“We—ca—n’t—can’t go in—into ... the garden—with—out—permis—sion,” Marguerite convulsively objected.
But Laurence was firm. “But, yes, we can. There’s nobody about now. Come quick!” she commanded, half dragging, half carrying Marguerite down-stairs again. And thus at last they reached a small postern opening from the north wing, and stopped only when, still clasping each other, they stepped into the wonderful allée of lindens that skirts the cloisters on that side of the building.
The sun filtering through the pale leafage made swaying spots of pink copper all over the decorously raked gravel; the heliotropes and old-fashioned verbenas and rose-geraniums filling the borders smelled sweet to heaven, and in a near-by bosquet of laburnum a green finch sang to burst his little throat (à se rompre la gorge).
Marguerite—“Gamin” to her intimates—instantly became quieter. With a gesture that was very youthful and very impatient she pushed the tumbled gold out of her big blue eyes, still brimful of tears, and stamped her narrow foot.
“Don’t tell me it’s true!” she cried. “Don’t, Loris! It would be too terrible!”
Miss Seton—the Hon. Laurence Seton—in all the plenitude of her admirably controlled faculties, stared at the delightful tomboy beside her.
“It is true, my poor ‘Gamin,’” she serenely stated, checking another outburst with a slight recoil of her supple body. “My excellent uncle and aunt have resolved that I shall go with them to ‘la triste Angleterre,’ and so to the sad England I must go. Voilà!”
“But when—when?” demanded the quivering little creature. “When?”
Laurence hesitated. To tell the “Gamin” that only a few hours remained before her final departure from Bryn would destroy all her chances of making her preparations in peace; for this, alas! was a half-holiday, and Marguerite would be free to follow her about everywhere. To tell a frank fib was out of the question, of course. Laurence always avoided direct lies, so she took refuge in a simple evasion.
“How can I tell exactly? Such queer people as my relatives are apt to be unreliable,” she equivocated. “You don’t know my uncle Bob and my aunt Elizabeth, luckily for you, ‘Gamin.’ One can never guess what is going to happen next when they come on the scene!”