"I was never half so much in earnest! Please go on in the way you have begun. And have no fear that the charts will mislead you, or that the seas will grind your bark on hidden shoals. Shipwreck, you know, is one of the greatest joys of our adventures,—we have to be wrecked first before we find the island of the treasure-chests."
She sighed softly, but I felt that her spirits were rising.
"But those men down there? How shall I manage that?" she asked eagerly.
I snapped my fingers. We must get back into the air again. And it was remarkable how readily my long-untried wings bore me upward. The earth, after all, does not bind us so fast!
"I don't know the game; but I have found out a lot of things without being told, so tell me nothing! Remember that I have something quite remarkable, startling even, to show you to-morrow. I have even overcome, you know, the obstacle you placed in the way of my discoveries by sending in ahead of me this morning for the plans of the house."
I watched her narrowly, but she was in no wise discomfited.
"Well, I burned them the moment Hilda brought them back," she laughed. "I had faith in you, and I wanted you to manage it all for yourself. I rather guessed that you would go to Pepperton. That was when I still believed."
"But you must go on believing. Make-believing is the main cornerstone and the keystone of the arch of the happy life."
"You are sure you are not mocking a foolish old woman?"
"You are the wisest woman I ever knew!" I asserted, and my heart was in the words.