“They are not at all beautiful to look at; they are shadows on stilts,” said Sara; “you might think of something more interesting than that.”
“But I wish something did go before us like that to show the way,” said Pamela. “I wish it was true about guardian angels—if we could only see them, that is to say; and then it is so difficult to know—”
“What?” said Sara; “you are too young to want a guardian angel; you are not much more than a little angel yourself. When one has begun to go daily farther from the cast, one knows the good of being quite a child.”
“But I am not quite a child,” said Pamela, under her breath.
“Oh yes, you are. But look, here Jack must be coming; don’t you hear the wheels? I did not know it was so late. Shall you mind going back alone, for I must run and dress? And please come to me in the morning as soon as ever they are gone, I have such heaps of things to say.”
Saying this, Sara ran off, flying along under the trees, she and her shadow; and poor little Pamela, not so much distressed as perhaps she ought to have been to be left alone, turned back toward the house. The dog-cart was audible before it dashed through the gate, and Pamela’s heart beat, keeping time with the ringing of the mare’s feet and the sound of the wheels. But it stopped before Betty’s door, and some one jumped down, and the mare and the dog-cart and the groom dashed past Pamela in a kind of whirlwind. Mr. John had keen eyes, and saw something before him in the avenue; and he was quick-witted, and timed his inquiries after Betty in the most prudent way. Before Pamela, whose heart beat louder than ever, was half way down the avenue, he had joined her, evidently, whatever Betty or Mrs. Swayne might say to the contrary, in the most purely accidental way.
“This is luck,” said Jack; “I have not seen you for two whole days, except at the window, which doesn’t count. I don’t know how we managed to endure the dullness before that window came to be inhabited. Come this way a little, under the chestnuts—you have the sun in your eyes.”
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Pamela, “and I must not wait; I am going home.”
“I suppose you have been walking with Sara, and she has left you to go home alone,” said Jack; “it is like her. She never thinks of any thing. But tell me what you have been doing these two frightfully long days?”
From which it will be seen that Mr. John, as well as his sister, had made a little progress toward intimacy since he became first acquainted with the lodgers at Mrs. Swayne’s.