“My dear child, I can’t.” He seemed to feel, however, that something more must be said. “We shall meet again. But it’s getting on, isn’t it, toward the general scatter?”
“Yes, and I hope that this year,” she answered, “you’ll have a good holiday.”
“Oh we shall meet before that. I shall do what I can, but upon my word I feel, you know,” he laughed, “that such a tuning-up as YOU’VE given me will last me a long time. It’s like the high Alps.” Then with his hand out again he added: “Have you any plans yourself?”
So many, it might have seemed, that she had no time to take for thinking of them. “I dare say I shall be away a good deal.”
He candidly wondered. “With Mr. Longdon?”
“Yes—with him most.”
He had another pause. “Really for a long time?”
“A long long one, I hope.”
“Your mother’s willing again?”
“Oh perfectly. And you see that’s why.”