"
But as my spirits went down so Lucy's went up, like the old man
and woman in the cottage weather-glass. "That looks more promising,"
she said. "The spectacles are good. Perhaps, after all, dear
Bernard may escape. I don't think he's at all the sort of person
to be taken with a dove-coloured bonnet."
For some days after Bernard came home from Cambridge we chaffed a
good deal among ourselves about Miss Melissa Easterbrook. Bernard
took quite my view about the spectacles and dress. He even drew
on an envelope a fancy portrait of Miss Easterbrook, as he said
himself, "from documentary evidence." It represented a typical
schoolmarm of the most virulent order, and was calculated to
strike terror into the receptive mind of ingenuous youth on simple
inspection.
At last the day came when we were to go to Liverpool. We arrived
at St. Pancras in very good time, and looked about on the platform
for a tall and hard-faced person of transatlantic aspect, arrayed
in a dove-coloured dress and a pair of gray spectacles. But we
looked in vain; nobody about seemed to answer to the description.
At last Bernard turned to my wife with a curious smile.
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