A PRACTICAL TEST

Manawatu Herald, Volume II, Issue 270, 28 May 1889, Page 3

A PRACTICAL TEST

(Fbom all the teak round.) * Mrs Courtly was ' at home,' and Tom was shown into her large, drawingroom, a cheering #*fcontrast to the wet streets and his «own library. It was full of people, 4^and Tom had for a , moment some in seeing his little keensparkling hostess. He made >*his way to her, and was greeted laughingly by her with — 'Well, Mr Chester, is Diogenes your idea at present ? I thought I * fead lost you. as a guest; an old woman doesn't like that. Never Blind, air, I shall forgive you this w time, though you don't deserve it. You're a favourite of mine, do you r know. And now you want someone younger than myself to talk to. Let me introduce you to my niece, Lady Maria "Wood. Myria, my dear,' to a tall giri who had been standing near the fire, but turned at the words and ackowledged Mr Chester's bow. Let me get you a chair," said Tom to her, being the first thing he of. 'Thank you,' she said, with a smile. ' I was sitting here just now, behind Aunt Sarah; there's room; sit down, won't you? Do you know my Aunt well? She For continuation of reading matter nee j fourth page.

seemed to hare missed you. I've mever been here before, and I don't leuow any one. I do so want to; and I can't very well go up to Aunt Sarah, and say, for instance, 'Who is the old gentleman in the very shabby brown poat?' He's some one clever, I k4ow ; he's written a book or something. Do tell me, ii you know-Jl've never been in London before ; my homeY in Ireland, isn't that a confession/!— the first, I me»i,n — well, both, perhaps.' She had chattered fast, and stopped a moment to rest, leaving Tom leisure to glance, at her face, while be tried to. frame an answer which should belong to all her queries.

A. sweet, round, girlish face met his eyes — young, fair, with soft brown hair all round it. The slight, young figure looked slighter still in the dark-green, cloth d#ess she wore; and Tom saw that he was talking to a young woman be'onging to a class he had often contemptuously described as 'neither one thing nor the other,' neither school girl nor woman.

But contempt was the feeling furthest from Tom that afternoon. He listened to her chatter, and gave her information concerning? things and persons in London, which was a little vain and reckless ; but laughed and confessed himself frankly when she said, after one or two of his moat astonishing statements, in her pretty

voice —

' Are you sure, Mr Chester ?' When Mrs Oourtley came up to their corner, and said ' Maria, you will sing to us ? ' Tom, to his own great surprise, found himself offering to turn over her pages. Directly after, it occurred to him that he knew not a note of music, and should probabh r make a muddle of it. ' Never mind,' he said to himself, " it's a song. I'll go for the words.' And go for the words he did, manfully; and afterwards her pretty, 'Thank you, Mr Chester; you turned them exactly right," helpad to make him really vexed to realise that it was six o'clock, and he must at cnce find Mrs Courtley and take his leave, if he meant to be in time for a never neglected frmd«,y duty— tea in the library -with Mrs Smith and Polly. H» was quite in time. Polly— in a dark grei n dre«s, with a wide stripe of bright red all down the front, bordered with shining and wonderful buttons, the whole copied with infinite pains from one she had seen in church, and mentally exaggerated during her w»lk home— had just brought up tea. " Tell Mrs Smith I'm in,' Tom said to her ; whereupon «he ran dowa the kitchen stairs and reappeared, with l£rt Smith.

They sat down, and Tom began the conversation, as he always did on these occasions, by what he flattered himself were brief* well-chosen allusions to the simple topics of the day. Mrs Smith's replies were chiefly, 'Yes, sir; realm sir; no, sir,' in unvarying order, with .no regard for the subject under discus* sioa. Polly's remarks, Tom prided himself had lately shown growing intelligence : but tonight it seemed to him she was more apt than ever before to break into his own decidedly elevating topio, with reference to ' that dreadful poisoning case in Hoxten,' and ' that murder as Manchester.'

Her frock, too, surely it wasn't quite what it should be— and yet he had seen friends tyji his in something like that. He thought! she sat unusually awkwardly on her chnir, too, and she had apparently quite forgotten his bygone remonstrances on the subject of grammatical errors. Tom felt very disheartened when Polly, Mrs Smith, and the tea things had gone downstairs. He had watched Polly fold the tablecloth with an odd sense of a, difference between those strong, firm, pink hands, and -the white ones he had seen playing .with her ffre ? screen, as their owner talked to him in Mrs Courtley's drawing-room thiee hours before.

' But she'll get on all right -with patience," said Tom to himself, -with returning hope, as he filled his second pipe in the smoking room, " and I might, perhaps, speak about that Irock."

At the end of the neafe-*eek T3em had a letter, which he had for- tome time been vaguely excepting? He received it, however, not Mknt&ati* great deal of grumbling. ' A. cousin with whom, in spite of his many ost ways, Tom hadalways Been a favourite, had made him promise to come to her wedding. : "Some time next summer," she bad said when she tod him he •must come.'

May — early in May as it was, too — hardly struck Tom* aa summer. Still, he put that down to the general|unreliableness and unreasonableness of women's plans, and, with several heavy sighs, packed his portmanteau.

Anything out of the ordinary routine of his life he disliked intensely ; and now he felt a martyr indeed, for he had bean weak enough, ns he c lied it on the way down, to obey a sentence in his cousin's letter which had said —

* And you limftt come on Monday, Tom. If you only come on Wednesday, I shouldn't sre ycftt. Sevefral' other people are coming on Monday, too." , ' r

TokeContin\wL