The laughter took a note of applause now from Mr. Hadley. “Miss Saxon,” he exclaimed, turning to Stella, “don’t let’s press her any further; she’s positively making a classic of the ague. If she says much more, we shall all be wanting to go out there for the express purpose of getting it.”
“But ten chances to one you wouldn’t get it, if you did,” said Kate. “As a matter of fact, we don’t have much of it nowadays. It was part of the newness of the country, and draining the land has carried most of it off.”
There was nothing to be said to this. She was in possession of the field at both ends, and they retreated from the subject with a last volley of laughter.
After supper Tom told Kate confidentially that she had “done ’em up in good style. Though I’ll warrant,” he added severely, “that you’d brag as much as anybody if you had some of the old places we have out your way.” And then he observed that the nabob wasn’t half bad. He didn’t know as ’twas strange that the girls had taken such a fancy to him.
As it happened, Esther was thinking of him at that very moment. She had just finished reading a letter from Morton Elwell,—a letter written, as he happened to mention, before five one morning of a day that was to be full of work. How well she knew that it was one of many—days that followed each other without break or pause save for the Sabbath’s rest! And then she thought of Mr. Philip Hadley with his summer devices for “killing time.” She wondered why life should be so easy for some, so strenuous for others; and, for the first time, she thought of it with a sort of resentment that Morton Elwell should work so hard and have no summer pleasuring.
[CHAPTER XI—AN OUTING AND AN INVITATION]
The next week came that never-to-be-forgotten outing which gave the Northmore girls their first glimpse of Boston, and their first acquaintance with the sea. Till the morning they started there was no talk of anything else. Stella, who knew better than her cousins what occasion might demand of dress in a stylish watering-place, bent all her artistic skill to the revising of garments, and even Kate and Esther, whose wardrobes were mostly new, found some chance for retouchings, some need of new laces and ribbons.
For the first time since their coming, their grandfather really felt himself a little neglected. Occasionally, as he passed through the room where the three girls sat busy with sewing and the eager discussion of styles and colors, he murmured solemnly, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity;” and he not only prayed feelingly at family devotions that the young of his household might learn to adorn themselves with “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,” but he selected once for his morning reading a chapter in which warnings were pronounced against those who set their hearts on “changeable suits of apparel, and mantles, and wimples, and crisping-pins.” However, he was as anxious as any one that his granddaughters should enjoy themselves, and his good-will toward this particular excursion was sufficiently indicated by the trifle which he quietly added to the pin-money of each when they started off.
It does not concern our story, and would take too long to tell all the sights and happenings of the days that followed. Never did two more interested or more appreciative girls than Kate and Esther Northmore walk about the streets of Boston, or take in the meanings and memories which it held in its keeping, and in its dear vicinity.
At Cambridge, as they walked about the grounds of Harvard, whom should they meet but Mr. Philip Hadley? A remarkable coincidence it seemed at the time, though Kate remembered later that Stella had set out with tolerable distinctness the time when they expected to be there, with other details of the Boston visit, that night at the farm.