"Assuredly!" replied Hildegarde, smiling. "Winter and summer, and winter again, Miss Loftus. This is our home now, and we have become attached to it even in these few months."
"Oh, you look at it in a sentimental light," said Miss Loftus, with a disagreeable smile. "The domestic hearth, and that sort of thing. Rather old-fashioned, isn't it, Miss Grahame?"
"Possibly; I have never thought of it as a matter of fashion," was the quiet reply.
"And how do you expect to kill time in your wilderness?" was the next question.
"Kill him?" Hildegarde laughed. "We never can catch him, even for a moment, Miss Loftus. He flies faster at Braeside than even in New York. I sometimes think there are only two days in the week, Monday and Saturday."
"I hear you have a sewing-school in the village. I suppose that will take up some time."
"I hope so! The children seem interested, and it is a great pleasure to me. Then, too, I expect to join some of Miss Wayland's classes in the fall, and that will keep me busy, of course."
"Miss Wayland, over in Dorset? Why, it is three miles off."
"And even if so? I hear it is a delightful school, and Miss Wayland herself is very lovely. Do you know her?"
"No!" said Miss Loftus, who had been "dying" as she would have put it, to get into Miss Wayland's school three years before. "A country boarding-school isn't my idea of education."