Susan lingered. There was a look on Frances' face she did not like to
see. "Yuh ain't lonesome, honey?"
The sunshine of the girl's nature flashed at once to the surface. "Not a
bit! This fire is just glorious; it's cold out-of-doors, cold as
Christmas, and the coffee smells delicious, and the ham--hurry up! I'm
so hungry, I'll be back in the kitchen if you don't!"
Susan, satisfied, hurried off.
Frances loosened her jacket and slipped the hat-pins out of her hat and
put the hat on her knee; the firelight shone on the brown velvet of it
and on her trim brown gown, and her slender foot stretched out towards
the hearth, and lighted up the warm tints of her scarlet waist and the
rose of her cheeks reddened by wind and fireshine.
A litter of papers and magazines was on the table behind her and an
electric globe overhead, but the firelight and her thoughts were best
company. There was a sting back there in her memory somehow she was
vaguely conscious of and resentful of; she was feeling for it with
senses unused to such searching, and by and by, being unsuccessful, she
wandered to other thoughts, which was the surest cure for the sting, had
she but known it. She slipped her arms from her jacket and that slid to
the floor, her attitude relaxed more and more, she was half dreaming
when the sharp ringing of the bell and Susan's footsteps echoing along
the polished floor of the hall brought her suddenly to her feet. Before
she was quite wide awake a visitor stood in the library.
"I saw you had an idle moment," he began in a tone of intense amusement.
Frances looked at him uncomprehendingly.
Lawson pointed mischievously to the half drawn curtain. Frances walked
swiftly to it and sent the rings clashing along the pole.
"Good!" he cried, "if I may stay."
"Shut out the wind, shut out the weather," his heart was saying to him;
he had forgotten the rest of it, but he knew the last word was
perilously dear sometimes--"together."
"Together!" It was the first time he had ever really felt the
significance of the word with her. Even if there were none others near
she had made him feel as if there were a crowd always. Now, the dusky
firelit room, the startled look on her face, the half-hesitancy of her
speech, he would not miss a tithe of. He stooped and picked up her
gloves and hat-pins, and as he handed them to her his hand shook a
trifle, awkwardly, and he pricked her.
"Oh dear!" she cried, pathetically as a child, "it's bleeding!"
"Let me see!" There was a round red drop of blood at the finger's tip.
"I would not have hurt you for worlds! How stupid! Let me--there!" He
was wrapping her hand in his handkerchief and stanching the slight flow
at the dainty pink point of her fingers, and blessing the pin, even if
it did hurt. How small her hand had seemed, how white, how warm; he
unwrapped the swathings and held it palm upwards, looking solicitously
and wondering inanely which finger was hurt. The pink palm was unlined
as a child's. Lawson eyed it swiftly; he had some idea of palmistry.
"Shall I read your future?" he asked gayly after one quick glance at the
marriage cross on the soft flesh under her forefinger.
"Why, can you?" cried Frances, flushing a little at the question and a
little that he should still be holding her hand.
"Oh yes, here--"
"Suppah is raidy!" Susan, coming quietly to the door to beckon her
mistress and ask advice about the serving of the meal, had come upon the
tableau. She broke it up.
Lawson moved toward the door and Frances stood, uncertainty on her face.
"You have just come--" she began.
"I didn't think it was so late."
"You drove too long!" she flashed.
"Oh no, not long after I saw you!" he was quick to retort. "What were
you doing without your father?"
"He met an old friend--"
"Is he still away?"
"Yes, he's going to stay."
Lawson put his hand on the door-knob. He saw he must go, but Susan,
impatient at even this delay and so furious at what her eyes had seen
that she scarce heeded what she was doing clanged out the supper bell
and then poked her turbaned head through the portière. "Ef yuh don't
come on, eberyting will be col'!" she declared.
Frances, angered through and through at the old woman's interference,
tilted her chin high. "Come out and have supper with me, Mr. Lawson,"
she said, "it's lonesome by myself!"
"Fo' Gawd!" muttered Susan, knowing she had overreached herself and
brought about worse than she had tried to avert, "fo' Gawd!"
"Susan, put a plate for Mr. Lawson!"
Susan, plate in hand, came slowly to the table where they waited. "I
ain't gwine put it at de foot, Gawd knows," she told herself, "I'se
gwine put it at de side, de lef' side too, an' I hopes to de Lawd he'll
burn hisself agains' de coffee-pot; it's good and hot, I knows!"
Lawson was duly satisfied where he was; he could watch her hands, shaky
a little at first, hovering over the queer-shaped silver pot of coffee
and the low wide cream-jug and open sugar-bowl, and he listened
delightedly to her questions as to his tastes; he could enjoy too,
seeing the example of his hostess, the good food Susan had unwittingly
prepared him.
There was no criticism now of house or table. The great high-ceilinged
room with its heavy furniture of dark mahogany, its dusky corners, and
its single light shining above his hostess' head and lighting every tint
of her loveliness, seemed the perfection of home atmosphere.
When they went into the hall and heard the rain beating on the corridor
roof, and Frances opened the outer door for one instant to glance out on
the storm-swept quadrangle, the gleaming lights pricking the darkness
here and there, and to speak uneasily of her father, before she closed
the door upon the storm and came back to her seat by the library fire,
he felt all the happiness he had dreamed of that other evening which had
turned out so differently.
The difference was to affect other things, also, for as he rose to go he
said laughingly, "You know I am asked to go on the eleven?"
"No!" Football was the only one of the University sports for which
Frances had any enthusiasm.
"Yes, Marsden's hurt is more serious than they thought; they want me to
take his place, for the time at least."
"Yes," assented Frances as he paused.
"I used to play at home on the old college team."
"You will accept?"
"I think so; it means hard training and," with a short laugh,
"abstemious living, but I think I will."
"I am glad!" cried Frances impulsively. At the warmth of her
friendliness the young man's eyes spoke a warmer language yet. The
girl's glances fell.
Lawson made an impulsive step forward, drew a long hard breath, his
hands clenched, though he did not know it; then, "Good night!" he said
quietly, "and thank you for a very pleasant evening."