“The Forum offered to send Tom Brownell as the newspaper man of the trip, besides which two or three others we had chosen are always excellent fun, and Mrs. Parks was to be chaperon, at which she is a perfect success. She has the knack of always being on the spot, in case any one needs to prove or disprove an alibi, yet at the same time is totally oblivious; so Mrs. Grundy never has a chance to say a word, and every one is happy.”
“Did you turn your back on such attractions to come to us?” said Brooke, deeply touched. Her feeling showed plainly in the look she gave Lucy, as after unpacking her friend’s toilet things, she had dipped a sponge in warm water, and kneeling by her, began to bathe her forehead and eyes as gently as if Lucy had been a tired little child.
Lucy closed her eyes and gave a sigh of content at the touch of Brooke’s fingers, but in a second opened them again, and looking straight at Brooke, replied: “No, I won’t let you quite think that, though you know that I love to be with you and your mother. Some of the party turned their backs on me; first, Tom Brownell had himself replaced (I made sure through Charlie that it was his own doing) by a young westerner who, he said, ‘knew the local ropes’ better, and would be of greater advantage to the prospectors. Next Mrs. Parks decided that as the baby was teething she could not leave him for so long, in spite of having a separate maid for his head, hands, and feet, besides a trained nurse in perpetual residence.
“Then father suggested that little Mrs. Morton be invited in Mrs. Parks’s place. You must remember her,—the Hendersons’ cousin, a pretty, subdued little widow of about thirty, who puts people’s houses in order and sees to the curtains and other interior decorations. She always looks as if she’d been cut out for a good time, but fate has been rough to her, and though she is working hard to get used to it, a merry devil will look out of her eyes in spite of herself.”
“Oh, yes, I remember. She redecorated your house as a surprise for you the season we were abroad, I believe,” said Brooke, sudden illumination coming to her, for it had been openly whispered, early in the season, that Mr. Dean was ardently, if maturely, in love with Mrs. Morton, but that the little lady’s peace-loving nature and hardly won independence, coupled with a fear of Lucy and her sharp tongue, stood firmly in the way of a very comfortable and suitable match.
“Yes, and father wished it done over again this winter, but I absolutely refused to be routed out in cold weather. Now I’d heard, as I know you have by your face, Miss Simplicity, that father was supposed to wish to marry the lady long ago, but that she was afraid of me. At first it pleased me to have her afraid; I revelled in it, also I thought that the idea would wear off with father.
“Lately I’ve changed my mind, and I think life is too good to live it alone, and that everybody ought to marry any one they wish to, provided the person does not have fits or inherit consumption. Then I went to father and told him so, and he was so pleased that he nearly made me cry, for though he always said that I was everything to him, it wasn’t quite true it seems; and he said that some day I would find out that he was not quite everything to me, and oh, Brooke, I really think I should like to!”
Brooke, who was still kneeling by Lucy, put her arms around her, and the two women, each having felt the mysterious throb of the woman heart that made them kin, rested a moment cheek to cheek.
Lucy recovered first, and shaking off the tender mood, tossed her head, the usual bravado returning to eye and lip as she said: “Next, I went to see Mrs. Morton and told her that so far as I was concerned the coast was clear, that I bore no malice, and that I hoped she and father would have a jolly old age (she is only six years older than I); but that I simply could not go on the car trip with them, though I would thank her not to announce it until after the start.