North and South Page #5

								

laughing.

“But are all these quite necessary troubles?” asked Margaret, looking up
straight at him for an answer. A sense of indescribable weariness of all
the arrangements for a pretty effect, in which Edith had been busied as
supreme authority for the last six weeks, oppressed her just now; and
she really wanted some one to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas
connected with a marriage.

“Oh, of course,” he replied with a change to gravity in his tone. “There
are forms and ceremonies to be gone through, not so much to satisfy
oneself, as to stop the world’s mouth, without which stoppage there
would be very little satisfaction in life. But how would you have a
wedding arranged?”

“Oh, I have never thought much about it; only I should like it to be a
very fine summer morning; and I should like to walk to church through
the shade of trees; and not to have so many bridesmaids, and to have no
wedding-breakfast. I dare say I am resolving against the very things
that have given me the most trouble just now.”

“No, I don’t think you are. The idea of stately simplicity accords well
with your character.”

Margaret did not quite like this speech; she winced away from it more,
from remembering former occasions on which he had tried to lead her into
a discussion (in which he took the complimentary part) about her own
character and ways of going on. She cut his speech rather short by
saying:

“It is natural for me to think of Helstone church, and the walk to it,
rather than of driving up to a London church in the middle of a paved
street.”

“Tell me about Helstone. You have never described it to me. I should
like to have some idea of the place you will be living in, when
ninety-six Harley Street will be looking dingy and dirty, and dull, and
shut up. Is Helstone a village, or a town, in the first place?”

“Oh, only a hamlet; I don’t think I could call it a village at all.
There is the church and a few houses near it on the green--cottages,
rather--with roses growing all over them.”

“And flowering all the year round, especially at Christmas--make your
picture complete,” said he.

“No,” replied Margaret, somewhat annoyed, “I am not making a picture. I
am trying to describe Helstone as it really is. You should not have said
that.”

“I am penitent,” he answered. “Only it really sounded like a village in
a tale rather than in real life.”

“And so it is,” replied Margaret, eagerly. “All the other places in
England that I have seen seem so hard and prosaic-looking, after the New
Forest. Helstone is like a village in a poem--in one of Tennyson’s
poems. But I won’t try and describe it any more. You would only laugh at
me if I told you what I think of it--what it really is.”

“Indeed, I would not. But I see you are going to be very resolved. Well,
then, tell me that which I should like still better to know: what the
parsonage is like.”

“Oh, I can’t describe my home. It is home, and I can’t put its charm
into words.”

“I submit. You are rather severe to-night, Margaret.”
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