Bubbles the roan, own brother to Patches, and Peggy Glamorgan on his
back were radiant youth incarnate. The horse arched his graceful head as
though proudly conscious of the loveliness of his burden; the corded
muscles of shoulder, flank and leg flexed sensitively under his satin
skin with every move of his pliant body. The girl's sombrero had the
true ranchero tilt. Her khaki riding costume was as perfect a thing as
the cinema-fed imagination of a fashionable habit-maker could conceive;
it was only by exercising superhuman restraint that he had refrained
from adding buckskin fringe and a six-shooter. Tommy Benson regarded her
as though hypnotized. He caught a quizzical expression in Jerry's eyes
as she stood on the porch, and colored hotly. He swallowed hard and
sprang to the saddle. With obvious effort to regain his poise, he
touched his horse with his heels and with a theatrical sweep of his
right arm declaimed:
"Let's go! 'Once more into the breach dear friends, once more.'"
Peggy lingered.
"You are sure that you won't come with us, Jerry?" Her sister smilingly
shook her head.
"No, I must finish some work. Come back, Goober!" to the dog who had
been jumping up to lick the noses of the horses, and who with short
joyous barks was preparing to follow them. He threw her a glance replete
with injured dignity and flopped down on the porch with head on his
outstretched paws. Peggy threw a hasty "I'm sorry!" over her shoulder
and urged Bubbles to a gallop. Tommy bore down upon her as she reached
the ranch road. He seized the bridle of her horse and pulled him down.
"Where's the fire?" he demanded. "What's the big idea in burning up the
road? I want to make this ride last."
"I thought you wanted to get to Lower Field to help Steve,"
reproachfully.
"Sure thing, but if I break my neck getting there it won't prove much,
will it? I wonder why your sister didn't come."
The horses stepped daintily side by side, their glossy coats shining in
the sunlight. Peggy's brows met in a suspicion of a frown.
"Tommy--you don't mind if I call you Tommy, do you?" with just the right
suggestion of hesitation and a glance from under curling lashes which
fanned a spark in the man's eyes to fire.
"I'll say that I don't," fervently. "Formality is silly in a great,
God's-own-country like this. What's on your mind?"
"Jerry. I was wondering. There is something queer about Steve and Jerry,
Tommy. They don't seem a bit like married lovers; have you noticed it?"
Benson bent far forward to examine the bit in his horse's mouth. When he
settled back in the saddle his face was flushed.
"'I never knew so young a lady with so old a head,'" he quoted gayly.
"What does a child like you, just out of the nursery, know about
lovers?" he teased.
She regarded him with lofty condescension.
"I shall be nineteen my next birthday and I'll have you understand that
boys have been plentiful in my career, Mr. Benson. Of course if you
don't care to talk with me----"
"I do--I do, Peg-o'-my-heart!" Courtlandt's name for her slipped
unconsciously from Tommy's lips. He looked at her apologetically but the
girl was too engrossed in her troubled thoughts to notice what he called
her. Reassured he answered her question. "I think that Steve and Jerry
are bully pals."
"Pals! Ye gods, and that's all. Honest now, Tommy, have you ever seen
Steve catch Jerry's hand as though he just couldn't help it?" Benson
met her triumphant glance with a sternly accusing eye.
"Oh, the precocity and sophistication of twentieth century youth! Look
here, young woman, what have you been reading?"
"Reading! Tommy, you're overdoing it. You're too innocent to be true,"
with a little rush of laughter. "Now I ask you, would you want a wife
who was as distantly friendly to you as Jerry is to Steve?"
"I should not," with convincing emphasis. "But why should your sister
have married Courtlandt if she didn't love him? I can't conceive of his
not being mad about her."
"Dad was the why. I didn't know until I asked him if I might come here.
I went to San Francisco with my roommate when school closed, but I
intended to come to Jerry as quickly as I politely could. When he gave
me permission to come Dad told me that he expected me to marry family as
Jerry had--that he had brought her up with the idea and that she had not
disappointed him. That's that!"
"In the vernacular of the backwoods, 'She seen her duty an' she done
it,'" interpolated Benson. "Might--might an humble admirer ask if you
are planning to please your father or--or yourself, when you marry?" He
succeeded in keeping eyes and tone gayly impersonal.
"I don't intend to marry at all, that is, not for years and years and
years."
"You'll be quite a nice old lady by that time, won't you?"
"You're not nearly as good-looking when you scowl, Tommy. As I was
saying, when so rudely interrupted, when I do marry it will be to please
myself. I told Dad a thing or two," and Tommy, observing the tiny flames
which memory had set in her hazel eyes, allowed that she had.
"I'm puzzled about Jerry's money," Peggy went on thoughtfully. "Dad
gives us an allowance fit for princesses of blood royal; that's an
out-of-date simile now, isn't it? When I asked her this morning for five
dollars with which to tip the man who brought up my trunk, first she was
shocked at the idea of tipping one of the outfit, and then she grew as
red as fire and stammered that she had no small bills. Ye gods, what do
you know about that?" with slangy amazement.
"Sweet cookie, that's nothing. Many a time I haven't been able to pry a
dollar bill loose."
"That is different. You're--you're working and it takes time to make a
living," with sweet earnestness. Tommy shot a quick look at her. Was she
laughing at him? No, she was taking his lack of funds seriously. "About
that Alexandrite ring. Once Jerry would have ordered it by wire before
you could say 'Jack Robinson'--but all she said was, 'I--I'm not buying
jewels now, Peg.' Has she turned miser or has Dad----" her eyes flew to
Benson's in startled questioning. "Dad was furious because Jerry and
Steve left New York. Could he have stopped her allowance? But--but if he
did--surely Steve would give----" she stopped in troubled uncertainty.
"Why don't you ask your sister?" suggested Benson gravely.
"I will. I can't believe that Dad would--well he'd better never try to
drive me. And that's that," with a defiant tilt of her chin.
"Would you stick to--to a man, a poor man, you loved even if you knew
that your father would cut you off with the proverbial shilling?" Her
hazel eyes met his turbulent blue ones frankly.
"Indeed I would, Mr. Tommy Benson. I shouldn't be afraid to marry a poor
man, that is, a poor man with a future. I should want to be sure that he
was that kind. I love to cook and sew and I should adore taking care of
a ducky little house and brushing my husband's coat collar when he
started off for work in the morning and going to market. There is only
one thing I should hate to economize about----" her expression and tone
were introspective. Benson was conscious that his heart was in his eyes
but he didn't care. She was adorable with that thoughtful pucker of her
vivid lips. He had to steady his voice before he asked lightly:
"And what may that one thing be, Peg-o'-my-heart?"
"Children," she answered promptly and with utter absence of
self-consciousness. "I want eight and--and I suppose that's rather
extravagant for a poor man to start with, don't you, Tommy?"
Benson held his emotions in a grip of steel. At that moment the
boy-he-had-been waved good-bye and slipped away forever. The man's eyes
were gravely tender as he answered the girl's question with judicial
deliberation.
"Perhaps--not. That is, not for a poor man with a future." He tightened
on the bridle. "Steve will think we're quitters. Let's go!"
The white road stretched ahead of them. Their horses' feet raised a haze
of dust. On either side billowed fields of tall, untrodden grass and
beyond the fields lumped the foot-hills. In a pasture a roan mare lay
with her head up over her shoulder asleep, while beside her, flat on its
side in the sun, dozed a young colt. Insects droned and buzzed
unceasingly. The air sparkled with that brand of ozone to be found only
among the foot-hills.
Benson and Peggy came upon Courtlandt in Lower Field. He nodded to them
absent-mindedly. He was the centre of a group of mounted men, all eager,
all armed. Most of them rolled and smoked cigarettes incessantly as they
sat their horses. A few of them wore chaps with vests over their colored
shirts, some were in khaki riding clothes, all wore bandanas of violent
pattern in place of collars, broad-brimmed Stetsons and laced riding
boots. They were a clean-cut, self-respecting looking lot, as lean,
lithe and brown as a life spent in the saddle could make them. Pete
Gerrish on his massive sorrel loomed above them all.
"Understand me, there is to be no shooting," Steve was reiterating as
Peg and Benson rode up. "Gerrish, I'll fire the man who shoots unless in
self-defense. Do you get me, boys?"
"Sure, we get you," drawled Marcelle O'Neil, so nicknamed because of the
unrepressible kink in his straw-colored hair. "No objection, be ther',
to ropin' one of Ranlett's gang an' reinin' him up short if he starts to
lope?" he wheedled.
"No. Bring every one of them back if you can. Without injury, though.
We'll let the law mete out punishment."
"Sure, it's none of my butt-in how you handle the durn polecat, but if I
had my way I'd swing Ranlett up to a cottonwood if I got my mazuma fer
doin' it. Them were the finest Shorthorns in the world and if
Nick-the-time-feeder was back----"
Nicholas Fairfax had been notoriously prompt to discharge a man who
slacked on the job, but O'Neil had not intended to let the bunk-house
name for the late owner of the Double O slip out. He looked furtively at
Courtlandt but he, consciously or unconsciously, ignored the lapse.
"We'll find them, O'Neil. We must. Get a move on, boys. Ride in pairs
and ride like----"
Their whoop of enthusiasm drowned his last words. Steve remained
motionless until the last one had taken the fence at a jump. His face
was white, his eyes strained and tired. He rode toward Peg and Benson
who had with difficulty restrained their horses from following the
riders.
"That was the nearest approach to the wild-west cowboy of the eighties
that you will ever see, Peg-o'-my-heart. Did you notice that Marks and
Schoeffleur were missing, Tommy? Why didn't Jerry come with you, Peg?"
"She said that she had work to do, that she would ride after luncheon."
"She understood that she was not to go out of sight of the ranch-house?"
The girl's salaam was as profound as the neck of her horse would
permit.
"Your slave heard and obeys, oh Abdul the Great."
A laugh erased the tired lines about Courtlandt's mouth.
"Do I seem such a tyrannous old Turk to you? Well, it is only because I
am afraid that Jerry----" He left his sentence unfinished and turned to
Benson. "Take a message to Upper Farm for me. Tell--the Devil!"
"Your mistake, Steve; it's only Mrs. Denbigh," Peggy corrected
mischievously as she followed Courtlandt's eyes to where Felice Denbigh
and Greyson were entering the field. The three rode to meet the
newcomers.
"Good morning. I didn't know that you left your downy before noon,
Felice."
The woman put her horse through a few paces that were as coquettish as
her eyes and voice.
"On with the vamps!" muttered Tommy in a tone intended only for Peg's
ear. With difficulty she choked back a delighted giggle as Felice
answered in a spoiled-child voice:
"Steve, you're getting to be a barbarian out here. Have you forgotten
that last night you invited me to ride with you this morning?"
"Last night--I what?" demanded Courtlandt, a slow color darkening his
face.
"I waited for you at the X Y Z and when you didn't come fairly browbeat
my host into escorting me to Double O ranch. I thought I should find you
there. No such luck. We saw only Mrs. Courtlandt and she thought that
you would be too busy----"
"I am too busy," curtly. "Tommy, take Mrs. Denbigh with you and Peg to
Upper Farm. You'll find the most up-to-date dairy in the country there,
Felice. Its equipment cost----"
"Don't talk like a mail-order catalogue, Steve," the woman interrupted
petulantly. "If you can't show me the Upper Farm I will wait until you
can, I'm a patient waiter. I always get what I want," with narrowed eyes
and an iced smile which sent a queer shiver down Benson's spine. He
looked at Greyson to see how he was bearing his equivocal position. The
man's fine, thoroughbred face was red and set about the lips. Benson
couldn't understand his allowing himself to be placed in such an awkward
situation. Why the dickens had he invited the Denbigh woman to the X Y
Z? He must have been at the Manor long enough during Old Nick's illness
to have found her out. He brought his thoughts back to the present in
time to hear Felice say:
"Shall we go on to Slippy Bend, Mr. Greyson? Your sister gave us some
commissions to execute there. So long, Stevie! You'll come over for a
game of auction to-night, of course. You and I against mine host and
Paula." She didn't wait for his answer. Without a glance in the
direction of Peg and Benson she wheeled her horse and rode away. Greyson
waved his hat to Peg, called something to her companions and cantered
after his guest. For one long, silent moment Courtlandt followed the two
with his eyes, then he resumed his directions to Benson where he had
dropped them.
"Tell Mrs. Simms to have Simms report to me to-morrow noon at the ranch.
Show Peg over Upper Farm. She won't insist upon being personally
conducted by me, I'll wager. Get your lunch there. Mrs. Simms' jelly
cookies will make you purr with repletion, Peggy. I told Ming Soy that
we wouldn't be back till late afternoon. Take your time. Don't let Peg
ride too hard. Jerry won't be anxious. She knows what distances are
here."
"But, Steve, don't you need me? I can take Miss Glamorgan back and join
you."
"No, I'm riding alone. I have a few fairly fresh trails to follow up. Be
a good child, Peg-o'-my-heart, and do exactly what the best range-rider
on the Double O tells you to do." He laughed at her indignant eyes,
touched Blue Devil with his heel and loped off. Peggy looked after him
and then at Benson.
"I wonder--I don't like that Denbigh woman. Did you see her eyes when
Steve turned her down? Careful Cosmetics is the name for her. She must
think it's the open season for vamps round here." She looked at Tommy
with laughter and a glint of mischief in her hazel eyes. "Now I wonder
who Steve could have meant by the best range-rider of the Double O?" she
mused in a low voice as though communing with herself.
Benson swept off his Stetson with swash-buckling impressiveness.
"I don't like to talk about myself--but," he murmured with exaggerated
humility, "I'll say that I--now who the dickens is that? The Simms kid.
Johnny Simms. What does he want? I----" His voice trailed off into
silence as he watched a boy who came galloping up on a pony to speak to
Courtlandt. Tommy unconsciously caught the bridle of the girl's horse.
Bubbles and Soapy, who had been paddock mates, nuzzled noses. The girl
and man watching saw the boy hand Steve a paper, then whirl and gallop
away as though pursued by a thousand furies.
"That's queer," Benson observed under his breath.
"What's queer?" asked Peggy in the same hushed whisper.
"That the boy should break away like that. He adores Steve. So do the
other Simms kids. Now what is Courtlandt doing? Burning something?" as
a wisp of smoke fell to the ground.
"Why don't you go and find out?" in a tone which was own cousin to his.
"Nothing doing. You don't know Steve. I'm here; he knows it. He never
misses a trick. If he wants me he'll shout. There, you see? He doesn't,"
as Courtlandt, after a glance at the ground where the smoke had fallen,
galloped across the field toward the ranch road.
"You're fond of Steve, aren't you?" Peggy probed as they headed their
horses toward Upper Farm.
"Fond of him! That's a deleted, diluted expression of my sentiments for
the Whistling Lieut. We literally went through fire and water overseas;
since then I've been on the ranch. You see, the German Inn where Steve
and I sojourned for a couple of months didn't have a particularly
beneficial effect on my health, so when I got back to the good old U. S.
A. I came here to recuperate and I have stayed."
"Haven't you any family?"
"I have. One devoted, in-perfect-condition mother, 1921 model, ditto
father. She is coming out next week. Hasn't your sister written you
about me?" curiously.
"What conceit! She hasn't written pages about you," with a laugh which
sent the color to his face in a flood. "She wrote that you were here,
that Steve said that you had a future if you'd stick to ranching and
leave celluloid alone--now what did he mean by that?"
"So Steve said that I was a man with a future, did he? Make a mental
note of that, Miss Glamorgan," his tone and look brought a startled
flash to eyes which had been so boyishly friendly. He steadied his voice
before he went on: "I've had a fool idea that I wanted to be a
movie-actor--but----"
"But don't you want to any more?"
"No."
"When did you experience a change of heart?"
"This morning at exactly two o'clock, I decided that there was nothing
in it, that I wanted to be a solid citizen with a settled abiding
place."
"Two o'clock! Why, that was when I reached Slippy----" With heightened
color she tightened her rein and touched Bubbles with her heels. "I'll
race you to the farmhouse," she called over her shoulder, a curious
breathlessness in her voice. She kept the lead till they reached the
gate of the farm, then Benson caught her horse by the bridle.
"The back of your head is attractive but I like your face better. Don't
you want to hear the romantic story of Mrs. Simms before we get there?
She's a Heart and Ringer."
"A--a what?"
It was no longer necessary to hold the bridle of the girl's horse. She
forced him to a walk.
"Heart and Ringer. That is what they call the women who marry men who
advertise in the matrimonial sheet, Heart and Ring."
"Really, Tommy! Did Mrs. Simms do that?"
"She did, and she got just what she paid for. Simms is a bounder but
he's thrifty as the dickens and an A 1 workman. That's what caught Old
Nick in the beginning. He'd have employed the devil himself had he those
characteristics. But the man is ugly and insolent. How Steve puts up
with him beats me. It is because of Mrs. Simms, I suppose. She is a fine
woman and a corker in the dairy. She lived in Montana. She was the
daughter of a miner who had made his pile and gone to farming. Montana
got on her nerves, so when she saw Simms' 'ad' in Heart and Ring she
corresponded with him and married him. I'll bet a hat Montana has looked
like heaven to her ever since. That was one of their children who met
Steve. I'd give my Kipling de luxe to know why."
He drew rein before the white farmhouse which hugged the ground like a
mammoth brooding hen. In the field beyond was a spatter effect of snowy
dairies and cow-barns. Black and white Holsteins, creamy Jerseys,
Guernseys and a few Ayreshires grazed epicureanly in the lush pastures
that climbed the foot-hills.
A slender, wiry woman, who gave a fresh-from-the-laundry impression, so
immaculate, so clear of skin, so smooth of hair was she, greeted Peg and
Benson as they dismounted. Her smile was obliterated as Tommy's eyes
lingered on her arm. She hastily pulled down her sleeves and buttoned
them snugly at the wrists.
"It sure is fine to see you, Mr. Benson. You ain't taken my advice so
soon and got a wife, have you?" she asked with a laugh and twinkle in
the eyes which nature had intended for a merry blue, but which Life,
aided and abetted by Heart and Ring and--Simms, had threshed to an
apprehensive gray.
"No such luck, Mrs. Simms. This is Mrs. Courtlandt's sister, Miss
Margaret Glamorgan. We came with a message from the Chief for Simms.
Where is he? At the dairy?"
"I'm sure pleased to know you, Miss. Simms has gone to--to Slippy Bend,
Mr. Tommy."
"She's lying," Benson decided, even as he directed: "When he gets back
tell him to report at the office to-morrow noon, sharp, with his
accounts. Has he been up to his old tricks again?" His eyes fell as
though by accident to her arms.
The woman's eyes, her lips, changed in expression. It was as though her
features, red-hot with life and interest, had been run into a mold and
hardened.
"He has that, Mr. Tommy."
"Is there any use in repeating what I have said before, that you ought
to leave him?"
"An' I say as I said before, you're wrong, Mr. Tommy. I promised in the
sight of God and man to stick to him as long as we both lived. I wasn't
forced to marry Simms. I did it of my own free Will--my own fool will,"
contemptuously. "I'd be a fine example to my children, wouldn't I, if I
tried to get out of marriage just because it wasn't the romantic
joy-ride I'd expected. It would be different if Simms abused the
children; he never lays a hand on 'em. He wouldn't dare," with a glitter
in her eyes. "You and Mr. Tommy'll stay and have a bite of lunch with
us, won't you, Miss? Mr. Courtlandt always has his when he comes."
Her change of voice and subject was so sudden that it caught Peggy's
hazel eyes, glistening with tears, fixed upon her face. The girl blinked
the mist away, slipped her hand under the woman's firm arm and inquired
with irresistible charm:
"Will there be jelly cookies, Mrs. Simms?"
The blue came back to the eyes for a moment.
"Surely. Aha, Mr. Tommy, now I know what you came for."
"I didn't tell her about them. It was the Big Chief."
"Mr. Steve!" The blue suffered a total eclipse. "Did he come with you?"
"As far as Lower Field. By the way, what's wrong with Johnny? He
galloped up to Courtlandt, stuck out his hand, then beat it."
"But he stuck out his hand?"
"Surest thing you know."
Mrs. Simms exhaled to the limit of her flat chest.
"That's all right, then. Johnny--Johnny found a sparkling stone--and he
said as how he thought 'twas gold--and he's--he's pestered me to death
till I told him he could ask Mr. Steve if he could stake off a claim.
Minin's in his blood. My father was a miner, Miss. I guess I'd better
get busy about dinner, not stand talking here," she explained as she
hurried away.
Benson's eyes followed her as he perched on a corner of the porch
railing and lighted his pipe. Peg had gone into the house to help. He
could hear the two voices, the woman's a high strident tone, the girl's
like music with a joyous note running through it. The delectable odor of
bacon and frying chicken drifted out to him and set his already rampant
appetite clamoring for satisfaction. Mrs. Simms had cut that boy and
pebble story from whole cloth, if he was a judge of human nature, and
he'd bet his last dollar that he was, Benson thought, as he changed his
seat to one from which he could look inside the room which served as
living-room and dining-room at Upper Farm.
It was for all the world like the pictures one saw in mail-order
catalogues, he thought with a smile. There was an old-time melodion in
one corner and an up-to-date phonograph in another. There was golden oak
furniture in profusion. The walls were covered with a paper on which
impossible roses fought for supremacy with more impossible alleged birds
of paradise. How could a person think between such walls, Tommy
wondered. He had the feeling as he looked that birds and roses were
being stuffed down his throat. In the midst of his reflections Mrs.
Simms called him.
The three children slipped shyly into their chairs after the strangers
were seated. They were boys, ranging in age from four to ten. Johnny had
not come home, apparently. They had almost white hair and eyes shaped
like the eyes of sculpins, which they kept fixed on Peggy Glamorgan,
after the hypnotic effect of the company blue and white checked
table-cloth, the pressed glass spoon-holder, and the best gold-banded
plates with a big S in a funereal-like wreath on the border, had worn
off.
Benson smiled to himself as he watched them. They were doing frankly and
unreproved what he longed to do. Extreme youth had some compensations.
He lost himself in a radiant dream of possibilities and became as
absorbed with his inward vision as the scions of the house of Simms were
with the material and fascinating Peg herself. He was quite unconscious
that the girl was observing him in amused wonder.
"What did Johnny mean by staking a claim, Mrs. Simms?" she inquired as
with the air of a dainty gourmand she set her teeth in a second cookie.
"I would have asked Mr. Benson, but who am I to rouse him from his dream
of--of fair women, perhaps--yes?" with a ripple of laughter.
Tommy roused with a start and colored generously.
"I beg pardon, I was----"
"That's what miners do when they think they've found gold," interrupted
Mrs. Simms, quite unconscious of the byplay. "They stake off a lot of
land and post it. Sometimes they don't work it for a year or more."
"Then why take possession? Isn't that dog-in-the-manger stuff?"
"No, because they really want it. They stake their claim so that no
other man can get it," broke in Benson. "And if you ask me, I'll say
that it's a whale of an idea," he added with a curious light in his
eyes. "Young woman, if you have finished your cookie gorge we will
depart."
"Cookie gorge! Slanderer! Mrs. Simms, did I eat as many as he?"
"Don't perjure yourself, Mrs. Simms. Come, Peg-o'-my-heart!" He realized
that his eyes were acting as town-criers for his emotions and shifted
his gaze from the girl to the woman. She sensed their message and
exclaimed impulsively:
"My stars, ain't it great to be young and--and free!"
"You've said it, Mrs. Simms," agreed Peg with her woman-of-the-world air
as she drew on her riding gloves. "Catch me settling down. Never! And
that's that!"
The woman's troubled eyes sought Benson's. He laughed and held out his
hand. "Good-bye, Mrs. Simms. Don't you worry. Having attained the
titanic and imposing age of eighteen the lady would naturally have
caustic views on matrimony. It will come out right and--and that's
that!" he observed cryptically. "Be sure that Simms reports to-morrow.
The Big Chief has about all he can handle now; we don't want him
worried."
It was not until Benson and Peg neared the Double O ranch that they
came back to the subject of their late hostess. They had spent a lazy,
happy afternoon, making Tommy's daily round of inspection which he
usually covered in two hours.
"Do you think Simms hurts her?" the girl broke out suddenly, apropos of
nothing. "Did you see those marks on her arm? Why, oh why, does she stay
with him?" with a shudder.
"You heard why."
"Yes, and do you know what I saw when she said that about God and man? I
didn't see her at all; it was a close-up of Jerry's eyes at her wedding,
and the clergyman saying, 'And forsaking all others.' Those words echoed
in my brain for days. Jerry is like Mrs. Simms. She'd keep a vow like
that if it killed her."
"Wouldn't you?"
"You never can tell," flippantly. "At least I don't intend to get into a
position where I'll have to for years--and--years--and years----" The
last words floated back to him with laughter as she galloped off. She
kept the breakneck pace till she pulled up at the court entrance. Benson
was off his horse before she could dismount. He lifted her from the
saddle and with his arms about her drew her into the garden.
"I won't take possession till you give me leave,--but--but I--I'll stake
my claim now, and that's that!" he whispered huskily as he kissed her
once upon her white throat.
"Mr. Tommee! Mr. Tommee Benson!" called a voice from the path as Ming
Soy in her gay silks came running toward them. Her slant eyes were
almost wide. "Misses Stevie went off on horse after lunch. Tlell Ming
Soy just going to flield; Ming Soy bleat glong when you and little
Missis come, but she didn't go to flield, and she never come back--not
all this time."