Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/333

Rh I wonder where Silvia is now, and what she is doing? She left the day after our conversation in the garden, and we never met again. Sir George Vestris remained one day after her departure. If she cast him on one side, as report says she casts all her other lovers, he took his punishment quietly and gave no sign.

Alice goes to-morrow. She has asked me to go and stay at her country-house for Christmas; and perhaps, as papa will be away, I may be able to go. My sisters have pressed me hard with their questions about Paul, but I have managed to keep them off. They are puzzled, I think, as well they may be.

My journey's end comes at last, and at 5.35, reasonably punctual, according to the notions of country station-masters, the train reaches Silverbridge. There is mother in the pony-carriage; and on the platform, broader, bigger, more swaggering than ever, is the Bull of Basan, but Corydon, where is he? Invisible, thank Heaven! I jump out quite briskly. If young men whose attentions are unwelcome only knew how they endeared themselves to the objects of their affection by their absence, they would surely practise the virtue much oftener! I give mother and Basan a vigorous hug, and then, my box having been duly produced and handed over to the dog-cart in waiting, we set out, mother and I side by side, Basan occupying an abased and harassing position between the reins.

"My eye! How white you are!" he remarks at once. "Just look at her, mother!"

She looks at me with the anxious perfect love that no earthly face save a mother's ever wears, and says, "So she is. The dissipations have not agreed with you, dear. We must nurse you up now you have come home." And I know that in her gentle heart she is meditating a course of port wine and rum-and-milk.

"I say, Nell, have you heard the news?" asks Basan, dodging an insinuating irruption of leather into his right eye. "Won't