Airy Fairy Lilian Part 15

"What?" Guy hearing his name mentioned looks up dreamily from the _Times_, in the folds of which he has been buried. "What about me?"

"Nothing. I was only telling Lilian in what high esteem you are held by our dear Florence."

"Is that all?" says Guy, indifferently, going back to the thrilling account of the divorce case he has been studying.

"What a very ungallant speech!" says Miss Chesney, with a view to provocation, regarding him curiously.

"Was it?" says Guy, meeting her eyes, and letting the interesting paper slip to the floor beside him. "It was scarcely news, you see, and there is nothing to be wondered at. If I lived with people for years, I am certain I should end by being attached to them, were they good or bad."

"She doesn't waste much of her liking upon me," says Cyril.

"Nor you on her. She is just the one pretty woman I ever knew to whom you didn't succ.u.mb."

"You didn't tell me she was pretty," says Lilian, hastily, looking at Cyril with keen reproach.

"'Handsome is as handsome does,' and the charming Florence makes a point of treating me very unhandsomely. You won't like her, Lilian; make up your mind to it."

"Nonsense! don't let yourself be prejudiced by Cyril's folly," says Guy.

"I am not easily prejudiced," replies Lilian, somewhat coldly, and instantly forms an undying dislike to the unknown Florence. "But she really is pretty?" she asks, again, rather persistently addressing Cyril.

"Lovely!" superciliously. "But ask Guy all about her: he knows."

"Do you?" says Lilian, turning her large eyes upon Guy.

"Not more than other people," replies he, calmly, though there is a perceptible note of irritation in his voice, and a rather vexed gleam in his blue eyes as he lets them fall upon his unconscious brother. "She is certainly not lovely."

"Then she is very pretty?"

"Not even _very_ pretty in my eyes," replies Sir Guy, who is inwardly annoyed at the examination. Without exactly knowing why, he feels he is behaving shabbily to the absent Florence. "Still, I have heard many men call her so."

"She is decidedly pretty," says Lady Chetwoode, with decision, "but rather pale."

"Would you call it pale?" says Cyril, with suspicious earnestness.

"Well, of course that may be the new name for it, but I always called it sallow."

"Cyril, you are incorrigible. At all events, I miss her in a great many ways," says Lady Chetwoode, and they who listen fully understand the tone of self-reproach that runs beneath her words in that she cannot bring herself to miss Florence in all her ways. "She used to pour out the tea for me, for one thing."

"Let me do it for you, auntie," says Lilian, springing to her feet with alacrity, while the new name trips melodiously and naturally from her tongue. "I never poured out tea for any one, and I should like to immensely."

"Thank you, my dear. I shall be much obliged; I can't bear to leave off this sock now I have got so far. And who, then, used to pour out tea for you at your own home?"

"Nurse, always. And for the last six months, ever since"--with a gentle sigh--"poor papa's death, Aunt Priscilla."

"That is Miss Chesney?"

"Yes. But tea was never nice with Aunt Priscilla; she liked it weak, because of her nerves, she said (though I don't think she had many), and she always would use the biggest cups in the house, even in the evening.

There never," says Lilian, solemnly, "was any one so odd as my Aunt Priscilla. Though we had several of the loveliest sets of china in the world, she never would use them, and always preferred a horrid glaring set of blue and gold that was my detestation. Taffy and I were going to smash them all one day right off, but then we thought it would be shabby, she had placed her affections so firmly on them. Is your tea quite right, Lady Chetwoode--auntie, I mean,"--with a bright smile,--"or do you want any more sugar?"

"It is quite right, thank you, dear."

"Mine is without exception the most delicious cup of tea I ever tasted,"

says Cyril, with intense conviction. Whereat Lilian laughs and promises him as many more as he can drink.

"Will you not give me one?" says Guy, who has risen and is standing beside her, looking down upon her lovely face with a strange expression in his eyes.

How pretty she looks pouring out the tea, with that little a.s.sumption of importance about her! How deftly her slender fingers move among the cups, how firmly they close around the handle of the quaint old teapot!

A lump of sugar falls with a small crash into the tray. It is a refractory lump, and runs in and out among the china and the silver jugs, refusing to be captured by the tongs. Lilian, losing patience (her stock of it is small), lays down the useless tongs, and taking up the lump between a dainty finger and thumb, transfers it triumphantly to her own cup.

"Well caught," says Cyril, laughing, while it suddenly occurs to Guy that Florence would have died before she would have done such a thing.

The sugar-tongs was made to pick up the sugar, therefore it would be a flagrant breach of system to use anything else, and of all other things one's fingers. Oh, horrible thought!

Methodical Florence. Unalterable, admirable, tiresome Florence!

As Sir Guy speaks, Lilian being in one of her capricious moods, which seem reserved alone for her guardian, half turns her head toward him, looking at him out of two great unfriendly eyes, says:

"Is not that yours?" pointing to a cup that she has purposely placed at a considerable distance from her, so that she may have a decent excuse for not offering it to him with her own hands.

"Thank you," Chetwoode says, calmly, taking it without betraying the chagrin he is foolish enough to feel, but he is very careful not to trouble her a second time. It is evident to him that, for some reason or reasons unknown, he is in high disgrace with his ward; though long ago he has given up trying to discover just cause for her constant displays of temper.

Lady Chetwoode is knitting industriously. Already the heel is turned, and she is on the fair road to make a most successful and rapid finish.

Humanly speaking, there is no possible doubt about old James Murland being in possession of the socks to-morrow evening. As she knits she speaks in the low dreamy tone that always seems to me to accompany the click of the needles.

"Florence sings very nicely," she says; "in the evening it was pleasant to hear her voice. Dear me, how it does rain, to be sure! one would think it never meant to cease. Yes, I am very fond of singing."

"I have rather a nice little voice," says Miss Chesney, composedly,--"at least"--with a sudden and most unlooked-for accession of modesty--"they used to say so at home. Shall I sing something for you, auntie? I should like to very much, if it would give you any pleasure."

"Indeed it would, my dear. I had no idea you were musical."

"I don't suppose I can sing as well as Florence,"--apologetically,--"but I will try the 'Banks of Allan Water,'

and then you will be able to judge for yourself."

She sits down, and sings from memory that very sweet and dear old song,--sings it with all the girlish tenderness of which she is capable, in a soft, sweet voice, that saddens as fully as it charms,--a voice that would certainly never raise storms of applause, but is perfect in its truthfulness and exquisite in its youth and freshness.

"My dear child, you sing rarely well," says Lady Chetwoode, while Guy has drawn near, unconsciously to himself, and is standing at a little distance behind her. How many more witcheries has this little tormenting siren laid up in store for his undoing? "It reminds me of long ago,"

says auntie, with a sigh for the gay hours gone: "once I sang that song myself. Do you know any Scotch airs, Lilian? I am so fond of them."

Whereupon Lilian sings "Comin' thro' the Rye" and "Caller Herrin',"

which latter brings tears into Lady Chetwoode's eyes. Altogether, by the time the first dressing-bell rings, she feels she has made a decided success, and is so far elated by the thought that she actually condescends to forego her ill-temper for this occasion only, and bestows so gracious a smile and speech upon her hapless guardian as sends that ill-used young man to his room in radiant spirits.

CHAPTER IX.

"So young, and so untender."--_King Lear._