| 274 | 275 | 276 | 277 | 278 |
| 1 | 133 | 265 | 398 | 530 |
|
there plenty of laughing and talking among them as they reviewed all
these things upon the top of the coach, and didn't they pity the people
who hadn't got a holiday!
But Kit's mother, again - wouldn't anybody have supposed she had
come of a good stock and been a lady all her life! There she was, quite
ready to receive them, with a display of tea-things that might have
warmed the heart of a china-shop; and little Jacob and the baby in
such a state of perfection that their clothes looked as good as new,
though Heaven knows they were old enough! Didn't she say before
they had sat down five minutes that Barbara's mother was exactly the
sort of lady she expected, and didn't Barbara's mother say that Kit's
mother was the very picture of what she had expected, and didn't Kit's
mother compliment Barbara's mother on Barbara, and didn't
Barbara's mother compliment Kit's mother on Kit, and wasn't Barbara
herself quite fascinated with little Jacob, and did ever a child show off
when he was wanted, as that child did, or make such friends as he
made!
'
And we are both widows too!' said Barbara's mother. 'We must have
been made to know each other.'
'
I haven't a doubt about it,' returned Mrs Nubbles. 'And what a pity it
is we didn't know each other sooner.'
'But then, you know, it's such a pleasure,' said Barbara's mother, 'to
have it brought about by one's son and daughter, that it's fully made
up for. Now, an't it?'
To this, Kit's mother yielded her full assent, and tracing things back
from effects to causes, they naturally reverted to their deceased
husbands, respecting whose lives, deaths, and burials, they compared
notes, and discovered sundry circumstances that tallied with
wonderful exactness; such as Barbara's father having been exactly
four years and ten months older than Kit's father, and one of them
having died on a Wednesday and the other on a Thursday, and both of
them having been of a very fine make and remarkably good-looking,
with other extraordinary coincidences. These recollections being of a
kind calculated to cast a shadow on the brightness of the holiday, Kit
diverted the conversation to general topics, and they were soon in
great force again, and as merry as before. Among other things, Kit told
them about his old place, and the extraordinary beauty of Nell (of
whom he had talked to Barbara a thousand times already); but the
last-named circumstance failed to interest his hearers to anything like
the extent he had supposed, and even his mother said (looking
accidentally at Barbara at the same time) that there was no doubt
Miss Nell was very pretty, but she was but a child after all, and there
were many young women quite as pretty as she; and Barbara mildly
Page
Quick Jump
|