“No, not even here,” he said with a quiet smile. “Your reputation is too precious to me. But remember that in any difficulty or danger I have the first right to help you.” His courage nerved her to face the parting and even to assume an air of cheerfulness. “I must come back to Charlie,” she said. “He is sure to be hungry, and there will be plenty of time for you to have lunch, too, before any tourists molest us.” So together they walked to the little encampment, where they found the photographers fraternising over the Kodak, while Dugald had the tea just ready. And since laughter and tears are not far apart, and the very people who have lived through a tragedy are happily the ones most easily moved to see all that is humorous in daily life, there followed a cheerful meal which might have surprised and even shocked a mere superficial observer of life, but contained elements of comfort in it for all who understood the griefs and trials of human-kind. Crowning it all was the unalloyed happiness of the child, whose beaming face and ringing laughter soothed Christine’s sore heart as nothing else could have done. “_Auf wiederschen!_” said Macneillie, when the last moment had come, and Christine said nothing, but all her soul seemed in her eyes as she lifted them to his. CHAPTER XX “Paint those eyes, so blue, so kind, Eager tell-tales of her mind; Paint with their impetuous stress Of inquiring tenderness; Those frank eyes, where deep doth lie An angelic gravity.” Matthew Arnold. |The last day of Evereld’s school life was drawing to a close, “packing day” as they called it, and when it had been a mere question of the beginning of the holidays it had always been a rather festive occasion. But on this last evening, standing at the threshold of a new untried life, there was a good deal of sadness about it, and her usually bright face was a little clouded as she paced up and down a shady garden walk with her special friend Bride O’Ryan. The merry voices of the younger children, as they played hide and seek, and now and then a distant sound of applause from those who were watching the tennis players, made her feel melancholy, for to-morrow she would no longer have her nook in this happy, busy hive of industry, would no longer have a share in the genial life, but would be in a very different home, a home which was not her own, which had never seemed in the least homelike, and to which she did not at all want to return. A happy remembrance caused her cheerfulness to return. “Oh, Bride!” she exclaimed, “perhaps, after all, Sir Matthew will let me spend the next fortnight with you as we begged. He won’t let me go to Ireland, he was quite set against that, but he may say yes to your sister’s second letter.”