"Of course. We were as foolish as all the rest of the world! We thought happiness and gold and honor the three Graces, instead of Faith, Hope, and Charity," smiling into the girls' excited faces.
"And isn't happiness?"—began Hope, but she shook her head.
"Not worldly happiness—no. It is too brief, too treacherous. If one learns to depend upon that, one is doomed to perpetual disappointment. I have long understood that contentment is better than what we call happiness—much better. Yes, we wrote, laughing together over the possibility that our ancestral home might be seeking us, but believing nothing of the kind. How we did joke over our united efforts at composing it! He was the scholar, but I suggested all sorts of long-stilted sentences to him, which he modified to suit himself. He used to think me bright in those days. When it was signed, addressed, and sealed, we looked into each other's eyes.
"'I wonder if we'll ever regret this?' said Duncan, serious for the first time. He was always more grave than I, and used often to curb my high spirits—who would think it now?
"'Fiddle-faddle! Regret a pot of money, or a Queen's commission as
Field-marshal?' I asked flippantly.
"'Yet the pot of money might not make us really better off, and the Queen's commission might take me away from you,' he said, and stooped to kiss me.
"I don't know what came over me, then. A sudden fear seemed to contract my heart. I caught him about the neck, declaring we could not be happier than we were.
"'Throw the letter into the fire, Duncan!' I cried. 'It may separate us, and I'd rather have you than all the world besides!' He held me close a minute, then laughed a little.
"What geese we are! How could anything separate us, if we don't let it? You know very well any advantage would cease to be one the minute it came between us. We will send the letter, but we will use our own judgment about whatever it brings us.'
"So it was sent, and—what is that? Tegeloo, what is it? are we to take to the boats, after all? Why are they shouting so?"