Part 28 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+rt-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.