What Necessity Knows - Lily Dougall (readera ebook reader txt) 📗

mother addressed the family in general. "The dentist," said she, "talks to Eliza when she goes to the shop. Blue and Red! if he should speak to you, you must show the same sense Eliza did, and take not the slightest notice."

Sophia had asked what the dentist said to Eliza, and Mrs. Rexford had reproved the girls for laughing, while the head of the family prepared himself to answer in his kindly, leisurely, and important way.

"To 'take not the slightest notice' is, perhaps, requiring more of such young heads than might be possible. It would be difficult even for me to take no notice whatever of a young man who accosted me in a place like this. Severity, mild displeasure, or a determination not to speak, might be shown."

"If necessary," said Sophia; "but--"

"If _necessary_," the father corrected himself, emphasizing his words with a gentle tap of his fingers on the table. "I only mean if necessary, of course."

"People have such easy-going ways here," said Sophia. "Don't you think, mamma, a little ordinary discretion on the girls' part would be enough? Blue and Red have too much sense, I suppose, to treat him as an equal; but they can be polite."

Eliza, overhearing this, decided that she would never treat the young American as an equal, although she had no idea why she should not.

Let it not be supposed that Mrs. Rexford had idled over the dish she was wiping. The conversation was, in fact, carried on between the family in the bright sitting-room and an intermittent appearance of Mrs. Rexford at the door of the shady kitchen. Twice she had disappeared towards Eliza's table to get a fresh plate and come again, rubbing it.

"Ah, girls," she now cried, "Sophia is always giving you credit for more sense than I'm afraid you possess. No giggling, now, if this young fellow should happen to say 'good morning.' Just 'good morning' in return, and pass on--nothing more."

The father's leisurely speech again broke in and hushed the little babble.

"Certainly, my dear daughters, under such circumstances as your mother suggests; to look down modestly, and answer the young man's salutation with a little primness, and not to hesitate in your walk--that, I should think, is perhaps the course of conduct your mother means to indicate."

"It strikes me," said Harold, the eldest son, "a good deal depends on what he _did_ say to Eliza. Eliza!"

This last was a shout, and the girl responded to it, so that there were now two figures at the door, Mrs. Rexford drying the dish, and Eliza standing quite quietly and at ease.

"Yes, my son," responded Captain Rexford, "it _does_ depend a good deal on what he _did_ say to Eliza. Now, Eliza" (this was the beginning of a judicial inquiry), "I understand from Mrs. Rexford that----"

"I've heard all that you have said," said Eliza. "I've been just here."

"Ah! Then without any preface" (he gave a wave of his hand, as if putting aside the preface), "I might just ask you, Eliza, what this young--Harkness, I believe his name is--what----"

"He's just too chatty, that's all that's the matter with him," said Eliza. "He took off his hat and talked, and he'd have been talking yet if I hadn't come away. There was no sense in what he said, good or bad."

The children were at last allowed to go on with their lessons.

When the dish-washing was finished and Mrs. Rexford came into the sitting-room, Sophia took the lamp by the light of which she had been doing the family darning into the kitchen, and she and Harold established themselves there. Harold, a quiet fellow about nineteen, was more like his half-sister than any other member of the family, and there was no need that either should explain to the other why they were glad to leave the nervous briskness of the more occupied room. It was their habit to spend their evenings here, and Sophia arranged that Eliza should bring her own sewing and work at it under her direction. Harold very often read aloud to them. It was astonishing how quickly, not imperceptibly, but determinedly, the Canadian girl took on the habits and manners of the lady beside her; not thereby producing a poor imitation, for Eliza was not imitative, but by careful study reproducing in herself much of Sophia's refinement.


CHAPTER XV.

That evening Blue and Red were sent to bed rather in disgrace, because they had professed themselves too sleepy to finish sewing a seam their mother had given them to do.

Very sleepy, very glad to fold up their work, they made their way, through the cold empty room which was intended to be the drawing-room when it was furnished, to one of the several bedrooms that opened off it. There was only one object in the empty room which they passed through, and that was the big family carriage, for which no possible use could be found during the long winter, and for the storing of which no outside place was considered good enough. It stood wheelless in a corner, with a large grey cloth over it, and the girls passing it with their one flickering candle looked at it a little askance. They had the feeling that something might be within or behind it which would bounce out at them.

Once, however, within their small whitewashed bedroom, they felt quite safe. Their spirits rose a little when they shut the door, for now there was no exacting third person to expect anything but what they chose to give. Theirs was that complete happiness of two persons when it has been long proved that neither ever does anything which the other does not like, and neither ever wants from the other what is not naturally given.

They were still sleepy when they unbuttoned each other's frocks, but when they had come to the next stage of shaking out their curly hair they began to make remarks which tended to dispel their drowsiness.

Said Blue, "Is it very dreadful to be a dentist?"

Said Red, "Yes; horrid. You have to put your fingers in people's mouths, you know."

"But doctors have to _cut off legs_, and doctors are quite----"

There is another advantage in perfect union of twin souls, and that is, that it is never necessary to finish a remark the end of which does not immediately find expression on the tip of the tongue, for the other always knows what is going to be said.

"Yes, I know doctors are," replied Red; "still, you know, Principal Trenholme said Mr. Harkness is not a well-bred American."

"His first name is Cyril. I saw it on the card," replied Blue, quitting the question of social position.

"It's a _lovely_ name," said Red, earnestly.

"And I'll tell you," said Blue, turning round with sudden earnestness and emphasis, "I think he's the _handsomest_ young man I _ever saw_."

The rather odd plan Mrs. Rexford had hit on for lessening the likeness between these two, clothing each habitually in a distinctive colour, had not been carried into her choice of material for their dressing-gowns. These garments were white; and, as a stern mood of utility had guided their mother's shears, they were short and almost shapeless. The curly hair which was being brushed over them had stopped its growth, as curly hair often does, at the shoulders. In the small whitewashed room the two girls looked as much like choristers in surplices as anything might look, and their sweet oval faces had that perfect freshness of youth which is strangely akin to the look of holiness, in spite of the absolute frivolity of conduct which so often characterises young companionship.

When Blue made her earnest little assertion, she also made an earnest little dab at the air with her brush to emphasise it; and Red, letting her brush linger on her curly mop, replied with equal emphasis and the same earnest, open eyes, "Oh, so do I."

This decided, there was quiet for a minute, only the soft sound of brushing. Then Red began that pretty little twittering which bore to their laughter when in full force the same relation that the first faint chit, chit, chit of a bird bears to its full song.

"Weren't papa and mamma funny when they talked about what we should do if he spoke to us?"

She did not finish her sentence before merriment made it difficult for her to pronounce the words; and as for Blue, she was obliged to throw herself on the side of the bed.

Then again Blue sat up.

"You're to look down as you pass him, Red--like this, look!"

"_That_ isn't right." Red said this with a little shriek of delight. "You're smiling all over your face--that won't do."

"Because I _can't_ keep my face straight. Oh, Red, what _shall_ we do? I know that if we _ever_ see him after this we shall simply _die_."

"Oh, yes"--with tone of full conviction--"I know we shall."

"But we _shall_ meet him."

They became almost serious for some moments at the thought of the inevitableness of the meeting and the hopelessness of conducting themselves with any propriety.

"And what will he think?" continued Blue, in sympathetic distress; "he will certainly think we are laughing at _him_, for he will never imagine how much we have been amused."

Red, however, began to brush her hair again. "Blue," said she, "did you ever try to see how you looked in the glass when your eyes were cast down? You can't, you know."

Blue immediately tried, and admitted the difficulty.

"I wish I could," said Red, "for then I should know how I should look when he had spoken to me and I was passing him."

"Well, do it, and I'll tell you."

"Then you stand there, and I'll come along past and look down just when I meet you."

Red made the experiment rather seriously, but Blue cried out:

"Oh, you looked at me out of the corner of your eye, just as you were looking down--that'll never do."

"I didn't mean to. Now look! I'm doing it again." The one white-gowned figure stood with its back to the bed while the other through its little acting down the middle of the room.

"That's better"--critically.

"Well," pursued Red, with interest, "how does it look?"

"Rather nice. I shouldn't wonder if he fell in love with you."

This was a sudden and extraordinary audacity of thought.

"Oh, Blue!"--in shocked tones--"How could you think of such a thing!" She reproached her sister as herself. It was actually the first time such a theme had been broached even in their private converse.

"Well," said Blue, stoutly, "he might, you know. Such things happen."

"I don't think it's quite nice to think of it," said Red, meditatively.

"It isn't nice," said Blue, agreeing perfectly, but unwilling to recant; "still, it may be our duty to think of it. Sophia said once that a woman was always more or less responsible if a man fell in love with her."

"Did Sophia say that?" Weighty worlds of responsibility seemed to be settling on little Red's shoulders.

"Yes; she was talking to mamma about something. So, as it's quite possible he might fall in love with us, we _ought_ to consider the matter."

"You don't think he's falling in love with Eliza, do you?"

"Oh no!"--promptly--"but then Eliza isn't like us."

Red looked at her pretty face in the glass as she continued to smooth out