"Upon my soul," said the gentleman, with great violence, "it is a most extraordinary thing that a human being should turn himself into a post for the express purpose of – I beg your pardon, madam. I was not conscious that I was addressing a lady! Can I serve you in any way? Command me, I beg of you!"
The moment Hildegarde caught the sound of the gentleman's voice, she turned her head away, so that he could not see her face; and now she spoke over her shoulder.
"A place in thy memory, dearest – sir, is all that I ask at thy hands. It is hard to be forgotten so soon, so utterly!"
"What! what! what! what!" said the Colonel. "Who! who! why – why the mischief will you not turn your head round, young woman? There is only one young woman in the world who would address me in this manner, and she is a hundred miles away. Now, in the name of all that is elfish, Hildegarde Grahame, what are you doing here?"
Hildegarde turned round, her eyes full of happy laughter, and took her friend's arm.
"And in the name of all that is occult, and necromantic, and Rosicrucian, Colonel Ferrers, what are you doing here?" she asked. "I thought you were in Washington."
"I was, till last night!" the Colonel replied. "We have seen all the sights, the boy and I, and now we have come to see the sights here on our way home. Well! well! and the first sight I see is the best one for sair een that I know. What a pity I left the boy at the hotel! He was still asleep. We arrived late last night. I went to wake him, and I give you my word, I could as soon have thought of waking an angel from a dream of paradise; the little fellow smiled, you understand, Hildegarde, and – and moved his little arms, and – I came away, sir, – my dear, I should say, – and left him to sleep as long as he would. Where are you going now, my child? have you had breakfast? if not, – "
"Oh, yes, I have had breakfast, dear sir!" said Hildegarde. "And you were thinking, if I had had it, how pleasant for me to go in and surprise that blessed lamb in his crib; now, weren't you?"
"The point, as usual!" cried the Colonel. "Country neighbours learn to know each others' thoughts, they say, but I never believed it, till I had neighbours. Well, shall we go? Now, upon my soul, this is the most surprising and delightful thing that has happened to me for forty years. But you have not told me where you are staying, Hilda, nor why you are here, nor in fact anything; have simply wormed information out of the confiding friend, and remained silent yourself!" and the Colonel looked injured, and twirled his moustaches with mock ferocity.
"I like that!" said Hildegarde. "That really pleases me! Kindly indicate, dear sir, the moment at which I could have got in a word edgewise, since you began your highly interesting remarks! I have been simply panting with eagerness to tell you that I left home yesterday, and arrived in New York at five o'clock in the afternoon; that I am staying with my great-aunt in Gramercy Park; that I am wofully homesick, and that the sound of your voice was the most ecstatic sound I have heard for half a century."
"Ha!" said the Colonel. "Humph! mockery, I perceive! of the aged, too! Very well, Miss Grahame, your punishment will be decided hereafter. Meanwhile, here we are at my hotel, and we will go straight up and wake the boy, – if he seems to be ready to wake, my dear. I am sure you will agree with me that it would be a pity to rouse him from a sound sleep. 'Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,' you remember, Hildegarde!"
"Yes, dear Colonel Ferrers!" said Hildegarde. "But I don't believe Hugh's sleeve is very deeply ravelled, do you? and indeed, it is high time for him to be awake."
They turned in at a great white marble portal, and the elevator soon brought them to the Colonel's door. He opened it softly with a latch-key, and led the way into the apartment; then paused, and beckoned Hilda to come in quietly.
"Listen!" he whispered. "Hugh is awake!"
They listened, and heard a clear, sweet voice discoursing calmly:
"I have three pillows to my head, though I am not ill. I wish that other boy was here, that was in bed, and made songs about himself, and said it was the Land of Counterpane. He was the Giant great and still, that sits upon the pillow-hill, and I am that kind of giant too. Now I play he is here, and he sits up against that pillow, and I sit up against this. And I say, 'How can you say all the things that come in your mind? I can have the things in my mind, too, but they will not have rhyme-tails to them. How do you make the rhyme-tails?'
"And then he says, – I call him Louis, for that is the prettiest part of his name, – Louis says, 'It has to be a part of you. I think of things in short lines, and after every line I look for the rhyme-tail, and I see it hanging somewhere. But perhaps your Colonel can help you about that,' Louis says.
"But I say, 'No! my Colonel cannot help me about that. My Colonel is good, and I love him with love that grows like a tree, but he cannot make rhymes. Now, if my Beloved were here, she might be able to help me; but she is far away, and the high walls shut her out from me. The walls are very high here, Louis, and my Colonel has gone away now, and I don't know how soon he will come back; so don't you leave me, Louis, for I am alone in a sandy waste, and there are no quails. But manna would be nasty, I think.'"
At this point the listeners could bear no more. Hilda ran into the room, and had Hugh in her arms, and was laughing and crying and cooing over him all at once. The Colonel followed, very red in the face, blowing his nose and clearing his throat portentously.
"Why, darling," Hilda was saying between the kisses, "darling Boy, did you want me? and did you think your Colonel would leave you for more than a few little minutes? Of course he would not! And where do you suppose I came from, Boy, when I heard you say you wanted me? Do you think I came down the chimney?"
Hugh gravely inspected her spotless attire; the blue serge showed no wrinkle, no speck of dust.
"I should say not the chimney!" he announced, "But from some strange where you must have come, Beloved, if it was a place where you heard me talking when I was not there. Was it the up-stairs of the Land of Counterpane?" he added, his eyes lighting up with their whimsical look. "Was it the Counterpane Garret? Then it must have been over the top of the bed that you came from, and you seemed to come in at the door. Did Louis tell you to come?"
"Louis?" said the Colonel. "What does the boy mean? Stuff and nonsense! I met your Beloved in the street, ran into her, and thought she was a post; and then I brought her along, and here she is; and what do you think about breakfast, Young Sir?"
Young Sir thought very well of breakfast, but he could not think of eating it without his two friends looking on; so Hildegarde waited in the parlour, chatting merrily with the Colonel till Young Sir's toilet was completed, and then breakfast was brought, and Hugh ate, and the others watched him; and Hildegarde found that she was quite hungry enough to eat Black Hamburg grapes, even if it was only two hours since breakfast, and altogether they were very merry.
"And what shall we do now?" asked the Colonel, when the pleasant meal was over. "The Metropolitan, eh? The boy must see pictures, Hilda, hey? 'The eye that ne'er on beauty dwells,' h'm! ha! folderol! I forget the rest, but the principle remains the same. Never seen any pictures except those at home, and the few in Washington. Chiefly rubbish there, I observe. What do you say, Miss Braeside? Will you give Roseholme the honour of your company as far as the Metropolitan?"
"Why not?" thought Hildegarde. "Hobson said positively that Aunt Emily would not see me before lunch, and there is no one else that I need go to see quite so very immediately."
"Yes, I will go with pleasure!" she said. So off they started, the cheerfullest three in New York that morning. Busy men, hurrying down-town to their business, turned to look back at them, and felt the load of care lightened a little just by the knowledge that there were