This morning was the one before they sailed. Miss Hutchinson had wished to go to Westminster for a last look. "You will come with me?" she had asked of Cecilia. The question had really been a statement. Cecilia replied that she would be charmed to go. She went to get a broad hat that entirely eclipsed one eye.
The sun was faintly present. "It is fine," said Miss Hutchinson, who spoke English whenever she remembered it, to show that she had lived much abroad.
"So it is," said Cecilia. "How absent-minded of the sun!" Miss Hutchinson didn't answer. She was busy showing a taxi driver the error of his ways.
"Robbers!" said Miss Hutchinson, as they settled on the stuffy cushions. Cecilia looked after a passing bus, and wistfully. She dearly loved to ride on top. They bumped along, Miss Hutchinson expatiating on some one's relatives. It seemed that one of them had been "in trade."
"Papa makes bricks," said Cecilia calmly, wondering, as she said it, whether the British soaked their shoes overnight in the "bath" to get that delightful muffiny effect and the curl up at the toes.
"My dear," said Miss Hutchinson quickly, "that is quite different. His business is on a large scale, and his fortune excuses anything. This man had been in trade in a small way?—a sweet-stuff shop, I believe, or a chemist. Something fearfully ordinary."
"Horrible!" said Cecilia. Miss Hutchinson looked at her. Cecilia's smile was strange. She hoped she was not saddled with a young person of too modern ideas for seven days.... In Westminster Miss Hutchinson went toward the Poet's Corner. Cecilia wandered outside. She paused by a small stone set in the wall. "Jane Lister, Dear Child," she read. The gentle little ghost smiled on her from those simple words. She looked long at them. She always saw the "Dear Child," quaintly frocked, smiling.
Some one paused behind her. She turned. "Isn't that almost too beautiful?" she whispered.
"Yes," answered K. Stuyvesant Twombly.
He looked on this impulsive, American girl, and smiled. Then she turned back to Jane Lister, and he raised his hat and went on.