Miss Needham skipped with hectic and perverse coquetry. She stimulated herself anew upon the assurance that it was great fun having a lover to meet. And it was really fine, for another thing, to be able so perfectly to dominate the scene, disposing all according to her whim—best of all, to have another man right there on the spot to behold these palpable wonders! She remembered, with a tiny obscure pang, how she had wished Richard might be present to see what amazing progress she had made. Richard she could not have; but fortune provided a substitute in the unsuspecting person of jolly Mr. O'Donnell.
Louise's mood of almost saucy pleasure was sufficiently generous to overflow in Barry's favour, else the poor man would surely have shivered himself to death ere this. She smiled up at him with more artlessness than really consorted with her triumph.
"Hilda was afraid you might not come," she chatted pleasantly, flirting a little with the corners of her mouth.
"She was?"
"Yes, she was dreadfully worried—you know how children are. She'll be awfully relieved when she sees you."
"But you," he asked, half jestingly and half in faint earnest, "—you weren't afraid?"
"I? Oh, no!" She laughed along with the denial. "NotI."
The locomotive was coughing and wheezing and snorting, with an air of absurd importance. All at once there was a tremendous exhaust which sent steam geysering in considerable volume to either side. They were so close that the roar brought a tightening to the girl's throat. Barry touched her arm, gently insinuating her out of the path of the steam's dominion. She felt the momentary pressure of his fingers. And through the hiss and dizzy vibration in the air it was as though he were saying to her: "You are mine, all mine! You are mine forever and ever! You can belong henceforth to no one but me!" She trembled and felt faint. Her heart was beset with goblins and ghosts....
When they had settled for the diminutive journey, Louise was more than ever glad of Mr. O'Donnell's presence. But now it was no longer so much that he might behold the brilliance of her autocracy as that she might lean upon him while striving to adjust herself to the almost alarming situation Barry's arrival had precipitated. And O'Donnell, for his own part, was not a little flattered at being so deluged with attention from a pretty woman—especially since she had a real, live lover sitting right beside her! The lover himself took everything in a perfectly philosophical manner. Naturally she didn't want to reveal her heart to the wide world, his comfortable acquiescence seemed to say. She was reserving all that for him alone. And in the meantime it was very decent and intelligent of her to be nice to hisfriend. As a matter of fact, Miss Needham's conduct wasn't by any means so sheer and vivid as the complex which produced it; she was not behaving nearly so strangely as she felt.
The journey back to Beulah, disproportionately lengthy if measured on the dial of one's watch, was under way. All the coaches were packed with resorters plying off in search of adventure—adventure which, in its most substantial form, could they but know it, they were to discover inside those mysterious covered baskets stowed away under seats and, sometimes rather precariously, on the metal racks overhead. For eating is, after all, the Great Adventure in Middle Western resort life. One might perhaps hesitate about putting it ahead of canoes in the moonlight, and that indispensable adjunct of every resort that ever was, the Lovers' Lane. But whereas the latter phenomena appeal to only a single age or mood of society, the adventure of filling the stomach appeals to everyone alike, old and young, mighty and humble. So far as the present excursionists were concerned, the furtive covers were soon flapping; and the air grew tropical with the persuasive aroma of bananas.
Louise sat beside her lover in the midst of these not unfamiliar scenes; and the outcome of her half agreeable, half harrowing mental complex was a slightly hysterical gaiety. So long as Mr. O'Donnell was with them, she felt secure. But whywasthis? Why was it she suddenly dreaded the thought offinding herself for the first time alone with Lynndal? Phantoms swarmed. In her letters she had given him every promise. Yet now he was with her again, she dared not let herself go. Phantoms of old delight; phantoms, too, projected into the scope of an imagined future.... The words she had seemed to hear while the steam brought that queer stuffiness to her throat, still echoed troublingly: "You are mine, all mine! You can belong henceforth to no one—but to me!" Her mind was all charged with a brooding unrest. Externally she sparkled and was blithe; but within lurked a vague fever of apprehension....
Things like this may conceivably be going on in almost any one's mind at almost any time; but they are never shown. We are adepts when it comes to guarding our guilty struggles.
The train was winding its way through dismal swamp country. Stark trunks of trees, stripped of verdure, with the life in them long extinct, stood knee-deep in brackish water. Though the day was quite bright, an impenetrable veil of melancholy lay over the swamplands—a gloom never lifted, which seemed the child of silence and stagnation. The sad blight of the landscape seeped into her heart. She was twisting her life this way and that, absorbed, as usual, in the mystery of her own fascinating if at present rather menaced ego.
Lynndal Barry and his companion, chatting, seemed unaware of the girl's momentary absorption;her curious, almost breathless, detachment. Although detached, she was nevertheless looking at Barry with serious, half-seeing eyes. And all at once she found herself thinking of him respectfully, even tenderly. There was something conspicuously ordered and kindly and calm about him. She seemed, abruptly, conscious of a great patience in this man who had come to her out of the West; had scarcely discovered in his letters how essentially mature he was. But the next moment this vaguely annoyed her. She seemed to miss in him the thrill of fire and passion which her nature craved. He seemed to be relaxed upon the snug hearth-rug of life—yes, in slippers! Barry was, actually, not much above thirty; but his seemed to her now a poise unwelcome. She fingered the book in her lap with nervous, groping fingers; even shuddered a little as she gazed off across the swamp.
Barry, however, seemed aware of none of the girl's emotional fluxes. Why should he be? Howcouldhe be? Barry didn't even in the least suspect that she had any such things as emotional fluxes in her make-up; nor, for that matter, was it likely he would quite know an emotional flux if he should meet it. This must not, however, be taken to signify that Barry wasn't sensitive, for he was. And he had a way, too, of biding his time, which sometimes deceived people into thinking him invulnerable to the finer antennæ of feelings. However, though his ear was not entirely deaf to the unstrummed music oflife, he did not as yet suspect—or if so, not more than just glancingly—that there was to be a flaw in his eager little romance.
"Oh, yes, it will surprise her completely, of course," O'Donnell was saying.
"You haven't written at all, then?"
"You see, I've only just learned she was back from Tahulamaji. I learned about it in town. I may say I learned of it only yesterday!"
"It's queer, isn't it," remarked Barry, with almost a flash of imagination, "we should have happened to come up on the same steamer?"
And then, being just a delightful, sane, normal individual, O'Donnell said whathadto be said—what isalwayssaid when talk reaches such a point: He said that the world was small.
Louise came back to them with an effort. The train was beginning to draw up out of the swamp region, and on to a plain better adapted to rural uses. The sunshine lay very bright upon the grass. An emotion of hope stirred in her heart. Everything was bound to turn out for the best—herbest, she thought. Of course it would! She felt all at once radiantly, boundlessly happy. And she forgot the words in the steam, when his fingers had touched her arm.
The subject of this miraculous meeting of Barry and O'Donnell still animated a conversation which she entered with almost desperate eagerness.
"You weren't acquainted before you met on the boat?"
"Never laid eyes on each other," laughed the Irishman. "We began talking about dry-farming in the gentlemen's lounge, and from that, gradually...."
"The fact is," put in Barry, who wanted to see what little mystery there was cleared up as quickly as possible, "we found we were both on our way to—"
"—to besiege ladies living under the same roof!" concluded the other's readier tongue.
Barry coloured a bit at the bluntness, but rather with pleasure than embarrassment.
"I guess I don't quite understand," remarked Louise a little coolly.
"Well, you see, the fact is we're very old friends, Miss Whitcom and I—"
"Aunt Marjie!"
"Yes—Marjie...." He repeated the name slowly, and with the sly relish of one who is not quite sure whether he would dare perpetrate such an indulgence in the presence of the adored herself.
"Why, how perfectlyromantic!" cried Louise. And she ceased entirely, for the moment, to be concerned about the puzzling and rather tangled romance of her own life.
"You say you haven't seen each other for years?"
"Five years," he nodded.
"Oh, how surprised shewillbe! I do certainly want to be there when she first sees you!"
For of course it went without saying that they were lovers. Only fancy! Well—as much had been said outright. He was coming to besiege Aunt Marjie, just as Lynndal....
Her heart clouded a little with the mist of perplexity which seemed, now, to have begun settling the moment she heard Leslie's step outside on the hillside at dawn....
But O'Donnell went on nonchalantly enough: "Oh, but there'll be nothing remarkable at all. Miss Whitcom, if you'll pardon my speaking quite freely of your relative, has the most extraordinary control. Perhaps you've noticed it. I can tell you just what she'll do. She'll talk about the new wall paper in the throne room of the Queen of Tahulamaji's palace. Or else it will be still some perfectly commonplace remark about a tiresome old swimming medal. But exclamations in the true sense? No, there won't be any, Miss Needham, I assure you."
Oh, Eros! Here, sitting all perplexed beside the man she has promised to marry—all besieged by ghosts of her past loves, and the ghost of one scarce passed as yet—is a woman. And yonder in a cottage, covering the unlucky shortage of pancakes with mundane chuckles, is another woman who has been pursued for twenty years by one dauntless lover, and who, when he comes, will talk about the paper on the wall.
The journey drew to a screeching and bumping close; the brakes whistled, and the locomotive fell a-panting most lustily, as though to proclaim that it had done a mighty thing indeed in hauling a few laden coaches a dozen miles across the swamp-lands.
The intrepidPathfinderlay at the dock, waiting. All Beulah had turned out, it really seemed, to welcome the train; and now all Beulah swarmed down to bid those who would embark farewell.
There was the mayor—or so one fancied; and there were aldermen—could not one fairly see them sitting in solemn council? There was the Methodist minister in his half-clerical week-day togs; there were all the old men of the town, and all the old ladies; all the boys and girls and babies; together with just as many others as could possibly be spared from conducting the business of the town. The dock was quite crowded. Yet Louise and her two companions were the only passengers thePathfinderwas to bear away.
There always seemed something vaguely symbolic about these important departures of thePathfinder. The townsfolk seemed to gaze off with a kind of wistful regret—yes, from the mayor down to the tiniest babe. It always was so: as though thePathfinderwere bound for free, large spaces of ocean; for ports in Europe, or the Indies. And the townspeople could only assemble on the shore and silently watch this ship's glorious westward flight. So life went.
Many are called, but few are chosen!
Leslie had some trouble with his engine on the return trip. It sputtered and it balked. The never very regular rhythm grew more and more broken, till at length there was no rhythm left at all. Finally the thing simply stopped dead; it wouldn't budge. The little craft rippled forward a few paces on momentum, then swung into a choppy trough and began edging dismally back toward Beulah. Leslie was glad then that Louise wasn't aboard. Yes, he was very glad indeed there were no ladies present. He sat down in the bottom of the boat and took the engine to pieces. Then he put it together again. And tossed and tossed. And drifted. And cursed like a man.
When at last he limped up to the dock at Crystalia, missing fire horribly, and having to help along by poling as soon as the water was sufficiently shallow, he found Hilda waiting for him. She smiled very brightly. And somehow he felt the unpleasantness of the voyage fading into a plain sense of satisfaction over being back. It seemed a singularly long time since he had set out with Louise....
"Good morning!" Hilda called to him from the dock.
He nodded and grinned; and poled, perhaps, the more vigorously. With his foot he desperately prodded the almost exhausted engine.
"WhyLes, what's thematter?" she cried. For he was, in truth, a sight.
"Stalled two miles out," he replied bluntly, though not curtly, giving the engine a final kick by way of advising it that its labours for the day were at an end.
"Why, Les—how dreadful! Oh, I can't help laughing. Your face is so funny!"
He made a grimace and rubbed his cheeks with the sleeve of his flannel shirt, not particularly improving matters thereby.
"I don't want the old thing any more—it's just so much junk!" He stepped out on the dock and moored the naughty little craft, though without any great enthusiasm, and rather as though he hoped a strong wind would come and carry the miscreant irrevocably to sea. Then he added: "Hilda, I've got an idea! I'll auction it off and turn over the proceeds to your father's missionary fund!"
Her laugh rang.
"Don't you think that would be a good idea?"
"Oh, Les—you'resofunny!"
She laughed a great deal as they walked along together through the hot white sand toward the Crystalia cottages, occupied mostly by Chicago-Oak Park people, and forming no part of what was generally known as the religious colony. Leslie was bythis time entirely over his maritime grouch. He conceived, always in his elusively serious way, a delight in being quite as "funny" as he could. An outsider might have registered the impression that, even at his funniest, Leslie wasn't honestly amusing enough to elicit such frequent, rich, joyous peals of laughter; but Hilda was very happy—happy!—so happy that she needed no deliberate stimulus to mirth; so happy she could with the utmost ease shift her mood from grave to gay, or from gay to grave, matching the mood of her companion.
"I know you've forgotten," she said, swinging along beside him and occasionally flashing up a most captivating glance.
"Forgotten what?"
"I'll never tell!"
"Then how can I know what I've forgotten, if you don't remind me?" Though gossamer at best, it had an effect of logic—perhaps a rather graspable masculine logic, at that.
"Maybe you'll remember—when it's too late." Her eyes sparkled.
"Oh, you mean the tournament?"
She nodded.
"I hadn't forgotten it."
"Well, you see I was afraid you had."
He smiled. She was really quite delightful.
"I'm so glad, Les. There'll be time for you to get into light things. Oh, I'm so glad your memorydidn'treally fail!"
He looked at her quietly a moment, but her gaze was now all on the sun-patterned turf. They had entered the forest of Betsey, and were pursuing the winding road toward the Point.
"Oh, that's nothing," he said solemnly. "I never forget appointments with ladies."
She laughed again, then ventured: "Tell me. Didn't you forget, just the tiniest little bit, when you were taking Louise across, or," she rather hurried on, "when you were out there in the middle of the lake and the engine was acting up? Please be ever so honest!"
Leslie looked down again at the girl beside him. Odd he had never noticed how intelligent and shyly grown-up Hilda was! She had been merely Louise's little sister; all at once she becameHilda, a self-sufficient entity, perfectly capable of standing alone. Also she looked very fresh and charming this morning in her cool white jumper and skirt. He looked at Hilda in a kind of searching way; then, pleasantly meeting her eyes, he answered her question. "No, not even the tiniest little bit."
Their walk together through the forest was enlivened with gay and unimportant chatter. As they passed the hidden bower where Hilda, at an earlier hour, had crouched to spy and listen, the girl almost danced at the thought of having so delightfully usurped her sister's place. And the best part of it was that it was perfectly all right; because Louise had gone to meet her own true lover. Leslie didn'tbelong to Louise; it seemed almost too wonderful to be true that he didn't!
As it happened, Louise entered the lad's thoughts also as he and Hilda walked side by side along the sylvan path. Perhaps something of the same odd transposition weighed, even with him. He had gone this identical way with some one else, only a few eternities ago. He had held her in his arms a moment, and then.... Then what was it she had said? Friends! First she had said she cared, and after that she had said she wanted.... Did she really knowwhatshe wanted? For weeks they had gone around together constantly. The moon had been wonderful. Then the letter had come from the West, and she had decided she had better begin being a nice, harmless sister. Still, she had let him kiss her once, even after the advent of the fatal epistle—a sort of passionate farewell surrender—wanted to let him down as easy as possible. Ugh! He was in no mood to spare her now. And then Leslie came slowly back; back to the bright, rare summer morning; back to the forest of Betsey, with its hopeful glints of sunshine; back—to Hilda. He sighed. At least he had learned something more about women.
They came to Beachcrest Cottage, and, since Leslie's cottage was further along, in the direction of the lighthouse, it was here they parted. Before he ran off, however, to make himself presentable, Leslie underwent the ordeal (pleasant rather than notas it turned out), of being introduced to Miss Whitcom.
She was seated on the second step of the flight leading up to the screened porch, seemed in very good spirits, and was writing a letter—employing a last year's magazine as base of operations. The ink bottle balanced itself just on the edge of the next step up: a key, if one please, to Marjory Whitcom's whole character. Had she been writing at the cottage desk in the living room, where everything was convenient, then she would never, never have spent her life doing wild and impossible things. And had the ink bottle been placed firmly instead of upon the ragged edge, then, having eluded Barrett O'Donnell all these years, she would not now be writing to him.
"Aunt Marjie," said Hilda, her eyes shining and her cheeks flushed, "this is Leslie."
He was pleased to meet Miss Whitcom, but assured her he must deny himself the pleasure of shaking hands. Look at them! He had had his engine all to pieces. He was going to auction off the boat now and give the Rev. Needham's missionary fund the first real boost in a decade.
"Leslie!" hushed Hilda in great dismay. How did they know but the Rev. Needham might be within hearing distance?
But Miss Whitcom laughed delightedly, whether or no, and said that after hearing such a gallant expression of religious zeal she simply must shakehis hand, grime and all. And she did so. She had a way of winning young men completely.
"And did you pilot my elder niece over to Beulah before we sleepyheads here at home were even stirring?"
"Yes, Aunt Marjie. It was Leslie. You know!" And Hilda blushed at her very vagueness, which swept back so quaintly to embrace the pancake catastrophe.
"Oh, yes," replied Miss Whitcom with dreadful pointedness. "I know—oh, yes. I know very wellindeed! And I know of a certain young lady who departed and forgot to turn off the burners of the stove, so that plain, humdrum mortals must quit the table hungry—positively hungry!"
Leslie somehow managed to establish connections. "Whatever happened, I'm afraid I was partly to blame, Miss Whitcom."
"Aha! Only partly?" For she fancied his chivalry carried along with it a tone, so far as he was concerned, of extenuation.
"Well, I suppose having me there, talking, helped to make her forget."
"H'm!" She eyed him in her odd, sharp way. But he looked back with a half understanding defiance. "So you won't takeallthe blame?"
Leslie smote the lower step with his foot, then shyly glanced at Hilda. Hilda laughed and coloured.
So Miss Whitcom said, looking drolly off to sea: "The plot thickens!"
And she was right; there were greater doings ahead.
Leslie sprang off along the ridge to get into tennis garb. He decided, as was only natural, that the one infallible way of cleansing himself was to plunge into the sea. He was consequently in his little cottage bedroom about two minutes, and then emerged in swimming apparel.
Leslie was well-formed and sun-browned. He sped off over the sand to the shore, and thence dived straight out of sight.
"Swims rather well," commented Miss Whitcom. "That crawl stroke isn't by any means the easiest to master."
"Yes, Leslie's the best swimmer on the Point," said Hilda proudly.
Miss Whitcom dipped her pen, but the ink went dry on it, and the letter lay uncompleted.
"I do believe he's forgotten all about you and is going to swim straight across!" she declared. For Leslie was, indeed, streaking out in fine style, making the water splash in the sun, and occasionally tossing his head as though keenly conscious of life's delightfulness.
"He'll turn back," said Hilda quietly.
"You think so?"
"I know he will!" she laughed.
"Oh, youknow?"
"Why how ridiculous! Nobody could swim clear across, Aunt Marjie. It's seventy miles!"
"Really?"
"Did you ever hear of anybody swimming as far as that?"
"I'm not sure I ever did," the other admitted. They were silent a little, both watching the swimmer. Then the lady remarked in a dreamy way: "They always look so fine and free when they're young, and the sun flashes over the water, and they make straight out, as though they never meant to stop at all."
Hilda was a little at a loss to know how this rather curious speech should be taken. She felt dimly that there was something below the surface, as so frequently there seemed to be when Aunt Marjie spoke; but at first she couldn't imagine what it was.
"So fine and free," Miss Whitcom repeated in the same tone. "They make straight out. But they always turn back."
And then Hilda asked, giving voice to a sudden bold dart of intuitive understanding: "You mean men, Aunt Marjie?"
Whereupon her aunt laughed away the odd impulse of symbolism. "Yes, the men, Hilda. They try to carry us off our feet in the beginning. They want us to believe they're young gods. And theycan't understand why some of us are coming to grow sceptical, and why we're beginning to want to try our hand at a few things ourselves."
"He's turning around now!" cried Hilda, who was not paying the very best sort of attention.
"Yes, poor dears," the other persisted. "The other shorewouldbe too far off."
"Oh, much too far!" agreed Hilda, jumping up to wave her hand.
Whatever Aunt Marjie might be getting at, Hilda, for her part, was ever so glad of the sea's prohibitive vastness.
The Rev. and Mrs. Needham came out on to the porch, he preceding her through the doorway; there was just the faintest evidence of her shoving him on a little.
Her whispered "Yes, Alf, yes!" might, of course, represent an exclamation apropos of almost anything. For instance, the words might form the tail-end of almost any sort of domestic conversation—or perhaps a talk about holding a Sunday School rally in the fall. The incomplete phrase might, in one's imagination, expand itself into something like this: "Yes, we really must. Nothing like a well-planned rally to stir up the interest of the young folks. Yes, Alf, yes!" But as a matter of fact, Mrs. Needham and her husband had not been discussing any such matters. The authentic conversation, to go back a little, which had just antedated egress from the cottage living room, ran, in fact, as follows:
"Alf, I do want you two to get better acquainted!"
"What?"
"More intimate, and not...."
"Well, Anna?"
"Not quite so—so stiff, somehow...."
"H'm-m-m!"
"Alf, she'ssogood-hearted. If it's true she has changed any way, who knows but you might have an influence ...?"
He sighed heavily. They stood facing each other. It became a little formal.
"Alf, this would be a splendid chance. She's right out there on the steps!"
"Oh, well—really! Not this morning. No, not just now, when we're all keyed up about Barry. In the course of time, I daresay...."
"Oh,now, Alf," she coaxed, in a very low, throaty, persuasive contralto. "Oh, do go out there now! I'll call Hilda in for something. There's—there's some mending—ought to be done right away," she quickly added, as the suspicion hovered between them that Hilda would be called in on mere pretense.
"Anna, maybe this afternoon."
"Now! Oh, Alf—now!"
"Anna, I—"
"Yes, Alf, yes!"
And so he was gently pushed on to the porch.
Hilda and Marjory looked up. There was a barricade of mosquito netting between them and the emerged pair. Hilda was flushed. She had just been waving to some one in the water. Marjory's eyes kindled with indefinite mirth, and at this kindling the minister's heart quaked a little. There was something about his wife's sister—yes, he thoroughly admitted it now; there was something about her. She was strange and incompatible. Had she,indeed, become inclined to be atheistical in her beliefs? Was that what made him feel so uncomfortable, always, in her presence? He a man of the pulpit, it would be natural that the ungodly should fill him with distrust; natural they should make him wary and cautious. Was it that in Marjory?Was it that?
"Hilda, see here a minute," said Mrs. Needham; and she beckoned discreetly. Hilda followed her mother into the cottage.
This left the Rev. Needham on one side of the screening and Miss Whitcom on the other. Miss Whitcom still sat on the second step with the pen in her hand. She had dipped the pen a good many times, but the letter was no further advanced. She turned to watch Leslie get in the last full strokes and crawl out. He lay in the hot sand a moment or so before racing indoors.
The Rev. Needham had sunk into the nearest chair, and sat there rocking, with just perceptible nervousness, clearing his throat from time to time in a manner which appeared to afford that portion of his anatomy no appreciable relief. It seemed a kind of moral clearing. It was the vague articulation of incertitude.
As a matter of fact, Marjory had forgotten all about her brother-in-law. She was musing. At length a more desperate laryngeal disturbance than any that had preceded brought her back to contemporary consciousness.
"Ho!" she cried. "I didn't know you were there, Alfred!" There were times when he thought her almost coarse.
"I thought I'd just come out here a few minutes," he said. "It's quite cool on this side, till the sun gets round." The minister sighed. He had an uncomfortable inner feeling that he hadn't quite justified his presence. It was, to be sure, his own porch; but that did not make any difference. Dimly he hoped his relation would not relinquish her position on the second step.
Marjory dipped her pen again, but the letter was doomed. With a gesture of languid, smiling despair the task was conclusively abandoned.
"No, it's no use," she muttered, rather unintelligibly. "I never can concentrate at a resort."
"Beg pardon, Marjory?"
"I just want to dream and dream all day. Isn't it dreadfully delightful?"
"Yes—we like it up here," he replied, the least bit stiffly.
"Alfred, how did you ever happen to come so far?"
"So far?"
"Yes; aren't there any resorts in Ohio?"
"Well, you see it was, to begin with, on account of the Summer Assembly...."
She didn't fully fathom it until he had explained: "We're a sort of religious colony here on the Point."
"Oh-h-h!" cried the lady then, with the air of onewho is vastly—perhaps a little satirically—enlightened. "I understand now what Anna meant yesterday when she spoke about 'visiting clergymen.' You hold meetings, I presume, and then have some refreshments at the end?"
"No refreshments," he replied, in a rather dry tone, reproving her at the same time, with an almost sharp glance.
"Well," she agreed, with a touch of apology, "I suppose you wouldn't. I was thinking of some of our Tahulamaji pow-wows."
To this he made no reply; but the somewhat chill dignity of the silence which ensued provoked, alas, an even more unfortunate question.
"Alfred, I know you'll consider me perfectly awfully impossible, but it's been such a long time.... I've forgotten—I really have.... It—it isn't Methodist, is it ...?"
"Methodist, Marjory?"
"What I mean is, you're not.... Oh, Alfred, forheaven'ssake before I simply explode with chagrin, do quickly tell mewhat you are!"
"My denomination?" he asked unhappily.
"That's the word! Do please forgive a poor creature who's lived so long in out-of-the-way places that she's half forgotten how to be civilized!"
"There are certain things," the Rev. Needham told himself icily, "one never quite forgets, unless one...." He started a little, raised his eyes wanly to hers, but shifted them quickly to thelandscape. "I am a Congregational minister, Marjory," he said.
"Oh, dear me! Of course! I'm sure I remembered subconsciously. Don't you think such a thing is possible?"
"You mean ...?" He seemed unable fully to concentrate, either—though not primarily because this was a resort.
"I mean remembering subconsciously. But you see it's all because in Tahulamaji we get so fearfully lax about everything."
Was this his cue? He fidgeted, glanced sidewise to see whether his wife were within range of his voice.
"I presume there's a great deal of laxness in Tahulamaji...."
"Well," she pondered, accepting his wider implication. "Yes, I'm afraid so. Still, of course, one must never lose sight of the missionaries."
"Yes!" brightened her brother-in-law. "We help support a missionary in Tahulamaji. Perhaps you—"
"No, Alfred, no. I'm afraid I've never had that pleasure. You see I've been so busy, and the missionary seems always so busy, too."
"There's much to be done," he reminded her simply.
She was quite serious and respectful. He began to grow more at ease; more expansive; told her a great deal about what missionaries do in foreignlands, and especially what the missionary in Tahulamaji was doing. His talk grew really interesting. Then there was a shift which brought them round to the activities of the church in America.
"We're trying to broaden out all we can," he told her. "Every year new opportunities seem to be opening up. We have to keep abreast of the times. For instance, there's the parish house—"
Leslie's arrival interrupted them. He was now dressed in white and wore a purple tie. Hilda came skipping across the porch and ran down the steps to him.
"You must wish us luck!" she called back over her shoulder.
"Just bushels of it!" Miss Whitcom called loudly after them.
Mrs. Needham had come to the door of the cottage. She stood surveying the situation so laboriously contrived. Having Marjory out there on the second step and her husband above in the rocker, with a wall of netting between them, did not somehow seem very auspicious. But she sighed and quickly withdrew; it was better than no situation at all. She thought of a text her husband had used once: "Be ye content with what the Lord giveth"—or something to that effect.
The Rev. Needham cleared his throat, again privately a little nervous. For no reason at all there had seemed to him a godless twang to her gracious, full-voiced "just bushels of it!"
Miss Whitcom recovered the threads for him."Yes, yes, Alfred. Quite so. You were saying something about a parish house."
"We hope to build one, in the spring ... if we can," he went on. "The money's partly raised. Of course it takes a long time—money doesn't seem very plentiful just now. But the parish house, when we get it"—his eyes lighted softly—"will add so much to our practical facilities."
She noted this softness, and it touched her a little. All the same she had some not very soothing things to say.
"Yes, I've no doubt. I'm quite amazed—I may say almost frightened, Alfred—at the development of the common-sense idea in America. You notice it especially, I suppose, coming in like this from a long absence. The change, I may say, quite smites one. It's baffling—it's bewildering! Good gracious, all the old, moony Victorianism gone! The whole ecclesiastical life of the community made over into something so dashing and up-to-date that I tell you frankly, Alfred, I'd be almost afraid to go into a church, for fear I might no longer know how to behave! It's amazing, Alfred—it really is—how 'practical' religion has grown. I tell you I never would have dreamed the church had such a future! I come back from my long sojourn in heathendom, and what do I find? I find religion all slicked up on to a strict business basis. At last the church of God has reached an appreciation of the value and importance of money! Everywhere you read of mammothcampaigns to raise millions of dollars. You have to have a real business head on your shoulders nowadays—don't you find it so, Alfred?—to be a minister. It's wonderful simply beyond belief! If Christ were to walk in suddenly I know he would have to show his card at the door. Iknowthey would ask him what he came about and how long the interview would take. Practical Christianity, you call it, don't you, Alfred?"
"Marjory, I...."
"Ah—now I've shocked you! Yes, I see I have. You mustn't mind my speaking out so bluntly. It's a way I've rather fallen into of late, I'm afraid. And when I say the new Christianity seems baffling to me, I mean it's quite splendidly baffling. Practical Christianity—what a fine idea it was! I wonder who thought of it. Yes, the church was always too exclusive. There can be no doubt of it. Practical Christianity—practical philanthropy—with the elaborate social service bureaus—they've just simply transformed everything. What a hustle and bustle—and what undreamed-of efficiency! Justthinkhow efficiently the church stood back of the war! And yet—you must pardon me—I somehow can't help feeling that even with all its slogans and its hail-fellow slaps across your shoulders.... You know"—she interrupted herself, in a way, but it was to pursue the same trend of thought—"I had quite an adventure on the train, coming from New York. I watched a Bishop retire! Oh, don't look so scandalized, Alfred. Of course it was quite all right."
"I hope so, Marjory," he murmured limply.
"I must tell you about the Bishop, Alfred. He was just the kind of man you would expect a Protestant bishop to be—his face, I mean. Calm—so very calm—and so gently yet firmly ecclesiastic! He wore an unobtrusive but stylish clerical costume of soft grey, and a little gold cross hung round his neck—you know. It struck me as never before how close the Episcopacy is snuggling up to Rome.... Oh, but I must tell you about the Bishop's going to bed!"
The Rev. Needham sat there almost breathless on his screened porch. His dismay might have struck one as speechless—at any rate, he was speechless.
"The Bishop," continued Miss Whitcom, "seemed very weary. There was a quiet, tired look in his eyes. He had his dinner early, sitting all alone at one of the little tables on the shady side. I ate my dinner at another of the little tables, and was quite fascinated. There was something so patrician about him. He was so subtly sleek! I didn't see him again until his berth was made up. But the making up, Alfred, was what fascinated me more than the Bishop himself! The porter was just fitting things together when I came in from my simple dinner. He spread down one mattress, and then—Alfred, I gasped to see it—he spread down another right on top of it!"
"Another, Marjory?" The minister appeared quite absorbed, almost fascinated.
"Had he taken the whole section?" she demanded.
To this no reply was ventured, and she continued:
"Or did he get them both as a kind of divine dispensation? Anyway, the bed, I must say, looked almost royal. There were four pillows instead of two, and they were given little special pats and caresses. All of a sudden I thought of Jacob's stone, Alfred. Wasn't it funny? I couldn't help it. And then I thought about 'the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head'—wasn't it curious? And then, onlythen, Alfred (you see how slow I am), it occurred to me that this must be a part of the new order of things! It came to me almost like an inspiration that the bed of the Bishop must have something to do with Practical Christianity. But I'm forgetting the last appealing touch, Alfred. The Bishop had a huge bag of golf sticks with him.They reposed all night in the upper berth!"
She ended her rather long story about the Bishop; and its precise interpretation remained a thing of doubt for the minister. Was she serious? Or was she only laughing? His bearing now argued a preparedness for either mood. But whatever her motive, in a moment Miss Whitcom appeared to have forgotten all about the Bishop and to be busy with other matters. The Rev. Needham sat on his own side of the netting and didn't know just what he ought to do or say. Whatwasto be done, what said? Fortunately, at this vaguely uncomfortable juncture,there came another, and this time a really important, interruption.
Steps were heard on the sparse planking which served for sidewalk between Beachcrest and the road to Crystalia.
The minister, rising quickly, began rubbing his hands together. "It must be Mr. Barry," he said.
Mrs. Needham appeared at the cottage door, as though bidden by some psychic intelligence. "Are they here?" she asked excitedly.
"I can't see yet, for the shrubbery. But I think I hear Louise's voice."
"Iseeher," Miss Whitcom advised them from her position on the steps. "And what's more," she added, while her sister hastily patted and preened herself, "I see him also!"
"Mr. Barry?"
"Um. Rather tall. Not exactly bad looking.... But," she added darkly, "they're walking ever so far apart!"
What did she mean by that? The Rev. Needham glanced a little nervously at his wife and unconsciously began humming the Invocation.
They arrived. Lynndal was presented to Mrs. Needham, then to Miss Whitcom. He was, of course, very warmly greeted by the minister.
Louise looked troubled....
The Dutch clock in the cottage living room set up a spiteful striking: one, two, three, four (each stroke tart and inimical), five, six, seven, eight (asthough from the very depths of its mechanism it would cry out against the terrific irony of life), nine, ten....
Lynndal had come all the way from Arizona.
"My gracious!" cried Miss Whitcom loudly and cordially, "I'vebeen in Arizona!"
"You have?"
"Rather! I started a cactus candy business there before you were...." She paused, then wholeheartedly laughed a defiance at the very notion of grey hairs. "No, I won't say it. I won't go back so far as that. For I do believe you're thirty, sir, if you're a day."
"I'm thirty-three," confessed Barry, looking older, for just a wistful moment, than his wont.
"Well, then, when you were a youngster, we'll say, Marjory Whitcom was working fourteen long hours a day in an absurd little factory on the fringe of the desert—slaving like all possessed to make a go of it. The idea was a good one."
"Yes," he agreed, "for we're turning out wonderful cactus candy now."
"I know it. The idea was corking. Alas, so many of my ideas have been corking! But every one at that time said it was absurd to think of making candy out of cactus, and no one would believe the Toltec legend which gave us our receipt. Ah, yes—there's many a slip...."
In her almost brazen way she cornered the new hero of Point Betsey—actually got between him and the others. But Miss Whitcom was shrewder, even, than she was brazen. You couldn't possibly deceive her when she had her reliable antennæ out. Had she not seen the landscape between them? Distinctlyseenit? Suspecting the imminence of a rather taut situation, this was her way of clearing the air.
Louise did not altogether fathom her aunt's subtlety; but she was grateful, seizing the occasion to disappear. She flew up to her room, flung herself on the bed, and nervously cried a little.
Lynndal was here. The long anticipated event had actually come to pass. But it wasn't the kind of event she had conceived. What was the trouble? Was he not as she remembered him? Yes, but with phantoms to dictate the pattern, how she had idealized him in the interim, and how the correspondence had served to build up in her mind a being of romance and fire which flesh and blood could never hope to challenge! Well, he had come, this stranger—with his quiet kindliness, his somehow sensed aura of patience, where she looked for passion.
Ghosts of the past played havoc with her heart, and she thought: "Can I give myself to this man? Can I be his, all his? Can I be his for ever and ever? Can I belong henceforth to him and no one else?"
The mood was one of general relaxation, however—though a relaxation she had, at an early hour, been far enough from anticipating. She reviewed theevents of the day thus far. She had waked at flush of dawn; had risen full of a gay expectation, and had gone out to meet her lover. He had come; she had met him and had forestalled his kiss. Now he was here. Ten o'clock. And her heart was in a curious state of panic.
But Barry, meanwhile, still down on the screened porch, was finding his fiancée's relative an intelligent and really engaging person. For her part, it had not taken long—with the cactus candy as bait—to lure him into enthusiasm over his dry-farming. She knew, it developed, very nearly as much about dry-farming as he did, and Barry, of course, knew nearly as much about it as there was to know.
The Rev. and Mrs. Needham, having gone on into the cottage living room, expecting that Barry, momentarily arrested, would follow, stood a moment conferring in discreet tones.
"What do you think of him, Anna?"
"He seems like a real nice sort, Alf. What doyouthink?"
"I've always admired Barry," he said proudly, a bit complaisantly. "During several years of business connection...."
"Yes, Alf he's certainly looked after our interests out West."
Sly little wrinkles of worry just etched themselves across the Rev. Needham's florid brow. Those interests in the West—heaven knew how much they meant! They kept the wolf from the door—a mildwolf, of course, and one that wouldn't really bite; but still a wolf. Yes, they sustained the Needham establishment in a kind of grand way—certainly in a way which wouldn't be possible on ministerial salary alone. And it was Lynndal Barry's initiative which had built the dam: the dam generated electricity and paid dividends. Yes, they certainly owed a great deal—though of course it was all on a sufficiently regular business basis—to Mr. Barry.
"He's a fine, fine man—one of God's own noblemen, Anna. It's only to be hoped...."
"Hoped, Alf?" Anna was seldom able to supply, off-hand, what one groped for in one's perplexity.
"That Louise," he began a little impatiently, "—that Louise...."
"Why, whereisshe?" asked Mrs. Needham, looking suddenly around.
Ah, where indeed?
The Rev. Needham experienced an uncomfortable shivery sensation in his stomach. Still, there was no reason other than what Marjory had said about their walking rather far apart. What did she mean? What did she ever mean? Ah, Marjory....
They looked at her. Yes, she had certainly captured Mr. Barry. Poor Marjory had a way....
"I wonder," sighed the Rev. Needham—a little ponderously to conceal an inner breathlessness. "I wonder...."
"What, Alf?"
He shook himself, looking dimly horrified."Nothing, Anna." What he wondered was whether his wife's sister had ever fallen by the wayside....
"Alf," whispered Anna, on the point of slipping upstairs to make sure for the last time that the visitor's room was quite ready, "how did you two get on?"
"I can't say very well," he answered with an inflection of nervous vagueness. "It was almost all about a Bishop on the train. Anna, I'm—I'm afraid it's no use. You know there are people in the world that seem destined never to understand each other...."
"Oh, Alf—she's so good-hearted!"
"That may be true," he replied, "but in Tahulamaji I'm beginning to be convinced she led—that she may almost have led...."
"Oh, Alf!"
"And she'd forgotten...."
"What?"
He spoke with troubled petulance: "My denomination!"
When Miss Whitcom learned, as she did directly, that Mr. O'Donnell was at the Elmbrook Inn, down at Crystalia, she emphatically changed colour. However much she might like to deny it, a fact was a fact. And in addition to that, her talk, for at least ten seconds, was utterly incoherent. She simply mixed the words all up, and nothing she said made any sense at all. Of course she quickly regained her equilibrium and made a playful remark about "having had all that letterwriting trouble for nothing." But it mustvery plainly and unequivocally be set down that throughout those first ten seconds her colour was high, her coherence at zero.
The ensuing hour at Beachcrest passed quietly, despite the fact that every one seemed moving at a high rate of tension.
Mrs. Needham spent a considerable portion of the time in conference with Eliza. The advent of the grocer's boy occasioned the usual excitement. It must be understood that these arrivals mean ever so much more in the wilderness than they do in town. In town, supposing there is a certain item missing, you merely step to the phone and give your tradesman polite hell. But on Point Betsey there were no such resources possible. They did not even have electric lights, and it was merely possible, when things went wrong, to explode to the boy (which never did any good), or to explode in a grander yet still quite as futile way to the world at large. Fortunately, this morning (the morning of this most momentous day!) the supplies arrived in relatively excellent condition.
The Rev. Needham, pacing up and down alone in the living room, paused nervously now and then to heed the muffled sounds issuing from sundry quarters of the cottage: the squeaky opening or closing of doors, which might somehow have a meaning in his life; the shuffle of steps (maybe portentous) across the sanded boards.... And most especially he pricked his ears—those small, alert ears of his, that were perpetually prepared for the worst—when thethings came from the store. It would be horrible, with guests in the house, to have a short supply; although of course here again, as in the case of the pancakes, he was concerning himself outside his own department. But even if these responsibilities of the kitchen didn't really rest on his shoulders, nevertheless the Rev. Needham listened as each item was pronounced, upon its emergence from the huge market basket.
Coffee, cheese, eggs—eggs, ah! we must look at them. One broken? Well, we should be thankful for eleven sound ones. Housekeeping, especially housekeeping in a cottage, develops a wonderful and luminous patience. This patience—like mercy, an attribute of God Himself—may even sometimes lead one to the tracing of quite Biblical applications. There were twelve disciples in the beginning, yet one of them, in the stress of events....
Bread, celery, carrots, frosted cookies.Where was the roast?The Rev. Needham's heart stood still. He halted, petrified with horrid fear. The roast, the roast! Thank God they found it, down at the bottom of the basket. Oh, thankGod! The pacing was resumed.
Up and down, up and down. One would have perceived here, so far as externals went, merely a quiet, middle-aged clergyman strolling in his home. Yet in the cottage living room this clergyman and this angry Dutch clock together synthesized contemporary events. "Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble!" tickedthe clock sharply. And each step in the Rev. Needham's pacing seemed a question. As the years crept by, broadening vision seemed not very materially to be quieting the good man's fidgets and perturbations. It seemed merely to give them longer tether; for his unsettled state was organic. It would never be really otherwise. Religion, science, feeling, thought, reason—all alike, in their several directions, seemed impotent to anchor him. The sea was too deep. He might, of course,callhimself anchored; but alas, the cruel little demons of doubt and quandary were bound, sooner or later, to insinuate themselves back into his heart. His walk was groping, indecisive. Each step was a question: "Whither? Why? How long? What is best? What is best?What is best?"
Miss Whitcom stood meditatively before the somewhat wavy mirror in her little room. She was pondering past, present, future. Also, she was acknowledging that grey hairs had perceptibly multiplied since O'Donnell last saw her. Would he notice them? And if he did? Well? She contemplated herself and her life in the wavy mirror.
Beyond his own three-quarters partition, Barry happened at the same moment to be standing before a mirror also—as men do sometimes, who would be sure to deny the charge were it publicly preferred against them. Yes, he was getting along. Not inany senseold, of course. To some a man of thirty-three seems still a young man. He tried to look at it that way. Still thirty-three was thirty-three. And Louise.... She was young, so young—and fresh, and sweet, and adorable.... His quiet eyes misted a moment as he thought of her. And for her sake he could wish himself one of those fabulous princes we read of in childhood. Ah, yes—a kind of prince—just for her sake! He regarded himself in the glass solemnly and critically. There were undeniable lines of salient maturity in his face; and princes, that was sure, never had any lines at all. So young, so sweet, so charming! He sighed and went about unpacking his things. That he should win her—that he should win this dear girl for his wife ...!
"I have done nothing to deserve such happiness as this," he said softly. "In all my life, nothing, nothing!"
And then he took a ring out of a little box and gazed at it. And when he had gazed at it a long time, he put it back in the box and put the box in his pocket.
Louise, in the seclusion of her room, no longer wept, though she still lay on the bed. Tears had relieved the strain, and her heart was not so burdened. Slowly reviving, she lay in a sort of half pleasant lethargy—not thinking, exactly, nor even actually feeling, for the moment. Tears are like suave drugs: under their mystic persuasion life may assume thelovely softness of a mirage. But the softness is fleeting. It rests and it is gone. It is like false dawn. Or it is like a dream of light when the night is blackest.
Marjory and Anna met outside the cottage in a little rustic bower where there was a hammock, and where the Rev. Needham had constructed, with his own hands, a clumsy and rather unstable rustic bench. It had taken him nearly all one summer to build this bench. The clergyman had perspired a great deal, and gone about with a dogged look. They were all mightily relieved when the task was at last completed. It seemed to simplify life.
Mrs. Needham sat on the rustic bench now, fanning herself with her white apron. Her face was flushed, her manner a little wild. She and Eliza had reached the agonizing conclusion that the raisins, indispensable to the Indian meal pudding, hadn't come, only to discover the little package lying out on the path where it had slipped from the grocer boy's basket. The pudding was saved, but what a shock to one's whole system!
"Well, Anna," said her sister, dropping fearlessly into the hammock. None but newcomers possessed that sublime faith in hammock ropes!
"I declare!" returned Anna. "Whew!"—her apron moving rapidly—"So warm!"
"Well, have you been charging up hillsides, or racing Alfred on the beach?"
Mrs. Needham looked a little startled at the irreverent allusion. "Oh, no, only planning with Eliza, and—"
"You find Eliza a treasure, don't you?"
"Yes, she's very capable."
"I suppose a maid's capability must take on a special lustre in the wilderness. Don't you sometimes fancy you see a faint halo over Eliza's head? You people in this luxurious country have become so dependent, I don't know what youwoulddo if there should ever be a general strike!"
"No, I don't know either," admitted Mrs. Needham. "Eliza talks of going back. It's so quiet up here—girls don't like it. We've raised her twice. I really don't know what's going to be the end of the help question. And wages ...!" She raised her eyes to the heavens.
A short silence followed. Marjory swung gently back and forth in the hammock. She might have been pronounced an eloquent embodiment of perfect calm; and yet her heart was curiously bumping about.
"Anna," she asked slowly, "do you remember Barrett O'Donnell?"
Her sister looked at her queerly a moment. "Some friend, Marjory?" For Marjory had had, in her time, so many friends!
"You'll remember him, I know, when you seehim," she nodded. And then she continued: "He's here."
"Here?"
"Well," her sister laughed, "not quite on the Point, but at Crystalia."
"Really?"
"Dear old Barrett! I wonder...."
"Marjory," the other asked, with an odd effect of conscious shrewdness, "is he—is Mr. O'Donnelltheman?"
"For goodness sake,whatman, Anna?"
"Why, I always felt," her sister replied quaintly, "that there was one man, all through the years—'way from the time we stopped telling each other secrets...."
Marjory laughed loudly. But she seemed touched also. "It's a long time, isn't it, since we stopped telling secrets?"
And Anna sighed, for perhaps her retrospect, if less exciting, was even longer than her sister's.
The two sat, after that, a little while without speaking. Then Anna's large round face assumed a truly brilliant expression.
"Marjory!" she cried.
"Well?"
"You say he's here?"
"Um, though it seems impossible to credit such a thing. Perhaps it's all a myth. He's at the Elmbrook Inn. Is there," she whimsically faltered, "—is there honestly such a place?"
"Marjie, I mean to have him up!"
"Anna—you mean here?"
"Forluncheon!"
In their excitement the two ladies were really all but shouting at each other. They realized it and smiled; sank to quieter attitudes both of bearing and speech.
"You think he'd come, don't you Marjie?"
"Come? Rather! Did you ever hear of a travelling man turning down a chance at home cooking?"
"Then I'm going to send right over and invite him. It will be real fun! I suppose," she embroidered, with as great an effect of roguery as she could enlist, "I suppose he's followed you up!"
"Obviously!" her sister replied, not apparently flustered in the least.
"Think of it!"
"Yes, it is rather dreadful, isn't it—especially at our ages!"
"I think it's kind of splendid, Marjie."
"Er—Alfred never was much of what you'd call the 'following' kind, was he Anna?"
"Well, I can't seem to remember. It seems to me once...."
"Oh, they'll nearly always followonce. It's keeping right on that seems hard. Of course," she added, "marriage puts a stop to all that sort of thing, doesn't it?"
"Yes, I suppose, in a sense...."
"Anna, there's just one way to keep 'em going:don't marry! Well, you see for yourself how it is."
"Yes, but it seems kind of dreadful to put it that way, don't it?"
"Dreadful? Oh, yes. Yes, of course it's dreadful. Still, it's rather nice."
"M-m-m," murmured Anna.
The philosophy of man's pursuit proved baffling. Here were two sisters who knew its bitters and its sweets. Yet it is doubtful if for either the bitter was all bitter and the sweet all sweet....
Hilda and Leslie came back from the tennis tournament. They were hot and in high spirits.
"Who won?" asked Mrs. Needham cheerily.
"We did, mama!"
"Three cheers!" cried Miss Whitcom, sitting up enthusiastically in the hammock.
"You never saw such excitement!" cried Hilda. "Most of the games were deuce for both sides before anybody got it!"
"Very close," was Leslie's simpler version.
Louise crept to her window and peered down into the bower. Hilda and Leslie were holding one racquet between them. It was his racquet and she was twining her fingers playfully in and out among the strings. A feeling of suffocation closed suddenly upon Louise's throat.
And just then Barry walked into the bower. He had been exploring the delightful wild endroit, andhoping that Louise might suddenly appear, with some lovely tangle of wood and vine for background. For he hailed from a country where trees are scarce, and one's backgrounds from childhood are sand, desert sand. His life had grown suddenly so rich....
Barry was welcomed. Mrs. Needham made room for him beside her on the rustic bench. She looked at him a little shyly, but with the ecstatic admiration, also, of one who would say: "This is the man we're giving our daughter to!"
But wherewasLouise? Her mother had scarcely seen her since the return from Frankfort. How strangely she was behaving.
"I believe she's lying down," said Barry, his tone warm with shielding tenderness and apology. "She got up so early to meet the boat. It was wonderful of her!"
The two young champions were giving Aunt Marjie a fuller account of the tennis combat. They still held the racquet between them. Both were flushed, keen-eyed, ridiculously happy. How soon he had recovered! Louise, up at her window, remembered Leslie's mood at an earlier hour. At dawn she might have had him. Now it was too late. "Oh, the injustice of it!" she cried, her hands crushing her breast. But as she looked down into his glowing face, she realized a swift sense of humiliation. "He didn't care after all," she told herself.
Hilda and Leslie evinced great willingness to convey the luncheon invitation to Barrett O'Donnell. Leslie, of course, volunteered to go, and Hilda, of course, said she simplywouldgo too. So off they raced, still holding the tennis racquet between them.
Louise watched them go. In her hand was the book she had bought in Frankfort. Suddenly, under stress of very violent emotion, she pressed it against her cheek.
Barry watched them out of sight. He was thinking of Louise. She had not yet kissed him. In his pocket was a little box, and inside the little box was a ring.
Marjory also watched them go. She sighed even as she smiled: "Another young thing, just starting out—boy-crazy. So futile." But she smiled more radiantly in spite of herself, and the other valuationwouldslip in: "So sweet!"