“The exotic for me!” cried Rossitur,—“if
I only had a place for her. I don’t like
pale elegancies.”
“I’d make a piece of poetry of that if
I was you, Carleton,” said Mr. Thorn.
“Mr. Carleton has done that already,”
said Mrs. Evelyn smoothly.
“I never heard you talk so before, Guy,”
said his mother looking at him. His eyes had
grown dark with intensity of expression while he was
speaking, gazing at visionary flowers or beauties through
the dinner-table mahogany. He looked up and laughed
as she addressed him, and rising turned off lightly
with his usual sir.
“I congratulate you, Mrs. Carleton,” Mrs.
Evelyn whispered as they went from the table, “that
this little beauty is not a few years older.”
“Why?” said Mrs. Carleton. “If
she is all that Guy says, I would give anything in
the world to see him married.”
“Time enough,” said Mrs. Evelyn with a
knowing smile.
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Carleton,—“I
think he would be happier. He is a restless spirit—nothing
satisfies him—nothing fixes him. He
cannot rest at home—he abhors politics—he
flits way from country to country and doesn’t
remain long anywhere.”
“And you with him.”
“And I with him. I should like to see if
a wife could not persuade him to stay at home.”
“I guess you have petted him too much,”
said Mrs. Evelyn slyly.
“I cannot have petted him too much, for he has
never disappointed me.”
“No—of course not; but it seems you
find it difficult to lead him.”
“No one ever succeeded in doing that,”
said Mrs. Carleton, with a smile that was anything
but an ungratified one. “He never wanted
driving, and to lead him is impossible. You may
try it, and while you think you are going to gain
your end, if he thinks it worth while, you will suddenly
find that he is leading you. It is so with everybody—in
some inexplicable way.”
Mrs. Evelyn thought the mystery was very easily explicable
as far as the mother was concerned; and changed the
conversation.
To them life was a simple art
Of duties to be done,
A game where each man took his part,
A race where all must run;
A battle whose great scheme and scope
They little cared to know,
Content, as men-at-arms, to cope
Each with his fronting foe.
Milnes.
On so great and uncommon an occasion as Mr. Ringgan’s
giving a dinner-party the disused front parlour was
opened and set in order; the women-folks, as he called
them, wanting the whole back part of the house for
their operations. So when the visitors arrived,
in good time, they were ushered into a large square
bare-looking room—a strong contrast even
to their dining-room at the Poolwhich gave them nothing
of the welcome of the pleasant farmhouse kitchen,
and where nothing of the comfort of the kitchen found
