Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878, page 59 by Various Authors
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as at the door asking for his father. He forgot the sporting intelligence in an instant: "Well, isn't my father in?"
No: Mr. Hardwicke went out about twenty minutes earlier, and did not say when he should be back. They had told Miss Langton, and she said, "Perhaps Mr. Henry--"
Mr. Henry was off like a shot. He found Sissy on her horse at the door, looking pensively along the street, as if she were studying the effect of dusky red on palest blue--chimney-pots against the April sky.
"So Mr. Hardwicke is out?" she said when they had shaken hands. "I'm so sorry! I wanted him so particularly."
"Is it important? Are you in a great hurry?" said Henry. "He won't be long, or he would certainly have left word--on a market-day especially. Could you come in and wait a little while?" he suggested. "I suppose I shouldn't do as well?"
"I don't know," said Sissy, looking a little doubtfully at the tall, fresh-colored young fellow, who smiled frankly in reply.
"Oh, it isn't at all likely," said Mr. Henry with delightful candor. "The governor can't, for the life of him, understand how I make so many blunders. I've a special talent that way, I suppose, but I don't know how I came by it."
"Then perhaps it had better be Mr. Hardwicke. If it were a waltz, now--" and she laughed. "But it isn't a waltz: it is something very important. Do you know anything about wills?"
He looked up in sudden apprehension: "Is it about a will? Mrs. Middleton's? Is anything the matter?"
"No, it isn't Aunt Middleton's: it's mine," was the composed reply. But seeing relief, and almost amusement, on his face, she added hastily, "I can make a will, can't I? I'm twenty-one, you know: it's my birthday to-day."
"Then I wish you many happy returns of the day."
"Thank you, but can I make a will?"
"Of course you can make a will."
"A will that will be good?" Sissy insisted, still speaking in the low tone she had adopted when she began to explain the object of her visi