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Nell was tucked away in a soft arm-chair, in which her father never saw her without wondering that such a little thing should require eighteen yards for a dress.
'I'm not so little,' she would say on these occasions, and then Mr. Meredith chuckled, for he knew that there were young men who considered his Nell tall and terrible. He liked to watch her sweeping through a room. To him the boudoir was a sea of reefs. Nell's dignity when she was introduced to a young gentleman was another thing her father could never look upon without awe, but he also noticed that it soon wore off.
On the mantelpiece lay a comb and several hairpins. There are few more mysterious things than hairpins. So far back as we can go into the past we see woman putting up her hair. It is said that married men lose their awe of hairpins and clean their pipes with them.
A pair of curling-tongs had a chair to themselves near Nell, and she wore a short blue dressing-jacket. Probably when she woke from her reverie she meant to do something to her brown hair. When old gentlemen called at the Lodge they frequently told their host that he had a very pretty daughter; when younger gentlemen called they generally called again, and if Nell thought they admired her the first time she spared no pains to make them admire her still more the next time. This was to make them respect their own judgment.
It was little Will Abinger who had set Nell a-dreaming, for from wondering if he was home yet for the Christmas holidays her thoughts wandered to his sister Mary, and then to his brother Dick. She thought longer of Dick in his lonely London chambers than of the others, and by and by she was saying to herself petulantly, 'I wish people wouldn't go dying and leaving me money.' Mr. Meredith, and still more Mrs. Meredith, thought that their only daughter, an heiress, would be thrown away on Richard Abinger, barrister-at-law, whose blood was much bluer than theirs, but who was, nevertheless, understood to be as hard-up as his father.
The door-bell rang, and two callers were ushered into the drawing-room without Nell's knowing it. One of them left his companion to talk to Mrs. Meredith, and clattered upstairs in search of the daughter of the house. He was a bright-faced boy of thirteen, with a passion for flinging stones, and, of late, he had worn his head in the air, not because he was conceited, but that he might look with admiration upon the face of the young gentleman downstairs.
Bouncing into the parlour, he caught sight of the object of his search before she could turn her head.
'I say, Nell, I'm back.'
Miss Meredith jumped from her chair.
'Will!' she cried.
When the visitor saw this young lady coming toward him quickly, he knew what she was after and tried to get out of her way. But Nell kissed him.
'Now, then,' he said indignantly, pushing her from him.
Will looked round him fearfully, and then closed the door.
'You might have waited till the door was shut, at any rate,' he grumbled. 'It would have been a nice thing if any one had seen you!'
'Why, what would it have mattered, you horrid little boy!' said Nell.
'Little boy! I'm bigger than you, at any rate. As for its not mattering – but you don't know who is downstairs. The captain – '
'Captain!' cried Nell.
She seized her curling-tongs.
'Yes,' said Will, watching the effect of his words, 'Greybrooke, the captain of the school. He is giving me a week just now.'
Will said this as proudly as if his guest was Napoleon Bonaparte, but Nell laid down her curling-irons. The intruder interpreted her action and resented it.
'You're not his style,' he said; 'he likes bigger women.'
'Oh, does he?' said Nell, screwing up her little Greek nose contemptuously.
'He's eighteen,' said Will.
'A mere schoolboy.'
'Why, he shaves.'
'Doesn't the master whip him for that?'
'What? Whip Greybrooke!'
Will laughed hysterically.
'You should just see him at breakfast with old Jerry. Why, I've seen him myself, when half a dozen of us were asked to tea by Mrs. Jerry, and though we were frightened to open our mouths, what do you think Greybrooke did?'
'Something silly, I should say.'
'He asked old Jerry, as cool as you like, to pass the butter! That's the sort of fellow Greybrooke is.'
'How is Mary?'
'Oh, she's all right. No, she has a headache. I say, Greybrooke says Mary's rather slow.'
'He must be a horror,' said Nell, 'and I don't see why you brought him here.'
'I thought you would like to see him,' explained Will. 'He made a hundred and three against Rugby, and was only bowled off his pads.'
'Well,' said Nell, yawning, 'I suppose I must go down and meet your prodigy.'
Will, misunderstanding, got between her and the door.
'You're not going down like that,' he said anxiously, with a wave of his hand that included the dressing-jacket and the untidy hair. 'Greybrooke's so particular, and I told him you were a jolly girl.'
'What else did you tell him?' asked Nell suspiciously.
'Not much,' said Will, with a guilty look.
'I know you told him something else?'
'I told him you – you were fond of kissing people.'
'Oh, you nasty boy, Will – as if kissing a child like you counted!'
'Never mind,' said Will soothingly, 'Greybrooke's not the fellow to tell tales. Besides, I know you girls can't help it. Mary's just the same.'
'You are a goose, Will, and the day will come when you'll give anything for a kiss.'
'You've no right to bring such charges against a fellow,' said Will indignantly, strutting to the door.
Half-way downstairs he turned and came back.
'I say, Nell,' he said, 'you – you, when you come down, you won't kiss Greybrooke?'
Nell drew herself up in a way that would have scared any young man but Will.
'He's so awfully particular,' Will continued apologetically.
'Was it to tell me this you came upstairs?'
'No, honour bright, it wasn't. I only came up in case you should want to kiss me, and to – to have it over.'
Nell was standing near Will, and before he could jump back she slapped his face.
The snow was dancing outside in a light wind when Nell sailed into the drawing-room. She could probably still inform you how she was dressed, but that evening Will and the captain could not tell Mary. The captain thought it was a reddish dress or else blue; but it was all in squares like a draught-board, according to Will. Forty minutes had elapsed since Will visited her upstairs, and now he smiled at the conceit which made her think that the captain would succumb to a pretty frock. Of course Nell had no such thought. She always dressed carefully because – well, because there is never any saying.
Though Miss Meredith froze Greybrooke with a glance, he was relieved to see her. Her mother had discovered that she knew the lady who married his brother, and had asked questions about the baby. He did not like it. These, he thought, were things you should pretend not to know about. He had contrived to keep his nieces and nephews dark from the fellows at school, though most of them would have been too just to attach any blame to him. Of this baby he was specially ashamed, because they had called it after him.
Mrs. Meredith was a small, stout lady, of whose cleverness her husband spoke proudly to Nell, but never to herself. When Nell told her how he had talked, she exclaimed, 'Nonsense!' and then waited to hear what else he had said. She loved him, but probably no woman can live with a man for many years without having an indulgent contempt for him, and wondering how he is considered a good man of business. Mrs. Meredith, who was a terribly active woman, was glad to leave the entertainment of her visitors to Nell, and that young lady began severely by asking 'how you boys mean to amuse yourselves?'
'Do you keep rabbits?' she said to the captain sweetly.
'I say, Nell!' cried Will warningly.
'I have not kept rabbits,' Greybrooke replied, with simple dignity, 'since I was a boy.'
'I told you,' said Will, 'that Greybrooke was old – why, he's nearly as old as yourself. She's older than she looks, you know, Greybrooke.'
The captain was gazing at Nell with intense admiration. As she raised her head indignantly he thought she was looking to him for protection. That was a way Nell had.
'Abinger,' said the captain sternly, 'shut up.'
'Don't mind him, Miss Meredith,' he continued; 'he doesn't understand girls.'
To think he understands girls is the last affront a youth pays them. When he ceases trying to reduce them to fixed principles he has come of age. Nell, knowing this, felt sorry for Greybrooke, for she foresaw what he would have to go through. Her manner to him underwent such a change that he began to have a high opinion of himself. This is often called falling in love. Will was satisfied that his friend impressed Nell, and he admired Greybrooke's politeness to a chit of a girl, but he became restless. His eyes wandered to the piano, and he had a lurking fear that Nell would play something. He signed to the captain to get up.
'We'll have to be going now,' he said at last; 'good-bye.'
Greybrooke glared at Will, forgetting that they had arranged beforehand to stay as short a time as possible.
'Perhaps you have other calls to make?' said Nell, who had no desire to keep them there longer than they cared to stay.
'Oh yes,' said Will.
'No,' said the captain, 'we only came into Silchester with Miss Abinger's message for you.'
'Why, Will,' exclaimed Nell, 'you never gave me any message?'
'I forgot what it was,' Will explained cheerily; 'something about a ribbon, I think.'
'I did not hear the message given,' the captain said, in answer to Nell's look, 'but Miss Abinger had a headache, and I think Will said it had to do with that.'
'Oh, wait a bit,' said Will, 'I remember something about it now. Mary saw something in a Silchester paper, the Mirror, I think, that made her cry, and she thinks that if you saw it you would cry too. So she wants you to look at it.'
'The idea of Mary's crying!' said Nell indignantly. 'But did she not give you a note?'
'She was too much upset,' said Will, signing to the captain not to let on that they had refused to wait for the note.
'I wonder what it can be?' murmured Nell.
She hurried from the room to her father's den, and found him there surrounded by newspapers.
'Is there anything in the Mirror, father?' she asked.
'Nothing,' said Mr. Meredith, who had made the same answer to this question many hundreds of times; 'nothing except depression in the boot trade.'
'It can't be that,' said Nell.
'Can't be what?'
'Oh, give me the paper,' cried the ex-mayor's daughter impatiently.
She looked hastily up and down it, with an involuntary glance at the births, deaths, and marriages, turned it inside out and outside in, and then exclaimed 'Oh!' Mr. Meredith, who was too much accustomed to his daughter's impulses to think that there was much wrong, listened patiently while she ejaculated, 'Horrid!' 'What a shame!' 'Oh, I wish I was a man!' and, 'Well, I can't understand it.' When she tossed the paper to the floor, her face was red and her body trembled with excitement.
'What is it, Nelly?' asked her father.
Whether Miss Abinger cried over the Mirror that day is not to be known, but there were indignant tears in Nell's eyes as she ran upstairs to her bedroom. Mr. Meredith took up the paper and examined it carefully at the place where his daughter had torn it in her anger. What troubled her seemed to be something in the book notices, and he concluded that it must be a cruel 'slating' of a novel in one volume called The Scorn of Scorns. Mr. Meredith remembered that Nell had compelled him to read that book and to say that he liked it.
'That's all,' he said to himself, much relieved.
He fancied that Nell, being a girl, was distressed to see a book she liked called 'the sentimental out-pourings of some silly girl who ought to confine her writing to copy-books.' In a woman so much excitement over nothing seemed quite a natural thing to Mr. Meredith. The sex had ceased to surprise him. Having retired from business, Mr. Meredith now did things slowly as a good way of passing the time. He had risen to wealth from penury, and counted time by his dining-room chairs, having passed through a cane, a horsehair, and a leather period before arriving at morocco. Mrs. Meredith counted time by the death of her only son.
It may be presumed that Nell would not have locked herself into her bedroom and cried and stamped her feet on an imaginary critic had The Scorn of Scorns not interested her more than her father thought. She sat down to write a note to Mary. Then she tore it up, and wrote a letter to Mary's elder brother, beginning with the envelope. She tore this up also, as another idea came into her head. She nodded several times to herself over this idea, as a sign that the more she thought of it the more she liked it. Then, after very nearly forgetting to touch her eyes with something that made them look less red, she returned to the drawing-room.
'Will,' she said, 'have you seen the new ponies papa gave me on my birthday?'
Will leapt to his feet.
'Come on, Greybrooke,' he cried, making for the door.
The captain hesitated.
'Perhaps,' said Nell, with a glance at him, 'Mr. Greybrooke does not have much interest in horses?'
'Doesn't he just!' said Will; 'why – '
'No,' said Greybrooke; 'but I'll wait here for you, Abinger.'
Will was staggered. For a moment the horrible thought passed through his mind that these girls had got hold of the captain. Then he remembered.
'Come on,' he said, 'Nell won't mind.'
But Greybrooke had a delicious notion that the young lady wanted to see him by himself, and Will had to go to the stables alone.
'I won't be long,' he said to Greybrooke, apologising for leaving him alone with a girl. 'Don't bother him too much,' he whispered to Nell at the door.
As soon as Will had disappeared Nell turned to Greybrooke.
