Our Bessie Part 2

But she glanced at him curiously once or twice as she walked beside him.

"What a gentlemanly, handsome man he was!" she thought. Yes, he looked like a doctor; he had the easy, kindly manner which generally belongs to the profession. She had never thought much about her own father, but to-night, as they drove through the lighted streets, her thoughts, oddly enough, recurred to him. Dr. Lambert was sitting opposite the two girls, but his eyes were fixed oftenest on his daughter.

"Your mother was very anxious and nervous," he said, "and so was Hatty, when Tom brought us word that the train was snowed up in Sheen Valley I had to scold Hatty, and tell her she was a goose; but mother was nearly as bad; she can't do without her crutch, eh, Bessie?" with a gleam of tenderness in his eyes, as they rested on his girl.

Edna felt a little lump in her throat, though she hardly knew why; perhaps she was tired and over-strained; she had never missed her father before, but she fought against the feeling of depression.

"I am so sorry your son has to walk," she said politely; but Dr. Lambert only smiled.

"A walk will not hurt him, and our roads are very steep."

As he spoke, the driver got down, and Bessie begged leave to follow his example.

"We live on the top of the hill," she said apologetically; "and I cannot bear being dragged up by a tired horse, as father knows by this time;"

and she joined her brother, who came up at that moment.

Tom had kept the fly well in sight.

"That's an awfully jolly-looking girl, Betty," he observed, with the free and easy criticism of his age. "I don't know when I have seen a prettier girl; uncommon style, too--fair hair and dark eyes; she is a regular beauty."

"That is what boys always think about," returned Bessie, with good-humored contempt. "Girls are different. I should be just as much interested in Miss Sefton if she were plain. I suppose you mean to be charmed with her conversation, and to find all her remarks witty because she has _les beaux yeux_."

"I scorn to take notice of such spiteful remarks," returned Tom, with a shrug. "Girls are venomous to each other. I believe they hate to hear one another praised, even by a brother."

"Hold your tongue, Tom," was the rejoinder. "It takes my breath away to argue with you up this hill. I am not too ill-natured to give up my own bed to Miss Sefton. Let us hurry on, there's a good boy, or they will arrive before us."

As this request coincided with Tom's private wishes, he condescended to walk faster; and the brother and sister were soon at the top of the hill, and had turned into a pretty private road bordered with trees, with detached houses standing far back, with long, sloping strips of gardens. The moon had now risen, and Bessie could distinctly see a little group of girls, with shawls over their heads, standing on the top of a flight of stone steps leading down to a large shady garden belonging to an old-fas.h.i.+oned house. The front entrance was round the corner, but the drawing-room window was open, and the girls had gained the road by the garden way, and stood s.h.i.+vering and expectant; while the moon illumined the gra.s.s terraces that ran steeply from the house, and shone on the meadow that skirted the garden.

"Run in, girls; you will catch cold," called out Bessie; but her prudent suggestion was of no avail, for a tall, lanky girl rushed into the road with the rapturous exclamation, "Why, it is our Bessie after all, though she looked so tall in the moonlight, and I did not know Tom's new ulster." And here Bessie was fallen upon and kissed, and handed from one to another of the group, and then borne rapidly down the steps and across the terrace to the open window.

"Here she is, mother; here is our Bessie, not a bit the worse. And Hatty ought to be ashamed of herself for making us all miserable!" exclaimed Katie.

"My Hatty sha'n't be scolded. Mother, dear, if you only knew how sweet home looks after the Sheen Valley! Don't smother me any more, girls. I want to tell you something that will surprise you;" and Bessie, still holding her mother's hand, but looking at Hatty, gave a rapid and somewhat indistinct account of her meeting with Edna Sefton.

"And she will have my room, mother," continued Bessie, a little incoherently, for she was tired and breathless, and the girl's exclamations were so bewildering.

Mrs. Lambert, a pale, care-worn woman, with a sweet pathetic sort of face, was listening with much perplexity, which was not lessened by the sight of her husband ushering into the room a handsome-looking girl, dressed in the most expensive fas.h.i.+on.

"Dora, my dear, this is Bessie's fellow-sufferer in the snowdrift; we must make much of her, for she is the daughter of my old friend, Eleanor Sartoris--Mrs. Sefton now. Bessie has offered her her own room to-night, as it is too late for her to travel to London."

A quick look pa.s.sed between the husband and wife, and a faint color came to Mrs. Lambert's face, but she was too well-bred to express her astonishment.

"You are very welcome, my dear," she said quietly. "We will make you as comfortable as we can. These are all my girls," and she mentioned their names.

"What a lot of girls," thought Edna. She was not a bit shy by nature, and somehow the situation amused her. "What a comfortable, homelike room, and what a lovely fire! And--well, of course, they were not rich; any one could see that; but they were nice, kind people."

"This is better than the snowdrift," she said, with a beaming smile, as Dr. Lambert placed her in his own easy chair, and Tom brought her a footstool and handed her a screen, and her old acquaintance Bessie helped her to remove her wraps. The whole family gathered round her, intent on hospitality to the bewitching stranger--only the "Crutch," as Tom called her, tripped away to order Jane to light a fire in her room, and to give out the clean linen for the unexpected guest, and to put a few finis.h.i.+ng touches to the supper-table.

The others did not miss her at first. Christine, a tall, graceful girl who had inherited her father's good looks, was questioning Edna about the journey, and the rest were listening to the answers.

Hatty, a pale, sickly-looking girl, whose really fine features were marred by unhealthy sullenness and an anxious, fretful expression, was hanging on every word; while the tall schoolgirl Ella, and the smaller, bright-eyed Katie, were standing behind their mother, trying to hide their awkwardness and bashfulness, till Tom came to the rescue by finding them seats, with a whispered hint to Katie that it was not good manners to stare so at a stranger. Edna saw everything with quiet, amused eyes; she satisfied Christine's curiosity, and found replies to all Mrs. Lambert's gentle, persistent questioning. Tom, too, claimed her attention by all sorts of dexterous wiles. She must look at him, and thank him, when he found that screen for her; she could not disregard him when he was so solicitous about the draft from the window, so anxious to bring her another cus.h.i.+on.

"I did not know you were such a ladies' man, Tom," observed Dr. Lambert presently, in a tone that made Tom retreat with rather a foolish expression.

With all his love for his children, Dr. Lambert was sometimes capable of a smooth sarcasm. Tom felt as though he had been officious; had, in fact, made a fool of himself, and drew off into the background. His father was often hard on him, Tom said to himself, in an aggrieved way, and yet he was only doing his duty, as a son of the house, in waiting on this fascinating young lady.

"Poor boy, he is very young!" thought Edna, who noticed this by-play with some amus.e.m.e.nt; "but he will grow older some day, and he is very good-looking;" and then she listened with a pretty show of interest to a story Dr. Lambert was telling her of when he was snowed up in Scotland as a boy.

When Bessie returned she found them all in good spirits, and her fellow-traveller laughing and talking as though she had known them for years; even Tom's brief sulkiness had vanished, and, unmindful of his father's caustic tongue, he had again ventured to join the charmed circle.

It was quite late before the girls retired to rest, and as Edna followed Bessie up the broad, low staircase, while Tom lighted them from below, she called out gayly. "Good-night, Mr. Lambert; it was worth while being snowed up in the Sheen Valley to make such nice friends, and to enjoy such a pleasant evening."

Edna really meant what she said, for the moment; she was capable of these brief enthusiasms. Pleasantness of speech, that specious coinage of conventionality, was as the breath of life to her. Her girlish vanity was gratified by the impression she had made on the Lambert family, and even Tom's crude, boyish admiration was worth something.

"To be all things to all men" is sometimes taken by vain, worldly people in a very different sense from that the apostle intended. Girls of Edna Sefton's caliber--impressionable, vivacious, egotistical, and capable of a thousand varying moods--will often take their cue from other people, and become grave with the grave, and gay with the gay, until they weary of their role, and of a sudden become their true selves. And yet there is nothing absolutely wrong in these swift, natural transitions; many sympathetic natures act in the same way, by very reason and force of their sympathy. For the time being they go out of themselves, and, as it were, put themselves in other people's places. Excessive sympathy is capable of minor martyrdom; their reflected suffering borders upon real pain.

When Bessie ushered Edna into her little room, she looked round proudly at the result of her own painstaking thoughtfulness. A bright fire burned in the small grate, and her mother's easy chair stood beside it--heavy as it was, Bessie had carried it in with her own hands. The best eider-down quilt, in its gay covering, was on the bed, and the new toilet-cover that Christine had worked in blue and white cross-st.i.tch was on the table. Bessie had even borrowed the vase of Neapolitan violets that some patient had sent her father, and the sweet perfume permeated the little room.

Bessie would willingly have heard some encomium on the snug quarters provided for the weary guest, but Edna only looked round her indifferently, and then stifled a yawn.

"Is there anything you want? Can I help you? Oh, I hope you will sleep comfortably!" observed Bessie, a little mortified by Edna's silence.

"Oh, yes: I am so tired that I am sure I shall sleep well," returned Edna; and then she added quickly, "but I am so sorry to turn you out of your room."

"Oh, that does not matter at all, thank you," replied Bessie, stirring the fire into a cheerful blaze, and then bidding her guest good-night; but Edna, who had taken possession of the easy chair, exclaimed:

"Oh, don't go yet--it is only eleven, and I am never in bed until twelve. Sit down a moment, and warm yourself."

"Mother never likes us to be late," hesitated Bessie; but she lingered, nevertheless. This was not an ordinary evening, and there were exceptions to every rule, so she knelt down on the rug a moment, and watched Edna taking down the long plaits of fair hair that had crowned her shapely head. "What lovely hair!" thought Bessie; "what a beautiful young creature she is altogether!"

Edna was unconscious of the admiration she was exciting. She was looking round her, and trying to realize what her feelings would be if she had to inhabit such a room. "Why, our servants have better rooms," she thought.

To a girl of Edna's luxurious habits Bessie's room looked very poor and mean. The little strips of faded carpet, the small, curtainless bedstead, the plain maple washstand and drawers, the few simple prints and varnished bookcase were shabby enough in Edna's eyes. She could not understand how any girl could be content with such a room; and yet Bessie's happiest hours were spent there. What was a little shabbiness, or the wear and tear of homely furniture, to one who saw angels'

footprints even in the common ways of life, and who dreamed sweet, innocent dreams of the splendors of a heavenly home? To these sort of natures even threadbare garments can be worn proudly, for to these free spirits even poverty loses its sting. It is not "how we live," but "how we think about life," that stamps our characters, and makes us the men and women that we are.

CHAPTER III.

HATTY.

The brief silence was broken by Edna.

"What a nice boy your brother is!" she observed, in rather a patronizing tone.

Bessie looked up in some surprise.