“Well, he does chatter like a magpie, but I feel he must have such a dull time here with no one anywhere near his own age. Elderly as I am, I seem a bit nearer than Aunt de Tracy or Miss Smeardon. Aunt de Tracy, all the same, will never understand my relations with that boy, or with anyone else for that matter. I did try so hard,” she went on, “when I first arrived, just to strike the right note with her, and I’ve missed it all the time, by that very fact, no doubt. I’m so unused to trying––at home.”
“You mean in America?”
“Yes, of course; I don’t try there at all, and yet my friends seem to understand me.”
“Does it seem to you that you could ever call England ‘home’?”
“I could not have believed that England would so sink into my heart,” she said, sitting down in the doorway and arranging the flowers on her hat. “During those first dull wet days when I was still a stranger, 154 and when I looked out all the time at the dripping cedars, and felt whenever I opened my lips that I said the wrong thing, it seemed to me I should never be gay for an hour in this country; but the last enchanting sunny days have changed all that. I remember it’s my mother’s country, and if only I could have found a little affection waiting for me, all would have been perfect.”
“You may find it yet.” Lavendar could not for the life of him help saying the words, but there was nothing in the tone in which he said them to make Robinette conscious of his meaning.
“I’m afraid not,” she sighed, thinking of Mrs. de Tracy’s indifference. “I’m much more American than English, much more my father’s daughter than the Admiral’s niece; perhaps my aunt feels that instinctively. Now I must slip upstairs and change if we are going boating.”
“Never!” cried Lavendar. “If I don’t 155 snatch you this moment from the devouring crowd I shall lose you! I will keep you safe and dry, never fear, and we shall be back well before dark.”
They went down the river after leaving the little pier, passing the orchards heaped on the hillsides above Wittisham, and Lavendar wanted to row out to sea, but Robinette preferred the river; so he rowed nearer to the shore, where the current was less swift, and the boat rocked and drifted with scarcely a touch of the oars. They had talked for some time, and then a silence had fallen, which Robinette broke by saying, “I half wish you’d forsake the law and follow lines of lesser resistance, Mr. Lavendar. Do you know, you seem to me to be drifting, not rowing! I’ve been thinking ever since of what you said to me on the sands at Weston.”
“Ungrateful woman!” he exclaimed, trying to evade the subject, “when these two faithful arms have been at your service every day since we first met! Think of the 156 pennies you would have taken from that tiny gold purse of yours for the public ferry! However, I know what you mean; I never met anyone so plain-spoken as you, Mrs. Robin; I haven’t forgotten, I assure you!”