I gave the verses to Wright, after luncheon,—all of them. He could do with them as he liked, I said. Revise, correct, re-group. I was tired of singing songs, but I did not tell him that. In my heart I thought I would be glad to have my verses, bound and shut in a little book. They would remind me of Cuba, and of other things, when I was too old, too armoured by time, to feel the hurt of remembering. I would keep my Diary, too, against that distant day. Time, I had read, heals all. It was pleasant to think that sometime the ache in my breast would be stilled. But I thought perhaps I would miss it, it would grow to be part of me after a while—
Mercedes, looking in on me from the flowers screening the verandah where I sat, asked coaxingly,
"Coming walking with us, Mavis!"
"Us?" I inquired.
"Wright, and Billy, and me."
I shook my hand.
"I think not," I answered. "I have some letters to write."
"Billy said you wouldn't come," said she, pouting.
"Did he?"
For a moment I was inclined to reconsider, but the delight of proving my husband wrong would not have atoned for an hour of his society. And well I knew that Wright and Mercedes would, eventually, wander off or get surprisingly lost, or accomplish one of the fifty odd things which they managed so ingenuously, and which would rid them of even the most friendly chaperonage.