Miss Errington did want her, and as I was not consulted it was arranged that Fan and Katy should go to Washington the last week in July and from there to Saratoga in company with Miss Errington. Nothing had been said of the Colonel’s going, and when I asked what he meant to do, he replied, “Oh, stay at home; Saratoga is not to my taste.”
It was later than usual that night when Jack came to us, more tired than I had ever seen him. He had worked harder than any of his men, he said, as he leaned back in his chair and asked where Fan was. She was putting Paul to bed, and it was Katy who told him of the proposed trip.
“Fanny going!” he repeated, his face flushing for a moment, and then turning paler than before. She had just come in, and going up to him began to smooth his hair and forehead, saying, “You poor boy, you are all tired out. You ought not to work so hard. Let those lazy negroes do it. Yes, I thought I’d go; it is a good chance to see a little of the world before I settle down into a Joan. You don’t care, do you?”
She was still manipulating his hair, with her face very near to his and something so coaxing in her voice that a man less in love than Jack would have yielded to it and granted what she wished.
“I am glad to have you go, if it pleases you,” he said. “Only I thought you might like to be here and watch the house as it progresses. But you’ll be back before we get to the rooms.”
“Oh, yes,” she answered very promptly. “I shall be back before you reach the rooms. It is only for August, and I have always wanted to see Saratoga.”
“Is the Colonel going?” Jack asked and Fan answered, “No, indeed, and I’m glad; I think him horrid and so patronizing.”
The fact that the Colonel was not to make one of the party reconciled Jack to Fan’s absence more than anything else, and in spite of his fatigue he grew very cheerful and quite like himself as the evening wore on. That night in our room there was a spirited discussion between Fan and myself with regard to her proposed trip, I arguing that for Jack’s sake she should stay at home, and she declaring she would not. It was the only bit of life she’d ever see, she said, and she meant to take it. She’d never been beyond the smoke of our chimney, and after she was married she should of course settle down, just as all the Lovering women did, into a domestic drudge. Poverty was hateful, and she was glad she was for once going to know how rich people lived and play rich herself.
The next morning she was very pliable and sweet, and spent half the day at The Plateau with Jack whom she brought home with her to supper, and then sat with him alone on the piazza until the clock struck eleven and old Phyllis appeared on the scene in wonderful night-gear, with a tallow dip in her hand, saying she “had done hearn sunthin’, and thought mebby thar was burgles in the house.”