"It'll come!" she murmured. "Sometimes, sir, when my patience is well nigh exhausted, I has a vision of the New Jerusalem in the night, and is revived. It'll come, sir, the quadruple'll come!"
"I wonder," laughed Lucy, as they walked on, "whether she will go on to the end of her life expecting it?"
"If her husband will allow her," answered Lionel. "But by what I have heard since I came home, his patience is—as she says by her own with reference to the white 'quadruple'—well nigh exhausted."
"He told Decima, the other day, that he was sick of the theme and of her folly, and he wished the New Jerusalem had her and the white donkey together. Here we are!" added Lucy, as they came in front of Deerham Court. "Lionel, please, let me go in the back way—Jan's way. And then Lady Verner will not see me. She will say I ought not to have come through the rain."
"She'll see the shoes and the silk dress, and she'll say you should have stopped at Verner's Pride, as a well-trained young lady ought," returned Lionel.
He took her safely to the back door, opened it, and sent her in.
"Thank you very much," said she, holding out her hand to him. "I have given you a disagreeable walk, and now I must give you one back again."
"Change your shoes at once, and don't talk foolish things," was Lionel's answer.