"Do you? There doesn't seem to be any one else, then, but you!" says poor Joyce, dropping Mabel into her lap, and Tommy more to the front, and clasping them both to her with a little convulsive movement.

Perhaps the good cry she has on top of those two loving little heads does her more good than anything else could possibly have done.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

"A bitter and perplexed 'What shall I do?'

Is worse to man than worse necessity."

Three months have come and gone, and winter is upon us. It is close on Christmastide indeed. All the trees lie bare and desolate, the leaves have fallen from them, and their sweet denizens, the birds, flown or dead.

Evening has fallen. The children are in the nursery, having a last romp before bed hour. Their usual happy hunting ground for that final fling is the drawing-room, but finding the atmosphere there, to-night, distinctly cloudy, they had beaten a simultaneous retreat to Bridget and the battered old toys upstairs. Children, like rats, dislike discomfort.

Mrs. Monkton, sitting before the fire, that keeps up a continuous sound as musical as the rippling of a small stream, is leaning back in her chair, her pretty forehead puckered into a thousand doubts. Joyce, near her, is as silent as she is; while Mr. Monkton, after a vain pretence at being absorbed in the morning paper (diligently digested at 11 this morning), flings it impatiently on the floor.

"What's the good of your looking like that, Barbara? If you were compelled to accept this invitation from my mother, I could see some reason for your dismal glances, but when you know I am as far from wishing you to accept it as you are yourself, why should----?"

"Ah! but are you?" says his wife with a swift, dissatisfied glance at him. The dissatisfaction is a good deal directed toward herself.

"If you could make her sure of that," says Joyce, softly. "I have tried to explain it to her, but----"

"I suppose I am unreasonable," says Barbara, rising, with a little laugh that has a good deal of grief in it. "I suppose I ought to believe,"

turning to her husband, "that you are dying for me to refuse this invitation from the people who have covered me with insult for eight years, when I know well that you are dying for me to accept it."

"Oh! if you know that," says Monkton rather feebly, it must be confessed. This fatally late desire on the part of his people to become acquainted with his wife and children has taken hold of him, has lived with him through the day, not for anything he personally could possibly gain by it, but because of a deep desire he has that they, his father and mother, should see and know his wife, and learn to admire her and love her.

"Of course I know it," says Barbara, almost fiercely. "Do you think I have lived with you all these years and cannot read your heart? Don't think I blame you, Freddy. If the cases were reversed I should feel just like you. I should go to any lengths to be at one with my own people."

"I don't want to go to even the shortest length," says Mr. Monkton. As if a little nettled he takes up the dull old local paper again and begins a third severe examination of it. But Mrs. Monkton, feeling that she cannot survive another silence, lays her hand upon it and captures it.

"Let us talk about it, Freddy," says she.

"It will only make you more unhappy."

"Oh, no. I think not. It will do her good," says Joyce, anxiously.

"Where is the letter? I hardly saw it. Who is asked?" demands Barbara feverishly.

"n.o.body in particular, except you. My father has expressed a wish that we should occupy that house of his in Harley street for the winter months, and my mother puts in, accidentally as it were, that she would like to see the children. But you are the one specially alluded to."

"They are too kind!" says Barbara rather unkindly to herself.

"I quite see it in your light. It is an absolute impertinence," says Monkton, with a suppressed sigh. "I allow all that. In fact, I am with you, Barbara, all through: why keep me thinking about it? Put it out of your head. It requires nothing more than a polite refusal."

"I shall hate to make it polite," says Barbara. And then, recurring to her first and sure knowledge of his secret desires, "you want to go to them?"

"I shall never go without you," returns he gravely.

"Ah! that is almost a challenge," says she, flushing.

"Barbara! perhaps he is right," says Joyce, gently; as she speaks she gets up from the fire and makes her way to the door, and from that to her own room.

"Will you go without me?" says Barbara, when she has gone, looking at her husband with large, earnest eyes.

"Never. You say you know me thoroughly, Barbara; why then ask that question?"

"Well, you will never go then," says she, "for I--I will never enter those people's doors. I couldn't, Freddy. It would kill me!" She has kept up her defiant att.i.tude so successfully and for so long that Mr.

Monkton is now electrified when she suddenly bursts into tears and throws herself into his arms.

"You think me a beast!" says she, clinging to him.

"You are tired; you are bothered. Give it up, darling," says he, patting her on the back, the most approved modern plan of reducing people to a stale of common sense.

"But you do think it, don't you?"

"No. Barbara. There now, be a good sensible girl, and try to realize that I don't want you to accept this invitation, and that I am going to write to my mother in the morning to say it is impossible for us to leave home just now--as--as--eh?"

"Oh, anything will do."

"As baby is not very well? That's the usual polite thing, eh?"

"Oh! no, don't say that," says Mrs. Monkton in a little, frightened tone. "It--it's unlucky! It might--I'm not a bit superst.i.tious, Freddy, but it might affect baby in some way--do him some harm."

"Very well, we'll tell another lie," says Mr. Monkton cheerfully. "We'll say you've got the neuralgia badly, and that the doctor says it would be as much as your life Is worth to cross the Channel at this time of year."

"That will do very well," says Mrs. Monkton readily.

"But--I'm not a bit superst.i.tious," says he solemnly. "But it might affect you in some way, do you some harm, and--"

"If you are going to make a jest of it, Freddy----"

"It is you who have made the jest. Well; never mind, I accept the responsibility, and will create even another taradiddle. If I say we are disinclined to leave home just now, will that do?"

"Yes," says she, after a second's struggle with her better self, in which it comes off the loser.

"That's settled, then," says Mr. Monkton. "Peace with honor is a.s.sured.

Let us forget that unfortunate letter, and all the appurtenances thereof."

"Yes: do let us, Freddy," says she, as if with all her heart.

But the morning convinces Monkton that the question of the letter still remains unsettled. Barbara, for one thing, has come down to breakfast gowned in her very best morning frock, one reserved for those rare occasions when people drop in over night and sleep with them. She has, indeed, all the festive appearance of a person who expects to be called away at a second's notice into a very vertex of dissipation.

Joyce, who is quite as impressed as Monkton with her appearance, gazes at her with a furtive amazement, and both she and Monkton wait in a sort of studied silence to know the meaning of it. They aren't given long to possess their souls in patience.