"I think not," she said. "It is only those who don't deserve to be happy whose happiness doesn't last. Now you, Lucy—But give me some more tea, and don't try and croak, because you make the most awful failure of it."
Lucy's face wreathed itself in its wonted smile again.
"I wonder whether there are two happier girls in all the world than you and I, Leslie?" she said. "What shall we do this evening—go for a walk? You haven't been into the village yet. Will you come? It is such a pretty, quaint little place, with the tiniest and most delightful church you ever saw! Isn't it strange that we should be pitchforked down here into a place we know nothing about and never heard of? It is like Robinson Crusoe again. I hope the natives will not be savage!"
Leslie looked up from the copy-book she was examining.
"We shall have very little to do with the natives, savage or friendly, Lucy," she said.
"Of course not," assented Lucy, cheerfully. "I suppose the clergyman's wife will call—Oh, I forgot! He said the first morning he came to read prayers that he wasn't married. But the squire's lady will drive up in a carriage and pair, and walk through the school with her eyeglass up. But no one else will come to bother us. You see," she ran on, jumping up to water the flowers in the window, "school-teachers are supposed to be neither fish, flesh nor fowl—and not very good red herring. People don't visit them."
"That is good news for school-teachers, at any rate," said Leslie, smiling.
"Yes; we don't want anybody, do we, dear? You and I together can be quite happy without the rest of the world. And now about our walk. Shall we go, Leslie?"
"I don't think I will this evening, Lucy. I will stay and go over these books. But you shall go on a voyage of discovery, and bring back a full and particular account of your adventures."
"No, no! I'll stay," began Lucy. But Leslie looked up at her with the expression Lucy had learned to know so well. "Very well, dear," she said, gently. "I will just run into the village and order some things we want and come straight back; and mind, you are not to do all those copy-books, or I shall feel hurt and injured."