“Oh, I’ll try! I’ll try! But only one a month.”
“One a week or I won’t write at all. And it’s nice to get letters.”
“One a fortnight then.”
To this Lee finally consented, and then went upstairs and helped him to pack. Their faces were so funereal at dinner that they were the subject of much good-natured chaff. Many disapproving glances were directed at Mr. Maundrell,—with whose ascent they had not been made acquainted,—for the children had furnished the house with much amusement, and they commanded no little sympathy.
After dinner Cecil and Lee sat in one of the bay windows in the front parlour and talked of the future. Cecil good-naturedly promised that life should be exactly like one of Scott’s novels, any one that Lee preferred. After some excogitation she concluded that she liked the poems best, particularly “Marmion,” and Cecil agreed to qualify for the part. Lee in return vowed to go fishing and shooting with him, never to scream at the wrong time, even if a blackbeetle got on her, and never to get into rages and call him names. They also exchanged tokens. Lee gave him a little gold heart with her picture—cut from a tin-type—and a strand of her lank hair in it, and he gave her a ring cut with the arms of his house, and begged her to keep it in her pocket when his father was round.
The next morning Lee was graciously permitted to accompany the travellers across the bay. She and Cecil paced up and down the deck of the boat, too excited for melancholy; both under that spell which cauterises so many wounds. Lee was to be left behind, but she was in the midst of an event. Moreover, she was shortly to see what a Pullman car was like. She wrung one more solemn promise from Cecil to write.
Lord Barnstaple had taken a drawing-room for himself and his son, and Lee examined the ornate interior and thought it very vulgar.
“You’ll be sure not to put your head out of the window, won’t you, Cecil?” she asked anxiously. “And you’ll hold on tight at night and not be pitched out of these things.”
Cecil grunted. She had hung a camphor bag on him, and presented him with a large package of cough drops.
Lord Barnstaple took out his watch. “We start in eight minutes,” he said. “You had better let me put you in the hack; I have told the man to take you home.” He paused and smiled slightly. He was at peace with the world, and inclined to be gracious to everybody; moreover, there was just a chance, a bare chance, that this boy-and-girl affair might come to something. His son had a tenacious will, and these Americans were the devil and all for getting their own way. If Lee should turn out a great heiress—he had a vague idea that all American girls became heiresses as soon as they grew up—and should fulfil her promise of even temper and sturdy character, Cecil might, of course, do worse. Far be it from him to encourage the invasion of the British aristocracy by the undisciplined American female, but if another in the family was to be his unhappy fate, as well drop into the plastic mind a few seeds from the gardens of civilisation.