“Really, Betty,” said Frances, for her, almost crossly, “you are too bad! Did I elect to have a tête-à-tête with Mr Littlewood? If it were worth while I might blame you and Eira seriously for the way you behaved – like two – ”

Betty was on the point of interrupting with some vehement repetition of the dislike she had taken, and that not causelessly, to their uninvited visitor, when a significative tug at her sleeve from Eira startled her into silence, though thereby Frances’ intended lecture made no further way, as the interruption came from Eira instead.

“You are not to say ‘silly school-girls,’” she exclaimed. “I know that’s what you were going to say. We simply walked on because three women and one man seem – are – so stupid. Why does it always seem as if there were too many women?”

“In a family where there are no brothers it couldn’t very well seem anything else,” replied Frances, rather shortly; but she did not resume her remonstrances, for by this time they were by the front door, and she hurried into the drawing-room, where, as she expected, tea, and a somewhat ruffled Lady Emma, were awaiting them.

“You are very late, why – ” were the words that greeted her; but before hearing more, Eira softly closed the door, holding back Betty for a moment’s confabulation in the hall.

“What is it, Eira?” said Betty impatiently. “You tug my sleeve, and then you pull me back when I’m tired and want some tea. What is it you want to say?”

“We had better leave our cloaks outside,” said Eira, rapidly unbuttoning her own garment as she spoke. “What I want to say can’t be said in a moment, it is something too tremendous! I only felt that I must give you a hint to be more careful in your way of speaking about Mr Littlewood.”

“Why?” asked Betty, opening her dark eyes to their widest.

“Because,” said Eira, “I am not at all sure but what a most wonderful thing is going to happen, or, for that matter, has happened. Betty, suppose – just suppose – that he has fallen in love with Frances.”

Betty gasped, unable for a moment to articulate.

“That man!” she at last ejaculated.

“Well, why not?” returned Eira. “You’ve taken a dislike to him of some kind, or you fancy you have, and of course I don’t mean to say that I think he’s good enough, but still – but I can’t speak about it just now, only take care!”

She had certainly succeeded in taking Betty’s breath away. The girl would scarcely have been capable of a coherent reply, but she was not called upon for one. The drawing-room door opened, and their elder sister’s voice was heard.

“Do come in to tea,” she said, “and, Eira, you run and tell papa it is ready. I had no idea it was so late,” she went on. “Poor mamma has been wondering what was keeping us,” she added, in a deprecatory tone, as Betty followed her into the room.

“We can’t blame Mr Littlewood for it,” said Betty eagerly; “we were walking almost all the time we were talking to him, so he can’t have delayed us!”

“Mr Littlewood?” repeated Lady Emma, in the high-pitched tone which with her was one of the signs of disturbed equanimity. “Mr Littlewood? What is she talking about? You don’t intend to say that you have been a walk with a – perfect stranger! Frances, what does this mean? I insist on your telling me.”

“I have not the very least objection to telling you, mamma,” said Frances. “In fact, I have a message for you from Mr Littlewood, which I was just going to deliver.”

Her tone was absolutely respectful, but there was a touch of coldness in it, not without its effect on her mother. In her heart Lady Emma not only trusted her eldest daughter entirely, but looked up to her in a way which showed her own involuntary consciousness of the superiority in many ways of the girl’s character to her own. But any approach to acknowledgment of this real underlying admiration and respect would have seemed to her so strange and paradoxical, considering their mutual relations, as to be almost equivalent to a reversal of the fifth commandment.

She contented herself with replying in a calmer tone, “Did you meet Mr Littlewood, then? Naturally I can’t understand things till you explain them.”

“Yes,” Frances replied, “we met him on our way home, not in the park, but in the little copse on the Massingham road.”

“I am glad you were not in the park,” said Lady Emma.

“But we did come through it after meeting him,” said Frances. “It would have been affected to do otherwise just because he is staying at the house, and I suppose, as he was walking our way, he could scarcely have avoided walking on beside us. He asked me if he might call to say good-bye to you, mamma, to-morrow afternoon?”

The last words, unfortunately as it turned out, were overheard by Mr Morion as he entered the room. His wife, taught by long experience, made no reply, so the message remained uncommented upon, unless a doubtful grunt from the depths of the arm-chair where the master of the house had settled himself could have been taken as referring to it.

Silence, not an unusual state of things at Fir Cottage, ensued, and as soon as the two younger girls could escape from the room they hastened to their own quarters, a small and in wintertime decidedly dreary little chamber, which in old days had been used as their schoolroom. It looked out to the side of the house and was ill lighted. But its propinquity to the kitchen was, practically speaking, in cold weather no small boon, preventing its ever becoming very chilly, for, though it boasted a fireplace, the restrictions as to fuel formed one of the most disagreeable economies in practice at Fir Cottage. In summer, on the other hand, the schoolroom was apt to become unbearably hot; but in summer, if it is anything like a normal season, and in the country, life usually presents itself under a very different aspect. Such things as fires and chilblains do not enter into one’s calculations; one’s own room, in nine cases out of ten, is a pleasant resort, and even if not so, are there not out-of-doors boudoirs by the dozen?

Dreary enough, though, the little room looked this evening, when by the light of one candle Betty and Eira established themselves as comfortably as circumstances allowed of, that is to say, on two little low basket-chairs, dismissed from the drawing-room long ago as too shabby, which had been one of their few luxuries in lessons days. Just now, also, the extraordinary possibilities which they were about to discuss so filled their imaginations that the uninviting surroundings over which they often groaned would have passed unnoticed had they been ten times worse. And worse they might have been most assuredly! For one fairy gift was shared alike by the three sisters – the gift of dainty orderliness; and where this reigns one may defy poverty to do its worst, for with such a background the tiniest attempt at prettiness or grace is trebled in pleasing effect.

“Eira,” said Betty in an almost awe-struck whisper, “do you really, really mean what you said? Do you think it possible? And – ” with a touch of hesitation, quaint and almost touching in its contrast to the outspoken treatment of such subjects by the typical maiden of to-day, “if – if he had – fallen in love with Frances, could she ever care for him, I wonder?”

A dreamy questioning came into her eyes as she spoke.

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” said Eira. “Of course neither you nor I can picture to ourselves any man being good enough for Frances, so we need not expect the impossible. But taking that for granted, I don’t see why she mightn’t get to care for this man. Indeed, she has liked him from the beginning, and stuck up for him against you. And as men go – of course we really don’t know any, but I suppose some books are more or less true to life? – as men go, I suppose any one would consider him very attractive.”

“Perhaps,” said Betty gently, for she was already beginning to see her bête noire through very different spectacles, “perhaps. And then,” she added, with an amusing little air of profound worldly wisdom, “he must be rich, and made a good deal of, and all that sort of thing, and for a man of that kind to find out what a girl really is, in spite of her plain simple life, and way of dressing, and all that – though, of course, nobody can say that Francie is not good-looking, far more than merely pretty – don’t you think, Eira, that that of itself shows that he must have a great deal of good in him?”

“Yes,” Eira agreed, “I do. Though it doesn’t do to be too humble, Betty, even about external things. Remember, however poor we are, that as far as family and ancestry go we could scarcely be better. No one need think it a condescension to marry a Morion.”

“Of course,” said Betty, speaking half absently. “Oh, Eira, how interesting it will be when he comes to-morrow! Do let us think what we can do to – to show everything to advantage. If we could persuade Francie to sing, for her voice is so lovely!”

“She never would,” said Eira, “not to any one like that, who is pretty sure to be a good judge, for she knows her voice is untrained. Why, she has never had a lesson in her life! Can’t we do anything about her dress, however? She always looks nice, perfectly nice, but almost too plain, too severe, as if she had retired from the world and was above such things as dress and looks.”

“Perhaps it’s just that that attracts him in her,” said Betty – “the difference, I mean, between her and the fashionable girls he is accustomed to.”

“Yes,” replied Eira, “up to a certain point that’s all very well, but no man would like to have a wife, however beautiful she was, who did not to some extent look like other people. Betty, how could we contrive to make her wear her own black silk blouse to-morrow? It is even more becoming to her than ours are, and a little handsomer. Don’t you remember her saying when we got them that hers mustn’t look too young? She is rather absurd about her age, for certainly she doesn’t look older than twenty-four at most.”

“I wonder how old Mr Littlewood is?” said Betty, thoughtfully: “I’m afraid not more than twenty-seven; and Frances is one of those people who would think it almost a crime to marry a man younger than herself.”

“We can easily keep off the subject,” said Eira. “Indeed, after he has left, I think we had better say very little about him, though we may go on planning all the time by ourselves, you know, how to help it on in every possible way, once he comes back again.

“Oh, Betty!” and she clasped her hands in excitement, “isn’t it nice to have something to make plans about?”

Somewhat to their surprise and still more to their satisfaction, the two girls found their sister, the next morning, much more amenable to their tactfully administered suggestions than they had anticipated.

“Yes,” she said simply, “I should like to make the room nice, and ourselves too, so that he may take as favourable an impression as possible back with him to his people and the other Morions, and you will be careful, Betty dear, won’t you, not to hoist your flag of war again?”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Betty, kissing her sister as she spoke. “I see now that I behaved idiotically, and I see too how kind he was to take it as he did.”

In their uncertainty as to the time at which their acquaintance might call, the sisters decided on taking their usual walk in the morning, and remaining about the premises after luncheon. There was not much fear of their mother’s not being at home, in the literal as well as conventional sense of the words, for Lady Emma was not given to constitutionals, or, except on the rarest occasions, to returning the formal calls of the few neighbours with whom she was on visiting terms, and in her heart she was rather gratified than otherwise at the stranger’s overtures, due, as she imagined, to some extent at least, to the impression made upon him by her own cold dignity of manner, seconded, however childishly, by Betty’s outburst of self or family assertion.

All, therefore, promised propitiously for the expected visit of farewell, though at luncheon a not unfamiliar gloom was to be discerned on the paternal countenance which sent a thrill through the hearts of the two younger girls, Betty’s especially, the most sensitive to such misgivings.

“Let us keep out of his way,” she whispered to Eira as they left the dining-room: “if he had the least, the very least, idea that we wanted to stay at home he would be sending us off on some message to that wretched chemist’s, as sure as fate!”

“But how about Frances?” said Eira, in alarm.

“I think it’s all right,” Betty replied. “Both she and mamma, though they don’t perhaps say so, want it all to be nice, I feel sure. I saw Frances giving some finishing touches to the drawing-room, which really looks its best, and I heard mamma saying something about tea cakes, and you know how in reality mamma depends on Frances: she won’t let her go out, even for papa.”

Mr Morion’s “den,” as in jocund moments he condescended to call it, opened unfortunately on to the hall, almost opposite the drawing-room. In some moods he had a curious and inconvenient habit of sitting with the door open, and though he sometimes complained of advancing years bringing loss of hearing, there were times at which his ears seemed really preternaturally acute, and this afternoon, thanks to this peculiarity, aided possibly by some occult intuition of anticipation in the air, he was somewhat on the qui-vive for – he knew not what. Suffice to say he was in a raw state of nervous irritability, ready to quarrel with his own shadow, could that meek and trodden-upon phantom have responded to his need.

Four o’clock struck, the light was rapidly waning, when he issued an order to whatever daughter was within hearing to have tea hastened, as he wanted it earlier than usual.

It was Frances who heard him, and she at once rang the bell, though not without a silent regret as to this unusual precipitancy.

“For Mr Littlewood is pretty certain not to call before half-past,” she reflected, “and afternoon-tea looks so untidy when it has been up some time.”

Some little delay, however, ensued. It was between a quarter and twenty minutes past the hour when she summoned her sisters, hidden till then in their little sitting-room.

“Has he come?” whispered Betty.

Frances shook her head.

“No,” she replied, in the same voice, “but papa would have tea extra early. Help me to keep the table tidy.”

Mr Morion, by this time, had taken possession of an arm-chair by the drawing-room fire, which he pulled forward out of its place, as he was feeling chilly. As Frances was handing him his cup of tea the front door bell rang. A thrill of expectancy passed through Betty and Eira.

“Who can that be?” said their father, in a tone of annoyance.

“It is probably Mr Littlewood,” said Lady Emma quietly, “calling to say good-bye. I was expecting him.”

“Very strange, then, that you didn’t mention it to me,” replied her husband acridly. “Am I in a fit state of health to be troubled with visitors to-day? Not that it signifies: he need not be admitted.”

“Papa,” said Frances, in a tone of remonstrance, “it will seem very rude – he asked if he might call – we met him yesterday, and – ”

But the parlour-maid’s approaching footsteps were already to be heard in the hall, and, without taking the slightest notice of his daughters words, Mr Morion rose from his seat, and, opening the door, gave his orders in a decided voice.

“Parker,” he said, “if that is a visitor, say at once that her ladyship is not at home, and that I am not at home either.”

No one spoke. In the perfect silence the short colloquy which ensued at the front door was distinctly heard. Then came the sound of its shutting, and Parker appeared in the drawing-room with a card on a salver, which bore the name of Mr Horace Littlewood, an address, and added, in pencil in one corner, the letters, “p. p.c.”

Mr Morion threw it on to the table without comment; then turned sharply on Frances with a demand for a second cup of tea.

Frances handed it to him. Her face had grown scarlet – a most unusual occurrence with her. Lady Emma leaned back in her chair with an expressionless face. The younger girls, sitting together, clasped each other’s hand secretly in mute, inexpressible disappointment and indignation. Frances, crossing the room on the pretext of handing them their tea, glanced at them with such sympathy in her eyes as all but upset their outward composure. It is, indeed, to be questioned if in Eira’s case at least her tea was not mingled with unperceived tears; and as soon as they dared to do so all three sisters left the room.

Two or three days later came the climax to the episode which had broken the monotony of life at Fir Cottage, in anticipation even more than in actuality. For Frances, returning from one of the endless expeditions to the village from which as often as possible she saved the younger ones, came into their little sitting-room with a half-rueful, half-comical expression on her face.

“My dear pets,” she said, “I feel half-inclined to laugh at myself for minding what I have just heard, but for once I must own to absurd disappointment. Mr Webb has just told me that the Littlewoods have given up thoughts of taking Craig-Morion.”

Betty and Eira gazed at her speechless.

“I had hoped,” she went on, “that it would have brought some brightness, change, at least, and variety into your lives, you poor dears.” They glanced at each other.

“Dear Frances,” said Betty at last.

“But how little – oh! how little,” she said to Eira, when they were alone again, “Frances suspects why we mind so much!”

Eira was by this time quietly wiping her eyes.

“Betty,” she replied, “from this moment I give up castle-building for ever. Let us settle down to be three old maids – they always go in threes – the sooner the better.”

“Yes,” Betty agreed, “and some day, I suppose, Eira, we shall find out how to make some use of our lives.”

“I don’t know,” said Eira. “I’m not as good as you and Frances. Just now I don’t feel as if I cared!”

Chapter Seven
The Curtained Pew

There is a commonplace saying that old people love best the springtime of the year, as it brings back the brighter memories of their youth, and to a certain extent the sense of buoyancy which fades with increasing age; while the young, on the other hand, love the autumn with its tender sadness in contrast to their own joyous anticipations. But generalities are, after all, but generalities; there was little in the lives of the three Morion daughters this autumn to induce them to turn with any sentimentality or even sentiment to outside nature in its fall; there was too much real greyness, too much real endurance of daily, hourly depressing circumstances for them to long for anything but change.

“It wouldn’t be so bad, it really wouldn’t,” said Eira, “if it were the spring, but another long, long winter, when we can be so much less out of doors; and to have had the glimpse of a chance of a break in it all only seems to have made it worse. Surely, Frances, without wrong complaining and grumbling, isn’t it the case that we are peculiarly unlucky in some ways – that our lives are, I mean? Now, supposing we had had to work for our living, we should probably have been far happier, don’t you think?”

Frances hesitated in her reply, and a shadow clouded her face. Unwittingly enough, Eira had touched on perplexing ground, all too familiar to the eldest sister’s thoughtful mind. Had she done wrong or unwisely in regard to her younger sisters? Not very much, perhaps, had been practically in her power, but, still, had she given too much consideration to the right of their all too quickly passing youth, the right of happiness, of enjoyment, of the many things that only during youth can normally exist, and too little to the actual formation of character, to the development of their individual capacities? Had she been too sorry for them, or shown it too much? Strange reflections, more maternal than sisterly, when the actual small amount of difference in their ages was remembered. But since little girlhood Frances Morion had felt herself more mother than sister to the two younger ones.

“That’s a big question, Eira,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “We must believe that the circumstances of every life are, to a certain point at least, meant – intended.” And her voice changed as she went on, more slowly and seriously: “The puzzle is to find out the point at which we should resist them, and not carry resignation or submission too far.”

“There’s not much puzzle about it for us,” said Betty. “We are pretty clearly hedged in! Papa and mamma would never allow us to take any sort of line of our own.”

“Then, for the present at least,” said Frances, “the line is drawn, and I suppose if by the end of life one had learnt perfect patience one would have learnt a good deal; but still – ”

“Still what?” said Eira.

“I am not quite ready to say what is in my mind,” replied her sister. “Perhaps it will come when I have thought more about it. Roughly speaking, I was considering if there is nothing that we can do – nothing that I can help you two to do, in the way of extending your interest a little, even as things are. And, of course, the best way to do that is to look out for what we can reach of helping others.”

“We do do what we can, I think, Francie,” said Eira, in a tone of some disappointment. “We have our Sunday-school classes, and Betty’s blind old man and my bedridden old woman that we go to read to; but beyond that there are always the old difficulties: papa’s opposition and – want of money. I’m sure now we could do a lot at Scaling Harbour, among the fisher-children – such a terribly rough set —if we had money and a little more freedom.”

“I know,” said Frances quietly; but, though for the moment the subject dropped, she thought the more.

And the next few weeks gave her both leisure and cause for ever-deepening reflection.

The weather was unusually and monotonously disagreeable. Raw, grey, and as cold as weather can be when it just falls short of the stimulus and exhilaration which, to the young and strong at least, usually accompany frost. Letters, rare at all times, dwindled down to almost none. Even a family chronicle from their ex-governess, now a settler’s wife in the Far West, was hailed almost enthusiastically as a welcome distraction.

“There is only one thing in the world that I have to be thankful for,” said Eira one day, when, defiant of wind and threatening rain, they started for their afternoon walk, “and that is, that, thanks to you, Francie, and all the wonderful things you’ve done for me and made me do, my chilblains haven’t got bad again – not since – oh, yes! do you remember? – not since the time Mr Littlewood was here.”

“That’s one good thing,” said Frances, “one very good thing. I sometimes think I wouldn’t have made a bad woman-doctor.”

“What a horrible idea!” said Betty, with a shudder. “I hope it doesn’t mean that you ever think of becoming a hospital nurse. If you did, I should just simply drown myself, and make Eira do the same!”

“Hush!” said Frances. “Don’t say such things, even in fun. No, I’ve no ambition of the kind – not while I’ve got my own place at home, any way. But it’s rather curious you should have said that, Betty, for an idea has come into my head of something we could do for the people at Scaling Harbour, which really would cost us nothing, or next to nothing. It struck me when Mrs Ramsay” – (the ex-governess) – “sent me that commission for a few simple surgical books, to teach her to know what to do out there in case of accidents, which she says are always happening.”

“And certainly, by all accounts,” said Eira, with interest, “they are always happening at Scaling Harbour. But what is your idea?”

“It is not very definite yet,” said Frances. “Only the first steps towards it. What I am thinking of is, if we could use part of this winter, when we have so much time on our hands, for teaching ourselves the elements of surgical aid, and then when we have, to some extent, mastered it, to give simple little lectures – lessons, rather – to the fisher-women down there once a week or once a fortnight.”

Eira’s eyes brightened.

“Yes,” she said, “I would like that! There is something, I think, very attractive about those people; something a trifle wild, almost foreign. They do say, you know,” she went on, “that there’s a strain of Spanish descent among them; and, in any case, they are quite unlike the inland people about here, who are peculiarly dull and phlegmatic.”

“I should be frightened to go much among them,” said Betty.

“Possibly,” went on Frances, “we might persuade mamma to let two or three of them come up to us a few times. We could teach them a little of the practical part in the first place, and get to know them, and then they might talk about it to their neighbours. To begin with, all we want is one or two sensible books, or possibly, a set of ambulance lessons by correspondence. I think I have heard of such things.”

“They would be sure to cost a lot of money,” said Betty, who was evidently not inclined to take an optimistic view of the scheme.

“Don’t be such a wet blanket, Betty,” said Eira. “We can but try.”

“And even if we couldn’t manage it just now,” said Frances, “something might make it feasible after a time. It might prove the getting in the thin end of the wedge; you know papa and mamma sometimes come round to things if we wait long enough for – for them to get accustomed to the idea, as it were.”

“And when that time comes,” said Betty dolorously, “all the interest of the thing we wanted has gone.”

“O Betty, do not croak so,” said Eira; “it’ll depend on ourselves to keep up the interest by talking about it.”

“Yes,” said Frances, “you are quite right, though I have noticed that pleasant things seldom come quickly, and troubles and disappointments do. It isn’t often that one has some quite delightful surprise! Nice things either come in bits, so that you scarcely realise the niceness, or else they are pulled back when you feel sure of them, so that, even if they come after all, the bloom seems taken off.”

“Dear me, Frances,” said Eira, glancing up at her with a smile, “you are quite a pessimist for once.”

“No – no,” returned Frances. “I don’t mean to be. I was really thinking about it to myself and wondering why it is so. When there appears to be a sort of rule about anything, you can’t help beginning to hunt for the reason of it.”

“The rule with us,” said Betty, still in the same plaintive tone, “according to the old saying, is no rule, for the exceptions never appear.”

Both Frances and Eira laughed.

“Why, Betty, you are becoming quite paradoxical, inspired by melancholy,” exclaimed the latter; but not the ghost of a smile was to be raised this afternoon on Betty’s pretty little face.

“I suppose it’s very wrong of me,” she said, “but I do feel cross and dull. Even these horrid, dirty roads, and this detestable wind, add to it all. It’s scarcely worth while coming out, except that there’s nothing to do indoors.”

“I really think it’s no use attempting a long walk,” said Frances. “Let us turn here, and get home by the other road, past the church; it will be a little more sheltered.”

“If the church were open and decently warm,” said Eira, “like the little new one in the village, it would be rather nice to go in there sometimes. I’m not imaginative, but I can fancy things in there. Even the mustiness, the very old smell, carries one back in a fascinating way. I always begin thinking of great-grand-aunt Elizabeth, though I’ve no love for her! But she must have been young once upon a time, and pretty and lovable perhaps.”

“Perhaps she was,” agreed Frances, “though her position – put in her brother’s place – makes one feel as if she may have been unsisterly and designing. But then, no one knows the rights of the story, or what her brother had done for his father to disinherit him.”

They were nearing the church by this time; as the old porch came within view, Eira gave a little cry of satisfaction.

“It is open, I declare,” she said. “Do let us go in, Francie. I hate going home before there is a prospect of tea, and it’s too early for that yet.”

Her sisters made no objection, and they entered. Inside it felt comparatively warm, and, though at first almost dark, as their eyes got accustomed to the gloom they caught sight of the old vicar, standing in a pew near the chancel, apparently looking for something.

He turned as he heard their steps, and greeted them kindly:

“Good-day, young ladies,” he said. “If I may venture to trouble you, Miss Eira – your young eyes are keener than mine. Mrs Ferraby has lost a little brooch, not a thing of much value except to herself, and it struck her that it may have dropped off her in church, as that was the last time she remembered wearing it. Of course it would be better to look for it by a clearer light.”

As he spoke he drew still further aside the red moreen curtain which separated the vicarage pew from the larger square one belonging to the big house, permission to occupy which was one of the very few advantages enjoyed by the Fir Cottage family, as representatives of the Morions. Betty and Eira came forward eagerly.

“Do let us look,” they said, both together; Eira, who was the old vicar’s favourite, adding, playfully, “But you must come out yourself, Mr Ferraby, please. If it is anywhere, it is pretty sure to be on the floor.”

“I don’t know that,” said Betty, who had no special wish to grope on her hands and knees. “You may feel on the floor if you like, Eira; I shall look on the seats and the book-rail.” And, strange to say, she had scarcely begun to do so when she gave a little cry of pleasure. “Here it is,” she exclaimed, “wedged into a crack in the woodwork between the pews, ever so neatly; but no doubt it would have dropped down the first time the pew was dusted,” and with deft fingers she withdrew the little trinket from its temporary resting-place. “It is queer,” she added; “there must be a hollow space between this and the panel on our side. Perhaps it’s the place with a little door where we leave our prayer-books,” and, standing on a hassock, she peered over into their own pew, adding, “No, our book-cupboard is farther along.”