Nuttie's Father

'The insurance office sounds the best, and would be the least shock to our belongings,' said Annaple; 'but it seems to lead to nothing. He would not get on unless we had capital to invest, and even if we had any, you wouldn't catch us doing that again!'

'Does Mr. Dutton advise that?'

'No, he only thought we should like it better; but we are quite past caring for people's feelings in the matter. They couldn't pity us worse than they do. I incline to Stubbs and Co. One of them was once in the Greenleaf office, and has a regard for anything from thence; besides Mark would have something to do besides desk work. He would have to judge of samples, and see to the taking in and storing of goods. He does know something about that, and I'm sure it would agree with him better than an unmitigated high stool, with his nose to a desk.'

'I should like it better.'

'That's right! Now I have got some one to say so. Besides, rising is possible, if one gets very useful. I mean to be Mrs. Alderman, if not my Lady Mayoress, before we have done. Then they have a great big almost deserted set of rooms over the warehouse, where we might live and look after the place.'

'Oh! but should you like that?'

'Mr. Dutton wants us to live out in some of the suburban places, where it seems there is a perfect population of clerks' families in semi-detached houses. He says we should save Mark's railway fare, rent, and all in doctors' bills. But people, children and all, do live and thrive in the City; and I think Mark's health will be better looked after if I am there to give him his midday bite and sup, and brush him up, than if he is left to cater for himself; and as to exercise for the Billy-boy, 'tis not so far to the Thames Embankment. The only things that stagger me are the blacks! I don't know whether life is long enough to be after the blacks all day long, but perhaps I shall get used to them!'

'Well, I think that would be worse.'

'Perhaps it would; and at any rate, if the blacks do beat me, we could move. Think, no rent, nor rates, nor taxes--that is an inducement to swallow--no--to contend with, any number of blackamoors, isn't it? even if they settle on the tip of Billy-boy's nose.'

'I could come to see you better there than out in a suburb,' said Nuttie. 'But what do these rooms look out upon?'

'On one side into their own court, on the other into Wulstan Street-- a quiet place on the whole--all walls and warehouses; and there's an excellent parish church, Mr. Underwood's; so I think we might do worse.'

Nuttie was very sorry that the gentlemen came up, and Mr. Fane wandered out and began asking whether they were going to the rose show. Somehow on that evening she became conscious that Annaple looked at her and Mr. Fane rather curiously; and when they met again the next day, and having grown intimate over the introduction of the two little boys, were driving out together, there were questions about whether she saw much of him.

'Oh, I don't know! He is the nicest, on the whole, of papa's friends; he can talk of something besides'--Nuttie paused over her 'besides,'--'horseyness, and all that sort of thing--he is not so like an old satyr as some of them are; and so he is a resource.'

'I see. And you meet him elsewhere, don't you, in general society?'

'I don't go out much now that Lady Kirkaldy is not in town; but he always seems to turn up everywhere that one goes.'

'Ursula, I'm very glad of that tone of yours. I was afraid--'

'Afraid of what?' cried Nuttie in a defiant tone.

'That you liked him, and he is not really nice, Nuttie. Mark knows all about him; and so did I when I lived with the Delmars.'

Nuttie laughed rather bitterly. 'Thank you, Annaple. As if I could care for that man--or he for me, for that matter! I know but too well,' she added gravely, 'that nobody nice is ever intimate at home.'

'I beg your pardon. I would not have worried you about it, only I think you must take care, Nuttie, for Blanche mentioned it to us last winter.'

'Blanche is an arrant gossip! If she saw a grandfather and great grandmother gossiping she would say they were going to be married.'

'Yes, as Mark says, one always swallows Blanche with a qualification.'

'You may be quite sure, Annaple, that nothing like that will ever be true about me! Why, what would ever become of my poor little Wyn if I was so horrid as to want to go and marry?'

She said it with an ineffable tone of contempt, just like the original Nuttie, who seemed to be recalled by association with Annaple.

That sojourn of Mark and his wife at Springfield House was a bright spot in that summer. If it had been only that Annaple's presence gave the free entree to such an island of old Micklethwayte, it would have been a great pleasure to her; but there was besides the happiness of confidence and unrestraint in their society, a restful enjoyment only to be appreciated by living the guarded life of constraint that was hers. She was so seldom thrown among people whom she could admire and look up to. Annaple told her husband of Nuttie's vehement repudiation of any intention of marriage. 'I am sure she meant it,' she observed, 'it was only a little too strong. I wonder if that poor youth who came to her first ball, and helped to pick us out of the hole in Bluepost Bridge, had anything to do with it.'

Annaple had an opportunity of judging. Mr. Dutton would not have brought about a meeting which might be painful and unsettling to both; but one afternoon, when Nuttie was 'off duty' with her father, and had come in to share Annaple's five o'clock tea, Gerard Godfrey, looking the curate from head to foot, made his appearance, having come up from the far east, about some call on Mr. Dutton's purse.

The two shook hands with pleased surprise, and a little heightening of colour, but that was all. Nuttie had been out to luncheon, and was dressed 'like a mere fashionable young lady' in his eyes; and when, after the classes and clubs and schools of his district had been discussed, he asked, 'And I suppose you are taking part in everything here?'

'No, that I can't!'

'Indeed! I know Porlock, the second curate here very well, and he tells me that his vicar has a wonderful faculty of finding appropriate work for every one. Of course you know him?'

'No, I don't;' said Nuttie.

'Miss Egremont has her appropriate work,' said Mr. Dutton, and the deacon felt himself pushed into his old position at Micklethwayte. He knew the clergy of the district very well, and how persistently either Mr. Egremont, or perhaps Gregorio, prevented their gaining admittance at his house; and he guessed, but did not know, that Nuttie could not have got into personal intercourse with them without flat disobedience.

Annaple threw herself into the breach, and talked of St. Wulstan's; and the encounter ended, leaving the sense of having drifted entirely away from one another, and being perfectly heart whole, though on the one hand Ursula's feeling was of respect and honour; and Gerard's had a considerable element of pity and disapprobation.

'No!' said Annaple when they were gone, 'he will not cry like the kloarek in the Breton ballad who wetted three great missals through with his tears at his first mass. He is very good, I am sure, but he is a bit of a prig!'

'It is very hard to youth to be good without priggishness,' said Mr. Dutton. 'Self-assertion is necessary, and it may easily be carried too far.'

'Buttresses are useful, but they are not beauties,' rejoined Annaple.

The warehouse arrangement was finally adopted, and after the three weeks necessary for the cleaning and fitting of their floor, and the bringing in of their furniture, Mark and Annaple began what she termed 'Life among the Blacks.'

Nuttie had great designs of constantly seeing Annaple, sending her supplies from the gardens and preserves at Bridgefield, taking her out for drives, and cultivating a friendship between Alwyn and Willie, who had taken to each other very kindly on the whole. They could not exactly understand each other's language, and had great fights from time to time over toys, for though there was a year between them they were nearly equal in strength; but they cared for each other's company more than for anything else, were always asking to go to one another, and roared when the time of parting came; at least Alwyn did so unreservedly, for Nuttie had begun to perceive with compunction that Billy-boy was much the most under control, and could try to be good at his mother's word, without other bribe than her kiss and smile. Ah! but he had a mother!