Mrs. Molesworth - The Third Miss St Quentin

“What a pity Maddie and Ermie are too big for you to ride them too,” she said condescendingly, at which they all laughed.

“Yes,” said Lady Cheynes, smiling, but not for Ella to hear, “you can be generous enough, my little girl, when you get your own way.”

“And when she is first ” added Ermine. “It is too funny, auntie, to see that sort of feeling in Ella, already. I’m sure Maddie and I weren’t like that when we were little.”

Lady Cheynes looked round, Harvey was coming up the path, the old lady made a little sign to Ermine to take care.

“I think perhaps Miss Ella has been out long enough, if you’ll excuse me, my lady,” said the maid, in her smoothest tones.

“Take her in then by all means,” said Lady Cheynes. “Ella, my dear, your nurse is waiting for you.”

Ella was playing with Phil, a few paces off.

“I won’t go in,” she said coolly.

Madelene took her by the hand.

“Come, dear,” she said, “you mustn’t make your cold worse.”

The child pulled away from her.

“You’re very naughty, Maddie,” she said. “You only want me to go away that you and Ermie may play with Phil yourselves. Phil, say I’m not to go.”

“Not I,” said Philip. “You’re a spoilt, rude little girl, and I’m very sorry I gave you a ride.”

Ella turned upon him like a little fury, but Harvey interposed.

“Come, Miss Ella, my dear,” she said. “Sir Philip will think you’re growing into a baby instead of a big girl if you dance about like that.”

And by dint of coaxing and persuasion which Harvey knew how to employ skilfully enough when it suited her, the child was at last got away.

“Grandmother,” said Philip Cheynes, half-an-hour or so later, when the two were on their way home in the old lady’s pony-carriage, “don’t you think it is a great pity that Colonel St Quentin married again? It has brought them all nothing but trouble – Mrs St Quentin so delicate, and that spoilt little brat.”

“You mustn’t abuse my godchild, Phil,” Lady Cheynes replied. “She might be a charming child. And her poor mother – No, I think Madelene and Ermie owe a great deal to her.”

“Oh, well,” said Philip, boyishly, “I suppose they do. Maddie’s awfully cut up about Ella’s going away from them. For my part, I’m very glad she is going away. Still, she is a jolly little thing when she’s in a good temper.”

Summer, not spring now. But the same garden and the same people in it – three of them, that is to say, little chance though there might be at the first glance, of our recognising them.

They were sitting together on the lawn – the two sisters Madelene and Ermine and their cousin Philip. They were less changed than he perhaps – Madelene especially, for she had always been tall, and at fourteen had looked older than her years, whereas now at five-and-twenty one could scarcely have believed her to be as much. She had fulfilled the promise of her girlhood for she was an undoubtedly beautiful woman, though to those who knew her but superficially, she might have seemed wanting in animation, for she was quiet almost to coldness, thoughtful and self-controlled, weighing well her words before she spoke and slow in making up her mind to any decision.

Ermine, brown-haired and brown-eyed, brilliantly handsome, was more popular than her elder sister. But rivalry or the shadow of it between the two was unknown. Never were two sisters more completely at one, more trusted and trusting friends.

“They are all in all to each other and to their father,” was the universal description of them. “Almost too much so indeed,” some would add. “It must be because they are so perfectly happy as they are that neither of them is married.”

For why the Misses St Quentin did not marry was every year becoming more and more of a puzzle to their friends and the world at large.

Sir Philip Cheynes got up from the comfortable garden chair on which he had been lounging and leant against the elm under whose wide-spreading branches the little party had established themselves. A table was prepared for tea, Ermine had a book on her knee which she imagined herself to be or to have been reading, Madelene was knitting.

“It will spoil it all,” said Philip at length after a silence which had lasted some moments, “spoil it all completely.”

“What?” asked Madelene, looking up, though her fingers still went on busily weaving the soft snowy fleece on her lap.

“Everything, of course. Our nice settled ways – this satisfactory sort of life together, knowing each other so well that we never have misunderstandings or upsets or – or bothers. Your father and my grandmother are a model aunt and nephew to begin with, and as for us three – why the world never before saw such a perfection of cousinship! And into the midst of this delightful state of things, this pleasant little society where each of us can pursue his or her special avocation and – and perform his or her special duties – for we’re not selfish people, my dears – I’m not going to allow that – into the midst of it you fling helter-skelter, a spoilt, ill-tempered, restless unmanageable school-girl – eager for amusement and impatient of control – incapable of understanding us or the things we care for. I never could have imagined anything more undesirable – I – ”

“Upon my word, Philip, I had no idea you could be so eloquent,” interrupted Ermine. “But it is eloquence thrown away, unless you want to prove that you yourself, if not we, are the very thing you have been denying, without having been accused of it.”

“Selfishness – eh?” said Philip.

“Of course, or something very like it.”

Philip was silent. To judge by his next remark Ermine’s reproof had not touched him much.

“I don’t know that, for some time to come at least,” he said, “it will matter much to me. I shall probably be very little here till Christmas and then only for a few weeks.”

His cousins looked up in some surprise.

“Indeed,” they said. “Where are you going? Abroad again?” – “You will miss all the hunting and shooting,” Ermine added.

“I know that,” said Philip. “I’m not going for pleasure. I am thinking of taking up my quarters at Grimswell for a while. The house there is vacant now, you know, and my grandmother thinks it a duty for me to live on the spot and look after things a little.”

Madelene’s eyes lighted up.

“I am so glad,” she said. “I quite agree with Aunt Anna.”

“I thought you would,” said Philip, “and so would never mind who. I can’t say I exactly see it myself – things are very fairly managed there – but still. I’m the sort of fellow to make a martyr of myself to duty, you know.”

Ermine glanced at him as he stood there lazily leaning against the tree – handsome, sunny and sweet-tempered, with a half mischievous, half deprecating smile on his lips, and a kindly light in his long-shaped dark eyes.

“You look like it,” she said with good-natured contempt.

“But to return to our – ” began Philip.

“Stop,” cried Ermine, “you are not to say ‘muttons,’ and I feel you are going to. It is so silly.”

“Really,” Philip remonstrated. “Maddie,” and he turned to Miss St Quentin appealingly, “don’t you think she is too bad? Bullying me not only for my taken-for-granted selfishness but for expressions offensive to her ladyship’s fastidious taste which she fancies I might be going to use.”

“My dear Philip, you certainly have a great deal of energy – and – breath to spare this hot afternoon,” said Ermine, leaning back as if exhausted on her seat, “I know you can talk – you’ve never given us any reason to doubt it, but I don’t think I ever heard you rattle on quite as indefatigably as to-day. One can’t get a word in.”