“Don’t you wish we could paraphrase Joshua’s command, ‘Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon,’ and say, ‘Spring, stand thou still in April’?”
“Do I?” answers the other, uneasily. “I do not think so!”
Her friend looks at her with covert observation, to verify that, despite the peaceful quality of the most soothing of all occupations, gardening, peace is not the dominant note in the concert of Miss Carew’s emotions this gaudy, sweetly clamorous April morning.
“In point of fact, I came to bring you a message.”
“From whom?”
Is it fancy that the question is jerked out with some sort of difficulty?
“From Mrs. Prince. She wants to persuade you to pay Captain Binning another visit this afternoon. She tells me”—with a faint tinge of surprise—“that you refused when she asked you two days ago.”
“I was there on Monday—that is only five days ago!” Lavinia has knelt down on the gravel again, and is busy with her hop. Her voice sounds a trifle hard.
“Five days can be pretty long to a sick man, more especially to a sick man nursed by Féodorovna Prince!”
“But he is not nursed by her!” exclaims the other, almost angrily. “Mrs. Prince herself told me that Mr. Prince had forbidden it, because he knew she would kill him!”