Frank would not commit himself, but he was evidently at the era of sensitiveness on the poetical side. Cecil spoke for him. "How very provoking! What did you do to him, Rosamond?"
"I kept off the sand-flies! I can't say but I was glad of a little rest, for I had been packing up for the whole family for ten days past, with interludes of rushing out into the town; for whatever we had not forgotten, the shops had not sent home! Oh! what a paradise of quiet it was under the rocks at Filey-wasn't it, Julius?"
"We will go there again next time we have a chance," said Julius, looking blissful.
"I would never go again to the same place," cried Cecil. "That's not the way to acquire new ideas."
"We are too old to acquire new ideas, my dear," drawled Rosamond, sleepily.
"What did you go to the Church Congress for!" asked Charlie.
"I hope Julius was awake by that time," said Frank.
"Not if we are to have all the new ideas tried on us," said Raymond, dryly.
"I went to a Congress once!" exclaimed Cecil.
"Indeed!" said her husband, surprised.
"Yes. We thought we ought to encourage them. It was the Congress of Sunday-school managers for our archdeaconry."
"Did you acquire any new ideas?" asked Frank; while Rosamond's very eyelashes seemed to curl with suppressed diversion.
"Oh yes. We explained our system of tickets, and the Arch-deacon said it was a very good one, and ought to be adopted everywhere."
This mode of acquisition of new ideas was quite too much for Julius and Charlie, who both exploded; but Frank retained composure enough to ask, "Did you explain it in person?"
"No. We made Mr. Venn."
"The schoolmaster?" said Julius.
"No. He is our clergyman, and he always does as we tell him; and so Dunstone is quite the model parish of the archdeaconry."
Julius could not help making an odd little bend of the head, half deferential, half satirical; and Raymond said, "Cecil, I believe it rests with you to make the move." An ingenuous girlish blush mantled on her cheek as she looked towards Rosamond and moved.
The drawing-room adjoined the dining-room, and likewise had a glass door leading into the conservatory; but this, like the other windows, was concealed by the pale-blue damask curtains that descended from cornices gilded like the legs of the substantial chairs and sofas. There was, however, no lack of modern light cane and basket seats round the fire, and it looked cheery and comfortable. Rosamond put an arm round Anne's waist-"Poor tired dear, come and lie on the sofa."
"Oh no, I couldn't. The gentlemen will come in."
"All brothers! What, will you only be satisfied with an easy-chair! A charming room, and a charming fire!"
"Not so nice as a library," said Cecil, stabbing the fire with the poker as a sort of act of possession. "We always sit in the library at Dunstone. State rooms are horrid."
"This only wants to be littered down," said Rosamond. "That's my first task in fresh quarters, banishing some things and upsetting the rest, and strewing our own about judiciously. There are the inevitable wax-flowers. I have regular blarney about their being so lovely, that it would just go to my heart to expose them to the boys."
"You have always been on the move," said Cecil, who was standing by the table examining the ornaments.
"You may say so! there are not many of Her Majesty's garrisons that I have not had experience of, except my native country that I wasn't born in. It was very mean of them never once to send us to Ireland."
"Where were you born?" said Cecil, neither of the two catching at the bull which perhaps Rosamond had allowed to escape by way of trying them.
"At Plymouth. Dick and I were both born at Plymouth, and Maurice at Scutari; then we were in the West Indies; the next two were born all up and down in Jamaica and all the rest of the Islands-Tom and Terry-dear boys, I've got the charge of them now they are left at school. Three more are Canadians; and little Nora is the only Irish-born one amongst us."
"I thought you said you had never been in Ireland."
"Never quartered there, but on visits at Rathforlane," said Rosamond. "Our ten years at home we have been up and down the world, till at last you see I've ended where I began-at Plymouth."
"Oh, what a lovely Florentine mosaic!" exclaimed Cecil, who had taken but slight interest in this itinerary. "It is just like a weight at Dunstone." Then opening a miniature-case, "Who is this- Mrs. Poynsett when she was young?"
"Most likely," said Rosamond. "It is like her now, and very like Charlie."
"Yes. Charles is quite unlike the family."
"What family?" said Rosamond.
"The Charnocks, of course. Raymond is a perfect Charnock!"
"A vast advantage," murmured Rosamond.
"Of course," said Cecil, taking it quite seriously. "No one else could be the same thing to us. Papa said there was not a match in the whole world that could have gratified him so much."
"How old are you, Cecil?" quoth Rosamond, with a ripple in her voice.
"Oh, his age was no matter. I don't like young men. That's not the drawback; no, it is that horrid Poynsett at the end of the name."
"You see you had better have waived your objections to youth, and taken a younger son."
"I couldn't," said this naive young person. "Besides, there is much more of a field for me here than at Dunstone since papa's marriage."
Whatever Rosamond had on the tip of her tongue was averted by the entrance of the three younger brothers. Julius seated himself beside her in the cushioned fireside corner; and Cecil asked where Raymond was.
"Just stepped in to see my mother," said Frank. "This room opens into hers. Will you come to them?"
"Not yet," said Cecil. "I want you to tell me about the neighbourhood."
"Just what I want," said Rosamond. "Whenever I ask, Julius always says there's Dr. Easterby."
Frank and Charlie burst out laughing.
"Dr. Easterby is one of the greatest men in the English Church," said Julius.
"Precisely! But what is the regiment at Backsworth?" and as Charlie named it, "Oh, what fun! That's where Laurie Cookson exchanged. He will be sure to send us cards for everything."
"At Dunstone we never used to go to garrison gaieties," said Cecil, gravely.
"Oh! I'm a military pariah," said Rosamond, hastily.
"Who are the land-owners?" continued Cecil. "There was a place I saw from the line, but Raymond didn't hear when I asked whose it was. Close to the station, I mean."
"That is Sirenwood," said Charles. "Sir Harry Vivian's. He is just come back there with his two daughters."
"I thought Emily Vivian was dead," said Julius. "You don't mean that women!"
"That woman?" laughed his wife. "What has she done to be a that woman?"
"Offended his Reverence," said Frank, in that sort of jocose tone which betrays annoyance.
"A heartless mischievous woman!" said Julius.
Rosamond cocked up her left eyebrow with an ineffably droll look, which encouraged Charlie to say, "Such fierceness can only be prompted by personal experience. Look out, Rosamond!"
"Come 'fess, Julius," said she, merrily. "'Fess and make it up."
"I-I have nothing to confess," said Julius, seriously.
"Hasn't he indeed?" said she, looking at the brothers.
"Oh! don't ask us," said Charlie. "His youthful indiscretions were over long before our eyes had risen above the horizon!"
"Do you mean that they have really come home to live here?" demanded Julius, with singular indifference to the personal insinuations.
"I am sorry it is so painful to you," said I Frank, somewhat ironically; "but Sir Harry thinks it right to return and end his days among his own people."
"Is he ill, then?"
"I can't gratify you so far," returned Frank; "he is a fine old fellow of sixty-five. Just what humbugging papers call a regular specimen of an old English gentleman," he added to Cecil.