“You are quite resolved, then?” and Miss Leslie looked at her steadily.
“Quite! I have my own ideas of education, and I could not possibly allow the slightest interference. My son”—and here she swelled visibly with a sense of her own importance—“will have every chance in life!”
“God grant it!” said Miss Letitia fervently. “No one in the world desires his good more heartily than I do. And if ever I can be of any assistance to him in his career, I will. But for the present I will say good-bye,—both to you—and to him.”
“Are you going away?” enquired Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir with but a faint show of interest.
“Yes, I shall go to Scotland for the rest of the summer, and I have arranged to join a party of friends in Egypt this winter. So I shall not be here to interfere”—and Miss Letty smiled rather sadly as she emphasised the word—“with Boy. I hope he will not quite forget me.”
“I hope not,” said “Muzzy” with bland commiseration. “But of course you know children never remember anything or anybody for long. And what a blessing that is, isn’t it?”
Miss Letty made no answer; she was down on the floor kissing Boy.
“Good-bye, darling,” she whispered,—“good-bye! I shall not see you for a while, but you will always love me, won’t you?”
“Alwiz love ’oo!” murmured Boy earnestly, with a vague sense that he was experiencing a very dreadful emotion which seemed quite to contract his little heart—“Alwiz!” and he threw his chubby arms round Miss Letty’s neck and kissed her again and again.
“Dear little man!” she said with almost a half-sob. “Poor little man! God bless you!”