Aunt Euphrasia looked from one face to the other.
"Not to say anything for two years!" she thought, recalling inwardly her brother's wise injunction. "It says itself, though; and it was made to!"
"How do you do, Mrs. Argenter? I hope you are feeling better for your country summer? Aunt Effie! You're not surprised to see me? Did you think I would let you go down without?"
No; Aunt Effie, when she had written him that regular little Sunday afternoon note from Brickfield, telling him that they were all to come down on Tuesday, had thought no such thing. And she was at this moment, with wise forethought, packed in behind all the others, in the most inaccessible corner of the car.
"You're not going down to the city?"
But he was. Rodney's eyes sparkled as he told her.
"Your own doctrine exemplified. Things always happen, you say. One of the mills is stopped for just this very day of all others,—repairing machinery. I'm off work, for the first time in four months. There has been no low water all summer. Regular header, straight through. Don't you see I'm perfectly emaciated with the confinement? I've breathed in wool-stuffing till I feel like a pincushion."
"An emaciated wool-stuffed pincushion! Yes, I think you do look a little like it!" Aunt Euphrasia talked nonsense just as he did, because she was so pleased she could not help it.
They paired, naturally. Miss Kirkbright and Mrs. Argenter, facing each other in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been filled. Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a House of Refuge.
"I will not have it called that, though. It shall not be stamped with any stereotyped name. It shall not even be a Home,—except my home; and I'll just take them in: I and Euphrasia."