"We might sew."

"Ha! I have it!" cried Peggy dramatically. "We'll dress-make! What a joke! We'll each make a blouse, and wear them at dinner one evening.

It will be delightful. Every girl ought to be able to make her own clothes, and it's so simple, so easy."

"Is it?" Eunice arched her brows in surprise. "Have you ever tried?"

"Not exactly, but they were always doing it at the vicarage, and I used to help. I always drew the designs, and criticised the things when they were done. It's quite easy. You get a pattern, pin it to the stuff, cut it out, run it up, and there you are."

"And you really think I could manage?"

"Of course you could. We will work together, and I'll help you. That's to say, if you would like to try."

"Oh, I should indeed. Fancy wearing something I had made myself! I'd be so proud. I'll have mine very, very simple, as plain as possible."

"I sha'n't! Mine shall be elaborate and fussy and mysterious--one of those things in which you cannot see any fastenings, or imagine how on earth the owner gets in or out. There's a model in this week's _Queen_ which will be just the thing, and I have a piece of flowered pink silk upstairs which will do for you as well as for me. It is a remnant which I bought in Paris. I have a mania for remnants. I always think they will come in usefully, but somehow they don't. This will be the exception, however, and it will be nice to be alike!"

"Thank you so much; but you won't tell any one what we are going to do, will you? We had better not say anything yet, in case we don't succeed."

"Don't succeed, indeed! Don't let me hear such words, my dear, I beg!

To imagine failure is to invite defeat!" Peggy shook her head with her most copy-book air. "We shall succeed, and therefore it would be selfish to keep our plans to ourselves. It will be quite an excitement in prospect. Let me see: to-day is Tuesday. How would it be if we said Sat.u.r.day night?"

"Too soon! Too soon! I should say a week at the very soonest. We can't manage in less."

"Oh yes, we can if we try. We will give up our mornings to work, and the afternoons to pleasure. There is very little making in a blouse-- three seams, and the sleeves, that's all! Four days are quite enough; besides, it is really five, for we will begin this morning."

"Now? At once? But I haven't thought, I haven't planned, nothing is ready! Surely it would be wise to wait, and think it over first?"

But impetuous Peggy could not be brought to acknowledge that procrastination could ever be wise. If she had had her way, she would have been hard at work hacking out her blouse within ten minutes of its first suggestion; but fortunately for all concerned Arthur appeared upon the scene at this minute, and put down his foot at the mention of sewing.

"Not if I know it, on a beautiful summer afternoon! Leave that until it rains, or I don't need your society. Now I do. I want you to come over to the vicarage with me, while I pay my congratulations to the bride.

I've got an offering for her too. Something I brought from town, and I want you to carry it for me."

"So likely, isn't it?" sniffed Peggy scornfully. "It shall never be said of me that I trained my brother so badly that I carried even an umbrella in his company! What is it, Arthur? Do tell us? What have you got?"

But Arthur refused to tell. He slung the box on the crook of his stick, and led the way across the fields, smiling enigmatically at the girls'

inquiries, but vouchsafing no clue to satisfy their curiosity. There was evidently some mystery afoot, and the expectation of its unravelment gave a spice of excitement to the coming visit. The box contained something nice; Peggy felt sure of that, for when Arthur gave a present he gave something worth having. How pleased Esther would be, and how embarra.s.sed! What fun it would be to witness the presentation, and help out her acknowledgments by appropriate cheers and interjections!

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

When the vicarage was reached a reconnoitre round the garden discovered the murmur of voices in the schoolroom, and marshalled by Arthur the three visitors crept silently forward until they were close upon the window, when Eunice hung modestly in the rear, while her companions flattened their faces against the panes. A shriek of dismay sounded from within, as Mellicent dropped a work-basket on the floor and buried her face in her hands, under the conviction that the house was besieged by wild Indians, and the advance party close upon her. A smaller shriek echoed from the further end of the room where Esther stood, being pinned up in a calico lining by the hands of the local dressmaker, and the smallest shriek of all came from the region of the sewing-machine, where Mrs Asplin let the treadle work up and down by itself, and clasped her heart instead of the seam. Esther fled precipitately behind a screen, Mellicent flopped on a chair, and Mrs Asplin cried loudly:

"Go away, go away. Come in, dear boy! Is it really you? What in the world do you mean by startling us like this?"

"I've told you before, Arthur Saville, that it drives me crazy when people come suddenly glaring in through the window! You'll kill me some, day, or turn me into a jibbering idiot, and _then_ you'll be sorry! Front doors are made to come in by, 'specially--especially when visitors are with you!" cried Mellicent severely, and at this Mrs Asplin turned towards Eunice with her sunny, welcoming smile.

"You are Miss Rollo, aren't you, dear? This bad boy had no business to bring you in here, but I've heard of you so often from Mellicent that you don't seem like a stranger. We are hard at work preparing for the wedding, so you must excuse the muddle. We are delighted to see you!"

"Oh, Eunice won't mind. She has heard so much about you too, mater, that she would have been quite disappointed to have found you sitting in the drawing-room like any ordinary, commonplace person. Sorry I startled you! I wouldn't make you jibber for the world, Chubby, so I'll knock next time, to let you know I'm coming. But where's the bride?

Where's the bride? Is she coming out from behind that screen, or have I to go and fetch her?"

At that Esther came forth quickly enough, a blue jacket fastened over the calico lining, and her cheeks aglow with blushes, for here was a double embarra.s.sment--to face Arthur's banter for the first time since her engagement, and to be introduced to the great Miss Rollo in a dressing-jacket! "The great Miss Rollo," however, turned out to be a simple-looking girl, who looked much more afraid of her companions than her companions were of her, while when she came face to face with Arthur he seemed suddenly sobered, and uttered his congratulations in quite a quiet, earnest voice. Was this Esther? he was asking himself--this rosy, smiling girl the sober, long-visaged Esther who had seemed so far removed from youthful romance? Love was indeed a mighty force, if it could bring about such a change as this--the right sort of love--that is to say, unselfish, enn.o.bling, a love which has no thought for itself, but lives in the happiness of another. As Arthur looked at his old friend, and noted the softening of eye and lip, the new sweetness of expression, there rose before his imagination another face, which for many years had seemed to him the most beautiful in the world, but which now appeared suddenly hard and loveless. He never realised the fact for himself, but it was really in this moment of meeting with Esther in the flush of her happiness that the last link was snapped in the chain which had bound him to Rosalind Darcy.

The dream seemed to him to have lasted quite a long time, but in reality the pause was but of a moment's duration, and had been abundantly filled by Mellicent, who having spied Arthur's parcel was consumed with curiosity to discover its contents.

"What's in the box?" she cried with the directness for which she was celebrated, and Arthur picked up his parcel, and balanced it in his hands with a roguish glance in the bride's direction.

"Something for Esther, for the bottom drawer."

"The bottom drawer! What _are_ you talking about?"

"Every engaged young woman has a bottom drawer! It's part of the performance, and you can't be properly engaged without it. It's the bottom drawer of the wardrobe generally, and all sorts of things live in it--everything and anything that she can lay hands on, to put aside for the new house. Fancy work, pictures, pottery, Christmas presents, and bazaar gleanings--in they go, and when she has friends to tea they sit in rows on the floor, and she undoes the wrapping, and they groan with envy, and cry, 'How sweet! How perfectly sweet! Won't it look sweet in the drawing-room!'"

"You seem to know a great deal about it!"

"I do! I've heard about it scores of times, and of course I knew that Esther would have a bottom drawer like the rest."

"You were mistaken then! Esther has nothing of the sort. I am to be engaged such a short time, Arthur, that I have had no leisure to think of such things. In any case, I don't think it is much in my line."

"Well, you needn't be so superior! If you haven't got a bottom drawer, you have the next thing to it. Who went over the house the very day she came home, grabbing all the things that belonged to her, and taking them up to her room?" cried Mellicent the irrepressible. "Who took the little blue jug off my mantelpiece? Who took the bra.s.s candlestick from the hall? Who took the pictures from the schoolroom? Who took the toilet-cover that she said I might have, and left me with nothing but two horrid mats? You _did_, you know you did, and it is not a bit of use giving yourself airs!"

Evidently not. Esther hung her head, and admitted the impeachment.

Well, she _had_ thought that it would be nice to have her own things--it _did_ seem wise to collect them at once, before she grew too busy! It was very, very kind of Arthur, and she was truly grateful. Should she open the parcel now?

"Of course you must! Your first present! It is quite an event, and just what I should have expected, that it should come from Arthur. Dear lad, always so thoughtful!" murmured Mrs Asplin fondly. "Open it on the table, and we will sit round and watch. Come, Miss Rollo, sit by me. Perhaps you are in the secret already, and know what it is?"

"No, we don't know. We inquired, but he wouldn't tell us anything about it."

"But it's probably salt-cellars! Men have so little imagination. They always take refuge in salt-cellars!"

This from Peggy, while Esther looked polite and murmured:

"Most useful, I'm sure. Nothing more so!" and Mellicent grimaced vigorously.

"Uninteresting, I call it! Now joolery is far nicer. I wish it were joolery, but I'm afraid it's too big. Open it, do! Cut the string, and don't fumble all day at one knot! The professor will buy you some more, if you ask him nicely."

"Mellicent!" cried Esther deeply; but she cut the string as desired, laid back the wrappings, and took up a small tissue paper parcel.

"Just a small trifle. Something useful for the bottom drawer!" murmured Arthur modestly, and the next moment the parcel fell on the table with a crash, while every one shrieked in chorus. Something had gone off with a bang, something fell out of its wrappings and clattered wood against wood. A mouse-trap! A little, penny mouse-trap of plainest, commonest description! They could hardly believe their eyes--could do nothing but exclaim, gasp, and upbraid at one and the same moment.

"You _said_ it was a wedding present!"

"I never did. It was you who said that. I said 'something useful for the bottom drawer.' I hope, dear Esther, that you may find it very, very useful."

"You mean creature! I hope it may be nothing of the kind; I might have known it was a trick. Now, what is in the other parcels? because if there are any more Jack-in-the-box springs, I prefer not to open them.

One shock of that kind is quite enough."