XXXII
LAYING FOUNDATIONS
There are three short and simple words, the hardest of all to pronounce in any language, but which no man or nation that cannot utter, can claim to have arrived at manhood. Those words are, I was wrong.
—James Russell Lowell.
The early tea was over, and long shadows were falling as the little party broke up. The three girls were still debating what sort of ice cream they should make, when just beyond the gate a neighbour, driving by, offered Mr. Erskine a seat in his buggy. Then Magnus turned to his sisters.
"Stay here, you girls," he said. "I have to speak to Cherry very seriously; and I doubt if she likes to be lectured before people. Run in."
The girls laughed and obeyed; but perhaps Cherry did not choose to wait for lectures, nor mean to have them, for she spoke first. They were going slowly up the hill, Magnus falling into the West Point saunter, to which Cherry rather unwillingly conformed.
"We are walking very slow," she ventured. "And you used to walk so fast."
"West Point style. The very first day they impressed it upon my mind that fast walkers want to get somewhere. And, Cerise, just now I do not."
"Magnus," she said suddenly, "what did you really mean by a 'storm flag'?"
"Ah!" said Cadet Kindred, in a tone of deep satisfaction, "now I have got it. I thought it could not be long before Cherry would take me in hand."
"But whatever did you mean?"