She glanced around at him. He had his hands crossed on the head of his stick in his usual posture.
“I wonder if I’ll ever dare talk to him! He looked so kind at Rosalie yesterday. If the fish bite good, perhaps Mr. Irving’ll forget her. Here’s hopin’ they will! I meant to have a real good visit with the child to-day. I must send her a card when we stop for lunch.”
At the Thumb, Betsy had a chance to do this.
As soon as Mrs. Bruce discovered that they might make the remainder of their trip by water, she urged it.
“I would just as lief go separately from Mrs. Nixon,” she said to her son, “until she has had a night’s sleep. Find out, Irving, whether they’re going by boat.”
It proved that all the places on the boat had been engaged, and as soon as Mrs. Bruce discovered this, her desire to proceed in that way was augmented; and many were the alterations she suggested in a management which contained possibilities of such poignant disappointment as hers.
Mrs. Nixon preserved a magnificent silence; but looked graciously upon her child, whose sallies appeared to have amused Miss Maynard out of her habitual demureness.
“They seem to get on very well together,” she remarked to her brother at a moment when they were alone.
He nodded. “Helen dares be a girl again,” he announced. “There is a great weight off her mind. Her cheeks seem to have grown plump over night.”