“Yes, yes,” added the rector hastily, “don’t think of us, Philip lad; we shall get on fairly well, I fancy; and then, you know, in after years your aunt and I will share in your triumphs. How proud we shall be of our nephew, the great violinist, Signor Philip Norton! Sounds well, doesn’t it? There won’t be a prouder woman in England than your Aunt Delia then, and as for your old uncle, the rectory will be hardly large enough to contain him, if he is still alive.”
And so, almost in spite of his hesitation, Philip found himself gently pushed forward into a career which seemed to be too beautiful to be real; indeed, he half expected to awake some morning and find that the whole plan had been only a lovely dream.
But the preparations for his journey went steadily on, and each morning Philip would look at the calendar and say:
“In a month we start”—“in a week”—and then—“to-morrow.”
He did not go to Ashden very much during those last days, for he wanted to spend every moment with the dear friends at the rectory; nor did he see much of Lord Ashden, who had many preparations to make for what might be a long absence, and who, moreover, with great delicacy, forbore to intrude upon these last days, which he knew were sad ones for the dear old clergyman and his wife.
The bustle and stir incident upon the preparation for such a long journey were an immense relief to Aunt Delia, and she gave herself not a moment to think of what the house would be like when her darling boy should have gone. She had Philip’s boxes all packed and strapped a full week before he was to start, and then she thought of so many things which she had forgotten to put in that she unpacked them all again; and she repeated this operation several times before she was quite satisfied. For some unaccountable reason, as the travellers were going directly south, the dear old lady was convinced that Philip would need the most extraordinary amount of extra clothing, and she smuggled into his boxes enough flannel and woollen garments to have equipped an expedition to the polar regions. She was also convinced that both Philip and Lord Ashden would need at least a couple of knitted mufflers apiece, and after a busy day spent in running up and down stairs and packing and unpacking boxes, she would sit up half the night knitting away, as though her life depended upon it, on these same mufflers, while her loving thoughts and hopes for Philip’s future travelled faster even than the flying needles.
But there was another member of the household who was even more excited over the preparations for departure than Aunt Delia herself. This was Dash, who from the first moment that the journey was suggested seemed to understand that some momentous change was near at hand. When Philip’s boxes were brought down from the garret, he went sniffing anxiously about them, and when Aunt Delia laid one of the boy’s familiar garments in one of them, the little dog sat down beside it, and throwing back his head began to howl so piteously that Philip, who was practising in the next room, came running in to see if he were ill or in pain. After that Dash seemed fully to comprehend that his master was going on a journey, and from having always followed him about very faithfully he became his veritable shadow. If Philip but crossed the room Dash was at his heels, and at night he deliberately forsook the box in a corner of the school-room, in which he had formerly slept very contentedly, and would curl himself up on the foot of Philip’s bed, from which neither threats nor entreaties could drive him away. Philip, indeed, begged that he might be allowed to remain, for it had been decided that Dash must be left at Lowdown, and his little master’s heart felt strangely sad and heavy at the thought of parting from his faithful friend.
One night Aunt Delia, coming softly into his room with a light, to be sure that her boy was warmly covered, was surprised to hear a sound of suppressed sobbing issuing from beneath the bed-clothes.
“Why, Philip,” she said, coming nearer, “what is it?”
“Oh, Aunt Delia, I do feel so sad at the thought of leaving Dash, and he seems to understand; I believe he really thinks that I am very mean and heartless to go away and leave him behind.”