“Will you allow me to leave one or two of my boxes for a few days?” asked Miss Copperas of Tod, when we went down on the following morning, and found her equipped for departure. “This has been so hurried a removal that I have not had time to pack all my things, and must leave it for Elizabeth to do.”
“Leave anything you like, Miss Copperas,” replied Tod, as he shook hands. “Do what you please. I’m sure the house seems more like yours than mine.”
She thanked him, wished us both good-bye, and set off to walk to the coach-office, attended by the grenadier, and a boy wheeling her luggage. And we were in possession of our new home.
It was just delightful. The weather was charming, though precious hot, and the new feeling of being in a house of our own, with not as much as a mouse to control us and our movements, was satisfactory in the highest degree. We passed our days sailing about with old Druff, and came home to the feasts prepared by the grenadier, and to sit among the roses. Altogether we had never had a time like it. Tod took the best chamber, facing the sea; I had the smaller one over the dining-room, looking up coastwards.
“I shall go fishing to-morrow, Johnny,” Tod said to me one evening. “We’ll bring home some trout for supper.”
He was stretched on three chairs before the open window; coat off, pipe in mouth. I turned round from the piano. It was not much of an instrument. Miss Copperas had said, when I hinted so to her on first trying it, that it wanted “age.”
“Shall you? All right,” I answered, sitting down by him. The stars were shining on the calm blue water; here and there lights, looking like stars also, twinkled from some vessels at anchor.
“If I thought they wouldn’t quite die of the shock, Johnny, I’d send the pater and madam an invitation to come off here and pay us a visit. They would fall in love with the place at once.”
“Oh, Tod, I wish you would!” I cried, eagerly seizing on the words. “They could have your room, and you have mine, and I would go into the little one at the back.”