"Jolly old soul," commented Lanse. He was playing solitaire, and had paused reflectively with a card in his hand while he gazed at the spread-out piles before him. "Jolly old soul!—I am glad she is going to see something at last, before she dies."
"What expressions you do use, Lanse! one would think she was ninety. As for seeing, she'll see nothing but Garda Thorne, and have her hands full at that."
"Her eyes, you mean," said Lanse, slipping his card deftly upon a pile which contained already its legal three, and fitting the edges accurately as he did so to those of the card beneath, in order to cheat himself with the greater skill.
Aunt Katrina's comments were based upon some recent tidings. Betty had journeyed down to East Angels that afternoon in the black boat of Uncle Cato to convey to her dearest Kate a wonderful piece of news: Garda had suddenly decided to go abroad for the winter—to Italy, and she had written from New York, where she was staying with Lish-er and Trude, to beg Betty to come north immediately and go with her, "like the dear, kind old aunt" that she was. Betty's mind, driven into confusion by this sudden proposal, was a wild mixture of the sincerest regrets at leaving dear Kate, of the sincerest gratification at this proof of Garda's attachment, and the sincerest (and most dreadful) apprehensions concerning the ocean passage.
Garda's second visit at East Angels—a very short one—had terminated only six weeks before; at that time she had no intention of going to Italy. This, then, was some sudden new idea, and Lanse had amused himself imagining causes for it. He imagined them on such a scale of splendor, however, that Aunt Katrina declared at last that she could listen to no more of them; they were too ridiculously silly.
She brought herself to listen, however, when, four months later, Betty, having survived a recrossing of the ocean, came down to East Angels, with the lion carpet-bag, to tell "everything" to her friend.
Poor Betty had been so homesick in foreign lands that Garda had not had the heart to detain her longer. "And she said that she had hoped I would stay with her a long time, perhaps always," narrated Betty. "And of course I enjoyed being in New York ever so much, of course; and Rome too—Rome was so instructive. But then you know, as I told the dear child, Rome is not my home, nor can I make it so at my age, of course."
"It's not age; it's experience," said Kate.
"Very likely you're right, Kate; but then, you know, I've had so little experience; since I came from Georgia with Mr. Carew, ever so many years ago, I've never put my foot outside of Florida until now, and I suppose I've grown like those Swiss exiles we read about, who can't hear that call for cows, you know, that Ranz something, without getting so homesick, though to everybody else it's a dreadfully yelling sound,—though I ought to say, too, that as we've next to no cows in Florida, the comparison isn't a very good one; but then there were next to no cows in Rome either, for that matter, though it was there that a cow brought up little Castor and Pollux, who built the city—no, no, I'm mistaken, that was Romulus and Remus; Castor and Pollux tamed the horses on the Quirinal; but in either case it shows that the milk must have been good, because they were so strong, you know."
"Are we talking of milk, Elizabeth?" asked Kate, in despair.