"And now," said Lee, "I think I'll tell mamma."
On the way to find the princess, Lee and Renier encountered Herring. He
appeared to be hurrying, but something in their faces brought him to a
sudden stop.
Their attempts to meet his inquiring gaze with indifference proved
unavailing, for he closed one eye and said:
"Which of you two has swallowed the family canary? Or has each of you
swallowed half of him?"
The guilty pair were unable to preserve their natural coloring. They
turned crimson, and each showed a courteous willingness to let the other
be the first to speak.
"You've been to Carrytown," said Herring. "I saw you start. You raced
down to the float. And in your rivalry to see which should board the
_Streak_ first, it looked as if you were going to knock each other
overboard. Renier, he won, and you, Miss Lee, were annoyed. When you
returned from Carrytown, you had long, pensive, anxious faces. Renier
stepped ashore and, in helping you ashore, gave you both hands. When a
girl whom I have seen climb a tree after a baby owl accepts the aid of a
man's two hands in stepping from a solid boat to a solid float, there is
food for thought. Having landed, you proceeded direct to the head of the
Darling family and were for some time engaged with him in solemn
discourse. A paper was shown him. From a distance it looked as if it
might be some sort of a license--a license to hunt and be hunted,
perhaps----"
"But it wasn't," said Lee suddenly, and she thrust her hand under
Renier's arm. "If you must know, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, it was a license
to love and be loved. So there!"
She was no longer blinking, nor was Renier. They looked so loving and
proud that it was Herring's turn to feel embarrassment. Then he said:
"I only meant to be a tease. If I'd really thought anything--I wouldn't,
of course; none of my darn business. But I'm _awfully_ glad. I've hoped
all along it would happen. It's the best ever. Am I to be secret as the
grave or can I tell--any one I happen to meet?"
"Give us ten minutes to tell mamma," said Lee, "and then consider your
lips unsealed."
Herring had drawn from his pocket a stop-watch and set it going.
"Ten minutes," he said. "Thanks awfully! And good luck!"
He had turned, waving his free hand to them, and darted away.
Lee laughed scornfully.
"Any one he happens to meet!" she exclaimed. "He's headed straight for
the garden, and there he'll just _happen_ to meet Phyllis. She was
speaking of her tomatoes at breakfast, and saying that they ought to be
ripening and that she was going to have a look at them."
"Lee, darling," said Renier, "nobody can possibly see us. And when Mr.
Heartbeat left us alone in the front room it was a frightfully long time
ago. And sometimes a fellow's arms get to aching with sheer emptiness,
and--and, 'this is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the
hemlocks----'"
"Are mostly birches and larches hereabouts," said Lee, and, with a happy
laugh, she drifted into a pair of arms that closed tightly about her.
And, "It doesn't matter if anybody does see us," she said.
* * * * *
It was characteristic of Herring that he should enter the garden by
leaping over the fence. It was also characteristic that he should catch
his foot on the top rail and fall at full length in a bed of very
beautiful and much cherished phlox.
Phyllis, in the path near by, gazed at the fallen man with mirth and
anxiety.
"Hurt?" she asked.
He rose and examined a watch which he was carrying in his right hand.
"Crystal smashed," he said, "but still going. And I've got to wait four
minutes!"
"Why have you got to wait four minutes?"
"Because I promised to wait ten, and six of them have elapsed. Oh, but
won't you be excited when I am at liberty to speak! It's more exciting
than when we were lost in the woods, crossing the swamp that had never
been crossed before. Meanwhile, let us calm ourselves by talking of
something prosaic. How are the tomatoes getting on?"
Phyllis put up her hand in a smiling military salute.
"'General Blank's compliments,'" she said, "'and the colored troops are
turning black in the face.'"
"My favorite breakfast dish," said Herring, "is grilled tomatoes,
preceded by raw oysters and oatmeal."
"Isn't it nice," said Phyllis, "that there is money in the family after
all, and we're going to give up The Camp as an inn?"
"It would have been given up anyway," said Herring. "A determined body
of men had so resolved in secret. There's one minute left."
For some reason they found nothing to say during the whole of that
minute. When the last second thereof had passed forever, Herring said
simply:
"Your sister Lee and Renier are going to be married."
I cannot describe the expression that came over Phyllis's face. It
wasn't exactly jealousy; it wasn't exactly the expression of a beautiful
female commuter who has just missed her train. It wasn't a wild look, or
a happy look, or a sad look. Perhaps it was a little bit more of an
aching void look than anything else.
Whatever its exact nature, the wily Herring studied it with an immense
satisfaction. And then his heart began to flurry in a sort of panic.
"Lee!" exclaimed Phyllis, "married! Why, they're nothing but children!"
She felt something encircle her waist. She looked down and saw a hand
and part of an arm.
"What are you doing?" she asked, in a sort of daze.
"I'm trying to establish a hold on you," said Herring, and toward the
end of so saying his voice broke; "and you're not to feel lonely and
deserted with me standing here, are you?"
For a moment it seemed to Herring that Phyllis was going to extricate
herself from his encircling arm. She achieved, indeed, a quarter
revolution to the left and away from him.
"Don't, Phyllis!" he cried. "Don't do it! I couldn't bear it!"
Then she ceased revolving to the left, stopped, and from a startled,
uncertain, half-frightened young person became suddenly a warmly loving
young person, warmly loved, who revolved suddenly to the right, and
became the recipient of a sudden storm of ecstatic exclamations and
kisses.
And then, nestling close to the one and only man in the world, she
listened with complete satisfaction to his efforts to explain to her
just how beautiful and wonderful and good she was.