“Yes, papa. I like them very well--they are just like me. They do as little work as they can, and get off everything they can. We had a famous ride--but that was yesterday. I told you about it. Lily Barrington’s horse ran away, or we thought it ran away; and mine set off at such a pace! I was dreadfully frightened, but Lily liked it. She had done it on purpose, fancy! and thinks there is nothing in the world so delightful as a gallop.”
“And you call her Lily?” said Mr. Trevor, with a glow of pleasure; “that’s right, my dear. That’s what I like to hear. Not that I want you to neglect the others, Lucy; but you can always get a hold on the poor; no fear of them; I want you to secure the great ones, too. I want you to know all sorts. You ought to with your prospects. I was saying to Ford to-day a girl with your prospects belongs to England. The country has an interest in you, Lucy. You ought to know all sorts, rich and poor. That is just what I have been settling,” he said, laying his hand on the blotting-book now closed, in which his papers were.
Lucy gave him a little smile nodding her head. She was evidently quite in the secret of the document there. But she did not stop her knitting, nor was she so much interested in that future which he was settling for her so carefully as to ask any questions. Her little nod, her smile which had a kind of indulgence in it, as for the vagaries of a child, her soft calm and indifference bore the strangest contrast to his absorption in all that concerned her. Perhaps the girl did not realize how entirely her future was being mapped out; perhaps she did not realize that future at all. There was a touch of the gentlest youthful contempt for that foolish wisdom of our fathers to which we are all instinctively superior in our youth, in her perfect composure. It amused him--though it was so odd that a man should be amused in such a way--and it did not matter any further to her.
“Mrs. Stone sent her kind regards, papa, and she will gladly come over and take a cup of tea any time you like.”
“Oh, she’ll come, will she? I want to tell her of something I’ve put in the will,” said old Mr. Trevor.
This roused Lucy from her composure. She looked at him with a half-startled glance.