Dear Hugh,The end has come for Alfred. I am sure you will not be surprised to hear it. I have known for months it must come and have braced myself to bear it. I am glad he always let me know the inside of his affairs, and, from the time his illness started, I set myself to learn the business so I could take his place. Alfred’s partner, Mr. Ferry, I never wholly liked and trusted. I do not feel sure of his loyalty, and for the sake of my children I feel I must guard every step of my business way. I do not say this to trouble you, or make you feel you must come to me. You could not help me by coming, and it is a long, expensive journey. I promise to tell you if I see any definite cause for anxiety. Don’t worry about me, dear. I am well and so are both the children; but let me hear from you soon.Your loving sisterCarol
Dear Hugh,
The end has come for Alfred. I am sure you will not be surprised to hear it. I have known for months it must come and have braced myself to bear it. I am glad he always let me know the inside of his affairs, and, from the time his illness started, I set myself to learn the business so I could take his place. Alfred’s partner, Mr. Ferry, I never wholly liked and trusted. I do not feel sure of his loyalty, and for the sake of my children I feel I must guard every step of my business way. I do not say this to trouble you, or make you feel you must come to me. You could not help me by coming, and it is a long, expensive journey. I promise to tell you if I see any definite cause for anxiety. Don’t worry about me, dear. I am well and so are both the children; but let me hear from you soon.
Your loving sister
Carol
Hugh looked up. John Ogden’s eyes were shining.
“There’s only one Carol,” he said.
“I’m a nice support for a sister to lean on,” said Hugh bitterly. “And this letter is two weeks old.”
“I will attend to that with a wire,” said Ogden.
“You’ll tell her not to write to me, I suppose,” said Hugh with a sneer.
“No, I’ll tell her to write in my care, as you are recovering from a slight illness.”
“I told you, in the first place, what Carol would think of this whole performance.”
“I shall convert her,” declared Ogden. “I shall write to her to-night. Eat your luncheon, Hugh, and go on trusting in me.”
“Ho! Trusting!” muttered Hugh.
John Ogden continued to reassure his protégé, telling him that he would be right behind him if there was anything he could do at any time for Carol, and Hugh was fast clearing the dainty tray when, replying to a knock at his door, Miss Frink walked in.
Hugh noticed at once that she was wearing that triumphant expression which portended some contribution to his well-being; and, indeed, she was at once followed by the bearer of a handsome piece of furniture which proved to be the latest artistic shape, and most expensive wood, that can encase a musical machine.
“Music is good for him, Mr. Ogden,” she explained when the polished beauty was set against the wall and the man had left. “Hugh is very fond of music, and I wanted him to be able to have it whenever he wished, and choose his own pieces.”
“Oh, Miss Frink!” exclaimed Hugh, not joyfully, rather with an accent of despair.
“Yes, I know,” she responded, opening the door of the record depository. “He doesn’twant me to get him anything; but for my own sake I ought to have one of these in the house.”
“That is a corker, Miss Frink,” said Ogden, coming forward to make an admiring examination of the Console.
“You pick out something for him,” said Miss Frink. “Where’s Miss Damon?”
“I’m here.” The nurse appeared from the dressing-room and removed Hugh’s tray while Ogden put an opera selection on the machine and started it to playing.
They all listened in silence to the Pilgrims’ Chorus, and Miss Frink watched Hugh’s face, noting that none of that stimulation which the nurse had described as the effect of music appeared upon it.
“Turn it off,” she said brusquely. “He doesn’t like that piece. We’ll try another.”
“Why, yes, I do,” said Hugh when quiet again reigned. “You make me feel deucedly ungrateful.”
“Don’t bother to be grateful, boy,” said Miss Frink imperturbably. “I want you to have what you like. I let the clerk pick out these records and they’re here on trial. Back goes Wagner. Perhaps you’re like the man who heard ‘Tannhäuser’ and said he thought Wagner had better have stuck to his sleeping-cars.”
“I’ll tell you, Miss Frink,” said Miss Damon in her demure voice. “You have the catalogue there, and I think, if you would let Mrs. Lumbard come up and make some selections—she seems to understand Mr. Stanwood’s taste—”
“Bright thought!” exclaimed Miss Frink. “Miss Damon, go over to her room and get her, will you?”
No sooner said than done; and, as soon as the nurse had disappeared, Hugh spoke: “Miss Damon has to leave this afternoon, Miss Frink.”
That lady faced him with a slight frown. “I don’t know about her having to,” she returned.
“Yes, a very sick woman has sent for her,” said Hugh. His voice suddenly burst from his control, “And I can’t stand it any longer!”
“I didn’t know you didn’t like her.”
“You know I do like her,” returned Hugh roughly, “but you know I’ve been trying to get you to let her go for a week.”
“And if you will allow me,” said Ogden, with his most charming and cheery manner, “I will stay a few days and chaperon Hugh over the stairs a few times, enough to give you confidence—he seems to have it plus—”
Miss Frink gave her rare laugh. “That boy is a joke, Mr. Ogden. He spends his dayscounting my pennies, I do believe. He sees me bankrupt. All right, you stay and Miss Damon shall go.” And here the nurse and Adèle came into the room.
The latter stared greedily at the object of her curiosity. Flushed with his recent resentment, and robed in the small crimson jewels glinting against their lustrous black background, he sat there, and she devoured him with her eyes.
“Mr. Stanwood, this is—” began Miss Frink, when Hugh, pushing on the arms of his throne, sprang to his feet with a smile of amazement.
“Ally!” he exclaimed.
Miss Frink stared. Another strange name for her incubus. She was no more surprised than the object of Hugh’s laughing recognition. Mrs. Lumbard gazed at him for a delighted, puzzled space.
“I do believe you don’t know me. Why should you?” he cried. “This”—he grasped his robe—“is a little different from the canteen.”
“Hughie!” exclaimed Adèle, and hurried forward to take both his hands.
“She made music for us over there, Miss Frink. I ought to have known it when I heard her yesterday. Nobody can hit the box quite like Ally.”
“Why do you call her Ally?” Miss Frink found voice to ask.
“Short for Albino,” laughed Hugh. “Of course, Ally.”
Miss Frink’s heart quickened. “In a single night.” The sad statement recurred to her at once; but it was characteristic that she postponed this consideration.
“Here is another chance for you to be useful, Adèle,” she said. “Take this catalogue over to Mr. Stanwood and between you make out a list of his preferences. Give me three numbers right away.—No, don’t either of you say, ‘Do you remember,’ until I’ve got those numbers. I suppose you can find some of the tunes you had over in France.”
“I don’t want one of them,” said Hugh emphatically. “Not much. That thing you played yesterday, Ally.”
“Oh, yes, that will be here, and other selections from the same opera.”
Meanwhile Miss Frink was exchanging words with Miss Damon, and, as the nurse left to get into her street dress, Miss Frink went to the phone and called a number.
“Is this you, Millicent? This is Miss Frink. Hold the wire. Now, then, Adèle?”
Mrs. Lumbard came near with the catalogueand gave three numbers in turn. These Miss Frink repeated over the wire. “Have you a pencil there? All right. You’ve written them? All right. Now take a cab, please, and get these records. If you can’t find them one place, go to another. Have them charged to me, and drive out here and ask to be shown up to the White Room.”
She hung up. “You can go on making a longer list now. Perhaps Mr. Ogden will help you. Excuse me while I see Miss Damon.”
Miss Frink left the room, and Adèle and Hugh immediately fell into reminiscence, John Ogden looking on with an expression not wholly in keeping with the mirthful chuckles that accompanied their resurrected jokes.
“And what’s doing now, Ally? Are you a lady of leisure?” asked Hugh at last.
“Yes; I am visiting Aunt Susanna for a little while, but I’ve got to go at something to earn my living. Do you know Farrandale well, Mr. Ogden?”
“Why—a—pretty well,” returned that gentleman who had suddenly been galvanized by seeing that the young woman had unconsciously picked up a letter lying near her, and was twisting it nervously in her hands. It was Hugh’s letter from Carol.
“Do you think I would have a chance of getting enough music pupils here to make my bread and butter, with occasionally a little jam?” Mrs. Lumbard’s eyes sparkled at the welcome bit of life that had come her way, and she felt jubilant that the drudgery of first moves in an acquaintance had been done away with in the case of herself and “Hughie.” So his name was Stanwood. He was one of the crowd of “Buddies” who doubtless would all remember her, though her stay at their canteen had not been long, and only Hugh’s exceptional looks had marked him out for her remembrance. She hoped his pleasure at seeing her and his enjoyment of her music would weigh in her favor with the difficult relative she had stormed but not conquered. That awful break about her hair! How would she get over that?
“Why, yes, it is a flourishing little town,” returned Ogden, coming nearer, with hungry eyes on the letter. “If there was some way to give them a chance to hear you play.”
Here Miss Frink returned, and Hugh accosted her.
“Ally says she wants to teach music, Miss Frink. You’re always doing nice things for people. Why not let her give a recital here inthe house and show the Farrandale folks what she’s made of?”
Miss Frink drew near to his chair, attracted by the interested expression of his face, a vital look she had not before seen.
“You would like that, eh?” she returned indulgently. “You want to give a party? I’ve never given a party,” she added thoughtfully. “I’ve never had the courage.”
“Mr. Ogden and I will back you up.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Ogden, edging nearer the tortured letter, but even then unable to get as close to it as Miss Frink was.
“Mr. Hugh Stanwood Sinclair,” stood out clearly on the envelope, and Ogden could see that its owner was miles away from the consciousness of it.
He slid around Miss Frink’s back. “Excuse me, Mrs. Re—Lumbard, my letter, please.”
Adèle flattened the bent thing quickly. “Oh, pardon me,” she said, and put it in the outstretched hand. Mechanically, and from the force of fixed habit to see everything, especially those things which it was desired she should not see, she glanced at the letter in passing it; but her attention was quickly absorbed in Hugh’s further suggestions regarding publicity for her, and she was divided between hopeand fear as to the effect on Miss Frink of his interest.
Miss Frink continued to stand there, looking down absorbedly into the boy’s gay face, and listening quietly. Hugh laughed and joked with Ogden, planning how they would be ushers on the great occasion, and she stood still, watching him.
Adèle started to rise. With a motion of her hand Miss Frink prevented her. “Sit still, Adèle.”
Downstairs a little later Leonard Grimshaw left the study intending to go up to his room.
Stebbins was just opening the front door as he came through the hall. Millicent Duane entered. She bowed to the secretary, but addressed herself to the servant.
“Will you please show me to the White Room?” she said.
Grimshaw, after a patronizing return of her greeting, was moving toward the stairway, but now he paused. “What did you wish, Miss Millicent?”
“Miss Frink sent me for some records and asked me to bring them here to the White Room.”
“Records?” Grimshaw looked dazed. “I thought I heard a band in the street a fewminutes ago. I wonder if Miss Frink—” He paused and fixed his round spectacles on Millicent as if he suspected her of being in some plot.
The girl turned again toward Stebbins.
“You don’t need to go up. I’ll take them,” the secretary came forward and held out his hand for the parcel.
“Thank you, but I want to do just what Miss Frink asked me to.” The girl clasped her package closer.
Grimshaw smiled disagreeably. “The White Room is a very attractive place, eh?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” returned the girl, her cheeks reddening at his manner. “I only know that I feel I would rather do exactly what Miss Frink asked. She may have a further errand for me.”
The secretary motioned to Stebbins to go.
“I will take you, then,” he said shortly.
He preceded her up the stairs in silence, thinking his own disturbed thoughts about that band in the street, and poor broken Miss Frink’s obsession.
Arrived at the door of the White Room, they could hear a buzz of voices within, and a man’s laugh. The secretary knocked punctiliously, and Miss Frink herself opened the door.
“That’s a good child,” she said to Millicent.“You made good time. I think you must have read ‘A Message to Garcia.’ Come in and meet Prince Charming.”
Millicent, her cheeks stinging in the sudden understanding of the secretary’s gibe, yielded up her package, and with wide eyes beheld the smiling face above the dressing-gown. She impulsively took a step backward and Adèle’s lip curled at her expression.
“No, no,” said Miss Frink, “come right in. That’s what she called you, Hugh, before she even knew of your existence. Prince Charming. Now see if you can live up to it.”
Hugh rose, and, though his mind was still echoing with their jokes about the recital, this surprising statement fixed his attention on the blushing, unsmiling girl with the startled eyes, whom Miss Frink was drawing forward. “Miss Duane, Prince Charming,” she said.
The two young things gazed at each other. Poor little intense, conscious Millicent could only nod, her eyes frightened and fascinated.
Hugh nodded, too, smiling. “A case of mistaken identity, Miss Duane,” he said, and dropped back into his chair.
Millicent noted the proximity to it of Mrs. Lumbard’s, as she gave a little nod toward Adèle and breathed her name.
“Mr. Ogden,” said Miss Frink, without releasing the girl’s hand, “this is my friend Miss Duane; no, don’t go, Millicent. I want you to stay and hear these things you’ve brought. Perhaps we shall want to send them back.”
Leonard Grimshaw had remained in the room, and stood sphinx-like, his eyes first on the new piece of furniture and then on Adèle, who appeared to be chatting with Hugh in the manner of an old friend.
Mrs. Lumbard noted his surprise.
“I don’t believe I told you I worked in France, Leonard,” she said. “Imagine my amazement to find that Mr. Stanwood is one of my old Buddies.”
The secretary received this information with a stiff bow.
“Sit down, Grim. Never mind me,” said Miss Frink. “Mr. Ogden is teaching me how to run this new plaything. Here”—she carried the unwrapped records to Hugh—“choose your opening number.”
Adèle, with her head close to his, pointed out the desired ragtime. Miss Frink took it back to the machine.
Hugh looked at Millicent. Her fair hair was shining palely under her blue hat. Her cheekswere glowing. Her eyes were fixed on the music-machine. How could Miss Frink have been so cruel! She could feel the secretary’s scornful spectacles, and Mrs. Lumbard’s cold glance. This fashionable Mr. Ogden. Probably he was contemptuous, too, of the countrified errand-girl so ready to admire Prince Charming.
The music started. As it went on, Miss Frink, staring at her new purchase, began to frown in a puzzled way as if it had maliciously betrayed her, and was chuckling. She finally turned toward Hugh. His face was beaming. He had risen and was sitting on the arm of his chair swinging one of his big satin-shod feet, while he softly beat his knee with one hand.
He looked so handsome and happy she glanced at Adèle. “Wicked and happy!” was her quick mental exclamation. On, to Millicent, her gaze roved. Plenty of color was there, but no expression. There was no face more naturally expressive. Miss Frink began to suspect that she had embarrassed the girl.
The strains ceased, and “silence like a poultice” fell.
“Bully!” cried Hugh, gayly snapping his fingers. “That’s the stuff.”
“You liked that?” exclaimed Miss Frink. “You like to be cross-eyed and pigeon-toed?”
John Ogden laughed. “He’ll never let you send that one back, Miss Frink. The youth of to-day have reverted to savagery.”
“My vote is that it should go back,” declared Leonard Grimshaw. The sphinx had spoken, and in a voice that cracked.
“Oh, we’re in the minority, Grim,” sighed Miss Frink.
“I don’t believe so,” he said, making one last stand for the circumspection and decency of the house. “Mr. Stanwood and Mrs. Lumbard find it to their taste evidently, but Mr. Ogden I’m sure does not. I think it is simply disgusting, and if Millicent Duane is honest she will say the same.”
His heat amused Hugh, who caught the glance which the young girl, appealed to, turned to him, involuntarily. He leaned forward and held her there. She could not free herself quickly from that laughing, questioning gaze.
Starting up from her chair she said: “I—I don’t believe I heard it—much.”
“Didn’t hear it!” exclaimed Miss Frink, putting her hands over her own suffering ears.
“I—Grandpa is waiting for me, Miss Frink. If you don’t need me any more—”
“No, child. I don’t need you. Thank you, and run along.”
Millicent swept the room with a vague, inclusive nod, and, going out into the hall, hurried to the stairs, and ran down. Her breath came fast, her eyes were dim and she stumbled. Some one behind her, unheard on the thick covering, caught her. She started and flung a hand across her eyes.
“Did you have your cab wait, Miss Duane?” asked John Ogden.
She glanced at him through the moisture. His face was seriously questioning. “No—I sent it away,” she replied indistinctly.
“If you don’t mind I’ll walk on with you a bit, then.” He took his hat and opened the door for her. “My favorite part of the day,” he added.
In silence they crossed the wide veranda, and when they were descending the steps Millicent spoke again: “It sounded very foolish, for me to say I didn’t hear that record.”
“Perhaps you are one of the fortunate people who can close their ears to what they don’t wish to hear.” They passed through the iron gates. “Or perhaps you didn’t want to take sides. I saw Mr. Stanwood trying to hypnotize you.”
Millicent met her companion’s kind smile. “Why did Miss Frink want to make me feel so foolish?” she burst out impetuously.
“I’m sure she didn’t wish to or mean to. You shouldn’t grudge her a little fun. I’m certain she doesn’t have much. What she said shouldn’t have been embarrassing. It was extremely mysterious, however.”
Millicent regarded her companion again, suspiciously; but his was a most reassuring face, and, besides, he had a number of gray hairs.
“She said,” he went on, “that you called Mr. Stanwood Prince Charming before you knew of his existence. Nothing in that to offend you, but a riddle of riddles all the same, to me.”
Ogden’s pleasant voice soothing her vanity made swallowing a much easier matter. “You see,” she hesitated, “I used to be in Ross Graham’s.”
“Long ago?” He glanced at her childlike profile.
“Yes.—About three days. Miss Frink bought something of me—and I said—it was fit for Prince Charming—and Miss Frink didn’t know about fairy tales.”
“I dare say not,” remarked Ogden.
“So I told her, and we—we got acquainted that way.”
“Not that gorgeous robe!” said Ogden, suddenly enlightened.
“Yes, that horrid dressing-gown!”
“Horrid? It’s a dream!”
“Yes, a nightmare.”
“What’s all this? What’s all this?”
“I didn’t know he was there—in Miss Frink’s house.”
“She said you didn’t.”
“I didn’t know it was for him.”
“She said so.”
Millicent of the glowing cheeks turned quickly on her companion; and he smiled into her disturbed eyes.
“There is only one explanation of Miss Frink’s remark causing you embarrassment,” he said.
“Oh, of course I know I ought to have said something bright, and funny, and careless, but I never am bright, and funny, and careless. What do you mean by explanation?”
“Oh, just that the—the disturbing fact was that you found you had hit the nail on the head: that hewasPrince Charming, you know.”
If Millicent’s cheeks could have gained a deeper hue it would have been there. Her temples grew rosy, and her lips parted. A little frown met her companion.
“Now, if it had been I that sat there sporting all those crimson jewels, I, with my high forehead, and silver threads among the gold, you would just have given a little sympathetic grin at Papa, and curtsied, and let it go at that.”
“Mr. Ogden,” with displeasure, “I am not so—”
“Just let me tell you, Miss Duane, so you’llthink better of him, that Prince Charming isn’t working at it as a profession at all. I never saw anybody whose good looks disturbed him less.”
“Mr. Ogden, do you suppose—”
“So I don’t want you to let it set you against him, or feel the way you did when you ran downstairs just now. By the way, Miss Duane, do you happen to be related to the Colonel Duane who has a war record? Very distinguished man. I’ve heard he lives in Farrandale.”
The speaker had the pleasure of watching the transformation in the transparent face, from bewildered resentment to eagerness.
“There!” he said suddenly, “I suspected you had a dimple. If I had been wearing that dressing-gown, I should have seen it sooner.”
“Why, it’s Grandpa. Colonel Duane is my grandfather.—Perhaps you knew it all the time, and that is the reason you’ve been so—so disrespectful in your talk.”
Ogden laughed. “Indeed, the fact should have made me far more respectful. I didn’t know it, but your pretty name brought up the association. I certainly should like to meet Colonel Duane.”
“Well, you’re going to,” said Millicent eagerly. “We live together and we have a garden. We live in one of Miss Frink’s houses,and when I used to be in Ross Graham’s—”
“Three days ago,” put in Ogden.
“Well, it seems three months. Then I had so little time with him; but now that I only have to get Miss Frink to sleep—”
“To sleep!”
“Not at night, you know. Just in the daytime. She has some one come and read to her, and now it’s me. It used to be another girl, but she bobbed her hair and lost the place. Poor Damaris! I do so wish I could get Miss Frink to let her have my position in the gloves, Miss Frink hates bobbed hair so. Do you think you might help, Mr. Ogden?”
“Anything I can do. Buy her some hair tonic, perhaps?”
Millicent laughed. “I may ask you to help,” she said earnestly. “We’re nearly there, Mr. Ogden, and I want to tell you before we meet Grandpa that I appreciate your kindness in seeing that I was unhappy and running after me. Mrs. Lumbard—do you know Mrs. Lumbard?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, she—even in that short time she made me feel I was in the way—and—and everything was wrong. I don’t want you to think I’m too stupid.”
Ogden met her appealing look. “I understand you very well,” he said.
They approached the little old house built before Farrandale had grown up.
“I’m so pleased that you appreciate Grandpa,” the girl went on. “You see Grandpa was a celebrated lawyer when he laid down his profession to go into that war. He is Somebody!”
Ogden perceived the white-haired figure in the garden. The old man had the hose in his hand and was sprinkling plants, shrubs and lawn.
When Ogden returned to the White Room, he found Hugh alone and rather impatient.
“Where did you disappear to?” inquired the boy.
“I eloped with that record-bearing peach.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Why, didn’t you see she was much disturbed in her mind?”
“She didn’t have pep enough to stand up against the cockatoo.”
“She had one object in life just then, and that was to get out of here.”
“We’re kindred spirits, then, even if she doesn’t care for jazz. Say, I’m going down to dinner, Ogden,” added the boy eagerly. “I’mgoing to get out of these infernal swaddling clothes—”
Ogden laughed. “There you are kindred spirits, too,” he said. “The peach has it in for that dressing-gown.”
Hugh glanced down over it. “That’s queer. You’d think a girl would just revel in it.”
“Probably she would if you hadn’t been wearing it.”
Hugh looked inquiring.
“Miss Frink ‘fussed’ her with all that Prince Charming stuff.”
The boy shook his head. “What was Miss Frink up to, anyway?”
“Why, Miss Duane used to be in Ross Graham’s—three days ago; and she sold your benefactress the royal robe, and told her it was fit for Prince Charming, not knowing whom it was for.”
“And that ‘fussed’ her?” asked Hugh incredulously. “Aren’t girls the limit? What did she care who it was for, so she made the sale?”
Ogden looked at his protégé quizzically. “Oh, she’s been to the movies.”
Hugh stared and scowled deeper. “Now, don’t you get bats in the belfry, too,” he said.
“Miss Duane has retired from business and is now reader-in-chief to Miss Frink.”
“So Ally told me. She tried for the job herself and was turned down, she says.”
“Really? You didn’t seem to realize that your friend was playing with that letter of Carol’s some time before I rescued it.”
“Well, why shouldn’t she?”
Ogden raised his eyebrows and smiled.
“Oh, shoot!” ejaculated Hugh gloomily, suddenly understanding. “Say, I ought to be writing to Carol.”
Ogden nodded. “I have just been sending her a full day-letter in your name, and you promised to write at once, and also asked her to write you in my care, as your plans are unsettled just now.”
“I’ll say they are!” said Hugh emphatically. He was thoughtful for a space. “Carol all alone,” he said presently. “I tell you, Mr. Ogden, it makes me feel like taking a brace and amounting to something. I read law the last year before the war. I’d like to go on with it. If Carol’s partner in the business is unreliable, I’d like to be able to attend to him.”
“I’ve been talking to an ex-lawyer to-day, one who has made his mark. Little Miss Duane’s grandfather. He is a veteran of the Cuban War. Colonel Duane. Perhaps he has his law library still.”
“He could steer me, anyway,” replied Hugh, looking interested—“if I should stay on in the town,” he added, looking away. After another pause he went on: “It was good fun to see Ally again and made everything seem more familiar.”
“How much do you know about Mrs. Reece-Lumbard?” asked Ogden.
Hugh laughed reminiscently. “Nothing except those twinkly fingers of hers. She tried some highbrow stuff on us at first—uplift, artistic, that kind; but when she found we walked out on her she changed. Great Scott, she could whoop it up, and we sang till the roof nearly lifted. I may have heard her name in those days, but if I did I’d forgotten it.”
“Well, she married Tom Reece,” said Ogden. “He was in the Medical Corps over there, and when they came home they had a baby with them, and Mrs. Reece, being a very gay lady, they had lots of trouble. She was shining in cabaret performances when I knew her, and last winter I learned that there was a divorce. To-day I asked her, when we were alone in the hall, about her baby girl, and she said she hadn’t brought her, fearing a child in the house might annoy her Aunt Susanna.”
“Well, that was considerate, wasn’t it?”returned Hugh, in defense against Ogden’s manner. “A woman never gets any sympathy.”
“The courts didn’t give Mrs. Reece any,” said Ogden dryly. “I knew that Dr. Reece was given the custody of the little girl. I just wanted to see what she would say about it.”
Hugh’s brow clouded. “I’m sorry to hear of that mess,” he replied. “Is that why you think she is deceiving Miss Frink about herself? People that live in glass houses, you know.”
Ogden smiled. “Yes, I’m not going into the stone business at present.”
The dinner that night was what Adèle called a really human meal. Miss Frink sat at the head of the table and her secretary at the foot. He did the honors in a highly superior manner. Adèle sat at his right and the two men guests were placed, one each side the hostess.
Miss Frink looked thoughtfully at Hugh, dressed in the new suit she had paid for. He was happy in his promotion from the invalid chair, and responded to Mr. Ogden’s amusing stories, while Adèle put aside dull care and told canteen reminiscences of her own, some of them sufficiently daring to draw upon her the gaze of the neighboring spectacles.
After dinner they all adjourned to the drawing-room,and Miss Frink, for the first time in all the years, saw its dignified furnishings as background to a social gathering. Adèle played, and Hugh sauntered up and down the room, singing when the familiar melodies tempted him. Miss Frink’s eyes followed him with a strange, unconscious hunger.
When at last Mrs. Lumbard sought her pillow, she was too excited for sleep, and the little spurt of jollity faded into the dull consideration of her situation. Why had handsome Hughie made that break about her hair! She reviewed all that had been said in his first recognition of her. She saw herself again, sitting and nervously twisting that letter. She felt something inimical in Ogden. He had known Dr. Reece. He wanted to get his letter away from her. There, in the darkness of her unquiet pillow, she saw the twisted envelope again. It was not his letter at all. She had flattened it out and seen that it was Hughie’s.
Mr. Hugh Stanwood Sinclair. She saw the address again. Sinclair. Why? when Hughie’s name was Stanwood? Why was the address Sinclair? Her head lay quieter as she meditated. Mr. Ogden had been anxious to get that letter! He had made her feel rebuked for twisting it. She lay a long time awake.
When Miss Frink went to her room that night, two red spots burned in her cheeks. She was a creature of habit and proud of it. Her maid had the bed turned down and prepared for the night as usual. A silk negligée hung over the back of a chair. The silver carafe of ice water with its cut-glass tumbler stood by the side of the bed. Her programme would be to slip off the black satin gown, don the negligée, go to the lighted bathroom and wind the waves of her front hair back on their crimping pins, and so proceed to the point of extinguishing the lights, getting into bed, and going at once to sleep.
The mental picture behind those red spots was of the same envelope which was absorbing Adèle’s meditations. It had lain directly in the line of Miss Frink’s bi-focals when Mrs. Lumbard gave it its final flattening. Miss Frink crossed the room to where the enlarged portrait of her girlhood’s chum hung on the wall.
“Come on, Alice, let’s talk it over as we used to,” she said, and with a quick movementunhooking the picture, she sat down in the nearest chair with it in her lap, and gazed into the eyes. “I want to look at a friend. I’m seventy-odd, Alice, and you’re still my only one: the only being who has ever loved me.” She paused in her soliloquy to swallow something. “I’m not going to make a tragedy of it. I could have adopted a child after Philip disappointed me. I could have had some one to love me, but I liked business better than domesticity, so I made my own bed and I’m not going to complain of it. You told me I was all wrong about Philip, wrong in not giving him his freedom, wrong to quarrel with him, wrong to cut myself off from him, I remember now everything you said, though I haven’t thought of it for years. The book was closed. Nothing could have surprised me more than to have it opened again. But, Alice”—Miss Frink’s hand pressed the sides of the picture frame until it hurt—“it is only my money. That is the humiliation. I couldn’t believe that I would feel it so.” The soliloquizing lips quivered. “Your Adèle—if she is yours, something in me cries out all the time that she is not—what interest would she have had in an Aunt Susanna who was old and poor? She fawns on me with meek, loving expressionsas if I could be fooled. Forgive me, dear, but you wouldn’t like her, either. There’s Grim, of course; it’s a religion with him to look after me, but he hasn’t any natural, spontaneous interest in his fellow-beings. The calf of gold rules his consciousness. He’s narrow, narrow as I am myself. Oh, Alice, if I had you here! If I could only do it over again and do it better.” For the first time in years tears stood in Miss Frink’s eyes. She winked them away quietly, and fell into meditation. Presently, her thoughts seething through the past and present, her lips moved again:
“John Ogden is a finished rascal; polished, suave, a real society man. Full of charm he is, and I wonder how he ran into the boy, and persuaded him. I’m hurt, Alice. Hugh’s old Aunt Sukey is hurt;—but it’s better to be hurt than dead, and he didn’t know who he was saving, I have that comfort. That was no part of John Ogden’s plan; and it makes the boy more mine than Ogden’s. He hasn’t been happy a minute since he came, and the why is plain. He hates the double-dealing, while Ogden thinks it is the best joke going. I hate lies, Alice”—with sudden heat. “You know I always did; and the humiliation—why does it cut me so that the boy, my ownflesh and blood that I’m mightily near to loving, has cold-bloodedly entered into some plan that has only my money for its object? I’ve been a dupe; and, of course, any young person would chuckle over my sympathy for his delirious longing for Aunt Sukey. Alice!”—suddenly Miss Frink clutched the picture frame again—“that girl—that photograph—is his mother. He said Aunt Sukey opposed her tooth and nail, and I asked him if I could do anything. He said it was too late.”
Miss Frink let the picture slide down into her lap while she followed this train of thought and looked into space. Presently she propped the frame up again between her hands.
“Of course, Alice, that single night in which your much-married granddaughter’s hair turned white might have come before she went over to France. I’m about as mean to the girl in my thoughts as anybody could be, and she has made the boy look really happy for the first time in all these weeks. I ought to give her some credit for that. It was pleasant down in the drawing-room to-night through her means; but the iron had entered into my soul, and I felt inside the way Grim looked outside. Poor Grim, he is not a society man. He doesn’t want our habits changed. Now, I’m upagainst another fight, Alice, girl. It’s a long time since I’ve had to fight. It’s a temptation to say to them all—Ogden, the boy, and Adèle—‘I know you through and through. I’m not the dupe you think me. Get away all of you and never let me see you again.’ But, Alice, what’s the use of living seventy years unless you’ve learned to do nothing impulsively? I look right back to my treatment of Philip Sinclair and recall the things you said to me then. I shall let you help me, Alice. I will take the advice that I scorned thirty years ago. Good-night, Alice, girl.”
Miss Frink didn’t sleep much that night, and the next morning, the weather having made a sudden start summerward, she felt a new chapter of her life beginning.
Hugh came down to breakfast with John Ogden, and Adèle was ready with new ideas for her recital. Miss Frink allowed herself to be carried along on the tide of their talk until breakfast was over.
“What a lovely morning. Your grounds are charming,” said Ogden.
“Everything is blooming,” returned the hostess. “Let us make a little tour of inspection.”
She led the way through the small conservatoryattached to the dining-room, and out upon the lawn.
“How beautifully this place is kept,” said Ogden.
“Yes. I have so few amusements,” assented his companion.
“Thoroughness is your watchword, I’m sure.”
“I believe it is,” she agreed. “Whether I was doing right or wrong, I always seem to have made a clean sweep of it.”
Ogden regarded her in genuine admiration. “All your thoughts must be of satisfaction, I should think.”
Miss Frink tossed her head with a dissenting gesture. “You’d think wrong then, man. Let us sit down here awhile.”
She led the way to a rustic seat under an elm tree. “Shan’t I go in and get a wrap for you?” asked Ogden. The prospect of a tête-à-tête with his hostess was not without its qualms.
“No, no. This sun is hot.”
“So is this one,” thought Ogden, but he smiled with his usual air of finding the present situation inspiring.
“I’d like to know how you came to take such an interest in Hugh,” began his companion without prelude.
“Through liking his father, and loving his sister,” replied Ogden glibly.
“Eh? His sister?”
“Yes, his sister Carol. She couldn’t see me,” continued Ogden cheerfully. “She married a man named Morrison and went to Colorado. Hugh received word yesterday that her husband has died. She is left with two little children” (Miss Frink began to stiffen mechanically, and Ogden saw it), “but she is a young woman after your own heart. Her husband’s illness was a long one, and she learned his business in order to carry it on, and she won’t allow Hugh to come out there or worry himself about her.”
Miss Frink gazed at him with unconscious fixedness. “Yes. His mother’s name was Carol,” was the thought behind her stiff lips.
“Hugh couldn’t seem to find himself when he came back from France, and was rather down in the mouth when I got hold of him, so I thought. He is so young, it would be better for him to learn a business from the bottom up, and I thought of Ross Graham’s.”
“Oh, you thought of Ross Graham’s.” Miss Frink nodded slowly and continued to meet her companion’s debonair look. “I wonder why you thought of Ross Graham’s.”
“I told you in my letter of introduction,”responded Ogden, without hesitation. “It is just one of the compact pieces of perfection that you have been bringing about all your life.”
Miss Frink nodded acceptance of the compliment and of his self-possession.
“I should say his nerve was one piece of perfection,” she reflected; and then her habit of honest thought questioned how she would have received the frank proposition. If John Ogden had come to her with the information that she had a robust, handsome, grand-nephew, Philip Sinclair’s son, who needed a boost toward finding his right place in the world, would she have listened to him? Would she have received the boy? She would not, and she knew it.
Ogden was speaking on: “How little I dreamed that I was doing as much for you as for Hugh when I saw him off on that train.”
“Oh, perhaps some other bystander would have saved the old lady,” she replied, with sudden rebellion against Ogden’s making a virtue of his duplicity.
“Really?” he returned suavely. “I have understood that Hugh had the street all to himself just at that time.”
“Well, I think he did,” said Miss Frink brusquely, looking away.
Ogden’s gray eyes were rather large and prominent, and just now their gaze irritated her.
“You know it is very interesting to me,” he went on, “that the mere fact of my choosing Ross Graham’s for Hugh rather than some other concern, should have saved your valuable life. I believe in Providence, Miss Frink. Don’t you?”
“I believe that Heaven helps those who help themselves,” she retorted; “and that’s you, I’m sure, Mr. Ogden.”
“But we’re not talking about me,” he responded with a gay air of surprise.
“Well, we’re going to,” responded Miss Frink. “I want you to tell me everything you know about Mrs. Lumbard.”
“Why—” he returned, clearing his throat to gain time, “it’s on the surface. She is a very pretty woman who is a fine musician. You can tell by Hugh’s attitude what she meant to the boys over there, and she has a reputation all through the South.”
“Did you know her before her marriage when she was Miss Morehouse?”
“Yes.”
“What was her father like?”
“Why—” Ogden hesitated. “I understood they were your relatives.”
“No. They’re not. Is her father living?”
“I—I really don’t know; but Mr. Morehouse died only last year.”
“Well, he was her father, wasn’t he?”
“No; he married her mother when the daughter was a child prodigy at the piano.”
Such a strange change passed over Miss Frink that Ogden was startled. She gazed at him out of a face as stiff as parchment.
“Mr. Ogden, I am uncanny. My feelings are uncanny,” she said at last. “You might as well be sitting under an X-ray as by me. I know the whole truth about you. I know all your double-dealings—”
“Oh, Miss Frink, why should you give me heart failure? I don’t know why you should be so excited. I hope I haven’t told any tales.” Ogden flushed to the ears.
“Yes, a great big one, but, oh, the relief it is to me. She has nothing to do with my Alice. Be careful not to let her know that you’ve told me this. Once I had a friend, Mr. Ogden, a real friend. She never tried to get the better of me. She never deceived me. She loved me as herself.”
John Ogden thought he had never looked into such bright eyes, and their strenuous gaze seeming, as she had claimed, to see absolutelythrough him, sent a prickling sensation down his spine. She seemed to be contrasting him with that single-minded friend, frightfully to his disadvantage.
“She has died,” went on the low voice, “and I never found another. Now Mrs. Lumbard has claimed me through her; claimed to be her granddaughter. I never could believe it, and it seems I was right.”
Ogden frowned and shook his head. “If you’re glad, I suppose I shouldn’t regret my break; but I wouldn’t for anything have thrown a monkey-wrench into Mrs. Re—Lumbard’s machinery if I had known.”—“Supposing Miss Frink knew all!” was his reflection.
His companion nodded slowly. “Let me have the truth once in a while, once in a while. Don’t grudge it to me. You’ve only clinched my feeling that she is a liar.”
Ogden looked up toward the porch where Adèle and Hugh were laughing.
“There is one thing I wanted to speak of to you. You take such a kindly interest in Hugh—”
“That is barely decent,” responded Miss Frink with sudden sharpness. “What is it you want? When a poor young man saves the life of a rich old woman, it is to be expected thatshe gives him a good plump check as reward, isn’t it?”
Ogden regarded her in surprise. “What the love of money does to people!” was his reflection. “I shan’t tell Hugh you said that,” he replied quietly. “He has had enough to bear. You know whether his attitude toward you is mercenary.”
Miss Frink’s old cheeks flushed in their turn. “Well, I know it isn’t,” she said bluntly; “but you are his manager, aren’t you?”
“My dear lady! Please don’t spoil this beautiful morning.”
“I’m excited, Ogden. I know it,” she said nervously. She was glad he had trapped her, but how had he dared to do it, and how could she forgive him!
“This is what I was going to say,” he went on. “The last year before Hugh went to France he read law. Since hearing that his sister is alone, he feels that he would like to go on with it. He might be able to help her some day. Yesterday I met Colonel Duane. He is a lawyer and still has a good library. What would you think of Hugh’s working at that, evenings?”
“Why evenings?”
“Because I judge you intend to give him ajob in the store that will at least partly pay his board.”
Miss Frink looked off at the fountain where two marble babies were having an unending water duel, and apparently from their expressions having great fun over it.
“That is a very good idea,” she said, “to read law with Colonel Duane.”
Ogden accepted her ignoring of the “job.” There was a change in her since yesterday. She seemed to be smothering and controlling some spite against himself. If she suspected anything, he must prepare Hugh. The sudden meeting with Ally and the plan to help her with the recital had changed the boy’s gloomy, rebellious mood; and certainly nothing had occurred since last evening, when Miss Frink had been a sufficiently complacent though passive hostess.
“I will attend to the matter,” she said after a pause, and rose. “I must go in. Grim will wonder if I am forgetting the mail.”
Adèle was in a porch swing, her pretty slippers and ankles very much in evidence when Miss Frink and Ogden came up on the veranda. She was singing “Madelon,” and Hugh was trying to stop her, amid much laughter and threatening.
The lady of the old school crossed to her and pulled down the skirt of the young woman’s pink dimity morning dress. It would have kept Miss Frink busy if she had performed that office for all the girls in Farrandale who needed it that morning, and all the mornings; although Farrandale was no more lax than any other town.
Adèle rose quickly from the swinging seat, and Miss Frink turned to Hugh. “Well, what’s this I hear about our young lawyer?”
“Oh, has Mr. Ogden told you of my wish to read with Colonel Duane? I’m keen for it, Miss Frink.”
That lady looked up into his eager face with a lingering regard. What would he say if she told him here and now that she knew him to behers; her own flesh and blood; she who but a few weeks ago had believed herself alone in the world? This splendid specimen of young manhood was hers, hers to assist or to renounce. Her habitual shrewdness and forethought warned her that she did not know him: that he must show the stuff he was made of before she could discover whether she cared to own him. He was deceiving her, at the present moment. He was only watching for opportunities to use her. No wonder his conscience had revolted at the succession of favors pressed upon him by the woman he was hoodwinking. Miss Frink’s X-ray mentality told her that here was an honest thought manipulated by the man of the world with whom she had just been tête-à-tête. Nevertheless, Hugh was at fault. He should have spurned such a plan—“And let you lie under the simple granite monument provided for in your will?” added some small inner voice.
Probably that suggestion was what made her smile at him now, so reflectively.
“That is, if Colonel Duane is willing to be bothered with me,” went on the boy, still eagerly. “I can’t trust you, Miss Frink. I won’t have the old gentleman bound hand and foot and thrown down at my feet.”
This egregious remark touched Miss Frink’ssense of humor. She laughed spontaneously. The implication of her power pleased her no less than that of her devotion to this dastardly, double-faced youth.
“You just mind your own business, Hugh,” she returned. “You shall see the Colonel to-day.”
“I should love to walk over there with him,” said Adèle.
“I believe you,” replied Miss Frink, “but do you know Colonel Duane?”
“Why, no, but—”
“I think another arrangement would be better,” said Miss Frink, and, turning, went into the house.
Adèle pretended to shiver. “Oh, she does sit on me so hard!” she cried, then she dropped back into the porch seat and continued her gay badinage with Hugh, the undercurrent of her thought triumphing over her difficult hostess, inasmuch as she knew her to be a dupe and could reveal it, at any time.
John Ogden watched the young woman uneasily. It was evident that she was doing her best to attract Hugh.
“Say, boy, I’d look out for Ally if I were you,” said Ogden when again they were alone.
“Oh, she’s lots of fun.”
“Yes, she means to be; but she’s in wrong with Miss Frink. It seems she is here, entirely under false pretenses.”
Hugh turned and stared down at his mentor.
“Indeed!” he replied. “How shocking!”
“Miss Frink has found it out,” said Ogden, flushing, “and through me. That’s the worst of it.”
“A little stone-throwing in your glass house, eh?”
“Totally unintentional.” And Ogden repeated what had taken place.
Hugh stared into space. He hated to have people get in wrong. It disturbed him all the time that Ally should have been such a fool as to deserve to get in wrong with the courts.
“Of course Miss Frink doesn’t dream of the court disgrace,” added Ogden.
“Women always get the worst of it,” said Hugh moodily.
“Well, I’ve no doubt she will at least keep her word about the recital,” remarked Ogden.
“We must take it for granted,” said Hugh energetically. “We must help the poor girl, and have some pep about it.”
Ogden laughed. “You can be trusted for pep,” he returned. “That was a good line about Colonel Duane. I should have expectedMiss Frink to have Grimshaw escort your conceited self to the gate.”
At that moment the Colonel was watching a pair of birds feeding their young. Millicent came to the door and called him in to the ’phone.
“It is Miss Frink,” she said with bated breath. “I do hope it is nothing about me.”
The old gentleman patted her hand as he took the receiver, and the girl stood with parted lips, listening.
“Good-morning, Miss Frink.”
“Why, yes, if an old fogy like myself can be of any use to him, certainly.”
“Oh, yes, plenty of time. I’m a very small farmer, you know.”
“Yes, I have the foundational books.”
“No doubt you would, Miss Frink.”
“To-day? Yes, I shall be very glad to see him.”
“Very well, I shall be here.”
Colonel Duane hung up the receiver and smiled at the girl with the rapt eyes.
“No, you’re not discharged, my dear. She has another errand for you to do.”
“What is it, Grandpa?”
“Don’t lose those eyes out, my dear. You’re sure to need them again some time. The youngman there, Mr. Stanwood, wants to come over here to see my law books.”
“Are you sure it isn’t Mr. Ogden?” asked Millicent earnestly. “He was so interested in everything yesterday.”
“No, it is Mr. Stanwood. It seems he started to read law, and then they needed him in France.”
“Oh, I told Mr. Ogden that you were a celebrated lawyer.”
“You little girl! Blowing the old man’s horn.” He put his arm around her.
“What is the errand, Grandpa?”
“To bring Mr. Stanwood over here.”
“Oh!”
“When you get through the reading, he will be waiting for you on the veranda.”
“I don’t see why Mr. Ogden doesn’t bring him.”
“Why should he, when you are coming right home, anyway? Possibly Mr. Ogden doesn’t care to call on us every day.”
What could be simpler than picking Mr. Stanwood up on the veranda, and showing him the way to her grandfather? Millicent was vexed with herself for feeling as if she were setting out on an adventure when she went to her reading that day. She could see Hugh as he saton the arm of his easy-chair, bejeweled with crimson petals, swinging his gay foot, and snapping his fingers in time to the jazz. At least he would not have on that cursed dressing-gown to-day, and she would show him by her businesslike manner that she was simply doing an errand for Miss Frink in being his escort.
When that lady lost consciousness to-day, and began gently to blow the silk handkerchief thrown over her face, Millicent despised the sensation of her heart beginning to beat a little faster as she tripped down the wide staircase to the ponderous front door. As she came out upon the veranda, she saw him. He was sitting in the porch swing with Mrs. Lumbard, and Mrs. Lumbard looked unusually pretty in a pink dimity gown, and was exhibiting lengths of crossed silk stockings as she impelled the swing with the tip of one slipper.
Hugh at once jumped up, and Adèle nodded. “You made a short job of it to-day,” she remarked, and Millicent hated her.
“Perhaps you are not quite ready, Mr. Stanwood,” she said, with what was Farrandale’s most formal and forbidding manner.
“Indeed, I am,” he replied, picking up his hat.
“Don’t you think you’d better take an overcoat, Hughie?” asked Adèle affectionately.
“No, indeed, it’s warm. Well, good-bye, Ally, I won’t ask you to be good—just to be as good as you can.”
She laughed and threw him a kiss. Millicent stood, stiff as a ramrod, hating them both.
Hugh smiled at her disarmingly as they went down the steps together. “You know I am as pleased as a boy with a pair of red boots to think Colonel Duane will take me,” he said.
“He seemed very willing,” returned the girl, without looking at him.
Had Damaris been the escort of the most talked-about young man in Farrandale, she would have paraded him: taken him by the most populous ways. Millicent had mapped out a semi-rural route, longer to be sure, but one in which few people would see them and say that Millicent Duane was out walking with Miss Frink’s young man.
“Mrs. Lumbard worked among us doughboys in France,” said Hugh, sensing an iciness in the atmosphere.
“I heard her say so yesterday,” returned Millicent, eyes ahead.
“She plays like a house afire,” said Hugh, “and she has to earn her living. Do you believe she could make a go of it teaching piano here?”
“I don’t know why not?” returned the girl civilly.
“Anyway, Miss Frink is going to let her give a recital in her house and let the people hear her. Will you help boom it?”
“I’m afraid I’m a person of no influence, Mr. Stanwood.”
Hugh regarded the persistent profile, a very grave profile with a slightly tilted nose.
“Mr. Ogden says you had a grouch yesterday,” he said good-humoredly. “Is this a hang-over?”
At this she turned and gave him a look which came out somewhere beyond him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Why, you don’t seem to realize that this is a great day. Spring is here, and the birds are busy—this is a mighty pretty street, by the way, like the country, and I’m out of that infernal room walking on my own legs. I feel we should be taking hold of hands and skipping—Merry, Merry May, fol-de-rol, tiddle-de-winks, and all that, you know.”
She met his laughing eyes and relaxed slightly. “It is a celebration for you, isn’t it?” she said.
“Yes. Ogden said Miss Frink teased you yesterday.”
“Oh, how silly to speak of it!” exclaimed Millicent, reverting to the profile and coloring beautifully. He thought she looked very pretty, and he laughed gayly at her sudden temper.
“Well, I just want you to remember that I wasn’t the guilty party. An innocent bystander shouldn’t be crushed, yet how often they are!”
In the rural road, Hugh was effervescing with the joy of living, and his prim escort was gradually unbending. When an apple tree in full bloom came in view, it helped wonderfully.
“Grandpa has a little orchard. It looks marvelous. You will see—we’re almost there.”
“Wait a minute, Miss Duane”—Hugh put out a hand gropingly—“just a minute. I feel queer—”
Millicent looked around at him. He was very pale.
“Can you beat it?” he demanded feebly. “That apple tree—it’s whirling. I think I’m—going to—”
“Oh, don’t, Mr. Stanwood.” His groping hand grasped her arm, and she held him with the other while he sank on the bank under the apple blossoms, his weight pulling her down beside him.
“Oh, shoot!” he gasped.
“Please don’t faint,” she said. “We’re sonearly there. Just lie still; I’ll go get Grandpa to help.”
She fled away, and he closed his eyes and called himself names.
Back they came, Millicent white and flushed by turns, and the old gentleman coming along with his hale and hearty tread.
“Not such a bad couch,” he said cheerily, bending over Hugh while Millicent stood with clasped hands, suffering all the throes of guilt. The regular road would have been little more than half as long, and she could hear Mrs. Lumbard’s comments on choosing the romantic path.
“Lie there a bit while Milly brings you some hot milk, then you’ll get to the house easily enough between us two sturdy ones. Tried to do a little too much, I guess.”
Millicent went back with winged feet and soon returned with the hot milk. He drank the milk, supported by Colonel Duane’s arm, and soon his dizziness ceased. Leaning on the two friends he walked slowly, and soon entered the back gate of their cottage. The little orchard made the place look in festive array.
“All dressed up for you, you see,” said the Colonel.
“Heavenly!” said Hugh.
Millicent was valiantly supporting one of his arms, and his other was around the Colonel’s neck.
“I’ll say it’s pretty here,” said Hugh. “Sorry I was a fool.”
“Going to put you in the hammock,” said Colonel Duane, “and let you look the apple blossoms out of countenance awhile.”
This he did, arranging the pillows deftly under Hugh’s head. He went into the house for another, and Millicent stood there looking down at the patient.
Hugh smiled up at her; and there was that dreadful smile again, that Prince Charming smile that made so much defense necessary, and she hadn’t any more. Remorse had drowned it.
“He’s all right now, childie,” said her grandfather comfortingly. “I’ll bet you’re blaming yourself for taking that road. How did you happen to?”
“It’s lots—lots prettier,” said Millicent with a gulp. She sank into a receptive rocking-chair.
“And the joke is,” said the Colonel, “that Miss Frink didn’t think he was up to the short road, even. She was expecting you to drive, and somehow or other Grimshaw was tardywith the team and you had gone. So he hopped in and came the whole way, beating up the sidewalks for you.” Colonel Duane laughed. “I told him to go over to Damaris and see if you were there.”