"She's altogether charming," said Sylvia warmly; "and she's young—much younger than I am, for example."
"How old is young, or how young is old? I had an idea that you and she were about the same age."
"You flatter me! I'm nearly four years older! but I suppose she seems much more grown-up, and she knows a great many things I don't."
"I dare say she does!" Dan laughed. And with this they turned to other matters.
Dan sat facing her, hat in hand, and as the train rushed through the Berkshires Sylvia formed new impressions of him. She saw him now as a young man of affairs, with errands abroad—this in itself of significance; and he had to do with politics, a subject that had begun to interest Sylvia. The cowlick where his hair parted kept a stubborn wisp of brown hair in rebellion, and it shook amusingly when he spoke earnestly or laughed. His gray eyes were far apart and his nose was indubitably a big one. He laughed a good deal, by which token one saw that his teeth were white and sound. Something of the Southwestern drawl had survived his years at New Haven, but when he became earnest his eyes snapped and he spoke with quick, nervous energy, in a deep voice that was a little harsh. Sylvia had heard a great deal about the brothers and young men friends of her companions at college and was now more attentive to the outward form of man than she had thought of being before.
When they reached Boston, Harwood took Sylvia and her companions to luncheon at the Touraine and put them on their train for Wellesley. His thoughtfulness and efficiency could not fail to impress the young women. He was an admirable cavalier, and Sylvia's companions were delighted with him. He threatened them with an early visit to college, suggesting the most daring possibilities as to his appearance. He repeated, at Sylvia's instigation, the incident of the hearse horses at Poughkeepsie, with new flourishes, and cheerfully proposed a cousinship to all of them.
"Or, perhaps," he said, when he had found seats for them and had been admonished to leave, "perhaps it would be more in keeping with my great age to become your uncle. Then you would be cousins to each other and we should all be related."
Speculations as to whether he would ever come kept the young women laughing as they discussed him. They declared that the meeting on the train had been by ulterior design and they quite exhausted the fun of it upon Sylvia, who gained greatly in importance through the encounter with Harwood. She was not the demure young person they had thought her; it was not every girl who could produce a personable young man on a railway journey.
Sylvia wondered much about Marian and dramatized to herself the girl's arrival at college. It did not seem credible that Mrs. Bassett was preparing Marian for college because she, Sylvia Garrison, was enrolled there. Sylvia was kindly disposed toward all the world, and she resented Harwood's insinuations. As for Mrs. Owen and Dan's intimations that Marian must be educated to satisfy the great aunt's ideals as represented in Sylvia—well, Sylvia had no patience whatever with any such idea.