“We will just go without waiting any longer,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “We are their nearest neighbours—and they will take it kind if we lose no time. As for these old cats, it will be little matter to the Diroms what they do—but your papa, that is a different affair. It can do no harm, for everybody knows who we are, Effie, and it may do good. So we will be on the safe side, whatever happens. And there is nothing much doing for the horses to-day. Be you ready at three o’clock, and we will take Rory in the carriage for a drive.”

Effie obeyed her stepmother with alacrity. She had not taken any part in the argument, but her imagination had found a great deal to say. She had seen the young Diroms out riding. She had seen them at church. There were two girls about her own age, and there was a brother. The brother was of quite secondary importance, she said to herself; nevertheless, there are always peradventures in the air, and when one thinks that at any moment one’s predestined companion—he whom heaven intends, whatever men may think or say—may walk round the corner!

The image of Ronald, which had never been very deeply imprinted, had faded out of Effie’s imagination. It had never reached any farther than her imagination. And in her little excitement and the pleasurable quickening of her pulsations, as she set out upon this drive with her stepmother, there was that vague sense that there was no telling what might come of it which gives zest to the proceedings of youth. It was the nearest approach to setting out upon a career of adventure which had ever fallen to Effie’s share. She was going to discover a world. She was a new little Columbus, setting her sail towards the unknown.

Mrs. Ogilvie ran on all the way with a sort of monologue, every sentence of which began with, “I wonder.”

“Dear me, I wish I could have found out who she was. I wonder if it will turn out to be my sister’s friend. She was a great deal older than I am, of course, and might very well have grown-up sons and daughters. For Mary is the eldest of us all, and if she had ever had any children, they would have been grown up by this time. We will see whether she will say anything about Mary. And I wonder if you will like the girls. They will always have been accustomed to more luxury than would be at all becoming to a country gentleman’s daughter like you. And I wonder if the young man—the brother—will be always at Allonby. We will have to ask them to their dinner. And I wonder——” But here Mrs. Ogilvie’s wonderings were cut short on her lips; and so great was her astonishment that her lips dropped apart, and she sat gaping, incapable of speech.

“I declare!” she cried at last, and could say no more. The cause of this consternation was that, as they entered the avenue of Allonby, another vehicle met them coming down. And this turned out to be the carriage from the inn, which was the only one to be had for ten miles round, conveying Miss Dempster and Miss Beenie, in their best apparel. The Gilston coachman stopped, as was natural, and so did the driver of the cab.

“Well,” cried Miss Dempster, waving her hand, “ye are going, I see, after all. We’ve just been having our lunch with them. Since it was to be done, it was just as well to do it in good time. And a very nice luncheon it was, and nicely set upon the table, that I must say—but how can you wonder, with such a number of servants! If they’re not good for that, they’re good for nothing. There was just too much, a great deal too much, upon the table; and a fine set-out of plate, and——”

“Sarah, Mrs. Ogilvie is not minding about that.”

“Mrs. Ogilvie is like other folk, and likes to hear our first impressions. And, Effie, you will need just to trim up your beaver; for, though they are not what you can call fine, they are in the flower of the fashion. We’ll keep you no longer. Sandy, you may drive on. Eh! no—stop a moment,” cried the old lady, flourishing her umbrella.

The Gilston coachman had put his horses in motion also; so that when the two carriages were checked again, it was obliquely and from a distance, raising her voice, that Miss Dempster shouted this piece of information: “Ye’ll be gratified to hear that she was a Miss Maitland,” the old lady cried.

“Well, if ever I heard the like!” said Mrs. Ogilvie, as they went on. “There to their lunch, after vowing they would never give their countenance——! That shows how little you can trust even your nearest neighbours. They are just two old cats! But I am glad she is the person I thought. As Mary’s sister, I will have a different kind of a standing from ordinary strangers, and you will profit by that, Effie. I would not wonder if you found them a great acquisition; and your father and me, we would be very well pleased. We’ve heard nothing about the gentlemen of the house. I wonder if they’re always at home. As I was saying, I wonder if that brother of theirs is an idle man about the place, like so many. I’m not fond of idle men. I wonder——”

And for twenty minutes more Mrs. Ogilvie continued wondering, until the carriage drew up at the door of Allonby, which was open, admitting a view of a couple of fine footmen and two large dogs, which last got up and came forward with lazy cordiality to welcome the visitors.

“Dear me!” Mrs. Ogilvie said aside. “I am always distressed with Glen for lying at the door. I wonder if it can be the fashion. I wonder——”

There was time for these remarks, for there was a long corridor to go through before a door was softly opened, and the ladies found themselves, much to their surprise, in what Mrs. Ogilvie afterwards called “the dark.” It was a room carefully shaded to that twilight which is dear at the present period to fashionable eyes. The sun is never too overpowering at Gilston; but the Miss Diroms were young women of their generation, and scorned to discriminate. They had sunblinds without and curtains within, so that the light was tempered into an obscurity in which the robust eyes of country people, coming out of that broad vulgar daylight to which they were accustomed, could at first distinguish nothing.

Effie’s young and credulous imagination was in a quiver of anticipation, admiration, and wonder. It was all new to her—the great house, the well-regulated silence, the poetic gloom. She held her breath, expecting what might next be revealed to her, with the awe and entranced and wondering satisfaction of a novice about to be initiated. The noiseless figures that rose and came forward and with a soft pressure of her hand, two of them mistily white, the other (only the mother, who didn’t count) dark, impressed her beyond description.

The only thing that a little diminished the spell was the voices, more highly pitched than those native to the district, in unaccustomed modulations of “high English.” Effie murmured quite unconsciously an indistinct “Very well, thank you” in answer to their greetings, and then they all sat down, and it became gradually possible to see.

The two Miss Diroms were tall and had what are called fine figures. They came and sat on either side of Effie, one clasping her hands round her knees, the other leaning back in a corner of the deep sofa with her head against a cushion. The sofa and the cushion were covered with yellow damask, against which the white dress made a pretty harmony, as Effie’s eyes got accustomed to the dimness. But Effie, sitting very straight and properly in her chair, was much bewildered by the ease with which one young lady threw her arms over her head, and the other clasped them round her knees.

“How good of you to come!” said the one on the sofa, who was the eldest. “We were wondering if you would call.”

“We saw you at church on Sunday,” said the other, “and we thought you looked so nice. What a funny little church! I suppose we ought to say k’k.”

“Miss Ogilvie will tell us what to say, and how to talk to the natives. Do tell us. We have been half over the world, but never in Scotland before.”

“Oh then, you will perhaps have been in India,” said Effie; “my brother is there.”

“Is he in the army? Of course, all Scotch people have sons in the army. Oh no, we’ve never been in India.”

“India,” said the other, “is not in the world—it’s outside. We’ve been everywhere where people go. Is he coming back soon? Is he good at tennis and that sort of thing? Do you play a great deal here?”

“They do at Lochlee,” said Effie, “and at Kirkconnel: but not me. For I have nobody to play with.”

“Poor little thing!” said the young lady on the sofa, patting her on the arm: and then they both laughed, while Effie grew crimson with shy pride and confusion. She did not see what she had said that was laughable; but it was evident that they did, and this is not an agreeable sensation even to a little girl.

“You shall come here and play,” said the other. “We are having a new court made. And Fred—where is Fred, Phyll?—Fred will be so pleased to have such a pretty little thing to play with.”

“How should I know where he is?—mooning about somewhere, sketching or something.”

“Oh,” said Effie, “do you sketch?” Perhaps she was secretly mollified, though she said to herself that she was yet more offended, by being called a pretty little thing.

“Not I; but my brother, that is Fred: and I am Phyllis, and she is Doris. Now tell us your name, for we can’t go on calling each other Miss, can we? Such near neighbours as we are, and going to see so much of each other.”

“No, of course we can’t go on saying Miss. What should you say was her name, Phyll? Let us guess. People are always like their names. I should say Violet.”

“Dear no, such a mawkish little sentimental name. She is not sentimental at all—are you? What is an Ogilvie name? You have all family names in Scotland, haven’t you, that go from mother to daughter?”

Effie sat confused while they talked over her. She was not accustomed to this sudden familiarity. To call the girls by their names, when she scarcely had formed their acquaintance, seemed terrible to her—alarming, yet pleasant too. She blushed, yet felt it was time to stop the discussion.

“They call me Effie,” she said. “That is not all my name, but it is my name at home.”

“They call me Effie,” repeated Miss Doris, with a faint mockery in her tone; “what a pretty way of saying it, just like the Italians! If you are going to be so conscientious as that, I wasn’t christened Doris, I must tell you: but I was determined Phyll should not have all the luck. We are quite eighteenth century here—furniture and all.”

“But I can’t see the furniture,” said Effie, making for the first time an original remark. “Do you like to sit in the dark?”

At this both the sisters laughed again, and said that she was a most amusing little thing. “But don’t say that to mamma, or it will quite strengthen her in her rebellion. She would like to sit in the sun, I believe. She was brought up in the barbarous ages, and doesn’t know any better. There she is moving off into the other room with your mother. Now the two old ladies will put their heads together——”

“Mrs. Ogilvie is not an old lady,” said Effie hastily; “she is my stepmother. She is almost as young as——” Here she paused, with a glance at Miss Phyllis on the sofa, who was still lying back with her head against the cushion. Effie felt instinctively that it would not be wise to finish her sentence. “She is a great deal younger than you would suppose,” she added, once more a little confused.

“That explains why you are in such good order. Have you to do what she tells you? Mamma is much better than that—we have her very well in hand. Oh, you are not going yet. It is impossible. There must be tea before you go. Mamma likes everybody to have something. And then Fred—you must see Fred—or at least he must see you——”

“Here he is,” said the other, with a sudden grasp of Effie’s arm.

Effie was much startled by this call upon her attention. She turned round hastily, following the movement of her new friends. There could not have been a more dramatic appearance. Fred was coming in by a door at the end of the room. He had lifted a curtain which hung over it, and stood in the dim light outside holding back the heavy folds—looking, it appeared, into the gloom to see if any one was there.

Naturally, coming out of the daylight his eyes at first made out nothing, and he stood for some time in this highly effective attitude—a spectacle which was not unworthy a maiden’s eye. He was tall and slim like his sisters, dark, almost olive in his complexion, with black hair clustering closely in innumerable little curls about his head. He was dressed in a gray morning suit, with a red tie, which was the only spot of colour visible, and had a great effect. He peered into the gloom, curving his eyelids as if he had been shortsighted.

Then, when sufficient time had elapsed to fix his sight upon Effie’s sensitive imagination like a sun picture, he spoke: “Are any of you girls there?” This was all, and it was not much that Fred said. He was answered by a chorus of laughter from his sisters. They were very fond of laughing, Effie thought.

“Oh yes, some of us girls are here—three of us. You can come in and be presented,” Phyllis said.

“If you think you are worthy of it,” said Doris, once more grasping Effie’s arm.

They had all held their breath a little when the hero thus dramatically presented himself. Doris had kept her hand on Effie’s wrist; perhaps because she wished to feel those little pulses jump, or else it was because of that inevitable peradventure which presented itself to them too, as it had done to Effie. This was the first meeting, but how it might end, or what it might lead to, who could tell? The girls, though they were so unlike each other, all three held their breath. And then the sisters laughed as he approached, and the little excitement dropped.

“I wish you wouldn’t sit in the dark,” said Fred, dropping the curtain behind him as he entered. “I can’t see where you are sitting, and if I am not so respectful as I ought to be, I hope I may be forgiven, for I can see nothing. Oh, here you are!”

“It is not the princess; you are not expected to go on your knees,” said his sisters, while Effie once more felt herself blush furiously at being the subject of the conversation. “You are going to be presented to Miss Ogilvie—don’t you know the young lady in white?—oh, of course, you remember. Effie, my brother Fred. And now you know us all, and we are going to be the best of friends.”

“This is very familiar,” said Fred. “Miss Ogilvie, you must not visit it upon me if Phyll and Dor are exasperating. They always are. But when you come to know them they are not so bad as you might think. They have it all their own way in this house. It has always been the habit of the family to let the girls have their own way—and we find it works well on the whole, though in point of manners it may leave something to be desired.”

He had thrown himself carelessly on the sofa beside his sister as he spoke. Effie sat very still and erect on her chair and listened with a dismay and amazement which it would be hard to put into words. She did not know what to say to this strange group. She was afraid of them, brother and sisters and altogether. It was the greatest relief to her when Mrs. Ogilvie returned into the room again, discoursing in very audible tones with the mistress of the house.

“I am sure I am very glad to have met with you,” Mrs. Ogilvie was saying. “They will be so pleased to hear everything. Poor thing! she is but lonely, with no children about her, and her husband dead this five years and more. He was a great loss to her—the kindest man, and always at her call. But we must just make up our mind to take the bitter with the sweet in this life. Effie, where are you? We must really be going. We have Rory, that is my little boy, with us in the carriage, and he will be getting very tired of waiting. I hope it will not be long before we see you at Gilston. Good-bye, Mrs. Dirom; Effie, I hope you have said to the young ladies that we will be glad to see them—and you too,” giving her hand to Fred—“you especially, for we have but few young men in the country.”

“I accept your invitation as a compliment to the genus young man, Mrs. Ogilvie—not to me.”

“Well, that is true,” she said with a laugh; “but I am sure, from what I can see of you, it will soon be as particular as you could wish. Young people are a great want just in this corner of the country. Effie, poor thing, has felt it all her life: but I hope better things will be coming for her now.”

“She shall not be lonely if we can help it,” said the sisters. They kissed her as they parted, as if they had known her for years, and called her “dear Effie!” waving their hands to her as she disappeared into the light. They did not go out to the door with the visitors, as Effie in the circumstances would have done, but yet sent her away dazzled by their affectionateness, their offers of regard.

She felt another creature, a girl with friends, a member of society, as she drove away. What a thing it is to have friends! She had been assured often by her stepmother that she was a happy girl to have so many people who took an interest in her, and would always be glad to give her good advice. Effie knew where to lay her hand upon a great deal of good advice at any moment; but that is not everything that is required in life.

Phyllis and Doris! they were like names out of a book, and it was like a picture in her memory, the slim figure in white sunk deep in the yellow damask of the sofa, with her dark hair relieved against the big soft puffy cushion. Exactly like a picture; whereas Effie herself had sat straight up like a little country girl. Mrs. Ogilvie ran on like a purling stream as they drove home, expressing her satisfaction that it was Mary’s friend who was the mistress of the house, and describing all the varieties of feeling in her own mind on the subject—her conviction that this was almost too good to be true, and just more fortunate than could be hoped.

But Effie listened, and paid no attention. She had a world of her own now to escape into. Would she ever be bold enough to call them Phyllis and Doris?—and then Fred—but nobody surely would expect her to call him Fred.

Effie was disturbed in these delightful thoughts, and Mrs. Ogilvie’s monologue was suddenly broken in upon by a sound of horses’ hoofs, and a dust and commotion upon the road, followed by the apparition of Dr. Jardine’s mare, with her head almost into the carriage window on Effie’s side. The doctor’s head above the mare’s was pale. There was foam on his lips, and he carried his riding whip short and savagely, as if he meant to strike some one.

“Tell me just one thing,” he said, without any preliminary greetings; “have these women been there?”

“Dear me, doctor, what a fright you have given me. Is anything wrong with Robert; has anything happened? Bless me, the women! what women? You have just taken my breath away.”

“These confounded women that spoil everything—will ye let me know if they were there?”

“Oh, the Miss —— Well, yes—I was as much surprised as you, doctor. With their best bonnets on, and all in state in Mr. Ewing’s carriage; they were there to their lunch.”

The doctor swore a solemn oath—by——! something which he did not say, which is always a safe proceeding.

“You’ll excuse me for stopping you, but I could not believe it. The old cats! And to their lunch!” At this he gave a loud laugh. “They’re just inconceivable!” And rode away.