Lord Clayborne's Fancy by Laura Matthews Read Free Book Online Page B

invited that night.” Meg was now laughing unrestrainedly, and Rebecca, pretending to regard her sternly, said, “Now, Meg, I am sure this tale is most informative if you will but keep an open mind. For Miss Sarah fixed me with her beady eyes and kept nodding knowingly at me, but she was obviously impatient to get away so that she could discuss me with her sister. Miss Lucilla, on the other hand, would never quite meet your eye, even when she was speaking directly to you. Meg, you must attend, for you have not the full cast of characters yet,” Rebecca urged, though Meg was now wiping her eyes on a tiny wisp of handkerchief, and clutching at her side, alternately.
    “We also had with us Dr. Baker, the physician, descended from a very old and distinguished family. He is rather lean and serious-looking, and only entered the conversation if he wished to disagree, in the most scientific and eso—esoteric, I think it is, vocabulary that you can imagine. I could not understand every third word.”
    “They sound,” Meg gasped between giggles, “like a most stimulating company.”
    “And indeed they were. For when we had adjourned to the Blue Saloon and I had played for them and the Misses Blackwell had sung the most amazing songs—religious, you understand—Sir John began in his booming voice to describe the use to which he was putting his south pasture. His wife, at the same time, mind you, was whispering about an unlit fire in the library grate the evening before, while Dr. Baker was disputing the wisdom of Sir John’s choice of pasturage. Miss Sarah was staring right at the doctor and shaking her head in disagreement, while Miss Lucilla was looking somewhere over his left shoulder with a very vague expression on her face. Now, Meg, I am sorry to have been so long in the setting of this scene, but I have reached the dénouement!” Rebecca proclaimed dramatically.
    “I really do not think I can bear it, Becka,” Meg gasped again.
    “Of course you can, for it was highly instructive. You see, during all this shouting and mumbling the vicar had been sleeping quite peacefully. I am sure,” she admitted apologetically, “that it was my playing on the pianoforte which accomplished that. Nevertheless, when suddenly he awoke, he began reciting the twenty-third psalm, to the astonishment of everyone present. Most educational, I thought,” Rebecca proclaimed, as she finally let herself join in her sister’s whoops.
    “Becka, there never was one like you to make the most of a sadly boring time. I can picture the whole, and I would have taken to my bed with the headache,” she confessed.
    “Well, perhaps it was not so bad, really. Uncle Henry has the most exquisite sense of humor and we had many a laugh over it afterwards. And I have drawn a character of each of them of which I am inordinately proud. I shall show them to you one day.”
    “Do you still do that? I remember the day Turnip found your drawing of her, and how we had to bear her Christian long suffering for weeks afterwards. And I have always kept the one you did of me, for though it is not perhaps flattering,” she reproached her sister, still giggling, “it serves to damp any pretensions I might feel on occasion.”
    “I am sure it is a most unladylike hobby, but I thoroughly enjoy it. When in London I was inspired by Rowlandson’s cartoons. I pride myself that I have developed a style of my own,” Rebecca admitted.
    Their discussion was interrupted at this point by the arrival of Miss Turnpeck, who could be heard outside the saloon door assuring someone that she had had not the least difficulty in finding her way about the house and that she was sure the two young ladies were having the nicest coze, perhaps even having ordered tea by this time of the afternoon. Rebecca guiltily rang then, as the old governess entered. Although the travelers had had luncheon trays in their rooms, she remembered Turnip’s penchant for nibbling biscuits all through the