"It is altogether too coa.r.s.e," said f.a.n.n.y, with pretended pettishness.

"But, there!--whoever gets me will have to make the best of it."

"Whoever gets you, f.a.n.n.y, will have the dearest little wife in the world, and if he doesn't love every hair in your head he will be the most ungrateful of men--and I shall tell him so."

"I wonder who he will be," said f.a.n.n.y, "and whether he knows that I've been growing up for him?"

It was quite a natural remark for a light-hearted, innocent girl to make. Why, therefore, should it cause both the cousins to fall straightway into the mood ruminative--a mood which entails silence while it lasts.

"One thing I am determined upon," said f.a.n.n.y, waking up, as it were; "I won't have him unless he can waltz."

"If he can't," said Phoebe, with an arch smile, "you can teach him."

"Well, yes; that _would_ be nice." And f.a.n.n.y, brush in hand, commenced to hum a favourite waltz, and took a few turns to it, saying, when she was again before the gla.s.s, "What were we speaking of, Phoebe, before my young man popped in?"

"About the play."

"We are all going on the first night--think of that! And in a private box--think of _that_! The observed of all observers, as Mr. Kiss would say. I shall feel so excited--almost as if I were the author--though such a thing is impossible."

"Why impossible, f.a.n.n.y? You wrote a story when you were nine years old."

"Yes, and it commenced, "They were born in India without any father or mother." Was there anything ever so absurd?"

"The success of Mr. Linton's play will mean a great deal to him. He is not rich, I am afraid."

"If he isn't he ought to be," said f.a.n.n.y, brushing with great care the tresses she pretended to despise; "wearing his brains out in the way he does. He _did_ look anxious, didn't he, while Mr. Kiss was reading it?

And how beautifully he read! I felt like kissing him when he was going through the love scenes. They _do_ kiss a good deal on the stage, don't they?"

"Yes," said Phoebe, speaking with difficulty, her mouth being full of hair-pins; "but then they don't mean it."

f.a.n.n.y made a face. "I shouldn't care for it that way," she said, and then she laughed, as though she had said something funny.

"Do you think Bob meant it," asked Phoebe, "when he said he was going to be an actor?"

"Bob's a riddle," replied f.a.n.n.y. "I give him up."

"He might do worse. It's quite a fashionable profession."

"It isn't a profession. Didn't Mr. Kiss tell us that an actor was a rogue and vagabond by Act of Parliament."

"That was only a joke. Mr. Kiss is a gentleman."

"Of course he is. The Prince of Wales once shook hands with him, and _he_ wouldn't shake hands with any one _but_ a gentleman. Do you wish you were a man, Phoebe?"

"No."

"_I_ do!" said f.a.n.n.y, with a decided nod of her head, the hair of which was by this time elaborately done up in curl-papers. Phoebe had also completed her preparations for bed. "And now, Phoebe, let us have a chat." She made this proposition with a feminine obliviousness of having spoken a single word since she had locked the bedroom door.

"What about, f.a.n.n.y?"

"Open your mouth and shut your eyes, and see what G.o.d will send you,"

said f.a.n.n.y.

"Nonsense, f.a.n.n.y."

"Very well--nonsense. Then we won't have a chat. Only"--and f.a.n.n.y pursed up her lips and shook her paper-covered little head wisely.

"Only what?"

"That you'll be sorry for it--that's all."

"What a tease you are! There!" Phoebe opened her mouth and shut her eyes.

"Don't move--don't stir!" cried f.a.n.n.y, and she took from her dress an envelope, the edge of which she placed between Phoebe's teeth. "What is this?"

"A piece of paper. I'd sooner have a chocolate cream."

"You would, eh? Well, here's your chocolate cream--here's a packet of them--and if I don't tell him when he comes home, my name isn't f.a.n.n.y Lethbridge."

This remark caused Phoebe to open her eyes very quickly, and the colour on her face to come and go. f.a.n.n.y's right hand was behind her back.

"Tell whom, f.a.n.n.y?"

"'Tell whom, f.a.n.n.y?'" mimicked f.a.n.n.y. "Now _is_ there more than one Frederick Cornwall, Esq., in the world?"

"There may be--in the London Directory."

"But they don't all write letters from Switzerland to Camden Town, do they?"

"Have you received another letter from Mr. Cornwall, f.a.n.n.y?"

"Yes, I have; and here it is. It came this morning."

"And you kept it to yourself all this time!"

"How could I show it to you before? You had hardly been in the house two minutes when papa came home with Mr. Kiss and Mr. Linton. Then there was Bob hanging about, and you know how he scowls when I speak lovingly of Fred--I beg his pardon, Mr. Frederick Cornwall. Then there was helping mother with the tea. Then there was the reading of the play. Then there were the songs. With all that excitement, the letter went clean out of my head--except that I thought you would like it all the better if we read it together quietly here, where n.o.body can disturb us."

"You are a dear, good girl!"

"Of course I am, and you're another." Whereupon the cousins, with their arms round each other's necks, fondly embraced. They were sitting now on the bed very cosily, side by side. "Phoebe, I have something very horrifying to tell you."

"He hasn't met with an accident--he isn't ill?" exclaimed Phoebe, turning pale.

"Not a bit of it. He is as well as five feet eleven, aged six-and-twenty, should be. No, it isn't that; but it is about him, though."

"Tell me, f.a.n.n.y."

"For a long time I have had my suspicions, but I wouldn't venture to breathe them to you. I watched mamma; I watched papa. When we were talking of him--it was always I who brought up his name--I set traps for them, and they fell into them unsuspiciously. And then there was what mamma said, in a pretended off-hand way, this morning, when she gave me the letter from Fred. It amounts to this, Phoebe"--she dropped her voice, and said in a whisper--"they think he comes after _me_!"

"Why shouldn't he, dear?"