After the greetings were over, and Lucy learned their thoughts of her coming, she did not appear as much at ease as usual.
“The fact is,” she began abruptly, “I haven’t come to say good-by; I’m stopping with Mrs. Parks until she goes to town, for the Senator has to be away, and we hit it off nicely together. I’ve taught the heir apparent endless tricks, so that he can outrank any baby of the social circus, and consequently of course they adore me.
“I’ve come to bid Tom good-by, for he is suddenly being sent abroad to report socially, politically, and otherwise on that Congress at The Hague. Of course it isn’t exactly the work of city editor, but he knows the ground and languages and all of that, besides which it will be good for him in every way, and he sails on Saturday!”
“But where is he?” asked Brooke, too much puzzled to be surprised. “We have not seen him, and how do you expect to meet him here when he knows that you are in Gordon? though I’ve often thought it safest to look for you where you are not, for there is where you are usually to be found,” and then they both laughed at the Irish bull Brooke had perpetrated.
“The telephone, my dear—from Gordon to New York—price one dollar! He wired frugally: ‘Sail for Hague Saturday, will be in Gordon to-night,’ upon which I called him up, and limited his trip to Gilead, supper at the Sign of the Fox, afterward the Commercial Hotel by the depot, unless urgently requested by Mrs. Lawton to pass the night in the wasp room with the black walnut furniture! Unfortunately, as you have no ’phone, I could not inform you of the arrangement until I came in person,” and even Adam Lawton joined quietly in the laugh that followed Lucy’s audacious confession.
“There will be a ’phone here for you to announce your marriage next summer, if you grow impatient of watching and waiting,” said Brooke mischievously; “so many people have asked us to have it that they may send orders with less trouble, and then both Cousin Keith and mother think that it would be real economy of both time and material for us to know when large parties are driving out.”
Tom Brownell came duly, and Mrs. Lawton almost purred with content as she saw the pair of strong young faces at the tea-table, happy with the tender happiness that is refined by a coming parting for anticipated good. Again the two paced up and down the path beside the house in the moonlight, but this time it was the young hunter’s moon, curved as a powder-horn, and hurrying early to bed after his sun mother, that looked narrowly between the trees athwart the western sky.
“It will be a splendid trip for you,—nothing could be better,” said Lucy, brightening; “you’ve not had a month out of the city these two years past.”
“It would be better if it were to be our wedding journey,” answered Brownell; “being engaged may be an excitement and stimulant to the sluggish, but for us the calmness of certainty would be far better; but as it is, dear, I am more than thankful for my half-loaf.”
Lucy did not speak for a few moments, and then, turning swiftly and putting both hands on his shoulders, in her old earnest fashion, said, transfixing him with her black eyes, in which mischief and pleading now struggled for mastery: “If a thing would be better, it is wrong not to do it, for we are bound to do our best. It shall be our wedding journey. How much money have you of your very own?”