Chapter Seven
This Very Little World
Alonzo. – What is this maid with whom thou wast at play?
Your eldest acquaintance cannot be three hours.
Tempest.
For the beautiful Miss Cheviott, little though she had been seen in Paris, had been seen enough to make a considerable sensation, especially as rumour, in this case with somewhat more foundation than usual, added the epithet
heritière
to the rest of Alys’s charms. Parisian papas and mammas sighed at the perversity of the British customs, which forbade their entering the lists on behalf of their eligible Adolphes and Gustaves, and the representatives of the English upper ten thousand, then in Paris, would have been very ready to make great friends with the brother and sister. But their advances were hardly reciprocated; Alys’s inexperience failed to appreciate them, and Mr Cheviott’s somewhat “stand-off” manner was not encouraging. Ill-natured people made fun of him for “mounting guard over his sister,” more amiably inclined observers pronounced such brotherly devotion to be really touching, but one and all fell short of attaining to anything like intimacy with the owner of Romary or the reputed heiress.
So some amount of curiosity, added to the interest inspired by the two Cheviotts and the buzz of conversation in Madame de Briancourt’s boudoir, perceptibly subsided for a minute or two on their first appearing. Alys, in her simplicity, hardly observed this, or, if she did so, was not struck by it as anything unusual, but Mr Cheviott noticed and was a little annoyed by it.
“I would not have called here this afternoon, if I had known we should find Madame de Briancourt ‘at home’ in such force,” he said to an English lady of his acquaintance after paying his respects to his hostess.
“Ah, you have not been long enough in Paris to be quite
au fait
of everything,” said Mrs Brabazon, good-naturedly. “There is always a great crowd here on Thursdays. But why should you object to it? It is all the more amusing.”
“I am not fond of crowds, and, as for my sister, she is quite unaccustomed to anything of the kind. She is hardly ‘out’,” he added, with a smile.
Mrs Brabazon smiled too. “I can quite believe it,” she replied, “and I can, too, prophesy very certainly that, in her present character as your sister, she will not be ‘out’
long
.”
She looked up at Mr Cheviott expecting to see that the inferred compliment had pleased him. But, to her surprise, far from testifying any gratification the expression of his face seemed rather to tell of annoyance, and, being a good-natured woman, Mrs Brabazon felt sorry, and began wondering what there could have been in her harmless little speech so evidently to “rub him the wrong way.” Alys, sitting at a little distance talking to a young lady to whom Madame de Briancourt had introduced her, happened at this moment to look round and caught sight of her brother’s face.
“Laurence is vexed at something,” she thought, and, moving her chair a little so as to bring herself within speaking distance of her brother and Mrs Brabazon, she tried to think how she could give a turn to the conversation which so evidently was not to Mr Cheviott’s taste. The “turn” came from another direction. A tall, thin boy of sixteen, or thereabouts, a boy with a somewhat anxious and almost girlishly sweet expression of face, came softly and half timidly across the room in Mrs Brabazon’s direction.
“Aunt,” he said, hesitatingly, “I think it is getting rather late – that is to say, if you are still thinking of a drive.”
“I was just thinking so myself, Anselm. Just you find out, my dear boy, if the carriage has come; it was to follow us here, you know, and I shall be ready in a moment.”
The boy turned away to do as she asked.
“That is my
other
nephew – Anselm Brooke,” she explained to Mr Cheviott. “Basil you know?”
“Oh, yes,” said Alys’s brother, with evident interest. “How is he, poor fellow? I was just going to ask you. Better, I hope?”
Mrs Brabazon shook her head, and the tears filled her eyes.
“There will be no real ‘better’ for him, I feel sure,” she said, sadly. “Yet my brother will not believe it, or rather persists in saying he does not. I can understand it; I remember how obstinately incredulous I was when Colonel Brabazon’s illness became hopeless. But it is sad, is it not? You remember what a fine young fellow Basil was only last year?”
“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, kindly. “It is very sad.”
“And poor Anselm, it is really piteous to see his devotion to Basil. He has always looked up to him as to a sort of superior being, and indeed Basil has been treated as such by us all. Anselm has always been so delicate and backward – a frail staff to lean upon, but my mind misgives me that before long his father will have no other.”
“Do the doctors think as you do?”
“They do not
say
so, but I feel sure they think so.”
“I should like to see Basil again before I leave. May I call, do you think?”
“By all means; it would please him very much. Are you going straight home when you leave Paris – to Meadshire, I mean, for that is ‘home’ now to you, I suppose.”
“Yes,” replied Mr Cheviott, “we go straight to Romary. You must come and see us there some time or other, Mrs Brabazon.”
“Thank you,” she said, with a sigh, “I must make no plans just now. My time belongs entirely to my brother and the boys. But talking of Meadshire reminds me – is it anywhere near Withenden that you live?”
“Very near – within a mile or two.”
“Have you ever heard of a place called Hathercourt near there?” inquired Mrs Brabazon, with interest. “You don’t happen to know anything of the clergyman of Hathercourt, or rather of his family? West, I think, is the name.”
“Western,” interrupted Alys close by. “Oh, yes, they are such pretty girls. I am sure they are nice.”
“How can you possibly judge, Alys?” said her brother, coldly. “You only saw them once in your life, and just for a mere instant.”
But Alys’s eager, flushed face, and warmly-expressed admiration of the Western sisters, had absorbed Mrs Brabazon’s attention; she hardly heard what Mr Cheviott said, or, if she did, she gave no heed to it.
“So you know them, then, Miss Cheviott?” she said, cordially, smiling at Alys as she spoke. “Do tell me all you know about them. ‘Girls,’ you say – are they all girls, then – no sons?”
“Oh, yes,” said Alys, “I think there are sons – indeed, I feel sure there are. But it was the girls I noticed, one was
so
pretty.”
The eagerness died out of her voice, for the expression of her brother’s face told her that again she had managed to displease him.
“How unlucky I am to-day,” she said to herself, and the change in her manner was so complete that Mr Cheviott was afraid Mrs Brabazon would notice it.
“It is a case of ‘all kinds’ in the Western household,” he said, with a slight laugh. “Alys and I only saw them once in church – there seemed to be girls and boys, of every size, down to little mites – a regular poor parson’s family.”
“But what sort of people are they?” asked Mrs Brabazon. “Being such near neighbours, you must hear something about them.”
“They are not such very near neighbours of ours. Withenden is the nearest railway station to Hathercourt, and we are only three miles from Withenden, but Hathercourt again is four miles the other way. Of course I take some interest in Hathercourt now, on Arthur Beverley’s account. You heard of his romantic legacy?”
“Oh! yes,” said Mrs Brabazon. “He wrote all about it to Basil. But I wish you would tell me anything you do know or have heard about these Westerns.”
“Which is very little. They are not in any sort of society.”
“How could they be, if they are so very poor?”
Mr Cheviott slightly shrugged his shoulders.
“I did not say they could be,” he answered, with a smile. “I was only, at your bidding, telling the very little I know about them. They are not in any society, not only because they are very poor, but because people know nothing about them. The father is not a man who has distinguished himself in any way, and I believe he married beneath him – a poor governess, or something of that kind – so what can you expect?”
Mrs Brabazon gave a curious smile.
“Oh! indeed,” she said, dryly. “So the
on dit
of Meadshire is that the Rector, or Vicar – which is he? – of Hathercourt married beneath him. Thank you; I am glad to know it. Here comes Anselm, I must go! You said these Western girls were pretty, did you not, Miss Cheviott?” she went on, turning to Alys. “Their beauty must be of the dairy-maid order, I suppose?”
Alys felt that her brother’s eyes were fixed upon her, but she answered sturdily nevertheless.
“On the contrary, they are particularly refined-looking girls. The eldest one especially has the sort of look that – that – ” she hesitated.
“That a princess of the blood royal might have,” suggested Mrs Brabazon, laughingly.
Alys smiled, and so, to her relief, did her brother. Then Mrs Brabazon and the boy Anselm took their departure, and not long after, Madame de Briancourt having overwhelmed them with her pretty regrets and desolations at their leaving Paris so abruptly, the brother and sister bade their hostess farewell, and drove off again on their round of calls.
“Laurence Cheviott is evidently prejudiced against these Westerns. I wonder why, for I think him a reasonable sort of man, on the whole,” said Mrs Brabazon to herself. “Can it be possible that he has fallen in love with this very magnificent Miss Western, whom his sister admires so much, and that she has snubbed him?
That
I can quite believe he would find it hard to forgive. But, oh! no, that is quite impossible. I remember he said he had only seen them once. I think I shall get Basil, poor fellow, to write to Arthur Beverley; he may know something of them. I would like to see them, and it would be a satisfaction to Basil too.”
“What possible reason can Mrs Brabazon have for wanting to know anything about those Westerns? I am afraid she is something of a busybody after all. Surely Arthur cannot have been writing anything about them to Basil Brooke? Oh, no, it can’t be that, for if he had written anything of consequence, it would have been confidentially, and he would hardly be likely to trouble Brooke about anything of
that
kind now,” thought Mr Cheviott, when he found himself in the carriage again beside his sister, driving rapidly away from Madame de Briancourt’s.
Alys noticed his abstraction.
“What are you thinking of, Laurence?”
“Only what a very little world this is!”
“I know,” exclaimed Alys, not sorry to draw the conversation round to a point where her mind was not at rest. “You are thinking how strange it was that we should twice in one day hear Hathercourt Rectory spoken of – at least, not twice spoken of, but I mean mentioned, in Arthur’s letter, and again by Mrs Brabazon. Laurence, were you vexed with what I said of the Westerns? Did it seem like contradicting you?”
“Oh, no, you could not help saying what you thought – nor could I,” he added, after a little pause.
“I did think those girls
so
pretty, especially the eldest one, and not only pretty, but something more – good and nice.”
“I don’t see how they
can
be superior, however, considering their disadvantages,” said Mr Cheviott, musingly. “I don’t agree with you in admiring the elder one more than the other. There was something not commonplace about that younger girl,” and a curious feeling shot across his mind as he recalled the young face with the kindly honest eyes and half shy smile that had met his glance that Sunday morning in the porch of the old church – a feeling almost of disloyalty in the words and tones with which he had replied to Mrs Brabazon’s inquiries – a ridiculous feeling altogether to have in connection with a girl he had only seen once in his life, and that for not more than five minutes. But the vision of Mary Western’s face had imprinted itself on his memory, and refused to be effaced.
Alys fancied that the prejudice she had suspected was passing away; it could not have been very deep after all. She determined to take a bold step, and one that she had been meditating for some time.
“Laurence,” she said, “when we go back to Romary I wish you would let me know those girls. I can’t tell you why I have taken such a fancy to them, but I
have
. You could soon judge by seeing a little more of them if they are nice girls, and I am
sure
you would find they are. I have never had many companions, and it is dull sometimes – rather dull, I mean.”
She looked up in his face appealingly. It was very grave.
“Surely,” he was saying to himself, “the Fates are dead against me. What can have put it into the child’s head to want to set up a romantic friendship with these Westerns? Can Arthur have to do with it? Can he possibly have written anything to Alys besides what I saw?”
“You are vexed with me, Laurence,” she said, deprecatingly, as he did not speak. Then he looked at her and felt ashamed of his suspicions, and his tone was gentle when he answered:
“No, I am not vexed with you, but a little disappointed, perhaps, at your asking anything so foolish. Just reflect, dear, what
can
you know of those girls to make you wish to choose them for friends – ”
“They have such nice faces.”
“And what I know of the family is not to their advantage,” pursued Mr Cheviott, without noticing the interruption. “None of the Withenden people speak cordially of them, or indeed seem to know anything about them.”
“And you call that to their disadvantage, Laurence!” exclaimed Alys – “you who have so often said what a set of snobs the Withenden people are. Of course it is very easy to see why the Westerns are disliked; they won’t be patronised by the county people, and they are too refined for the Withenden set, and so they keep to themselves, and the girls’ beauty makes everybody jealous of them.”
She looked up in her brother’s face triumphantly, feeling that she had the best of it, and so, too, in his heart, felt Mr Cheviott. But he could not afford to own himself vanquished, and took refuge in being aggrieved.
“Very well, Alys,” he said, coldly, “I cannot argue with you; you will be of age in three years, and then you can choose your own friends, but while you are under my guardianship, I can but direct you to the best of my judgment, however you may dislike it.”
Alys’s eyes filled with tears.
“Oh, Laurence, don’t speak to me like that; I am so unlucky to-day. I did not – indeed I did not mean to vex you; I should never want to go against your wishes —
never
, not if I live to be a hundred instead of twenty-one. Laurence, do forgive me!”
And Laurence smiled and “forgave,” though wishing she were convinced as well as submissive, for somewhere down in the secret recesses of his consciousness, there lurked a misgiving which shrank from boldly facing daylight as to whether his arguments had altogether succeeded in convincing himself.
“I am very sorry to hear of Basil Brooke being so ill,” he said by way of changing the conversation.
“Is that one of Mrs Brabazon’s nephews?”
“Yes, the elder; they have come to Paris to try some new doctor, but it is no use. I thought so when he first got ill; and now what his aunt says shows it is true. Poor fellow!”
“Have you known him long? I don’t think I ever heard you speak of him before,” said Alys.
“He was more a friend of Arthur’s than mine; they were in the same regiment. But here we are at Mrs Feston’s.”
On the whole, Alys enjoyed these few last days in Paris much more than the weeks which had preceded them. She was touched by her brother’s evident anxiety that she should do so. Never had she known him more indulgent and considerate, but yet he was less cheerful than usual – at times unmistakably anxious and uneasy. There came no more letters from Captain Beverley, but Alys was not sorry.
“It was something in that letter of Arthur’s that annoyed Laurence so the other day,” she thought to herself; “and fond as I am of Arthur, I couldn’t let him or any one come between Laurence and me.”
And she was not quite sure if she felt pleased or the reverse when her brother told her that, in all probability Captain Beverley would be their guest almost as soon as they reached Romary.
“You haven’t written to tell him when we are going home, have you, Alys?”
Alys looked up from her letter to Miss Winstanley in surprise at the inquiry.
“I?” she said; “oh dear, no. I leave all that to you of course. I have not answered Arthur’s letter at all; there seems to have been so much to do this last day or two.”
Her brother seemed pleased and yet not pleased.
“It is just as well. I don’t think I shall tell him either. We’ll take him by surprise – drive over to see him in his bachelor quarters at the farm-house the day after we get home, eh?”
“Oh, yes, do,” exclaimed Alys, eagerly. “We’ll say we have come to luncheon! What fun it will be; for Arthur has about as much notion of housekeeping as the man in the moon, and he will look so foolish if he has to tell us he has nothing in the house but eggs!”
“You don’t suppose he has been living on nothing but eggs all this time, do you?”
“He may have had a chop now and then for a change,” observed Alys; “but from what he said in his letter, I don’t fancy he has had to depend much on himself. He seems to have been a great deal with his friends at the Rectory.”
There was intention in the allusion. Alys stole a look at her brother’s face to see if the effect was what she half anticipated. Yes; the amusement had all died put of his expression, to be replaced by annoyance and anxiety. Alys’s conscience smote her for trying experiments at the cost of her brother’s equanimity.
“Poor Laurence!” she reflected. “I wish he would not worry himself so much about other people’s affairs. Arthur is quite able to take care of himself. But evidently it
is
about him and the Westerns that Laurence is in such a state of mind. I really do wonder why he should care so much.”
And the next morning the Cheviotts left Paris.
Chapter Eight
Plans
“Se’l sol mi splende, non curo la luna.”
Italian Proverb.
“
Man proposes, but the weather interposes
,” is a travesty of the well-known old saying, which few people would dispute the truth of. Directly the delay in the Cheviotts’ return home was traceable to other agencies, but indirectly the weather was at the bottom of it after all. The journey to London was accomplished without let or hindrance by the way; the let and the hindrance met the brother and sister on their arrival at Miss Winstanley’s house, where they were to spend the night, in the shape of a letter for one thing, and of a bad sore throat of their hostess for another. And all that was wrong was the fault of the weather! Miss Winstanley had caught cold through getting her feet wet the Sunday before, when the morning had promised well and turned out a base deceiver by noon; and the letter was from the housekeeper at Romary, written in abject distress at the prospect of her master and mistress’s return home sooner than she had expected them. More than distress, indeed; the letter closed an absolute entreaty that they would not come for ten days or so. It was “a terrible upset with the pipes,” she wrote, that was the cause of her difficulty – an upset caused by a complete overhauling of these mysterious modern inventions of household torture, the necessity for which had been revealed by some days of unusually heavy rains, by which “the pipes” had been tested and found wanting, and the Withenden plumbers being no exception to their class, long celebrated as the most civil and procrastinating of “work-people,” had already exceeded by several days the date at which the business was to have been concluded.
“Pipes is things as can’t be hurried,” wrote Mrs Golding, pathetically, “and, as everybody knows, it’s easy getting work-people into a house to getting them out again; but what with the pipes and the men, the house is in that state I cannot take upon myself to say what my feelings would be for you and Miss Alys to see it.”
Now Mrs Golding was an excellent servant; she had been Alys’s nurse, and though her grammar was far from irreproachable, and her general appearance not more than respectable and old-fashioned, she was thoroughly well qualified for the somewhat onerous post to which, on her master’s accession to Romary, he had at once promoted her. But she had two faults – she had feelings and she had nerves.
The letter came at breakfast-time. Alys and her brother were by themselves, Miss Winstanley’s sore throat preventing her coming down as early as usual. Mr Cheviott read it, and tossed it across the table to his sister.
“So provoking!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Alys, “it is tiresome just when you were so particularly anxious to go home. But I see no help for it; when nurse takes to her ‘feelings,’ what can we do? No doubt the house is in a terrible mess, and if we persisted in going down at once, I really believe she would have a fit. If we wait a few days, as she suggests, you may trust her to have everything ready for us; and indeed, Laurence, I was thinking just before nurse’s letter came that it seemed hardly kind of me to go away when aunt is ill and all alone. She will be able to come with us to Romary in a week, she says, if we can wait till then.”
Mr Cheviott did not at once answer.
“It is unlucky,” he said at last; “but, as far as I am concerned, I must not put off going home, and Mrs Golding’s feelings must just make the best of it. But you had better stay here a week or so, Alys, I see that, so you can tell my aunt so.”
“Thank you,” said Alys; “but I wish you could stay too.”
But “No, it is really impossible,” was her brother’s reply, and soon after he went out.
Alys did not see him again till about an hour before dinner-time.
“Is my aunt up yet?” he inquired, as he came in, and even in the tone with which he uttered the two or three words she could perceive a cheerfulness which had not been his in the morning.
“No,” she replied, “but she says she will come into the drawing-room after dinner. She is much better.”
“Ah, well, then, if I am not to see her till after dinner, you must tell her from me that I have taken the liberty of inviting a friend to dinner in her name. Fancy, Alys, almost the first person I ran against this morning was Arthur. He only came up to town yesterday for a few days to settle something about this new farm-house that his head’s running upon – so lucky we met!”
“Yes, very. I shall be so glad to see him,” said Alys, heartily. “But what a pity, Laurence, that you have to go just as he has come. It would have been so nice for all of us to go home together.”
Mr Cheviott hesitated.
“I am not, after all, perfectly certain that I shall go down to Romary quite so soon as I said. Part – in fact, the chief part – of my business was with Arthur, and if he stays in town a few days too, we may all go down to Romary together, as you wish.”
“That’s very nice of you, Laurence. I really think my training is beginning to do you good. Aunt, of course, will be delighted to see Arthur, but I will go and tell her about it now.”
She was leaving the room when her brother called her back. “Remember,” he said, “I haven’t
promised
,” but Alys laughed and shook her head, and ran off.
“I can manage Arthur,” she thought, “if it depends on him. But I am sure there is something Laurence has not told me that has annoyed him lately, though he looks happier to-night – I wonder what it is all about.”
Captain Beverley was a great favourite with Miss Winstanley, whose affection for her nephew – her half-brother’s son – Laurence Cheviott, was considerably tempered with awe. But with Arthur she always felt at ease.
“It is not that I mind being laughed at, now and then,” she would confide to Alys, pathetically, “but with Laurence I really never feel sure if he is laughing at me or not. Of course he is never wanting in real respect, and he is the best of nephews in every way, but I can’t deny that I am frightened of him, and, however
you
laugh at me, my dear, you can’t laugh me out of it. I always have been afraid of Laurence, ever since he was a baby, I believe. He has had such a dreadfully
superior
sort of way of looking at one, and saying, ‘What for does you do that?’”
“What a dreadful baby he must have been! I always tell him he was never snubbed as much as would have been for his good,” Alys would reply, upon which her aunt would observe, with a sigh, that it was “far too late in the day to think of anything of the kind
now
.”
Her spirits rose greatly when she heard that Arthur was coming to dinner.
“I really think I feel well enough to dine with you, after all,” she said to Alys. “It would certainly seem more hospitable, as Arthur is coming, and I don’t like to get the character of exaggerating my ailments,” and Alys agreed with her that if she were “well wrapped up,” the exertion of going down two flights of stairs to the dining-room was not likely to do her any harm.
“But you know, aunt, you mustn’t eat too much at dinner,” said Alys, gravely, “for if you feed a cold you’ll have to starve a fever. A little soup and a spoonful of jelly – anything more might be very dangerous.”
“Naughty girl,
you
are laughing at me now,” remonstrated poor Miss Winstanley, but Alys assured her solely that she was “quite, quite in earnest.”
And the
partie carrée
was a very cheerful one. Laurence seemed more light of heart than he had been for some time; Arthur, whose state of spirits was, to give him his due, seldom such as to cause his friends much anxiety, was even gayer and merrier than usual, almost feverishly so, it seemed to Alys once or twice, and yet again, when she caught his eyes fixed upon her with a sort of appealing anxiety in their expression that she never remembered to have seen in them before, she could have fancied, were such a fancy possible in connection with so light-hearted and thoughtless a being, that he, in his turn, had something on his mind. Could the mantle of Laurence’s recent anxiety have fallen upon him? she asked herself. It seemed so strange to associate anxiety of any kind with Arthur that she tried to dismiss the idea, and told herself that she must have grown morbid from being so much alone with Laurence, and fancying he was vexed or annoyed whenever he looked dull.
“Then it is all nicely settled about our staying in town, and going down to Romary together. It all depends on you, Arthur.”
Captain Beverley looked surprised.
“On
me
!” he exclaimed, “how do you mean? I thought it all depended on Miss Winstanley’s sore throat.”
“Oh! no. Laurence’s staying has nothing to do with aunt. He said he had business with you, but that you could settle it in town as well as at Romary, if you could stay – and so you will stay, won’t you? It would be so much nicer to go down all together.”
Captain Beverley looked increasingly mystified.
“I don’t understand – ” he was beginning, but Mr Cheviott, whose attention had been caught by the sound of his own name, interrupted him.
“It is Alys herself who does not understand,” he said, good-humouredly, but not without a little constraint. “If you had been still at that delightful farm-house of yours, Arthur, I would have joined you there, and talked over these improvements. But that can wait, I dare say, and if you care to go into the financial part of it, we can do that in town as well. You are not in a hurry to go back to your new quarters, are you? You will wait and go back with us to Romary, as Alys wishes, won’t you?” Captain Beverley looked a little surprised, and a little disconcerted. He was not prepared for his cousin’s sudden interest in his improvements at Hathercourt, and hardly understood it, for hitherto Mr Cheviott had looked somewhat coldly on the schemes Arthur was full of, and he was still less prepared to be cross-questioned as to his length of stay in town, which in his own mind he had decided was to be a very short one.
“Thank you,” he said, with a little hesitation. “I should like to go over the plans for the Edge with you very much. But as to my staying in town another week, I really can’t say. I only ran up for a couple of days, and there are lots of things waiting for me to settle about at Hathercourt.”
“You are becoming quite a man of business, I see,” and Alys fancied that Arthur winced a little.
She felt sorry that she had said anything about their plans till she could have seen Arthur alone, for somehow she had managed to cause an uncomfortable feeling – the cheerfulness of the little party seemed to have flown; Laurence grew silent and abstracted; Alys tried nervously to hit upon a safe subject of conversation. Fortune favoured her.
“By-the-bye, Arthur,” she said, suddenly, “have you heard anything about the Brocklehurst ball? When it is to be, I mean. Some one said something about its being earlier than usual, and I shall be rather glad, for it will be less likely to interfere with other things than when it is so near Christmas time.”
Captain Beverley looked up in surprise.
“It is to be in a fortnight – in less than a fortnight, indeed, on the fourth, and to-day is the twenty-third,” he replied. “Did you not know? I supposed you had made all your arrangements.”
“Oh! I am so sorry!” exclaimed Alys. “I had all sorts of plans in my head, and now it will be too late.”
“What will be too late? What are you talking about?” said Mr Cheviott; and when Alys explained, he looked rather ashamed of himself.
“I should have told you, Alys, but I completely forgot about it. I found a letter here last night when we arrived, asking us to go to Cleavelands on the twenty-second, and go to Brocklehurst with a party from there. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
But Alys’s face did not brighten up as he expected.
“I thought you liked the Cleaves so much,” he said.
“Yes, I do. I like young Mrs Cleave very much. It isn’t that. It is only that I had set my heart on going from Romary, and asking nice people to go with us.”
“So we might have done, but for this visit to Paris,” said Mr Cheviott. “But it can’t be