THE BROWN-PAPER PARCEL

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1073, 10 August 1869, Page 3

THE BROWN-PAPER PARCEL

IN FIVE CHAPTERS. CHAPTER IV. (From "All the Year Round.") It seemed to Mary Mackworth as if she had suddenly entered a different world :. a world of soft carpets and sweet perfumes, and warm summer air : the sort of world which such creatures as Cilia ought naturally to inhabit, but which was quite out of keeping with her own muddy boots and dank cloak, and with the untidy state to •which the winter wind had reduced her bonnet and hair. She was glad to see a mirror in which she could arrange those, fluttering ribbons and rebellious locks. A very few touches made her feel tidy again, so she rested quite content, though not at all aware that she was looking much more than tidy, and that her three miles up-hill walk, through wind and cold, had given a glow to her gipsy colouring, and a brightness to her clear dark eyes, which made her, for the moment, quite sparklingly pretty. Her father walked to and fro, admiring and approving. " Very nice ! very nice ! Thorough good taste this man must have. AH new and fresh, and yet grafted so cleverly on the style of the old place, that there is no jarring in the fitness of things. And all the old books here, I see, and well cared for now ! Not as it used to be in Hathaway'a time, when it was enough to break one's heart to see the way in which they were, uaed."

His speech, which was almost a soliloquy, broke off as the door opened, and Mary started to her feet and well-nigh exclaimed aloud with surprise, as she found herself face to face— not with the partly middleaged banker whom she had expected to see, but with her unknown friend, the hero of the Hansom cab ! The recognition was mutual, for he started and coloured almost as vehemently as Mary • while the curate, at a total loss to account for these manifestations, stared from one to the other in blank astonishment. Mary was the first to recover self-pos-session. "I am very glad to see you," she said, holding out her hand. " Papa, this is the gentleman I told you of, who was so ▼cry kind to me when I was caught in the snow." " I am very glad to have this opportunity of thanking you," said Mr. Mackworth, " and I must apologise too for paying you a business visit on Sunday : but I consider it a jcase of necessity. I think Mr. Langley advertised some days ago for. a parcel which, I fear, must have been lost on the occasion when you were so good-natured to my daughter." "Yes, I did advertise," said the gentleman. "I am Mr. Langley," he added with a smile, as he saw that both father and daughter looked bewildered. " I advertised and offered a reward. Five hundred pounds." ■ " The reward will not be necessary, * said Mr. Mackworth, as he put his hand in his breast-pocket. "I beg your pardon," he added, hesitating, " perhaps I ought to ask you to describe the contents." " Ten notes of one thousand pounds each. I cani tell you the relief of getting them back. Thank you a thousand times ! It is much more than my carelessness deserves," The curate held his tongue ; if he had spoken his thoughts, he would have said "Just sol" Perhaps his face expressed something of the kind, for when the banknotes had been counted over and locked-up, Mr. Langley attempted an apologetic sort of explanation. " You mustn't suppose that I was such a fool as to leave the money in the cab while ! I went in at Grueby's," he said ; " I thought it safer in my hand than in my pocket, and I had just put it on the seat before getting in when the sudden snow-storm attracted my attention,— and" — he hesitated. "And then you were so kind as to take pity on me," said Mary, and the curate smiled as he murmured some commonplace about virtue not being its own reward. " And now, Mary, my dear," he said to his daughter, "we had better be setting off homewards ; it is getting dusk already, and •we must be back for our evening service." " No ! No," said the banker, warmly ; "do pray take a cup of tea before you go ; my sister will be extremely glad to make your acquaintance. And you must really let me send you home in the brougham. I don't generally have it out on Sunday, really," he added, as he read some disapproval of the ready offer ia the curate's face ; "but this is an exceptional case — you jmidso__yoiirself, and I do hope you will let - ane"Eave the pleasure of sending you back in it." what he said, that Mr. Mackworth gave way, greatly to his daughter's satisfaction, and followed their host across the hall to a long drawing room, fragrant with the sweet breath of the conservatory on which it opened. Here, as elsewhere, all was fresh and new : and on the walls were pictures •which rivefced her father in a moment. He had a great natural taste for art, and during a tour he had once made in Italy as tutor to a friend, that taste had been highly cultivated. His remarks showed such thorough knowledge and descrimination that Mr. Langley felt rather out of his depth, and turned to Mary : "Do you care for pictures?" he asked her. "I care," she answered, "but lam quite ignorant about them. I know what I like, and that is all." "And that is exactly my case," said Mr. Langley. "I know nothing else about them." "You must have had excellent taste to begin with," Mr. Mackworth put in, "to select as you have selected. See, Mary," lie added, pointing out one of Millais' gorgeous pieces of colouring ; "is not this what you once described to me ?" " Oh 1 yes," cried Mary eagerly, as pleased as if she were greeting an old friend : "it was in the Royal Academy two years ago." "Do you often go to the Royal Academy ?" asked Mr. Langley. " Whenever I can. Mrs. Halroyd likes her children to go sometimes, and then I take them. lam their governess," she said, in answer to Mr. Langley's inquiring look. " I treat myself to an hour there, too, whenever I can ; it does one good after a dull day's work." " Oh ! doesn't it?" said Mary ; " I always think, after a few months in London, that one gets so weary of never seeing anything but what is ugly." " You don't like London, I see," said Mr. Langley, smiling. "Who can? I like the people lam with there— -I am as happy as possible — but, as to London itself! Ido so long for something green to look at: something really green and wild, not all prim and spoilt, like the parks." "I believe," said her father, amused by her genuine earnestness, " that; my daughter would have everybody agree that London is unfit for human habitation. Now I, on the contrary, think London life is one well worth the living." At this moment, when the curate had given up his study of the pictures on account of the gathering darkness, tea made its appearance. Larap3 were brought by one or two soft-treading servants, and a square table seemed to start from the large bow ■window, covered with shining silver, exquisite china, and the whitest of napery. Mary's perfect enjoyment was a little marred by her almost self-reproachful regret at being there instead of Cilia, and also by a slight degree of shynesa which crept over her when the comfortable twilight no longer sheltered her. This feeling was rather increased by the entrance of a small pretty woman dressed in handsome half mourning, whom Mr. Langley introduced as "my sister, Mrs. Lester." He briefly explained to her the affair of the bank-notes, and she turned to Mary with warm thanks and expressions of the greatest relief. is more than you deserve, Vincent," she eaid, shaking her head at her brother. And then she took her place at the table, and dispensed Diost welcome cups of tea

and the conversation grevy so animated that both Mary and her father were sorry when the brougham was announced. As they rosetc go, Mr. Langley came up to the curate rather nervously, and offered him something enclosed in an envelope. " You must let me pay my debts," he said. Mr. Mackworth looked at him for a moment in bewilderment : then suddenly examined the packet, and tendered it back, shaking bis head. " But I really shall not feel satisfied unless I pay the reward, as I have publicly of- j fered it — fur your poor people, Mr. Mackworth," said the banker. "For his penance, Mr. Mackworth, on moral grounds you ought to take it," iuterposed Mrs. Lester : " don't >ou think so ?" She turned her agreeable face on Mary, who laughed and hazarded no opinion. To tell the truth, she would have no objection at all to those five hundred pounds and the comfort they would bring to their mother and Cilia, the advantages to Harry, the addition to every one's well-being. No doubt papa was right, and she 'was low-minded and ignoble, but still !~so she said nothing, and her father rejoined 1 : "' ' "As to my poor peo'pW, if you like to spend the sum in charity, there are plenty of ways of doing so, which I am sure I need not point out to you. I thank you very much for your hospitality, and above all for the sight of those pictures : you don't know. the treat ifc has been to me." " You must come by daylight : this evening it was too dark to see them well," said Mr. Langley. " Will you not bring him ?" he added, as he handed Mary to the carriage. " We shall be delighted," Mr. Mackworth answered for her ; and the brougham drove off. Off course the home party were in some excitement as to the visit at Nettlehurst; and after service, as all gathered round the fire, Mary was eagerly questioned and crossquestioned. The discovery that her unknown friend was the banker himself caused great amusement to the younger branches, and Mr. Mackworth gave a little sigh of resigned surprise at the folly of youth and womankind, when he found that even his wife seemed more interested in hearing all about Mr. Langley and his sister, than in what he had to say about that beautiful Millais, those exquisite Landseers, and that Madonna after Sassofer Zata, which he really almost thought must be an original. The questions followed one another thick and fast; but perhaps Mary's answers were not quite so ready as usual ; she described the house and grounds with animation, and drew a clever picture of Mrs. Lester, " a small, sharp, pretty little woman, with a face like a good-natured hawk ;" but she had so little to say about Mr. Langley that Harry reproached her for ingratitude, and the fire of family wit kiudled again, reducing the curate to fall back on one of his often repeated and most utterly disregarded injunctions: "My dears, do try to talk about things ; not people." "I suppose," Cilia suggested, as the evening drew to a close, "there is no chance of our being asked to the Nettlehurst ball." Mary shook her head. " Though," she said, colouring a little and glancing at her mtiier,^Tvirr^Diirigieynaicr^ayTie - nopea we~ would come again." "He was obliged to say that," Mr. Mackworth observed ; " but I certainly shall not take him at his word ; by this time to-morrow he will have forgotten our very existence." "Oh, papa!" Mary looked so much aggrieved by this speech, that her mother glanced at her in surprise, and then said gently: " Darling^ JLwishuyou could go Jx> this ball : ftrWouid be a great treat foTyou." "Oh! I don't mind about that a bit, mamma," said Mary, rallying her spirits. " Come, Harry ; you help me to go and get the supper. It is growing quite late." At that same moment, Mr. Langley, sitting over his dessert with Mrs. Lester,, had just said abruptly : „ . , " Kate, I want you to call on the Mack<* worths and ask them to the ball." " Call on them, of course I will ; but as to the ball, Vincent, I wouldn't if I were you. Depend upon it they have no clothes for such an occasion." " What does that matter ? Surely they could do up a muslin gown or something or other of some kind," said her brother with masculine vagueness. "Do call, Katie, and take them a card ; won't you ?." "My dear ! considering that the ball is yours, and I'm only a guest myself, you need not speak so imploringly," said Mrs. Lester laughing. "Is ifc necessary to call on them to-morrow ?" " I suppose not." There was a silence ; then Mr. Langley got up and walked to the fire-place. " I say, Kate, I wish you would though, if you don't mind." " Wish I would do what? Oh ! are you thinking about the Mackworths still ? Of course, dear, I'll do exactly what you wish about it, and about asking them too." " And, Kate, don't ask them so that they feel bound to refuse you." " You are wonderfully interested about these people, Vincent," she said, looking up at him. "Well — isn't he an interesting man? And I have heard so much of the good he does at Farley. It would fare ill enough without him, for old Lowther scarcely ever goes near the place." "Mr. Lowther is dying, iahe not ?" "He is by way of being ill, but he has cried wolf so often, that he is sure to live for ever. People of that sort always de." "I will call to-morrow," said Mrs. Letter, rising ; " and, as to the ball, though I dare say they won't come, people like to be asked. However, to tell you the truth, we have quite girls enough already. The Maokworths were spoken of no more that evening, but Mrs. Lester thought that she bad never known her brother so silent and pre-occupied.