'And now, of course,' she resumed, taking breath, and chilled a little by their silence, 'now, of course, I want to know about Catherine?' She regarded them with anxious interrogation. Rose, still smiling, slowly shook her head.
'What!' cried Mrs. Thornburgh; then, with charming inconsistency, 'Oh, you can't know anything in two days.'
'That's just it,' said Agnes, intervening; 'we can't know anything in two days. No one ever will know anything about Catherine, if she takes to anybody, till the list minute.'
Mrs. Thornburgh's face fell. 'It's very difficult 'when people will be so reserved,' she said, dolefully.
The girls acquiesced, but intimated that they saw no way out of it.
'At any rate we can bring them together,' she broke out, brightening again. 'We can have picnics, you know, and teas, and all that--and watch. Now listen.'
And the vicar's wife sketched out a programme of festivities for the next fortnight she had been revolving in her inventive head, which took the sisters' breath away. Rose bit her lip to keep in her laughter. Agnes, with vast self-possession, took Mrs. Thornburgh in hand. She pointed out firmly that nothing would be so likely to make Catherine impracticable as fuss. 'In vain is the net spread,' etc. She preached from the text with a worldly wisdom which quickly crushed Mrs. Thornburgh.
'Well, _what_ am I to do, my dears?' she said at last, helplessly. 'Look at the weather! We must have some picnics, if it's only to amuse Robert.'
Mrs. Thornburgh spent her life between a condition of effervescence and a condition of feeling the world too much for her. Rose and Agnes, having now reduced her to the latter state, proceeded cautiously to give her her head again. They promised her two or three expeditions and one picnic at least; they said they would do their best; they promised they would report what they saw and be very discreet, both feeling the comedy of Mrs. Thornburgh as the advocate of discretion; and then they departed to their early dinner, leaving the vicar's wife decidedly less self-confident than they found her.
'The first matrimonial excitement of the family,' cried Agnes, as they walked home. 'So far no one can say the Miss Leyburns have been besieged!'