That was the way in which Mrs. Gibson first broached her intention of accompanying Cynthia up to London for a few days’ visit. She had a trick of producing the first sketch of any new plan before an outsider to the family circle; so that the first emotions of others, if they disapproved of her projects, had to be repressed, until the idea had become familiar to them. To Molly it seemed too charming a proposal ever to come to pass. She had never allowed herself to recognize the restraint she was under in her stepmother’s presence; but all at once she found it out when her heart danced at the idea of three whole days — for that it would be at the least — of perfect freedom of intercourse with her father; of old times come back again; of meals without perpetual fidgetiness after details of ceremony and correctness of attendance.

‘We’ll have bread and cheese for dinner, and eat it on our knees; we’ll make up for having had to eat sloppy puddings with a fork instead of a spoon all this time, by putting our knives in our mouths till we cut ourselves. Papa shall pour his tea into his saucer if he is in a hurry; and if I’m thirsty, I’ll take the slop-basin. And oh, if I could but get, buy, borrow, or steal any kind of an old horse; my grey skirt is not new, but it will do; — that would be too delightful. After all, I think I can be happy again; for months and months it has seemed as if I had got too old ever to feel pleasure, much less happiness again.’

So thought Molly. Yet she blushed, as if with guilt, when Cynthia, reading her thought, said to her one day —

‘Molly, you are very glad to get rid of us, are not you?’

‘Not of you, Cynthia; at least, I don’t think I am. Only, if you only knew how I love papa, and how I used to see a great deal more of him than I ever do now ——’

‘Ah! I often think what interlopers we must seem, and are in fact —’

‘I don’t feel you as such. You, at any rate, have been a new delight to me, a sister; and I never knew how charming such a relationship could be.’

‘But mamma?’ said Cynthia, half-suspiciously, half-sorrowfully.

‘She is papa’s wife,’ said Molly, quietly. ‘I don’t mean to say I am not often very sorry to feel I am no longer first with him; but it was’— the violent colour flushed into her face till even her eyes burnt, and she suddenly found herself on the point of crying; the weeping ash-tree, the misery, the slow dropping comfort;’ and the comforters came all so vividly before her; —‘it was Roger!’— she went on looking up at Cynthia, as she overcame her slight hesitation at mentioning his name —‘Roger, who told me how I ought to take papa’s marriage, when I was first startled and grieved at the news. Oh, Cynthia, what a great thing it is to be loved by him!’

Cynthia blushed, and looked fluttered and pleased.

‘Yes, I suppose it is. At the same time, Molly, I’m afraid he’ll expect me to be always as good as he fancies me now, and I shall have to walk on tip-toe all the rest of my life.’

‘But you are good, Cynthia,’ put in Molly.

‘No, I’m not. You’re just as much mistaken as he is; and some day I shall go down in your opinions with a run, just like the hall clock the other day when the spring broke.’

‘I think he’ll love you just as much,’ said Molly.

‘Could you? Would you be my friend if — if it turned out ever that I had done very wrong things? Would you remember how very difficult it has sometimes been to me to act rightly’ (she took hold of Molly’s hand as she spoke). ‘We won’t speak of mamma, for your sake as much as mine or hers; but you must see she is not one to help a girl with much good advice, or good —— Oh, Molly, you don’t know how I was neglected just at a time when I wanted friends most. Mamma does not know it; it is not in her to know what I might have been if I had only fallen into wise, good hands. But I know it; and what’s more,’ continued she, suddenly ashamed of her unusual exhibition of feeling, ‘I try not to care, which I daresay is really the worst of all; but I could worry myself to death if I once took to serious thinking.’

‘I wish I could help you, or even understand you,’ said Molly, after a moment or two of sad perplexity.

‘You can help me,’ said Cynthia, changing her manner abruptly. ‘I can trim bonnets, and make head-dresses; but somehow my hands can’t fold up gowns and collars, like your deft little fingers. Please will you help me to pack? That’s a real, tangible piece of kindness, and not sentimental consolation for sentimental distresses, which are, perhaps, imaginary after all.’

In general, it is the people who are left behind stationary, who give way to low spirits at any parting; the travellers, however bitterly they may feel the separation, find something in the change of scene to soften regret in the very first hour of separation. But as Molly walked home with her father from seeing Mrs. Gibson and Cynthia off to London by the ‘Umpire’ coach, she almost danced along the street.

‘Now, papa!’ said she, ‘I’m going to have you all to myself for a whole week. You must be very obedient.’

‘Don’t be tyrannical, then. You are walking me out of breath, and we are cutting Mrs. Goodenough, in our hurry.’

So they crossed over the street to speak to Mrs. Goodenough.

‘We’ve just been seeing my wife and her daughter off to London. Mrs Gibson has gone up for a week!’

‘Deary, deary, to London, and only for a week! Why, I can remember its being a three days’ journey! It will be very lonesome for you, Miss Molly, without your young companion!’

‘Yes!’ said Molly, suddenly feeling as if she ought to have taken this view of the case. ‘I shall miss Cynthia very much.’

‘And you, Mr. Gibson; why, it will be like being a widower over again! You must come and drink tea with me some evening. We must try and cheer you up a bit amongst us. Shall it be Tuesday?’

In spite of the sharp pinch which Molly gave to his arm, Mr. Gibson accepted the invitation, much to the gratification of the old lady.

‘Papa, how could you go and waste one of our evenings. We have but six in all, and now but five; and I had so reckoned on our doing all sorts of things together.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh, I don’t know: everything that is unrefined and ungenteel,’ added she, slyly looking up into her father’s face.

His eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was perfectly grave. ‘I’m not going to be corrupted. With toil and labour I have reached a very fair height of refinement. I won’t be pulled down again.’

‘Yes, you will, papa. We’ll have bread and cheese for lunch this very day. And you shall wear your slippers in the drawing-room every evening you’ll stay quietly at home; and oh, papa, don’t you think I could ride Nora Creina. I’ve been looking out the old grey skirt, and I think I could make myself tidy.’

‘Where is the side-saddle to come from?’

‘To be sure the old one won’t fit that great Irish mare. But I’m not particular, papa. I think I could manage somehow.’

‘Thank you. But I’m not quite going to return into barbarism. It may he a depraved taste, but I should like to see my daughter properly mounted.’

‘Think of riding together down the lanes — why, the dog-roses must be all out in flower, and the honeysuckles, and the hay — how I should like to see Merriman’s farm again! Papa, do let me have one ride with you! Please do. I am sure we can manage it somehow.’

And ‘somehow’ it was managed. ‘Somehow’ all Molly’s wishes came to pass; there was only one little drawback to this week of holiday and happy intercourse with her father. Everybody would ask them out to tea. They were quite like bride and bridegroom; for the fact was, that the late dinners which Mrs. Gibson had introduced into her own house, were a great inconvenience in the calculations of the small tea-drinkings at Hollingford. How ask people to tea at six, who dined at that hour? How, when they refused cake and sandwiches at half-past eight, how induce other people who were really hungry to commit a vulgarity before those calm and scornful eyes? So there had been a great lull of invitations for the Gibsons to Hollingford tea-parties. Mrs. Gibson, whose object was to squeeze herself into ‘county society,’ had taken this being left out of the smaller festivities with great equanimity; but Molly missed the kind homeliness of the parties to which she had gone from time to time as long as she could remember; and though, as each three-cornered note was brought in, she grumbled a little over the loss of another charming tete-a-tete with her father, she really was glad to go again in the old way among old friends. Miss Browning and Miss Phoebe were especially compassionate towards her in her loneliness. If they had had their will she would have dined there every day; and she had to call upon them very frequently in order to prevent their being hurt at her declining the dinners. Mrs. Gibson wrote twice during her week’s absence to her husband. That piece of news was quite satisfactory to the Miss Brownings, who had of late months held themselves a great deal aloof from a house where they chose to suppose that their presence was not wanted. In their winter evenings they had often talked over Mr. Gibson’s household, and having little besides conjectures to go upon, they found the subject interminable, as they could v............