The girls in the drawing-room not only met with no adventure, but they did not even know that the damp atmosphere had cleared up and the moon come out. They did not know what had become of Walter. They were as unaware of his despair as of the sudden amusement which had come to him to console him in the midst of it. They thought—hoped rather—that he had gone to the book-room with Mr. Penton and was there talking it over, and perhaps undoing the effect of what their mother had said. It did not, indeed, seem very likely that Walter should be able to do this, but yet they were so much on the side of Penton in their hearts that a vague hope that it might be so, moved them in spite of themselves. Walter against mother seemed a forlorn hope; and yet when all your wishes are in the scale it is difficult to believe that these will not somehow help and give force to the advocate. Ally and Anne had taken their places at the table when the gentlemen went away. They were making little pinafores for the children: there were always pinafores to be made for the children. Anne, who was not fond of needle-work, evaded the duty (which to her mother appeared one of the chief things for which women were made) as much and as long as she could, but, being beguiled by promises of reading aloud, did submit in the evening. The little ones used so many pinafores! Ally was always busy at them, except when she was helping in the more responsible work of making little frocks. This evening there was no one to read aloud, but no one blamed Walter for going out; no one even thought of the book, though they were at the beginning of the third volume. Penton for the moment was a more interesting subject than any novel. The girls had not thought so much of it as Walter had done, but still it had been a prominent feature in their dreams also. The idea of being Pentons of Penton could not be indifferent; of taking their place among the aristocracy of the county; of going everywhere, having invitations to all the parties, to tennis in summer, to the dances, all the gayeties, of which now they only heard. Secretly in their souls they had consoled themselves with the thought of this when they heard of the great doings at Milton and all that was done when little Lord Bannister came of age. Anne, indeed, had exclaimed, “If they don’t think proper to ask us now they may let us alone afterward, for I sha’n’t go!” But Ally, more tolerant, had taken the other side. “They don’t know anything about us; it would be going out of their way to ask us. If they knew we were nice, and didn’t ask us because we were poor, that would be horrid of them; but how can they tell whether we are nice or not?”; Anne would have none of this indulgent argument; she had made up her mind when they came to advancement to revenge all these wrongs of their poverty, so that it was equally hard upon her to have to consent to do without that advancement after all.

Thus they had plenty to talk about as they made their little pinafores. These were made of colored print, which looked cheerful and clean (when it was clean), and wore well, Mrs. Penton thought. Brown holland, no doubt, is the best on the whole, and there is most wear in it, but it is apt to look dingy when it is not quite fresh, and when it is once washed gets such a blanched, sodden look; even red braid fails to make it cheerful. So that Mrs. Penton preferred pink print and blue, which are cheaper than brown holland. The table looked quite bright with those contrasting hues upon it; and the young faces of the girls bending over their work, though they looked more grave and anxious than usual, were pleasant in their fresh tints. Mrs. Penton herself went on with her darning. She had filled up all those great holes, doing them all the more quickly because she had studied the “lie” of them, and how the threads went, before.

“I have never said anything about it,” said Mrs. Penton, “for what was the use? I saw no way to be clear of Penton; but I’ve had this in my mind for years and years. You don’t know what an expense it would be; even the removal would cost a great deal: and though we should have a larger income we should have no ready money—not a farthing. And then you know your father, he would never be content to live in a small way, as we can do here, at Penton; he would want to keep up everything as it was in Sir Walter’s time. He would want a carriage, and horses to ride. He might even think of going into Parliament—that was one of his ideas once. Indeed, I see no end to the expense if we were once launched upon Penton. We should be finer, and we should see more company, but I don’t think we should be a bit better after awhile than if we had never come into any fortune at all.”

“But it would always be something to be fine, and to see more company, and to have a carriage, and horses to ride,” said Anne.

“At the cost of getting into debt and leaving off worse than we were before!” said the mother, shaking her head.

Ally let her work drop on the table and looked up with soft eyes. There was a light unusual in them, which shone even in the smoky rays of that inodorous lamp. “Oh,” she said, with a long-drawn breath, “mother! it’s wicked, I know; and if it made things worse afterward—”

“She thinks just as I do!” cried Anne—“that to have a little fun and see the world, and everything you say, would be worth it, if it were only for a little while!”

“Oh, girls!” said Mrs. Penton—a mild exasperation was in her tone—“if you only knew what I know—”

“We can’t do that, mother, unless we had experience like you; and how are we to get experience unless we risk something? What can we ever know here?—the hours the post goes out, though we have so few letters, the times they have parties at the abbey, though we’re never asked. The only thing we can really get to know is how high the river rises when it’s in flood, and how many days’ rain it takes to make it level with our garden. Oh, how uncomfortable that is, and how chill and clammy! What else can we ever know at Penton Hook?”

“Oh, girls!” said Mrs. Penton again.

Si jeunesse savait! But this is what will never be till the end of the world. And at the same time there was something in her maternal soul that took their part. That they should have their pleasure like the other girls; that they should have their balls, their triumphs like the rest; that to dress them beautifully and admire their bright looks might be hers, a little reflected glory and pleasure for once in her dim, laborious life—her heart went out with a sigh to this which was so pleasant, so sweet. But then afterward? To give it up was hard—hard upon those who had not discounted it all as she had done, taking the glory to pieces and deciding that there was no satisfaction in it. She felt for her husband and the children, though for them more than for him—but her feeling was pity for a pleasant delusion which could not last, rather than sympathy. Penton itself was to her nothing; she disliked it rather than otherwise as something which had been opposed to her all her life.

“If your father accept this offer,” she said after a time, “we need not stay in Penton Hook. We might let it; or at least we might leave it in the winter and go to some other place. We might go to London, or we might even go abroad; then you would really see the world. If your father had to give up Penton without any advantage that would be a real misfortune. But of course they would give him a just equivalent. Our income would be doubled and more than doubled. Oswald could stay at Marlborough; Walter might go to Oxford. We should be better off at once without waiting for it, and we should be free, not compelled to keep up a large place or spend our money foolishly. You might have your fun, as you call it. Why shouldn’t you? We would be a great deal better off than at Penton, and directly—at once. You know what everybody says about waiting for dead men’s shoes. Sir Walter may live for ten years yet. When a man has lived to eighty-five he may just as well live to ninety-five. And I am sure if we only could get a little more money to live on, none of us wishes him to die.”

“Oh, no,” said the girls, one after another. “If it is any pleasure to him to live,” Anne added reflectively, after a pause.

“Pleasure to live? It is always a pleasure to live, at least it seems so. No one wishes to die as long as he can help it. I wonder why myself; for when you are feeble and languid and everything is a trouble, it seems strange to wish to go on. They do, though,” said the middle-aged mother with a sigh. She thought of Sir Walter as they thought of her, with a mixture of awe and impatience. They felt that their own eager state, looking forward to life, must be so far beyond anything that was possible to her; just as she felt her own weary yet life-full being to be so far in the range of vitality above him. She drew the stocking off her arm as she spoke, and smoothed it out, and matched it with its fellow, and rolled them both up into that tidy ball which is the proper condition of a pair of stockings when they are clean and mended, and ready to be put on. “I think I will go up to the nursery and take a look at the children,” she said. “Horry had a cold; I should like to see that there is no feverishness about him now he is in bed.”

Ally and Anne dropped their work with one accord as their mother went away, not because her departure freed them, but because their excitement, their doubt, their sense of the family crisis all intensified when restraint was withdrawn, and they felt themselves free to discuss the problem between themselves. “What do you think?” they both said instinctively, the two questions meeting as it were in mid career and striking against each other. “I think,” said Anne, quickly, not pausing a moment, “that there is a great deal in what mother says.”

“Oh, do you?” said Ally, with an answering look of disappointment; then she added, “Of course there must be, or mother would not say it. But would you ever be so happy anywhere as you would be in Penton? Would you think anywhere else as good—London, or even abroad—oh, Anne, Penton!”

And now it was that Anne showed that skeptical, not to say cynical spirit, that superiority to tradition which had never appeared before in any of her family.

“After all,” she said, “what is Penton? Only a house like another. I never heard that it was particularly convenient or even beautiful more than quantities of other houses. It is very large—a great deal too large for us—and without furniture, as mother says. Fancy walking into a great empty, echoing place, without a carpet or a chair, and pretending to be comfortable. It makes me shudder to think of, whatever you may say.”

Ally was chilled much more by Anne’s saying it than by the vision thus presented to her. She began hurriedly, “But Penton—” and then stopped, not knowing apparently what to say.

“I begin to be dreadfully tired of Penton,” said Anne, giving herself an air of superiority and elderly calmness. “Everybody romances so about that big, vulgar house. Well, anything’s vulgar that pretends to be more than it is. One would suppose it was the House Beautiful or else a royal palace at the very least, to hear you all speak. And then poor old Sir Walter, to grudge him his little bit of life! I feel like a vampire,” cried Anne, “every day wishing that he may die.”

“I am sure,” cried Ally, moved almost to tears, “I don’t wish him to die.”

“You wish to be at Penton, and you can’t be at Penton till he dies,” said Anne, triumphantly. “Poor old gentleman! his nice warm rooms that he has taken so much trouble with, and all his pretty things! And to think that a lot of children who will pull everything to pieces should he let in upon them, and his own daughter, who is like himself, and who would keep everything just as he liked to see it, should be driven away!”

“I never thought of it in that light before,” said Ally, in a troubled voice.

“Nor I,” said Anne; “but it is fair to put yourself in another person’s place and think how you would feel if—Mrs. Russell Penton must hate us, naturally. I should if I were she. Fancy if there was some one whose interest it was that father should die!”

“Oh, Anne!”

“It is just the very same only that father is not so old as Sir Walter. Suppose there were no boys, but only you and me, and some other horrible people were the heirs of the entail. How I should hate them! I think I should try to kill them!”

Anne loved an effect, and Ally’s softer spirit was the instrument upon which she played. Ally cried “No, no, no!” with a horrified protest against these abominable sentiments. A cloud of trouble gathered over her face; her eyes filled with tears. She put up her hands to stop those dreadful words as they flowed from her sister’s mouth.

“To hate any one would be terrible. I could not do that, nor you either, Anne.”

“Not if they wished that father might die?”

This awful supposition overwhelmed Ally altogether. She melted into tears.

“Well, then, come along out into the garden, and don’t let’s think of it any more. I want a little air—the lamp is so nasty to-night—and I’ll finish my pinafore to-morrow. It is very nearly done, all but the button-holes. Do come out and see if the river is rising. That is one good thing about Penton, it is out of reach of the floods. But look, what a change! It is almost as clear as day, and the moon so beautiful. If I had known I should not have stayed in-doors in the light of that horrid lamp.”

“We must do our work some time,” said Ally, faintly, allowing herself to be persuaded. It was rather cold, and very damp; but the moon had come out quite clear, dispersing, or rather driving back into distance the masses of milky clouds which had lost their angry aspect, and no longer seemed to foretell immediate rain. Rain is disagreeable to everybody (except occasionally to the farmers), but it is more than disagreeable to people who live half surrounded by a river; it made their hearts rise to see that the rain-clouds seemed dispersing and the heavens getting clear. And then it takes so very little to lighten hearts of seventeen and eighteen! The merest trifle will do—the touch of the fresh air, even the little nip of the cold which stirred their blood. As they came out Walter appeared, coming back from the gate, a dark figure against the light.

“Oh, Wat, where have you been? Have you been up to the village without telling us? And I did so want a run? Why didn’t you call me?”

“Don’t, Anne,” said Ally; “he is not in spirits for your nonsense. Poor Wat! he can not throw it off like you.”

“Ah,” said Walter, reflectively; but it seemed to the girls that he had to think what it was he could not throw off. “I have not been up to the village,” he said; “only round the dark corner. Martha was there with a little girl who was in a terrible funk. She thought there were lions and tigers under the hedge. I just saw her round the corner.”

“How kind of you, Wat! A little girl! But who could she be?”

“I don’t know a bit,” said Walter, demurely. “It was too dark to see her face.”

He thought his own voice sounded a little strange, but they did not perceive it. They came to either side of him, linking each an arm in his.

“Come and look at Penton in the moonlight,” said Anne, she who was so indifferent to Penton. But somehow to all of them the sting was taken out of it, and there was no pain for them in the sight.