"Oh, no," returned the little girl, and she knew then she had two sides to her nature, and one was longing for the new and untried, and the other clung to what was familiar. There were tears in her eyes, but she could not have told which chord of her soul of all the many was touched.
"I should just die without you!" protested Norah. "I couldn't love a colleen of my own better."
Grandmere said but little. She saw there was an unquiet longing in the child's heart. She could not quite approve of trusting her to strangers, but she knew girls had come from the old world to Virginia and married men they had never seen before, and made good wives and mothers. Daffodil was too young to think of lovers, two years hence there might be danger.
"I'd go!" declared Felix in his most manly fashion. "Why, Tim Byerly has been out to Ohio, which is a real country, not all a river. And Joe Avery went over to the Mes'sipy and down to New Orleans."
"Mississippi," corrected his mother.
"That's what Joe calls it. And men haven't time for such long names. Yes, I mean to go about when I'm big and have some money. Father 'n' I'll set out and discover some new state and take possession of it in the name of the President. Of course girls can't set out to discover things. And Philadelphia has been discovered already."
They had not long to think about it. And as if to make it the more possible an old neighbor, Mrs. Craig, who was going to spend the winter in the distant city with a married daughter, offered to give her a mother's care on the journey. Girl friends came in and envied her the wonderful luck. Most of the neighbors took it for granted that she would go.
As for the little girl she changed her mind about every hour. She had come to care a great deal about M. de Ronville. In youth one responds so readily to affection and he had learned to love her as he had never loved anything in his life. He was charmed with her frankness and simplicity, her utter unworldliness. She seemed to care no more for the great estate over the river than if it had been a mere garden patch. And he thought her too lovely to be wasted upon any of these rather rough, commonplace young men. She must be taught to know and appreciate her own value.
It was only settled the night before. There was no need of much making ready, they could get what she wanted in the great city. And they must allow him the pleasure of providing for her. No one would be wronged by whatever he might do for her.
Grandad had been very grumpy about it, and Norah cried and scolded and then admitted it was the most splendid thing, like a fairy story. Felix was full of delight. And the good-by's were so crowded at the last that her head was in a whirl. She felt as if she should come back that same night and talk over her day's journey.