But Mr. Raycie had taken up his main theme again. “In my opinion, if a young man travels at all, he must travel as extensively as his—er—means permit; must see as much of the world as he can. Those are my son’s sailing orders, Commodore; and here’s to his carrying them out to the best of his powers!”
Black Dinah, removing the Virginia ham, or rather such of its bony structure as alone remained on the dish, had managed to make room for a bowl of punch from which Mr. Raycie poured deep ladlefuls of perfumed fire into the glasses ranged before him on a silver tray. The gentlemen rose, the ladies smiled and wept, and Lewis’s health and the success of the Grand Tour were toasted with an eloquence which caused Mrs. Raycie, with a hasty nod to her daughters, and a covering rustle of starched flounces, to shepherd them softly from the room.
“After all,” Lewis heard her murmur to them on the threshold, “your father’s using such language shows that he’s in the best of humour with dear Lewis.”
II
IN spite of his enforced potations, Lewis Raycie was up the next morning before sunrise.
Unlatching his shutters without noise, he looked forth over the wet lawn merged in a blur of shrubberies, and the waters of the Sound dimly seen beneath a sky full of stars. His head ached but his heart glowed; what was before him was thrilling enough to clear a heavier brain than his.
He dressed quickly and completely (save for his shoes), and then, stripping the flowered quilt from his high mahogany bed, rolled it in a tight bundle under his arm. Thus enigmatically equipped he was feeling his way, shoes in hand, through the darkness of the upper story to the slippery oak stairs, when he was startled by a candle-gleam in the pitch-blackness of the hall below. He held his breath, and leaning over the stair-rail saw with amazement his sister Mary Adeline come forth, cloaked and bonneted, but also in stocking-feet, from the passage leading to the pantry. She too carried a double burden: her shoes and the candle in one hand, in the other a large covered basket that weighed down her bare arm.
Brother and sister stopped and stared at each other in the blue dusk: the upward slant of the candle-light distorted Mary Adeline’s mild features, twisting them into a frightened grin as Lewis stole down to join her.
“Oh—” she whispered. “What in the world are you doing here? I was just getting together a few things for that poor young Mrs. Poe down the lane, who’s so ill—before mother goes to the storeroom. You won’t tell, will you?”
Lewis signalled his complicity, and cautiously slid open the bolt of the front door. They durst not say more till they were out of ear-shot. On the doorstep they sat down to put on their shoes; then they hastened on without a word through the ghostly shrubberies till they reached the gate into the lane.