“Miss Rothesay is scarcely of your opinion; at all events, she is going to try the experiment by leaving us for a while.”
“Miss Rothesay leaving us!”
“It is indeed true, Lyle. You see I have not been well of late, and my kind friends here are over-anxious for me; and I want to see my aunt in Scotland.”
“It is to Scotland you are going?—all that long dreary way? You may stay there weeks, months! and that while what will become of me—I mean of us all at Farnwood?”
His evident regret touched Olive deeply. It was something to be missed, even by this boy: he always seemed a boy to her, partly because of olden times, partly because he was so boy-like and unsophisticated in mind and manner.
“My dear Lyle, how good of you to think of me in this manner! But indeed I will not forget you when I am away.”
“You promise that?” cried Lyle, eagerly.
Olive promised; with a sorrowful thought that none asked this pledge—none needed it—save the affectionate Lyle!
He was still inconsolable, poor youth! He looked so drearily pathetic, and quoted such doleful poetry, that Mrs. Gwynne, who, in her matter-of-fact plainness, had no patience with any of Lyle's “romantic vagaries,” as she called them, began to exert the dormant humour by which she always quenched his little ebullitions. Olive at last considerately came to the rescue, and proposed an evening stroll about the garden, to which Lyle gladly assented.
There he still talked of her departure, but his affectations were now broken by real feeling.