‘I suppose he will come home at Easter,’ said Cynthia, ‘and then I shall see him for myself’
‘It’s a great pity that their being in mourning will prevent their going to the Easter charity ball,’ said Mrs. Gibson, plaintively. ‘I shan’t like to take you two girls, if you are not to have any partners. It will put me in such an awkward position. I wish we could join on to the Towers party. That would secure you partners, for they always bring a number of dancing men, who might dance with you after they had done their duty by the ladies of the house. But really everything is so changed since dear Lady Cumnor has been an invalid that, perhaps, they won’t go at all.’
This Easter ball was a great subject of conversation with Mrs. Gibson. She sometimes spoke of it as her first appearance in society as a bride, though she had been visiting once or twice a week all winter long. Then she shifted her ground, and said she felt so much interest in it because she would then have the responsibility of introducing both her own and Mr. Gibson’s daughter to public notice, though the fact was that pretty nearly every one who was going to this ball had seen the two young ladies—though not their ball dresses—before. But, aping the manners of the aristocracy as far as she knew them, she intended to ‘bring out’ Molly and Cynthia on this occasion, which she regarded in something of the light of a presentation at Court. ‘They are not out yet,’ was her favourite excuse when either of them was invited to any house to which she did not wish them to go, or they were invited without her. She even made a difficulty about their ‘not being out’ when Miss Browning—that old friend of the Gibson family—came in one morning to ask the two girls to come to a friendly tea and a round game afterwards; this mild piece of gaiety being designed as an attention to three of Mrs. Goodenough’s grandchildren—two young ladies and their schoolboy brother—who were staying on a visit to their grandmamma.
‘You are very kind, Miss Browning, but, you see, I hardly like to let them go—they are not out, you know, till after the Easter ball.’
‘Till when we are invisible,’ said Cynthia, always ready with her mockery to exaggerate any pretension of her mother’s. ‘We are so high in rank that our sovereign must give us her sanction before we can play a round game at your house.’
Cynthia enjoyed the idea of her own full-grown size and stately gait, as contrasted with that of a meek, half-fledged girl in the nursery; but Miss Browning was half puzzled and half affronted.
‘I don’t understand it at all. In my days girls went wherever it pleased people to ask them, without this farce of bursting out in all their new fine clothes at some public place. I don’t mean but what the gentry took their daughters to York, or Matlock, or Bath, to give them a taste of gay society when they were growing up; and the quality went up to London, and their young ladies were presented to Queen Charlotte, and went to a birthday ball, perhaps. But for us little Hollingford people, why, we knew every child amongst us from the day of its birth; and many a girl of twelve or fourteen have I seen go out to a card-party, and sit quiet at her work, and know how to behave as well as any lady there. There was no talk of “coming out” in those days for any one under the daughters of a squire.’
‘After Easter, Molly and I shall know how to behave at a card-party, but not before,’ said Cynthia, demurely.
‘You’re always fond of your quips and your cranks, my dear,’ said Miss Browning, ‘and I wouldn’t quite answer for your behaviour: you sometimes let your spirits carry you away. But I’m quite sure Molly will be a little lady as she always is, and always was, and I have known her from a babe.’
Mrs. Gibson took up arms on behalf of her own daughter, or, rather, she took up arms against Molly’s praises.
‘I don’t think you would have called Molly a lady the other day, Miss Browning, if you had found her where I did: sitting up in a cherry-tree, six feet from the ground at least, I do assure you.’
‘Oh! but that wasn’t pretty,’ said Miss Browning, shaking her head at Molly. ‘I thought you’d left off those tom-boy ways.’
‘She wants the refinement which good society gives in several ways,’ said Mrs. Gibson, returning to the attack on poor Molly. ‘She’s very apt to come upstairs two steps at a time.’
‘Only two, Molly!’ said Cynthia. ‘Why, to-day I found I could manage four of these broad shallow steps.’
‘My dear child, what are you saying?’
‘Only confessing that I, like Molly, want the refinements which good society gives; therefore, please do let us go to Miss Brownings’ this evening. I will pledge myself for Molly that she shan’t sit in a cherry-tree; and Molly shall see that I don’t go upstairs in an unladylike way. I will go upstairs as meekly as if I were a come-out young lady, and had been to the Easter ball.’
So it was agreed that they should go. If Mr. Osborne Hamley had been named as one of the probable visitors, there would have been none of this difficulty about the affair.
But though he was not there his brother Roger was. Molly saw him in a minute when she entered the little drawing-room; but Cynthia did not.
‘And see, my dears,’ said Miss Phoebe Browning, turning them round to the side where Roger stood waiting for his turn of speaking to Molly, ‘we’ve got a gentleman for you after all! Wasn’t it fortunate?—just as sister said that you might find it dull—you, Cynthia, she meant, because you know you come from France; and then, just as if he had been sent from heaven, Mr. Roger came in to call; and I won’t say we laid violent hands on him, because he was too good for that; but really we should have been near it, if he had not stayed of his own accord.’
The moment Roger had done his cordial greeting to Molly, he asked her to introduce him to Cynthia.
‘I want to know her—your new sister,’ he added, with the kind smile Molly remembered so well since the very first day she had seen it directed towards her, as she sat crying under the weeping ash. Cynthia was standing a little behind Molly when Roger asked for this introduction. She was generally dressed with careless grace. Molly, who was delicate neatness itself, used sometimes to wonder how Cynthia’s tumbled gowns, tossed away so untidily, had the art of looking so well, and falling in such graceful folds. For instance, the pale lilac muslin gown she wore this evening had been worn many times before, and had looked unfit to wear again till Cynthia put it on. Then the limpness became softness, and the very creases took the lines of beauty. Molly, in a daintily clean pink muslin, did not look half so elegantly dressed as Cynthia. The grave eyes that the latter raised when she had to be presented to Roger had a sort of childlike innocence and wonder about them, which did not quite belong to Cynthia’s character. She put on her armour of magic that evening—involuntarily, as she always did; but, on the other side, she could not help trying her power on strangers. Molly had always felt that she should have a right to a good long talk with Roger when she next saw him; and that he would tell her, or she should gather from him, all the details she so longed to hear about the Squire—about the Hall—about Osborne—about himself He was just as cordial and friendly as ever with her. If Cynthia had not been there, all would have gone on as she had anticipated; but of all the victims to Cynthia’s charms he fell most prone and abject. Molly saw it all, as she was sitting next to Miss Phoebe at the tea-table, acting right-hand, and passing cake, cream, sugar, with such busy assiduity that every one besides herself thought that her mind, as well as her hands, was fully occupied. She tried to talk to the two shy girls, as in virtue of her two years’ seniority she thought herself bound to do; and the consequence was, she went upstairs with the twain clinging to her arms, and willing to swear an eternal friendship. Nothing would satisfy them but that she must sit between them at vingt-un; and they were so desirous of her advice in the important point of fixing the price of the counters that she could not ever have joined in the animated conversation going on between Roger and Cynthia. Or, rather, it would be more correct to say that Roger was talking in a most animated manner to Cynthia, whose sweet eyes were fixed upon his face with a look of great interest in all he was saying, while it was only now and then she made her low replies. Molly caught a few words occasionally in intervals of business.