"Tell that to the marines, you sly hussy!" exclaimed Doctor Jim, regaining mysteriously his wonted large good humour. "Don't tell me this isn't all made up between you and Robert!"
Barbara looked at him soberly for a moment. Then the old audacious light laughed over her face, her eyes danced perilously,—and Mistress Mehitable felt a tremor of apprehension. She always felt nervous when Doctor Jim had the hardihood to draw Barbara's fire.
"Do you know, Doctor Jim, I don't feel quite so badly as I did about leaving you and Aunt Hitty! I think, you know, you will be quite a comfort to each other, won't you, even if Doctor John should have to stay longer than he expects in Hartford!"
At this moment Doctor John himself came in, to Mistress Mehitable's infinite relief.
CHAPTER XXIV.
When Glenowen came to Second Westings he was in such haste that Barbara concluded he had other duties in New York than the searching of records and verification of titles; but with unwonted discretion she asked no questions. Affairs of state, it seemed to her, were the more mysterious and important the less she knew about them; and it pleased her to feel that the fate of commonwealths, perchance, was carried secretly within the ruffled cambric of her debonair and brown-eyed uncle. From Second Westings they journeyed by coach to New Haven, and from that city voyaged by packet down the Sound to New York. Arrived in New York, they went straight into lodgings which Glenowen had already engaged, in an old, high-stooped Dutch house on State Street.
From the moment of her landing on the wharf, Barbara was in a state of high exhilaration. The thronging wharves, the high, black, far-travelled hulls, the foreign-smelling freights, all thrilled her imagination, and made her feel that now at last unexpected things might happen to her and story-books come true. Then the busy, bustling streets, where men jostled each other abstractedly, intent each on his own affairs, how different from Second Westings, where three passers-by and a man on horseback would serve to bring faces to the windows, and where the grass on each side of the street was an item of no small consequence to the village cows! And then the houses—huddled together, as if there was not space a-plenty in the world for houses! It was all very stirring. She felt that it was what she wanted, at the moment,—a piquant sauce to the plain wholesomeness of her past. But she felt, too, that it would never be able to hold her long from the woods and fields and wild waters.
Of her arrival Barbara sent no word to Robert, though she knew by somewhat careful calculation that his office was but a stone's throw away from her lodging. She looked forward to some kind of a dramatic meeting, and would not let her impatience—which she scarcely acknowledged—risk the marring of a picturesque adventure. When Glenowen, the morning after their arrival, gave her the superfluous information that Robert's office was close by, right among the fashionable houses of Bowling Green, and proposed that they should begin their exploration of the city by strolling past his window, Barbara demurred with emphasis.
"Well," said Glenowen, thinking he understood what no man ever has a right to think he understands, "just as you like, mistress mine. I'll drop in on him myself, and let him know where we are, so he can call with all due and fitting ceremony!"