CHAPTER X
THE FLUTTER OF A HANDKERCHIEF
As a bell in a chime
Sets its twin-note a-ringing,
As one poet's rhyme
Wakes another to singing,
So once she has smiled
All your thoughts are beguiled,
And flowers and song from your childhood are bringing.
*****
Each grace is a jewel
Would ransom the town;
Her speech has no cruel,
Her praise is renown;
'Tis in her as though Beauty,
Resigning to Duty
The scepter, had still kept the purple and crown.
—Robert Underwood Johnson.
The next morning at eight o'clock I sent a note to Miss Pat, asking if she and the other ladies of her house would not take breakfast with me at nine; and she replied, on her quaint visiting-card, in an old-fashioned hand, that she and Helen would be glad to come, but that Sister Margaret begged to be excused. It had been in my mind from the first to ask them to dine at Glenarm, and now I wished to see this girl, to test, weigh, study her, as soon as possible after her meeting with Gillespie. I wished to see how she would bear herself before her aunt and me with that dark transaction on her conscience. The idea pleased me, and when I saw the two women coming through the school garden I met them at the gate.
Breakfast seems to be, in common experience, the most difficult meal of the day, and yet that hour hangs in memory still as one of the brightest I ever spent. The table was set on the terrace, and its white napery, the best Glenarm silver and crystal, and a bowl of red roses still dewy from the night, all blended coolly with the morning. As the strawberries were passed I felt that the little table had brought us together in a new intimacy. It was delightful to sit face to face with Miss Pat, and not less agreeable to have at my right hand this bewildering girl, whose eyes laughed at me when I sought shame in their depths. Miss Pat poured the coffee, and when I took my cup I felt that it carried benediction with it. I was glad to see her so at peace with the world, and her heart was not older, I could have sworn, than the roses before her.
"I shall refuse to leave when my time is up!" she declared. "Do you think you could spend a winter here, Helen?"
"I should love it!" the girl replied. "It would be perfectly splendid to watch the seasons march across the lake. We can both enroll ourselves at St. Agatha's as post-graduate students, and take a special course in weather here."