"The day can't make music harmful," she rejoined. "But I can't sing. Sometimes when I can't express what I am thinking about I hum it. How long are you and Alf going to be away?"
"As long as it suits him," I answered. "I have decided to have no voice as to the length of our stay."
"Then you are simply going to accommodate him. How kind of you. And have you always so much consideration for others? If you have you may find your patience strained if you stay here."
"To stand any strain that may be placed upon our patience is a virtue," I remarked—sententious pedagogue—and she lifted her hands, clasped them behind her head, looked at me and laughed, a music sweet and low. Just then Alf came out upon the passage, looking down at himself, first one side and then the other; and it was with a feeling of close kinship to envy that I regarded his new clothes. He apologized for having kept me waiting so long, but in truth I could have told him that I should have liked to wait there for hours, looking at the graceful figure of that girl, standing with her hands clasped behind her brown head.
The distance was not great and we had decided to walk, and across a meadow, purpling with coming bloom, we took a nearer way. I said to Alf that one might think that he was a stranger at the General's house, and he replied: "In one way I am. I have been there many a time, it is true, but always to help do something."
"Is the family so exclusive, then?" I asked.
"Oh, they are as friendly as any people you ever saw, but, of course, I naturally place them high above me. The old General doesn't appear to know that I have grown to be a man; always talks to me as if I were a boy—wants to know what father's doing and all that sort of thing. He doesn't give a snap what father's doing."
"And the girl. How does she talk to you?" It was several moments before he answered me.
"I was just trying to think," he said. "To tell you the truth, I don't know how she talks to me. I can't recall anything she has ever said to me. She calls me Alf and I call her Miss Millie, and we laugh at some fool thing and that's about all there is to it. But I know that the old man would never be willing for me to marry her. He is looking pretty high for her or he wouldn't have spent so much money on her education."
"But, of course, the girl will have something to say," I suggested.