"I shall have gwown into a strong tower when you see me nex'. A very high one indeed."
And Sidney kissed him with laughing eyes. "You dear little man! I shall expect to see and hear great things now you are a genuine schoolboy."
It was a lovely autumnal morning. Sidney was walking along a terrace of roses at Thanning Towers, reading a letter from Randolph Neville. It was the first one she had received since she had left her old home, and her eyes devoured each line with an eagerness which surprised herself.
"DEAR FELLOW BUILDER,
"Not one word will I tell you of my surroundings or work till I have talked of your heavy trouble. Blow upon blow seems to have fallen upon you. I have written before of my deep sympathy for you in the loss of your dear father; but why need there have followed such an uprooting? Surely your uncle's house is yours? You say little about his bride, and I have to read between the lines. I feel a tremendous longing surge up within me to come straight home and learn how it is with you. When I return, shall I find that Thanning Dale knows you no more? I cannot see it without your light active figure flitting along the roads, climbing the beacon, gathering flowers in your quaint old garden by the sea.
"Will you write me a letter in answer to this and tell me all about yourself, and your feelings and outlook, and about no one else at all? I am greedy for news of you. I cannot see you at Thanning Towers. You ought to be in a setting of your own. Don't, I beseech you, go away and try to forget your troubles in the seething turmoil of city life. I have been too long without a real home of my own to wish you a similar fate. You write so calmly about being a single woman with no ties, but you are not a woman to be without a home; you are essentially the ideal home-maker. I cannot separate you from all that brings peace and rest and cheer to any toil-worn, weary traveller.
"Who is looking after you, guarding and advising you? Have you anyone who notes whether you are weary or tired, anyone whose joy it is to watch every passing emotion on your face, to awake smiles, and still tears? Oh, I expect you will say I am writing like some sentimental boy; but I do not feel like one. I have been hardened and roughened in the school of life, but I am like a traveller who has trodden tracts of desolation and dreariness and has suddenly found an oasis in the desert, with such a cluster of pure and sweet-scented blossoms growing there that long after he has left it the scent and refreshment and delight of that moment remains with him still. Would the traveller hear unmoved that the sweet centre of that spot had been ruthlessly torn from its setting, and the oasis would know it no more? Write to me, I plead again, of yourself, for it is you who pass and repass in my thoughts night and day.
"Your far-away friend,
"RANDOLPH NEVILLE."
Sidney's face was flushed as she folded up the letter and slipped it into her pocket. She stood leaning against the low terrace wall, a picture of dainty grace and sweetness, and in her eyes was a dreamy glow of expectation.
"Oh," she said half aloud, "if I could only see him walking up this path, I should never feel lonely again. He has never written me such a letter before. What does he mean by it, I wonder?"
Her answer was not long in the sending.
"DEAR MR. NEVILLE,
"Your letter has already comforted me. It is such a wonderful thing that my troubles and concerns are of more interest to you, so many thousand miles away, than to any of my friends here with whom I talk and live every day. I don't know that it is a good thing to write about oneself. I have never been in the habit of doing so; nor do I wish to spend much of my time in self-pity and self-introspection. Life has changed to me, of course. But it had changed before my father died. The glamour and joy of it had steadied down to quiet content. And so long as I had him to live for, I wanted nothing else. Yet there were reasons that made me thankful for his absence later on.
"And now I try not to think whether I am happy or not. What does it matter? There are others who have as deep sorrows as I have had, and are taking life as I am taking it—just a day at a time, to be lived, not so much for oneself now, as for those who need our care and pity. Mrs. de Cressiers will not let me leave her. I must do so before long. But I do not think I will take refuge in towns. I love every inch of these sweet country lanes, every ripple of the river that laps under its green banks, always calling one down to the sea. My uncle asked me wistfully yesterday, when I happened to meet him trudging down to the river, where I was going to settle. He told me there was a small house empty upon the cliffs at Yalstone. 'I could often turn in when I'm fishing, and we'd have yarns together,' he said. But I had to shake my head. Much as I love the sea, I could not live so close to it. I told you in my last letter about Monica. Oh, isn't life perplexing and sad? And she has not the key of Faith to unravel it. It is all dark to her. I am going to see her this afternoon.
"Do, please, tell me a little of your doings when next you write. I hear scraps about you from Gavine, who, of course, hears them from George Lockhart. She says you have had an attack of fever. Are you over it yet? Have you anyone—you see I am taking a leaf out of your book—who looks after you and nurses you when ill?
"And now I'll answer some of your questions. I have Someone Who watches over me and notes if I am weary or tired; Someone Who guards and advises me; Someone Who brings smiles to my lips and stills the tears that rise, and understands the very thoughts of my heart; Someone Who daily makes that promise good: 'Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'
"And isn't it good to think that He is guarding and guiding us both at the same time—though the ocean may be between us—and shepherding us through the wilderness that leads to our Home?
"Your fellow pilgrim,
"SIDNEY."
[CHAPTER XVIII]
AUSTIN SPEAKS