“Possibly it was; but honestly I feel, as they say in Norfolk, ‘as if I’d like to do someone an injury,’ when I think of the years that your locust has eaten.”
This announcement, transfixing and incredible, had the effect of reducing Letty to absolute silence. Sometimes Cousin Maude had odd moods and made wild and extraordinary statements; on such occasions it was prudent to be mute.
Presently they rose, and wandered back to the farm, and were greeted by Cara, who came bounding to meet them, screaming at the top of her voice:
“Tea is ready, and I’m so hungry—there’s hot cakes and cherry jam!”
A few days later, Mrs. Hesketh ordered a sleeping-berth, and prepared to return to Thornby, where important law business awaited her.
“How I shall miss you,” said Letty, as they took their last walk together by the lake-side, and watched the lights begin to twinkle in far-away Lucerne. “It will be worse for me, than if you had never come.”
“Nonsense, my dear,” rejoined her friend; “it is only in story-books that people are missed. As for you,—you have the remedy in your own hands.”
But Letty’s determination was unshaken, and, as her companion angrily declared:
“You are always strong and obstinate, where you ought to be yielding; and yielding, where you should be firm.”
Mrs. Hesketh departed, and left behind her such an aching void, that more than once Letty, the obstinate, found her resolve sorely shaken, and felt half inclined to take all risks, and follow her friend to England.