CHAPTER VIICHANGES
All she did was but to wear out the day;Full oftentimes she leave of him did take;And oft again devised somewhat to say,Which she forgot, whereby excuse to make;So loth was she his company to forsake.Spenser.
All she did was but to wear out the day;Full oftentimes she leave of him did take;And oft again devised somewhat to say,Which she forgot, whereby excuse to make;So loth was she his company to forsake.Spenser.
All she did was but to wear out the day;Full oftentimes she leave of him did take;And oft again devised somewhat to say,Which she forgot, whereby excuse to make;So loth was she his company to forsake.Spenser.
All she did was but to wear out the day;
Full oftentimes she leave of him did take;
And oft again devised somewhat to say,
Which she forgot, whereby excuse to make;
So loth was she his company to forsake.
Spenser.
Miss Agrippina de Crespigney stood in the breach of the old stone sea-wall, watching David Lindsay as he rowed rapidly from the shore.
“This intimacy must be stopped at once,” shesaid; “that poor, neglected child must be looked after and not allowed to associate with every rude boor that she may happen to meet on this dreary promontory! She must be sent to school. I will speak to Colonel de Crespigney on the subject at once.”
So muttering, Miss Grip turned, clambered down from her standpoint and walked rapidly towards the house.
When she got there she found little Glo’ standing between her uncle’s knees, as he reclined in his chip-bottomed arm-chair in the front porch.
“Why, how is this, Aunt Agrippina? This child says you told her I sent for her. It was surely a mistake. I never sent for her,” said Colonel de Crespigney, as soon as he saw Miss Grip.
“No one said you did. I told her you wanted her, and so you do want her, or at least you ought to,” grimly replied the lady.
“Why, what on earth do you mean, Miss de Crespigney?”
“You know very well what I mean, or you should know,” severely retorted Miss Grip.
“Upon my sacred word of honor, I don’t! Pray explain yourself,” entreated the colonel.
Instead of replying to him, Miss Agrippina deliberately divested herself of her bonnet and shawl and gave them to the child, saying:
“Here, my dear, take these up into my room and put them away carefully.”
“Now, then, what do you mean?” demanded the colonel, when the little girl had disappeared into the house.
“I mean that you want your ward to stay at homeuntil she goes to school, which she must do very soon,” said Miss Grip, decidedly.
“Go to school? How can she? There is no school fit for her within fifty miles of this place.”
“Certainly not. She must be sent away to a first-class boarding-school.”
“I cannot consent to that, Aunt Agrippina. I cannot, and will not. I cannot part with her. Besides, it would break her heart to send her away.”
“Fiddle!” said Miss Grip.
“Yet I see that she should have instruction. I will advertise for a first-class resident governess.”
“You will not do any such thing, Colonel Marcellus de Crespigney! A resident governess in the house, indeed! Why, she would marry you in six months!”
“Absurd!” indignantly exclaimed the colonel.
“Oh, yes, you may call it ‘absurd,’ if you like! But I know you, Marcellus! Any needy woman, any single woman, I mean, young or old, plain or pretty, shut up in the same house with you, would marry you out of hand!”
“You must think me a very weak man,” said the colonel.
“I do,” said Miss Grip.
“Thank you,” said De Crespigney, with an air of chagrin.
“Weak where your sympathies are concerned, Marcel, and that is no discredit to you, my dear! But I’ll not have any wandering woman making her market at your expense! No, sir! no resident governess, if you please!”
“I hope, Aunt Agrippina, you will permit me to be master of my own house, so far as to say who shall or shall not make a part of my family.”
“Oh, by all means, and take the consequences, too, for if you engage a resident governess, I shall leave the house. And after I go what respectable woman, do you suppose, would come and live here with a young widower, and no lady of his family to keep her in countenance? Ah, ha! I have you there, Marcel! Yes, and I mean to keep you there!”
“It is rather unkind of you, Aunt Agrippina; but I shall not argue the point, since I know from experience that nothing ever turned you from any resolution that you had formed. Still, I say, it is very unkind of you,” said the colonel, with a wounded air.
“It is for your own good, honey. If I were to stay here and let a resident governess come, she would make you the captive of her bow and spear, and marry you right under my very nose! It will not do, Marcel. The child must be sent to school.”
“But she is so young yet. Not nine years old until June. You or I can direct her studies for the next year or two.”
“I don’t see it. Besides, who is to look after her out of school hours? I tell you, Marcel, it is not only for her education that she is to be sent from home.”
“For what other reason, I pray you?”
“To keep her out of bad company.”
“‘Bad company?’ Bad company, in this remote, isolated place?” exclaimed the colonel, gazing at the lady in surprise.
“Yes! bad company, I say! the very worst company! I think it is a shame, a burning and a crying shame,” exclaimed Miss Grip, firing up at the sound of her own words—“a burning and a crying shame that she, Maria da Gloria de la Vera, a Countess ofPortugal by birth, should be left here to run wild like any little savage, with no better companion than a low-born, ignorant fisher-boy! There!”
“Lord—bless—my—soul—alive!” cried the colonel, sarcastically.
“Where do you suppose I found them?” sharply demanded Miss Grip, whose temper was rising.
“Found—whom?” coolly inquired the colonel.
“Your niece and ward, the Countess Maria, and your hired servant, David, the fisher-boy.”
“I wish you would not be ridiculous, my dear aunt. What good does that title do our poor little girl, here in democratic America? Why, even her father, a Portuguese nobleman by birth, but a staunch republican in principle, dropped his title when he transferred his interests to the United States,” said Marcel.
“Then he had no right to do it, and his act is of no consequence to his daughter. She is the Countess de la Vera, and she would be recognized as such in any other civilized country except in democratic America, as you call it. But that is not the point.”
“What is the point, then?”
“I asked you just now, where you supposed I found them?”
“In a boat, on the water?”
“No; sitting on an old, overturned boat under the broken sea-wall, side by side, with an open book before them, both their hands on the covers, both faces bent over the same page.”
“God bless the child! She was trying to teach the lad!” ejaculated Marcel, with a smile of sympathetic pleasure in his eyes.
“I say it is most improper! most indecorous! most objectionable! for the little Countess Mariato be sitting down on an old boat side by side with a low, vulgar, ill-bred fisher-boy!” exclaimed Miss Grip.
“Stop, stop, my dear lady! You go too far, indeed! David Lindsay is a poor fisher lad, certainly; but he is not, in any sense of the words, low, vulgar, or ill-bred.”
“Now, how can he be anything else?”
“By intuition. He has the intuitions of a little gentleman.”
“And now, since you talk like that, I am more determined than ever that the child shall go to school,” said Miss Grip.
“It is of no earthly use for you to persist in saying so, Aunt Agrippina. I cannot part with little Glo’. She is the sunshine of my home—the light of my life! Besides, she loves me so that she could not bear to leave me. The separation would grieve her to death.”
“Fiddle!” scornfully repeated Miss Grip.
The reappearance of little Glo’ interrupted the conversation, and the subject was dropped for the time being.
There is an Indian song which teaches a good lesson in perseverance:
“If a man talk a very long time,If a man talk a very long time,If a man talk a very long time,He will bore a hole through a rock.”
“If a man talk a very long time,If a man talk a very long time,If a man talk a very long time,He will bore a hole through a rock.”
“If a man talk a very long time,If a man talk a very long time,If a man talk a very long time,He will bore a hole through a rock.”
“If a man talk a very long time,
If a man talk a very long time,
If a man talk a very long time,
He will bore a hole through a rock.”
And if a woman so talk, the effect is surer as well as swifter.
At the very first opportunity Miss Agrippina deCrespigney resumed the subject of sending her niece to school, and she talked a “very long time.”
Again and again she returned to the theme, and longer and longer she talked. She would listen to no proposal of home teaching. She would come to no compromise whatever. She would send the little “countess” to a first-class French and English Ladies’ Academy.
But it was not until late in the summer that Colonel de Crespigney, worn out with importunity and convinced, though against his will, by argument, reluctantly consented to the plan.
Miss Agrippina acted promptly on his decision, lest it should be repented of and withdrawn.
“This is Friday, the 14th of August,” she said. “I will myself leave here with the child on Monday, the 17th. We will go to Baltimore and stop at some good family boarding-house. Then I will go to the Academy of the Sacred Heart, and make an engagement to enter her on the reopening of the school exercises on the first of September, get a list of the articles required for her school uniform and outfit, have them purchased and made up in the interval, enter my little lady on the opening day, and come home. All this will take me about a fortnight, I suppose,” said Miss Grip.
And the same day she packed up a few changes of clothes for herself and her niece, and then communicated to the child that she was to go to school on the following Monday.
Her words conveyed but a tithe of the truth to the inexperienced little girl, who forthwith went to her “dee-ar Marcel” for further information.
She found him in his favorite seat—the old chip-bottomed arm-chair, on the front porch.
“Am I really going away from you to school, uncle dee-ar?” she inquired, seating herself on his knees and putting her arms around his neck.
“Yes, my darling. You are a little lady, and must be educated, cultivated, refined, accomplished. And so you must go to school,” replied “Marcel,” laying her tender cheek against his hirsute face.
“But I don’t want to be all that, uncle. I want to stay with you always, and play with David Lindsay.”
Marcel caressed her tenderly, and explained gently the absolute necessity of her submission to the social law that required her to be educated.
“Won’t you be lonesome without your little Glo’, Marcel, dee-ar!”
“Very lonesome indeed, my child.”
“And won’t you be very sorry?” she asked, smoothing his hair with her small hand.
“No, not very sorry, darling. I shall be glad because it will be for your good,” said De Crespigney, trying to look as if he meant what he said.
“You have got Aunty Agrippina and your books and your music to keep you company. But David Lindsay! Oh, Marcel, David Lindsay!” said the child, as the tears filled her eyes.
“What of him, my pet?” asked the colonel very gravely.
“Oh, he has got nobody but me, and no music nor books but what I bring him. Oh, poor David Lindsay! What will he do?” sighed Glo’.
“He will do very well, my dear. He will be busy with his fishing.”
“But he can’t be always fishing! And he will have nobody to play with, or to read with, or to bring him books, or—oh, dear! what shall we do?Oh, I can’t go to school, Marcel! I can’t! How can I go and leave you and David Lindsay?” broke forth the child, in a wail of distress.
“I and David Lindsay must try and console each other, in our little lady’s absence, with the thought that it is all for her good that she has gone. We shall do very well,” said the colonel, more gravely and tenderly than he had yet spoken.
“Oh, will you? Will you? Will you comfort David Lindsay? Will you lend him some books? Oh, he is so hungry for books, uncle dee-ar. I am going to give him all mine before I go away; but mine are only a few, and he will soon read them all. Will you lend him some? Will you, Marcel, dee-ar?”
“Yes, darling, I will indeed. I will, my precious. I will charge myself with the welfare of your little friend, and he shall not want books, nor advice, nor anything that he may require, if he wishes to cultivate his mind,” said Marcel de Crespigney, who was absolutely without any prejudices of rank.
“And oh! will you love David Lindsay, and let him love you, like I do?”
“Like you do? What do you mean, my child?”
“Like I love you! Will you love him and let him love you, like I love you?” she pleaded, laying her soft cheek against his face—a frequent caress of hers.
He kissed her for all reply.
It was too late that Friday evening to see her playmate. She had been reading with him all that afternoon, and had taken leave of him before she knew that she was to go to school. Now she felt sure that he had gone home, and she should nothave a chance to see him and tell him until the next day.
Still, she was thinking more of her playmate than of any one else, simply because he had more need of her than any one else. So she went up to her little bookcase and took down all her books and packed them in a trunk that would hold about twenty-five or thirty miscellaneous volumes, comprising nearly all of Peter Parley’s and other juvenile works, that were held in great favor at that time. With these she put in two slates, a dozen graded copy-books, pens, pencils, india-rubber, blotting-papers, inkstand, and every requisite of the school-desk that she could find.
Then she locked it and called up old Laban, and said to him:
“I want you to shoulder this and take it down to the boat-house for me.”
The old servant looked at the trunk and looked at the child, scratched his head, and declared:
“I don’t know what you mean, Miss Glo’.”
The little creature was not disposed to take airs on herself; so she kindly explained to the old man what she intended to do with the trunk, adding truthfully:
“I told Uncle Marcel, and he did not object.”
Old Laban then shouldered the trunk and followed his little mistress down the stairs, out of the front door, and so down to the end of the promontory, through the breach in the old sea-wall, and finally to a dilapidated little boat-house, where she directed him to place it.
“It will be safe there until the morning and then I can give it to David Lindsay, and he can carry it away in his boat.”
The sun had set half an hour before, and it was growing dark, so little Glo’ and her sable companion hurried from the shore back to the house.
“Saturday and Sunday! I have only got two days to be with Uncle Marcel and David Lindsay,” said little Glo’ to herself when she awoke the next morning.
And to make the most of her time, she hurried out of bed, dressed herself quickly, and ran down stairs.
Her aunt and uncle had not yet appeared, so she said to the cook:
“Just give me a cup of milk and a biscuit,’Phia, and I will eat my breakfast and go. It is my last day but one at home, and I must make the most of it.”
The old woman complied with her request, and the little girl quickly dispatched her meal, snatched her straw hat from the rack in the hall, and ran out of the house and down to the beach.
She stood in the breach of the broken wall and looked all around for her playmate, but did not see him, and she thought she was going to be disappointed; but just then she heard the sound of a hammer, and knew it must come from one held in his hand, for there was no one else who worked on the beach.
She ran down and found him nailing loose boards on the old boat-house.
“Oh! David Lindsay,” she exclaimed, as soon as she saw him, “I have got something to tell you! What do you think it is? Oh, you would never guess! I am going away on Monday!”
“Oh!NO!” cried the boy, while a look of blank consternation came over his face.
“Indeed, I am! I don’t want to go; but they say I must, David Lindsay.”
“Oh! where are you going?” he asked, in a great trouble, that he never dreamed of trying to hide.
“To a boarding-school in Baltimore. Oh! I don’t want to go, David Lindsay! But they say I must!” cried the child, almost in tears again.
The lad sighed, looked thoughtful, and then said:
“Yes; I know. Even grandmother has said often: ‘Why don’t they send that little lady to school? She ought to be at school.’ So I suppose you must go, sure enough, and it is all right; but it is very har—hard!” said the boy, valiantly trying to suppress a sob, and succeeding in doing so.
“Yes, it is hard; but Uncle Marcel says that he and you must console each other; and he says he will lend you books and give you advice, and help you, if you wish, to improve your mind, David Lindsay. And here, come in here, and see what I have got for you! I told uncle I was going to give them to you, and he did not object. And old Laban brought them down here for me yesterday. Come and see,” she said, as she led the way into the old boat-house and pointed to the trunk.
“Oh!” exclaimed the boy. “Books?”
“Yes! Drag the trunk out into the light where I can show it to you, David Lindsay.”
The boy obeyed.
The girl then unlocked the trunk and gleefully displayed its contents, looking up into the boy’s face with eyes dancing with the delight of delighting. Indeed, his eyes, radiant with rapture, responded fully.
“Oh! oh! what heaps of books and things!” he cried.
“They are all, all yours, David Lindsay!”
“Oh! oh! how generous you are! And—oh! how happy you must be!” he exclaimed, fairly catching his breath in ecstasy.
“Indeed I am very, very happy, David Lindsay!” she cried.
And so she was at that moment, while looking on her playmate’s happiness, and forgetting that she had to leave him soon and go away from home.
And then both went to work and tumbled out all the slates, pencils, and pens, all the “Peter Parleys,” and other attractive school books.
Finally, at the bottom of the trunk, lay two thick volumes, which little Glo’ with some difficulty lifted out and took upon her lap, and playfully hid with her handkerchief, saying:
“And now, David Lindsay, here are two precious, precious treasures, too precious to be read very often!”
“What is it?” said the boy—“the Holy Bible in two volumes?”
“No,” answered the girl, gravely and sweetly. “The Word of the Lord is the Book of books, and not to be talked of with others.”
“Well, then, is it the Lives of the Saints?”
“No,” she answered, smiling; “but you can never guess. This one in blue and gold is the ‘Arabian Nights’ Entertainment,’ and this one in crimson, with the painted picture on the cover, is ‘Fairy Tales.’ Oh! they are just splendid, David Lindsay! I love them, and so will you; but you ought not to read them until you have done all your work and lessons for the day. Mamma never let me have the story-books until I had done my lessons,” said the little girl, solemnly.
Meanwhile David was looking at the new books.
“I—I like these a heap better than I do the school ones,” he said, as he turned over the pages.
“Oh, to be sure! So do I. But they are only holiday books, you know.”
“Yes, these are only holidays, and these are working hours,” said the boy, with a sigh and a smile, as he began to replace the volumes in the bottom of the trunk.
“I will put them all back again, if you want to go to work, David Lindsay,” she said, as she joined him in the task that soon, at her word, he left her to complete. Then the sound of his hammer kept time to her hands as they quickly stowed away the treasures in the trunk.
Presently the boy stopped hammering and came to speak to her again.
“You are so good to me. You do so much for me, and I do not do any for you. I have not found out what to do for you! Oh, could you tell me what I could do for you?”
She opened her blue eyes wide with astonishment pure and simple.
“Why, why, you are always doing ever so much to please me!” she said.
“Now what? Do just tell me what?” he asked.
She paused in thought so long that he asked again, earnestly:
“What do I do to please you?”
“Oh, I don’t know just what in particular, but you do everything every day, all the time! Why, David Lindsay, if you was to go to heaven and leave me behind, I should just cry my eyes out! Yes, I should just sit down on the old boat here and cry my eyes out!” And moved by the pictureher imagination had drawn, she might have given him a practical illustration, if he had not quickly responded:
“But I am not going to heaven to leave you behind! All we Lindsay fishermen live to be old men of eighty or ninety, if we don’t get drowned, you know! Though indeed, for the matter of that, we mostly do get drowned,” he added, in a lower tone.
But she heard him, and quickly cried:
“Oh! Don’t you go and get drowned, please don’t, David Lindsay!”
“Indeed, I don’t mean to!” said the boy, as he went back to his hammering.
At that moment the colored girl, Lamia, appeared in the breach of the wall, calling for Miss Gloria.
The child stood up, and answered:
“Here I am. Who wants me?”
“Your aunt! Leastways, your uncle’s aunt—Miss Aggravatin Discrepancy,” said Lamia.
(That was what the negroes, with their usual blundering manner, made out of the lady’s classic and elegant maiden name.)
“What does my aunt want with me, Lamia?” inquired the child, with a troubled look.
“To try on yer travelin’ dress, which me an’ Miss Aggravatin has been a rippin’ up of one of her own old allypackers to make over for you, an’ a cuttin’ an’ a bastin’ of it all de whole mornin’. Come along, chile, ’cause it’s got to be finished to-night, ef we sets up workin’ on it till to-morrow mornin’.”
“I must go, David Lindsay. I must go. But I will come back as soon as ever I can get away. And oh, won’t you please try to get through your work so as to take time to row me over to Sandy Hill to take leave of dee-ar Granny Lindsay? Oh,indeed I must go and take leave of dee-ar Granny Lindsay!” said little Glo’, looking earnestly in the face of her playmate.
“I will work fast and get through all I have to do. I won’t stop for dinner, but will work through the noon hour, and then I can get done by four o’clock and be ready for you,” replied the boy.
Little Glo’ ran home so as to get through the “trying on” as soon as possible.
She found her aunt too busy to question her as to where she had been.
Miss Agrippina did not detain her long, but as soon as the waist of the dress was fitted, and the length of the sleeves and skirt measured, she dismissed the child.
Full of a new idea, little Glo’ ran to seek her uncle.
She found Colonel de Crespigney in the library, seated before the old organ, drawing weird music from its worn-out keys.
“Marcel, dee-ar, I have only got a day and a half now! Won’t you please let David Lindsay off from his work, so he can take me in the row-boat over to bid good-by to Granny Lindsay? Oh, I must say good-by to dee-ar Granny Lindsay before I go,” she pleaded, laying her tender cheek against his face.
“Yes, love,” answered the gentle young uncle. “Yes, you shall have your little will while you stay here. Go and tell the lad to leave off work at once and row you over to the island.”
She kissed him in warm gratitude and sped away to the landing, where she found her playmate still at work.
She told him her joyful news, exclaiming gleefully:
“We shall have a whole half-day holiday, for it is only just twelve o’clock, David Lindsay! We shall have, oh, such a happy, happy half-day!”
The boy quickly stopped his work and got his boat ready.
Then the children lifted the trunk of books between them and placed it in the skiff. Lastly they entered and seated themselves, and David took up the oars and rowed for the isle.
They found the old dame busily engaged in preparing her frugal early dinner of tea and bread and butter, with fried fish, boiled eggs, and peaches and milk.
She gave the little lady a warm welcome and divested her of her hat and mantle. And while Gloria explained that her uncle had given David Lindsay a half holiday, the dame added two more cups and saucers and teaspoons and two more plates and pairs of knives and forks to the table and put a few more eggs on to boil.
“I am going to school on Monday, Granny Lindsay, and I have come to take leave of you,” said little Glo’, when she took the seat that David had placed for her.
“Have ’ee, darling? I’m glad to see ’ee, and main glad to hear ’ee’s going to school,” cordially replied the dame.
“I don’t want to go, Granny Lindsay! I don’t want to leave you all,” sighed the child.
“But ’ee ought to, darling. ’Ee’s a little lady, and ’ee ought to be trained up as such.”
“But I don’t want to be, Granny Lindsay! I want to stay home with dee-ar Marcel and you and David Lindsay!” sadly persisted the child.
“’Ee must subject ’eeself to ’ee pastors and masters, little lady. They do all for ’ee own good.”
“Aunt Agrippina says that I am a countess, Granny Lindsay; but I know I am not. I am worse at counting than at anything else. I never could learn the multiplication table,” said the child, with a look of perplexity and vexation.
“So much the more reason for ’ee to go to school, my little lady! Now sit ’ee up to table and have some dinner.”
Little Glo’ soon forgot her trouble in the society of Granny Lindsay and David.
She passed a “happy, happy half day,” then, with many kisses, took a loving leave of her old friend, and returned home in charge of the fisher lad.
It was sunset when they landed on the promontory beach.
“To-morrow is Sunday. Uncle and aunt and I will go to church at La Compte’s Landing. But after church we shall come directly home. Will you come in the afternoon to bid me a last good-by before I go? You know we are to start before day on Monday, so as to catch the St. Inigoes stage-coach,” said little Glo’, as she was about to take leave of her friend.
“Yes, indeed. I am going to church at St. Inigoes, but I will go to early mass, so as to be back in time to come here in the afternoon,” replied the boy.
“So do! Good-night, David Lindsay!”
“Good-night!”
“God bless you, David Lindsay!”
“And you, too!”
She sped away towards the house, not singingand dancing as had been her custom. Her little loving heart was too heavy with the thought of parting with her friends.
The next day she went with her uncle and aunt to morning service at La Compte’s Landing, returned with them to a early dinner, and then went down to the beach to bid a last good-by to her friend and playmate.
He was waiting for her with a box of fine shells in his hand.
“These are some that grandfather brought home from the Indian Ocean. Granny has kept them for a long time; but she wants you to have them now,” he said, rising and offering the box.
“Oh, how beautiful!” she exclaimed, sitting down with the box on her lap, and beginning to examine them. “So many different colors! so many different shapes and sizes! Not two alike!”
“People can make pretty boxes and vases out of them, granny says. Make the boxes and things out of pasteboard, you know, and stick the shells on them with glue,” said the boy, as he stood looking down on her, pleased that she was pleased with his humble offering.
“Oh, but I think it would spoil the pretty shells to fix them on to anything! I like them to be free, so I can pour them from one hand to the other, and turn them over! Oh, David Lindsay, I am so glad to have them! And so glad you gave them to me, too!”
“Granny gave them to me to give to you.”
“Well, it is all the same, David Lindsay. And I will take the pretty little things to school with me, and look at them every day, and keep them foreverand ever. Sit down by me and let us look at the little beauties together. You know that this is our last day.”
The boy obeyed her.
She said it was their “last day;” and that day was drawing rapidly to a close. The children knew that they were going to part, but they scarcely knew yet what the parting was to be to them; they had had no experience in separation; and both wondered a little in secret why they felt no more pain at the immediate prospect of losing each other.
When the sun set, which was always the signal for their daily good-night, little Gloria shut up her box of shells and arose, saying:
“I must go now. Good-by, David Lindsay.”
“Good-by.”
“God bless you, David Lindsay!”
“And you too!”
Now, according to custom, she should have run home; but she lingered, loth to leave the spot.
“You know we are going to start long before daylight to-morrow morning,” she said.
“I—know it!” he gasped with a great sob.
“Oh! David Lindsay, don’t cry!” she wailed, with the tears rushing to her eyes.
“I’m not crying. It’s a lump in my throat,” said the poor boy.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What shall I do? I don’t want to go to school! I don’t want to be a lady! I don’t! I don’t! And poor Marcel don’t want me to go, neither!” wept the child.
“And no more do I!” cried the boy, struggling with the “lump in his throat.”
“Don’t cry, David Lindsay. Oh! please don’t cry!”
“I’m not crying a bit! But I don’t want you to go away,” sobbed the lad.
“Nobody does, but Aunt Grip. It is all Aunt Grip! Oh! I wish she had never come near the place! We were all so happy until she came! And she says it is all for my own good. And I think that is too bad!”
Little Glo’s last words awoke the better spirit of the boy.
He sobbed and sighed, and then set himself to comfort the little lady.
“She means it for your good. Even granny says you ought to go to school. And so I know it must be all right for you to go. And you will come back again, and be able to tell me lots of things.”
“Oh, yes, indeed; I will come back for the Christmas holidays, you know. And oh! David Lindsay, every time I write to dee-ar Marcel I will send a message to you. And will you send one back to me, too?”
“If the master will let me.”
“Why, of course he will let you! Dee-ar Marcel is too tender-hearted to refuse. Let me tell you something. Aunt Grip, ever since she has been here, has been trying to prevent me from coming out here and playing with you, and if it had not been for dee-ar Marcel, she would have prevented me; but Marcel would not let me be grieved that much.”
The twilight was fading so fast that the child looked up to the sky in alarm, exclaiming:
“Oh! I must go! I must go! Good-by, dee-ar David Lindsay!”
“I must walk with you up to the house. It is too dark for you to go by yourself,” said the boy, rising to accompany her.
He helped her over the rough stones of the broken sea-wall, and then walked with her until they reached the porch and found Colonel de Crespigney and Miss Agrippina sitting out there to enjoy the delicious coolness of the August evening.
Then the boy paused and lifted his torn straw hat, and said:
“Good-night.”
“Good-night. God bless you, dee-ar David Lindsay.”
“And you too!”
So the children parted, to meet no more for years to come.
That night David Lindsay, being a boy, and therefore ashamed of his tears, cried “all alone by himself” in the little loft of his island cot.
That night, little Glo’, being a girl, sobbed herself to sleep on the sympathetic bosom of her “dee-ar Marcel.”
Long before light the next morning she took tearful leave of her uncle and her humble colored friends, and started in the custody of Miss Grip for the distant city where she was to spend her school days.
Before the end of the month she was duly entered as a resident pupil in the Academy of the Sacred Heart Convent. And Miss Agrippina de Crespigney returned to Promontory Hall to keep house for her nephew, well satisfied.