to put her strong arm round that fragile body and weakling soul, so as to shield them from the knocks of this rough world! This, too, from him, who has introduced the one element of suffering it has ever known into Prue's little life.
'Am I?' she answers quietly; but her cheek burns.
'There is no one that suits me so well as Prue,' says the young man sentimentally, looking up to the sky.
'"She's like the keystone of an arch,
That doth consummate beauty;
She's like the music of a march,
That maketh joy of duty!"'
Peggy's eye relents. He may mean it – may be speaking truth – it is not likely, as he seldom does so; but after all, the greatest liars must, during their lives, speak more truth than lies. One is prone to believe what one wishes, and he may mean it.
'There is no one that I am so fond of as I am of Prue,' pursues he, with a quiver in his voice.
'You have an odd way of showing it sometimes,' says she, in a softened tone.
'Are you alluding to that?' asks he, glancing carelessly over his shoulder at the kiosk. 'Pooh! I hated it. I shall get milady to pull it down some day. I was so glad when you and Talbot came up: it was so dark, and I felt the earwigs dropping on my head.'
'Then why did you go there?' inquires she.
He bursts into a laugh, from which sentiment and quiver are miles away.
'The woman tempted me; at least' (seeing his companion's mouth taking a contemptuous upward curve at this mode of expression) – 'at least, she seemed to expect it. I always like to do what people seem to expect.'
And Margaret's heart sinks.
CHAPTER V
'To one that has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to gaze upon the fair
And open face of heaven – to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.'
It is the next day. John Talbot has spent a very happy morning. He is a countryman at heart. Fate has put him into the Foreign Office, and made him a great man's secretary, and tied him by the leg to London for ten months out of the twelve; but the country, whose buttercups brightened his childhood, keeps his heart – the country, with its little larks upsoaring from its brown furrows; with its green and its russet gowns; with its good, sweet, innocent noises, and its heavenly smells. He has been lying on the flat of his back on the sward, with his hands under his head, staring in luxurious idleness up at the sky, and listening to the robin's song – in August scarcely anybody but the redbreast sings – and to the pleasant swish of the wind among the lime-tops. Lying there alone on the flat of his back – that is to say, at first. Afterwards he has plenty of company. Not, indeed, that either his host or his fellow-guests trouble him much. From the lair he has chosen he has a view of his lady's window. It is true that he looks but seldom towards it, nor do its carefully closed casements and drawn curtains hold out much hope of a descent of the sleeping goddess within. Lady Roupell lets it be understood that she does not wish to be seen or spoken to till luncheon; and the rest are dispersed, he neither knows nor cares whither. And yet he has companions. They are in the act of being escorted out to walk by their nurses when they catch sight of him. In an instant they bear down upon him as fast as their fat legs will carry them.
'Just think!' cries Lily, beginning to shout at the top of her voice long before she reaches him – 'just think what Franky has been doing! Is not he a naughty boy? He took the water-can and emptied it over Nanny's skirt! She says she will ask mammy to whip him!'
'Which mammy will most certainly decline to do,' says Talbot sotto voce to himself.
He has raised himself on his elbow, the more safely to receive their onslaught. He is aware of an idiosyncrasy of Miss Harborough's – that of narrating hideous crimes as having been committed by her little brother, which have in reality been executed by herself.
'If it was Franky who upset the water-can, how is it that it is your frock which is wet?' asks he judicially.
She does not answer, beyond putting her head affectedly on one side, and rubbing her shoulder against her ear.
'Are you sure that it was not you, and not Franky?'
Instantly, with the greatest ease and affability, she acknowledges that it was she; and the nurses at that moment coming up, she is about to be walked off for chastisement, when weakly interceded for by Talbot, who has the further lunacy to request that both children may be left in his charge. After that he has a very eventful morning. He is in turn a pony, a giraffe, a hyæna, a flamingo (unhappily for him the little Harboroughs have lately visited the Zoological Gardens), a rabbit (about the natural history and domestic life of which animal he hears some very startling facts), and the captain of a robber band. Finally, he has to take part in a terrible game – the one most dreaded by their family of all in the little Harborough repertoire – Ingestre Hall destroyed by fire, done with bricks. And the odd thing is that he likes it – likes it better than Downing Street and the great statesman.
When the luncheon gong sounds he can hardly realise that it is two o'clock. He is so much dishevelled by his transmigrations – which, indeed, have been as numerous as Buddha's – that, after having repaired the injuries to his toilette, he finds that everybody is already in the dining-room – finds the inevitable chair left vacant for him beside Lady Betty. He has sat by Lady Betty through so many luncheons and dinners that it has lost the gloss of novelty, and they speak to each other scarcely more than a husband and wife would do. It is her voice that he hears prevailing over those of the rest of the company as he enters the room, for she has not Cordelia's gift.
'Lambton? Are they any relation to Lord Durham?'
'I do not think so,' replies the hostess carelessly. 'Their father was a small squire in these parts, who over-farmed himself, and died very much out at elbows. And their mother – well, their mother was nothing but a very poor creature' (with a shrug), 'who was always fancying herself ill, and whom nobody believed until she proved it by dying! Ha! ha! Poor soul! I do not think that anybody cried much, except Peggy; she cried her eyes out.'
'Not quite out,' thinks Talbot, remembering the severe blue darts that shot at him over-night; and to his own soul, at this testimony to her tender-heartedness, he says, 'Nice Peggy!'
'Which was Peggy?' asks Mr. Harborough, looking up from his cutlet; 'the big one? Yes? I like Peggy. I do not know when I have seen such a good-looking girl.'
His wife bursts into a laugh.
'I knew that Ralph would admire her. Did not I tell you so?' turning to Talbot. 'She is just his style; they cannot be too big for Ralph; he admires by avoirdupois weight.'
'As to that, my dear,' retorts Mr. Harborough tranquilly, 'we all know that you are not much in the habit of commending your own sex; but I think you will find that I am not alone in my opinion.'
There is a moment's silence. Men are cowardly things. Not one of them is found to take up the cudgels for poor Margaret.
'She would be good-looking perhaps if she were bled,' pursues Lady Betty; 'she looks so aggressively healthy!'
'You cannot make the same complaint of poor Prue, at any rate,' says Lady Roupell, in a voice that betrays some slight signs of dissatisfaction with her guest's observations, for she likes her Lambtons.
'No;
