CHAPTER XII
“Mrs. Harman,” I said, as she took the chair vacated by the elfin young lady, “you see I can manage it! But perhaps I control myself better when there’s no camp-stool to inspire me. You remember my woodland didoes—I fear?”
She smiled in a pleasant, comprehending way, but neither directly replied nor made any return speech whatever; instead, she let her forearms rest on the broad railing of the marble balustrade, and, leaning forward, gazed out over the shining and mysterious slopes below. Somehow it seemed to me that her not answering, and her quiet action, as well as the thoughtful attitude in which it culminated, would have been thought “very like her” by any one who knew her well. “Cousin Louise has her ways,” Miss Elizabeth had told me; this was probably one of them, and I found it singularly attractive. For that matter, from the day of my first sight of her in the woods I had needed no prophet to tell me I should like Mrs. Harman’s ways.
“After the quiet you have had here, all this must seem,” I said, looking down upon the strollers, “a usurpation.”
“Oh, they!” She disposed of Quesnay’s guests with a slight movement of her left hand. “You’re an old friend of my cousins—of both of them; but even without that, I know you understand. Elizabeth does it all for her brother, of course.”
“But she likes it,” I said.
“And Mr. Ward likes it, too,” she added slowly. “You’ll see, when he comes home.”
Night’s effect upon me being always to make me venturesome, I took a chance, and ventured perhaps too far. “I hope we’ll see many happy things when he comes home.”