Anonymous

Mrs. Lytchett was paying a homiletic visit to Mrs. Bethune. She often did. She had great ideas of the duty of a Bishop's wife in keeping the wives of all the other clergy up to theirs; and there was much in the Bethune household that, in her opinion, required exceptional looking after. She liked Mrs. Bethune very much, and pitied her not a little. Just now, she must require help in managing Marjorie. A girl fresh from school—and not at all the school Mrs. Lytchett had advised for her—was almost always tiresome at first, till she had been settled into her place. Mrs. Lytchett meant to settle Marjorie.

"Oh, I am glad to see you up, and looking well," she said, coming in briskly on the early afternoon's calm.

Mr. Bethune put a chair for her beside his wife's sofa, and then sat down again to the littered table. He had long ago attuned himself to a placidity and aloofness in the midst of chatter which nothing ordinary could disturb.

"How dreadfully busy Mr. Bethune looks! Is it another book?" Mrs. Lytchett said.

With a murmured, "I had better go and look after the boys," Marjorie obeyed a glance from her mother's merry eyes, and went away through the window. She was apt to fret and rebel at Mrs. Lytchett's interferences, and was specially resentful at any implied criticism of her mother.

"What a big girl Marjorie grows! She is quite startling sometimes. One forgets she isn't a child."

"She has grown up early—to fill my place," with a little sigh.

"Oh, I hope not," was the cheery response. "She could not do that, you know—at any rate, not so successfully. By the way, I came partly to ask about her. Is she engaged to Mr. Warde?"

"Engaged? No. She is scarcely eighteen."

"But he evidently admires her—there is no mistaking that—he takes complete possession of her. Now, what do you wish about it?"

"It isn't what I wish," gently. "You are very kind—but Marjorie is a girl who will settle such a matter for herself."

"Oh, but that is nonsense! Those things can always be managed with proper care."

"But I should be sorry to have her managed. Nothing forced upon Marjorie will make her happy. She must be left to herself."

"How mistaken! You would not leave her to herself if a bad man were in question."

"I should take care not to put her in the way of a bad man," with dignity.

"You would prevent her meeting him? Exactly; then why act differently when it is someone you like? However, there is time for that. There is another matter. Do you know anything of Mr. Pelham's household?"

"No, nothing."

"The Bishop likes him, thinks him a great acquisition, and he visits at Oldstead. I had him to dinner, and he and Charity sang nicely. I'm not sure," looking wise, "that there isn't something between——However, he sent his baby to see me this morning—a most wilful, spoilt little thing. That nurse will not do at all."

"You share Sandy's opinion."

"Ah! I heard your boys had taken to the baby. Perhaps that was what made her so tiresome this morning. I warned Mr. Pelham what mischiefs they were," candidly. "But the nurse is insufferable. Dressed in a sort of dove-coloured dress and a hat, and all her hair waved—kid gloves, and an embroidered skirt under her dress. I asked her if Mr. Pelham had given her leave to dress like that."

"A man does not notice," said Mrs. Bethune, glad that Marjorie was not by to comment.

"I told her that I should speak to him, as she did not seem to realise her own duty, and also about the child's dress. It was ridiculous."

"A man could not know," suggested Mrs. Bethune.

"She was very impertinent, and then we found that the baby had run away. We could not find her anywhere, and she had got to the Bishop's room through the window. It seems that your boys had shown her the way. It seems rather hard that the Bishop of the diocese shouldn't be free from intrusion in his own palace. And he was very busy—just going off."

At mention of her boys a little tender smile crept into Mrs. Bethune's eyes. "He is always good to the boys," she said to the implied reproach.

"Good, yes—but that should prevent advantage being taken. And the baby has a temper," pursued Mrs. Lytchett. "She fought and screamed when I took her from his knee. She is evidently being brought up very badly indeed. I am going to see about it now. Do you think he will be back? I hear," in accents of disgust, "that he rides backwards and forwards on one of those horrid bicycles."

Mrs. Lytchett paused to wonder a little at the sudden flush suffusing Mrs. Bethune's face, but went on: "I hope he won't introduce these things into the Precincts, now we have kept them away so long. I should have thought they might very well be left to Blackton and such places."

"Even the Duchess rides," Mrs. Bethune said softly. She felt guiltily conscious that Marjorie and Charity, under Mr. Pelham's instructions, had been riding for some days past—not only in the Deanery garden as at first, but far away into the country.

"The Duchess is the Duchess," sharply. "She does and tolerates many things that seem to me a great pity."

Mr. Pelham had ridden home early that day, with the idea in his mind of taking his baby down to the Canons' Court, and himself consulting Mrs. Bethune about her. Marjorie had said, "Mother will know"; Charity had said, "Ask Mrs. Bethune, she is the nicest woman to consult"; and his own drawing in the direction where Marjorie might be found made him jump at the advice.

But he had found a tearful nurse and a belligerent baby; and he was just emerging from a lively interview in the study, where he had been told that, "if she couldn't dress as seemed fitting in such a house, as the attendant of Miss Pelham, not just like a common nurse, she would like to give a month's notice," when he met Mrs. Lytchett crossing the hall to the drawing-room.

"This is very kind of you," he began, conscious of an audible sniff and the angry rustle of skirts behind him; and before him, Mrs. Lytchett's tilted nose and stony eyes fixed in the same direction. He had a man's horror of a scene, and he glanced apprehensively at the turned-down corners of Mrs. Lytchett's mouth.

"Bring Miss Barbara, nurse," he said hastily, and ushered his visitor into the drawing-room.

"What a remarkable apartment!" Mrs. Lytchett said in her deep voice, looking round. "What alterations you have made!"

"I hope you like it," he said courteously.

"I daresay I shall, when I get used to it. I'm not one that approves of changes," she responded. Then turning from frivolities, she sat down and began seriously upon her business.

"Your little girl came to see me this morning. I am afraid that nurse of yours is very unfit for her position, and is doing her great harm. She is spoilt and very wilful."

"My little Barbara!" murmured Mr. Pelham, a pang filling his heart at such words in connection with his baby, followed immediately by a feeling that he should like to do some harm to his visitor. Just then the door was opened widely, and the baby stood within the doorway.

To eyes not jaundiced, she was a perfect picture in a fitting frame. The sun shone in, through old stained glass, on the brown panelling of the hall behind her. A ray, through a side window of the drawing-room, fell upon her, lighting up her vivacious, dark beauty. Nurse, on seeing the visitor, had hastily given vent to her temper, and arrayed her in the latest Regent Street confection—a dainty short-waisted, long-skirted white satin frock trimmed with costly lace, under which the bare pink toes just peeped, for Barbara had scouted the accompanying shoes.

With her face dimpling into smiles at sight of her father, she caught up her skirt with one hand and hurried towards him.

"Noo f'ock," she called out.

Then she recognised the visitor, and paused, remembering the morning's conflict, putting her finger into her mouth and considering. A little to her father's dismay she tilted her nose, and said interrogatively, "Bip? Bip?" much as if she were questioning a terrier. Then she slowly sidled to his knee, eyeing Mrs. Lytchett the while in evident doubt of her intentions.

"Bip? Bip?" she queried again insistently, pointing her finger at the visitor.

"What is it, Barbie?" her father asked gently.

"She means the Bishop," explained the Bishop's wife in disgusted tones. "That is what she was screaming all through the hall this morning, when I brought her from his study. It is a dreadful name. You must say 'Bishop,' little one," she commanded in deep tones, bending towards the baby.

Barbara was not easily frightened, but the atmosphere was stormy, and her dressing had been hurried. She glanced up into the stony eyes above her, and perhaps gauged the lack of sympathy. With a quiver of her rosy mouth she said faintly, "Barbedie say Bip," and having thus asserted herself, threw herself against her father's knees, her face buried. He afterwards related that he heard murmurs of the obnoxious monosyllable; but fortunately the situation was relieved by a piercing whistle that now sounded through the windows.

As she heard it, a delighted smile came over Barbara's lifted face—a kind of record of past delight and future hope. She raised her hand, and pointed vaguely at the outside world.

"Boy," she said ecstatically, wriggling hurriedly from her father's knee. It was Sandy's summons to his comrade, and she hastened to answer it.

"I think it is the Bethune boys on their way home from school," Mr. Pelham said apologetically.

"It certainly sounds like them—no one else could make such a dreadful noise," Mrs. Lytchett answered. "Are you going to let that child go out like that, with no shoes on, and in that dress? Ah, there!"

She had risen and approached the window, with the view of intercepting Barbara's exit. But the baby was too quick. Hastily wriggling down the steps, in a manner peculiarly her own, she was seized upon on either hand by David and Sandy—apt at quick evasions, as well as in seeing cause for them—and was striding with huge strides across the lawn. Point lace and satin were of no account with the Bethune boys, any more than were bare toes and a hatless head. The girl-baby, all smiles to them, they found delightful, no matter in what she might happen to be cased.

"That dress will be ruined," Mrs. Lytchett said tragically; and she proceeded with energy to convey her opinions as to the dressing of little children, as well as of their nurses. When she at last withdrew to pay a visit on the Green, Mr. Pelham closed the big gate behind her with a sigh of relief.

"I daresay she is right," he thought. "But what unpleasant 'right.' I will ask Mrs. Bethune."

He felt always irresistibly drawn by the dark beauty of Mrs. Bethune's eyes. No one could see the appeal in them without a pang. Even amidst her merriment, their wistful beauty somewhat belied it. Mr. Pelham found her helplessness and patience very pathetic. She looked so young to be a prisoner—so young, too, to be the mother of all those boys—whose noise was, however, curbed somewhat near her sofa.

When she had heard his errand, she said, "I thought you had come for your little girl. She came down half an hour ago with my boys, in a dress fit for a princess. I feared they had stolen her away. We have ventured to take it off, and put her into one of the boy's blouses. I really couldn't let her go and dig in such clothes. Yes," in response to his look, "they are all in the garden. Go and see if you like her in it, and then you shall have a pattern."

Mr. Pelham, on emerging through the window into the garden, saw that the "all" included also Mr. Warde. That gentleman had shown himself disinclined to follow the Bishop's lead in being civil to the newcomer. He had not yet called on him—though when they met they were friendly in discussing mutual tastes.

Mr. Warde was sitting with Marjorie under the beech tree on the lawn, and Mr. Pelham was struck by the look of intimacy, long-established, that the books and work scattered on the table seemed to prove between them. He could not know that Mr. Warde had joined Marjorie, after she had gone out to overlook the boys. He only saw that they were sitting together in the summer shade, talking in low voices—the man with a look on his face, and a possession in his attitude, which could not be mistaken—the girl with a wistful appeal shining in her dark eyes, which might well be a response.

A cold doubt fell on the beholder as he walked slowly towards them, and his keen eyes took in all the details of the scene. He had heard rumours—Charity had half-revealed the understanding between them—but his heart had refused belief.

Could it be that, after all, they were engaged? If so, he knew that life—which, with its new possibilities, had lately become strangely sweet—would again be a dark and careful problem.