"Perhaps you would like a boat yourself?"
"Yes," she said, frankly. "If there were not many people there, we might go out sometimes in the evening--"
Her husband laughed and took her hand: "You don't understand, Sheila. The boats the boys have are little things a foot or two long--like the one in your papa's bedroom in Borva. But many of the boys would be greatly obliged to you if you would teach them how to manage the sails properly, for sometimes dreadful shipwrecks occur."
"You must bring them to our house. I am very fond of little boys, when they begin to forget to be shy, and let you become acquainted with them."
"Well," said Lavender, "I don't know many of the boys who sail boats in the Serpentine: you will have to make their acquaintance yourself. But I know one boy whom I must bring to the house. He is a German-Jew boy, who is going to be another Mendelssohn, his friends say. He is a pretty boy, with ruddy-brown hair, big black eyes, and a fine forehead; and he really sings and plays delightfully. But you know, Sheila, you must not treat him as a boy, for he is over fourteen, I should think; and if you were to kiss him--"
"He might be angry," said Sheila, with perfect simplicity.
"I might," said Lavender; and then, noticing that she seemed a little surprised, he merely patted her head and bade her go and get ready for dinner.
Then came the great climax of Sheila's southward journey--her arrival in London. She was all anxiety to see her future home; and as luck would have it, there was a fair spring morning shining over the city. For a couple of hours before, she had sat and looked out of the carriage-window as the train whirled rapidly through the scarcely awakened country, and she had seen the soft and beautiful landscapes of the South lit up by the early sunlight. How the bright little villages shone, with here and there a gilt weathercock glittering on the spire of some small gray church, while as yet in many valleys a pale gray mist lay along the bed of the level streams or clung to the dense woods on the upland heights! Which was the more beautiful--the sharp, clear picture, with its brilliant colors and its awakening life, or the more mystic landscape over which was still drawn the tender veil of the morning haze? She could not tell. She only knew that England, as she then saw it, seemed a great country that was very beautiful, that had few inhabitants, and that was still and sleepy and bathed in sunshine. How happy must the people be who lived in those quiet green valleys by the side of slow and smooth rivers, and amid great woods and avenues of stately trees, the like of which she had not imagined even in her dreams!
But from the moment that they got out at Euston Square she seemed a trifle bewildered, and could only do implicitly as her husband bade her--clinging to his hand, for the most part, as if to make sure of guidance. She did indeed glance somewhat nervously at the hansom into which Lavender put her, apparently asking how such a tall and narrow two-wheeled vehicle could be prevented toppling over. But when he, having sent on all their luggage by a respectable old four-wheeler, got into the hansom beside her, and put his hand inside her arm, and bade her be of good cheer that she should have such a pleasant morning to welcome her to London, she said "Yes," mechanically, and only looked out in a wistful fashion at the great houses and trees of Euston Square, the mighty and roaring stream of omnibuses, the droves of strangers, mostly clad in black, as if they were going to church, and the pale blue smoke that seemed to mix with the sunshine and make it cold and distant.
They were in no hurry, these two, on that still morning; and so, to impress Sheila all at once with a sense of the greatness and grandeur of London, he made the cabman cut down by Park Crescent and Portland Place to Regent Circus. Then they went along Oxford Street; and there were crowded omnibuses taking young men into the city, while all the pavements were busy with hurrying passers-by. What multitudes of unknown faces, unknown to her and unknown to each other! These people did not speak: they only hurried on, each intent upon his own affairs, caring nothing, apparently, for the din around them, and looking so strange and sad in their black clothes in the pale and misty sunlight.