Was this “little Fanny?” this tall, graceful creature of seventeen,
the little thing who bade him good-by at Mrs. Chubb’s door, ten years
since, with her pinafore stuffed in the corner of her eye? “Little
Fanny,” with that queenly presence? Cousin John almost felt as if he
ought to ask leave to touch her hand; ah--she is the same little Fanny
after all--frank, guileless, and free-hearted. She flies into his arms,
puts up her rosy lips for a kiss, and says “_Dear_ Cousin John.”
“God bless you,” was all he could find voice to say, for in truth, she
was Mary’s own self.
Yes--Fanny was very lovely, with those rippling waves of silken hair,
and the light and shadow, flitting like summer clouds over her speaking
face. Cousin John held her off at arm’s length. Yes, she was very
lovely. “How much she had changed!”
“And you, too,” said Fanny, seating herself beside him. “You look so
much better; the stoop in your shoulders is quite gone; you are bronzed
a little, but all the better for that.”
“Thank you,” said Cousin John, “more especially as I could not help
it, not even to please ‘little Fanny.’”
“Ah--but I am no longer _little_ Fanny,” she said, blushing slightly.
“I have crammed a great many books into my head since I saw you, and
done considerable thinking beside.”
“And what has your thinking all amounted to?” asked Cousin John, half
playfully, half seriously.
“Just to this--that you are the very best cousin in the world, and
that I never can repay you for all you have been to the poor, little
friendless orphan,” said Fanny, with brimming eyes.
“God bless you,” said Cousin John. “I am more than repaid in these
last ten minutes.”
Hours flew like seconds, while Percy narrated his adventures by sea
and land, and listened to Fanny’s account of herself; the old duenna,
meanwhile, walking uneasily up and down the hall, occasionally making an
errand into the sitting-room, and muttering to herself as she went out,
that she had heard before of boarding-school “cousins,” and that he was
altogether too handsome a man to be allowed such a long _tête-à-tête_
with Miss Fanny; and so she reported at head-quarters, but the Principal
being just then unfortunately engaged in examining a new French teacher,
who had applied for employment, could not give the affair the attention
Miss Miffit insisted upon.
Mr. Thurston Grey, too, was on the anxious seat; for the mischievous
Kate had informed him “that Fanny was holding a protracted meeting in
the best parlor, with the handsomest man she ever saw.”
Nothing like a rival to precipitate matters! The declaration which had
so long been trembling on Mr. Grey’s lips, found its way into a
billet-doux, and was forwarded to Fanny that very night, and presented
by Kate in the presence of Cousin John, “to test,” as she said, “the
quality of his _cousin_-ship.”
Cousin John was not jealous of “little Fanny!” how absurd! Little
Fanny! whom he had carried in his arms, who had slept on his breast. In
fact he laughed quite merrily at the idea, louder than was at all
necessary to convince himself of the nonsense of the thing, when he read
Mr. Grey’s proposal; (for Fanny had no secrets from “Cousin John.”) True
he wound up his watch twice that morning, and put on odd stockings, and
found it quite impossible to decide which of his cravats he should wear
that day, and looked in the glass very attentively for some time, and
forgot to smoke, but he wasn’t _jealous_ of little Fanny. Of course he
wasn’t!