“Invaluable young thing! Thanks awfully. Who begin, as you say, with a cynicism with which nobody ends, as you quite aptly infer. Filled, too, I regret to state, with rare editions, a trifle, well—perhaps a bit eighteenth century—and with yellow paper-covered French novels. These bookcases are expiating a life of frivolity within the four walls of a Convent. They were offered by Bertram's mother to some Sisters of Charity whose temporal welfare she looks after. The good nuns were glad to have the shelves for their poor schools and have packed them with edifying books.... So it happens that to-day they ornament both sides of the Convent-Parloir, and thus it is that Bertram's bookshelves are atoning for the gay, wild, extravagant, old days within convent walls.”
Lucilla tittered. “Shall our end be as exemplary?” Ruth asked, pensive, “or will it fade away into chill and nothingness—like the glory of this,” she smiled at Pontycroft, “April afternoon? B-r-r-r——-” She gave a little shiver.
Pontycroft pulled himself to his feet.
“Tut, tut!” said he. He proffered two white garments which lay over the back of a chair to Ruth and to his sister. “What are these melancholy sentiments? Aren't you contented? Aren't you satisfied, aren't you pleased here?” he asked, and he eyed Ruth inquisitorially.
“Oh yes,—oh yes, I am,” Ruth quickly assured him. “But I do get, now and then, tiresome conscientious scruples. In these halcyon hours I wonder if it isn't my duty to go and have a look at my dear old uncle, all alone there, in America.”
“Ruth—my dear Ruth!” cried Lucilla.
“Why doesn't your 'dear old uncle' come and have a look at you? I think it's his duty to do so; I've thought so for many a day.”
“Oh, he's bound to his fireside, I suppose,” Ruth answered, a touch of melancholy in her voice. “He's wedded to his chimney corner, his books. At seventy-two it's a bore, perhaps, to go wandering into foreign parts.”
“Foreign parts!” Lucilla cried with some scorn. “Are we Ogres? Barbarians? Do we live in the Wilds of America?”
“My dear infant, beware,” cautioned Pontycroft, “beware of the rudiments in your nature of that terrible New England instrument of torture, the Nonconformist Conscience. Despite your Catholic upbringing it will, if you indulge it, I fear, lead you to your ruin. The Nonconformist conscience, I beg you to believe, makes cowards of us all. Now I should suggest a much better plan, and one I have always approved of. Let's pack up our duds, as the saying goes, in your country; let's return to sane and merry England; let us for the future and since the pinch of Winter is at our heels, Summer in the South and Winter in the North.”