; and they were both of them deploring the slackness and insensibility of the corporation, and canvassing for Mr. Whitlock, as I believe. It struck me as a funny subject for a lady, but I believe she does not stick at trifles.”
“No real work can be carried out by those who do,” said Cecil.
“Oh!” added Rosamond, “I met Mrs. and Miss Bowater, and they desired me to say that Jenny can’t come till the dinner-party on the 20th, and then they will leave her.”
“How cool to send a message instead of writing!”
“Oh! she has always been like one of themselves, like a sister to them all.”
“I can’t bear that sort of people.”
“What sort?”
“Who worm themselves in.”
“Miss Bowater could have no occasion for worming. They must be quite on equal terms.”
“At any rate, she was only engaged to their poor relation.”
“What poor relation? Tell me! Who told you?”
“Raymond. It was a young attorney—a kind of cousin of the Poynsett side, named Douglas.”
“What? There’s a cross in the churchyard to Elizabeth Douglas, daughter of Francis Poynsett, and wife of James Douglas, and at the bottom another inscription to Archibald Douglas, her son, lost in the Hippolyta.”
“Yes, that must be the man. He was flying from England, having been suspected of some embezzlement.”
“Indeed! And was Jenny engaged to him? Julius told me that Mrs. Douglas had been his mother’s dearest friend, and that this Archie had been brought up with them, but he did not say any more.”
“Perhaps he did not like having had a cousin in an attorney’s office. I am sure I had no notion of such a thing.”
Rosamond laughed till she was exhausted at the notion of Julius’s sharing the fastidious objections she heard in Cecil’s voice; and then, struck by the sadness of the story, she cried, “And that makes them all so fond of Miss Bowater. Poor girl, what must she not have gone through! And yet how cheerful she does look!”
“People say,” proceeded Cecil, unable to resist the impulse to acquire a partaker in her half-jealous aversion, “that it was a great disappointment that Mrs. Poynsett could not make her sons like her as much as she did herself.”
“Oh!” cried Rosamond, “how little peace we should have if we always heeded what people say!”
“People that know,” persisted Cecil.
“Not very wise or very kind people to say so,” quoth Rosamond; “though, by the bye, the intended sting is happily lost, considering that it lies among five.”
“Why should you assume a sting?”
“Because I see you are stung, and want to sting me,” said Rosamond, in so merry a tone that the earnestness was disguised.
“I! I’m not stung! What Mrs. Poynsett or Miss Bowater may have schemed is nothing to me,” said Cecil, with all her childish dignity.
“People talk of Irish imagination,” said Rosamond in her lazy meditative tone.
“Well?” demanded Cecil, sharply.
“Only it is not my Irish imagination that has devised this dreadful picture of the artful Jenny and Mrs. Poynsett spinning their toils to entrap the whole five brothers. Come, Cecil, take my advice and put it out of your head. Suppose it were true, small blame to Mrs. Poynsett.”
“What do you mean?” said Cecil, in a voice of hurt dignity.
“I may mean myself.” And Rosamond’s peal of merry laughter was most amazing and inexplicable to her companion, who was not sure that she was not presuming to laugh at her.
There was a silence, broken at last by Rosamond. “Cecil, I have been tumbled about the world a good deal more than you have, and I never found that one got any good by disregarding the warnings of the natives. There’s an immense deal in the cat and the cock.”
“I do not understand, said Cecil.
Whereupon Rosamond, in a voice as if she were telling the story to a small child, began: “Once upon a time there was a wee bit mousiekie, that lived in Giberatie O—that trotted out of her hole upon an exploring expedition. By and by she came scuttling back in a state of great trepidation—in fact, horribly nervous. ‘Mother, mother!’ said the little mouse, ‘I’ve seen a hideous monster, with a red face, and a voice like a trumpet, and a pair of spurs.’”
“Of course, I know that,” broke in Cecil.
“Ah, you haven’t heard all. ‘I should have died of terror,’ said the little mouse, ‘only that I saw a dear sweet graceful creature, with a lovely soft voice, and a smooth coat, and the most beautiful eyes, and the most exquisite pathetic expression in her smile; and she held out her velvet paw to me, and said, ‘Dear little mousiekie-pousie, you’re the loveliest creature I ever met, quite unappreciated in these parts. That horrid old cock is terribly vulgar and commonplace; and never you believe your mother if she tells you he is better worth cultivating than one who has such a deep genuine love and appreciation of all the excellences of all mice, and of you in particular with your dun fur.’”
Rosamond could not for her very life help putting in that word dun; and Cecil, who had been driving straight on with her eyes fixed on her pony’s ears, and rather a sullen expression of forced endurance, faced about. “What you mean by all this I don’t know; but if you think it applies to me or my friends, you are much mistaken.”
“I told you,” said Rosamond, with the same languor, looking out under her half-shut eyes, “that I apply things to myself. I’ve met both sorts in my time.”
And silence reigned for the rest of the way. Cecil had read many more books, knew much more, and was altogether a far more cultivated personage than the Lady Rosamond; but she was not half so ready in catching the import of spoken words; and all this time she was by no means certain whether all this meant warning or meant mockery, though either was equally impertinent, and must be met with the same lady-like indifference, which Cecil trusted that she had never transgressed.
Neither of them, nor indeed any other living creature, knew of a little episode which had occurred about eighteen months previously, when Joanna Bowater had been taking care of Mrs Poynsett during Raymond’s first absence from home after her accident. Of course he took her back to Strawyers as soon as he arrived; and about half-way, after a prolonged and unusual silence, he said, “Jenny, I believe we know one another’s histories pretty well. It would be a great happiness and blessing if you could bring yourself to sink the past so far as to take me, and become indeed my mother’s daughter. Do not answer me in haste. Think it over, and tell me if it is possible.”
Jenny let him drive on more than a mile before she spoke; and when she did, the tears stood on her cheek, and it was quite an effort that her voice was made steady. “No, Raymond, I am very sorry, but it will not do. Two griefs will not make one joy.”
“Yes, they would, to my mother.”
“Ah! there it lies! Indeed, Raymond, I do feel for you all so much, especially your dear mother, that I would bring myself to it, if I could; but the very thought brings Archie up so vividly before me that I cannot! He has almost seemed to be sitting by me all this time. It seems as though beginning again would kill my right to think of him foremost of all.”
“I could bear with that and trust to time,” said Raymond. “Think it over, Jenny. I will be candid with you. The old delusion was too strong for any repetition of that kind, as you may see by the lame performance I am making now.”
Jenny gave a little agitated laugh, and ejaculated, “Dear Raymond!” then added, “It is not on your account, but mine.”
“But,” he added, “my marriage is becoming a necessity, if only for my mother’s sake; and you stand far before any other woman with me, if that would but satisfy you. I verily believe that in a short time we should be just as comfortable together as if we could start with more romance.”
“I dare say we should, dear Raymond,” said Jenny; “but I cannot feel that it is the right thing, while I have not that feeling for you which overpowers everything else; it seems to me that I ought not to give up my place at home. Papa depends on me a good deal, and they both will want me more and more.”
“Less than my mother.”
“I don’t know; and they are my first duty. I can always come to your mother when I am wanted, and I know in your secret soul you prefer me on those terms.”
He made no answer, only when passing the lodge he said, “Will you consider it a little longer, Jenny?”
But this only resulted in a note:—
“DEAR RAYMOND,—Considering only shows me that I must be Archie Douglas’s now and for ever. I can’t help it. It is better for you; for you can find some young girl who can wake your heart again, as never could be done by your still affectionate J. B.”
Raymond and Jenny had met so often since, that the matter was entirely past, and no one ever guessed it.
At any rate, Rosamond, the most ready to plunge into counsel to Cecil, was the least likely to have it accepted; Rosamond had foibles of her own that Cecil knew of, and censured freely enough within herself.
That never-ending question, whether what became the Colonel’s daughter became the clergyman’s wife, would crop up under endless forms. Rosamond, in all opinions, was good-natured and easy, and always for pardon and toleration to an extent that the Compton code could not understand. She could not bear that anybody should be punished or shut out of anything; while there was no denying that, now the first novelty was passing, she was very lazy as to her parochial work, and that where her feelings were not stirred she was of little use.
Julius seemed shamefully tolerant of her omissions, and likewise of her eagerness for all gaieties. He would not go himself, would not accept a dinner invitation for any of the three busy nights of the week, and refused all those to dances and balls for himself, though he never hindered Rosamond’s going.
She used absolutely to cry with passionate entreaties that he would relent and come with her, declaring that he was very unkind, he knew it took away all her pleasure—he was a tyrant, and wanted her not to go. And then he smiled, and owned that he hoped some day she would be tired of it; whereat she raged, and begged him to forbid her, if he really thought her whole life had been so shocking, declaring in the same breath that she would never disown her family, or cast a slur on her mother and sisters.
It always ended in her going, and though never again offending as by her bridal gown, she seldom failed to scandalize Cecil by an excess of talking and of waltzing, such as even Raymond regretted, and which disabled her for a whole day after from all but sofa, sleep, novels, and yawns.
Was this the person whose advice the discreet heiress of Dunstone was likely to follow?
It may be mentioned here, among other elements of difficulty, that Cecil’s maid Grindstone was a thorough Dunstonite, who ‘kept herself to herself,’ was perfectly irreproachable, lived on terms of distant civility with the rest of the household, never complained, but constantly led her young mistress to understand that she was enduring much for her sake.
Cecil was too well trained, and so was she, for a word of gossip or censure to pass between them; but the influence was not the less strong.
CHAPTER XII
Pastoral Visiting
A finger’s breadth at hand may mar
A world of light in heaven afar;
A mote eclipse a glorious star,
An eyelid hide the sky.
—KEBLE.
The dinner was over, and Cecil was favouring the audience with a severely classical piece of music, when, under cover thereof, a low voice said to Julius, “Now, really and truly, tell me how he is getting on?”
“Really and truly, Jenny?”
“Well, not as you would tell mamma, for instance; but as you think in your secret soul.”
“I am sorry you think me so duplex.”
“Come, you understand how anxious I am about the boy.”
“Exactly.” And they both laughed.
“Is that all?” said Joanna Bowater.
“Really and truly it is! Rose can manage him much better than I can.”
“He is very fond of her; but does he—is he—is his heart in his work?” asked the sister, looking with her honest eyes earnestly at Julius, her contemporary and playfellow as a child, and afterwards the companion with whom she had worked out many a deep problem, rendering mutual assistance that made each enter in no common degree into the inner thoughts of the other.
Julius smiled. “I doubt whether he has come to his heart yet.”
“Why should he be so young? Think what you were at twenty-three.”
“I never had Herbert’s physique; and that makes an immense difference. I had no taste or capacity for what is a great privation to a fine young fellow like him. Don’t look startled! He attempts nothing unfitting; he is too good and dutiful, but—”
“Yes, I know what that but means.”
“Nothing to be unhappy about. You know how blameless he has always been at Eton and Oxford; and though he may view his work rather in a school-boy aspect, and me as a taskmaster, as long as he is doing right the growth is going on. Don’t be unhappy, Jenny! His great clear young voice is delightful to hear; he is capital at choral practices, and is a hero to all the old women and boys, the more so for the qualities that earnestness cannot give, but rather detracts from.”
“You mean that he is not in earnest?”
“Don’t pervert all I say! He is not past the time of life when all appointed work seems a task, and any sort of excuse a valid cause against it; but he is conscientious, and always good-humoured under a scolding,—and Rosamond does not spare him,” he added, laughing.
“Then you don’t think there has been a mistake about him?” said Jenny, in a low voice of alarm.
“I have little doubt that when anything develops his inner life, so as to overcome the great strong animal that demands play and exercise, he will be a most useful clergyman.”
“Perhaps he is too young, though I don’t see how it could be helped. Papa always intended it, because of the living; and Herbert never wished anything else. I thought he really desired it, but now I don’t know whether he did not only take it as a matter of course.”
“Obedience is no unwholesome motive. As things stood, to delay his ordination would have been a stigma he did not deserve; and though he might have spent a year with advantage in a theological college, pupilage might only have prolonged his boyhood. It must be experience, not simply years of study, that deepens him.”
“Ah, those studies!”
“To tell the truth, that’s what I am most uneasy about. I take care he should have two hours every forenoon, and three evenings every week, free; but when a man is in his own neighbourhood, and so popular, I am afraid he does not get many evenings at home; and I can’t hinder Bindon from admonishing him.”
“No,” said the sister; “nothing will stir him till the examination is imminent; but I will try what I can do with him for the present. Here he comes, the dear old idle fellow!”
“Joanie, here you are at last, in conclave with the Rector. Lady Rose wants me to sing, and you must accompany me. No one is so jolly for picking one up.”
‘Picking one up’ was apt to be needed by Herbert, who had a good ear and voice, but had always regarded it as ‘bosh’ to cultivate them, except for the immediately practical purposes that had of late been forced on him. The choral society had improved him; but Jenny was taken aback by being called on to accompany him in Mrs. Brown’s Luggage; and his father made his way up to him, saying, “Eh, Herbert! is that the last clerical fashion?”
“’Tis my Rectoress who sets me on, sir,” was Herbert’s merry answer, looking at her. “Now, Lady Rose, you’ll keep me in countenance! My father has never heard you sing Coming through the Rye.”
“No, no, Herbert, my singing is only to amuse little boys. Here’s the higher order of art!”
For Cecil was leading a young lady to the piano, and looking as if she by no means approved of such folly, though everybody had listened to the Poor Old Cockatoo, laughed and applauded heartily; and the ensuing performance seemed to be unappreciated by any one except Raymond and Cecil themselves.
Anne was sitting in a corner of the sofa, with a straight back and weary face, having been driven out into the throng by the old friends who came to sit with Mrs. Poynsett; but she brightened as Miss Bowater took a seat beside her, and accepted her inquiries for Captain Charnock far more graciously than the many which had preceded them. Was not her likeness in his album? And had he not spoken of her as one whom Anne would like?
Soon Joanna had led her to tell not only of Miles’s last letter, but of those from Glen Fraser, of which she had spoken to no one, under the impression that nobody cared. She even spoke of the excellent farm and homestead which Mr. Van Dorp wanted to sell before going to the Free State, and which her father thought would exactly suit Miles.
“Does he mean to settle there?”
“Oh, yes; he promised me to leave the navy and take me home as soon as this voyage is over,” said Anne, eagerly. “If the Salamanca only puts in for long enough, he might run up to Glen Fraser, and see Bocksfeld Stoop, and settle it all at once. I am sure he would be delighted with it, and it is only two miles from Mr. Pilgrim’s.”
“I’m afraid you can never feel this like home,” said Jenny.
“Miles wanted me to know his family, and thought I should be useful to his mother,” said Anne; “but she does not want anything I could do for her. If she has Raymond, she seems to need nobody else.”
“And have you nothing to do?”
“I have letters to write to Miles and to them all at home; and I am making a whole set of shirts and stockings for papa and the boys—it will spare mamma and Jeanie, and I have plenty of time.”
“Too much, I am afraid! But Herbert said you were very useful at the Work Society at Wil’sbro’.”
“Not now.”
“Indeed!”
“No,” in the old cold dry tone. But while Jenny was doubting whether to inquire further, innate sympathy conquered, and Anne added, “I wonder whether I did wrong!”
“As how?” asked Joanna, kindly.
“They said”—she lowered her voice—“I must never speak on religious subjects.”
“How do you mean? What had you done?”
“One day I found a woman crying because her husband had gone away to seek work, so I told her my husband was further away and repeated the texts I like. She was so much comforted that I printed them on a card for her.”
“Was that all?”
“No; there was another poor dear that was unhappy about her baby; and when I bade her pray for it, she did not know how, so I had to tell her a little. There is one who does know her Saviour, and I did love to have a few words of peace with her.”
“And was that what was objected to?”
“Yes; they said it would change the whole character of the institution.”
“Who did?”
“Cecil—Mrs. Charnock Poynsett. I think Lady Tyrrell and Mrs. Duncombe desired her. I thought it was no place for me where I might not speak one word for Christ, and I said so; but since I have wondered whether the old Adam did not speak in me, and I ought to have gone on.”
“My wonder,” said Jenny, indignantly, “would be what right they had to stop you. This was private interference, not from the Vicar or the committee.”
“But I am not a real visiting lady. I only go to help Cecil.”
“I see; but why didn’t you ask Julius what was right? He would have told you.”
“Oh, no, I could not.”
“Why not?”
“It would seem like a complaint of Cecil. Besides—”
“Besides?”
“I don’t think Julius is a Christian.”
The startling announcement was made in so humble and mournful a voice as almost to disarm Jenny’s resentment; and before she had recovered enough for a reply, she was called to take leave of her parents.
Her brother was the professed object of her visit, and she was only at the Hall because there was no accommodation at his lodgings, so that she had no scruple in joining the early breakfast spread for the Rector and his wife, so as to have the morning free for him; but she found Julius alone, saying that his wife was tired after the party; and to Jenny’s offer to take her class, he replied, “Thank you, it will be a great kindness if you will teach; but Rose has no regular class. Teaching is not much in her line; and it is a pity she should have to do it, but we have to make the most of the single hour they allow us for godliness.”
“Don’t you utilize Mrs. Charnock? or is she not strong enough for early hours?”
“Poor Anne! The truth is, I am afraid of her. I fancy all her doctrine comes out of the Westminster Catechism.”
“Could Calvinism be put in at seven years old? Would not it be a pouring of stiff glue into a narrow-necked phial?”
“Result—nil.”
“A few pure drops might got in—and you could give her books.”
“It had struck me that it might be wholesome work for her; but the children’s good must stand first. And, timid and reserved as she seems, she insisted on preaching at the work-room, so that Cecil had to put a stop to it.”
“Are you certain about that preaching?”
“Rose heard of it from Cecil herself.”
“Did she ask what it amounted to?”
“I don’t know; perhaps I had better find out. I remember it came after that ride to Sirenwood. By the bye, Jenny, I wish Cecil could be hindered from throwing herself into that oak of Broceliande!”
“Are not you so suspicious that you see the waving arms and magic circles everywhere?”
“A friendship with any one here is so unnatural, that I can’t but think it a waving of hands boding no good. And there is worse than friendship in that quarter too.”
“Oh, but Lenore is quite different!”
“A Vivienne still!” said Julius, bitterly. “If she costs poor Frank nothing more than his appointment, it will be well.”
“I don’t understand!”
“She caught him in her toils two years ago at Rockpier; and now she is playing fast and loose with him—withdrawing, as I believe; and at any rate keeping the poor foolish boy in such an agitation, that he can’t or won’t settle to his reading; and Driver thinks he will break down.”
“I can’t think it of Lenore.—Oh! good morning, Raymond!”
“Good morning! May I come to breakfast number one? I have to go to Backsworth.”
“Yes,” said Jenny; “we told papa it was too bad to put you on the Prison Committee. What does your wife say?”
“My wife has so many occupations, that she is very sufficient for herself,” said Raymond. “I hope you will get on with her, Jenny. If she could only be got to think you intellectual!”
“Me? O, Raymond! you’ve not been telling her so?” exclaimed Jenny, laughing heartily.
“A very superior coach in divinity, &c.,” said Julius, in a tone half banter, half earnest.
But Jenny exclaimed in distress, “No, no, no; say nothing about that! It would never do for Herbert to have it known. Don’t let him guess that you know.”