Of all these four months there has been no chance to tell you anything before as concerning him.

He had been at Arlesbury; learning to be a manufacturer; beginning at the beginning with the belts and rollers, spindles, shuttles, and harnesses; finding out the secrets of satinets and doeskins and kerseys; driving, as he had wanted to do; taking hold of something and making it go.

“It isn’t exactly like trotting tandem,” he told Sylvie, “but there’s a something living in it, too; a creature to bit and manage; that’s what I like about it.  But I hate the oil, and the noise, and the dust.  Why, this is pin-drop silence to it!  I hope it won’t make me deaf,—­and dumb!  Father will feel bad if it does,” he said, with an indescribably pathetic demureness.

“Was it your father’s plan?” asked Sylvie, laughing merrily.

“Well,—­yes!  At least I told him to take me and set me to work; or I should pretty soon be good for nothing; and so he looked round in a great fright and hurry, as you may imagine, and put me into the first thing he could think of, and that was this.  I’m to stay at it for two years, before I—­ask him for anything else.  I think I shall have a good right then, don’t you?  I’m thinking all the time about my Three Wishes.  I suppose I may wish three times when I begin?  They always do.”

What could he talk but nonsense?  Earnestness had been forbidden him; he had to cover it up with the absurdity of a boy.

But what a blessing that it made no manner of difference!  That in all things of light and speech, the gracious law is that the flash should go so much farther, as well as faster than the sound!

Something between them unspoken told the story that words, though they be waited for, never tell half so well.  She knew that she had to do with his being in earnest.  She knew that she had to do with his being at play, this moment, laughing and joking the time away beside her on this railroad trip.  He had come to join Aunt Euphrasia?  Yes, indeed, and there sat Aunt Euphrasia in her corner, reading the “Vicar’s Daughter,” and between times talking a little with Mrs. Argenter.  Not ten sentences did aunt and nephew exchange, all the way from East Keaton down to Cambridge.  When Mrs. Argenter grew tired as the day wore on, and a sofa was vacated, Rodney helped Sylvie to move the shawls and the foot-warmer, and the rug, and improvise cushions, and make her mother comfortable; then, as Mrs. Argenter fell asleep, they sat near her and chatted on.

And Aunt Euphrasia read her book, and considered herself escorted and attended to, which is just such a convenience as a judicious and amiably disposed female relative appreciates the opportunity for making of herself.

Down somewhere in Middlesex, boys began to come into the cars with great bunches of trailing ferns to sell; exquisite things that people have just begun to find out and clamor for, and that so a boy-supply has vigorously arisen to meet.