"What do you say, Miss McPherson? Will you go?" Jack asked, and she answered quickly: "I'd like it, so much; but I thought--I'm quite sure we had better not;" and as she thus gave up the happiness she had so coveted, she burst into tears--tears for her poverty, and tears for Neil, who had not been so kind to them as this stranger was.
"Why, Bessie," her father said, "what is the matter? I thought you wanted to drive."
"I do, I do," she sobbed; then, with a quick, impatient movement she dashed the tears from her eyes which shone like stars as she lifted them bravely to Jack Trevellian and said, with a tinge of pride in her lone: "I should enjoy the drive more than anything else in the world, and it was kind in you to ask us; but, Mr. Trevellian, you don't know what it would be to you to be seen there with father and me--he in his darned coat and I in this gown, the best I have here, or anywhere, for summer; and then, my hat; the ribbons are all faded and poor, just as we are, dear father and I;" and as she talked she stepped to her father's side and wound her arms around his neck.
There was a world of pathos in the low, sweet voice which said so sadly, "dear father and I," and it moved Jack with a strange power, bringing a moisture to his eyes where tears had not been in years.
Mastering his weakness Jack burst into a merry laugh which was good to hear, as he said: "Is it the gown, and the hat, and the old darned coat? And do you think I care for trifles like these? I tell you honestly, I would rather take your linen gown, to drive this afternoon, with you in it, than the most elegant dress in London and you out of it."
And so it was arranged that they should go, and Jack staid on and on, and read aloud to Bessie, and told her of his travels in the East, and in Australia, and then, he scarcely knew how or why, he spoke of the old Trevellian home in the north of England, near the border. Trevellian Castle it was called, he said, and it had been in the family for years.
"I have two cousins there," he said, "or rather second cousins, Dick and Harry, and I like them both so much, especially Hal, who is six feet three inches high, and well proportioned. Quite a giant, in fact. Then there is a young girl, Florence Meredith, Flossie we call her, she is so like a playful kitten. She is not a cousin, at least to me, though she calls me that. She is a distant relative of Sir Paul's wife, the mother of Dick and Hal, and was adopted by her when a baby, Flossie is lovely, and you remind me of her, except that she is much younger. She will make a lovely woman, and somebody's heart will ache on her account one of these days."