CHAPTER VII
SPANISH LESSONS
The Harcourt carriage swung rapidly along the road, for the Little Colonel held the reins, and was testing the speed of the new horses, just sent down from Lexington.
"Isn't it glorious?" she cried, with a quick glance over her shoulder at Gay and Miss Marks on the back seat. "It's like flying, the way they take us through the air, and they're the best matched team in the country."
Leland, on the seat beside her, watched with growing admiration her expert handling of the horses, and Gay watched him. Swathed in a white chiffon veil, she was paying the penalty for being so obliging the day before. She had lain so long on the rocks in her pose of the drowned fishermaiden, that her face was burned to a blister, and she could not touch it without groaning. But she would willingly go through the ordeal again, she told herself, in order to bring about the present desirable state of affairs.
"Now which way?" asked Lloyd as they came to a turn. "I feel like a Columbus on an unsailed sea. I thought I knew every gah'den around heah within a radius of five miles, but I've nevah seen any that fits the description of the one you're taking us to."
"Turn to the right," Leland directed. "Then it's just a short way down a woodland road. You'll come to an old-fashioned wicket gate and a straight, box-bordered walk leading up to the back of such a quaint vine-covered old house with a red door, that you'll expect to see a thatched roof and hear an English skylark."
"Well, of all things," laughed Lloyd, "why didn't you say little red doah in the first place. That would have located it for me. You've simply discovahed the back premises of old Doctah Shelby's place, and yoah wondahful English gah'den is their kitchen gah'den. We could have reached their front gate in ten minutes from our house, and heah you have led us all around Robin Hood's bahn to find it. That loop around Rollington took us a good two miles out of the way."
"Well, that's the only way I knew how to reach it," he answered, with the flashing smile she had learned to look for. "I hope that you don't feel that it has been time wasted. I don't."