“Punctual to a tick,” said Ira, holding up his watch and producing the rhinoceros-horn match-box and his case of cheroots.
Granby took one, presented Sir Com, and they entered the hotel together.
Horace Belden was out that morning exercising his race-horse Knockknees. As he descended the same slope where he had fouled with Tootler’s buggy, he saw approaching a carriage with two ladies. He recognised them instantly, with a leap of the heart. He drew up by their side with polite commonplaces of welcome, dashed with more meaning when he addressed Diana. They told him whence and whither—to-day to Miss Sullivan, to-morrow to Newport.
“How can you like that man?” asked Clara, as they drove on. “He seems to me a Sansfoy.”
“I do not like or trust him,” replied Diana. “I tolerate him because he rides well and is agreeable, and because he reminds me of an old friend.”
She stooped to pick up a broken-winged butterfly that had fluttered feebly into the carriage. Stooping sent the blood into her face. While they cherished the poor insect, she grew of a sudden deadly pale, and putting her hand to her side, shuddered slightly. Clara did not observe the motion, which was not repeated.
There is no need to describe the meeting between pupils and preceptress; but in the late twilight Clara returned without Diana, who had consented to stay a day or two with Miss Sullivan. She wished to keep both the friends, but Mrs. Waddie would need her daughter in arranging their house.
Mr. Ira Waddy lionised Boston with Granby and Ambient. They looked in for a moment on Mr. Tootler. He was composing an air to a Frémont song which he had just written, and which Mrs. Tootler would revise—and perhaps infuse with even sharper ginger. He played it for them on the flute. Sir Com listened with astonishment. Mr. Tootler figures in the chapter entitled, “An Hour with a Musical Wool-Merchant,” in that young gentleman’s book, “Pork and Beans; or, Tracks in the Trail of the Bear and the Buffalo.”
In the evening, Waddy and Waddie became acquainted. The ambassador accepted the relationship, which was now fully established by relics and traditions. The Great Tradition, however, of the Mayflower, the caboose, Miles Standish, the pepper-pot—this he laughed at as legendary. Ira clung to it vigorously; he liked to have come in with the Pilgrims, even at the expense of humble ancestry and an inherited curse.