“It’s rather formidable,” she said, appealingly, looking up, “all the business, the insurance and taxes and signatures—and my graduation—and Wastewater, and the servants coming to me! I feel—feel a little bit overwhelmed.”
“Of course you do!” David conceded, sympathetically.
“But I think,” Sylvia said, now with one hand on his shoulder and her dark eyes raised seriously to his, “I think I’ve always had you in mind, David—is that a very unwomanly thing to say? Give me a little time to get my bearings.”
“All the time you want, dear!” David said, tenderly, as she paused.
For answer Sylvia raised her flushed and lovely face, and he kissed her solemnly. Then the girl laughed a little excitedly and held him off with both her hands linked in his, as she said:
“There, then! Is it ‘an understanding’?”
“It’s just what you wish, Sylvia.”
“Then that’s what I wish!” Sylvia answered, gaily. “Now let’s get our coats on and race once or twice about the garden before it’s quite dusk. Otherwise we sha’n’t be able to eat any of that cold turkey and peach preserve dinner that Mamma’s probably fussing about now.”
But it was quite dark in the garden, and bitterly cold and windy, and they had made only one turn when John rattled up to the side door with the little car, from which Gay descended, weary, blown, but in high spirits, hungry, comfortably weary, glad to be at home again. David thought their all coming into the house together very homelike and pleasant; the company was gone, but the family was gathered together to discuss the remains of the big turkey and the memories of the house party. He thought it would be charming to have this old house home for them all, always; Gay was all the more attractive, after all, because of the clouds and mists that hung over her birth and parentage, and Sylvia would quickly get her bearings; she was too sane and fine to be upset long even by her new importance.
Then the two girls, one so dark and the other so oddly fair, would always be great friends, and even with Uncle Roger gone, and poor old Tom gone, and so many other voices and faces gone for ever, Wastewater would be a home for new Toms and Rogers, and again a hospitable and imposing landmark in the countryside.