A Modern Chronicle — Complete. Winston Churchill

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      “I've spilled some, my dear. Get another saucer for your uncle.”

      Honora went mechanically to the china closet, her heart thumping. She did not stop to reflect that it was the rarest of occurrences for Aunt Mary to spill the coffee.

      “Your Cousin Eleanor has invited you to go this winter with Edith and Mary to Sutcliffe.”

      Sutcliffe! No need to tell Honora what Sutcliffe was—her cousins had talked of little else during the past winter; and shown, if the truth be told, just a little commiseration for Honora. Sutcliffe was not only a famous girls' school, Sutcliffe was the world—that world which, since her earliest remembrances, she had been longing to see and know. In a desperate attempt to realize what had happened to her, she found herself staring hard at the open china closet, at Aunt Mary's best gold dinner set resting on the pink lace paper that had been changed only last week. That dinner set, somehow, was always an augury of festival—when, on the rare occasions Aunt Mary entertained, the little dining room was transformed by it and the Leffingwell silver into a glorified and altogether unrecognizable state, in which any miracle seemed possible.

      Honora pushed back her chair.

      Her lips were parted.

      “Oh, Aunt Mary, is it really true that I am going?” she said.

      “Why,” said Uncle Tom, “what zeal for learning!”

      “My dear,” said Aunt Mary, who, you may be sure, knew all about that school before Cousin Eleanor's letter came, “Miss Turner insists upon hard work, and the discipline is very strict.”

      “No young men,” added Uncle Tom.

      “That,” declared Aunt Mary, “is certainly an advantage.”

      “And no chocolate cake, and bed at ten o'clock,” said Uncle Tom.

      Honora, dazed, only half heard them. She laughed at Uncle Tom because she always had, but tears were shining in her eyes. Young men and chocolate cake! What were these privations compared to that magic word Change? Suddenly she rose, and flung her arms about Uncle Tom's neck and kissed his rough cheek, and then embraced Aunt Mary. They would be lonely.

      “Aunt Mary, I can't bear to leave you—but I do so want to go! And it won't be for long—will it? Only until next spring.”

      “Until next summer, I believe,” replied Aunt Mary, gently; “June is a summer month-isn't it, Tom?”

      “It will be a summer month without question next year,” answered Uncle Tom, enigmatically.

      It has been remarked that that day was sultry, and a fine rain was now washing Uncle Tom's flowers for him. It was he who had applied that term “washing” since the era of ultra-soot. Incredible as it may seem, life proceeded as on any other of a thousand rainy nights. The lamps were lighted in the sitting-room, Uncle Tom unfolded his gardening periodical, and Aunt Mary her embroidery. The gate slammed, with its more subdued, rainy-weather sound.

      “It's Peter,” said Honora, flying downstairs. And she caught him, astonished, as he was folding his umbrella on the step. “Oh, Peter, if you tried until to-morrow morning, you never could guess what has happened.”

      He stood for a moment, motionless, staring at her, a tall figure, careless of the rain.

      “You are going away,” he said.

      “How did you guess it?” she exclaimed in surprise. “Yes—to boarding-school. To Sutcliffe, on the Hudson, with Edith and Mary. Aren't you glad? You look as though you had seen a ghost.”

      “Do I?” said Peter.

      “Don't stand there in the rain,” commanded Honora; “come into the parlour, and I'll tell you all about it.”

      He came in. She took the umbrella from him, and put it in the rack.

      “Why don't you congratulate me?” she demanded.

      “You'll never come back,” said Peter.

      “What a horrid thing to say! Of course I shall come back. I shall come back next June, and you'll be at the station to meet me.”

      “And—what will Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary do—without you?”

      “Oh,” said Honora, “I shall miss them dreadfully. And I shall miss you, Peter.”

      “Very much?” he asked, looking down at her with such a queer expression. And his voice, too, sounded queer. He was trying to smile.

      Suddenly Honora realized that he was suffering, and she felt the pangs of contrition. She could not remember the time when she had been away from Peter, and it was natural that he should be stricken at the news. Peter, who was the complement of all who loved and served her, of Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom and Catherine, and who somehow embodied them all. Peter, the eternally dependable.

      She found it natural that the light should be temporarily removed from his firmament while she should be at boarding-school, and yet in the tenderness of her heart she pitied him. She put her hands impulsively upon his shoulders as he stood looking at her with that queer expression which he believed to be a smile.

      “Peter, you dear old thing, indeed I shall miss you! I don't know what I shall do without you, and I'll write to you every single week.”

      Gently he disengaged her arms. They were standing under that which, for courtesy's sake, had always been called the chandelier. It was in the centre of the parlour, and Uncle Tom always covered it with holly and mistletoe at Christmas.

      “Why do you say I'll never come back?” asked Honora. “Of course I shall come back, and live here all the rest of my life.”

      Peter shook his head slowly. He had recovered something of his customary quizzical manner.

      “The East is a strange country,” he said. “The first thing we know you'll be marrying one of those people we read about, with more millions than there are cars on the Olive Street line.”

      Honora was a little indignant.

      “I wish you wouldn't talk so, Peter,” she said. “In the first place, I shan't see any but girls at Sutcliffe. I could only see you for a few minutes once a week if you were there. And in the second place, it isn't exactly—Well—dignified to compare the East and the West the way you do, and speak about people who are very rich and live there as though they were different from the people we know here. Comparisons, as Shakespeare said, are odorous.”

      “Honora,” he declared, still shaking his head, “you're a fraud, but I can't help loving you.”

      For a long time that night Honora lay in bed staring into the darkness, and trying to realize what had happened. She heard the whistling and the puffing of the trains in the cinder-covered valley to the southward, but the quality of these sounds had changed. They were music now.

CHAPTER VI. HONORA HAS A GLIMPSE OF THE WORLD

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