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Burrage, bringing not only Verena's glass of water but a smooth-faced, rosy, smiling old gentleman, who had a velvet waistcoat, and thin white hair, brushed effectively, and whom he introduced to Verena under a name which Ransom recognised as that of a rich and venerable citizen, conspicuous for his public spirit and his large almsgiving.
Nevertheless there were reasons, clear to Verena's view, for wishing either that he would go and see Olive or would keep away from her; and the responsibility of treating the fact that he had not so kept away as a secret seemed the greater, perhaps, in the light of this other fact, that so far as simply seeing Mr. Ransom went why, she quite liked it.
What she had mainly said was that he sometimes took her to the theatre. She was accordingly not shocked at the idea of such adventures on Verena's part; than which, indeed, judging from her own experience, nothing could well have been less adventurous. She always felt that she made that too prim; her lips stiffened themselves as she spoke.
The colour rose to Verena's cheek, and her eye for an instant looked moist. "I don't know what you always think, Olive, nor why you don't seem able to trust me. You didn't, from the first, with gentlemen. Perhaps you were right then I don't say; but surely it is very different now. I don't think I ought to be suspected so much.
Ransom, as he went, thrust the hood of Verena's long cloak over her head, to conceal her face and her identity. It quite prevented recognition, and as they mingled in the issuing crowd he perceived the quick, complete, tremendous silence which, in the hall, had greeted Olive Chancellor's rush to the front.
About Christmas a step was taken which advanced her affairs immensely, and put them, to her apprehension, on a regular footing. This consisted in Verena's coming in to Charles Street to stay with her, in pursuance of an arrangement on Olive's part with Selah Tarrant and his wife that she should remain for many months. The coast was now perfectly clear. Mrs.
Farrinder, just as the gentleman beside her, in a white overcoat, with an umbrella and a vague face, was probably her husband Amariah. At the opposite end of the row were another pair, whom Ransom, unacquainted with certain chapters of Verena's history, perceived without surprise to be Mrs. Burrage and her insinuating son.
"Yes, did she?" came from Verena's lips; and Pauline's eager eyes, and the eyes of all the other children, asked the same question. Penelope gave utterance to a great sigh. "I thought I'd be the goodest of you all," she said. "I maded up my mind that I just would; but I doesn't like Aunt Sophia, and I think I'll be the naughtiest." "No, you little goose; keep on being as good as you can.
This care for her moral appearance was, on Verena's part, something new; inasmuch as, though she had struck that note on previous occasions had insisted on its being her duty to face the accidents and alarms of life she had never erected such a standard in the face of a disaster so sharply possible.
"Well, if I didn't believe you were going to help her to develop," he remarked; and he stopped, while his hands continued to fumble, out of sight, and he treated Olive to his large joyless smile. She assured him that he need have no fear on that score; Verena's development was the thing in the world in which she took most interest; she should have every opportunity for a free expansion.
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