"SUCH NICE-LOOKING PEOPLE."
"Yes," said my father, "there is no doubt about it; it is the best thing
to do. So that is decided."
The "yes" was no expression of agreement with any one but himself. It
was simply the emphatic reiteration of the decision he had already
arrived at.
He folded up the letter he had been reading, and replaced it carefully
and methodically in its envelope, then glanced round the breakfast-table
with the slightly defiant, slightly deprecating, yet nevertheless wholly
good-tempered air which we all knew well--_so_ well that not one of us
would have dreamt of wasting time or energy by beating his or her wings
against the bars of the dear man's resolute determination.
Some faces fell a little, others expressed philosophic resignation, one
or two, perhaps, a kind of subdued exhilaration; but no one said
anything except mother, who replied quietly, as was her wont--
"Very well; I daresay you are right."
Then ensued a little talk as to the details of the proposal, or rather
decision, just announced, and five minutes later the family group had
dispersed.
The one face on which something more than resignation had been
distinctly legible was that of my youngest brother, Moore.
He was only fourteen, an age at which--for boy nature especially--it
does not take much provocation to get up one's spirits to some pitch of
agreeable excitement and expectancy. He ran after me as I left the
dining-room, and followed me down the long cold stone passage leading to
what he and my other brothers and I myself considered our own quarters.
Then, as he overtook me, he slipped his hand through my arm.
"Do you mind, Reggie?" he said in a tone of some deprecation of his own
satisfaction. "I think you might be a _little_ pleased--any way for my
sake. It's awfully jolly for _me_."
"Then I will be pleased, really pleased, my poor old Othello," I
replied, heartily, I think. For Moore was our baby and pet, and we
thought him irresistible. He was so pretty--everybody said that he, and
not I, should have been the girl, if only one girl there was to be among
us. He was fair-haired and fair-complexioned, yet not insipid looking,
for his eyes were deeply blue, or at least appeared so, thanks to their
bordering of dark eyelashes. "Irish eyes," though in other respects
Moore's beauty was decidedly of the Saxon type. He had a right to his
Irish eyes, as the rest of us to our Irish locks and browner skin. For
Irish we were, _really_ so as to ancestry, and in many particulars as to
inherited character, though none of us, not even my parents since their
childhood, had ever been in Ireland.
Moore's face beamed, and lost its half-apologetic expression.
"Good old Reggie," he said. "Then I'll let myself be jolly right out,
however Terry and Horry and Ger grumble at mother and you going away
before the holidays are over," and he showed signs of whooping or
hurrahing or something of the kind, which I hastened to nip in the bud.
"You had better be quiet about it, however you feel," I said warningly,
"or father will begin to think you don't need change and rest, and all
that kind of thing, after all."
"No, he won't," the boy replied confidently. "He never goes back once
he's settled a thing. You know he never does, Reggie. Sometimes," and
here certain reminiscences momentarily sobered his expression,
"sometimes I wish he would--"
"And," I continued, "you'd better not let Terence and Gerald hear you
talk of holidays. They don't own to anything but vacations now."
"That's just because they're not really grown-up," said Moore shrewdly;
"at least not out in the world. Look at Jocelyn now--he might give
himself airs. But he always talks of his holidays when he comes home.
He very seldom even calls it `leave,' though he is--how old is he now,
Rex? Twenty-five? Yes--eleven years older than I."
"We're all getting very old," I said. "I shall be eighteen next spring.
Can you believe it? And there's only Horace between you and me. We
shall all be grown-up before we know where we are, Moore." And I sighed
as I said it. I did not want to be grown-up or to come out. Life
suited me very well indeed just as it was, especially since we had left
off going abroad every winter, and part of the summer too, sometimes,
for mother's health. She had been so much stronger of late years, that
we had been able to settle down in our own home, which I loved better
than any place in the world, both for its own sake and because here I
could enjoy to the full the society of my five brothers whenever
"holidays" or vacations or leaves allowed them to be with us. So
perhaps it is not to be wondered at that my father's breakfast-table
fiat was something of a disappointment to me, though to many girls of my
age it would have been received with delight. For it was the
announcement of his decision that we were to set out on our travels
again, to spend the next few months at least, out of England, at some
German baths in the first place, and later on at one of the usual winter
resorts for invalids.
Mother had flagged of late, or at least father thought so, and Moore, on
the eve of public school life and always delicate, had not mended
matters by catching whooping-cough at his preparatory school and having
it badly. It would never do for him to start on his new career "below
par," said my father; better delay it for a few months than have him
break down and be sent home again with everything interrupted; in which
argument no doubt there was great common-sense.
"Yes," I went on, "we shall all be grown-up in no time, and then
dreadful things will happen. You and Horry will go off goodness knows
where, and I shall be left alone. You are my last rose of summer,
Moore. Not that I ever cared as much for Terence and Gerald as for you
and Horace as companions. Terry has always been a bit of a prig, and
Gerald too mad about soldiering, even though he doesn't find it easy to
pass his examinations. Horace and you are my special brothers, aren't
you, Othello?"
Moore squeezed my arm in token of affection. He was like a girl in many
of his ways as well as in his looks--demonstrative and caressing, yet
brave as a lion and essentially manly.
"You'll have _me_ for ages yet," he said consolingly, "at least for
holidays; and perhaps the dreadful things won't all be on the side of us
boys. You'll be going and getting married, Reggie, once you're
grown-up. Oh, _how_ I shall hate your husband!"