Adèle is in a fever of excitement. In her happy glee she would have gone out to tell all the village what pleasure was before her. Even the caution she receives from the Doctor cannot control her spirits absolutely. She makes her little adieux, for a while, under a certain control that surprises herself. But when, in her light-hearted ramble, she comes to say good-bye to Madame Arles, toward whom her sympathies seem to flow in spite of herself, she cannot forbear saying, "What harm, pray, can there be in this?"
"Such a secret, chère Madame! I am going to New York, you know, with Dr. Johns, the good man! and—such a secret! don't whisper it!—Papa has come, and has sent for me, and we are to travel together!" And she sprang at Madame Arles, and, clasping her arms around her neck, kissed her with a vehemence that might have startled even a less excitable person.
"Is it possible, my child! I wish you all joy, with all my heart."
And as if the exuberance of the wish had started her old ailment into new vigor, she has clasped her hands wildly over that bosom, to stay, if it might be, those inordinate throbbings.
But the adieux are at last all spoken. Mrs. Elderkin had said, "My child, I rejoice with you; and if I never see you again,"—(for she had her suspicions that the sudden movement had some connection with the wishes of her father,)—"if I never see you again, I hope you may keep always the simplicity and the love of truth I believe you have now."
Rose, almost bewildered by the gleeful excitement of her friend, enters eagerly into all her arrangements, trips into her chamber to assist in her packing, insists, over and over, that she must write often, and long letters.
Girls of sixteen or thereabout are prone to expectancies of this kind. Their friendships cover reams. Their promises of never-dying attachment are so full, so rich! But as the years drop these girl friends into their separate spheres, with a new world of interests, domestic buffetings, nursery clamor, growing up around them, the tender correspondence, before they know it, is gone by. And the budget of sweet and gushing school-day epistles is cut through and through with the ruthless family shears to kindle the family lamp or to light the cigar of some exacting and surly pater-familias.
"I suppose you will see Reuben in the city," Rose had said, in a chance way.
"Oh, I hope so!" said Adèle.
And of Reuben neither of them said anything more.