Only his mother could have been a greater loss,--he could not dwell on the anticipation; and still holding her hand, he roused himself to listen, and answer gaily to Eveleen's description of the tutor, Mr. Fielder, 'a thorough gentleman, very clever and agreeable, who had read all the books in the world; the ugliest, yes, without exaggeration, the most quaintly ugly man living,--little, and looking just as if he was made of gutta percha, Eveleen said, 'always moving by jerks,--so Maurice advised the boys not to put him near the fire, lest he should melt.'
'Only when he gives them some formidable lesson, and they want to melt his heart,' said Charles, talking at random, in hopes of saying something laughable.
'Then his eyes--'tis not exactly a squint, but a cast there is, and one set of eyelashes are black and the other light, and that gives him just the air of a little frightful terrier of Maurice's named Venus, with a black spot over one eye. The boys never call him anything but Venus.'
'And you encourage them in respect for their tutor?'
'Oh, he holds his own at lessons, I trow; but he pretends to have such a horror of us wild Irish, and to wonder not to find us eating potatoes with our fingers, and that I don't wear a petticoat over my head instead of a bonnet, in what he calls the classical Carthaginian Celto-Hibernian fashion.'
'Dear me,' said Charlotte, 'no wonder Philip recommended him.'
'O, I assure you he has the gift, no one else but Captain Morville talks near as well.'
So talked on Eveleen, and Charles answered her as much in her own fashion as he could, and when at last the evening came to an end, every one felt relieved.
Laura lingered long in Amy's room, perceiving that hitherto she had known only half the value of her sister her sweet sister. It would be worse than ever now, when left with the others, all so much less sympathizing, all saying sharp things of Philip, none to cling to her with those winsome ways that had been unnoted till the time when they were no more to console her, and she felt them to have been the only charm that had softened her late dreary desolation.
So full was her heart, that she must have told Amy all her grief but for the part that Philip had acted towards Guy, and her doubts of Guy would not allow her the consolation of dwelling on Amy's happiness, which cheered the rest. She could only hang about her in speechless grief, and caress her fondly, while Amy cried, and tried to comfort her, till her mother came to wish her good night.