When we came back to the hotel, I ran up, and the mail had come from Paris; so Uncle said if I'd fill his fountain-pen, he'd just spend the afternoon letting a few people in America know what Europe was really like. I'm a little bit troubled, for I'm all over being stiff and sore from that climbing, and yet he seems to feel almost as mean as ever. He has his meals in his room, for, although we're on the first floor, he says he cannot even think calmly of a stair-case yet. He says that Talbot's Tower seems to have settled in his calves, and Heaven knows when he'll get over it. Lee says I ought not to worry, but to make the most out of the situation; but I do worry, because Uncle is so uncertain. And I'm perfectly positive that there will be an awful scene when he finds out that during his paralysis I've been going all over with Lee.
"He has his meals in his room, for he says he cannot even think calmly of a stair-case yet."
Lee and I went to walk this afternoon, and we visited the old, old church of St. Nicolas. It said in the book that the apse still had its original stone roof, and Lee said it would be a good chance to learn what an apse was; so we set out to go there, but we forgot all about where we set out for, and it was five o'clock before we finally got back to where it was. It stands in an old cemetery, and it says in the book that it has been secularized; so we climbed up on gravestones till we could see in the windows and learn what that meant, also. The gravestones were all covered with lichen and so slippery that in the end Lee gave up and just helped me to look. We didn't learn much, though, for it was only full of hay.
When we got back to the hotel, I ran up, and Uncle was gone! I never was so frightened in my life, and when I ran back and told Lee, he whistled, so I saw that he was upset, too. He said I'd better go to my room and wait, and he'd dine at his hotel to-night; so I went to my room, and Uncle was there, hunting all through my things for the address-book. I was so glad and relieved that I didn't mind a bit the way he had churned everything up, although you ought to see my trunk, and I kissed him and told him it was just splendid to see him beginning to go about again. He looked pleased, but he says the backs of his legs are still beyond the power of description, and so I proposed having dinner with him in his room, which we did very comfortably, and he told me that he should remember this trip till the day he died, without any regard for the grease I spilt on his hat. After dinner he was very fidgety, and I can see that the confinement is wearing on him; but I don't know what to do.
More letters came by the evening mail, and Mrs. Clary is so in raptures over the dinner that when Uncle asked me if I had heard from her I thought it was wisest to say no, because I knew that if he read how happy M. Sibilet was making her, he surely wouldn't like it at all.
Lee sent me a note by a messenger about eleven o'clock, with instructions in French on the outside about their delivering it to me when I was not with Uncle. They delivered it all right, and I read it. He just said that the automobiles had come, and that he was going to cast his die clean over the Rubicon to-morrow morning at eleven. That means that he is going, of course, and that I am to be left here all alone. I do feel very badly over it, for Uncle will be almost sure to find out about Lee whenever he can get downstairs again, and then I'm sure I don't know what will happen. Of course I've not done anything that I shouldn't have done; but, dear me! doing right doesn't help if Uncle chooses to decide that it is wrong. And if he can't walk, to let us go on traveling, he's going to keep getting more and more difficult to get along with. I don't like to tell Lee how troubled I am, because if Lee gets worked up and decides to take a hand in while I'm traveling with Uncle, I might as well be Mr. Pickwick when he rushed between just in time to get the tongs on one side and the shovel on the other. I don't want Lee trying to defend me from Uncle, because I know Uncle would never forgive him for thinking I needed defending. You know yourself just how Uncle is, and now that his legs are so stiff he is more that way than ever. Lee doesn't understand, and I can't make him understand, and perhaps it's just as well that he should go on to-morrow. Maybe Uncle will be better in a few days, so that we can visit Bayeux. He's crazy to go to Bayeux and see the tapestry, and it isn't so very far. But what shall we do if we come to any town again where there are no cabs! It would be awful.