"O Aunt Emily, I should so like to play one game with them before they go!"
"I will have one with you, if you can be very careful of their tender points," said Mrs. Umfraville, without one of the objections that Kate had expected; "but first I want you to help me about some of the other things. Your uncle meant one of the work-boxes for you!"
"O Aunt Emily, how delightful! I really will work, with such a dear beautiful box!" cried Kate, opening it, and again peeping into all its little holes and contrivances. "Here is the very place for a dormouse to sleep in! And who is the other for?"
"For Fanny de la Poer, who is his godchild."
"Oh, I am so glad! Fanny always has such nice pretty work about!"
"And now I want you to help me to choose the other presents. There; these," pointing to a scarf and a muslin dress adorned with the wings of diamond beetles, "are for some young cousins of my own; but you will be able best to choose what the other De la Poers and your cousins at Oldburgh would like best."
"My cousins at Oldburgh!" cried Kate. "May they have some of these pretty things?" And as her aunt answered "We hope they will," Kate flew at her, and hugged her quite tight round the throat; then, when Mrs. Umfraville undid the clasp, and returned the kiss, she went like an India-rubber ball with a backward bound, put her hands together over her head, and gasped out, "Oh, thank you, thank you!"
"My dear, don't go quite mad. You will jump into that calabash, and then it won't be fit for anybody. Are you so very glad?"
"Oh! so glad! Pretty things do come so seldom to Oldburgh!"
"Well, we thought you might like to send Miss Wardour this shawl."
It was a beautiful heavy shawl of the soft wool of the Cashmere goats; really of every kind of brilliant hue, but so dexterously blended together, that the whole looked dark and sober. But Kate did not look with favour on the shawl.
"A shawl is so stupid," she said. "If you please, I had rather Mary had the work-box."
"But the work-box is for Lady Fanny."
"Oh! but I meant my own," said Kate earnestly. "If you only knew what a pity it is to give nice things to me; they always get into such a mess. Now, Mary always has her things so nice; and she works so beautifully; she has never let Lily wear a stitch but of her setting; and she always wished for a box like this. One of her friends at school had a little one; and she used to say, when we played at roe's egg, that she wanted nothing but an ivory work-box; and she has nothing but an old blue one, with the steel turned black!"
"We must hear what your uncle says, for you must know that he meant the box for you."
"It isn't that I don't care for it," said Kate, with a sudden glistening in her eyes; "it is because I do care for it so very much that I want Mary to have it."
"I know it is, my dear;" and her aunt kissed her; "but we must think about it a little. Perhaps Mary would not think an Indian shawl quite so stupid as you do."
"Mary isn't a nasty vain conceited girl!" cried Kate indignantly. "She always looks nice; but I heard Papa say her dress did not cost much more than Sylvia's and mine, because she never tore anything, and took such care!"
"Well, we will see," said Mrs. Umfraville, perhaps not entirely convinced that the shawl would not be a greater prize to the thrifty girl than Kate perceived.
Kate meanwhile had sprung unmolested on a beautiful sandalwood case for Sylvia, and a set of rice-paper pictures for Lily; and the appropriating other treasures to the De la Poers, packing them up, and directing them, accompanied with explanations of their habits and tastes, lasted till so late, that after the litter was cleared away there was only time for one game at chess with the grand pieces; and in truth the honour of using them was greater than the pleasure. They covered up the board, so that there was no seeing the squares, and it was necessary to be most inconveniently cautious in lifting them. They were made to be looked at, not played with; and yet, wonderful to relate, Kate did not do one of the delicate things a mischief!
Was it that she was really grown more handy, or was it that with this gentle aunt she was quite at her ease, yet too much subdued to be careless and rough?
The luncheon came; and after it, she drove with her aunt first to a few shops, and then to take up the Colonel, who had been with his lawyer. Kate quaked a little inwardly, lest it should be about the Lord Chancellor, and tried to frame a question on the subject to her aunt; but even the most chattering little girls know what it is to have their lips sealed by an odd sort of reserve upon the very matters that make them most uneasy; and just because her wild imagination had been thinking that perhaps this was all a plot to waylay her into the Lord Chancellor's clutches, she could not utter a word on the matter, while they drove through the quiet squares where lawyers live.
Mrs. Umfraville, however, soon put that out of her head by talking to her about the Wardours, and setting open the flood gates of her eloquence about Sylvia. So delightful was it to have a listener, that Kate did not grow impatient, long as they waited at the lawyer's door in the dull square, and indeed was sorry when the Colonel made his appearance. He just said to her that he hoped she was not tired of waiting; and as she replied with a frightened little "No, thank you," began telling his wife something that Kate soon perceived belonged to his own concerns, not to hers; so she left off trying to gather the meaning in the rumble of the wheels, and looked out of window, for she could never be quite at ease when she felt that those eyes might be upon her.
On coming back to the hotel, Mrs. Umfraville found a note on the table for her: she read it, gave it to her husband, and said, "I had better go directly."
"Will it not be too much? Can you?" he said very low; and there was the same repressed twitching of the muscles of his face, as Kate had seen when he was left with his sister Jane.
"Oh yes!" she said fervently; "I shall like it. And it is her only chance; you see she goes to-morrow."
The carriage was ordered again, and Mrs. Umfraville explained to Kate that the note was from a poor invalid lady whose son was in their own regiment in India, that she was longing to hear about him, and was going out of town the next day.
"And what shall I give you to amuse yourself with, my dear?" asked Mrs. Umfraville. "I am afraid we have hardly a book that will suit you."
Kate had a great mind to ask to go and sit in the carriage, rather than remain alone with the terrible black moustache; but she was afraid of the Colonel's mentioning Aunt Barbara's orders that she was not to be let out of sight. "If you please," she said, "if I might write to Sylvia."
Her aunt kindly established her at a little table, with a leathern writing-case, and her uncle mended a pen for her. Then her aunt went away, and he sat down to his own letters.
Kate durst not speak to him, but she watched him under her eyelashes, and noticed how he presently laid down his pen, and gave a long, heavy, sad sigh, such as she had never heard when his wife was present; then sat musing, looking fixedly at the grey window; till, rousing himself with another such sigh, he seemed to force himself to go on writing, but paused again, as if he were so wearied and oppressed that he could hardly bear it.
It gave Kate a great awe of him, partly because a little girl in a book would have gone up, slid her hand into his, and kissed him; but she could nearly as soon have slid her hand into a lion's; and she was right, it would have been very obtrusive.
Some little time had passed before there was an opening of the door, and the announcement, "Lord de la Poer."