“Well, well,” he said, “come and sit by me and tell me all the town news.”
Elfrida smiled to think what news she could tell him, and then frowned in the effort to think of any news that wouldn’t seem nonsense.
She told him all that she knew of Cousin Bet and the journey. He was quite politely interested. She told of Cousin Bet’s purchases—the collar of pearls and the gold pomander studded with corals, the little gold watch, and the family jewels that had been reset.
“And you have all to-night to rest in from that cruel coach?” he said.
“Yes,” said Elfrida, “we don’t go on again till after breakfast to-morrow. It’s very dull—and oh, so slow! Don’t you think you’d like to have a carriage drawn by a fiery iron horse that went sixty miles an hour?”
“You have an ingenious wit,” said the beautiful gentleman, “such as I should admire in my wife. Will you marry me when you shall be grown a great girl?”
“No,” said Elfrida; “you’d be too old—even if you were to be able to stop alive till I was grown up, you’d be much too old.”
“How old do you suppose I shall be when you’re seventeen?”
“I should have to do sums,” said Elfrida, who was rather good at these exercises. She broke a twig from a currant bush and scratched in the dust.
“I don’t know,” she said, raising a flushed face, and trampling out her “sum” with little shoes that had red heels, “but I think you’ll be two hundred and thirty.”