"It is mamma," whispered Lucy.

Margaret's countenance fell; she even frowned a little. Something unpleasant was going to happen, she felt sure.

"Let's blow out the lights and jump into bed," suggested Lucy.

"No use," said Margaret. "Open the door and get it over as quickly as possible. I shan't say a word, and she will run herself out of breath the sooner."

"Nonsense!" and Lucy blew out one of the candles as she spoke. "She will forget about it in the morning if we fall asleep now. I don't want to have the feeling of a well-spent day spoilt by a lecture."

The knock was repeated more peremptorily than before. It was too late to pretend unconsciousness now. Margaret went sullenly to the door and admitted her mother.

"What an uproar you two girls are making in here--din enough for a dozen--chattering like magpies, and laughing at this hour of the night, when decent people are in their beds! Nice complaints and remarks the people in adjoining rooms will make to-morrow!--though they may not venture to speak to _me_ about it," she added grandly, as if she dared any one to take that liberty. "But that makes it worse.

We cannot explain or set them right when they tattle behind our backs, and the stories will grow bigger and worse, till no one knows what they may come to.... You thoughtless pair! Lucy there speaking at the very tip of her voice. It will be a wonder if the people through the part.i.tions do not know every word she has been saying--something, most likely, which will do her no credit. Mrs Chickenpip, I may tell you, is your neighbour on that side, and she does not spare people who annoy her. For your own sakes you had better respect her slumbers. She pa.s.sed when I was hammering at your door, and she looked many things at me which good manners prevent people from saying; but she will find an opportunity of expressing them to some one else, or I am mistaken."

"Tiresome old cat," said Lucy. "No one will mind her. She is too grim and proper. n.o.body heeds what childless old women say about young people."

"Old women? She is younger than I am. Would you speak of your own mother----?"

"Oh no, mammy dear! n.o.body thinks of its own pretty mamma in that way;" and she threw her arms round her mother's neck.

"Have done, Lucy! I am in no mood for fooling, I a.s.sure you. Let me alone, and be quiet. It was you, Margaret, that I wanted to talk to.

We must come to an understanding at once. This kind of thing which has been going on down-stairs must come to an end. I have been inexpressibly shocked and pained. It is more than my poor health can stand. Would you bring my hair with sorrow to the grave?" ... "Grey hairs with sorrow to the grave," was the Scriptural quotation which had come into her mind; but even to make a rhetorical point, she felt that she could not afford to attribute greyness to her carefully tended braids. She put up her hand and stroked them tenderly, which disturbed the thread of her argument, and she came to a stop, with her eyes resting reproachfully on her elder daughter.

Margaret was aware that she had better let the lecture run itself down. Interruptions, she knew by experience, acted like winding up a clock, and set it off again, tick-tack, on a refreshed career. She bore the reproachful gaze in silence as long as she was able, but at last it grew too much for her, and rather sullenly she answered--

"What do you mean, mother?"

"You know very well what I mean. Have I not told you many times that that childish nonsense with young Blount must be given up?"

"Is it our engagement you mean?" Margaret answered, with heightened colour. She knew that she was unwise to speak, but her temper was rising. It always _would_ rise, she knew not how, when her mother spoke of "young Blount."

"Your what?" her mother cried, indignantly. "I will not hear of such a thing. I have forbidden you to be engaged to him. You shan't be engaged to him; and now that you force me to it, I forbid you to speak to him. An abominable young man!--worming himself deceitfully into families where he is not wanted. Was there ever anything so ungentlemanlike as his sneaking down here after us, although he had been as good as forbidden the house at home? He had not the candour to come to me and say, 'Mrs Naylor, I am here;' but slyly waylays you in a crowded ball-room, to hold surrept.i.tious interviews. I never heard of anything so atrocious in my life. I could not have believed it. But it rewards me for my imprudence in taking up a stranger, merely to oblige your uncle Joseph, and being kind to him--warming a viper in my bosom, that he might turn and sting me!"

This was fine, and Mrs Naylor stopped for breath.

"You have no right to say such things, mother," Margaret answered, hotly. "Walter never was ungentlemanlike. He could not be, if he were to try. And he is no sneak. He is as brave and honest as the day; and I have heard you say as much yourself, formerly, when he used to visit us. You often said he was the nicest young man of your acquaintance."

"And this is the reward of my ill-judged hospitality--having him come to me with your uncle, when you were both children! I see my imprudence now; but at least my daughter might spare me," and Mrs Naylor put her handkerchief to her eyes. "That a mother's solicitude should be taunted thus, by the very child she is trying to shield from the effects of her injudicious good-nature! Oh, Margaret, you are cruel!"

Margaret felt shocked with herself. To think that she should bring tears to her mother's eyes! How hard and obdurate she must surely be!

She had never felt so wicked in all her life before. Yet how to mend it? She would gladly do anything to pacify and soothe her wounded mother--anything but give up Walter; and that was the only thing which would be of any avail. She forbore to say more in his defence, however--in fact she could not have trusted her voice to keep steady or say anything just then; and as she saw the handkerchief still at her mother's eyes, her own began to overflow. She was contrite, without attempting to particularise on what account, and very unhappy.

Mrs Naylor saw that her demonstration had told, and made haste to improve the advantage. She put her handkerchief back in her pocket and cleared her voice.

"It is for your own sake I am so solicitous, Margaret. It is you he is trying to marry. You can marry but once, remember. Think how momentous is this step you are so blindly eager to take. Your whole future life depends on it."

"We are fond of one another, mother, and he is good and true. What more can a girl want?"

"Much, my dear. You talk like an inexperienced simpleton. How differently you will look on things in ten years' time! People cannot live--perhaps for fifty years--like turtles in a nest, in one continued round of billing and cooing. They must eat and dress themselves every day; and to do that nicely takes a deal of money, more than your friend is likely ever to earn."

"I do not want to be rich. The rich people we know are not so nice, I am sure. Few of them are gentlemen."

"I know, my dear. I understand you perfectly. Love in a cottage, and that sort of thing. When I was a girl, the novels were full of it, and it was very pretty. The novels are much more sensible nowadays, and it is strange that the young people who read them should still be as foolish as ever."

"I do not think life without love would be worth the having."

"Of course not, my shepherdess! It would be charming to sit in the woods always, holding a crook tied with nice fresh blue satin ribbon, and a straw hat c.o.c.ked on one side, a pet lamb at one's feet, and a swain beside one to whistle tunes upon a reed, like the Dresden-china figures; but when a shower came, and the ribbons got wet, it would be but a draggle-tailed diversion, believe me. Remember the old saying, 'When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out of the window.' You can't make love on an empty stomach. Housekeeping knocks a deal of the romance out of life."

"Walter has money, mother. With mine added, we shall be quite well off."

"I think, Margaret, if I had been pleading a gentleman's cause, I would not have put him in the invidious light of requiring a wife's fortune to enrich him. It sounds mercenary. Not that I wish to speak unkindly of your friend; but he lays himself open to the suspicion of fortune-hunting, by running after a girl with your prospects. Your uncle is not likely to marry, and you might look so very much higher, if you only had common-sense."

"I don't know where I should look for 'higher.' You have always said that his people were an excellent family in England."

"We are Canadians, my dear. Good connections in England will not help him much with us, unless they are bankers. He is a younger son, and his brother has children, so his prospect of ever coming to the family property is not worth counting. He has got all they can afford to give him, and is a fixture on this side the Atlantic for life."

"He is better off than most young men. Yet see how quickly some of them get on, and rise to the top."

"_He_ will never rise, my dear. He has not been trained for getting on in this country. He will not spend as little as our young men do, and he has not the first idea of how to make a fortune."

"He would not be half as nice if he had."

"My dear, you talk like a child. When people advance into middle life, mere lovemaking grows to be up-hill work. It would be grotesque, if it had not become too insipid for people to attempt keeping it up. The larger interests are needed to make middle life bearable. It is gratifying then to find that one has married a man of note--some one heard of everywhere, and spoken of by everybody. With your looks and accomplishments and prospects, there is no man you may not have the refusal of. How comfortable, when one grows elderly and uninteresting, to be wife of the chief-justice, or of a senator, and receive as much attention in old age as one has been accustomed to in youth! An ex-beauty poorly married is a disappointed and a discontented woman, let me tell you."

"Walter could go into politics if he liked; and if he ever does, he must rise to the top, he is so clever and well informed."

"Not he. He will never be more than he is now. He is too much of an Englishman, and too fixed in his notions, ever to catch the tone of his neighbours."

"He is a gentleman. Why should he take the tone of people less cultured than himself?"

"He won't. That's where the trouble is. And therefore his neighbours will never really like him. They will fancy he looks down on them.

They will never send him to Parliament, mark my words, however hard he may try. If they elect him reeve of his township, or a school-trustee, it is the most they will ever do for him.

"Playing country gentleman does not answer, my dear. It has been often tried. I have seen so many half-pay officers and others buy land, and start as country gentlemen, and it always ended the same way. In a few years their ready money was spent, and they could not move away. Their farms were worse cultivated than their neighbours', and less productive; and their children, rough and unkempt, grew up neither one thing nor another--neither gentle nor simple--with the pretensions of a cla.s.s which did not care to accept them, and without the industry and thrift to keep them up in the one into which they were sinking.

"Have nothing to do with the land in this country, my dear; or marry a greedy and hard-working clown at once. Your children, at least, may come to be somebody in that case, though you will lead a drudge's life yourself."

"I am ready to risk it, mother, however it may turn out. A crust in the woods with the man of my choice, rather than all the splendour you can mention, without him."

"You are infatuated! Reason is thrown away on you. I wonder at my own patience in attempting to argue with you so long. But at least you shall not ruin your life if I can help it. If you will not send away this pernicious young man, I must carry you away from him. He shall find that however his persecution may inconvenience us, it shall further his schemes not a jot.... You will pack up to-morrow, girls, first thing. Come down to breakfast in your travelling dresses. We leave by the first train tomorrow forenoon;" and so saying, she left the room.

"Oh, Margaret!" sighed Lucy in despair; "and we had the prospect of such a good time before us."

"What could I have said, Lucy, except what I did?"

"I don't know; but it is awfully disgusting."