The pen lingers fondly in my hand, and yet it is little, very little, that I have left to say.The Purple Volume lies open by my side, with the stories ranged together in it in the order in which they were read.My son has learned to prize them already as the faithful friends who served him at his utmost need.I have only to wind off the little thread of narrative on which they are all strung together before the volume is closed and our anxious literary experiment fairly ended.
My son and I had a quiet hour together on that happy night before we retired to rest.The little love-plot invented in George's interests now required one last stroke of diplomacy to complete it before we all threw off our masks and assumed our true characters for the future.When my son and I parted for the night, we had planned the necessary stratagem for taking our lovely guest by surprise as soon as she was out of her bed in the morning.
Shortly after seven o'clock I sent a message to Jessie by her maid, informing her that a good night's rest had done wonders for me, and that I expected to see her in my study at half past seven, as we had arranged the evening before.As soon as her answer, promising to be punctual to the appointment, had reached me, I took George into my study--left him in my place to plead his own cause--and stole away, five minutes before the half hour, to join my brothers in the breakfast-room.
Although the sense of my own happiness disposed me to take the brightest view of my son's chances, I must nevertheless acknowledge that some nervous anxieties still fluttered about my heart while the slow minutes of suspense were counting themselves out in the breakfast-room.I had as little attention to spare for Owen's quiet prognostications of success as for Morgan's pitiless sarcasms on love, courtship, and matrimony.A quarter of an hour elapsed--then twenty minutes.The hand moved on, and the clock pointed to five minutes to eight, before I heard the study door open, and before the sound of rapidly-advancing footsteps warned me that George was coming into the room.