"I suppose he was trying to pick up Americanisms from you; he"s always doing it. I keep him away from Americans as much as I can: but he will get at them on the cars and at the hotels. He"s always asking them such ridiculous questions, and I know some of them just talk nonsense to him."
Veronica came in with a tray, and a bowl of bouillon on it; and Mrs.
Erwin pulled up a light table, and slid about, serving her, in her cabalistic dress, like an Oriental sorceress performing her incantations. She volubly watched Lydia while she ate her supper, and at the end she kissed her again. "Now you feel better," she said. "I knew it would cheer you up more than any one thing. There"s nothing like something to eat when you"re homesick. I found that out when I was off at school."
Lydia was hardly kissed so much at home during a year as she had been since meeting Mrs. Erwin. Her aunt Maria sparely embraced her when she went and came each week from the Mill Village; anything more than this would have come of insincerity between them; but it had been agreed that Mrs. Erwin"s demonstrations of affection, of which she had been lavish during her visit to South Bradfield, might not be so false. Lydia accepted them submissively, and she said, when Veronica returned for the tray, "I hate to give you so much trouble. And sending her all the way to Trieste on my account,--I felt ashamed. There wasn" a thing for her to do."
"Why, of course not!" exclaimed her aunt. "But what did you think I was made of? Did you suppose I was going to have you come on a night-journey alone with your uncle? It would have been all over Venice; it would have been ridiculous. I sent Veronica along for a dragon."
"A dragon? I don"t understand," faltered Lydia.
"Well, you will," said her aunt, putting the palms of her hands against Lydia"s, and so pressing forward to kiss her. "We shall have breakfast at ten. Go to bed!"
XXIII.
When Lydia came to breakfast she found her uncle alone in the room, reading Galignani"s Messenger. He put down his paper, and came forward to take her hand. "You are all right this morning, I see, Miss Lydia,"
he said. "You were quite up a stump, last night, as your countrymen say."
At the same time hands were laid upon her shoulders from behind, and she was pulled half round, and pushed back, and held at arm"s-length. It was Mrs. Erwin, who, entering after her, first scanned her face, and then, with one devouring glance, seized every detail of her dress--the black silk which had already made its effect--before she kissed her. "You _are_ lovely, my dear! I shall spoil you, I know; but you"re worth it!
What lashes you have, child! And your aunt Maria made and fitted that dress? She"s a genius!"
"Miss Lydia," said Mr. Erwin, as they sat down, "is of the fortunate age when one rises young every morning." He looked very fresh himself in his clean-shaven chin, and his striking evidence of snowy wristbands and shirt-bosom. "Later in life, you can"t do that. She looks as blooming,"
he added, gallantly, "as a basket of chips,--as you say in America."
"Smiling," said Lydia, mechanically correcting him.
"Ah! It is? Smiling,--yes; thanks. It"s very good either way; very characteristic. It would be curious to know the origin of a saying like that. I imagine it goes back to the days of the first settlers.
It suggests a wood-chopping period. Is it--ah--in general use?" he inquired.
"Of course it isn"t, Henshaw!" said his wife.
"You"ve been a great while out of the country, my dear," suggested Mr.
Erwin.
"Not so long as not to know that your Americanisms are enough to make one wish we had held our tongues ever since we were discovered, or had never been discovered at all. I want to ask Lydia about her voyage. I haven"t heard a word yet. Did your aunt Maria come down to Boston with you?"
"No, grandfather brought me."
"And you had good weather coming over? Mr. Erwin told me you were not seasick."
"We had one bad storm, before we reached Gibraltar; but I wasn"t seasick."
"Were the other pa.s.sengers?"
"One was." Lydia reddened a little, and then turned somewhat paler than at first.
"What is it, Lydia?" her aunt subtly demanded. "Who was the one that was sick?"
"Oh, a gentleman," answered Lydia.
Her aunt looked at her keenly, and for whatever reason abruptly left the subject. "Your silk," she said, "will do very well for church, Lydia."
"Oh, I say, now!" cried her husband, "you"re not going to make her go to church to-day!"
"Yes, I am! There will be more people there to-day than any other time this fall. She must go."
"But she"s tired to death,--quite tuckered, you know."
"Oh, I"m rested, now," said Lydia. "I shouldn"t like to miss going to church."
"Your silk," continued her aunt, "will be quite the thing for church."
She looked hard at the dress, as if it were not quite the thing for breakfast. Mrs. Erwin herself wore a morning-dress of becoming delicacy, and an airy French cap; she had a light fall of powder on her face.
"What kind of overthing have you got?" she asked.
"There"s a sack goes with this," said the girl, suggestively.
"That"s nice! What is your bonnet?"
"I haven"t any bonnet. But my best hat is nice. I could--"
"_No_ one goes to church in a hat! You can"t do it. It"s simply impossible."
"Why, my dear," said her husband, "I saw some very pretty American girls in hats at church, last Sunday."
"Yes, and everybody _knew_ they were Americans by their hats!" retorted Mrs. Erwin.
"_I_ knew they were Americans by their good looks," said Mr. Erwin, "and what you call their stylishness."
"Oh, it"s all well enough for you to talk. _You"re_ an Englishman, and you could wear a hat, if you liked. It would be set down to character.
But in an American it would be set down to greenness. If you were an American, you would have to wear a bonnet."
"I"m glad, then, I"m not an American," said her husband; "I don"t think I should look well in a bonnet."
"Oh, stuff, Henshaw! You know what I mean. And I"m not going to have English people thinking we"re ignorant of the common decencies of life.
Lydia shall not go to church in a hat; she had better _never_ go. I will lend her one of my bonnets. Let me see, _which_ one." She gazed at Lydia in critical abstraction. "I wear rather young bonnets," she mused aloud, "and we"re both rather dark. The only difficulty is I"m so much more delicate--" She brooded upon the question in a silence, from which she burst exulting. "The very thing! I can fuss it up in no time. It won"t take two minutes to get it ready. And you"ll look just killing in it."
She turned grave again. "Henshaw," she said, "I _wish_ you would go to church this morning!"
"I would do almost anything for you, Josephine; but really, you know, you oughtn"t to ask that. I was there last Sunday; I can"t go every Sunday. It"s bad enough in England; a man ought to have some relief on the Continent."
"Well, well. I suppose I oughtn"t to ask you," sighed his wife, "especially as you"re going with us to-night."
"I"ll go to-night, with pleasure," said Mr. Erwin. He rose when his wife and Lydia left the table, and opened the door for them with a certain courtesy he had; it struck even Lydia"s uneducated sense as something peculiarly sweet and fine, and it did not overawe her own simplicity, but seemed of kind with it.
The bonnet, when put to proof, did not turn out to be all that it was vaunted. It looked a little odd, from the first; and Mrs. Erwin, when she was herself dressed, ended by taking it off, and putting on Lydia the hat previously condemned. "You"re divine in that," she said. "And after all, you are a traveler, and I can say that some of your things were spoiled coming over,--people always get things ruined in a sea voyage,--and they"ll think it was your bonnet."
"I kept my things very nicely, aunt Josephine," said Lydia conscientiously. "I don"t believe anything was hurt."