“Lion! Lion!” she called again; and this time a tall young fellow responded, running rapidly down the path to join her. He was two years her junior, vigorous, alert, and boyish, with a fresh skin, and tawny, waving hair like her own.
“How long you have been!” she cried reproachfully.
“Grieved to have kept you, Miss,” was the reply. “You see, things went contrairy-like. The grease got all over me when I was cleaning the guns, and cold water wouldn’t take it off, and that old Saunders took his time about bringing the can of hot, till at last I rushed down and fetched it up myself from the copper. You should have seen cook’s face! ‘Fancy, Master Lionel,’ says she, ‘coming yourself for ‘ot water!’ I tell you, Moggy, Saunders is past his usefulness. He’s a regular duffer—a gump.”
“There’s another American expression. Saunders is a most respectable man, I’m sure, and has been in the family thirty-one years. Of course he has a good deal to do just now, with the packing and all. Now, Lion, we shall have to walk smartly if we’re to get there at half-after.”
“All right. Here goes for a spin, then.”
The brother and sister walked rapidly on down the winding road, in the half-shadow of the bordering hedges. Real Devonshire hedge-rows they were, than which are none lovelier in England, rising eight and ten feet overhead on either side, and topped with delicate, flickering birch and ash boughs blowing in the fresh wind. Below were thick growths of hawthorn, white and pink, and wild white roses in full flower interspersed with maple tips as red as blood, the whole interlaced and held together with thick withes and tangles of ivy, briony, and travellers’ joy. Beneath them the ground was strewn with flowers,—violets, and king-cups, poppies, red campions, and blue iris,—while tall spikes of rose-colored foxgloves rose from among ranks of massed ferns, brake, hart’s-tongue, and maiden’s-hair, with here and there a splendid growth of Osmund Royal. To sight and smell, the hedge-rows were equally delightful.
Copplestone Grange stood three miles west of Bideford, and the house to which the Youngs were going was close above Clovelly, so that a distance of some seven miles separated them. To walk this twice for the sake of lunching with a friend would seem to most young Americans too formidable a task to be at all worth while, but to our sturdy English pair it presented no difficulties. On they went, lightly and steadily, Imogen’s elastic steps keeping pace easily with her brother’s longer tread. There was a good deal of up and down hill to get over with, and whenever they topped a rise, green downs ending in wooded cliffs could be seen to the left, and beyond and below an expanse of white-flecked shimmering sea. A salt wind from the channel blew in their faces, full of coolness and refreshment, and there was no dust.
“I suppose we shall never see the ocean from where we are to live,” said Imogen, with a sigh.
“Well, hardly, considering it’s about fifteen-hundred miles away.”
“Fifteen hundred! oh, Lion, you are surely exaggerating. Why, the whole of England is not so large as that, from Land’s End to John O’Groat’s House.”
“I should say not, nothing like it. Why Moggy, you’ve no idea how small our ‘right little, tight little island’ really is. You could set it down plump in some of the States, New York, for instance, and there would be quite a tidy fringe of territory left all round it. Of course, morally, we are the standard of size for all the world, but geographically, phew!—our size is little, though our hearts are great.”
“I think it’s vulgar to be so big,—not that I believe half you say, Lion. You’ve been over in America so long, and grown such a Yankee, that you swallow everything they choose to tell you. I’ve always heard about American brag—”
“My dear, there’s no need to brag when the facts are there, staring you in the face. It’s just a matter of feet and inches,—any one can do the measurement who has a tape-line. Wait till you see it. And as for its being vulgar to be big, why is the ‘right little, tight little’ always stretching out her long arms to rope in new territory, in that case, I should like to know? It would be much eleganter to keep herself to home—”
“Oh, don’t talk that sort of rot; I hate to hear you.”
“I must when you talk that kind of—well, let us say ‘rubbish.’ ‘Rot’ is one of our choice terms which hasn’t got over to the States yet. You’re as opiniated and ‘narrer’ as the little island itself. What do you know about America, any way? Did you ever see an American in your life, child?”
“Yes, several. I saw Buffalo Bill last year, and lots of Indians and cow-boys whom he had fetched over. And I saw Professor—Professor—what was his name? I forget, but he lectured on phrenology; and then there was Mrs. Geoff Templestowe.”
“Oh Mrs. Geoff—she’s a different sort. Buffalo Bill and his show can hardly be treated as specimens of American society, and neither can your bump-man. But she’s a fair sample of the nice kind; and you liked her, now didn’t you? you know you did.”
“Well, yes, I did,” admitted Imogen, rather grudgingly. “She was really quite nice, and good-form, and all that, and Isabel said she was far and away the best sister-in-law yet, and the Squire took such a fancy to her that it was quite remarkable. But she cannot be used as an argument, for she’s not the least like the American girls in the books. She must have had unusual advantages. And after all,—nice as she was, she wasn’t English. There was a difference somehow,—you felt it though you couldn’t say exactly what it was.”
“No, thank goodness—she isn’t; that’s just the beauty of it. Why should all the world be just alike? And what books do you mean, and what girls? There are all kinds on the other side, I can tell you. Wait till you get over to the High Valley and you’ll see.”
This sort of discussion had become habitual of late between the brother and sister. Three years before, Lionel had gone out to Colorado, to “look about and see how ranching suited him,” as he phrased it, and had decided that it suited him exactly. He had served a sort of apprenticeship to Geoffrey Templestowe, the son of an old Devonshire neighbor, who had settled in a place called High Valley, and, together with two partners, had built up a flourishing and lucrative cattle business, owning a large tract of grazing territory and great herds. One of the partners was now transferred to New Mexico, where the firm owned land also, and Mr. Young had advanced money to buy Lionel, who was now competent to begin for himself, a share in the business. He was now going out to remain permanently, and Imogen was going also, to keep his house and make a home for him till he should be ready to marry and settle down.
All over the world there are good English sisters doing this sort of thing. In Australia and New Zealand they are to be found, in Canada, and India, and the Transvaal,—wherever English boys are sent to advance their fortunes. Had her destination been Canada or Australia, Imogen would have found no difficulty in adjusting her ideas to it, but the United States were a terra incognita. Knowing absolutely nothing about them, she had constructed out of a fertile fancy and a few facts an altogether imaginary America, not at all like the real one; peopled by strange folk quite un-English in their ideas and ways, and very hard to understand and live with. In vain did Lionel protest and explain; his remonstrances were treated as proofs of the degeneracy and blindness induced by life in “The States,” and to all his appeals she opposed that calm, obstinate disbelief which is the weapon of a limited intellect and experience, and is harder to deal with than the most passionate convictions.
Unknown to herself a little sting of underlying jealousy tinctured these opinions. For many years Isabel Templestowe had been her favorite friend, the person she most admired and looked up to. They had been at school together,—Isabel always taking the lead in everything, Imogen following and imitating. The Templestowes were better born than the Youngs, they took a higher place in the county; it was a distinction as well as a tender pleasure to be intimate