“I would fix first what your occupation was to be, if I were you. There is no hurry about telling Sheila, although she will be very glad to get as much news of you as possible, and I hope you will spare no time or trouble in pleasing her in that line. By-the-way, what an infamous shame it was of you to go and gammon old Mackenzie into the belief that he can read poetry! Why, he will make that girl’s life a burden to her. I heard him propose to read Paradise Lost to her as soon as the rain set in.”
“I didn’t gammon him,” said Lavender, with a laugh, “Every man thinks he can read poetry better than every other man, even as every man fancies that no one gets cigars as good and as cheap as he does, and that no one can drive a horse safely but himself. My talking about his reading was not as bad as Sheila’s persuading him that he can play whist. Did you ever know a man who did not believe that everybody else’s reading of poetry was affected, stilted and unbearable? I know Mackenzie must have been reading poetry to Sheila long before I mentioned it to him.”
“But that suggestion about his resonant voice and the Crystal Palace!”
“That was a joke.”
“He did not take it as a joke, and neither did Sheila.”
“Well, Sheila would believe that her father could command the Channel fleet, or turn out the present ministry, or build a bridge to America, if only anybody hinted it to her. Touching that Crystal Palace; did you observe how little notion of size she could have got from pictures when she asked me if the Crystal Palace was much bigger than the hot-houses at Lewis Castle?”
“What a world of wonder the girl is coming into!” said the other, meditatively. “But it will be all lit up by one sun if only you take care of her and justify her belief in you.”
“I have not much doubt,” said Lavender, with a certain modest confidence in his manner, which had repeatedly of late pleased his friend.
Even Sheila herself could scarcely have found London more strange than did the two men who had just returned from a month’s sojourn in the Northern Hebrides. The dingy trees in Euston Square, the pale sunlight that shone down on the gray pavements, the noise of the omnibuses and carts, the multitude of strangers, the blue and mist-like smoke that hung about Tottenham Court Road—all were as strange to them as the sensation of sitting in a hansom and being driven along by an unseen driver. Lavender confessed afterward that he was pervaded by an odd sort of desire to know whether there was anybody in London at all like Sheila. Now and again a smartly-dressed girl passed along the pavement; what was it that made the difference between her and the other girl whom he had just left? yet he wished to have the difference as decided as possible, when some bright, fresh-colored, pleasant-looking girl passed, he was anxious to prove to himself that she was not to be compared with Sheila. Where in all London could you find eyes that told so much? He forgot to place the specialty of Sheila’s eyes in the fact of their being a dark gray-blue under black eyelashes. What he did remember was that no eyes could possibly say the same things to him as they had said. And where in all London was the same sweet aspect to be found, or the same unconsciously proud and gentle demeanor, or the same tender friendliness expressed in a beautiful face? He would not say anything against London women for all that. It was no fault of theirs that they could not be sea-kings’ daughters, with the courage and frankness and sweetness of the sea gone into their blood. He was only too pleased to have proved to himself, by looking at some half-dozen pretty shop-girls, that not in London was there any one to compare with Princess Sheila.
For many a day thereafter Ingram had to suffer a good deal of this sort of lover’s logic, and bore it with great fortitude. Indeed, nothing pleased him more than to observe that Lavender’s affection, so far from waning, engrossed more and more of his thought and his time; and he listened with unfailing good-nature and patience to the perpetual talk of his friend about Sheila and her home, and the future that might be in store for both of them. If he had accepted half the invitations to dinner sent down to him at the Board of Trade by his friend, he would scarcely ever have been out of Lavender’s club. Many a long evening they passed in this way—either in Lavender’s rooms in King street or in Ingram’s lodgings in Sloane street. Ingram quite consented to lie in a chair and smoke, sometimes putting in a word of caution to bring Lavender back from the romantic Sheila to the real Sheila, sometimes smiling at some wild proposal or statement on the part of his friend, but always glad to see that the pretty idealisms planted during their stay in the far North were in no danger of dying out down here in the South. Those were great days, too, when a letter arrived from Sheila. Nothing had been said about their corresponding, but Lavender had written shortly after his arrival in London and Sheila had answered for her father and herself. It wanted but a very little amount of ingenuity to continue the interchange of letters thus begun; and when the well-known envelope arrived high holiday was immediately proclaimed by the recipient of it. He did not show Ingram these letters, of course, but the contents of them were soon bit by bit revealed. He was also permitted to see the envelope, as if Sheila’s handwriting had some magical charm about it. Sometimes, indeed, Ingram had himself a letter from Sheila, and that was immediately shown to Lavender. Was he pleased to find that these communications were excessively business-like—describing how the fishing was going on, what was doing in the schools, and how John the Piper was conducting himself, with talk about the projected telegraphic cable, the shooting in Harris, the health of Bras, and other esoteric matters?