Rotha however was very willing it should be so. She wanted all these months, to study, to work, to think, to make herself as ready as she could be for what was before her.
The train could not take them until eleven o'clock. After breakfast Rotha sat for a time meditating, no longer on troublesome subjects, while Mr. Southwode finished the letter he had begun earlier. As he began to fold up his paper, she came out with a question.
"Mr. Southwode, what do you think I had better specially study this winter?"
He did not smile, for if the question was put like a child, the work he knew would be done like a woman. He asked quietly,
"What is your object in going to school at all?"
The answer lingered, till his eyes looked up for it; then Rotha said, while a lovely flush covered the girl's face,—
"That you may not be ashamed of me."
"That contingency never came under my consideration," he said, commanding his gravity.
"But indeed it did under mine!"
"Allow me to ask a further question. After that, do you expect to make it the main business of your life to please me?"