"But you can laugh, and yet look up, or life would be very dull. Who do you go to when you want to know anything that father can't teach you?"
"Yes; but only because he has a carriage--and we haven't."
"And when you want to see the picture galleries?"
"He can go; he always has time. But all that doesn't mean that I want to marry him," she added.
"But it is just that. You already look to him for most of your pleasures. That is a long way towards loving him. You would find him a very kind husband and friend."
"Oh! mother, what must I do?" entreated Marjorie, the tears coming into her eyes. "He has spoilt everything. It is Charity's garden-party this afternoon, and I shall be so uncomfortable. Couldn't you go, mother, in your chair?"
"I could, dear. Yes, I will go; perhaps it will be difficult for you." She sighed softly; she was hardly as yet reconciled to her helplessness in public, in spite of the cheery spirit which enabled her to bear suffering with such courage.
Mrs. Bethune's spirit made her the idol and confidante of her boys. Her fun was unquenched, even when the fire of life would seem to have gone out for ever; after the terrible fall, when, to save the infant in her arms, she had laid herself upon her back for life. The baby--Orme--was found unhurt, folded round, so it seemed, by the broken body of his mother. Ross, the most thoughtful, she averred, of her six sons, once said to her:
"Mummie, you do laugh mor'n anybody. Is it 'cos you can't walk?"
"Yes, little son, perhaps it is; to make up, you know."
And Sandy, butting his bright head into her knees one day, inconsolable about something, was won to laughter by, "Sandy, laugh! Look at me!"--and he had looked. And the irresistible witchery of the beautiful dark eyes had cured his woe. She was always the sunshiny centre of the house, and only her husband, or Marjorie in rare moments, guessed how sometimes the bright spirit quailed.
The Dean was popular in the county. When Mr. Pelham came into the Deanery garden somewhat late, he found Mrs. Bethune's chair under the chestnut trees, a centre of laughter and conversation. Marjorie was standing by her mother, with a wistful look on her face, he thought at first sight, wondering at its expression. Love, when presented first to a girl brought up as Marjorie had been, comes as a great shock. That it should be Mr. Warde of all men who should cause her this disquiet filled Marjorie with a sense of the unsatisfactoriness of the world. It disturbed things that had seemed to her as settled as the hills round Norham that this old friend should want to be her lover.