CHAPTER XIV.
NEW BEGINNINGS.
And so it happened that Patience was supplied with a new head, to the surprise and delight of Ruth.
“It is just like you, princess,” she said. “Fairy princesses always do such things, and oh, dear princess, what lovely clothes you have made Patience. She has been to fairyland I know. Did you make that cunning hat of rose-leaves, and the frock of spun cobwebs?”
Lisa laughed and hugged the imaginative little creature to her. “Do you know, Ruth,” she said, “that you and your grandma are coming to see us in the winter, and when we go away next week you will have that to anticipate?” For Ruth had grieved sorely over the prospect of Lisa’s near departure. Walter’s yacht had set sail a very few days after the storm, leaving Ned Carew behind. Poor Ned kept his place persistently by Lisa’s side, despite that maiden’s very contemptuous treatment.
“You never can tell what a girl means to do,” Ned had confided to Basil. “You know they say a girl often treats you very badly when she really likes you.”
“Can’t you see through a millstone when it has a hole in it?” returned Basil. And Ned pondered as deeply as he was capable upon the remark, finally concluding that Basil meant to suggest in a delicate way that Lisa’s conduct toward him indicated an opposite state of feeling from that which appeared upon the surface.
Persis had a lofty scorn for the “Popinjay,” as she called him, and any leniency toward him on Lisa’s part was mainly due to a contrary spirit aroused by Persis’s persistent attacks upon the unfortunate Ned.
Every morning found Persis and Basil ensconced in a corner of the porch with their Latin books, while Mrs. Estabrook sat near them in a high-backed chair. Persis had a persistent, dogged way of attacking her difficulties which amused Basil, and which made grandma aware that here was a trait which augured well for Persis’s success in life. No amount of persuasion or temptation would induce the girl to allow one lesson to be slighted, and in consequence, by the time the summer was over she had an assured prospect of finishing her studies at Miss Adams’s school earlier than at first seemed possible, and she was planning for her college life with high hopes.
“I miss Mr. Dan, but Basil is a great help,” she told her sister. “He is like a real brother, isn’t he, Lisa? Of course you are so taken up with the Popinjay you haven’t eyes for any one else. I believe you actually drove Mr. Dan away by your high and mightiness.”
Lisa’s lip curled. “I drive him away, indeed! It was doubtless because he was bored to death down here. I know he was just dying to get off with Walter away from us females. He was like a cat in a strange garret among such a raft of us, and I don’t wonder.”