“Well, where did you come from, anyhow, old fellow?” asked Harold, pleased beyond measure that Ted had seen fit to follow them up in this fashion. He could not imagine whatever had suddenly brought it about, after all the neglect of the summer; but that did not in the least diminish his delight.
“I came from home, Harold,” Ted replied; “I went back there two weeks ago, but it was so lonely I couldn't stand it, and so when I found out through the Allyns about where you were, I came posthaste after you. Besides, you know, when I discovered that my brake had been walked off with in a rather cool fashion, I concluded I had some rights in the case, and came to look after them. I see it's been terribly abused,” glancing in the direction of the brake, which, minus the horses, stood in front of the inn across the narrow road; “it was as good as new when you started.”
But these last remarks, so like the old Ted, but for the fact that he was not in the least in earnest, were hardly listened to at all by Harold. He was thinking his own glad thoughts. Five weeks yet till the Harrises would sail for home! Ted would have a chance to redeem himself in that time and make up for all his coldness and neglect; and the joy of it all was that it looked as though he was going to try to do it.
“Half crown, please, for being permitted to join the party,” said Mr. Harris, presenting the hat to Ted, after making sure that none of the coins were still missing; and Ted, though wholly bent on practising close economy, felt the circumstances justified the outlay, and did as he was bid.
There was only one person to whom Ted's coming was not a source of unalloyed pleasure. The addition of a seventh member to the party made it necessary that some one should occupy the vacant back seat on the brake between the grooms, and Mr. Farwell was gentleman enough to insist upon being allowed to take his regular turn in the matter. He would not have minded this much, however, only that, being endowed with average qualities of discernment, he soon realized he had been obliged to take a back seat in more senses than one. Dorothy continued to be most polite and friendly, but that Ted filled the role of an old and privileged friend was at once evident on the face of things, and Mr. Farwell endeavored to accept the situation with the best grace possible, and succeeded, be it said to his credit, remarkably well.
Mr. and Mrs. Harris were soon taken into Ted's confidence—the very next day, in fact, as they were sitting in the garden of the hotel at Keswick—and listened as raptly to his narration of all that had happened these last few weeks as the little circle outside the cottage door had listened to Marie-Celeste. Ted, however, made no excuses for himself, whereas Marie-Celeste's account was full of them; and so one narration was naturally far less plausible than the other. The one fact that seemed to Mr. and Mrs. Harris to defy credulity was that Ted should have fallen into the hands of the Hartleys, for in what other little cottage in all England could such a transformation have been wrought? Where else could he have been brought into such close touch with all the old home interests as he had been there, first through Chris and afterward through Donald and Marie-Celeste, and where else could he have come to see so clearly that he had been wilfully trampling upon all that is truest and best in life? “Fritz,” said Mrs. Harris that evening, as in company with Marie-Celeste they were strolling home from an hour spent in the little churchyard where the great poet Southey is buried, “I think it is beautiful to realize what a grand part Providence plays in the world.”
“Providence!” said Marie-Celeste thoughtfully; “really, I do not know just what people mean by Providence.”
“The word is from the Latin,” said her father, who, with most college men, liked to bring his knowledge of derivations to the front now and then, “and the dictionary, I think, would tell you that it means God's thoughtful care for everything created.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Harris, “only it seems to me that people are often in too much of a hurry to make use of the word, for you can't he certain until you are able to look hack upon a thing whether it was surely of God's ordering or man's short-sighted scheming. Still I am inclined to believe, even at this stage of the proceeding, that our coming over here this summer has indeed been a beautiful providence and a few weeks later, for good and sufficient reasons, there was not a shadow of doubt on that score left in the mind of any one.”