Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood
in a chair, and began chattering. Another servant came in with a small jar of preserves. They called her Sarah.
"Miss Delves has sent some jam for the young lady, if she'd like it. Or will she take a slice of cold meat first, she says?"
"I'll have the jam, please."
"That's right, Miss," laughed Jemima. "Sweets is good."
"Arn't you coming to your tea, Jemima? There'll be a fuss if she comes in and finds you have not begun it."
"Bother the tea! We are not obliged to swallow it down just at the minute she pleases," was the answer of Jemima.
"I say," exclaimed the other suddenly, "what do you think I saw? Young King----"
Jemima gave a warning shake of the head, and pointed to me. The conversation was dropped to a whisper, in which I once caught the words "that handsome George Heneage." Presently steps were heard approaching, and the two maids disturbed themselves. Sarah caught up the plate of bread and butter, and stood as if she were handing it to me, and Jemima stirred the fire vigorously. It had been warm in the day, but the bit of lighted fire in the grate looked pleasant in the autumn evening. The footsteps passed on.
"How stupid you are, Sarah! startling one for nothing!" exclaimed Jemima.
"I thought it was Charlotte Delves. It sounded just like her foot."
"She's in the kitchen, and won't come out of it till the dinner's gone in. She's in one of her tempers to-day."
"Is Charlotte Delves the mistress?" I could not help asking.
Both the maids burst out laughing. "She would like to be, Miss; and she is, too, in many things," answered Jemima. "When young madam came home first----"
"Hush, Jemima! she may go and repeat it again."
Jemima looked at me. "No: she does not look like it. You won't go and repeat in the drawing-room the nonsense we foolish servants talk, will you, Miss Hereford?"
"Of course I will not. Mamma taught me never to carry tales; she said it made mischief."
"And so it does, Miss," cried Jemima. "Your mamma was a nice lady, I'm sure! Was she not Mrs. Edwin Barley's sister?"
Before I had time to answer, Charlotte Delves came in. We had not heard her, and I thought she must have crept up on tiptoe. Sarah made her escape. Jemima took up the jam-pot.
"What are you waiting for?" she demanded, with asperity. "I came in to see if the young lady wanted anything, ma'am."
"When Miss Hereford wants anything, she will ring."
Jemima retired. I went on with may tea, and Miss Delves began asking me questions about home and mamma. We were interrupted by a footman. He was bringing the fish out of the dining-room, and he laid the dish down on the table. Miss Delves turned her chair towards it, and began her dinner. I found that this was her usual manner of dining, but I thought it a curious one. The dishes, as they came out of the dining-room, were placed before her, and she helped herself. Her other meals she took when she pleased, Jemima generally waiting upon her. I did wonder who she could be.
It seemed that I had to sit there a long while. I was then taken upstairs by Jemima, and my hair brushed. It hung down in curls all round, and Jemima pleased me by saying it was the loveliest brown hair she ever saw. Then I was marshalled to the drawing-room. Jemima opened the door quietly, and I went in, seen, I believe, by nobody. It was a large room, of a three-cornered shape, quite full of bright furniture. Selina's grand piano was in the angle.
Standing before the fire, talking, were the clergyman and Mr. Edwin Barley. A stranger might have taken one for the other, for the clergyman was in his sporting clothes, and Mr. Barley was all in black, with a white neckcloth. On a distant sofa, apparently reading a newspaper, sat Philip King; his features were handsome, but they had a very cross, disagreeable expression. He held the newspaper nearly level with his face, and I saw that his eyes, instead of being on it, were watching the movements of Mrs. Edwin Barley. She was at the piano, not so much singing or playing, as trying scraps of songs and pieces; Mr. Heneage standing by and talking to her. I went quietly round by the chairs at the back, and sat down on the low footstool at the corner of the hearth. The clergyman saw me and smiled. Mr. Barley did not; he stood with his back to me. He also seemed to be watching the piano, or those at it, while he spoke in a low, confidential tone with the clergyman.
"I disagree with you entirely, Barley," Mr. Martin was saying. "Rely upon it, he will be all the better and happier for following a profession. Why! at Easter he made up his mind to read for the Bar!"
"Young men are changeable as the wind, especially those whom fortune has placed at ease in the world," replied Mr. Barley. "Philip was red-hot for the Bar at Easter, as you observe; but something appears to have set him against it now."
"You, as his guardian and trustee, should urge him to take it up; or, if not that, something else. A life of idleness plays the very ruin with some natures; and it strikes me that Philip King has no great resources within him to counteract the mischief of non-occupation. What is the amount of his property?" resumed Mr. Martin, after a pause.
"About eighteen hundred pounds a year the estate brings in."
"Nonsense! I thought it was only ten or twelve."
"Eighteen, full. Reginald's was a long minority, you know."
"Well, if it brought in eight-and-twenty, I should still say give him a profession. Let him have some legitimate work; occupy his hands and his head, and they won't get into mischief. That's sound advice, mind, Barley."
"Quite sound," rejoined Mr. Barley; but there was a tone in his voice throughout that to me seemed to tell either of want of sincerity or else of a knowledge that to urge a profession on Philip King would be wrong and useless. At this period of my life people used to reproach me with taking up prejudices, likes, and dislikes; as I grew older, I knew that God had gifted me in an eminent degree with the faculty of reading human countenances and human tones.
"I have no power to force a profession upon him," resumed Mr. Edwin Barley; "and I should not exercise it if I had. Shall I tell you why?"
"Well?"
"I don't think his lungs are sound. In my opinion, he is likely to go off as his brother did."
"Of consumption!" hastily muttered the clergyman: and Mr. Edwin Barley nodded.
"Therefore, why urge him to fag at acquiring a profession that he may not live to exercise?" continued Mr. Barley. "He looks anything but well; he is nothing like as robust as he was at Easter."
Mr. Martin turned his head and attentively scanned the face of Philip King. "I don't see anything the matter with him, Barley, except that he looks uncommonly cross. I hope you are mistaken."
"I hope I am. I saw a whole row of medicine phials in his room yesterday: when I inquired what they did there, he told me they contained steel medicine--tonics--the physician at Oxford had ordered them. Did you ever notice him at dinner--what he eats?"
"Not particularly."
"Do so, then, on the next opportunity. He takes scarcely anything. The commencement of Reginald's malady was loss of appetite: the doctors prescribed tonics for him. But they did not succeed in saving him."
Once more Mr. Martin turned his eyes on Philip King. "How old was Reginald King when he died?"
"Twenty-three. Three years older than Philip is now."
"Well, poor fellow, I hope he will outlive his weakness, whatever may cause it, and get strong again. That money of his would be a nice windfall for somebody to drop into," added the clergyman, after a pause. "Who is heir-at-law?"
"I am."
"You!"
"Of course I am," was the quiet reply of Mr. Edwin Barley.
"Nurse him up, nurse him up, then," said the clergyman, jokingly. "Lest, if anything did happen,