is as mild as possible – leave the child alone. At the same time, Connie,” he added to me, “you must answer your mother more respectfully. You have nothing to be so cross about, my dear.”
I felt startled and almost frightened. It was very seldom papa found fault with me. Yet there was something in his tone which prevented my feeling angry; something in his tone and in his eyes too. It was as if he was a little sorry for me. I felt myself redden, and I think one or two tears crept up.
“I am sorry,” I said, gently.
Papa’s face brightened at once, and this made it easier for me to master myself. We were just at Fuller’s by this time. I went in with papa and mamma, and after a minute or two I found it was not difficult to talk as usual, and to feel really interested in the papers. Papa and mamma chose very nice ones for the dining- and drawing-rooms, and I was asked my opinion about them all, especially about the schoolroom one. Then came the bedroom ones, most of which were quickly decided upon. I grew very anxious indeed when mamma asked to see the pale-grey-with-roses one, which had been in the window a week or two ago. Fuller’s man knew it at once and brought it out.
“It is beautiful,” he said, “a French paper, but expensive.”
And so it was, dearer than the one chosen for the dining-room! But papa glanced at it and then at me with a smile.
“Yes,” he said, “I will have that one for the bedroom to the right – the room off the passage up the first stair.”
“Oh, papa, thank you,” I said earnestly. And I meant it.
I have told all these little things to make you understand as well as I can, the mixture of feelings I had about the Whyte children even before I ever saw them. Now I will skip a bit of time, and go on to tell about how things actually turned out.
Things almost never turn out as one expects, the older one gets the more one sees this, especially about things one has thought of and planned a good deal. I had planned the first seeing the Whytes ever so many times in my own mind, always in the same way, you know, but with little additions and improvements the more I thought it over. The general idea of my plan was this. It was to be a lovely day: I was to ride over with papa one morning, Hoppie was to be looking his sweetest, and as we rode up to the house I was to see (and pretend not to see, of course) a lot of heads peeping out of a window to admire the little girl and her pony. Then we should be shown into the drawing-room, which I had furnished in my own mind rather shabbily and stiffly, and Captain and Mrs Whyte would come in and begin thanking papa for all his kindness, and would speak to me very nicely and rather admiringly, and Mrs Whyte would sigh a very little as if she wished her daughters were more like me. She would say how very much they wanted to know me, and she would beg papa to stay a few minutes longer while she called them. She would be very kind, but rather fussy and anxious. Then the girls would come in, looking very eager but shy. They were to be smaller than I, and younger-looking, very shabbily dressed, but nice, and very admiring. I would talk to them encouragingly, and they would tell me how beautiful they thought the rose paper, and that Lady Honor had told them I had chosen it – at least, perhaps it should be Lady Honor, I was not quite sure – sometimes I planned that papa should smile and it should come out by accident, as it were. Then this should lead us to talk of flowers, and I would tell them how they might make winter nosegays to brighten up the drawing-room a little, and I would promise them some flowers out of our conservatory, and papa would ask Mrs Whyte to let them come to have tea with me the next day, and they would look delighted though half afraid, and they would all come to the door to see me mount, and, and – on and on I would go for hours, in my fancies, of which “I” and “we” were always the centre, the pivot on which everything else revolved!
Now I will tell what really happened.
It was about six weeks after the day that I had gone with papa and mamma to the Yew Trees. So it was within a fortnight of Christmas. Mamma and I had been to the Yew Trees again once or twice to see how things were getting on, but for the last ten days or so we had not gone, as the Whytes’ two servants and their furniture had come, and the house was now, therefore, to all intents and purposes theirs, and one morning a letter from Captain Whyte to papa announced that he and Mrs Whyte and “some of our numerous youngsters” were to arrive the same day.
“Poor things,” said mamma, with a little shiver, “how I do pity them removing at this season.”
“But it isn’t cold,” said papa. “So far it has been an unusually mild winter, though certainly we have had a disagreeable amount of rain.”
He glanced out as he spoke. It was not raining, but it looked dull and gloomy.
“I suppose there is nothing we can do to help the Whytes?” said mamma. “You will tell me, Tom, if you think there is.”
“I almost think the kindest thing in such circumstances is to leave people alone till they shake down a little,” he replied. “However, I shall be passing that way this evening, and I’ll look in for a moment. Captain Whyte won’t mind me.”
I didn’t think any one could ever “mind” papa! I suppose it comes partly from his being a doctor and knowing so much about home things, children and illnesses, and so on, that he is so wonderfully sensible and handy and tender in his ways – “like a woman,” Prudence says; but indeed I don’t think there are many women like him– and I don’t think it can be all from his being a doctor, it must be a good deal from his own kind, tender, sympathising heart.
“Please find out how soon we can go to see them at the Yew Trees,” I said. “Perhaps I might ride there with you some morning on Hop-o’-my-thumb before mamma goes regularly to call.”
“We’ll see,” said papa, as he went off. Of course, I was thinking of my imaginary programme, but papa did not know that.
When he came home that night I was disappointed to find that he had not seen any of the Whytes. Captain Whyte was out, and Mrs Whyte, after all, had not yet come. “Only Miss Whyte and two of the young gentlemen,” the servant had said, and as papa had no very particular reason for calling, he had not asked to see “Miss Whyte.”
“Do you think she is one of the little girls?” I asked.
Papa shook his head.
“I don’t know. She may be an aunt who has come to help,” he said.
This idea rather annoyed me. I had not planned for a helpful aunt; it disarranged things.
“Never mind, Connie,” said mamma, thinking I was disappointed. “We shall soon know all about them. I should think we might call early next week. The old-fashioned rule in a country-place is to wait till you have seen people in church,” she added.
This was Wednesday. It was a good while to wait till next Monday or Tuesday. However, I set to work at my fancies again, determining all the same to ride past the Yew Trees, as often as I could this week. It would be rather nice and romantic for them to have seen me riding about without knowing who I was, before they actually met me.
Whom I meant by “they” I am not quite sure. I fancy I did the Whyte girls the compliment of placing them next in importance to myself in my drama.
“I wonder,” I thought, “if Lady Honor told them nicely of my being called ‘Sweet Content,’ or if she said it mockingly. It was horrid of her if she did.”
Chapter Four.
All My Own Fault
“What are you in
