It was a dismal rainy afternoon, and the work of the day having been
finished early the girls were ensconced in their little sitting-room
reveling in a well-earned rest. By the way of unusual dissipation a
teakettle was hissing on the table, while the freshly filled sugar bowl
and bits of lemon told of preparations for the cup that cheers.
Stretched out at full length on the floor lay Hester in her favorite
attitude. At her feet sprawled Peter Snooks, chewing frantically at a
piece of rubber tire which was at once his solace and despair, defying
as it did his most strenuous efforts to tear it to bits. Julie, who had
donned a negligé and shaken the pins out of her curly hair, was buried
in a book, yet with one ear alert lest her father in the adjoining room
should stir and want something. Bridget, remarkable to relate, had taken
an afternoon out.
Presently Julie dropped her book and curling herself into the depths of
the chair was dozing off when Hester said abruptly, "There's a stranger
coming!"
Julie started up and gazed about as if expecting some one to loom up
before her.
"There is," reiterated Hester.
"Is what?" sleepily.
"A stranger coming."
"How do you know?"
"My nose itches," announced the younger Dale, rubbing the tip of that
saucy feature.
"Nonsense! That's an old granny's reason."
"Can't help it if it is. There is only one alternative and that is to
kiss a fool. You would not exactly class yourself in that category,
would you?" turning on her elbow to look at her sister. "Of course if
you insist--" and Hester leaned toward her.
Julie gave her a push. "You idiot! go kiss yourself in a mirror." But
the doorbell rang.
Julie bounced from her chair and fled down the hall. Hester stifled her
desire to laugh and opened the door on a tall, well-built man who stared
as he beheld her.
"Why--this is Mr. Renshawe, is it not?" the girl said with perfect
composure though inwardly amazed at seeing him. "Won't you come in?"
"How do you do--thanks--I--that is--" he stammered helplessly.
"You wish to see my sister, of course," ushering him in. "We did not
meet the other night at Mrs. Lennox's, did we? but you see I heard about
you afterward. I'll go and call my sister."
"Oh! no, don't, please, I beg of you. I must apologize for this
impertinent intrusion--I've made some abominable mistake!" In the hand
in which he was nervously twisting his hat, Hester caught a glimpse of
one of their business cards and in a flash the whole purport of his
visit was made clear to her.
"I do not think it is a mistake," she said naturally. "I imagine you
have come to see us on business, have you not? Won't you sit down, Mr.
Renshawe?"
"Oh, may I? Thanks. Do you do business?" he gasped incredulously,
glancing from the piquant girl about the pretty room where no suggestion
of anything like work was visible.
"Yes," replied Hester, "all kinds of fancy cooking. Possibly you've seen
our cards," she suggested in a desire to help him out.
He produced the one in his hand with the air of a guilty culprit. "Yes,
I have," he confessed. "It was given me this afternoon by the manager of
Heath & Co. He knows I give a good many bachelor parties in my chambers
and recommended these things. But Miss Dale," he protested, "I had no
idea it was you and your sister--it never occurred to me."
"Why should it?" asked Hester, "but it is, just the same, and we shall
be very glad to fill your order." She went to a desk and brought forth a
pad and pencil in a business-like manner.
He sat watching her with a puzzled, utterly perplexed expression drawing
his eye-brows together. Suddenly as she returned to her chair opposite
him he cried,
"By Jove! I know now, exactly--that's just who you are!" looking into
her face with evident relief.
Hester wanted to laugh and say "Is it?" to this ambiguous remark but
having assumed her formal business manner she maintained a discreet
silence and waited for him to explain.
"You are little Miss Driscoe's cousin!" he announced.
"Are you the Radnor man who has been visiting at the Blake's
plantation?" cried Hester impulsively, forgetting in her excitement that
he was to be kept on a strictly business footing.
"I shouldn't wonder," was his smiling reply. "I've been there several
times this past winter; in fact I came up from there only last week."
"Oh! did you? Long ago Nannie wrote us that there had been a Radnor man
at her birthday party but she quite forgot to mention his name. Oh! I
wish Julie had known this the other night! She would have loved a chance
to ask you all about the Driscoes. Isn't Nannie the dearest little
thing?"
"If I hadn't been a duffer, Miss Dale, I might have placed your sister
immediately when I met her, for I have had the minutest descriptions of
you both, I assure you. There was something very baffling about her that
night, as if I must have known her or at least seen her before
somewhere, but--"
"But you did not expect to see us in society, perhaps?"
He glanced at her as if the better to understand if her tone were
cynical, but her bland little smile told him nothing and before he could
make any reply she said:
"I am afraid we have strayed too far from important things, Mr.
Renshawe. It is shocking of me to encroach upon your time. Is there
anything we can do for you in a business way?" She told Julie afterward
she was quite proud of this little speech, for she had been consumed
with a desire to ask him a thousand questions about the Driscoes.
Renshawe interpreted it to mean that the chat was at an end and he
feared that in some clumsy way he had offended her, but she steered him
into a discussion of the order he had come to leave with such a calm
matter-of-fact air that he found himself consulting her about salads and
cakes with an ease he would not have believed possible when he entered
the room. He had never been brought into business relations with a young
girl of her position and he admired exceedingly her manner. The order
having been arranged quite to his satisfaction he dismissed the subject
and made up his mind to have his say in spite of the cue Hester had
given him. So as he rose to leave he said:
"I hope you will forgive me, Miss Dale, if I tell you I feel quite as if
I knew you and your sister and I am immensely glad to meet you. You see
the Blakes took me frequently to Wavertree Hall and Miss Nannie spoke of
you so often; she--"
"Dear little Nan," the girl said musingly, "how I should love to see
her!"
The man looked as if he would like to echo that sentiment, but he only
said as he moved toward the door:
"Will you be very kind, Miss Dale, and let Mrs. Lennox bring me some
time to see you and your sister? I have so many messages from Virginia,
for Miss Nannie was confident I should meet you and you see she was
right."
"Indeed you may come," said Hester frankly, "we--we do not receive many
visitors, but I know Julie will be glad to see you--I shall too,"
genuinely, and not as if politeness prompted this after-thought.
"Thank you. For the next few weeks I am owned body and soul," smiling,
"by Jules Grémond who is stopping with me. Perhaps you know of him, Miss
Dale? He's made considerable of a stir since he came out of Africa. An
old chum of mine whom I think you might enjoy meeting--perhaps after
awhile you will allow me to arrange it."
Hester always says she acted like a fool at this juncture and stammered
out some unintelligible reply, and that he immediately departed, she
thinks without any special consciousness of her idiocy--or at least she
hopes so, for she frankly confesses she was in no state of mind to know.
However that may be, the door had no sooner closed after him than the
dignified junior Dale, caterer, became metamorphosed into an excited
young girl who flew down the hall to the room where her sister had taken
refuge.
"Come back to the sitting-room where we can talk without waking Daddy,
quick!" she cried, pulling Julie down the hall. "Now what do you
suppose?" when they had reached the little room.
"Some one has left an extra fine order," seeing several pieces of paper
clutched nervously in Hester's hand.
"Don't be so everlastingly material!" pinning the papers with a vicious
stab to the back of the chair. "It has nothing to do with work,
whatever--that is not exactly. Oh! do guess who has been here--and who
_is_ here?"
"Hester, are you hiding some one to surprise me?" looking eagerly about.
"I know it is a man--I heard him. It can't be Dr. Ware; it wasn't his
step. It's--it's--oh! Hester Dale, is it cousin Driscoe?"
"You're getting hot," cried Hester encouragingly, reveling in her
sister's excited curiosity.
"Tell me this minute," demanded Julie, shaking her. "What other man
would be coming here?"
"Well, there _are_ others," laughed Hester, teasingly. "Mr. Renshawe,
for instance."
"No!"
"Honor bright! And who do you suppose he is?" mysteriously.
"Don't be so tantalizing! What on earth do I know about him?"
wrathfully.
"Well, you ought to. He hung around you the whole evening at Mrs.
Lennox's, you know he did. I simply wasn't in it. I don't believe he
even knew I was there!"
"You idiot! I had no personal talk with him whatever. As for you, you
flirted shockingly with Mr. Landor. I was astonished at you!" severely.
"I _was_ nice to him, wasn't I?" admitted Hester, "but that was all for
Jessie Davis' benefit."
"So I thought, you depraved wretch! Will you kindly tell me what all
this has to do with your present excitement?"
Hester sat on the edge of her chair and delivered her next speech in
italics.
"Mr. Renshawe is the man who went to Nannie's party and got the ring in
her birthday cake!"
"Not really!"
"And he came here not knowing who we really were, because the manager at
Heath's gave him one of our cards and recommended us as caterers. You
ought to have seen him, Julie! He was embarrassed almost to death and I
felt flustered myself, to say the least, but we managed to get through
the business part nicely and then at the end he just floored me!"
"Hester!" Words other than ejaculations seemed to have failed Julie.
The younger girl came over and stood in front of her to get the full
effect of her next speech, the most important piece of news, which she
had had hard work to keep until the last.
"Jules Grémond is in this country, staying with Mr. Renshawe now," she
said.
Julie was rendered wholly inarticulate, but the color spread in a
crimson wave over her face and she made a grab at her sister, pulling
her down beside her.
"You are guying me!" she cried when she could speak.
"It is the solemn truth; 'cross my heart, hope to die,'" maintained
Hester dramatically. "Moreover the things Mr. Renshawe has ordered are
for a tea he is giving for Monsieur Grémond to-morrow and the Fates
decree that we shall tickle the palate of the distinguished African
explorer with sandwiches and things! Oh! Julie, what a funny world!"
"How do you know he is distinguished?" asked Julie, clasping her hands
behind her head that her nervous fingers might not betray her.
"Because I do. Mr. Renshawe as much as said so. I wouldn't have believed
he had it in him, would you?"
"I don't know; we really hardly knew him well enough to judge."
"Umph! I don't know about that. What do you suppose he is doing here,
Julie? Do you think he'll look us up?" hesitatingly.
"Of course not," with more asperity than the innocent questions seemed
to justify. "He will never dream of our being in Radnor. You know we had
been some weeks at the hotel in Los Angeles when he came, and for all he
knew we might have been going to spend the rest of our days there.
Probably he has ceased to remember that we exist--a man would find his
_affaires du coeur_ rather clumsy baggage in the wilds of Africa!"
"If he carried them all, yes. One or two might be consoling," suggested
Hester airily.
"Oh! bother Jules Grémond! I don't want to think of him! He belongs to a
life that is past!"
"Well, it is queer, anyway," insisted Hester, "and I want to scream with
laughter when I think of a divinity like you--didn't he call you a
divinity, Julie?--coming down from your pedestal to cater for his serene
highness, the one and only Jules Grémond!"
There was something so inimitable about Hester's manner coupled with the
graphic picture she drew that Julie went off into a paroxysm of laughter
that ended in hysterical sobbing which Hester put an end to by shaking
her vigorously.
"You are so funny," said Julie faintly, wiping her eyes. "You are almost
as funny as the situation!" and then she buried her face in Hester's arm
and laughed again.
"Shut up!" said Hester with more force than elegance for she was getting
frightened at Julie's unusual behavior. "Stop this minute or you'll go
all to pieces and besides, I've an awful confession to make!"
"Oh! not anything more," protested Julie, leaning back exhausted. "My
dear, don't! Another shock will certainly be the death of me!"
piteously.
"Well I'll die if I don't get it off my conscience, so there you are!"
cried Hester, thumping down in Julie's lap and beginning to finger the
hair that strayed in little curls about her temples.
"Go on," resignedly from Julie.
"Playing with your hair? I know you love to have me do it so you need
not put on such a martyred air."
"Go on with your confession, you goose!"
"Well, I told Mr. Renshawe he might come to call on us. You see he asked
if we would let Mrs. Lennox bring him and he was so nice I couldn't
refuse."
An amused smile crept into Julie's eyes. "I thought we had nothing in
common with men whatever--that they did not fit into the present scheme
of things--that we had no use for them in the life we live! _Wasn't_ it
some such explosive theory you expounded to me ages ago?" she asked
teasingly.
"It is true, you know it is," pulling Julie's curls to emphasize her
words, "but I did it for Nannie's sake. I know he is just dying to come
here and talk about her."
"You mean you are just dying to have him! So am I, for the matter of
that. Won't it be nice to hear all about them?"
"Do you know something?" said Hester who had a trick of beginning a
speech with a question, "I believe he is in love with her!"
"What gave you that idea, you precocious infant?"
"Oh! nothing special, only the way he looked when her name was mentioned
and his wanting to come here to talk about her--there is no other
possible reason why he should want to come--and he got the ring in her
cake you know. Wouldn't it be romantic if she married him?"
"Hester Dale! The way you allow your imagination to run riot is
something perfectly fearful! You put one and one together and make a
thousand things! I never saw such a girl!"
"You are not cross, are you, Julie? You don't think I did wrong to say
he might come?"
"Of course not, you baby, I think you did perfectly right. Now go and
make me a cup of tea if the kettle has not boiled dry. We need a brace
after all this excitement."
Hester busied herself with the tea things and Julie sat staring at her,
wrapt in thought. If Hester was conscious of this preoccupation she gave
no sign, but hummed a gay tune and talked to Peter Snooks, who came and
sat pressed close to her knees in true dog fashion.
"Do you know, Peter Snooks," she said speculatively, "we have one very
important feature in common--our noses." At this he thrust his up in her
lap. "Yes," she continued, patting him, "we have. Yours denotes your
state of health--mine the arrival of a stranger within our gates. A
certain proud and haughty person jeers at mine but you know how it is,
don't you, old man?"
The dog pawed her lap by way of showing that he understood perfectly and
with his big eloquent eyes fixed on the sugar bowl, thrust out his
tongue suggestively.
"What! is that sensitive too! Oh! you scalawag!" and she tossed him a
lump of sugar.
This conversation had stolen in through Julie's reverie and she pulled
up her chair and leaned over to her sister as she took her cup of tea.
"I dare say I did jeer at that saucy nose of yours," she began, "but in
token of my future awe and respect I am going to kiss it now," suiting
the action to the words. "It may be a precaution against its owner's
kissing me as an alternative in the next emergency! Peter Snooks, I call
upon you to witness that I hereto set my seal," with another kiss,
"having at this moment solemnly declared that I consider the aforesaid
feature infallible."