So Virginia with a clear conscience continued her journey from Chicago on, and enjoyed the Colonel more than ever. As they went through the Berkshires on the last day of the journey, she told him more about Donald, his experience at school, and how he couldn’t seem to feel at home.
“I wish my grandson knew that fellow,” said the old gentleman. “Just what he needs. Too much fol-de-rol in bringing up boys now-a-days, Miss Virginia. The world’s made too easy for them, altogether too easy!” And he slapped his knee vigorously to emphasize his remark. “By the way, what’s the name of that school of yours?”
“St. Helen’s at Hillcrest, sir.”
“Exactly. Just what I thought you told me the first day I saw you. If I’m not mistaken, that’s in the neighborhood of the very school that grandson of mine attends. And if you’ll allow me, Miss Virginia, some day when I’m there I’m going to bring that boy of mine over to see you. You’d do him good; and I want him to see a girl who thinks of something besides furbelows.”
Virginia smiled, pleased at the thought of seeing the Colonel again.
“I’d love to have you come to see me,” she said, “and bring him, too, if he’d like to come. What is his name, and how old is he?”
“Why, he has my name, the third one of the family, Carver Standish, and he’s just turned seventeen. He has two more years at school, and then he goes up to Williams where his father and I were educated. He’s a good lad, Miss Virginia, if they don’t spoil him with too much attention and too much society. I tell you these boys of to-day get too much attention and too few hard knocks. I want this fellow to be a man. He’s the only grandson I’ve got.”
So they talked while the train bore them nearer and nearer Springfield where Virginia’s grandmother and aunt were to meet her. At last there were but a few minutes left, and she ran to wash and brush her hair, so that she might carry out the first of Aunt Lou’s instructions: “Be sure you are tidy when you meet your grandmother.”
She was very “tidy,” at least so the Colonel thought, when, with freshly brushed suit and hat, new gloves and little silk umbrella, she stood with beating heart and wide-open, half-frightened eyes on the platform of the slowly moving train. The Colonel was behind her with her bag.
“You see,” she told him, a little tremulously, “I’m so anxious for them to approve of me.”