The Laurel Walk. Molesworth Mrs.

this is lovely,” she exclaimed, “especially as you’ve got away too, Eira. Do tell us how you managed it.”

      “No, no,” remonstrated Frances, “tell her nothing. Don’t answer her till she has taken off her wet things. She will be all the quicker if you don’t begin speaking.”

      So Betty ran off and Eira joined her elder sister at the fireside.

      “Wasn’t it a good idea?” she said, smiling at the cheering glow.

      “Yes, indeed,” said Frances. “Betty was meditating something of the kind as we were coming home, but I doubt if she could have managed it. Anyway it wouldn’t have been ready to welcome us in this comfortable way. Oh dear! it was wet and dreary coming home, and we were kept waiting such a long time for papa’s medicine! By-the-by, is it all right?”

      Before Eira could answer, the door reopened to admit Betty.

      “Haven’t I been quick?” she exclaimed brightly. “Do pour out the tea, Frances. And tell me, Eira, I am dying to hear what good fairy aided and abetted you in this unheard-of extravagance.”

      “Nobody,” said Eira. “I simply did it. After all, I think it’s the best way sometimes to go straight at a thing. And if papa had met me carrying up the tea-tray I should have reminded him that it was better to have some hot tea ready for you, than to risk you both getting rheumatic fever. I didn’t meet him, as it happened, but just now when I gave him the medicines I took care, by way of precaution, to dilate on the drenched state you had arrived in and the long time you had been kept waiting at the chemist’s. The latter fact I made a shot at.”

      Frances drew a breath of relief.

      “Then we may hope for a fairly comfortable evening,” she said.

      “Yes,” said Betty; “to give the – no, Frances, you needn’t look shocked, I won’t finish it. I must allow that papa is more sympathising about physical ills than about some other things.”

      “And so he should be,” said Eira, “considering that he says he never knows what it is to feel well himself. Mamma is worse than he about being hardy and all that sort of thing. I often wonder how children grew up at all in the old days if they really were so severely treated as we’re told.”

      “It’s the old story,” said Frances; “the delicate ones were killed off, and those who did survive must have been strong enough to be made really hardy. How are your chilblains, Eira dear?”

      “Pretty bad,” the girl replied cheerfully; “at least I feel some premonitory twinges of another fit coming on! I mustn’t stay so near the fire. Talk of something else quick to make me forget them.”

      “Drink up this tea, in the first place,” said Frances. “That kind of warmth is good for them.”

      “And, oh, I have something to tell you,” said Betty, “something quite exciting! What do you think? I believe something has happened or is going to happen at Craig-Morion. It was all lighted up as we passed. No, I mustn’t exaggerate! There were lights moving about in several of the rooms, and the old Webbs were not at the lodge. It was all dark, and the gates locked, so they must have been up at the big house. That helped to make us late, you see.”

      “You poor things!” exclaimed Eira, though her pity was quickly drowned by this exciting news. “Can they be expecting some one? After all these years of nothing ever happening and nobody ever coming!”

      “It looks like it,” said Betty shortly. Then she gave herself a little shake, as if some unexpressed thought was irritating her. “Anything about Craig-Morion makes me cross,” she went on in explanation, “even though there’s something fascinating about it, too – tantalising rather. Just to think how different, how utterly different our lives would have been, if that stupid old woman had done what she meant to do, or at least what she promised. It wouldn’t have been anything so wildly wonderful! We should scarcely have been rich even then, as riches go. But it would have been enough to make a starting-point, a centre, for all the interests that make life attractive. We could make it so pretty!”

      “And have lots of people to stay with us, and whom we could stay with in return,” said Eira. “Just think what it would be to have really nice friends!”

      “Yes,” said Frances, in her quiet voice; “and as it is, the people it belongs to scarcely value it. It is so little in comparison to what they have besides. Yet,” and she hesitated, for she was a scrupulously loyal daughter, “unless papa and mamma had been able to interest themselves in things as we three would, perhaps it wouldn’t have made much radical difference, after all?”

      “Oh, yes, it would,” said Betty quickly. “It would have made all the difference. Papa wouldn’t have got into these nervous ways, if he had had things to look after and plenty of interests, and money, of course. And mamma would have been, oh! quite different.”

      “Perhaps so,” Frances agreed, “but it isn’t only circumstances that make lives. There are people, far poorer than we, I know, whose lives are ever so much fuller and wider. It is that,” she went on, speaking with unusual energy, “it is that that troubles me about you two! I want to see my way to helping you to make the best you can – in the very widest sense of the words – of your lives;” and her sweet eyes rested with almost maternal anxiety, pathetic to see in one still herself so young, on her two sisters.

      “And you, you poor old darling!” said Eira, “what about your own life?”

      “Oh!” said Frances, “I don’t feel as if I had any, separate from yours. All my day-dreams and castles in the air and aspirations are for you;” and in the firelight it seemed as if tears were glistening in her eyes.

      She was, as a rule, so self-contained and calm that this little outburst impressed her sisters almost painfully, and, with youthful shrinking from any expression of emotion, Eira answered half-jestingly:

      “I’m ashamed to own it, but do you know really sometimes that life would be quite a different thing to me – twice or three times as interesting – if I could have – ”

      “What?” said Betty.

      “Heaps and heaps of lovely clothes?” said the girl. At which they all three laughed, though half-ruefully, for no doubt their present wardrobe left room for improvement.

      Chapter Two

      A Break in the Clouds

      Things, externally at least, had brightened up by the next morning. The rain had ceased during the night, and some rays of sunshine, doubly welcome after its late absence, though not without the touch of pathos often associated with it in late autumn, came peeping in at the dining-room window of Fir Cottage, when the family assembled there for breakfast. For Mr Morion, valetudinarian though he was, had not even the “qualités de ses défauts” in some respects. That is to say, he was exasperatingly punctual, and at all seasons and under almost all circumstances an exemplary early riser.

      Naughty Eira groaned over this sometimes. “If he would but stay in bed, and enjoy his ill-health comfortably, and let us breakfast in peace, I could face the rest of the day ever so much more philosophically,” she used to say. “Or at least if he wouldn’t expect us to praise him for coming down in time when he hasn’t closed an eye all night!”

      “I always think that rather an absurd expression,” said Frances, “begging poor papa’s pardon; for when one can’t sleep, one both opens and shuts one’s eyes a great deal oftener than when you go straight off the moment your head touches the pillow.” At which her sisters laughed. The spirit of mischief latent in both the younger ones enjoyed decoying their sister into the tiniest approach to criticism of their elders. But this morning the rise in the barometer seemed to have affected Mr Morion’s nerves favourably; he even went the unusual length of congratulating himself openly on the promptitude with which the impending attack had been warded off, thanks to Frances.

      “Yes, indeed,” Lady Emma agreed, “it was a very good thing that the girls went themselves. If we had sent the boy he would have come back with some ridiculous nonsense about its being