And he took it from her with a sort of quiet authority, to which she submitted passively, neither resisting him nor thanking him.
‘I should like to see your pictures, Louis,’ said Caroline, when the sumptuous luncheon was discussed. ‘Would not you, Mr. Hall?’
‘To please you I should; but, for my own part, I have cut him as an artist. I had enough of him in that capacity in Cumberland and Westmoreland. Many a wetting we got amongst the mountains because he would persist in sitting on a camp-stool, catching effects of rain-clouds, gathering mists, fitful sunbeams, and what not.’
‘Here is the portfolio,’ said Henry, bringing it in one hand, and leaning on his crutch with the other.
Louis took it, but he still sat as if he wanted another to speak. It seemed as if he would not open it unless the proud Shirley deigned to show herself interested in the exhibition.
‘He makes us wait to whet our curiosity,’ she said.
‘You understand opening it,’ observed Louis, giving her the key. ‘You spoiled the lock for me once—try now.’
He held it: she opened it; and, monopolizing the contents, had the first view of every sketch herself. She enjoyed the treat—if treat it were—in silence, without a single comment. Moore stood behind her chair, and looked over her shoulder, and when she had done, and the others were still gazing, he left his post and paced through the room.
A carriage was heard in the lane—the gate-bell rang; Shirley started.
‘There are callers,’ she said, ‘and I shall be summoned to the room. A pretty figure—as they say—I am to receive company: I and Henry have been in the garden gathering fruit half the morning. Oh, for rest under my own vine and my own fig-tree! Happy is the slave-wife of the Indian chief, in that she has no drawing-room duty to perform, but can sit at ease weaving mats, and stringing beads, and peacefully flattening her picaninny’s head in an unmolested corner of her wigwam. I’ll emigrate to the western woods.’
Louis Moore laughed.
‘To marry a White Cloud or a Big Buffalo; and after wedlock to devote yourself to the tender task of digging your lord’s maizefield, while he smokes his pipe or drinks fire-water.’
Shirley seemed about to reply, but here the schoolroom door unclosed, admitting Mr. Sympson. That personage stood aghast when he saw the group around the fire.
‘I thought you alone, Miss Keeldar,’ he said. ‘I find quite a party.’
And evidently from his shocked, scandalised air—had he not recognised in one of the party a clergyman—he would have delivered an extempore philippic on the extraordinary habits of his niece; respect for the cloth arrested him.
‘I merely wished to announce,’ he proceeded coldly, ‘that the family from De Walden Hall, Mr., Mrs., the Misses, and Mr. Sam Wynne, are in the drawing-room.’
And he bowed and withdrew.
‘The family from De Walden Hall! Couldn’t be a worse set,’ murmured Shirley.