"But she says it isn't trouble one bit. She says it's fun. I didn't know Hermione liked fun before, and she does. We went up to the Wish Tower, mother, and there's a moat, and a bridge, and a gun, and a man. Oh, and down below there are holes in the great high wall, and I saw birds going in and out. Wasn't that odd? Cousin Hermione couldn't tell me why they went in. I thought grown-up people knew everything. But they don't. And, mother, we saw Beachy Head, ever so far-off, you know, and high up. Three miles away, cousin Hermione says. And I do want to go there some day, 'cause you know it's in the poetry about the Spanish Armada that my Marjory read to me. I've learnt bits, and I know that part. Oh, and mother—"
"Have pity, do, child! The way you chatter!"
Mittie came to an abashed pause, looking joyous still.
"I'll tell you the rest by-and-by," she said sedately. "Only I do think East Bourne is the very most delightful place I ever saw in all my life! And now I'm going back to Hermione."
"It's a perfect craze," Mrs. Trevor remarked carelessly. She did not look annoyed, however. Hermione's love for the child gratified her in the abstract, though the perpetual recurrence of those "four syllables" did at times prove wearisome.
This was their first day in East Bourne, so a little excitement on Mittie's part was excusable. Despite its being the month of November, they had soft mild and clear weather, without rain or fogs, and with many gleams of sunshine. The three ladies enjoyed their change thoroughly, Hermione not less than the others. Harvey still wore a grave and abstracted air, and the dents in his forehead, of which Mittie had once complained, were now so habitual that the child had ceased to notice them.
Nearly a week after their arrival, Julia had one afternoon to take a note to her husband in the small sitting-room which he here used as a study. He received it with a slight detaining gesture, and she stood waiting while he read.
"No answer needed," he said, glancing up. "Sit down, Julia. I don't often get you alone for five minutes."
"We seem generally all together," she replied, with a throb of pleasure at the words. "Harvey, I wish you looked strong again. I think I shall be well first."
"I! Oh, I am all right—should be, at least, if it were not for worries."