"I hope you will not tell her, then," returned Mr. Drummond in a soothing tone, for Mrs. Challoner was beginning to look agitated. "I am afraid nothing I say will induce Miss Challoner to give up her pet scheme; but I felt, as your clergyman, it was my duty to let you know my opinion." And here Archie looked so very solemn that Mrs. Challoner, being a weak woman, and apt to overvalue the least expression of masculine opinion, grew more and more alarmed.
"Oh, yes!" she faltered; "it is very good--very nice of you to tell me this." Phillis would have laughed in his face and Mrs. Cheyne would have found something to say about his youth; but in Mrs. Challoner's eyes, though she was an older woman, Archie's solemnity and Oriental beard carried tremendous weight with them. He might be young, nevertheless she was bound to listen meekly to him, and to respect his counsel as one who had a certain authority over her. "Oh, you are very good! and if only my girls had not made up their minds so quickly! but now what can I do but feel very uncomfortable after you have told me this?"
"Oh, as to that, there is always time for everything; it is never too late to mend," returned Mr. Drummond, tritely. "I meant from the first to tell you what I thought, if I should ever have an opportunity of speaking to you alone. You see, we Oxford men have our own notions about things: we do not always go with the tide. If your daughters--" here he hesitated and grew red, for he was a modest, honest young fellow in the main--"pardon me, but I am only proposing an hypothesis--if they wanted to make a sensation and get themselves talked about, no doubt they would achieve a success, for the novelty----" But here he stopped, reduced to silence by the shocked expression of Mrs. Challoner's face.
"Mr. Drummond! my girls--make a sensation--be talked about?" she gasped; and all the spirit of her virtuous matronhood, and all the instinctive feeling that years of culture and ingrained refinement of nature had engendered, shone in her eyes. Her Nan and Phillis and Dulce to draw this on themselves!
Now, at this unlucky moment, when the maternal fires were all alight, who should enter but Phillis, wanting "pins, and dozens of them,--quickly, please," and still warbling flatly that refrain of "Bonnie Dundee!"