Jeremy | Page 7

hall, to poor people and rich people, to old people and young people. She was warm-hearted but not impulsive, intelligent but not clever, sympathetic but not sentimental, impatient but never uncontrolled. She liked almost everyone and almost everything, but no one and nothing mattered to her very deeply; she liked going to church, always learnt her Collect first on Sunday, and gave half her pocket- money to the morning collection. She was generous but never extravagant, enjoyed food but was not greedy. She was quite aware that she was pretty and might one day be beautiful, and she was glad of that, but she was never silly about her looks.
When Aunt Amy, who was always silly about everything, said in her presence to visitors, "Isn't Helen the loveliest thing you ever saw?" she managed by her shy self- confidence to suggest that she was pretty, that Aunt Amy was a fool, and life was altogether very agreeable, but that none of these things was of any great importance. She was very good friends with Jeremy, but she played no part in his life at all. At the same time she often fought with him, simply from her real deep consciousness of her superiority to him. She valued her authority and asserted it incessantly. That authority had until last year been unchallenged, but Jeremy now was growing. She had, although she did not as yet realise it, a difficult time before her.
Helen and Mary advanced with their presents, laid them on the breakfast-table, and then retreated to watch the effect of it all.
"Shall I now?" asked Jeremy.
"Yes, now," said Helen and Mary.
There were three parcels, one large and "shoppy," two small and bound with family paper, tied by family hands with family string. He grasped immediately the situation. The shoppy parcel was bought with mother's money and only "pretended" to be from his sisters; the two small parcels were the very handiwork of the ladies themselves, the same having been seen by all eyes at work for the last six months, sometimes, indeed, under the cloak of attempted secrecy, but more often--because weariness or ill-temper made them careless--in the full light of day.
His interest was centred almost entirely in the "shoppy" parcel, which by its shape might be "soldiers"; but he knew the rules of the game, and disregarding the large, ostentatious brown-papered thing, he went magnificently for the two small incoherent bundles.
He opened them. A flat green table-centre with a red pattern of roses, a thick table-napkin ring worked in yellow worsted, these were revealed.
"Oh!" he cried, "just what I wanted." (Father always said that on his birthday.)
"Is it?" said Mary and Helen.
"Mine's the ring," said Mary. "It's dirty rather, but it would have got dirty, anyway, afterwards." She watched anxiously to see whether he preferred Helen's.
He watched them nervously, lest he should be expected to kiss them. He wiped his mouth with his hand instead, and began rapidly to talk:
"Jampot will know now which mine is. She's always giving me the wrong one. I'll have it always, and the green thing too."
"It's for the middle of a table," Helen interrupted.
"Yes, I know," said Jeremy hurriedly. "I'll always have it too--like Mary's--when I'm grown up and all. . . . I say, shall I open the other one now?"
"Yes, you can," said Helen and Mary, ceasing to take the central place in the ceremony, spectators now and eagerly excited.
But Mary had a last word.
"You do like mine, don't you?"
"Of course, like anything."
She wanted to say "Better than Helen's?" but restrained herself.
"I was ever so long doing it; I thought I wouldn't finish it in time."
He saw with terror that she meditated a descent upon him; a kiss was in the air. She moved forward; then, to his extreme relief, the door opened and the elders arriving saved him.
There were Father and Mother, Uncle Samuel and Aunt Amy, all with presents, faces of birthday tolerance and "do-as-you-please-to-day, dear" expressions.
The Rev. Herbert Cole was forty years of age, rector of St. James's, Polchester, during the last ten years, and marked out for greater preferment in the near future. To be a rector at thirty is unusual, but he had great religious gifts, preached an admirable "as-man-to- man" sermon, and did not believe in thinking about more than he could see. He was an excellent father in the abstract sense, but the parish absorbed too much of his time to allow of intimacies with anyone.
Mrs. Cole was the most placid lady in Europe. She had a comfortable figure, but was not stout, here a dimple and there a dimple. Nothing could disturb her. Children, servants, her husband's sermons, district visiting, her Tuesday "at homes," the butcher, the dean's wife, the wives of the canons, the Polchester climate, bills, clothes, other women's clothes--over all