"You will please call the guard before coming in here. The carriage is reserved."
At this moment her father came forward—not a little inclined to laugh.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but the carriage is really reserved. There was a written paper put up—it has fallen down, I suppose—there it is."
So the smart young man went away; but was it fair, after this notable victory, that they should all begin to make fun of her fierce and majestic bearing, and that the very person for whose sake she had confronted the enemy should begin to make ridiculous rhymes about her, such as these:
"Then out spake Violet Northimus—
Of Euston Square was she—
'Lo, I will stand at thy right hand,
And guard the door with thee!'"
Violet Northimus did not reply. She wore the modesty of a victor. She was ready at any moment to meet six hundred such as he; and she was not to be put out, after the discomfiture of her enemy, by a joke.
Then they slowly rolled and grated out of the station, and by-and-by the swinging pace increased, and they were out in the clearer light and the fresher air, with a windy April sky showing flashes of blue from time to time. They went down through a succession of thoroughly English looking landscapes—quiet valleys with red-tiled cottages in them, bare heights green with the young corn, long stretches of brown and almost leafless woods, with the rough banks outside all starred with the pale, clear primrose. There was one in that carriage who had had no lack of flowers that spring—flowers brought by many a kindly hand to brighten the look of the sick room; but surely it was something more wonderful to see the flowers themselves, growing here in this actual and outside world which had been to him for many a weary week but a dimly imagined dreamland. There were primroses under the hedges, primroses along the high banks, primroses shining pale and clear within the leafless woods, among the russet leaves of the previous autumn. And then the life and motion of the sky, the southwesterly winds, the black and lowering clouds suddenly followed by a wild and dazzling gleam of sunlight, the grays and purples flying on and leaving behind them a welcome expanse of shining April blue.
The day was certainly squally enough, and might turn to showers; but the gusts of wind that blew through the carriage were singularly sweet and mild; and again and again Mr. Drummond, who had been raised by all this new life and light into the very highest spirits, declared with much solemnity that he could already detect the smell of the salt sea air. They had their quarrels of course. It pleased a certain young lady to treat the south coast of England with much supercilious contempt. You would have imagined from her talk that there was something criminal in one's living even within twenty miles of the bleak downs, the shabby precipices, and the muddy sea which, according to her, were the only recognizable features of our southern shores. She would not admit indeed that there was any sea at all there; there was only churned chalk. Was it fair to say, even under the exasperation of continual goading, that the Isle of Wight was only a trumpery toy shop; that its "scenery" was fitly adorned with bazaars for the sale of sham jewelry; that its amusements were on a par with those of Rosherville gardens; that its rocks were made of mud and its sea of powdered lime?
"By heavens," exclaimed her antagonist, "I will stand this no longer. I will call upon Neptune to raise such a storm in the Solent as shall convince you that there is quite enough sea surrounding that pearl of islands, that paradise, that world's wonder we are going to visit."
"Yes, I have no doubt," said she with sweet sarcasm, "that if you stirred the Solent with a teaspoon, you would frighten the yachtsmen there out of their wits."