“Like me!” he repeats a little
dreamily, looking with a strong and bitter yearning
into my eyes; then, seeing that I am going to asseverate,
“for God’s sake, child,” he says,
hastily, “do not tell me that you love
me, for I know it is not true! you can no more help
it than I can help caring for you in the idiotic,
mad way, that I do! Perhaps, on some blessed,
far-off day, you may be able to say so, and I to believe
it, but not now!—not now!”
With feet as heavy and slowly-dragging as those of
some unwieldy old person, with drooped figure, and
stained and swollen face, I enter the school-room
an hour later to tell my ill-news.
“Enter a young mourner!” says Algy, facetiously,
in unkind allusion to the gloom of my appearance,
which is perhaps heightened by the black-silk gown
I wear.
“What is up?” cries Bobby, advancing
toward me with an overpowering curiosity, not unmixed
with admiration, legible on his burnt face; “what
has summoned those glorious sunset tints into
your eyes and nose?”
“Which of Turner’s pictures,” says
Algy, putting up his hand in the shape of a spy-glass
to one eye, and critically regarding me through it,
“is she so like in coloring? the ‘Founding
of Carthage,’ or ’The Fighting Temeraire?’”
“Shame! shame!” cries Bobby, in a mock
hortatory tone, trying to swell himself out to the
shape and bulk of our fat rector, and to speak in his
wheezy tone, “that a young woman so richly dowered
with the good things of this life; a young woman with
a husband and a deer-park in possession, and a house-warming
in prospect—”
“But I have not,” interrupt I, speaking
for the first time, and with a snuffliness of tone
engendered by much crying.
“Have not? have not what?”
“Have not a house-warming in prospect,”
reply I, with distinct malignity. A moment’s
silence. My bomb-shell has worked quite as much
havoc as I expected.
“But where has it gone to since this morning?”
asks Algy, looking rather blank.
“What do you mean?” cries Tou Tou, shrilly;
“it was only last night that you were asking
me for the Brat’s address that you might invite
him.”
“And tell him to bring a judiciously-selected
assortment of undergraduate friends with him,”
supplements Bobby, loudly.
“Yes,” say I, sighing, “I know I
did; but last night was last night.”
“That throws a great deal of light on the matter,
does it not?” says Algy, ironically.
“Nancy!” cries Bobby, seizing both my
hands, and looking me in the face with an air of irritated
determination, “if you do not this moment
stop sighing like a wind-mill and tell us what
is up, I will go to Sir Roger, hanged if I will not,
and ask him what he means by making you cry yourself
to a jelly!”
At this bold metaphor applied to my own appearance,
the tears begin again to start to my eyes.
