Kate Wiggin - A Cathedral Courtship

An hour or two later they appeared again—the dragon, who answers to the name of ‘Aunt Celia,’ and the ‘nut-brown mayde,’ who comes when she is called ‘Katharine.’ I was sketching a ruined arch. The dragon dropped her unmistakably Boston bag. I expected to see encyclopædias and Russian tracts fall from it, but was disappointed. The ‘nut-brown mayde’ (who has been trained in the way she should go) hastened to pick up the bag for fear that I, a stranger, should serve her by doing it. She was punished by turning it inside out, and I was rewarded by helping her gather together the articles, which were many and ill-assorted. My little romance received the first blow when I found that she reads the Duchess novels. I think, however, she has the grace to be ashamed of it, for she blushed scarlet when I handed her ‘A Modern Circe.’ I could have told her that such a blush on such a cheek would almost atone for not being able to read at all, but I refrained. It is vexatious all the same, for, though one doesn’t expect to find perfection here below, the ‘nut-brown mayde,’ externally considered, comes perilously near it. After she had gone I discovered a slip of paper which had blown under some stones. It proved to be an itinerary. I didn’t return it. I thought they must know which way they were going; and as this was precisely what I wanted to know, I kept it for my own use. She is doing the cathedral towns. I am doing the cathedral towns. Happy thought! Why shouldn’t we do them together—we and Aunt Celia? A fellow whose mother and sister are in America must have some feminine society!

I had only ten minutes to catch my train for Salisbury, but I concluded to run in and glance at the registers of the principal hotels. Found my ‘nut-brown mayde’ at once in the guest-book of the Royal Garden Inn: ‘Miss Celia Van Tyck, Beverly, Mass., U.S.A. Miss Katharine Schuyler, New York, U.S.A.’ I concluded to stay over another train, ordered dinner, and took an altogether indefensible and inconsistent pleasure in writing ‘John Quincy Copley, Cambridge, Mass.,’ directly beneath the charmer’s autograph.

We left Winchester on the 1.16 train yesterday, and here we are within sight of another superb and ancient pile of stone. I wanted so much to stop at the Highflyer Inn in Lark Lane, but Aunt Celia said that if we were destitute of personal dignity, we at least owed something to our ancestors. Aunt Celia has a temperamental distrust of joy as something dangerous and ensnaring. She doesn’t realize what fun it would be to date one’s letters from the Highflyer Inn, Lark Lane, even if one were obliged to consort with poachers and trippers in order to do it.

Better times are coming, however, for she was in a melting mood last evening, and promised me that wherever I can find an inn with a picturesque and unusual name, she will stop there, provided it is clean and respectable, if I on my part will agree to make regular notes of travel in my Russia-leather book. She says that ever since she was my age she has asked herself nightly the questions Pythagoras was in the habit of using as a nightcap:

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