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Cecilia Evesham

Friday evening

HERE I was interrupted, and now something new has happened that requires telling, so I 'll skip our adventures of Thursday after-noon, and go on to Friday. . . .

Well, this morning I came down to break-fast, almost blind with neuralgia. I struggled on till luncheon, when it became unbearable. Virginia (I call her that already) looked at me in the kindest way during the meal.

"You're ill," she said. "You need putting to bed."

Mrs. MacGill looked surprised. "Cecilia is never very ill," she observed tepidly.

"She's ill now, no mistake," Virginia persisted, and rose and came round to my side of the table. "Come and let me help you upstairs and put you to bed."

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I was too ill to resist, and she led me to my room and tucked me up comfortably.

"Now," she said, "this headache wants peace of mind to cure it, I know the kind. You can't get peace for thinking about Mrs. MacGill. I 'm going to take her off your mind for the afternoon—it's time I tried companioning—no girl knows when she may need to earn a living. You won't know your Mrs. MacGill when you get her again! I 'll dress her up and walk her out, and humour her."

She bent down and kissed me as she spoke. It was the sweetest kiss! Her face is like a peach to feel, and her clothes have a delicious scent of violets. Somehow all my troubles seemed to smooth out. She rustled away in her silk-lined skirts, and I fell into a much needed sleep, feeling that all would be well.

I was mistaken, however. All did not go well, but on the contrary something very unfortunate happened while I was sleeping | | 81 so quietly. It must have been about four o'clock when I was wakened by Virginia coming into my room again. She looked a little ruffled and pale.

"I've brought Mrs. MacGill back to you, Miss Evesham," she said, "but it's thanks to Sir Archibald, not to me. She will tell you all about it." With that Mrs. MacGill came tottering into the room, plumped down upon the edge of my bed, and began a breathless, incoherent story in which wild ponies, stampedes, lanes, Sir Archibald, and herself were all mixed up together.

"Did he really save you from a bad accident?" I asked Virginia, for it was impossible to make out anything from Mrs. MacGill.

Virginia nodded. "He did, Cecilia, and I like him," she said.

"Oh ho!" I thought. "Is it possible that I am going to be mixed up in a romance? She likes him, does she? Very good; we shall see."

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And then, because the world always appears a neutral-tinted place to me, without high lights of any kind, I rebuked myself for imagining that anything lively could ever come my way. "I could n't even look on at anything romantic nowadays," I thought, "I doubt if there is such a thing as romance; it's just a figment of youth. Come, Mrs. MacGill, I'll find your knitting for you," I said; "that will compose you better than anything else."