His face was pleasant, and his manner was kindly, as he shook hands with Reinette, and said he was glad to see her, and told her that she favored the Hethertons more than the Fergusons, but Reinette saw that he belonged to an entirely different world from her own, and when they were going over the house at the Knoll, she said to Phil that she felt as if she were backsliding awfully.
“Isn’t there a couplet,” she asked, “which runs thus:
“‘The de’il when sick a saint would be,
But when he got well, the de’il a saint was he.’
“Now I am just like that. Over at grandmother’s I felt as if I never could be bad again; and I never will to grandmother. I shall make her caps and fix her dresses, and coax her not to wear purple gloves, or call me Rennet. But O, Phil, shall I be so wicked that I can never go to Heaven if I don’t rave over those other people? They are so different from anything I ever saw before. Now, this suits me; this is more like Chateau des Fleurs,” she said, as she followed Phil through the house until they came to his room, where, on the table, he found a telegram from his father, which was as follows:
“Come to us at once as I must go to Boston on business, and your mother needs you.
“Paul Rossiter.”
He read it aloud to Reinette, who exclaimed:
“I am so sorry, for now I shall be alone, and I meant to have you with me every day.”
Phil was sorry, too, for the dark-eyed French girl had made sad havoc with his heart during the few hours he had known her. But there was no help for it; he must go to his mother, and the next morning, when the Springfield train, bound for Boston, left Merrivale, Phil was in it on his way to Martha’s Vineyard.