Nobody Part 128

"About four or five o'clock."

Mrs. Caruthers looked now as if she were staring at a prodigy.

"Start at four o'clock! Where do you get breakfast? Don't you have breakfast? Will the people give you breakfast so early? Why, they would have to be up by two."

Tom was listening now. He could not help it.

"O, we have breakfast," Lois said. "We carry it with us, and we stop at some nice place and take rest on the rocks, or on a soft carpet of moss, when we have walked an hour or two. Mr. Dillwyn carries our breakfast in a little knapsack."

"Is it _nice?_" enquired the lady, with such an expression of doubt and scruple that the risible nerves of the others could not stand it, and there was a general burst of laughter.

"Come and try once," said Lois, "and you will see."

"If you do not like such fare," Philip went on, "you can almost always stop at a house and get breakfast."

"I could not eat dry food," said the lady; "and you do not drink wine.

What _do_ you drink? Water?"

"Sometimes. Generally we manage to get milk. It is fresh and excellent."

"And without cups and saucers?" said the astonished lady. Lois's "ripple of laughter" sounded again softly.

"Not quite without cups; I am afraid we really do without saucers. We have an unlimited tablecloth, you know, of lichen and moss."

"And you really enjoy it?"

But here Lois shook her head. "There are no words to tell how much."

Mrs. Caruthers sighed. If she had spoken out her thoughts, it was too plain to Lois, she would have said, "I do not enjoy anything."

"How long are you thinking to stay on this side of the water?" Tom asked his friend now.

"Several months yet, I hope. I want to push on into Tyrol. We are not in a hurry. The old house at home is getting put into order, and till it is ready for habitation we can be nowhere better than here."

"The old house? _your_ house, do you mean? the old house at Battersby?"

"Yes."

"You are not going _there?_ for the winter at least?"

"Yes, we propose that. Why?"

"It is I that should ask 'why.' What on earth should you go to live _there_ for?"

"It is a nice country, a very good house, and a place I am fond of, and I think Lois will like."

"But out of the world!"

"Only out of your world," his friend returned, with a smile.

"Why should you go out of our world? it is _the_ world."

"For what good properties?"

"And it has always been your world," Tom went on, disregarding this question.

"I told you, I am changed."

"But does becoming a Christian _change_ a man, Mr. Dillwyn?" Mrs.

Caruthers asked.

"So the Bible says."

"I never saw much difference. I thought we were all Christians."

"If you were to live a while in the house with that lady," said Tom darkly, "you'd find your mistake. What in all the world do you expect to do up there at Battersby?" he went on, turning to his friend.

"Live," said Philip. "In your world you only drag along existence. And we expect to work, which you never do. There is no real living without working, man. Try it, Tom."

"Cannot you work, as you call it, in town?"

"We want more free play, and more time, than town life allows one."

"Besides, the country is so much pleasanter," Lois added.

"But such a neighbourhood! you don't know the neighbourhood--but you _do_, Philip. You have no society, and Battersby is nothing but a manufacturing place--"

"Battersby is three and a half miles off; too far for its noise or its smoke to reach us; and we can get society, as much as we want, and _what_ we want; and in such a place there is always a great deal that might be done."

The talk went on for some time; Mrs. Caruthers seeming amazed and mystified, Tom dissatisfied and critical. At last, being informed that their own quarters were ready, the later comers withdrew, after agreeing that they would all sup together.

"Tom," said Mrs. Caruthers presently, "whom did Mr. Dillwyn marry?"

"Whom did he marry?"

"Yes. Who was she before she married?"

"I always heard she was n.o.body," Tom answered, with something between a grunt and a groan.

"n.o.body! But that's nonsense. I haven't seen a woman with more style in a great while."

"Style!" echoed Tom, and his word would have had a sharp addition if he had not been speaking to his wife; but Tom was before all things a gentleman. As it was, his tone would have done honour to a grisly bear somewhat out of temper.

"Yes," repeated Mrs. Caruthers. "You may not know it, Tom, being a man; but _I_ know what I am saying; and I tell you Mrs. Dillwyn has very distinguished manners. I hope we may see a good deal of them."

Meanwhile Lois was standing still where they had left her, in front of the fire; looking down meditatively into it. Her face was grave, and her abstraction for some minutes deep. I suppose her New England reserve was struggling with her individual frankness of nature, for she said no word, and Mr. Dillwyn, who was watching her, also stood silent.

At last frankness, or affection, got the better of reserve; and, with a slow, gentle motion she turned to him, laying one hand on his shoulder, and sinking her face upon his breast.