“Why, what else should we have done? It would have been very dull and stupid to have stayed in together,” said Cecil, with a world of innocent wonder in her eyes. Then turning to her neighbour, “Surely, Julius, you went about and saw things!”
“The sea at Filey Bridge, and the Church Congress at Leeds,” he answered, smiling.
“Very shocking, is it not, Cecil?” said Rosamond, with mock gravity; “but he must be forgiven, for he was tired to death! I used to think, for my part, that lovers were a sort of mild lunatics, never to be troubled or trusted with any earthly thing; but that’s one of the things modern times have changed! As he was to be going, all the clerical staff of St. Awdry’s must needs have their holiday and leave him to do their work; indeed, one was sent off here. For six weeks I never saw him, except when he used to rush in to say he couldn’t stay; and when at last we were safe in the coupé, he fairly went to sleep before we got to the first station.—Hush! you know you did! And no wonder, for he had been up two nights with some sort of infidel who was supposed to be dying. Then that first week at Filey, he used to bring out his poetry books as the proper sort of thing, and try to read them to me on the sands: but by the time he had got to the bottom of a page, I used to hear the words dragging out slower and slower—
Whereon the—lily—maid—of—Astolat
Lay—smiling—like—a—star-fish—fast—asleep.”
Wherewith Rosamond dropped her head and closed her eyes; while the brothers shouted with mirth, except Frank, whose countenance was ‘of one hurt on a vulnerable side.’
“Disrespect to Elaine? Eh, Frank?” said Charlie; “how many pegs has Julius gone down in your estimation?”
Frank would not commit himself, but he was evidently at the era of sensitiveness on the poetical side. Cecil spoke for him. “How very provoking! What did you do to him, Rosamond?”
“I kept off the sand-flies! I can’t say but I was glad of a little rest, for I had been packing up for the whole family for ten days past, with interludes of rushing out into the town; for whatever we had not forgotten, the shops had not sent home! Oh! what a paradise of quiet it was under the rocks at Filey—wasn’t it, Julius?”
“We will go there again next time we have a chance,” said Julius, looking blissful.
“I would never go again to the same place,” cried Cecil. “That’s not the way to acquire new ideas.”
“We are too old to acquire new ideas, my dear,” drawled Rosamond, sleepily.
“What did you go to the Church Congress for!” asked Charlie.
“I hope Julius was awake by that time,” said Frank.
“Not if we are to have all the new ideas tried on us,” said Raymond, dryly.
“I went to a Congress once!” exclaimed Cecil.
“Indeed!” said her husband, surprised.
“Yes. We thought we ought to encourage them. It was the Congress of Sunday-school managers for our archdeaconry.”
“Did you acquire any new ideas?” asked Frank; while Rosamond’s very eyelashes seemed to curl with suppressed diversion.
“Oh yes. We explained our system of tickets, and the Arch-deacon said it was a very good one, and ought to be adopted everywhere.”
This mode of acquisition of new ideas was quite too much for Julius and Charlie, who both exploded; but Frank retained composure enough to ask, “Did you explain it in person?”
“No. We made Mr. Venn.”
“The schoolmaster?” said Julius.
“No. He is our clergyman, and he always does as we tell him; and so Dunstone is quite the model parish of the archdeaconry.”
Julius could not help making an odd little bend of the head, half deferential, half satirical; and Raymond said, “Cecil, I believe it rests with you to make the move.” An ingenuous girlish blush mantled on her cheek as she looked towards Rosamond and moved.
The drawing-room adjoined the dining-room, and likewise had a glass door leading into the conservatory; but this, like the other windows, was concealed by the pale-blue damask curtains that descended from cornices gilded like the legs of the substantial chairs and sofas. There was, however, no lack of modern light cane and basket seats round the fire, and it looked cheery and comfortable. Rosamond put an arm round Anne’s waist—“Poor tired dear, come and lie on the sofa.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t. The gentlemen will come in.”
“All brothers! What, will you only be satisfied with an easy-chair! A charming room, and a charming fire!”
“Not so nice as a library,” said Cecil, stabbing the fire with the poker as a sort of act of possession. “We always sit in the library at Dunstone. State rooms are horrid.”
“This only wants to be littered down,” said Rosamond. “That’s my first task in fresh quarters, banishing some things and upsetting the rest, and strewing our own about judiciously. There are the inevitable wax-flowers. I have regular blarney about their being so lovely, that it would just go to my heart to expose them to the boys.”
“You have always been on the move,” said Cecil, who was standing by the table examining the ornaments.
“You may say so! there are not many of Her Majesty’s garrisons that I have not had experience of, except my native country that I wasn’t born in. It was very mean of them never once to send us to Ireland.”
“Where were you born?” said Cecil, neither of the two catching at the bull which perhaps Rosamond had allowed to escape by way of trying them.
“At Plymouth. Dick and I were both born at Plymouth, and Maurice at Scutari; then we were in the West Indies; the next two were born all up and down in Jamaica and all the rest of the Islands—Tom and Terry—dear boys, I’ve got the charge of them now they are left at school. Three more are Canadians; and little Nora is the only Irish-born one amongst us.”
“I thought you said you had never been in Ireland.”
“Never quartered there, but on visits at Rathforlane,” said Rosamond. “Our ten years at home we have been up and down the world, till at last you see I’ve ended where I began—at Plymouth.”
“Oh, what a lovely Florentine mosaic!” exclaimed Cecil, who had taken but slight interest in this itinerary. “It is just like a weight at Dunstone.” Then opening a miniature-case, “Who is this—Mrs. Poynsett when she was young?”
“Most likely,” said Rosamond. “It is like her now, and very like Charlie.”
“Yes. Charles is quite unlike the family.”
“What family?” said Rosamond.
“The Charnocks, of course. Raymond is a perfect Charnock!”
“A vast advantage,” murmured Rosamond.
