"Fortunate!"
"Yes! very!"
Little did Molly apply these expressions to the piece of news Mrs.
Hamley told her in the course of the day; namely, that her son
Osborne had received an invitation to stay with a friend in the
neighbourhood of Cambridge, and perhaps to make a tour on the
Continent with him subsequently; and that, consequently, he would not
accompany his brother when Roger came home.
Molly was very sympathetic.
"Oh, dear! I am so sorry!"
Mrs. Hamley was thankful her husband was not present, Molly spoke the
words so heartily.
"You have been thinking so long of his coming home. I am afraid it is
a great disappointment."
Mrs. Hamley smiled--relieved.
"Yes! it is a disappointment certainly, but we must think of
Osborne's pleasure. And with his poetical mind, he will write us such
delightful travelling letters. Poor fellow! he must be going into the
examination to-day! Both his father and I feel sure, though, that he
will be a high wrangler. Only--I should like to have seen him, my own
dear boy. But it is best as it is."
Molly was a little puzzled by this speech, but soon put it out of her
head. It was a disappointment to her, too, that she should not see
this beautiful, brilliant young man, his mother's hero. From time to
time her maiden fancy had dwelt upon what he would be like; how the
lovely boy of the picture in Mrs. Hamley's dressing-room would have
changed in the ten years that had elapsed since the likeness was
taken; if he would read poetry aloud; if he would even read his own
poetry. However, in the never-ending feminine business of the day,
she soon forgot her own disappointment; it only came back to her on
first wakening the next morning, as a vague something that was not
quite so pleasant as she had anticipated, and then was banished as a
subject of regret. Her days at Hamley were well filled up with the
small duties that would have belonged to a daughter of the house had
there been one. She made breakfast for the lonely squire, and would
willingly have carried up madam's, but that daily piece of work
belonged to the squire, and was jealously guarded by him. She read
the smaller print of the newspapers aloud to him, city articles,
money and corn markets included. She strolled about the gardens with
him, gathering fresh flowers, meanwhile, to deck the drawing-room
against Mrs. Hamley should come down. She was her companion when she
took her drives in the close carriage; they read poetry and mild
literature together in Mrs. Hamley's sitting-room upstairs. She was
quite clever at cribbage now, and could beat the squire if she took
pains. Besides these things, there were her own independent ways of
employing herself. She used to try to practise an hour daily on
the old grand piano in the solitary drawing-room, because she had
promised Miss Eyre she would do so. And she had found her way into
the library, and used to undo the heavy bars of the shutters if the
housemaid had forgotten this duty, and mount the ladder, sitting on
the steps, for an hour at a time, deep in some book of the old
English classics. The summer days were very short to this happy girl
of seventeen.