Suddenly Rob seemed to shake herself mentally. "I really don't see why we all have an ill-concealed feeling that Prue is liable to be anything but happy!" she cried. "It is all because we love Bartlemy, and our thoughts are following him across the deep. Of course you will be happy, Prudy, and of course it is fine to be going to Newport and way stations, dancing and looking lovely with nothing to distract your attention from newly-found bliss, 'with the world so new-and-all,' as Kipling says. You are going to enjoy your little eighteen-year-old self till you won't believe it's you. And Arthur is a nice fellow, who has behaved beautifully all through this trying period, and I'm glad you are to be set in such a way as to show our jewel to her best advantage. We are envious old foxes, looking at your grapes! Ask us, Wythie and me, to your splendid mansion—when you get one—and you'll see how worldly we shall be, too!"
Prue laughed, but she did not need Rob's consideration. She had been too engrossed in the wonderful splendour awaiting her to be sensitive to the misgivings of her family. And after all why should she not be happy who had always longed for luxury, and to whom poverty in the old days had been more irksome than to her sisters?
"I'll ask you," she said, "to my fine mansion, to my box at the opera, to drive behind my splendid horses, to dine with my brilliant friends. Oh, girls, won't it be lovely?"
Prue ran down-stairs to meet Frances and Hester, whom she saw coming, and to tell them of her glories before any one else could take the edge off of her tidings.
"I wish she realized more, were less young. She seems scarcely different than when her father bought her that little blue silk parasol in her third year, and she refused to eat except beneath its shade," said Mrs. Grey.
"She was not unhappy after she got used to the parasol, although it no longer held her spellbound, Mardy," said Rob, the philosopher. "Why should she be unhappy after she has grown accustomed to a million? Prudy is so happy now that her parasol would not interest her. Let us believe that by and by she will be so much happier than now that this beginning too will be forgotten in greater bliss."
"Prue is one of the Grey girls, your daughter, Mary; I am sure wealth will not spoil her, and only think, with her great beauty and her great wealth what royal opportunities she will have for doing good!" added Cousin Peace. "Dear little golden-haired Prudy! She is only very young, and that will be but too soon corrected in her."
"Walk up the street part way with me, Robin; my husband will be waiting lunch for me," said Wythie with such a happy smile that Rob remarked, as she snatched a parasol:
"Dear me, how fine that sounds! Happiness seems to be a drug in our market. I'll come, Mrs. Rutherford; Hester and Frances will have to listen to Prue a while but they won't mind."