LITMIR.BIZ

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made me go to the Rectory with him,’ said Kate, very demurely. ‘It was not my doing at all; he wanted me to go.’

      And, after that, what could there be to say?

      CHAPTER XVI

      The two Berties came again next day—they came with their cousins, and they came without them. They joined the party from the Cottage in their walks, with an intuitive knowledge where they were going, which was quite extraordinary. They got up croquet-parties and picnics; they were always in attendance upon the two girls. Mrs. Anderson had many a thought on the subject, and wondered much what her duty was in such a very trying emergency; but there were two things that consoled her—the first that it was Ombra who was the chief object of the two young men’s admiration; and the second that they could not possibly stay long. Ombra was their first object. She assured herself of this with a warm and pleasant glow at her heart, though she was not a match-making mother, nor at all desirous of ‘marrying off,’ and ‘getting rid of’ her only child. Besides, the young men were too young for anything serious—not very long out of their teens; lads still under strict parental observation and guidance; they were too young to make matrimonial proposals to any one, or to carry such proposals out. But, nevertheless, it was pleasant to Mrs. Anderson to feel that Ombra was their first object, and that her ‘bairn’ was ‘respected like the lave.’ ‘Thank Heaven, Kate’s money has nothing to do with it,’ she said to herself; and where was the use of sending away two handsome young men, whom the girls liked, and who were a change to them? Besides, they were going away so soon—in a fortnight—no harm could possibly come.

      So Mrs. Anderson tolerated them, invited them, gave them luncheon sometimes, and often tea, till they became as familiar about the house as the young Eldridges were, or any other near neighbours. And the girls did not have their heads at all turned by the new cavaliers, who were so assiduous in their attentions. Ombra gently ridiculed them both, hitting them with dainty little arrows of scorn, smiling at their boyish ways, their impetuosity and self-opinion. Kate, on the contrary, took them up very gravely, with a motherly, not to say grandmotherly interest in their future, giving to him whom she called her old friend the very best of good advice. Mrs. Anderson herself was much amused by this new development of her charge’s powers. She said to herself, a dozen times in a day, how ridiculous it was to suppose that boys and girls could not be in each other’s company without falling in love. Why, here were two pairs continually in each other’s company, and without the faintest shadow of any such folly to disturb them! Perhaps a sense that it was to her own perfect good management that this was owing, increased her satisfaction. She ‘kept her eye on them,’ never officiously, never demonstratively, but in the most vigilant way; and a certain gentle complacency mingled with her content. Had she left them to roam about as they pleased without her, then indeed trouble might have been looked for; but Mrs. Anderson was heroic, and put aside her own ease, and was their companion everywhere. At the same time (but this was done with the utmost caution) she took a little pains to find out all about Sir Herbert Eldridge, the father of one of the Berties—his county, and the amount of his property, and all the information that was possible. She breathed not a word of this to any one—not even to Ombra; but she put Bertie Eldridge on her daughter’s side of the table at tea; and perhaps showed him a little preference, for her own part, a preference, however, so slight, so undiscernible to the vulgar eye, that neither of the young men found it out. She was very good to them, quite irrespective of their family, or the difference in their prospects; and she missed them much when they went away. For go away they did, at the end of their fortnight, leaving the girls rather dull, and somewhat satirical. It was the first invasion of the kind that had been made into their life. The boys at the Rectory were still nothing but boys; and men did not abound in the neighbourhood. Even Ombra was slightly misanthropical when the Berties went away.

      ‘What it is to be a boy!’ she said; ‘they go where they like, these two, and arrange their lives as they please. What a fuss everybody makes about them; and yet they are commonplace enough. If they were girls like us, how little any one would care–’

      ‘My dear, Mr. Eldridge will be a great landed proprietor, and have a great deal in his power,’ said Mrs. Anderson.

      ‘Because he happens to have been born Sir Herbert’s son; no thanks to him,’ said Ombra, with disdain. ‘And most likely, when he is a great landed proprietor he will do nothing worth noticing. The other is more interesting to me; he at least has his own way to make.’

      ‘I wonder what poor Bertie will do?’ said Kate, with her grandmother air. ‘I should not like to see him a clergyman. What Ombra says is very true, auntie. When one is a great Squire, you know, one can’t help one’s self; one’s life is all settled before one is born. But when one can choose what to be!– For my part,’ said Kate, with great gravity, ‘I am anxious about Bertie, too. I gave him all the advice I could—but I am not sure that he is the sort of boy to take advice.’

      ‘He is older than you are, my love, and perhaps he may think he knows better,’ said Mrs. Anderson with a smile.

      ‘But that would be a mistake,’ said Kate. ‘Boys have so many things to do, they have no time to think. And then they don’t consider things as we do; and besides–’ But here Kate paused, doubting the wisdom of further explanations. What she had meant to say was that, having no thinking to do for herself, her own position being settled and established beyond the reach of fate, she had the more time to give to the concerns of her neighbours. But it occurred to her that Ombra had scorned Bertie Eldridge’s position, and might scorn hers also, and she held her peace.

      ‘Besides, there is always a fuss made about them, as if they were better than other people. Don’t let us talk of them any more; I am sick of the subject,’ said Ombra, withdrawing into a book. The others made no objection; they acquiesced with a calmness which perhaps scarcely satisfied Ombra. Mrs. Anderson declared openly that she missed the visitors much; and Kate avowed, without hesitation, that the boys were fun, and she was sorry that they were gone. But the chances are that it was Ombra who missed them most, though she professed to be rather glad than otherwise. ‘They were a nuisance, interrupting one whatever one was doing. Boys at that age always are a nuisance,’ she said, with an air of severity, and she returned to all her occupations with an immense deal of seriousness.

      But this disturbance of their quiet affected her in reality much more than it affected her companions—the very earnestnest of her resumed duties testified to this. She was on the edge of personal life, wondering and already longing to taste its excitements and troubles; and everything that disturbed the peaceful routine felt like that life which was surely coming, and stirred her pulses. It was like the first creeping up of the tide about the boat which is destined to live upon the waves; not enough yet to float the little vessel off from the stays which hold it, but enough to rock and stir it with prophetic sensation of the fuller flood to come.

      Ombra was ‘viewy,’ to use a word which has become well-nigh obsolete. She was full of opinions and speculations, which she called thought; a little temper, a good deal of unconscious egotism, and a reflective disposition, united to make her what is called, a ‘thoughtful girl.’ She mused upon herself, and upon the few varieties of human life she knew, and upon the world, and all its accidents and misunderstandings, as she had seen them, and upon the subjects which she read about. But partly her youth, and partly her character, made her thoughts like the observations of a traveller newly entered into a strange country, and feeling himself capable, as superficial travellers often are, to lay bare its character, and fathom all its problems at a glance. Other people were, to this young philosopher, as foreigners are to the inexperienced traveller. She was very curious about them, and marked their external peculiarities with sufficient quickness; but she had not imagination enough to feel for them or with them, or to see their life from their own point of view. Her own standing-point was the only one in the world to her. She could judge others only by herself.

      Curiously enough, however, with this want of sympathetic imagination there was combined a good deal of fancy. Ombra had written little stories from her earliest youth. She had a literary turn. At this period of her life, when she was nearly eighteen, and the world was full of wonders and delightful mysteries to her, she wrote a great deal, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose, and now and then asked herself whether

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