"
"He did not tell me any details; said that they would keep until
to-night. We met him in the street this morning, immediately after we
left you," and Miss Lavinia gave a brief account of our shopping.
"That sounds quite like him. All his air castles seemed to be built about
his mother and the old farm at Pine Ridge. He has often told me how easy
it would be to get back the house to the colonial style, with wide
fireplaces, that it was originally, and he always had longings to be in a
position to coax his mother to come to Northbridge for the winter, and
keep a little apartment for him. Perhaps he will be able to do both now."
Sylvia spoke with keen but quite impersonal interest, and looking at her
I began to wonder if here might not, after all, be the comrade type of
woman in whose existence I never before believed,--feminine,
sympathetic, buoyant, yet capable of absolutely rational and unemotional
friendship with a man within ten years of her own age. But after all it
is common enough to find the first half of such a friendship, it is the
unit that is difficult; and I had then had no opportunity of seeing the
two together.
We went upstairs together, and lingered by the fire in Miss Lavinia's
sitting room before going to make ready for dinner. The thaw of the
morning was again locked by ice, and it was quite a nippy night for the
season. I, revelled mentally in the fact that my dinner waist was crimson
in colour, and abbreviated only in the way of elbow sleeves, and the
pretty low corn-coloured crepe bodice that I saw Lucy unpacking from
Sylvia's suit case quite made me shiver.
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