“Isn’t it? So sudden! She is travelling home to-night, instead of dancing. I wonder if her father has ‘put on glory’? I hope he was a good man.”
Florence gave her sister another quick, searching look, and after a moment said: “You are a very strange girl, Jean, do you know it?”
“Why?” Jean asked. “What is there strange about hoping that a man who had to exchange worlds without a moment’s warning was ready for it? Florence, the way that lace falls back from your arms is exquisite; I shouldn’t wonder if you would be the most becomingly dressed girl there. Isn’t it time you were off? The moon has risen. Oh, look! isn’t it a glorious night!”
She drew back the curtain to gaze on the shimmering glory, and Florence went downstairs to the sound of her voice trilling:
“For the glow of eventide I wait, I’m a pilgrim going home.”
An hour later Derrick came clattering downstairs and bounced into the family sitting-room with an imperious question: “Where is Ray?”
When his mother explained that Kendall had taken her out for a moonlight walk, he growled: “Oh, bother Kendall! He is always carrying her off just when a fellow needs her most. I can’t make any sense of this mess and I’ve gone over it fifty times, at least. I wish there wasn’t such a language as Latin, anyhow, or else I wish that a fellow like me had—”
At that point he stopped, and his mother took up the unfinished sentence: “Had a mother who knew enough to help him out of trouble, was that what you were about to say?”
“Not much it wasn’t!” with a quick little flash from expressive eyes. “I’ve got exactly the kind of mother I like best; but I wish I had brains enough to see through a thing, without everlasting drudgery; I spend more time on my Latin than all the fellows do put together, and then don’t more than half know. Ray, now, could tell in two minutes what all this fool stuff is about. Why can’t I see it?”
Then from a voice just behind him came a surprising suggestion: “What if you should let me have a peep at it, young man? I used to be called a fairly good Latin scholar once; I may not have forgotten all of it.”