CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FAIRY GODMOTHER.

Elizabeth went upstairs at a run, and found Patty and Eleanor trying to make Mrs. Duff-Scott understand who Paul Brion was, what his father was, and his profession, and his character; how he had never been inside their doors until that afternoon, and how he had at last by mere accident come to be admitted and entertained. And Mrs. Duff-Scott, serene but imperious, was delivering some of her point-blank opinions upon the subject.

"Don't encourage him, my dears--don't encourage him to come again," she was saying as Elizabeth entered the room. "He and his father are two very different people, whatever they may think."

"We cannot help being grateful to him," said Patty sturdily. "He has done so much for us."

"Dear child, that's nonsense. Girls _can't_ be grateful to young men--don't you see? It is out of the question. And now you have got _me_ to do things for you."

"But he helped us when we had no one else."

"Yes, that's all right, of course. No doubt it was a pleasure to him--a privilege--for _him_ to be grateful for rather than you. But--well, Elizabeth knows what I mean"--turning an expressive glance towards the discreet elder sister. Patty's eyes went in the same direction, and Elizabeth answered both of them at once.

"You must not ask us to give up Paul Brion," she said, promptly.

"I don't," said Mrs. Duff-Scott. "I only ask you to keep him in his place. He is not the kind of person to indulge with tea and music, you know--that is what I mean."

"You speak as if you knew something against him," murmured Patty, with heightened colour.

"I know this much, my dear," replied the elder woman, gravely; "he is _a friend of Mrs. Aarons's_."

"And is not Mrs. Aarons--"

"She is very well, in her way. But she likes to have men dangling about her. She means no harm, I am sure," added Mrs. Duff-Scott, who, in the matter of scandal, prided herself on being a non-conductor, "but still it is not nice, you know. And I don't think that her men friends are the kind of friends for you. You don't mind my speaking frankly, my love? I am an old woman, you know, and I have had a great deal of experience."

She was assured that they did not mind it, but were, on the contrary, indebted to her for her good advice. And the subject of Paul Brion was dropped. Patty was effectually silenced by that unexpected reference to Mrs. Aarons, and by the rush of recollections, embracing him and her together, which suddenly gave form and colour to the horrible idea of him as a victim to a married woman's fascinations. She turned away abruptly, with a painful blush that not only crimsoned her from throat to temples, but seemed to make her tingle to her toes; and, like the headlong and pitiless young zealot that she was, determined to thrust him out for ever from the sacred precincts of her regard. Mrs. Duff-Scott was satisfied too. She was always sure of her own power to speak plainly without giving offence, and she found it absolutely necessary to protect these ingenuous maidens from their own ignorance. Needless to say that, since she had adopted them into her social circle, she had laid plans for their ultimate settlement therein. In her impulsive benevolence she had even gone the length of marking down the three husbands whom she considered respectively appropriate to the requirements of the case, and promised herself a great deal of interest and pleasure in the vicarious pursuit of them through the ensuing season. Wherefore she was much relieved to have come across this obscure writer for the press, and to have had the good chance, at the outset of her campaign, to counteract his possibly antagonistic influence. She knew her girls quite well enough to make sure that her hint would take its full effect.

She leaned back in her chair comfortably, and drew off her gloves, while they put fresh tea in the teapot, and cut her thin shavings of bread and butter; and she sat with them until six o'clock, gossiping pleasantly. After giving them a history of the morning's ceremonies, as witnessed by the Government's invited guests inside the Exhibition building, she launched into hospitable schemes for their enjoyment of the gay time that had set in. "Now that I am come back," she said, "I shall take care that you shall go out and see everything there is to be seen. You have never had such a chance to learn something of the world, and I can't allow you to neglect it."

"Dear Mrs. Duff-Scott," said Elizabeth, "we have already been indulging ourselves too much, I am afraid. We have done no reading--at least none worth doing--for days. We are getting all behind-hand. The whole of yesterday and all this morning--"

"What did you do this morning?" Mrs. Duff-Scott interrupted quickly.

They gave her a sketch of their adventures, merely suppressing the incident of the elder sister's encounter with the mysterious person whom the younger ones had begun to style "Elizabeth's young man"--though why they suppressed that none of them could have explained.

"Very well," was her comment upon the little narrative, which told her far more than it told them. "That shows you that I am right. There are a great many things for you to learn that all the books in the Public Library could not teach you. Take my advice, and give up literary studies for a little while. Give them up altogether, and come and learn what the world and your fellow-creatures are made of. Make a school of the Exhibition while it lasts, and let me give you lessons in--a--what shall I call it--social science?--the study of human nature?"

Nothing could be more charming than to have lessons from her, they told her; and they had intended to go to school to the Exhibition as often as they could. But--but their literary studies were their equipment for the larger and fuller life that they looked forward to in the great world beyond the seas. Perhaps she did not understand that?

"I understand this, my dears," the matron replied, with energy. "There is no greater mistake in life than to sacrifice the substance of the present for the shadow of the future. We most of us do it--until we get old--and then we look back to see how foolish and wasteful we have been, and that is not much comfort to us. What we've got, we've got; what we are going to have nobody can tell. Lay in all the store you can, of course--take all reasonable precautions to insure as satisfactory a future as possible--but don't forget that the Present is the great time, the most important stage of your existence, no matter what your circumstances may be."

The girls listened to her thoughtfully, allowing that she might be right, but suspending their judgment in the matter. They were all too young to be convinced by another person's experience.

"You let Europe take care of itself for a bit," their friend proceeded, "and come out and see what Australia in holiday time is like, and what the fleeting hour will give you. I will fetch you to-morrow for a long day at the Exhibition to begin with, and then I'll--I'll--" She broke off and looked from one to another with an unwonted and surprising embarrassment, and then went on impetuously.

"My dears, I don't know how to put it so as not to hurt or burden you, but you won't misunderstand me if I express myself awkwardly--you won't have any of that absurd conventional pride about not being under obligations--it is a selfish feeling, a want of trust and true generosity, when it is the case of a friend who--" She stammered and hesitated, this self-possessed empress of a woman, and was obviously at a loss for words wherein to give her meaning. Elizabeth, seeing what it was that she wanted to say, sank on her knees before her, and took her hands and kissed them. But over her sister's bent head Patty stood up stiffly, with a burning colour in her face. Mrs. Duff-Scott, absently fondling Elizabeth, addressed herself to Patty when she spoke again.

"As an ordinary rule," she said, "one should not accept things from another who is not a relation--I know that. _Not_ because it is improper--it ought to be the most proper thing in the world for people to help each other--but because in so many cases it can never happen without bitter mortifications afterwards. People are so--so superficial? But I--Patty, dear, I am an old woman, and I have a great deal of money, and I have no children; and I have never been able to fill the great gap where the children should be with music and china, or any interest of that sort. And you are alone in the world, and I have taken a fancy to you--I have grown _fond_ of you--and I have made a little plan for having you about me, to be a sort of adopted daughters for whom I could feel free to do little motherly things in return for your love and confidence in me. You will indulge me, and let me have my way, won't you? It will be doing more for me, I am sure, than I could do for you."

"O no--no--_no!_" said Patty, with a deep breath, but stretching her hands with deprecating tenderness towards their guest. "You would do everything for us, and we _could_ do nothing for you. You would overwhelm us! And not only that; perhaps--perhaps, by-and-bye, you would not care about us so much as you do now--we might want to do something that you didn't like, something we felt ourselves _obliged_ to do, however much you disliked it--and if you got vexed with us, or tired of us--oh, think what that would be! Think how you would regret that you had--had--made us seem to belong to you. And how we should hate ourselves."

She looked at Mrs. Duff-Scott with a world of ardent apology in her eyes, before which the matron's fell, discouraged and displeased.

"You make me feel that I am an impulsive and romantic girl, and that _you_ are the wise old woman of the world," she said with a proud sigh.

But at this, Patty, pierced to the heart, flung her arms round Mrs. Duff-Scott's neck, and crushed the most beautiful bonnet in Melbourne remorselessly out of shape against her young breast. That settled the question, for all practical purposes. Mrs. Duff-Scott went home at six o'clock, feeling that she had achieved her purpose, and entered into some of the dear privileges of maternity. It was more delightful than any "find" of old china. She did not go to sleep until she had talked both her husband and herself into a headache with her numerous plans for the welfare of her _protégées_, and until she had designed down to the smallest detail the most becoming costumes she could think of for them to wear, when she took them with her to the Cup.