"Why, what is that?" asked Laura, a little alarmedly, taken off her guard.
"Well," replied Blythe, still solemn, "you'll only be away from here for about fifteen hours, and how are you possibly going to have your apartment completely redecorated, from forepeak to mizzen, alow and aloft, in that space of time?"
"Tush!" laughed Laura. "There will be plenty of time to have the place done over—and it really does sorely need it, now doesn't it?" this with a wistfulness at which Blythe and Louise laughed, "—when I take Louise to Europe with me in May—less than three months off."
"Am I to go to Europe with you, dear—really?" asked Louise, surprised and pleased; for Laura had said nothing about it before.
"Most assuredly you are," replied Laura, entirely in earnest. "If, that is, you can make up your mind to be burdened by the companionship of one so aged."
The topic was lost in the excitation of their arranging themselves in Laura's car, which was to take them to the ferry. But the thought of it recurred to Louise several times during the ride to the ferry. It was an alluring prospect, barring the obstacles. How could she leave her mother, even for a short time, now that she had rejoined her after a separation of years? Finally she was able to dismiss such cogitations and yield herself to the enjoyment of the day ahead.
It was one of those unseasonably mild days in late February that occasionally "drop in" to point an accusing finger at the harshness of winter. A brilliant sun swam in a cloudless sky, and the soft yet invigorating balminess of late April was, as they noticed when they sped by the Park, deluding the buds of tree and hedge into swelling prematurely and even seducing the willows into a vague, timidly displayed elusive green. Hardy, pioneering robins, advance couriers sent forth to investigate the senile endurance of winter, hopped about the Park sward. School-ward bound boys, out of sight of their homes, were doffing their irksome overcoats, and thrusting them, blanket-wise, at demure little schoolgirls who, in turn, were carrying their stuffy jackets over their arms. Motormen and truckmen were smothering yawns that denoted a premature spring fever. Business-bound men, going more slowly than usual, glancing occasionally at the sky of sapphire, and feeling on their cheeks gusty little zephyrs from the South, thought of fishing "where the wild stream sings." Belated shopgirls, sensing the morning's benign balm as they hurried through crowds, thought of hats and furbelows for the season that, they surmised, was almost upon them.
In the ferry-bound automobile, John Blythe was thinking about a letter hid in the pocket of his coat and wondering how the person whom the letter most concerned would regard its contents. Louise was wondering if her mother would be annoyed over the word she had left with her maid that she would be with Laura for the entire day and part of the evening; occasionally she glanced sidelongwise at John Blythe, when there was no possibility of his catching her at it, and strove vaguely to analyze the sense of power, mingled with kindliness, which his presence diffused. Laura, leaning back, emitting an occasional absurdity, studied them both and wondered, her eyes a little dreamy, if matters ever actually turned out in real life as they did in novels.
They stood on the ferryboat's prow, bathing in the sun's relenting glow and blinking at the gold-tipped river crests; and it was only ten o'clock when, after half an hour's ride on the slam-bang little accommodation train, they debarked at the spick-and-span little station, at the side of which Blythe's care-taker, a grinning but stolid German, had drawn up a fine and comfortable, if old-fashioned, surrey to which was hitched a pair of glossy, mettlesome sorrels.
Louise and Laura felt like clapping their hands when, after the two-mile drive through woodlands and past neat, well-cared-for little farms the clean, sweet-smelling soil of which already was being turned up, they drove on a firm, natural road through a wide wooden gate and came in sight of the pretty Colonial house, with four bright yellow pillars, topped by a balcony of snowy white, with wide-open shutters of an intense green, and a big white double door at the sides of which were little grooved columns surmounted by the inevitable Corinthian capitals. The house, fresh and smart in its old-fashioned way, was roomier than it looked from the front. It was divided by a wide hall which ran its entire length on the ground floor; and a wide stairway ran from the hall in front to the second floor, where, after the Colonial fashion, the balcony gave upon sleeping rooms.