A SUNNY MORNING.
“I SUPPOSE, if he likes her, there’s nothing to conceal in that?” challenged Miss Perfect.
“No, of course,” replied William, spiritedly; “I think she’s a thousand times too good for him, every way — that’s what I think; and I wonder, young as she is, Vi can be such a fool. What can she see in him? He has got two thousand a-year, and that’s all you can say for him.”
“I don’t know that — in fact, he strikes me as a very pretty young man, quite apart from his property,” said Aunt Dinah, resolutely; “and I could quite understand a young girl’s falling in love with him.”
William, leaning with his elbow on the chimney-piece, smiled a little bitterly, and said, quietly, “I dare say.”
“I don’t say, mind, that she is. I don’t know the least, whether she cares twopence about him,” said Aunt Dinah.
“I hope she doesn’t,” rejoined William.
“And why so?” asked Aunt Dinah.
“Because, I’m perfectly certain he has not the least notion of ever asking her to marry him. He’s mi thinking seriously about her, and never will? replied he.
“Well, it’s nothing to vaunt of. You need not talk as if you wished her to be mortified,” said Aunt Dinah.
“I! — I wish no such thing, I assure you; but, even if she admires and adores the fellow all you say, still I can’t wish her his wife — because I’m sure he’s not the least worthy of her. I assure you he’s no better than a goose. You don’t know him — you can’t — as the fellows in the same school did — and Violet ought to do fifty times better.”
“You said he does not think seriously about her,” said Miss Perfect. “Remember, we are only talking, you and I together, and I assure you I never asked her whether she liked him or not, nor hinted a possibility of anything, as you say, serious coming of it; but what makes you think the young man disposed to trifle?”
“I didn’t say to trifle,” answered William; “but every fellow will go on like that where there’s a pretty girl, and no one supposes they mean anything. And from what he said to-day, I would gather that he’s thinking of some swell, whenever he marries, which he talks of like a thing so far away as to be nearly out of sight; in fact, nothing could be more contrary to any sign of there being any such notion in his head — and there isn’t. I assure you he has no more idea, at present, of marrying than I have.”
“H’m!” was the only sign of attention which Aunt Dinah emitted, with closed lips, as she looked gloomily into her work-basket, I believe for nothing.
William whistled “Rule Britannia,” in a low key the little oval portrait of the Very Rev. Simeon Lewis Perfect, Dean of Crutch Friars, the sainted and ascetic parent of the eccentric old lady, who was poking in her work-basket, his own maternal grandfather; and a silence ensued, and the conversation expired.
Next morning, William, returning from his early saunter in the fields, saw the graceful head of Violet peeping through the open window of the parlour, through the jessamine and roses that clustered round it Her eyes glanced on him, and she smiled and nodded.
“Uncertain as the weather!” thought he, as he smiled and kissed his hand, approaching, “a lowering evening yesterday, and now so sunny a morning.”
“How do you do, Miss Violet? you said you wanted a water-lily, so I found two in my morning’s ramble, and here they are.”
“How beautiful. Thank you very much. Where did you find them?” said Vi, quite glowing.
“In the Miller’s Tarn,” he answered. “I’m so glad you like them.”
“Quite beautiful! The Miller’s Tarn?”
She remembered that she had mentioned it yesterday as a likely place, but it was two miles away; four miles there and back, for a flower. It deserved her thanks, and she did thank him; and reminded him in tone and look of that little Vi of other years, very pleasantly yet somehow sadly.
“I mean to return to Cambridge to-morrow,” said William, a little regretfully; he had glanced round at the familiar scene; “and I am sorry to leave so soon.”
“And must you go?” asked Violet.
“Not quite must, but I think I ought. If I had brought with me some papers I have been transcribing for Doctor Sprague, I might have stayed a little longer, but they are locked up and he wants the copy on Tuesday, and so I can’t help it.”
“It was hardly worth while coming, Poor grannie will miss you very much.”
“And you, not at all.”
“I? Oh, yes, of course we shall all miss you.”
“Some, but not you, Vi.”
The old “Vi” passed quite unnoticed.
“I, and why not I?”
“Because your time is so pleasantly occupied.”
“I don’t know what you mean, said the young lady coldly, with a little toss of her head. “More riddles, I suppose.”
“Mine are poor riddles; very easily found out. Are we to have croquet to-day?”
“I’m sure I can’t tell,” replied she.
“Did not Trevor tell you he was coming here at eleven?” asked William.
“I don’t recollect that he said anything about coming to-day,” she answered carelessly.
“I did not say to-day,” said William provokingly.
“You did. I’m nearly certain. At all events I understood it, and really it does not the least signify.”
“Don’t be vexed — but he told me he had settled with you to come here to-day, at eleven, to play as he did yesterday,” said William.
“Ho! then I suppose I have been telling fibs as usual? I remark I never do anything right when you are here. You can’t think how pleasant it is to have some one by you always insinuating that you are about something shabby,”
“You put it in a very inexcusable light,” said William, laughing. “It may have been a vaunt of Trevor’s, for I think he’s addicted to boasting a little; or a misapprehension, or — or an indistinctness; there are fibs logical and fibs ethical, and fibs logical and ethical; but you don’t read logic, nor care for metaphysics.”
“Nor metaphysicians,” she acquiesced.
“Well,” said William, “he says he’s coming at eleven.”
“I think we are going to have prayers,” interrupted Violet, turning coldly from the window, through which William saw the little congregation of Gilroyd Hall assembling at the row of chairs by the parlour door, and Aunt Dinah’s slight figure gliding to the corner of the chimney-piece, to the right of the Very Rev. Simeon Lewis Perfect, sometime Dean of Crutch Friars, where the Bible and Prayer-book lay, and in the shadow her golden spectacles glimmered like a saintly glory round her chaste head.
So William hastened to do his office of deacon, and read the appointed chapter; and their serene devotions over, the little party of three, with the windows open, and the fragrance and twitterings of that summer-like morning entering through those leafy apertures, sat down to breakfast, and William did his best to entertain the ladies with recollections lively and awful of his college life.
“Half-past nine, Miss Violet; don’t forget eleven,” said William, leaning by the window-frame, and looking out upon the bright and beautiful landscape. “I’ll go out just now and put down the hoops.”
“Going to play again to-day,” enquired Miss Perfect briskly; “charming morning for a game — is he coming, William?”
“Yes, at eleven,”
“H’m!” murmured Aunt Dinah, in satisfactory rumination. —
And William, not caring to be drawn into another discussion of this interesting situation, jumped from the window upon the sward, and strolled away toward the river.