“Yes, yes,” added the rector hastily, “don’t think of us, Philip lad; we shall get on fairly well, I fancy; and then, you know, in after years your aunt and I will share in your triumphs. How proud we shall be of our nephew, the great violinist, Signor Philip Norton! Sounds well, doesn’t it? There won’t be a prouder woman in England than your Aunt Delia then, and as for your old uncle, the rectory will be hardly large enough to contain him, if he is still alive.”
And so, almost in spite of his hesitation, Philip found himself gently pushed forward into a career which seemed to be too beautiful to be real; indeed, he half expected to awake some morning and find that the whole plan had been only a lovely dream.
But the preparations for his journey went steadily on, and each morning Philip would look at the calendar and say:
“In a month we start”--“in a week”--and then--“to-morrow.”
He did not go to Ashden very much during those last days, for he wanted to spend every moment with the dear friends at the rectory; nor did he see much of Lord Ashden, who had many preparations to make for what might be a long absence, and who, moreover, with great delicacy, forbore to intrude upon these last days, which he knew were sad ones for the dear old clergyman and his wife.
The bustle and stir incident upon the preparation for such a long journey were an immense relief to Aunt Delia, and she gave herself not a moment to think of what the house would be like when her darling boy should have gone. She had Philip’s boxes all packed and strapped a full week before he was to start, and then she thought of so many things which she had forgotten to put in that she unpacked them all again; and she repeated this operation several times before she was quite satisfied. For some unaccountable reason, as the travellers were going directly south, the dear old lady was convinced that Philip would need the most extraordinary amount of extra clothing, and she smuggled into his boxes enough flannel and woollen garments to have equipped an expedition to the polar regions. She was also convinced that both Philip and Lord Ashden would need at least a couple of knitted mufflers apiece, and after a busy day spent in running up and down stairs and packing and unpacking boxes, she would sit up half the night knitting away, as though her life depended upon it, on these same mufflers, while her loving thoughts and hopes for Philip’s future travelled faster even than the flying needles.