found on the Chesapeake good living and gay, and had gone no farther.
He spoke of this now. "It's all so different. And you're like an enchanted princess."
"Do you like enchanted princesses?"
"Love them," he smiled at her.
She smiled back. "Sometimes I have to pinch myself to be sure it's true."
He agreed. "I know how you feel. That you'll wake up some morning and find yourself on the farm."
She asked wistfully, "Do Aunt Catherine and Aunt Olivia miss me?"
"They have your letters. You've been good about writing, Hildegarde."
"Oh, no; they did so much for me. Sometimes I feel like a deserter."
"But you're happy here?"
"Crispin, I want my mother. There's never a moment—" She stopped and could not go on.
"I often think of her," the boy said, "and of how different she was from all the others. She was a wonderful woman."
"None of the women here is like her," Hildegarde confided. "Somehow they all seem to live on the surface. And Miss Anne says emotions aren't fashionable."
"That's all bunk," explosively. "Living at top-notch means feeling at top-notch. I'd rather love and hate like an untutored savage than be so desiccated that I couldn't enjoy everything from a sunset to a good dinner."
