It was impossible for her to remain beyond the week, she said, because she had promised to meet her friends General and Mrs. Perkinpine in Burlington in time to accompany them to Montreal and Quebec, whence they must hurry back to Saratoga for a week, and go thence to Baltimore; then, after returning for a few days to New York, they were to go to Europe.
"But you don't mean to go with them to Europe, Lucretia?" said grandmother.
"O, of course, Aunt Margaret," for so she called her,—"of course I intend to go. We mean to be gone a year, and half the time we shall spend in Paris. We shall go to Rome, and we shall spend a few weeks in England."
"I cannot imagine what you will do with six months in Paris,—you who don't know five words of French."
"I studied it, however, at boarding-school," said Miss Stackpole; "I read both Télémaque and the New Testament in French."
"Did you?" said grandmother; "well, every little helps."
"I think I should dearly love to go myself," said Louise.
"One picks up the language," said Miss Stackpole; "and certainly nothing is more improving than travel."
"If improvement is your motive, it is certainly a very laudable one," said grandmother. "But I should suppose that at your age you would begin to prefer a little quiet to all this rushing about. But every one to his liking."
Now it is undeniable that grandmother and Miss Stackpole never did get on very well together; so it was rather a relief to Louise and myself when Miss Stackpole, pleading fatigue from her ride, expressed a wish to go to bed early, and get a good long, refreshing night's sleep, the facilities for which, she averred, were the only compensating circumstance of country life.