"And pending the passage of that bill you want to live in Arcadian simplicity alone. I see. I quite like the idea myself. I should love to found Arcadia with you somewhere in rural England, when I have time. Where shall we have it? I should say Devonshire, shouldn't you? Clotted cream, you know, and country lanes. It will be like Marie Antoinette's hamlet at Versailles, only not nearly so silly. We will pay other people to milk the cows and make the butter, and do all the dirty work, and just sit around ourselves and be perfectly charming. No one will be admitted without passing a rigid examination in character, and that will be the only necessary qualification. Arcadia, Limited, we'll call it; it sounds like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, doesn't it?"
"Whom shall we have in it? Uncle Giles—he could pass all right, couldn't he?"
"Oh, Heavens, yes, Magna cum. And Aunt Miriam—perhaps. She would need some cramming before she went up. What about your mother?"
"I'm afraid Mama could never get in," answered Beatrice, smiling rather sadly. "I've talked to her before about such things and she never answers, but just looks at me with that sad tolerant smile of hers that seems to say 'Arcadian simplicity is all very well, but you'll find the best way to get it is through a husband with ten thousand a year or so.' And the dreadful part of it is that she's right, to a certain extent."
Although in matter of years Beatrice was a few weeks Harry's junior, she was at this time twice as old as he, for all practical purposes. She was an honored guest at Lady Fletcher's big dinners—almost the only ones that did not bore her to death—into which Harry would be smuggled at the last minute to fill up a vacant place, or else calmly omitted from altogether. Nevertheless, he was her greatest comfort all through her first season; nothing but his jovial optimism, which saw the worst but found it no more than amusing, kept the iron from entering into her soul. Such an occasional conversation as the above-quoted would put sanity into her world and fortify her for days against the commonplaces of dancing men and the jealous looks of less attractive maidens. And how she would pine for him during the intervals! How she would long for the arrival of the next vacation or mid-term exeat that would bring him up to town! There was a freshness, a wholesomeness about his way of looking at things that was soothing to her as a breath of country air.
It is not surprising, then, that Beatrice began to dread the nearing date of Harry's departure for America and college more than any one else, even Sir Giles himself, to whom Harry had become by this time almost as dear as a son. Poor Uncle Giles, though he wanted Harry to stay in the country more than any other earthly thing, made it a point of honor never to dissuade the boy from his original project of returning to his own country when he was ready to go to college and becoming an American again. Beatrice, however, was bound by no such restriction and complained bitterly of his desertion.
"What is the point of your going back to some silly American college?" she would ask. "It isn't as if you didn't have the best universities in the world right here, under your very nose. Why aren't Oxford and Cambridge good enough for you, I should like to know? They were good enough for Milton and Thackeray and Isaac Newton and a few other more or less prominent people."
"Very true," replied Harry with perfect good-humor. "The only thing is, those people didn't happen to be Yankees. I am, you know. It's been a habit in our family for two hundred years or more, and it doesn't do to break up old family traditions. Must be a Yankee, whatever happens."
"But that doesn't mean that you have to go to a Yankee college, necessarily," argued Beatrice. "You won't learn nearly as much there as you would at Oxford. You are as far along in your studies now as the second year men at Yale; I heard Uncle Giles say so himself."
"Yes, I know, that's very true. I can't argue about it; you've got all the arguments on your side. I just know that there's only one possible place on earth where I can go to college, and that is Yale. Better not talk about it any more, if it makes you peevish."