He looked down at her, smiling a little, but smiling sadly. "If Jean's mother had lived I should not have been such a weathercock. Will you write to me--promise me that you will write."
"Of course," cheerfully. "Oh, by the way, Julia tells me that dinner will be at three, and that two soldier boys are coming. I rather think I shall like that."
He ran his fingers through his crinkled hair. "What a lot you get out of life, Emily."
"Little things count so much with you. You are like Jean. She is in seventh Heaven over a snowstorm--or a chocolate soda. It's the youth in her--and it's the youth, too, in you--"
She liked that, and flushed a little. "Perhaps it is because there have been so few big things, Bruce, that the little ones look big."
He had a fleeting sense of what Emily would be like with some big thing in her life--how far would it swing her from her sedate course?
"You have done me a lot of good," he said heartily when she left him to go upstairs to Jean.
Jean was still in bed. "I must run down to the shop," Emily informed her. "But I'll be back in plenty of time to dress for dinner."
"Darling--" Jean reminded her, "you must go to church."
"Of course. I shall stop on my way down."
"Pray for me, Emily." She reached out her arms. Emily came to them and they clung together. "I am so happy, darling--" Jean whispered, "but there isn't anything to tell, not really--yet--Emily--"
When Emily had gone, Jean got out her memory books. She had made of breakfast a slight affair. How could one eat in the face of such astounding events. Already this morning flowers had arrived for her, heather and American Beauties. And Derry had written on his card, "The heather because of you--the roses because of the day--"
There were two hours on her hands before church. She could dress in one--the intervening time must be filled.
Her memory books were great fat volumes kept on a shelf by themselves, and forming a record of everything that had happened to her since her first day at boarding school. They were in no sense diaries, nor could they be called scrap-books. They had, rather, been compiled with an eye to certain red-letter events--and their bulkiness had been enhanced by the insertion between the leaves of various objects not intended for such limited space. There was a mask which she had worn at Hallowe'en; the tulle which had tied her roses at graduation; a little silver ring marking a childish romance; a flattened and much-dried chocolate drop with tender associations; dance-favors, clippings, photographs, theater programs, each illumined and emphasized by a line or two of sentiment or of nonsense in Jean's girlish scrawl.