‘The building of air-castles is an innocent amusement enough, I suppose,’ he said; ‘but I’m committing the folly of living in mine. I—’
Then I was frightened. When, all at once, you find you have something precious that you only dimly suspected was to be yours, you almost wish it hadn’t come so soon. But just at that moment Mrs. Benedict called to us, and came tramping back from the gate, and hooked her supercilious, patronizing arm in Mr. Copley’s, and asked him into the sitting-room to talk over the ‘lady-chapel’ in her new memorial church. Then Aunt Celia told me they would excuse me, as I had had a wearisome day; and there was nothing for me to do but to go to bed, like a snubbed child, and wonder if I should ever know the end of that sentence. And I listened [p71] at the head of the stairs, shivering, but all that I could hear was that Mrs. Benedict asked Mr. Copley to be her own architect. Her architect, indeed! That woman ought not to be at large—so rich and good-looking and unconscientious!
* * * * *
He
York, July 5.
I had just established myself comfortably near to Miss Van Tyck’s hotel, and found a landlady after my own heart in Mrs. Pickles, No. 6, Micklegate, when Miss Van Tyck, aided and abetted, I fear, by the romantic Miss Schuyler, elected to change her quarters, and I, of course, had to change too. Mine is at present a laborious (but not unpleasant) life. The causes of Miss Schuyler’s removal, as I have been given to understand by the lady herself, were some particularly pleasing window-boxes in a lodging in High Petergate [p72] Street; boxes overflowing with pink geraniums and white field-daisies. No one (she explains) could have looked at this house without desiring to live in it; and when she discovered, during a somewhat exhaustive study of the premises, that the maid’s name was Susan Strangeways, and that she was promised in marriage to a brewer’s apprentice called Sowerbutt, she went back to her conventional hotel and persuaded her aunt to remove without delay. If Miss Schuyler were offered a room at the Punchbowl Inn in the Gillygate and a suite at the Grand Royal Hotel in Broad Street, she would choose the former unhesitatingly; just as she refused refreshment at the best caterer’s this afternoon and dragged Mrs. Benedict and me into ‘The Little Snug,’ where an alluring sign over the door announced ‘A Homely Cup of Tea for Twopence.’ But she would outgrow all that; or, if she didn’t, I have [p73] common-sense enough for two; or if I hadn’t, I shouldn’t care a hang.
Is it not a curious dispensation of Providence that, just when Aunt Celia is confined to her room with a cold, Mrs. Benedict should join our party and spend her days in our company? She drove to the Merchants’ Hall and the Cavalry Barracks with us, she walked on the city walls with us, she even dared the ‘homely’ tea at ‘The Little Snug’; and at that moment I determined I wouldn’t build her memorial church for her, even at a most princely profit.
On crossing Lendal Bridge we saw the river Ouse running placidly through the town, and a lot of little green boats moored at a landing-stage.
‘How delightful it would be to row for an hour!’ exclaimed Miss Schuyler.
‘Oh, do you think so, in those tippy boats on a strange river?’ remonstrated Mrs. Benedict.