The Real Charlotte - Edith Somerville [75]
“Oh, very,” replied Christopher perfunctorily; “but he rather overdoes it, I think, sometimes, and you know you got the worst of that business.”
“I think you must have had the worst of it,” she said timidly. “I never was able to half thank you—” Even the equalising glow from the pink lampshades could not conceal the deepening of the colour in her cheeks.
“Oh, please don’t try,” interrupted Christopher, surprised into a fellow-feeling of shyness, and hastily turning over the yachting page; “it was nothing at all.”
“Indeed, I wanted to say it to you before,” persevered Francie, “that time at the bazaar, but there always were people there. Charlotte told me that only for you the pike would be eating me at the bottom of the lake!” she ended with a nervous laugh.
“What a very unpleasant thing to say, and not strictly true,” said Christopher lightly. “Do you recognise Miss Mullen in this?” he went on, hurrying from the subject.
“Oh, how pretty!” cried Francie, peering into a small and dark picture; “but I don’t see Charlotte. It’s the waterfall in the grounds, isn’t it?”
Pamela looked over from the piano again, amazed to hear her brother’s voice raised in loud laughter. There was no denying that the picture was like a water-fall, and Francie at first rejected with scorn the explanation that it represented a Sunday-school feast.
“Ah, go on, Mr. Dysart Why, I see the white water, and the black rocks, and all!”
“That’s the table-cloth, and the black rocks are the children’s faces, and that’s Miss Mullen.”
“Well, I’m very glad you never took any Sunday-school feast ever I was at, if that’s what you make them look like.”
“You don’t mean to say you go to Sunday-school feasts?”
Yes, why wouldn’t I? I never missed one till this year; they’re the grandest fun out!”
Christopher stared at her. He was not prepared for a religious aspect in Miss Mullen’s remarkable young cousin.
“Do you teach in Sunday-schools?” He tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice, but Francie caught the tone.
“You’re very polite! I suppose you think I know nothing at all, but I can tell you I could say down all the judges of Israel, or the journeyings of St. Paul this minute, and that’s more than you could do!”
“By Jove, it is!” answered Christopher, with another laugh. “And is that what you talk about at school feasts?”
Francie laid her head back on the cushion of her chair, and looked at him from under her lowered eyelashes. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said. She suddenly found that this evening she was not in the least afraid of Mr. Dysart. There were some, notably Roddy Lambert, who called him a prig, but she said to herself that she’d tell him as soon as she saw him that Mr. Dysart was a very nice young man, and not a bit stuck-up.
“Very much,” Christopher replied, sticking his eye-glass into his eye, “that was why I asked.” He really felt curious to know more of this unwonted young creature, with her ingenuous impudence and her lovely face. If anyone else had said the things that she had said, he would have been either bored or revolted, and it is possibly worth noting that, concurrently with a nascent interest in Francie, he was consciously surprised that he was neither bored nor revolted. Perhaps it was the influence of the half-civilised northern music that Pamela was playing, with its blood-stirring freshness, like the whistling wind of dawn, and its strange snatches of winding sweetness, that woke some slumbering part of him to a sense of her charm and youth. But Pamela guessed nothing of what Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” was doing for her brother, and only thought how gallantly he was fulfilling her behest.
Before he said good-night to Francie, Christopher had learned a good deal that he did not know before. He had