The Honorable Miss: A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town, L. T. Meade [unputdownable books .txt] 📗

alone would await him at the little station and might in consequence prefer to walk to the Manor, the girls calculated he might put in an appearance on the scene at about twenty minutes past seven. They had arranged to have dinner at a quarter to eight, and sat side by side now, looking a little forlorn in the frocks they had grown out of, and a little lonely, like half-fledged chicks, without their mother's august protection.

"Loftie will wonder," said Mabel, "at mother going off to Manchester in such a hurry."

It was the cook who had told Mabel about Manchester, Clara having informed her.

"There's Loftus!" suddenly exclaimed Catherine. "I knew he'd walk. I said so. There's the old shandrydan crawling after him with the luggage. Come, Mabel. Let's fly to meet the dear old boy."

She was off and away herself before Mabel had time to scramble to her feet. Her running was swift as a fawn's—in an instant she had reached her brother—threw herself panting with laughter and joy against him, and flung one arm round his neck.

"Here you are!" she said, her words coming out in gasps. "Isn't it jolly? Such a fresh old place! Lots of strawberries—glad you'll see it in the long days—give me a kiss, Loftie—I'm hungry for a kiss!"

"You're as wild an imp as ever," said Loftus, pinching her cheek, but stooping and kissing her, nevertheless, with decided affection. "Why did you put yourself out of breath, Kitty? Catch May setting her precious little heart a-beating too fast for any fellow! Ah, here you come, lazy Mabel. Where is the mater? In the house, I suppose? I say, Kate, what a hole you have pitched upon for living in? I positively couldn't ride down upon the thing they offered me at the station. It wasn't even clean. Look at it, my dear girls! It holds my respectable belongings, and not me. It's the scarecrow or ghost of the ordinary station-fly. Could you have imagined the station-fly could have a ghost?"

"No," retorted Mabel, "being so scarecrowy and ghost-like already. Please, driver, take Captain Bertram's things up to the house. He heard you speak, Loftie. These Northbury people are as touchy as if they were somebodies. Oh, Loftus, you will be disappointed. Mother has gone to Manchester."

"To Manchester?" retorted Loftus. "My mother away from home! Did she know that I was coming?"

"Yes," answered Kate, "I told her about your letter last night."

"Did you show her my letter?"

"No."

"Why didn't you? If she had read it she wouldn't have gone. I said I was in a scrape. I was coming down on purpose to see the mater. You might have sent me a wire to say she would not be at home, or you might have kept her at home by showing her my letter. You certainly did not act with discretion."

"I said you'd begin to scold the minute you came here, Loftie," remarked Mabel. "It's a way you have. I told Kitty so. See, you have made poor Kitty quite grave."

Loftus Bertram was a tall, slim, young fellow. He was well-made, athletic, and neat in appearance, and had that upright carriage and bearing which is most approved of in her Majesty's army. His face was thin and dark; he had a look of Kate, but his eyes were neither so large nor so full; his mouth was weak, not firm, and his expression wanted the openness which characterized Catherine's features.

He was a selfish man, but he was not unkind or ill-natured. The news which the girls gave him of their mother's absence undoubtedly worried and annoyed him a good deal, but like most people who are popular, and Loftus Bertram was undoubtedly very popular, he had the power of instantly adapting himself to the exigencies of the moment.

He laughed lightly, therefore, at Mabel's words, put his arm round his younger sister's unformed waist, and said, in a gay voice:

"I won't scold either of you any more until I have had something to eat."

"We live very quietly at the Manor," remarked Mabel, "Mother wants to save, you know. She says we must keep up our refinement at any cost, but our meals are very—" she glanced with a gay laugh at Catherine.

"Oh, by Jove! I hope you don't stint in the matter of food," exclaimed the brother. "You'll have to drop it while I'm here, I can tell you. I thought the mater would be up to some little game of this kind when she buried you alive in such an out-of-the-way corner. She makes a great mistake though, and so I shall tell her. Young girls of your age ought to be fed up. You'll develop properly then, you won't otherwise. That's the new dodge. All the doctors go upon it. Feed up the young to any extent, and they'll pay for it by-and-bye. Plenty of good English beef and mutton. What's the matter, Kate? What are you laughing in that immoderate manner for?"

"Oh, nothing, Loftie. I may laugh, I suppose, without saying why. I wish you would not put on that killing air, though. And you know perfectly there is no use in laying down the law in mother's house."

The three young people were now standing in the hall, and Clara tripped timidly forward.

"We want dinner as quickly as possible, Clara," said Mabel. "Come, Loftus, let us take you to your room."

That night the choicely served repast was less meagre than usual. Caller herring graced the board in abundance, and even Loftus did not despise these, when really fresh and cooked to perfection. The hash of New Zealand mutton, however, which followed, was not so much to this fastidious young officer's taste, but quantities of fine strawberries, supplemented by a jug of rich cream, put him once more into a good humor. He did not know that Kate had spent one of her very scarce sixpences on the cream, and that the girls had walked a mile-and-a-half through the hot sun that morning to fetch it.

The decanters of wine did not only do duty as ornaments that evening, and as the black coffee which followed was quite to Loftus' taste, he forgot the New Zealand mutton, or, at least, determined not to speak on the subject before the next morning.

After Mabel went to bed that night Kate asked her brother what the fresh scrape was about. He was really in an excellent humor then; the seclusion and almost romance of the old place soothed his nerves, which were somewhat jaded with the rush and tear of a life not lived too worthily. He and Kitty were strolling up and down in the moonlight, and when she asked her question and looked up at him with her fine, intelligent, sympathetic face, he pulled her little ear affectionately, and pushed back the tendrils of soft, dark hair from her brow.

"The usual thing, Kitty," he responded. "I'm in the usual sort of scrape."

"Money?" asked Catherine.

"Confound the thing, yes. Why was money invented? It's the plague of one's life, Catherine. If there was no money there'd be no crime."

"Nonsense," answered Catherine, with shrewdness. "If there wasn't money there would be its equivalent in some form or other. Are you in debt again, Loftie?"

"How can I help it? I can't live on my pittance."

"But mother gives you three hundred a year."

"Yes—such a lot! You girls think that a fine sum, I suppose! That's all you know. Three hundred! It's a pittance. No fellow has a right to go into the army with such small private means."

"But, Loftie, you would not accept Uncle Roderick Macleod's offer. He wrote so often, and said he could help you if you joined him in India."

"Yes, I knew what that meant. Now, look here, Kate. We needn't rake up the past. My lot in life is fixed. I like my profession, but I can't be expected to care for the beggary which accompanies it. I'm in a scrape, and I want to see the mater."

"Poor mother! I wish you weren't going to worry her, Loftie."

"It doesn't worry a mother to help her only son."

"But she has helped you so often. You know it was on account of you that we came down here, because mother had given you so much, and it was the only way left to us to save. It wasn't at all a good thing for Mabel and me, for we had to leave our education unfinished. But mother thought it best. What's the matter, Loftie?"

"Only if you're going on in this strain I'm off to bed. It is hard on a fellow when he comes once in a while to see his sisters to be called over the coals by them. You know I'm awfully fond of you, Kitty, and somehow I thought you'd be a comfort to me. You know very little indeed of the real worries of life."

Loftus spoke in a tone of such feeling that Catherine's warm heart was instantly touched.

"I won't say any more," she answered. "I know it isn't right of me. I always wished and longed to be a help to you, Loftie."

"So you can. You are a dear little sis when you like. You're worth twenty of May. I think you are going to be a very handsome girl, Kate, and if you are only fed up properly, and dressed properly, so that the best points of your figure can be seen—well—now what's the matter?"

"Only I won't have you talking of me as if I were going to be put up to auction."

"So you will be when you go to London. All girls are. The mothers are the auctioneers, and the young fellows come round and bid. Good gracious, what a thunder-cloud! What flashing eyes! You'll see what a famous auctioneer mother will make! What is the matter, Kitty?"

"Nothing. Good-night. I'm going to bed."

"Come back and kiss me first. Poor little Kit! Dear, handsome, fiery-spirited little Kit! I say though, what a shabby frock you've got on!"

"Oh, don't worry me, Loftie! Any dress will do in the country."

"Right, most prudent Catherine. By the way, when did you say mother would come back?"

"Perhaps on Monday."

"What did she go to Manchester for?"

"I can't tell you."

"Well, I trust she will be back on Monday evening, for I am due at the Depot on Tuesday. Lucky for me I got a week's leave, but I didn't mean to see it out. It will be uncommonly awkward if I cannot get hold of the mater between now and Tuesday, Kate."

"Loftus—are you going to ask her to give you much money?"

"My dear child, you would think the sum I want enormous, but it isn't really. Most fellows would consider it a trifle. And I don't want her really to give it, Kate, only to lend it. That's altogether a different matter, isn't it? Of course I could borrow it elsewhere, but it seems a pity to pay a lot of interest when one's mother can put one straight."

"I don't know how you are to pay the money back, Loftus."

Loftus laughed.

"There are ways and means," he said. "Am I going to take all the bloom off that young cheek by letting its owner into the secrets of Vanity Fair? Come Kitty, go to bed, and don't fret about me, I'll manage somehow."

"Loftus, how much money do you want mother to lend you?"

"What a persistent child you are. You positively look frightened. Well, three fifty will do for the present. That oughtn't to stump anyone, ought it?"

"I suppose not," answered Kate, in a bewildered way.

She put her hand to her forehead, bade her brother good-night, and sought her room.

"Three hundred and fifty pounds!" she murmured. "And mother won't buy herrings more than eightpence a dozen! And we scarcely eat any meat, and lately we have begun even to save the bread. Three hundred and fifty pounds! Well, I won't tell Mabel. Does Mabel really know the world better than I do, and is it wrong of me in spite of everything to love Loftus?"