“The day after to-morrow: I shall be delighted.”
“An early hour?”
“The earlier the better.”
“Is six o’clock too early?”
“Too early! certainly not; on the contrary.
Good-day: I must now go to Mrs. Somers; she has
charge of my portmanteau.”
Then Kenelm rose.
“Poor dear Lily!” said Mrs. Braefield;
“I wish she were less of a child.”
Kenelm reseated himself.
“Is she a child? I don’t think she
is actually a child.”
“Not in years; she is between seventeen and
eighteen: but my husband says that she is too
childish to talk to, and always tells me to take her
off his hands; he would rather talk with Mrs. Cameron.”
“Indeed!”
“Still I find something in her.”
“Indeed!”
“Not exactly childish, nor quite womanish.”
“What then?”
“I can’t exactly define. But you
know what Mr. Melville and Mrs.
Cameron call her as a pet name?”
“No.”
“Fairy! Fairies have no age; fairy is neither
child nor woman.”
“Fairy. She is called fairy by those who
know her best? Fairy!”
“And she believes in fairies.”
“Does she?—so do I. Pardon me, I
must be off. The day after to-morrow,—six
o’clock.”
“Wait one moment,” said Elsie, going to
her writing-table. “Since you pass Grasmere
on your way home, will you kindly leave this note?”
“I thought Grasmere was a lake in the north?”
“Yes; but Mr. Melville chose to call the cottage
by the name of the lake. I think the first picture
he ever sold was a view of Wordsworth’s house
there. Here is my note to ask Mrs. Cameron to
meet you; but if you object to be my messenger—”
“Object! my dear Mrs. Braefield. As you
say, I pass close by the cottage.”
KENELM went with somewhat rapid pace from Mrs. Braefield’s
to the shop in the High Street kept by Will Somers.
Jessie was behind the counter, which was thronged
with customers. Kenelm gave her a brief direction
about his portmanteau, and then passed into the back
parlour, where her husband was employed on his baskets,—with
the baby’s cradle in the corner, and its grandmother
rocking it mechanically, as she read a wonderful missionary
tract full of tales of miraculous conversions:
into what sort of Christians we will not pause to
inquire.
“And so you are happy, Will?” said Kenelm,
seating himself between the basket-maker and the infant;
the dear old mother beside him, reading the tract
which linked her dreams of life eternal with life just
opening in the cradle that she rocked. He not
happy! How he pitied the man who could ask such
a question.
“Happy, sir! I should think so, indeed.
There is not a night on which Jessie and I, and mother
too, do not pray that some day or other you may be
as happy. By and by the baby will learn to pray
’God bless papa, and mamma, grandmamma, and
Mr. Chillingly.’”
