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It is true that the Vardell family coat-of-arms was not concealed but it was not brandished or expounded. In quiet but vigilant emblazonry, it seemed to stand apart, like some far back member of the family in whose pride it shared. Which reminded me, by contrast, of a call I had once made upon a certain Northern family, conspicuously rich and conspicuously new.
"Our guest is only flesh and blood, Sadie," answered the courtly father when his laughing ceased, "so I presume, like the rest of us, he thinks you lovely. As for his telling you so, he was only carrying out your own instructions." "I don't see how you could have done anything else," laughed Mrs. Vardell. "You shut him up to it, you know, Sadie.
Captain Vardell presented us children with a handsome collection of shells, picked up on foreign shores during his numerous voyages; and some of them were very rare and beautiful. Most of them had a delicate pink tinge, like the outer leaves of a just-blown rose; and we amused ourselves fur a long time by arranging them in a glass-case which my father gave us for the purpose.
She spent most of her time in playing jackstraws with us, or else lounging on the sofa; muttering in rapid succession the words of a small prayer-book, which Captain Vardell told us she always carried about her, as it had been consecrated and given to her by a Spanish priest.
After your precept, to have said nothing nice would have meant that there was nothing nice to say." "But seriously," resumed Miss Sadie, turning again to me, "that was really a lovely sermon this morning. It is beautiful to be able to help a whole congregation like that." "Yes," chimed in Miss Vardell, Sadie's sweet senior, "it was perfectly fascinating. I shall never forget it as long as I live."
Once, when in extreme good-humor, she shewed us how to make beads resembling coral, from a certain paste which she manufactured; but we never could extract from her the names of the materials, and were obliged to content ourselves with making them under her direction. Mrs. Vardell was so extremely lazy that she would never stoop to pick up anything she had dropped.
After they had ransacked every mental corridor in vain they acknowledged the fruitlessness of the quest, and I myself told their aged relative the text. "Of course," they cried together, each repeating portions of it again and again in the spirit of atonement. "I suppose," said Mrs. Vardell, "that the mind undergoes a kind of relaxation after a delicious tension such as we experienced to-day."
We once had a visit from a Captain Vardell, an acquaintance of my father's, who had married a Spanish woman. This Captain had spent much of his time at sea; roving about from place to place, until at length he settled down for some years in Spain.
She was an extremely troublesome, exacting visitor, and we were not at all sorry when the time of her departure arrived. My father had exerted himself on their behalf, and at the end of their visit handed Captain Vardell a handsome sum of money, collected from among his merchant friends and acquaintances.
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