“Pray, Colonel Corbin, forgive me for my mistake in taking you and Miss Corbin there. Of course I didn’t dream that anything would be given which would offend you, and I am more sorry than I can express.”
The Colonel cleared his throat and responded:
“I can well believe, my dear sir, that your mistake came from the head, not the heart, and as such I fully condone it. But I could not allow my granddaughter to remain and see and hear things that no young girl, or any woman for that matter, should see or hear, and so I felt compelled to take some decisive step. I am prodigiously concerned at treating your hospitable intention to give us pleasure in this manner. But I ask you, as a man of the world, what was I to do?”
Farebrother restrained his inclination to haw-haw at the Colonel’s idea of a man of the world, and accepted his view of the whole thing with the most slavish submission. He whispered in Letty’s ear, though, as they rattled over the cobblestones, “Forgive me,” to which Letty, after a moment, whispered back, “I do.”
As it was so early in the evening, Farebrother proposed Delmonico’s, not having the courage to suggest any more theaters. They went, therefore, and had a very jolly little supper, during which the entente cordiale was thoroughly restored, and the unlucky play forgotten. On the whole the evening did not end badly for Farebrother.
He remained in New York as long as the Corbins did, which was about two weeks. He accompanied Letty on her shopping tours, aiding her with his advice, which she usually took, and then bitterly reproached him for afterward. When Mrs. Cary’s chair had been bought, and lavish presents for Miss Jemima, the Colonel, Dad Davy and all the servants, and an evening gown contracted for, Letty then quite unexpectedly indulged in a full set of silver for her toilet table. This left her without any money to buy the shoes, gloves, and fan for her evening gown, but Letty consoled herself by saying:
“Very probably I sha’n’t have a chance to wear it, anyhow, after we get back to the country, and I couldn’t use white gloves and shoes and a lace fan every day, and I can use a silver comb and brush, and look at myself in a silver glass.”
Ethel Maywood thought this very impractical of Letty, and Farebrother laughed so uproariously that Letty was quite offended with him. But she frankly acknowledged that she felt happier after her mind had been relieved of the strain of spending so large a capital, than when she was burdened with its responsibilities. The Colonel’s purchases were very much after the same order. He bought a pair of carriage horses which in Virginia he could have got for considerably less than he paid, and he quite forgot that the rickety old carriage for which they were intended was past praying for. He also bought a variety of ornamental shrubs and plants for which the climate at Corbin Hall was totally unsuited. He indulged himself in twelve dozen of port, which, with his hotel bills, swallowed up the rest of his cash capital.
Meanwhile, Sir Archy was by no means out of the running, and saw almost as much of his cousins as Farebrother. But he became deeply interested in New York, and went to work studying the great city with a characteristic English thoroughness. Before the two weeks were over, he knew more about the city government, taxation, rents, values, commerce, museums, theaters, press, literature, and everything else, than Farebrother did, who had lived there all his life.
The night before the Corbins were to start for Virginia, Letty knocked at the door of the Chessinghams’ sitting-room to say good-by. Ethel Maywood opened the door for her. She was quite alone, and the two girls seated themselves for a farewell chat. They did not like each other one whit better than in the beginning, but neither had they infringed the armed neutrality which existed between them. They knew that in the country that winter they would be thrown together, and sensible people do not quarrel in the country; they are too dependent on each other.