It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it, neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking, were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true, some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take the night train up),—"Why shouldn't we have this piece of our lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it just like this."
Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him on his cheek, saying nothing.
But to herself she said, after he had gone,—
"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out together. And there never is any time like this time. How is anybody sure of the rest of it?"
Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers.
CHAPTER XX.
"WANTED."
The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements, into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's sake.
She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire. Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be unbricked?