Hugh – Leonard! one at a time, please,” she exclaimed, laughingly.
“We’re so glad you’re back,” said the boys together, “and we’ve such heaps of things to tell you – and to show you,” added Leonard. “Are you too tired to come out to-night? I’ve got the other guinea-pig I was hoping for – one of the feathery kind, you know; he is such a beauty. Do come – ”
He got hold of his sister’s sleeve and began tugging at her, while Hugh on her other side was evidently bursting with some equally important communication he was longing to make to her.
Evelyn interposed, partly through selfish motives, partly, it is to be hoped, through pity for her sister.
“You mustn’t drag Philippa out to-night, boys,” she said. “It would be inhuman! Don’t you see she has had her hat on all day; you forget she’s been travelling since the morning. I’ve been selfish enough myself in keeping you here all this time talking – come up-stairs with me, Philippa,” and she passed her hand through her sister’s arm.
“I am really not tired,” said Philippa. “Perhaps I can come out later to see the guinea-pig, Leonard;” but she did not resist Mrs Headfort’s persuasive touch. The latter glanced at her once or twice as they slowly made their way up-stairs. Philippa’s face had an absent, grave expression, which made her sister feel somewhat self-reproachful.
“You are tired, Philippa, whatever you say, and it is greatly my fault. It is horrid to be rushed at the moment one arrives, with a lot of home worries.”
“They are not worries in the first place,” said Philippa, rousing herself; “I am feeling nothing but the greatest interest in your plans. I am only thinking it all over.”
“I hope you include my clothes in the ‘it,’ then! There are some patterns I must decide about before the post goes out. Will you come to my room as soon as you’ve taken off your things?”
“I must just peep in at the children for a moment,” said Philippa, “but I’ll come down again directly.”
The nursery was next door to her own room, a floor higher. For on Mrs Headfort’s return from India with her two babies more than a year ago, Philippa had given up to her sister the room which had been her own since Evelyn’s marriage.
Joyful sounds from above reached Mrs Headfort’s ears as she turned in to her own quarters – “Auntie Phil!” – “Aty, turn back!”
“How those children do adore her!” thought their mother. “I’m afraid they won’t let her go, and I really must settle about these tiresome clothes!”
But barely five minutes had passed before Philippa appeared again, divested of her travelling things, bright and interested.
“How did you manage to escape from the nursery?” said Mrs Headfort, admiringly.
Philippa laughed.
“I told them I must come down to you; children have a great respect for ‘must’ Oh, how pretty!” she went on, as she caught sight of an evening-dress lying on the bed; “you don’t mean to say that’s your old heliotrope! How capitally you’ve managed it!”
“I am so glad you like it,” said Evelyn, in a tone of great gratification. “I took it to Warder’s as soon as I heard about this terrible visit. It is really the only thing that’s quite ready. I must get one completely new evening-dress. Mamma and I thought white or cream would be best.”
“Yes,” Philippa agreed, “anything in colour gets so quickly, known, and white always suits you.”
“And, of course,” said Mrs Headfort, “I want something I can wear for a long time, and one can always alter a white dress. There are so many things to consider, you see, Philippa. Duke wouldn’t want them to think me extravagant, and yet, on the other side, I must on no account be dowdy.” She gave a deep sigh. “Men have no idea how difficult things are for women!”
“It is difficult,” Philippa agreed, “but your having no maid still seems to me the worst of it. Its hateful to depend on a housemaid’s good offices, and even morning-dresses are so difficult to manage by one’s self nowadays.”
“Yes indeed,” said Evelyn; “I shall never know if I look nice or not; it isn’t as if they were people I knew well – or knew at all. Oh, dear me, how I wish they had waited to ask me till Duke came home! But now you must help me to decide on one of these patterns, or I shall miss the post.”
The next half-hour passed quickly in discussions of the details of her sister’s trousseau, as Philippa laughingly called it; and if the younger girl in her secret heart found the minutiae rather wearisome, she kept her feelings to herself, and was more than rewarded by Evelyn’s increased good spirits and cheerfulness.
“You don’t know what a comfort it is to have Philippa back again,” she said to her mother that evening at dinner; “I am beginning to feel ever so much happier about Wyverston. I shall be able to write quite comfortably to poor old Duke by next mail.”
Mrs Raynsworth glanced affectionately at her younger daughter. Personally these two resembled each other very closely, nor did the resemblance stop with their outward appearance. There was decision and firmness in both faces, both even more strongly marked in Philippa’s case than in her mother’s, for young as the girl still was, she gave one an impression of extreme reliability, and of late years somewhat failing health and the mellowing influence of time had softened the character of Mrs Raynsworth’s whole personality. Her married life, though far from an unhappy one, had been by no means free from the undue share of practical cares which almost inevitably falls to the wife of a scholar. And that Mr Raynsworth was a scholar, in the fullest sense of the word, there could be no two opinions. It was from him Philippa inherited the intellectual side of her character, balanced by her mother’s practical good sense, and other more ordinary though not the less desirable feminine qualities.
In his secret heart there were times when Mr Raynsworth sighed over the girl’s eager interest in social amusements and the daily life of those about her.
“She almost has it in her to be a really learned woman,” he would say to himself, and in other surroundings it is possible that his ideal for her might have been realised. But as things were, Philippa would have choked in a study had the bulk of her time been spent poring over books. Her lessons with her father over, or, in later years, the work she did for him, and that with real appreciation, completed for the time being, she would fly off to arrange flowers in the drawing-room, or even to discuss the fashion of a new dress, with as keen enjoyment as if she had never touched a Greek or Latin book in her life.
Personally she was like her mother. Dark-haired, brown-eyed, and of a make and bearing suggestive of unusual vigour; while by one of those curious inconsistencies which abound in family likenesses, Evelyn Headfort resembled her father in appearance and temperament, and though by careful education her brain-powers had been made the most of, they were not above the average.
One gift she possessed – the source of infinite pleasure to those about her – that of a very beautiful voice, and if Philippa’s generous nature had been capable of even a passing touch of jealousy of her sister, it would have shown in this direction.
“It is strange,” she would say, sometimes, “that one can adore music as I feel I do, and yet have no power of expressing it one’s self.”
And even as a little child her sweetest dreams and fancies were shaped and coloured by the longing to find herself in possession of the marvellous gift
