Bluebell. Mrs. G. C. Huddleston
complied, and, settling the ladies on either side of a papier-maché table, opened the piano, and began dreamily playing through the music of the night before. Trove, finding the door ajar, had pushed in, and lay near the instrument, listening in that strange way some dogs do if the tones come from the heart, and not merely the fingers.
Having got through the last evening's répertoire, she sat musing on the music-stool, and then crooned rather low an old song of her mother's, beginning—
"They tell me thou art the favoured guest
In many a gay and brilliant throng;
No wit like thine to wake the jest,
No voice like thine to raise the song."
"Oh! that is too old-fashioned," said Mrs. Leigh, and Miss Opie coughed dryly. But why need Bluebell have blushed so consciously, as she dashed into Lightning galops and Tom Tiddler quadrilles, till Trove, like a dog of taste, took his offended ears and outraged nerves off to his lair in the lobby?
His fair mistress soon after sought her bower, a scantily furnished retreat, but, like most girls' rooms, taking a certain amount of individuality from its occupier. Everything in the little room was blue, and each article a present. Photographs of school friends were suspended from the wall with ribbons of her name-sake colour. It was in the earlier days of the art, when a stony stare, pursed lips, and general rigidity were considered essential to the production of the portrait.
Blue, also, were the pincushion and glass toilet implements on the dressing-table, and a rocking-chair had its cushion embroidered in bluebells—a tribute of affection from a late schoolfellow.
The bed was curtainless, and neutral except as to its blue valance, and the carpet only cocoa-nut matting, which, however, harmonized fairly with the prevailing cerulean effect.
Bluebell was writing in a book, guarded by a Bramah, some profound reflections on "First Impressions." She never lost the key nor forgot to lock this volume—a saving clause of common-sense protecting a farrago of nonsence.
"Ces beaux jours, quand j'étais si malheureux." Have you ever, reader, taken up an old journal written in early youth, and thought how those intensely black and white days have now mingled into unnoticeable grey, half-thankful that the old ghosts are laid, half-regretful for that keener susceptibility to joy and sorrow gone by? Then, as "the hand that has written it lays it aside," there is, perhaps, a pang at the reflection of how the paths now diverge of those who once walked together as—
"Time turns the old days to derision,
Our loves into corpses—or wives;
And marriage, and death, and division,
Make barren our lives."
But Bluebell knows nothing of that. She is at the scribbling age, and can actually endure to describe, as if they were new and entirely original, the dawning follies of seventeen.
In England a heroine might have wound up such sentimental exercises with gazing out on the moonlit scene; but nine degrees below zero was unfavourable for the wooing of Diana. The "cold light of stars" was no poetical figure, and Bluebell, frozen back to the prosaic, piled up the stove, and crept into bed, where her waking dreams soon merged into sleeping ones.
CHAPTER V.
A WOODLAND WALK.
I hope, pretty maid, you won't take it amiss,
If I tell you my reason for asking you this,
I would see you safe home (now the swain was in love),
Of such a companion if you would approve.
Your offer, kind shepherd, is civil, I own,
But I see no great danger in going alone;
Nor yet can I hinder, the road being free
For one as another, for you as for me.
It was Sunday afternoon. Bluebell was on her way to the Maples, and had not proceeded far when she observed a Robinson Crusoe-looking figure in one of those grotesque fur caps and impossible hooded blankets that the fashionable Briton in Canada so fondly affects. She was speculating idly upon whom it could be.
"Not Mr. Gordon, though the 'Fool's-cap' is like his; and Major Simeon has one of those. Oh, Captain Du Meresq!"
She bowed rather undecidedly, and then moved on abruptly.
But Bertie did not pass by.
"Are you returning?" asked he. "They can't get on without you. Freddy has dropped a cinder into his nurse's tea, and set fire to the straw in the cat's basket."
Bluebell laughed shyly.
"I have been to see mamma. Do not let me bring you out of your way, Captain Du Meresq,"—for he had turned back with her.
"Oh, I was only going for a walk," said Bertie, innocently—a harmless amusement that, without any other object, he was simply incapable of undertaking. "Hadn't I better see you home; there's a brute of a dog down there who sprang out at me! I broke my stick across his head, and then, of course, I had to apologize, being disarmed."
"I know that fierce dog. He belongs to a cabman; but I always speak to him, and he never attacks me."
"Even a lion itself would flee from a maid in the pride of her purity," laughed Bertie. "But, Miss Leigh, must we positively go shivering across this bleak desert again?—isn't there some sheltered way through the wood?"
"There certainly is; but it is three miles round, and, I dare say, full of drifts."
"Never mind, all the better fun. Up this way?"
"Oh, but isn't it late? I think they will be expecting me before."
"There's nobody at home, if that's all," said Bertie. "They have gone to the Cathedral, and most likely will turn into tea at the Van Calmonts."
The scrambling walk was a temptation, the common hideous and cold.
"We must walk very quick, then."
"Run, if you like. Come along, there's a dear child."
Bluebell coloured furiously.
"Maybe I won't go at all now!"
"That is so like a girl," said Bertie impatiently; "standing coquetting in the cold. Now, you are offended. What did I say? Only called you a child."
"You had no business to speak so," said Bluebell, angry at his familiar manner, but rather at a loss for words. "Why can't you call me Miss Leigh, like everybody else?" and the indignant little beauty paused, with hot cheeks, and feeling desperately awkward.
Du Meresq bit his lip to hide a smile. He was half afraid she would dash off and terminate the interview.
"Dear me!" said he. "When you are a little older you will think youth a very good fault. Will you forgive me this once, Miss Leigh, and I will not call you anything else?—for the present" (sotto voce).
Bluebell was mollified, and rather proud of the good effects of her reproof, notwithstanding the half-inaudible rider. Du Meresq, also, was satisfied, for, without further opposition, they had struck into the wood. Unused to the Britannic hamper of a chaperone, Bluebell saw nothing singular in the proceeding. So they crunched over the snow, keeping, as far as possible, the dazzling track marked by the wheels of the sleigh-waggons, and plentifully powdered by the snow-laden trees; now up to their knees in a drift, from which Bertie had the pleasure of extricating his companion, who forgot her shyness in the difficulties of the path, and, not being given to