“All we can do, I suppose, is to hear of each other through the Professor and Frau Rosenwald. They will never let me write to you at school. It’s not as if I were your brother really or even your cousin. They’re awfully strict at schools about that.”
“Well,” said Evereld, resolutely drying her eyes, “We can write in the holidays, and in a little more than three years’ time I can do just exactly what I like. Promise, Ralph, that you will come to me when I am one and twenty. Promise me faithfully.”
“I promise,” he said. But as he spoke it seemed to him that by that time a thousand things might have happened to divide them. He had a perception somehow that, once broken, that brotherly and sisterly intimacy could never again be the same thing. Later on, Evereld knew that it was indeed at an end, but for the moment his promise cheered her, and she set herself to work to make the most of the present. “Come,” she said, “tea is getting cold, and you must eat all you can, for who knows where you will dine. Oh, Ralph! what do you mean to do? Where shall you go in London?”
“I think I shall go first to my father’s solicitor, old Mr. Marriott. He was kind to me when I left Whinhaven, and he will know the whole truth about things, and will perhaps advise me.”
“Shall you go in for the Indian Civil again?”
“I don’t think so, for most likely all that part is true enough. I must have failed badly; I never was any good at exams. No, I have a great idea of trying my luck on the stage. That was always my wish since the day when my father took me to see Washington. We often laughed over the plan and discussed it, and he had none of that horror of the stage which so many parsons profess to have.”
“That would be delightful,—a thousand times better than going to India! And perhaps we shall go to see you act. And oh! perhaps you’ll get to know Macneillie!”
“I have no idea where Macneillie has gone to,” said Ralph. “He has not played in London for the last six years; somebody told me he had started a Company of his own in the provinces. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to find out, and write to him. Unless our hero-worship threw a very deceptive halo round him, he must be an awfully kind-hearted man. Come! drink to my good fortune, and then like an angel just help me to sort out my things. Tea, and this notion of yours about Macneillie make me feel like a giant refreshed. After all, it will be jolly enough to be on one’s own hook after eating the bitter bread of charity all this time.”
“Yet I rather wish you had taken those hank notes,” said Evereld. “How much money have you, Ralph, to start with?”
He felt in one pocket and produced a florin. “That will take me to London,” he said. He felt in another and produced half a sovereign, “on that I can live for a week,” he remarked.