When the party was ready to set off, she was feeling a wonderful sense of companionship and friendliness with Stafford, and he with her.
“Stunning, by Jove!” he said, as she climbed to her place beside him. “It looks as if Miss Ayr of Virginia was going to beat them on their own ground. It’s really almost too bad of you!”
What a pleasant, light-hearted, boyish creature he was, she thought, and how nice to be so cordially liked by him and to bowl along in the place of honor at his side, the observed and admired of all who passed them!
And not the least pleasant part of it all was the sense of bien-être, which came from the consciousness of her irreproachable costume. It made her feel brave and confident even with the women of the party, and, this time, her somewhat timid overtures to them were far more kindly met. Gladys, who had elected to be the one of her cousins to accompany her, treated her rather differently, she thought, and, altogether, it was a delightful occasion.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” asked Stafford, just as this thought was in her mind.
“Oh, yes, tremendously,” she said. “For the first time since I got here I am almost forgetting to be home-sick. Almost, but not quite.”
“Home-sick?” he said. “I don’t like that. Why should you be home-sick?”
“Oh, I’ve almost died of it,” said Carter. “The other day, going to the races, on the line of all those splendid carriages I saw, at the side of the road, an old horse eating oats out of a nose-bag, with a ragged old darkey standing by, and somehow it made me think so of home that I almost burst into tears.”
“But why should you feel so? What is it that you miss so much that could not be supplied here?”
“Here? Oh, I could never feel at home here! What I miss is simply everything—the earth, and the sky, and the trees, and the darkies, and the people, and everything!”