“My dear girl, you're not going to try to get that into that trunk, too? Something will break.”
“Not at all, my dear Clarence. Thank you. Will you send Norah up to me as you go down?”
It had not occurred to the colonel that he was going down, but he decided that he must have been, and departed, forgetting Norah utterly before he had accomplished half of the staircase.
He wandered out through the broad hall, reaching down a hat absently, and across the piazza. Then, half unconscious of direction, he crossed the neat suburban road and strolled up the gravel path of the cottage opposite. Mrs. Leroy was sitting in the bay-window, attaching indefinite yards of white lace to indefinite yards of white ruffles. Jane, in cool violet lawn, was reading aloud to her. Both looked up at his light knock at the side door.
“But I am afraid I interrupt,” he suggested politely, as he dropped into a low chair with a manner that betokened the assurance of a warm welcome.
“Not the least in the world,” Mrs. Leroy smiled whimsically.
“Lady is reading Pater to me for the good of my soul, and I am listening politely for the good of her manners,” she answered. “But it is a little wearing for us both, for she knows I don't understand it, and I know she thinks me a little dishonest for pretending to.”
“Mother!”
The girl's gray eyes opened wide above her cool, creamy cheeks; the deep dimples that made her mother's face so girlish actually added a regularity and seriousness to the daughter's soft chin. Her chestnut hair was thick and straight, the little half-curls of the same rich tint that fell over her mother's forehead brushed wavelessly back on each side of a deep widow's peak.
The two older ones laughed.