CHAPTER XXX.

HUGH'S PARTING GIFT.

A few afternoons later Honor and Molly are both seated at work under the weeping ash, but the weather being hotter than ever they have retired to the very back of the natural arbour which the drooping boughs form. Of course they have the advantage of being able to see all that goes on outside, while quite invisible themselves.

They are talking on the usual inexhaustible subject of the present time, namely, their future brother-in-law, Mr. Lancelot Ferrars, who has been down, and having had a mysterious talk with Mrs. Merivale in the drawing-room, has taken early dinner (not cold mutton) with them in quite a brotherly sort of fashion. After dinner he had been introduced to the studio, as being a place likely to interest him. Then after a stroll round the garden, and an early cup of tea insisted upon by Molly, he had gone off to the station to catch the next train back to town.

Altogether they are very pleased with their new relative in perspective, and are never tired of discussing his merits, either real or imaginary.

"He looks as if he had a little spice of temper in his composition," says Molly, while hunting for her scissors. "I saw it in his eyes."

"Well, I don't like him any the less for that," replies Honor, "so long as he knows how to control it. He looks as if he was accustomed to having his own way too, and--well, as if he wouldn't stand any nonsense from anybody."

"All the better for Doris," says Molly sagely. "She wants keeping in order, you know, and he will do it. I don't mean to imply that he will beat her, or anything of that sort, Honor; but, it is as you say, I am sure he would stand no nonsense from anyone. And quite right, too. I hate people without a will of their own. Why, there's a man going up the drive to the front door!"

"Dear me, you don't say so. Probably it is the baker," and Honor goes on with her work serenely.

"Nonsense, Honor!" cries Molly, peering excitedly through the close branches. "The baker goes to the backdoor, too. It's a gentleman--a _gentleman_, I tell you. Come here and look!"

At this startling announcement Honor rises and looks over Molly's shoulder.

"I believe it is Hugh," she says; "only somehow he looks so much older. How long is it since we have seen him, Molly?"

"I saw him about a year ago; but I expect it is longer since you did. It was while I was in London with Mrs. Horton. Good gracious, Honor, it _is_ Hugh, and he's got a moustache!"

This remark is called forth by the fact of the visitor having turned round on reaching the steps, and given an inquiring glance round the garden, as if in search of someone.

"O, thank goodness, Mary is answering the bell; not but what Hugh is used to Becky's shortcomings. Now he will be shown into the drawing-room in style. I hope mother isn't asleep on the sofa."

"Come along, Molly," cries Honor, preparing to leave the arbour. "We need not wait to have his name brought to us."

But Molly shows distinct signs of cowardice as they approach the drawing-room together, and as Honor actually opens the door and enters, she hangs back, and peeps curiously at Hugh from behind her sister.

"Why, Molly, have you forgotten me? Don't you know me?" he says, taking her two hands in his, and looking down into her fair flushed face.

Molly laughs.

"You _have_ changed," she says a little shyly, "and if we hadn't watched you all the time you were walking up to the door, I don't know that I _should_ have known you in this half light."

"Ah," says Honor, "you little thought we were in our 'leafy retreat,' as we used to call it. I expect you would have found your way to us there if you had."

"I am very sure I should," answers Hugh, going over to the window. "Shall I draw up the blinds, Mrs. Merivale? the sun is off the room now."

"O, _don't_!" cries Molly, who seems to be seized with an unaccountable fit of shyness. "I do hate a light room; so does mother."

Mrs. Merivale, however, happens to prefer a little light on this occasion, now that the sun is going down, and says in the same breath with Molly, "Yes, do please, Hugh."

So, with a little deprecating look towards Molly, up go the blinds and in comes the light.

Molly ensconces herself in a corner behind her mother, and allowing nearly all the conversation to fall on the others, sits very still, making silent observations of the alterations in her old playmate.

It turns out that Hugh is under orders to sail for Egypt a good deal sooner than he expected, and as his time is much taken up in dodging about at the Horse-guards, he finds he will not probably have the opportunity of coming down again before leaving for good. He has come, therefore, with the intention of staying the evening, if they will have him.

Honor, on hearing this, immediately becomes exercised in her mind as to the state of the larder, and making a sign to Molly to follow her, she quietly leaves the room.

So Mrs. Merivale and Hugh sit chatting together while the two girls consult with Mary about the arrangement of a nice little supper. It must here be explained that with their improved position the Merivales have engaged a more capable servant, it being necessary to have someone who can do without the perpetual looking after and directing which Becky, even in her brightest moments, always required--both Honor's and Molly's time being taken up now with other than domestic matters. Becky, however, still remains, greatly to her delight, she having become much attached to "missus" and the young ladies. She is useful in the rougher work of the house, all rights as to swilling the backyard and blacking boots being reserved by her. Thus the delinquency of the fire, and, indeed, others which have been almost beyond endurance sometimes, are not so constantly brought before the family now. Mary is a good-natured girl, and as a rule the two get on very well, unless the kitchen fire is let out. Then, her face is a sight to see.

Presently Hugh comes out, and finding his way to the kitchen as of old, tells the girls he is going to run up to see the Mr. Talboys between tea and supper. Perhaps Molly will go with him?

But Molly, perverse to the last, remembers some most important business she has to do, and says "no."

Hugh turns away, looking hurt, as well he may, and Honor, after frowning her displeasure at her younger sister, follows him out.

"I would go with you myself, Hugh, but I have a little bit of painting which I really _must_ do before the light goes. I didn't know," she adds, "that Molly had anything very important to do; but I suppose she knows her own business best."

But Molly, who does not wait to hear her sister's opinions on the subject, beats a retreat out to the back-yard, nominally to look after the fowls.

When Hugh has gone to the Rosery, and she joins her mother and Honor in the drawing-room, they both fall upon her, metaphorically speaking, and scold her roundly for what they call her unkindness and vanity. Hard words these for poor Molly to hear as she stands abashed before them, especially coming from either her mother or Honor, who are both so gentle with her always.

"It is not as if you were a child now," says Mrs. Merivale in a vexed tone of voice. "What might have passed for fun two or three years ago amounts to rudeness in a girl of your age. And how you can like to be unkind--yes, unkind, Molly,--I really do not know. What made you refuse to walk up to the Rosery with Hugh? You are certainly his favourite of all the girls" (here she tries to speak carelessly), "and when he is going away, goodness knows how far and for how long, you must needs be almost uncivil to him. Now, I must beg, Molly, that you do your best to make Hugh's last evening here a happy one. I don't suppose he is in very good spirits, poor fellow! and we don't want to put him into worse. Do you hear me? Very well. Come here and give me a kiss. Now, you can run away if you like."

Molly, who is almost on the verge of tears, is glad to avail herself of this permission. Catching up her large white garden hat she returns to the ash, with the intention of getting her work, which she has left there in a state of chaos.

Sitting down, however, she begins thinking, and presently a tear drops on her hands, which are lying loosely clasped in her lap. Others seeming likely to follow, she is just raising her hand to brush them away, when at a little distance she, hears, in Hugh's fine tenor, the old familiar song he is so fond of singing:

"O, Molly Bawn, why leave me pining, All lonely waiting here for you, While stars above are brightly shining, Because they've nothing else to do!"

In another moment he has caught sight of her white dress through the branches of the tree, and going quickly round to the entrance, he goes in and sits down by her side.

"Why, Molly! In the dumps?" he says kindly.

Molly shakes her head, but says nothing, and there is a long pause.

"I wish you could have found time to go up to the Rosery with me, Molly," Hugh says at length. "It was so cool and pleasant. I think it would have done you good after the hot day."

A little gasping kind of sigh, then, "I _could_ have gone if I had chosen," says truthful Molly. "It was all humbug about the business."

Hugh looks at her a little curiously.

"Why didn't you come then?" he asks.

"I don't know," says Molly, and again there is silence.

"And so you think I have changed so much?" queries Hugh presently.

"Yes, that is just it," replies Molly more briskly. "You _do_ seem to have become so--so _different_ somehow."

"In what lies the difference, Molly?"

"Well, I hardly know, Hugh--and yet I _do_ know; only I don't like to say."

"Say away," he says, leaning back in his chair and laughing. "_I_ won't mind."

"O, it is nothing disparaging," and Molly takes her hat off and swings it round. "The fact is you seem so--so dreadfully _old_ now to what you were. Do you know," she adds, sinking her voice and nodding in her old way, "I felt quite afraid of you when I came into the drawing-room and peeped at you from behind Honor; I did indeed. Then there was your moustache, too. It makes you look quite severe, and I could not help wondering how I ever had the face to lecture and blow you up as I did in the old days. But you seemed so boyish then to what you do now. The alteration quite startled me at first."

Hugh laughs.

"I am awfully sorry, Molly. But you didn't expect me to go on being boyish to the end of my days, did you? You see, I have knocked about the world a little now: I don't mean as to distance; that has to come," he adds with a little sigh. "But since I joined my regiment I have, of course, been thrown much more into the society of men--men much older than myself mostly, and I suppose the life altogether does change a fellow. My mother says the same as you, Molly. But notwithstanding the ferocious appearance that my moustache gives me generally," he goes on after a pause, "I assure you I am just the same in heart as ever. Just the same old playmate and companion if you will let me be, and as ready and anxious for lectures and scoldings from my little mentor as ever; so I hope she will not throw me over as a bad job, now that I am no longer a _boy_. Now, do you know, I think _I_ have more reason to complain of the change in _you_, Molly, of the two. What with your long frocks and your turned-up hair, and--oh, lots of things, really you are quite alarming to contemplate. You have grown so tall, too; why, I don't believe I am a head taller than you now, and I was a good deal more, you know."

"I am _sure_ you are not," returns Molly promptly, "Stand up and let us see."

Standing back to back, it is somewhat difficult to decide, so it is agreed that Honor shall settle the point later.

When they have done laughing they sit down again, Hugh remarking, "'Fair play is a jewel,' you know, and if you grow up, as you call it, I don't see why I should not too. What pretty work that is, Molly! Do you know, my slippers are beginning to wear out."

"Are they? Well, I'll see if I can find an old pair of somebody's for you. Do you think mine would fit you?" and Molly holds out her foot with a neat little morocco slipper on it.

"Too large, by a long way!" he mutters, shaking his head. Then there is silence for a few minutes, and Molly puts exactly five stitches into her work.

"Will you wear this as a little keepsake, Molly, and think of me sometimes when you look at it?"

"This" is a beautiful though simple pearl ring, which Hugh has put into her lap.

"O, how beautiful!" exclaims the girl, her eyes lighting with pleasure. "But--I don't know whether mother would care for me to wear it, Hugh."

"I have asked her, Molly, and she has no objection at all. It is only a keepsake, you know."

Hugh does not add that he has been asking Mrs. Merivale's permission to place a more important ring on her daughter's finger on his return from Egypt, provided that young lady raises no objections herself. Molly knows naught of this, however, and proceeds to place the ring on the third finger of her right hand with elaborate propriety, turning it round, and looking admiringly on the shimmering pearls, for they are fine ones, and being set with diamond dust, are shown to advantage.

"It is kind of you, Hugh; but I did not want anything to remember you by. I don't think I should have forgotten you. They are _lovely_ pearls, and I am so fond of pearls, too."

The young fellow looks pleased.

"Don't you think it would look nicer on the other hand, Molly? I think rings look awkward somehow on the right."

"Well, it hurts awfully if anyone squeezes one's hand when shaking it. Now, who was it who used to make me scream nearly, rings or no rings? Oh, I know! poor old Sir Peter Beresford. You know, I suppose, that he died last year?"

"Yes, poor old fellow! What a nice old man he was. Here, let me put it on for you, Molly. There! it looks ever so much nicer on that finger. You _will_ think of me and write regularly too, won't you, dear?"

"Yes," says Molly hastily; but she looks rather frightened, and Hugh hastens to change the subject.

"We are quits now," he says. "I have still got the ring you gave me!"

"The ring I gave you!" exclaims Molly staring.

"Yes, the ring you gave me. It is no use your pretending that you hav'n't given me one, because here it is!" and from a compartment of his pocketbook, in which he has been industriously hunting, he takes out and holds up a gorgeous arrangement of blue and white beads, strung on horse-hair--a present which Molly now remembers having made him with great solemnity when she was about ten years old.

"You can't say another word now, Molly," he says laughing.

"Diamonds and sapphires!" says Molly taking this valuable ring in her hand, "my favourite mixture; but how very absurd of you to keep it all this time, Hugh."

"Not at all. I assure you I value it very much," and he returns it to his pocket-book with great care.

"I call it highly ridiculous. But now I am going round to my roses, and you may come too if you like. I want to cut some for the table."

"I am glad you are getting over some of your terror of me," laughs Hugh following her.

"The brothers Talboys tell me you are quite a little witch with your roses; they say you have brought them to such perfection."

"I believe I _do_ know something about them," answers Molly.

"Becky!" she calls, catching sight of that damsel through the kitchen window, "bring out the large blue china bowl and put it on the front steps. Where no one will step into it; _not_ in the middle. And fill it with water, please. Do you know," she says as she catches up Hugh again, "that Becky is perfectly overcome by the sight of your moustache. I do hope she won't smash the bowl in consequence. She is a great admirer of yours, you know," she runs on, snipping a rose off here and there. "When you went away last time she confided to me that you were 'the nicest gentleman as she ever see!' There's a pretty compliment for you. This afternoon she said to me, 'Mr. Hugh _has haltered_!' I wondered for the moment if you had ridden down and 'tethered your roan to a tree.'"

Hugh laughs heartily.

"I am sure I feel immensely flattered. What a lovely bud that is you are cutting now, Molly!"

"It is for you, Hugh. Stand still a moment and I will pin it in your button-hole."

Hugh's pleased and gratified look defies description as he obeys orders, and stands looking down at the busy little fingers while they deftly fasten the bud in his coat.

"I shall never--" he is beginning to say, when Molly cuts his remark short.

"There is Honor!" she cries; "she shall help us to put all these in water," and running down the path she leaves him to follow.

In the evening, after supper, there is a little music. Molly plays, and Hugh sings one or two songs with a voice that trembles a little sometimes, Molly, after a slight skirmish on the subject, accompanying him.

Then Honor nobly struggles through a pianoforte duet with her younger sister by way of a change, her modest bass sounding rather feeble in comparison with Molly's spirited treble. It is only Schulhoff's "Grand Waltz" they are playing; nevertheless, Honor quakes when they come to the last two or three pages; but she centres all her hopes on Molly, and, amidst plenty of laughter (for Hugh and Dick are both in attendance to turn over), she is landed safely by her at the last chord. Then Dick sings, but notwithstanding the efforts made by every one to be cheerful their spirits seem to go down lower and lower as the evening advances; and when, after a long unbroken silence, Hugh suddenly seats himself at the piano, and sings with simple expression and pathos Hatton's "Good-bye, Sweetheart," tears rise to the eyes of nearly every one in the room.

It is a relief almost when Hugh rises and says he must be leaving. Mrs. Merivale having suggested that Honor and Molly shall walk down to the gate with him, and sent them on before, takes an affectionate leave of the young fellow, saying as she does so, "We will not let her forget you, dear Hugh." He is too much overcome to speak, but the look of gratitude upon his face as he stoops and kisses her is understood and appreciated by Mrs. Merivale.

The two girls are standing quietly by the gate when Hugh reaches it, and for a moment he stands beside them, silent also. Then he turns to the elder girl:

"Good-bye, Honor," he says gently. "You will let me hear everything that goes on, won't you?--all about Doris too; and tell her, with my love, how sorry I was not to see her again. I will write pretty often; as often as I can that is, unless I am knocked over by the Arabs one day." Then he kisses her and moves towards Molly, who, a little pale and very quiet, is leaning against the gate-post. He takes her two hands in his, and looks earnestly into her face for a moment. Then--

"God bless you, Molly!" he says brokenly. "Don't forget me!" and stooping he presses a lingering kiss almost reverently upon her forehead, and--the gate swings back and he is gone.

Honor is just wondering whether Molly is crying or what, so quietly is she standing, just where Hugh left her, when suddenly a figure rushes past them in hot haste.

"I'm going to walk to the station with him!" cries Dick's voice. "Great dolt that I was not to think of it before!" and away he dashes through the gate.

After this little diversion the girls walk slowly back to the house, and joining their mother they stand talking together, or rather she and Honor do. After a few minutes Molly, still very quiet, says she is tired and will go to bed.

"Poor child!" says Mrs. Merivale as the door closes, "I think she feels his going. I wonder if she _does_ care for him, and is just finding it out? I think we were right, though, Hugh and I--don't you, Honor?"

"What about, mother?"

"Why, I told you. Where is your memory, child? When he asked if he might give her that ring, he told me of his attachment to Molly. But he said it should be just as I wished whether he said anything to her or not. He said she was still so young in many ways that he did not want to frighten her, and perhaps destroy his chances later. He said, very sensibly I thought, that there is plenty of time; that they are both young, and he would rather that Molly grew to care for him on her own account as it were, than by its being suggested, so to speak. _Don't_ walk up and down so, Honor! You fidget me to death, child, and I am expressing myself anyhow!"

Honor seats herself, and her mother goes on:

"Well, that was the gist of what he said, and I think it was a very right way of looking at things. What do you say?"

"Yes, I think so, certainly," replies Honor warmly. "I always liked Hugh, and I only hope Molly will be as fond of him one day as he is of her."

"He says," resumes Mrs. Merivale, paying no heed to this remark, "that if he does not come back in the ordinary course of things, he shall get short leave if he finds the time running on. There's Dick! Mind, not a _word_ to him, Honor; he would tease the child out of her senses. I think the safest way will be for only you and me to know it. Doris will be so taken up with her own affairs that she will not give any thought to the matter. Of course his mother knows. She has always hoped for this, it seems. Ah, Molly is a good girl! You are _all_ good girls, Honor. Now, good-night, dear; you look tired too, and I am sure _I_ am."