LITMIR.BIZ

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shrug my shoulders.

      "In moments of depression it strikes Barbara and me, that me and Tou Tou shall end by being three old cats together."

      "Are you so anxious to be married?" he asks with an air of wonder, "in such a hurry to leave so happy a home?"

      "Every one knows best where his own shoe pinches," I answer vernacularly. "I am afraid that it does not sound very lady-like, but since you ask me the question, I am rather anxious. Barbara is not: I am."

      A shade of I cannot exactly say what emotion—it looks like disappointment, but surely it cannot be that—passes across the sunshine of his face.

      "All my plans hinge on my marrying," I continue, feeling drawn, I do not know how or why, into confidential communication to this almost total stranger, "and what is more, on my marrying a rich man."

      "And what are your plans?" he asks, with an air of benevolent interest, but that unexplained shade is still there.

      "Their name is Legion," I answer; "you will be very tired before I get to the end of them."

      "Try me."

      "Firstly then," say I, narratively, "my husband must have a great deal of interest in several professions—the army, the navy, the bar—so as to give the boys a helping hand; then he must have some shooting—good shooting for them; for them all, that is, except Bobby! never shall he fire a gun in my preserves!"

      My mind again wanders away to my vengeances, and I break off.

      "Well!"

      "He must also keep two or three horses for them to hunt: Algy loves hunting, but he hardly ever gets a day. He is so big, poor dear old boy, that nobody ever gives him a mount—"

      "Yes?"

      "Well, then, I should like to be able to have some nice parties—dancing and theatricals, and that sort of thing, for Barbara—father will never hardly let us have a soul here—and to buy her some pretty dresses to set off her beauty—"

      "Yes?"

      "And then I should like to have a nice, large, cheerful house, where mother could come and stay with me, for two or three months at a time, and get clear away from the worries of house-keeping and—" the tyranny of father, I am about to add, but pull myself up with a jerk, and substitute lamely and stammeringly "and—and—others."

      "Any thing else?"

      "I should not at all mind a donkey-carriage for Tou Tou, but I shall not insist upon that."

      He is smiling broadly now. The shade has fled away, and only sunshine remains.

      "And what for yourself? you seem to have forgotten yourself!"

      "For myself!" I echo, in surprise, "I have been telling you—you cannot have been listening—all these things are for myself."

      Again he has turned his face half away.

      "I hope you will get your wish," he says shortly and yet heartily.

      I laugh. "That is so probable, is not it? I am so likely to fall in with a rich young man of weak intellect who is willing to marry all the whole six of us, for that is what he would have to do, and so I should explain to him."

      Sir Roger is looking at me again with an odd smile—not disagreeable in any way—not at all hold-cheap, or as if he were sneering at me for a simpleton, but merely odd.

      "And you think," he says, "that when he hears what is expected of him he will withdraw?"

      Again I laugh heartily and rather loudly, for the idea tickles me, and, in a large family, one gets into the habit of raising one's voice, else one is not heard.

      "I am so sadly sure that he will never come forward, that I have never taken the trouble to speculate as to whether, if he did, my greediness would make him retire again."

      No answer.

      "Now that I come to think of it, though," continue I, after a pause, "I have no manner of doubt that he would."

      Apparently Sir Roger is tired of the subject of my future prospects, for he drops it. We have left the kitchen-garden—have passed through the flower-garden—have reached the hall-door. I am irresolutely walking up the stone steps that mount to it, not being able to make up my mind as to whether or no I should make some sort of farewell observation to my companion, when his voice follows me. It seems to me to have a dissuasive inflection.

      "Are you going in?"

      "Well, yes," I answer uncertainly, "I suppose so."

      He looks at his watch.

      "It is quite early yet—not near luncheon-time—would it bore you very much to take a turn in the park? I think" (with a smile) "that you are quite honest enough to say so if it would: or, if you did not, I should read it on your face."

      "Would you?" say I, a little piqued. "I do not think you would: I assure you that my face can tell stories, at a pinch, as well as its neighbor."

      "Well, would it bore you?"

      "Not at all! not at all!" reply I briskly, beginning to descend again; "but one thing is very certain, and that is that it will bore you."

      "Why should it?"

      "If I say what I was going to say you will think that it is on purpose to be contradicted," I answer, unlatching the gate in the fence, and entering the park.

      "And if I do, much you will mind," he answers, smiling.

      "Well, then," say I, candidly, looking down at my feet as they trip quickly along through the limp winter grass, "there is no use blinking the fact that I have no conversation—none of us have. We can gabble away among ourselves like a lot of young rooks, about all sorts of silly home jokes, that nobody but us would see any fun in; but when it comes to real talk—"

      I pause expressively.

      "I do not care for real talk," he says, looking amused; "I like gabble far, far better. I wish you would gabble a little now."

      But the request naturally ties my tongue tight up.

      "This is the tree that they planted when father was born," I say, presently, in a stiff, cicerone manner, pointing to a straight and strong young oak, which is lifting its branchy head, and the fine net-work of its brown twigs, to the cold, pale sky.

      Sir Roger leans his arms on the top of the palings that surround the tree.

      "Ah! eight-and-forty years ago! eight-and-forty years ago!" he repeats to himself with musing slowness. "Hard upon half a century!"

      I turn over in my own mind whether I should do well to make some observation of a trite and copy-book nature on the much greater duration of trees than men, but reflecting that the application of the remark may be painful to a person so elderly as the gentleman beside me, I abstain. However, he does something of the kind himself.

      "To think that it should be such a stripling," he says, looking with a half-pensive smile at the straight young trunk, "hardly out of the petticoat age, and we—he and I—such a couple of old wrecks!"

      It never occurs to me that it would be polite, and even natural, to contradict him. Why should not he call himself an old wreck, if it amuses him? I suppose he only means to express a gentleman decidedly in the decline of life, which, in my eyes, he is; so I say kindly and acquiescingly—

      "Yes, it is rather hard, is it not?"

      "Forty-one—forty-two—yes, forty-two years since I first saw him," he continues, reflectively, "running about in short, stiff, white petticoats and bare legs, and going bawling to his mother, because he tumbled up those steps to the hall-door, and cut his nose open."

      I lift my face out of my muff, in which, for the sake of warmth,

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