FullReads

Some of this speech had been about as pleasant to say as eating cinders, and when it was done I felt a sudden sensation (very rare with me) of unendurable fatigue. As the last words left my lips the sun set, but my eyes were so bedazzled that I am not sure that I should not have fallen, but for an unexpected support. What Philip had been thinking of during my speech I do not know, for I had avoided looking at him, but when it was done he threw the properties out of his arms, and flung them around me with the hug of a Polar bear.

“You ill-tempered!” he roared. “You’ve the temper of an angel, or you would never have come after me like this. Isobel, I am a brute, I have behaved like a brute all the week, and I beg your pardon.”

I retract my wishes about crying, for when I do begin, I cry in such a very disagreeable way–no spring shower, but a perfect tempest of tears. Philip’s unexpected generosity upset me, and I sobbed till I frightened him, and he said I was hysterical. The absurdity of this idea set me off into fits of laughing, which, oddly enough, seemed to distress him so much that I stopped at last, and found breath to say, “Then you’ll come home?”

“If you’ll have me. And never mind about Clinton, I’ll get out of it. The truth is, Isobel, you and Alice did snub him from the first, and that vexed me; but I am disappointed in him. He does brag so, and I’ve had to take that fowling-piece to the gunsmith’s already, so I know what it’s worth. I did give Clinton a hint about it, and–would you believe it?–he laughed, and said he thought he had got the best of that bargain. I said, ‘I hope you have, if it isn’t an even one, for I should be very sorry to think I had cheated a friend!’ But he either did not or wouldn’t see it. He’s a second-rate sort of fellow, I’m sure, and I’m sorry I promised to let him act. But I’ll get out of it, you shan’t be bothered by him.”

“No, no,” said I, “if you promised I’d much rather. It won’t bother me at all.”

(It is certainly a much pleasanter kind of dispute when the struggle is to give, and not to take!)

“You can’t fit him in now?” said Philip doubtfully.

“Oh yes, I can.” I felt sure that I could. I have often been short of temper for our amusements, but never of ideas. Philip tucked the properties under one arm, and me under the other, and as we ran homewards over the marsh, I threaded Mr. Clinton into the plot with perfect ease.

“We’ll have a second Prince, and he shall have an enchanted shield, which shall protect him from you–though he can’t kill you–for Charles must do that. He shall be in love with the Princess too, but just when he and Charles are going to fight for her, the Fairy Godmother shall sprinkle him with the Waters of Memory, and break a spell which had made him forget his own Princess in a distant land. You know, Philip, if he does act well, he may make a capital part of it. It will be a splendid scene. We have two real metal swords, and as they are flashing in the air–enter the Fairy with the carved claret jug. When he is sprinkled he must drop his sword, and put his hands to his head. He will recall the picture of his own Princess, and draw it out and kiss it (I can lend him my locket miniature of great-grandpapa). Charles and he must swear eternal friendship, and then he will pick up his sword, and exit right centre, waving the golden shield, to find his Princess. It will look very well, and as he goes out the Princess can enter left in distraction about the combat, and she and Charles can fall in each other’s arms, and be blessed by the Fairy.”