“He’s old, and I intend to be careful.
But he doesn’t own me, body and soul.
And it may be hard to make him understand that.”
Many times in the next few months Mademoiselle was
to remember that conversation, and turn it over in
her shrewd, troubled mind. Was there anything
she could have done, outside of warning old Anthony
himself? Suppose she had gone to Mr. Howard Cardew?
“And how,” said Mademoiselle, trying to
smile, “do you propose to assert this new independence
of spirit?”
“I am going to see Aunt Elinor,” observed
Lily. “There, that’s eleven buttons
on, and I feel I’ve earned my dinner. And
I’m going to ask Willy Cameron to come here
to see me. To dinner. And as he is sure
not to have any evening clothes, for one night in their
lives the Cardew men are going to dine in mufti.
Which is military, you dear old thing, for the everyday
clothing that the plain people eat in, without apparent
suffering!”
Mademoiselle got up. She felt that Grace should
be warned at once. And there was a look in Lily’s
face when she mentioned this Cameron creature that
made Mademoiselle nervous.
“I thought he lived in the country.”
“Then prepare yourself for a blow,” said
Lily Cardew, cheerfully. “He is here in
the city, earning twenty-five dollars a week in the
Eagle Pharmacy, and serving the plain people perfectly
preposterous patent potions—which is his
own alliteration, and pretty good, I say.”
Mademoiselle went out into the hall. Over the
house, always silent, there had come a death-like
hush. In the lower hall the footman was hanging
up his master’s hat and overcoat. Anthony
Cardew had come home for dinner.
Mr. William Wallace Cameron, that evening of Lily’s
return, took a walk. From his boarding house
near the Eagle Pharmacy to the Cardew residence was
a half-hour’s walk. There were a number
of things he had meant to do that evening, with a
view to improving his mind, but instead he took a
walk. He had made up a schedule for those evenings
when he was off duty, thinking it out very carefully
on the train to the city. And the schedule ran
something like this:
Monday: 8-11. Read History.
Wednesday: 8-11. Read Politics and Economics.
Friday: 8-9:30. Travel. 9:30-11.
French.
Sunday: Hear various prominent divines.
He had cut down on the travel rather severely, because
travel was with him an indulgence rather than a study.
The longest journey he had ever taken in his life
was to Washington. That was early in the war,
when it did not seem possible that his country would
not use him, a boy who could tramp incredible miles
in spite of his lameness and who could shoot a frightened
rabbit at almost any distance, by allowing for a slight
deflection to the right in the barrel of his old rifle.
