Julius Cæsar.
The days sped away all too fast, crowded full of work and talk and earnest thought. I entered eagerly into all of Mildred’s plans; she always knew that she could rely on me to do that, in spite of the protestations and objections with which I generally greeted the first announcement of each new scheme. I think she rather liked my objecting, as it gave her so fine an opportunity to state her case clearly and triumph over all obstacles.
“Do be charitable and indulge my garrulous propensities a little,” she would laughingly plead. “You may congratulate yourself that I was not born a man,—such a stump orator as I should have made, with all my hobbies!”
In spite of her gayety and happiness, however, I could see that the strain of attending to multitudes of things was beginning to tell, even on her apparently boundless strength. The day before the last she was with her lawyers, signing last papers, seeing that nothing was neglected, no one forgotten. In the evening there was a farewell reception for hosts of friends, at which all good-byes were said.
“I want no one but you to see me sail, Ruby dear,” she said; and so the hour of her departure was not announced. They had planned, first of all, a sailing voyage to the West Indies, and thence they were to go to Spain.
“I can’t bear Europe just yet,” said Mildred. “I want to put letters, despatches, and newspapers even, out of reach for a few weeks; to forget immigrants, cooking schools, tenement houses, libraries, and lawyers, and all the several problems that have been besetting me these last bewilderingly busy months.
“I must get time to stop and think. I want to sail idly through purple tropic seas; to skirt the green shores of volcanic islands; I want to feel for the time being that I have banished conscience and responsibility; in fact,” she added, laughing, “I want to become a pagan for a while, if I can.”
“The most sensible thing that I ever heard you say,” I remarked with decision. “If there ever was a girl who has earned a vacation, it is you.”
They were going on the Nanepashemet, manned by Captain Roberts, a weather-beaten seaman of Marblehead, who twenty years ago had dandled the little Mildred on his knee. He now counted it the greatest honor of his life that she had not forgotten him, and that he had been invited to take this bonny bride on his plain little sailing vessel.
“Why, jest think of it, Miss,” he proudly remarked to me, “she might jest as easy hev bought one of them crack steam yachts with fancy fixins, and have gone in reg’lar Vanderbilt style. But it’s jest like her, jest like her. She wa’n’t never one of the kind to make a splurge. I knew when she got her money ’twouldn’t turn her head.”