“Miss Betty, you better lemme give him a dozen licks anyhow,” urged Uncle Cesar. “You k’yarn’ raise boys ’thout licks.”
But Betty demurred. Kettle, meanwhile, poured out a flood of penitential tears, and, moved by Betty’s clemency, confessed that he had emptied the bottle of attar of rose on his head and rubbed it in. He even offered to produce the empty bottle to corroborate his word, which nobody doubted. However, the oft-deferred switching was once more postponed, and the improved prospects raised Kettle’s spirits immediately. Half an hour afterward, when he was in dry clothes, he was as cheerful as ever, although minus his wool, and, having been sent to the wood-pile by the still indignant Aunt Tulip, was seen standing on his head in the intervals of picking up chips.
CHAPTER XV
THE BROKEN DREAM
As the sunny autumn succeeded the enchanted summer, it seemed to Betty as if a new and lovely light were over the world. Fortescue’s letters, his constant gifts, the books which came often, and the music he sent her, and which Betty played and sang to her harp, were so many messages of love. Fortescue wrote that he had applied for leave, and that by making close connections he would be able to spend ten whole days at Rosehill. He meant to give a ball on Christmas Eve at Rosehill, and, as he wrote Betty, she could practise her future rôle as mistress of Rosehill. Fortescue could not manage the ball as well as the county people managed their Christmas balls. All he could do was to order the music and the supper and everything from Baltimore, but when Betty presided at Rosehill things could be done better and in true Virginia style. He hoped to arrive some days before Christmas.
Then Betty began the pleasant process of counting the days. This she confided to the Colonel, for Betty understood, as few young things do, the yearning of the old for the confidence of the young, the delicacy felt by an old man lest he intrude upon the secrets of the young.
The two, Betty and the Colonel, tried very hard to dovetail the wishes and duties and interests of the triangle. Fortescue was the third angle.
“Any way,” Betty cried, when they had reasoned out that she could not desert the Colonel, nor could she refuse to marry her lover, nor could Fortescue abandon his profession, nor could Betty abandon the idea of presiding at Rosehill—“Any way, Granddaddy, it will only be thirty-five years now before Jack is retired, and then we can all three settle down at Rosehill.”
The preparations for Christmas gaieties began early, and the same round of dances and hunts and dinners and teas and festivities of all sorts was arranged.