The Story Book Girls Part 53

Mabel and Jean found her easier than of yore. Only Elma carried the reserve formed by what she had gone through into the present moment of rapture. They made Mabel play and Jean sing, and Adelaide Maud and Jean performed a duet together.

Cuthbert pranced about and applauded heavily, and Adelaide Maud swung her crisp skirts and bowed low in a professional manner.

"If I can't sing," said she, "I can bow. So do you mind if I do it again?" So she bowed again.

It was quite different to the old Adelaide Maud, who aired such starchy manners in their drawing-room.

Lance came in by an early train.

"Heard you were home," said he, "and ran in to see if you'd take some Broken Hills, or Grand Trunks, or Consolidated Johnnies, you know."

He produced a note-book.

"Now Mrs. Leighton promised to buy a whole mine of shares the other day, and she hasn't done it. How am I to get on with my admirable firm, if my best clients fail me in this way?"

Jean exploded into laughter. Lance as a stockbroker, what next!

"You needn't laugh," he said. "I made twenty-five pounds for the mater last week. Not your mater, mine!"

"Don't listen to Lance's illegal practices," said Elma.

Lance struck an att.i.tude in front of Mabel.

"Oh, mother," he said, "how you've growed. I'm afraid of you. Wait till you see what Maclean will say!"

"Maclean?"

"Yes. Now, Elma, don't pretend to look blank about it. It was you who told me."

Elma groaned. (If it only were Mr. Maclean!)

"I told you nothing," she said. "You are not to be trusted, I've always known that, in Stock Exchange or out of it, I'd never tell you a single thing."

"Well, it was Aunt Katharine," said Lance with conviction. She had just appeared in the doorway.

"Well, well," she said in a fat, breathless way. "Well, you're home, and I am glad. Dear, how tall you both are! And is that the latest?"

She looked at Mabel's hat. "Well, well. We've had enough trouble with you away. Elma will be ready for none of that nonsense for a year or two, that's one comfort. Jean, you are quite fat. Living in other people's houses seems to agree with you. Not the life we were accustomed to. Young people had to stay at home in my day."

"Now, Aunt Katharine," said Lance, who was a privileged person, "are they your girls, or Mrs. Leighton's, that you lecture them so?"

"Look here, Lance," said Elma, "Aunt Katharine isn't a Broken Hill, or a con--consolidated Johnnie. You just leave her alone, will you?"

"Elma's become beastly dictatorial since she was ill," said Lance savagely. "What's that confab in the corner?"

Mrs. Leighton was sitting with Adelaide Maud, and in the pause which ensued, everybody heard her say, "When Jean was a baby--no, it was when Elma was a baby, and Cuthbert, you know----" just as the girls were afraid she would five long years ago.

"Oh," said Cuthbert from the other end of the room, "my dear mother, if you go on with that----"

"I can't imagine why they never want to know what they did when they were babies," said Mrs. Leighton, in an innocent manner. She disliked being stopped in any of these reminiscences. Adelaide Maud's eyes danced. "They were so much nicer when they were babies," sighed Mrs.

Leighton.

Then she turned round on them all.

"You two girls have been home for an hour or more, and you never asked after your dear father."

Mabel giggled. Jean looked very serious.

Elma said suddenly, "They are hiding something, mummy," and the secret was out.

Mr. Leighton had met them pretty nearly half way. He had travelled with them, and in town had seen them into the train for Ridgetown.

"And he told me," said Mrs. Leighton, "that he had an important meeting which would keep him employed for the better part of the day."

"So he had," said Mabel.

"It's just like John," said Mrs. Leighton to Aunt Katharine. "One might have known he wouldn't stay away from these girls."

She smiled largely as she remembered his protestations of the morning.

"Oh, well," said Aunt Katharine dingily, "it would have been nicer of him to have told you. You never were very firm with John."

Robin Meredith came in the evening when they were a.s.sembled with Mr.

Leighton in the drawing-room and the girls were playing once more. They played and sang with a fine new confidence and abandonment which made up to Mr. Leighton for long weary months of waiting. Mabel, mostly on account of her father's commendation, was quite composed and cheerful as she shook hands with Robin. Robin would not have minded the composure, but the cheerfulness wounded him a trifle. Mr. Leighton considered that his future life had more promise in it now that he saw Robin unnerved.

If it were not for the beautiful ease of Mabel's manner, he should have felt uncertain as to the consequences of all that had happened. But Mabel was so serenely right in every way that his last fear melted.

Mabel herself began to wonder at her own placidity. She looked with thankfulness on the scene before her, all her family and Elma given back to her, every one loyal, untouched by the influence which she had so feared before, Isobel going to be married to a man from whom she was glad to feel herself freed, her home intact. Yet a bitter mist gathered in her mind and obliterated the joyousness. How wicked of her--to complain with everything here so lovely before her.

No, not everything.

Mabel, in the darkness that night before falling asleep, held her hand to her eyes. No, everything had not come back to her yet.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Adelaide Maud

The Leighton's had been writing off the invitations for the wedding, and Elma was in her room with Adelaide Maud. This had been converted into a sitting-room so long as Elma remained a convalescent.

Elma had asked Isobel if she might have just one invitation for a special friend of her own. Now who was this friend, Mrs. Leighton wondered? She was surprised when Elma asked her, without any embarra.s.sment for Mr. Symington's address.

"And don't tell who it is, please, Mummy, because I have a little plot of my own on hand."

She sealed and addressed this important missive quite blandly under her mother's eyes.

Mrs. Leighton could not make it out. She was inclined to fall into Aunt Katharine's ways and say, "In my young days, young people were not so blatant."