They talked in the firelight and Pamela said: "I'm not sure that our happiness won't be the greater because it has come twenty years late. Twenty years ago we would have taken it pretty much as a matter of course. We would have rushed at our happiness and swallowed it whole, so to speak. Now, with twenty lonely, restless years behind us we shall go slowly, and taste every moment and be grateful. Years bring their compensation…. It's a funny world. It's a nice, funny world."
"I think," said Lewis, "I know something of what Jacob must have felt after he had served all the years and at last took Rachel by the hand—"
"'Served' is good," said Pamela in mocking tones.
But her eyes were tender.
CHAPTER XXIII
"It was high spring, and, all the way
Primrosed and hung with shade…."
HENRY VAUGHAN.
"There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern…. No, Sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn."—DR. JOHNSON.
Pamela and David between them carried the day, and a motor-car was bought. It was not the small useful car talked about at first, but one which had greatly taken the fancy of the Jardine family in the showroom—a large landaulette of a well-known make, upholstered in palest fawn, fitted with every newest device, very sumptuous and very shiny.
They described it minutely to Pamela before she went with them to see it and fix definitely.