Hildegarde's Home

"Did you like dancing-school?" Jack inquired, venturing to look up at her shyly.

"Yes, very much indeed!" replied Hildegarde. "Didn't you?"

"No; hated it."

Then they both laughed a little, and after that things went a good deal better. Jack came up on the piazza (he had been sitting on the steps, shuffling his feet in a most distressing manner), and helped to clip the long stems of the roses, and pulled off superfluous leaves. It appeared that he did not care much for flowers, though he admitted that roses were "pretty." He did not care for fishing or shooting; tennis had made his head ache ever since he began to grow so fast. Did he like walking? Pretty well, when it wasn't too hot. Reading? Well enough, when the book wasn't stupid.

"Wot are we to do with this 'ere 'opeless chap?" said Hildegarde to herself, quoting from "Pinafore."

As a last resort she asked if he were fond of music. Instantly his face lighted up.

"Awfully fond of it," he said with animation, and the embarrassed wrinkle disappeared as if by magic from between his eyebrows.

"Oh, I am so glad!" cried Hildegarde. "I haven't had any music the last two summers. I had everything else that was nice, but still I missed it, of course. Do you play, or sing?"

"A little of both," said Jack modestly.

"Oh, how delightful! We must make music together for mamma sometimes. My own piano has not come yet, but there is the dearest old funny thing here which belonged to the Misses Aytoun."

"Uncle Tom has no piano," said Jack, "but I have my violin, so I don't mind."

"Oh, a violin!" said Hildegarde, opening her eyes wide. "Have you been studying it long?"

"Ever since I was six years old," was the reply. "My mother would not let me begin earlier, though my father said that as soon as I could hold a knife and fork I could hold a bow. He's a little cracked about violins, my father. He makes them, you know."

"I don't know," cried Hildegarde. "Tell me about it; how very interesting!"

"Well – I don't mean that it's his business," said Jack, who seemed to have forgotten his shyness entirely; "he's a lawyer, you know. But it's the only thing he really cares about. He has a workshop, and he has made – oh, ever so many violins! He went to Cremona once, and spent a year there, poking about, and he found an old church that was going to be repaired, and bought the sounding-board. Oh, it must have been a couple of hundred years old. Then he moused about more and found an old fellow, a descendant of one of Amati's workmen, and I believe he would have bought him, too, if he could; but, anyhow, they were great chums, and he taught my father all kinds of tricks. When he came home he made this violin out of a piece of the old sounding-board, and gave it to me on my birthday. It's – oh, it's no end, you know! And he made another for himself, and we play together. Do you know the Mozart Concerto in F, for two violins? It begins with an allegro."

And being fairly mounted on his hobby, Jack Ferrers pranced about on it as if he had done nothing but talk to Hildegarde all his life. Hildegarde, meanwhile, listened with a mixture of surprise, amusement, and respect. He did not look in the least like a musical genius, this long-legged, curly-haired lad, with his blue eyes and his simple, honest face. She thought of the lion front of Beethoven, and the brilliant, exquisite beauty of Mozart, and tried to imagine honest Jack standing between them, and almost laughed in the midst of an animated description of the andante movement. Then she realised that he was talking extremely well, and talking a great deal over her head.

"I am afraid you will find me very ignorant," she said meekly, when her cousin paused, a little out of breath, but with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes. "I have heard a great deal of music, of course, and I love it dearly; but I don't know about it as you do, not a bit. I play the piano a little, and I sing, just simple old songs, you know, and that is all."

Hildegarde might have added that she had a remarkably sweet voice, and sang with taste and feeling, but that her cousin must find out for himself; besides, she was really over-awed by this superior knowledge in one whom the night before she had been inclined to set down as a booby. "Shall I ever learn," she thought remorsefully, "not to make these ridiculous judgments of people, before I know anything about them?"

Just then Mrs. Grahame came out and asked her new-found nephew, as she called him, to stay to dinner; but at sight of her the lad's shyness returned in full force. His animation died away; he hung his head, and muttered that he "couldn't possibly, thank you! Uncle Tom – stayed too long already. Good-by!" and, without even a farewell glance at Hildegarde, went down all the steps at once with a breakneck plunge, and disappeared.

"Tragedy of the Gorgon's Head! Medusa, Mrs. Grahame," said that lady, laughing softly. "Has my hair turned to snakes, Hilda, or what is there so frightful in my appearance? I heard your voices sounding so merrily I thought the ice was completely broken."

"Oh, I think it is," said Hildegarde. "You came upon him suddenly, that was all."

"Next time," said her mother, "I will appear gradually, like the Cheshire Cat, beginning with the grin."

Hildegarde laughed, and went to pin a red rose on her mother's dress. Then she said: "I was wrong, Mammina, and you were right, as usual. It is a tiresome way you have, so monotonous! But really he is a very nice boy, and he knows, oh! ever so much about music. He must be quite a wonder." And she told her mother about the violin, and all the rest of it.

Mrs. Grahame agreed with her that it would be delightful to have some musical evenings, and Hildegarde resolved to practise two hours a day regularly.

"But there are so few hours in the day!" she complained. "I thought getting up at seven would give me – oh! ever so much time, and I have none at all. Here is the morning nearly gone, and we have had no reading, not a word." And she looked injured.

"There is an hour before dinner," said Mrs. Grahame, "and the 'Makers of Florence' is lying on my table at this minute. Come up, and I will read while you – need I specify the occupation?"

"You need not," said Hildegarde. "I really did mean to mend it this morning, love, but things happened. I had to sew on boot-buttons before breakfast, three of them, and then Janet wanted me to show her about something. But now I will really be industrious."

This was destined to be a day of visits. In the afternoon Mrs. Loftus and her daughter called, driving up in great state, with prancing horses and clinking harness. Hildegarde, who was in her own room, meditated a plunge down her private staircase and an escape by way of the back door, but decided that it would be base to desert her mother; so she smoothed her waving hair, inspected her gown to make sure that it was spotless, and came down into the parlour.

Mrs. Loftus was a very large lady, with a very red face, who talked volubly about "our place," "our horses," "our hot-houses," etc., etc. Miss Loftus, whose name was Leonie, was small and rather pretty, though she did not look altogether amiable. She was inclined to patronise Hildegarde, but that young person did not take kindly to patronage, and was a little stately, though very polite, in her manner.

"Yes, it is pretty about here," said Miss Loftus, "though one tires of it very quickly. We vegetate here for three months every summer; it's papa's" (she pronounced it "puppa") "whim, you see. How long a season do you make?"

"None at all," said Hildegarde quietly. "We are going to live here."

Miss Loftus raised her eyebrows. "Oh! you can hardly do that, I should think!" she said with a superior smile. "A few months will probably change your views entirely. There is no life here, absolutely none."

"Indeed!" said Hildegarde. "I thought it was a very prosperous neighbourhood. All the farms look thrifty and well cared for; the crops are alive, at least."

"Oh, farmers and crops!" said Miss Loftus. "Very likely. I meant social life."

"I don't like social life," said Hildegarde.

This was not strictly true, but she could not help saying it, as she told her mother afterward.

Miss Loftus passed over the remark with another smile, which made our heroine want to pinch her, and added, "You must consider us your only neighbours, as indeed we really are."

"Yes, indeed!" said Mrs. Loftus, who was now rising ponderously to depart. "We shall hope to see you often at The Poplars, Mrs. Grahame. There is not another house within five miles where one can visit. Of course I don't include that old bear, Colonel Ferrers, who never speaks a civil word to any one."

Hildegarde flushed and looked at her mother, but Mrs. Grahame said very quietly, "I have known Colonel Ferrers for many years. He was a friend of my husband's."

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" said Mrs. Loftus, looking scared. "I had no idea – I never heard of any one knowing Colonel Ferrers. Come, Leonie, we must be going."

They departed, first engaging Hildegarde, rather against her will, to lunch with them the following Friday; and the grand equipage rolled clinking and jingling away.

"We seem to have fallen upon a Montague and Capulet neighbourhood," said Mrs. Grahame, smiling, as she turned to go upstairs.

"Yes, indeed!" said Hildegarde. "Shall we be Tybalts or Mercutios?"

"Neither, I hope," said her mother, "as both were run through the body. Of course, however, there is no question as to which neighbour we shall find most congenial. And now, child, get your hat, and let us take a good walk, to drive the cobwebs out of our brains."

"Have with you!" said Hildegarde, running lightly up the stairs; "only, darling, don't be so – so – incongruous as to call Mrs. Loftus a cobweb!"

CHAPTER VII

MISS AGATHA'S CABINET

"Mammina! I have found them! I have found them!" cried Hildegarde, rushing like a whirlwind into her mother's room, and waving something over her head.

"What have you found, darling?" asked Mrs. Grahame, looking up from her writing. "Not your wits, for example? I should be so glad!"

"One may not shake one's mother," said Hildegarde, "but beware, lest you 'rouse an Indian's indomitable nature.' I have found the keys of Miss Agatha's cabinet."