Miss Caruthers had been engaged in a lively battle of words with some of her young companions; and now her attention came back to Lois, whose meditative, amused expression struck her.
"I am sure," she said, "you are philosophizing! Let me have the results of your observations, do! What do your eyes see, that mine perhaps do not?"
"I cannot tell," said Lois. "Yours ought to know it all."
"But you know, we do not see what we have always seen."
"Then I have an advantage," said Lois pleasantly. "My eyes see something very pretty."
"But you were criticizing something.--O you unlucky boy!"
This exclamation, and the change of tone with it, seemed to be called forth by the entrance of a new comer, even Tom Caruthers himself. Tom was not in company trim exactly, but with his gloves in his hand and his overcoat evidently just pulled off. He was surveying the company with a contented expression; then came forward and began a series of greetings round the table; not hurrying them, but pausing here and there for a little talk.
"Tom!" cried his mother, "is that you?"
"To command. Yes, Mrs. Badger, I am just off the cars. I did not know what I should find here."
"How did you get back so soon, Tom?"
"Had nothing to keep me longer, ma"am. Miss Farrel, I have the honour to remind you of a _phillipoena_."
There was a shout of laughter. It bewildered Lois, who could not understand what they were laughing about, and could as little keep her attention from following Tom"s progress round the table. Miss Caruthers observed this, and was annoyed.
"Careless boy!" she said. "I don"t believe he has done the half of what he had to do, Tom, what brought you home?"
Tom was by this time approaching them.
"Is the question to be understood in a physical or moral sense?" said he.
"As you understand it!" said his sister.
Tom disregarded the question, and paid his respects to Miss Lothrop.
Julia"s jealous eyes saw more than the ordinary gay civility in his face and manner.
"Tom," she cried, "have you done everything? I don"t believe you have."
"Have, though," said Tom. And he offered to Lois a basket of bon-bons.
"Did you see the carpenter?"
"Saw him and gave him his orders."
"Were the dogs well?"
"I wish you had seen them bid me good morning!"
"Did you look at the mare"s foot?"
"Yes."
"What is the matter with it?"
"Nothing--a nail--Miss Lothrop, you have no wine."
"Nothing! and a nail!" cried Miss Julia as Lois covered her gla.s.s with her hand and forbade the wine. "As if a nail were not enough to ruin a horse! O you careless boy! Miss Lothrop is more of a philosopher than you are. She drinks no wine."
Tom pa.s.sed on, speaking to other ladies. Lois had scarcely spoken at all; but Miss Caruthers thought she could discern a little stir in the soft colour of the cheeks and a little additional life in the grave soft eyes; and she wished Tom heartily at a distance.
At a distance, however, he was no more that day. He made himself gracefully busy indeed with the rest of his mother"s guests; but after they quitted the table, he contrived to be at Lois"s side, and asked if she would not like to see the greenhouse? It was a welcome proposition, and while n.o.body at the moment paid any attention to the two young people, they pa.s.sed out by a gla.s.s door at the other end of the dining-room into the conservatory, while the stream of guests went the other way. Then Lois was plunged in a wilderness of green leaf.a.ge and brilliant bloom, warm atmosphere and mixed perfume; her first breath was an involuntary exclamation of delight and relief.
"Ah! you like this better than the other room, don"t you?" said Tom.
Lois did not answer; however, she went with such an absorbed expression from one plant to another, that Tom must needs conclude she liked this better than the other company too.
"I never saw such a beautiful greenhouse," she said at last, "nor so large a one."
"_This_ is not much," replied Tom. "Most of our plants are in the country--where I have come from to-day; this is just a city affair.
Shampuashuh don"t cultivate exotics, then?"
"O no! Nor anything much, except the needful."
"That sounds rather--tiresome," said Tom.
"O, it is not tiresome. One does not get tired of the needful, you know."
"Don"t you! _I_ do," said Tom. "Awfully. But what do you do for pleasure then, up there in Shampuashuh?"
"Pleasure? O, we have it--I have it-- But we do not spend much time in the search of it. O how beautiful! what is that?"
"It"s got some long name--Metrosideros, I believe. What _do_ you do for pleasure up there then, Miss Lothrop?"
"Dig clams."
"Clams!" cried Tom.
"Yes. Long clams. It"s great fun. But I find pleasure all over."
"How come you to be such a philosopher?"
"That is not philosophy."
"What is it? I can tell you, there isn"t a girl in New York that would say what you have just said."
Lois thought the faces around the lunch table had quite harmonized with this statement. She forgot them again in a most luxuriant trailing Pelargonium covered with large white blossoms of great elegance.
"But it is philosophy that makes you not drink wine? Or don"t you like it?"
"O no," said Lois, "it is not philosophy; it is humanity."