Under the Country SkyRichmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
General
Under the Country Sky
Richmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
Country life -- Fiction; Love stories; Young women -- Fiction
Much less did the hours seem real when she went with her husband to take
tea on the Terrace at the Houses of Parliament, or with all three of her
party to dine with some friendly Londoner who appeared eager to offer
hospitality to the whole party. Best of all, perhaps, were the late
evening walks upon which Craig took her alone, to stroll along the
Victoria Embankment, a place of which she never tired, to watch the
myriad lights upon the black river, and to talk endlessly of all the
pair could see before them of purpose and achievement.
"Do you know what you remind me of these days?" Craig asked one night,
when the two had returned to the hotel after one of these long, slow
walks, during which they had been unusually silent.
He threw himself into a deep armchair as he spoke and sat looking up at
his wife, who stood at the open balcony window, gazing down at the
street below, with the interest in everything human which seemed never
to abate.
She turned, smiling. She was particularly lovely to look at to-night,
wearing a little pale-gray, silk-and-chiffon frock (lately purchased at
a French shop in London), which, in spite of its Parisian lines and
graces, was distinctly reminiscent of a certain other gray-silk frock
worn on a never-to-be-forgotten occasion.
"Of a child at her first party?" she asked. "That's what I feel like.
Only there's no end to the cakes and ices, the bonbons and surprises.
And I never have to worry because before long I must go home!"
"No, not like that; your similes are always too self-deprecatory. You
seem to me more and more like a young queen who has just come to the
throne, but who is shy about picking up her sceptre. She prefers
long-stemmed roses, and every now and then she catches up her train and
runs down from her dais and out-of-doors, until some shocked courtier
rushes after her and brings her back!"
"Now you _are_ laughing at me!" Georgiana wheeled to confront her
husband, who, stretched lazily in his chair, after a long day at the
side of a great biologist in his laboratory, was relaxing muscles and
nerves at the same time.
He put out one arm toward her, and she came slowly to his side. "Not a
bit. It just delights me to see you your natural self in spite of all
that London can do to you. Allison tells me that it is the most
interesting thing in the world to watch you decide whether you will buy
a new hat or a new book. She declares that milliners admire you and seem
anxious to please you, but that when you get into a bookshop you have
every old bookseller climbing about his ladders to bring down his
choicest treasures for you."
Georgiana laughed. "I can't get used to buying hats at all--not to
mention silk stockings--and as for buying hats and books and silk
stockings on the same day, it's simply past belief that I can do it. Why
do you fill my purse so full? I'm afraid I'm losing all the benefit of
my long training in frugality."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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