"I shall go away, then," said Lucy.
"Oh, do not do that," exclaimed Margaret. "You will be so dull, for I cannot be with you, because they will all be setting off, and mamma will find out if I am in the house, and make me stay with them. There is no way of avoiding it, unless we go out."
"Is it far?" asked Lucy.
"Oh no, only through the plantations, and then across a field. I do not think we have ever been there with you. The field next to the one we shall go through is very steep indeed, and the river runs at the bottom of it, and I daresay it might be muddy and dirty just by the banks, but our path will not be at all so."
"Well," said Lucy, sulkily, "if we must go, we must; anything is better than those girls."
Margaret thought the same; of all things she dreaded another quarrel, and she hoped, by a little quiet flattery, to bring her friend, when they were alone, into something like good-humour; and without waiting for Lucy to change her mind, she hurried her up-stairs to prepare for the walk.
Amy, in the meanwhile, was enjoying herself to the utmost. A very short time had sufficed to remove almost all dread of her father, and only enough remained to increase the interest of his conversation. At first it was entirely about India and his travels; and Amy listened as she would have done to a romance or a fairy tale, and thought her papa a greater person than ever, as she discovered how much he knew, and the wonders he had seen: and then again he recurred to his long silence, and the uneasiness he knew it must have occasioned them, and spoke of the eagerness with which he always inquired for letters, and the pleasure it had been to hear from her of all she had been doing; "though you did not tell me many of the things you mentioned this morning," he said,—"the little things, I mean."
"I should write differently now, papa," replied Amy. "I did not quite know what to say then, and I always fancied you were a great man, and would not care for little trifles."
"But, Amy," said Colonel Herbert, "if persons are really great, they can care for, and attend to everything. It is only those who think themselves great, when they are not, who despise trifles."
"It is very nice," said Amy; "but I cannot think now that you really like to hear about my donkey, and my flowers, and my lessons."