"It could be—and more," said Cheiron.
"Then I will name her so."
After this there was a long silence. Mr. Carlyon would not interrupt what was evidently a serious moment to his little friend. He waited, and then presently he turned the channel of her thoughts by asking her if she thought he might call on her Aunts that afternoon.
Halcyone hesitated a second.
"We hardly ever have visitors. Aunt Ginevra has always said one must not receive what one cannot return, and they have no carriage or horses now, so they never see anyone. Aunt Roberta would, but Aunt Ginevra does not let her, and she often says in the last ten years they have quite dropped out of everything. I do not know what that means altogether, because I do not know what there was to drop out of. I have scarcely ever been beyond the park, and there do not seem to be any big houses for miles—do there?—except Wendover, but it is shut up; it has been for twenty years."
"Then you think the Misses La Sarthe might not receive me?"
"You could try, of course. You have not a carriage. If you just walked it would make it even. Shall I tell them you are coming? I had better, perhaps."
"Yes, this afternoon."
And if Halcyone had known it, she was receiving an unheard-of compliment! The hermit Carlyon—the old Oxford Professor of Greek, who had come to this out-of-the-way corner because he had been assured by the agent there would be no sort of society around him—now intended to put on a tall hat and frock coat, and make a formal call on two maiden ladies—all for the sake of a child of twelve years, with serious gray eyes—and a soul!