The Scribe is quite positive that had you only heard about it as he
had, even with the details elaborated, not only by Peter, who was
conservatism itself in his every statement, but by Miss Felicia as
well--who certainly ought to have known--you would not have believed
it possible until you had seen it. Even then you would have had to drop
into one of Miss Felicia's cretonne-upholstered chairs--big easy-chairs
that fitted into every hollow and bone in your back--looked the length
of the uneven porch, run your astonished eye down the damp, water-soaked
wooden steps to the moist brick pavement below, and so on to the beds of
crocuses blooming beneath the clustering palms and orange trees, before
you could realize (in spite of the drifting snow heaped up on the
door-steps of her house outside--some of it still on your shoes) that
you were in Miss Felicia's tropical garden, attached to Miss Felicia's
Geneseo house, and not in the back yard of some old home in the far-off
sunny South.
It was an old story, of course, to Peter, who had the easy-chair beside
me, and so it was to Morris, who had helped Miss Felicia carry out so
Utopian a scheme, but it had come to me as a complete surprise, and I
was still wide-eyed and incredulous.
“And what keeps out the cold?” I asked Morris, who was lying back
blowing rings into the summer night, the glow of an overhead lantern
lighting up his handsome face.
“Glass,” he laughed.
“Where?”
“There, just above the vines, my dear Major,” interrupted Miss Felicia,
pointing upward. “Come and let me show you my frog pond--” and away we
went along the brick paths, bordered with pots of flowers, to a tiny
lake covered with lily-pads and circled by water-plants.
“I did not want a greenhouse--I wanted a back yard,” she continued,
“and I just would have it. Holker sent his men up, and on three sides
we built a wall that looked a hundred years old--but it is not five--and
roofed it over with glass, and just where you see the little flight
of stairs is the heat. That old arbor in the corner has been here ever
since I was a child, and so have the syringa bushes and the green box
next the wall. I wanted them all the year round--not just for three or
four months in the year--and that witch Holker said he could do it, and
he has. Half the weddings in town have been begun right on that bench,
and when the lanterns are lighted and the fountain turned on outside, no
gentleman ever escapes. You and Peter are immune, so I sha'n't waste
any of my precious ammunition on you. And now what will you wear in your
button-hole--a gardenia, or some violets? Ruth will be down in a minute,
and you must look your prettiest.”
But if the frog pond, damp porch and old-fashioned garden had come as a
surprise, what shall I say of the rest of Miss Felicia's house which I
am now about to inspect under Peter's guidance.
“Here, come along,” he cried, slipping his arm through mine. “You have
had enough of the garden, for between you and me, my dear Major”--here
he looked askance at Miss Felicia--“I think it an admirable place in
which to take cold, and that's why--” and he passed his hand over
his scalp--“I always insist on wearing my hat when I walk here. Mere
question of imagination, perhaps, but old fellows like you and me should
take no chances--” and he laughed heartily.
“This room was my father's,” continued Peter. “The bookcases have still
some of the volumes he loved; he liked the low ceiling and the big
fireplace, and always wrote here--it was his library, really. There
opens the old drawing-room and next to it is Felicia's den, where she
concocts most of her deviltry, and the dining-room beyond--and that's
all there is on this floor, except the kitchen, which you'll hear from
later.”
And as Peter rattled on, telling me the history of this and that piece
of old furniture, or portrait, or queer clock, my eyes were absorbing
the air of cosey comfort that permeated every corner of the several
rooms. Everything had the air of being used. In the library the chairs
were of leather, stretched into saggy folds by many tired backs; the
wide, high fender fronting the hearth, though polished so that you could
see your face in it, showed the marks of many a drying shoe, while on
the bricks framing the fireplace could still be seen the scratchings of
countless matches.
The drawing-room, too--although, as in all houses of its class and
period, a thing of gilt frames, high mirrors and stiff furniture--was
softened by heaps of cushions, low stools and soothing arm-chairs,
while Miss Felicia's own particular room was so veritable a symphony
in chintz, white paint and old mahogany, with cubby-holes crammed
with knickknacks, its walls hung with rare etchings; pots of flowers
everywhere and the shelves and mantels crowded with photographs of
princes, ambassadors, grand dukes, grand ladies, flossy-headed children,
chubby-cheeked babies (all souvenirs of her varied and busy life), that
it was some minutes before I could throw myself into one of her heavenly
arm-chairs, there to be rested as I had never been before, and never
expect to be again.
It being Peter's winter holiday, he and Morris had stopped over on their
way down from Buffalo, where Holker had spoken at a public dinner. The
other present and expected guests were Ruth MacFarlane, who was already
upstairs; her father, Henry MacFarlane, who was to arrive by the next
train, and last and by no means lest, his confidential clerk, Mr. John
Breen, now two years older and, it is to be hoped, with considerable
more common-sense than when he chucked himself neck and heels out into
the cold world. Whether the expected arrival of this young gentleman had
anything to do with the length of time it took Ruth to dress, the Scribe
knoweth not. There is no counting upon the whims and vagaries of even
the average young woman of the day, and as Ruth was a long way above
that medium grade, and with positive ideas of her own as to whom she
liked and whom she did not like, and was, besides, a most discreet and
close-mouthed young person, it will be just as well for us to watch the
game of battledoor and shuttlecock still being played between Jack and
herself, before we arrive at any fixed conclusions.
Any known and admitted facts connected with either one of the
contestants are, however, in order, and so while we are waiting for old
Moggins, who drives the village 'bus, and who has been charged by
Miss Felicia on no account to omit bringing in his next load a certain
straight, bronzed-cheeked, well-set-up young man with a springy step,
accompanied by a middle-aged gentleman who looked like a soldier, and
deliver them both with their attendant baggage at her snow-banked door,
any data regarding this same young man's movements since the night Peter
wanted to hug him for leaving his uncle's service, cannot fail to be of
interest.
To begin then with the day on which Jack, with Frederick, the second
man's assistance, packed his belongings and accepted Garry's invitation
to make a bed of his lounge.
The kind-hearted Frederick knew what it was to lose a place, and so his
sympathies had been all the more keen. Parkins's nose, on the contrary,
had risen a full degree and stood at an angle of 45 degrees, for he had
not only heard the ultimatum of his employer, but was rather pleased
with the result. As for the others, no one ever believed the boy really
meant it, and everybody--even the maids and the high-priced chef--fully
expected Jack would turn prodigal as soon as his diet of husks had
whetted his appetite for dishes more nourishing and more toothsome. But
no one of them took account of the quality of the blood that ran in the
young man's veins.
It was scheming Peter who saved the day.
“Put that young fellow to work, Henry,” he had said to MacFarlane the
morning after the three had met at the Century Club.
“What does he know, Peter?”
“Nothing, except to speak the truth.”
And thus it had come to pass that within twenty-four hours thereafter
the boy had shaken the dust of New York from his feet--even to resigning
from the Magnolia, and a day later was found bending over a pine desk
knocked together by a hammer and some ten-penny nails in a six-by-nine
shanty, the whole situated at the mouth of a tunnel half a mile from
Corklesville, where he was at work on the pay-roll of the preceding
week.
Many things had helped in deciding him to take the proffered place.
First, Peter had wanted it; second, his uncle did not want it, Corinne
and his aunt being furious that he should go to work like a common
laborer, or--as Garry had put it--“a shovel-spanked dago.” Third, Ruth
was within calling distance, and that in itself meant Heaven. Once
installed, however, he had risen steadily, both in MacFarlane's
estimation and in the estimation of his fellow-workers; especially the
young engineers who were helping his Chief in the difficult task before
him. Other important changes had also taken place in the two years: his
body had strengthened, his face had grown graver, his views of life had
broadened and, best of all, his mind was at rest. Of one thing he
was sure--no confiding young Gilberts would be fleeced in his present
occupation--not if he knew anything about it.
Moreover, the outdoor life which he had so longed for was his again.
On Saturday afternoons and Sundays he tramped the hills, or spent hours
rowing on the river. His employer's villa was also always open to him--a
privilege not granted to the others in the working force. The old tie
of family was the sesame. Judge Breen's son was, both by blood and
training, the social equal of any man, and although the distinguished
engineer, being well born himself, seldom set store on such things,
he recognized his obligation in Jack's case and sought the first
opportunity to tell him so.
“You will find a great change in your surroundings, Mr. Breen,” he had
said. “The little hotel where you will have to put up is rather rough
and uncomfortable, but you are always welcome at my home, and this I
mean, and I hope you will understand it that way without my mentioning
it again.”
The boy's heart leaped to his throat as he listened, and a dozen
additional times that day his eyes had rested on the clump of trees
which shaded the roof sheltering Ruth.
That the exclusive Miss Grayson should now have invited him to pass some
days at her home had brought with it a thrill of greater delight. Her
opinion of the boy had changed somewhat. His willingness to put up with
the discomforts of the village inn--“a truly dreadful place,” to quote
one of Miss Felicia's own letters--and to continue to put up with them
for more than two years, while losing nothing of his good-humor and good
manners, had shaken her belief in the troubadour and tin-armor theory,
although nothing in Jack's surroundings or in his prospects for the
future fitted him, so far as she could see, to life companionship with
so dear a girl as her beloved Ruth--a view which, of course, she kept
strictly to herself.
But she still continued to criticise him, at which Peter would rub his
hands and break out with:
“Fine fellow!--square peg in a square hole this time. Fine fellow, I
tell you, Felicia!”
He receiving in reply some such answer as:
“Yes, quite lovely in fairy tales, Peter, and when you have taught
him--for you did it, remember--how to shovel and clean up underbrush
and split rocks--and that just's what Ruth told me he was doing when she
took a telegram to her father which had come to the house--and he in
a pair of overalls, like any common workman--what, may I ask, will you
have him doing next? Is he to be an engineer or a clerk all his life?
He might have had a share in his uncle's business by this time if he had
had any common-sense;” Peter retorting often with but a broad smile
and that little gulp of satisfaction--something between a chuckle and a
sigh--which always escaped him when some one of his proteges were living
up to his pet theories.
And yet it was Miss Felicia herself who was the first to welcome the
reprobate, even going to the front door and standing in the icy draught,
with the snowflakes whirling about her pompadoured head, until Jack had
alighted from the tail-end of Moggins's 'bus and, with his satchel in
his hand, had cleared the sidewalk with a bound and stood beside her.
“Oh, I'm so glad to be here,” Jack had begun, “and it was so good of you
to want me,” when a voice rang clear from the top of the stairs:
“And where's daddy--isn't he coming?”
“Oh!--how do you do, Miss Ruth? No; I am sorry to say he could not
leave--that is, we could not persuade him to leave. He sent you all
manner of messages, and you, too, Miss--”
“He isn't coming? Oh, I am so disappointed! What is the matter, is he
ill?” She was half-way down the staircase now, her face showing how keen
was her disappointment.
“No--nothing's the matter--only we are arranging for an important blast
in a day or two, and he felt he couldn't be away. I can only stay the
night.” Jack had his overcoat stripped from his broad shoulders now and
the two had reached each other's hands.
Miss Felicia watched them narrowly out of her sharp, kindly eyes. This
love-affair--if it were a love-affair--had been going on for years now
and she was still in the dark as to the outcome. There was no question
that the boy was head over heels in love with the girl--she could see
that from the way the color mounted to his cheeks when Ruth's voice rang
out, and the joy in his eyes when they looked into hers. How Ruth felt
toward her new guest was what she wanted to know. This was, perhaps, the
only reason why she had invited him--another thing she kept strictly to
herself.
But the two understood it--if Miss Felicia did not. There may be shrewd
old ladies who can read minds at a glance, and fussy old men who can see
through blind millstones, and who know it all, but give me two lovers to
fool them both to the top of their bent, be they so minded.
“And now, dear, let Mr. Breen go to his room, for we dine in an hour,
and Holker will be cross as two sticks if we keep it waiting a minute.”
But Holker was not cross--not when dinner was served; nobody was
cross--certainly not Peter, who was in his gayest mood; and certainly
not Ruth or Jack, who babbled away next to each other. Peter's heart
swelled with pride and satisfaction as he saw the change which two years
of hard work had made in Jack--not only in his bearing and in a certain
fearless independence which had become a part of his personality, but in
the unmistakable note of joyousness which flowed out of him, so marked
in contrast to the depression which used to haunt him like a spectre.
Stories of his life at his boarding-house--vaguely christened a hotel by
its landlady, Mrs. Hicks--bubbled out of the boy as well as accounts of
various escapades among the men he worked with--especially the younger
engineers and one of the foremen who had rooms next his own--all told
with a gusto and ring that kept the table in shouts of merriment--Morris
laughing loudest and longest, Peter whispering behind his hand to Miss
Felicia:
“Charming, isn't he?--and please note, my dear, that none of the dirt
from his shovel seems to have clogged his wit--” at which there was
another merry laugh--Peter's, this time, his being the only voice in
evidence.
“And she is such fun, Miss Felicia” (Mrs. Hicks was under
discussion), called out Jack, realizing that he had, perhaps--although
unconsciously--failed to include his hostess in his coterie of
listeners. “You should see her caps, and the magnificent airs she puts
on when we come down late to breakfast on Sunday mornings.”
“And tell them about the potatoes,” interrupted Ruth.
“Oh, that was disgraceful, but it really could not be helped--we had
greasy fried potatoes until we could not stand them another day, and
Bolton found them in the kitchen late one night ready for the skillet
the next morning, and filled them with tooth powder, and that ended it.”
“I'd have set you fellows out on the sidewalk if I'd been Mrs. Hicks,”
laughed Morris. “I know that old lady--I used to stop with her myself
when I was building the town hall--and she's good as gold. And now tell
me how MacFarlane is getting on--building a railroad, isn't he? He told
me about it, but I forget.”
“No,” replied Jack, his face growing suddenly serious as he turned
toward the speaker; “the company is building the road. We have only got
a fill of half a mile and then a tunnel of a mile more.”
Miss Felicia beamed sententiously when Jack said “we,” but she did not
interrupt the speaker.
“And what sort of cutting?” continued the architect in a tone that
showed his entire familiarity with work of the kind.
“Gneiss rock for eleven hundred feet and then some mica schist that
we have had to shore up every time we move our drills,” answered Jack
quietly.
“Any cave-ins?” Morris was leaning forward now, his eyes riveted on the
boy's. What information he wanted he felt sure he now could get.
“Not yet, but plenty of water. We struck a spring last week” (this time
the “we” didn't seem so preposterous) “that came near drowning us out,
but we managed to keep it under with a six-inch centrifugal; but it
meant pumping night and day.”
“And when is he going to get through?”
“That depends on what is ahead of us. Our borings show up all
right--most of it is tough gneiss--but if we strike gravel or shale
again it means more timbering, of course. Perhaps another year--perhaps
a few months. I am not giving you my own opinion, for I've had very
little experience, but that is what Bolton thinks--he's second in
command next to Mr. MacFarlane--and so do the other fellows at our
boarding house.”
And then followed a discussion on “struts,” roof timbers and tie-rods,
Jack describing in a modest, impersonal way the various methods used by
the members of the staff with which he was connected, Morris, as usual,
becoming so absorbed in the warding off of “cave-ins” that for the
moment he forgot the table, his hostess and everybody about him, a
situation which, while it delighted Peter, who was bursting with pride
over Jack, was beginning to wear upon Miss Felicia, who was entirely
indifferent as to whether the top covering of MacFarlane's underground
hole fell in or not.
“There, now, Holker,” she said with a smile as she laid her hand on his
coat sleeve--“not another word. Tunnels are things everybody wants to
get through with as quick as possible--and I'm not going to spend all
night in yours--awful damp places full of smoke--No--not another word.
Ruth, ask that young Roebling next you to tell us another story--No,
wait until we have our coffee and you gentlemen have lighted your
cigars. Perhaps, Ruth, you had better take Mr. Breen into the
smoking-room. Now, give me your arm, Holker, and you come, too, Major,
and bring Peter with you to my boudoir. I want to show you the most
delicious copy of Shelley you ever saw. No, Mr. Breen, Ruth wants you;
we will be with you in a few minutes--” Then after the two had passed
on ahead--“Look at them, Major--aren't they a joy, just to watch?--and
aren't you ashamed of yourself that you have wasted your life? No arbor
for you! What would you give if a lovely girl like that wanted you all
to herself by the side of my frog pond?”
A shout ahead from Jack, and a rippling laugh from Ruth now floated our
way.
“Oh!--OH!--” and “Yes--isn't it wonderful--come and see the arbor--” and
then a clatter of feet down the soggy steps and fainter footfalls on the
moist bricks, ending in silence.
“There!” laughed Miss Felicia, turning toward us and clapping her
hands--“they have reached the arbor and it's all over, and now we will
all go out on the porch for our coffee. I haven't any Shelley that you
have not seen a dozen times--I just intended that surprise to come to
the boy and in the way Ruth wanted it--she has talked of nothing else
since she knew he was coming. Mighty dangerous, I can tell you, that old
bench. Ruth can take care of herself, but that poor fellow will be in
a dreadful state if we leave them alone too long. Sit here, Holker,
and tell me about the dinner and what you said. All that Peter could
remember was that you never did better, and that everybody cheered, and
that the squabs were so dry he couldn't eat them.”
But the Scribe refuses to be interested in Holker's talk, however
brilliant, or in Miss Felicia's crisp repartee. His thoughts are down
among the palms, where the two figures are entering the arbor, the
soft glow of half a dozen lanterns falling upon the joyous face of the
beautiful girl, as, with hand in Jack's, she leads him to a seat beside
her on the bench.
“But it's like home,” Jack gasped. “Why, you must remember your own
garden, and the porch that ran alongside of the kitchen, and the brick
walls--and just see how big it is and you never told me a word about it!
Why?”
“Oh, because it would have spoiled all the fun; I was so afraid daddy
would tell you that I made him promise not to say a word; and nobody
else had seen it except Mr. Morris, and he said torture couldn't drag it
out of him. That old Major that Uncle Peter thinks so much of came near
spoiling the surprise, but Aunt Felicia said she would take care of him
in the back of the house--and she did; and I mounted guard at the top
of the stairs before anybody could get hold of you. Isn't it too
lovely?--and, do you know, there are real live frogs in that pond and
you can hear them croak? And now tell me about daddy, and how he gets on
without me.”
But Jack was not ready yet to talk about daddy, or the work, or anything
that concerned Corklesville and its tunnel--the transition had been too
sudden and too startling. To be fired from a gun loaded with care, hard
work and anxiety--hurled through hours of winter travel and landed at a
dinner-table next some charming young woman, was an experience which had
occurred to him more than once in the past two years. But to be thrust
still further into space until he reached an Elysium replete with
whispering fountains, flowering vines and the perfume of countless
blossoms--the whole tucked away in a cosey arbor containing a seat for
two--AND NO MORE--and this millions of miles away, so far as he could
see, from the listening ear or watchful eye of mortal man or woman--and
with Ruth, too--the tips of whose fingers were so many little shrines
for devout kisses--that was like having been transported into Paradise.
“Oh, please let me look around a little,” he begged at last. “And this
is why you love to come here?”
“Yes--wouldn't you?”
“I would not live anywhere else if I could--and it has just the air
of summer--and it feels like a summer's night, too--as if the moon was
coming up somewhere.”
Ruth's delight equalled his own; she must show him the new tulips just
sprouting, taking down a lantern so that he could see the better; and he
must see how the jessamine was twisted in and out the criss-cross slats
of the trellis, so that the flowers bloomed both outside and in; and
the little gully in the flagging of the pavement through which ran the
overflow of the tiny pond--till the circuit of the garden was made and
they were again seated on the dangerous bench, with a cushion tucked
behind her beautiful shoulders.
They talked of the tunnel and when it would be finished; and of the
village people and whom they liked and whom they didn't--and why--and of
Corinne, whose upturned little nose and superior, dominating airs
Ruth thought were too funny for words; and of her recently announced
engagement to Garry Minott, who had started for himself in business and
already had a commission to build a church at Elm Crest--known to
all New Jersey as Corklesville until the real-estate agencies
took possession of its uplands--Jack being instrumental, with Mr.
MacFarlane's help, in securing him the order; and of the dinner to be
given next week at Mrs. Brent Foster's on Washington Square, to which
they were both invited, thanks to Miss Felicia for Ruth's invitation,
and thanks to Peter for that of Jack, who, at Peter's request, had
accompanied him one afternoon to one of Mrs. Foster's receptions, where
he had made so favorable an impression that he was at once added to Mrs.
Foster's list of eligible young men--the same being a scarce article.
They had discussed, I say, all these things and many more, in sentences,
the Scribe devoutly hopes, much shorter than the one he has just
written--when in a casual--oh, so casual a way--merely as a matter of
form--Ruth asked him if he really must go back to Corklesville in the
morning.
“Yes,” answered Jack--“there is no one to take charge of the new battery
but myself, and we have ten holes already filled for blasting.”
“But isn't it only to put the two wires together? Daddy explained it to
me.”
“Yes--but at just the right moment. Half a minute too early might ruin
weeks of work. We have some supports to blow out. Three charges are at
their bases--everything must go off together.”
“But it is such a short visit.”
Some note in her voice rang through Jack's ears and down into his heart.
In all their intercourse--and it had been a free and untrammelled one
so far as their meetings and being together were concerned--there was
invariably a barrier which he could never pass, and one that he was
always afraid to scale. This time her face was toward him, the rosy
light bathing her glorious hair and the round of her dimpled cheek. For
an instant a half-regretful smile quivered on her lips, and then faded
as if some indrawn sigh had strangled it.
Jack's heart gave a bound.
“Are you really sorry to have me go, Miss Ruth?” he asked, searching her
eyes.
“Why should I not be? Is not this better than Mrs. Hicks's, and Aunt
Felicia would love to have you stay--she told me so at dinner.”
“But you, Miss Ruth?” He had moved a trifle closer--so close that his
eager fingers almost touched her own: “Do you want me to stay?”
“Why, of course, we all want you to stay. Uncle Peter has talked of
nothing else for days.”
“But do you want me to stay, Miss Ruth?”
She lifted her head and looked him fearlessly in the eyes:
“Yes, I do--now that you will have it that way. We are going to have a
sleigh-ride to-morrow, and I know you would love the open country, it is
so beautiful, and so is--”
“Ruth! Ruth! you dear child,” came a voice--“are you two never coming
in?--the coffee is stone cold.”
“Yes, Aunt Felicia, right away. Run, Mr. Breen--” and she flew up the
brick path.
For the second time Miss Felicia's keen, kindly eyes scanned the young
girl's face, but only a laugh, the best and surest of masks, greeted
her.
“He thinks it all lovely,” Ruth rippled out. “Don't you, Mr. Breen?”
“Lovely? Why, it is the most wonderful place I ever saw; I could hardly
believe my senses. I am quite sure old Aunt Hannah is cooking behind
that door--” here he pointed to the kitchen--“and that poor old Tom will
come hobbling along in a minute with 'dat mis'ry' in his back. How in
the world you ever did it, and what--”
“And did you hear my frogs?” interrupted his hostess.
“Of course he didn't, Felicia,” broke in Peter. “What a question to
ask a man! Listen to the croakings of your miserable tadpoles with
the prettiest girl in seven counties--in seven States, for that
matter--sitting beside him! Oh!--you needn't look, you minx! If he
heard a single croak he ought to be ducked in the puddle--and then
packed off home soaking wet.”
“And that is what he is going to do himself,” rejoined Ruth, dropping
into a chair which Peter had drawn up for her.
“Do what!” cried Peter.
“Pack himself off--going by the early train--nothing I can do or say has
made the slightest impression on him,” she said with a toss of her head.
Jack raised his hands in protest, but Peter wouldn't listen.
“Then you'll come back, sir, on Saturday and stay until Monday, and then
we'll all go down together and you'll take Ruth across the ferry to her
father's.
“Thank you, sir, but I am afraid I can't. You see, it all depends on the
work--” this last came with a certain tone of regret.
“But I'll send MacFarlane a note, and have you detailed as an escort of
one to bring his only daughter----”
“It would not do any good, Mr. Grayson.”
“Stop your nonsense, Jack--” Peter called him so now--“You come back for
Sunday.” These days with the boy were the pleasantest of his life.
“Well, I would love to--” Here his eyes sought, Ruth--“but we have an
important blast to make, and we are doing our best to get things into
shape before the week is out.”
“Well, but suppose it isn't ready?” demanded Peter.
“But it will be,” answered Jack in a more positive tone; this part of
the work was in his hands.
“Well, anyhow, send me a telegram.”
“I will send it, sir, but I am afraid it won't help matters. Miss Ruth
knows how delighted I would be to return here and see her safe home.”
“Whether she does or whether she doesn't,” broke in Miss Felicia,
“hasn't got a single thing to do with it, Peter. You just go back to
your work, Mr. Breen, and look after your gunpowder plots, or
whatever you call them, and if some one of these gentlemen of elegant
leisure--not one of whom so far has offered his services--cannot manage
to escort you to your father's house, Ruth, I will take you myself. Now
come inside the drawing-room, every one of you, or you will all blame me
for undermining your precious healths--you, too, Major, and bring your
cigars with you. So you don't drop your ashes into my tea-caddy, I don't
care where you throw them.”
It was late in the afternoon of the second day when the telegram
arrived, a delay which caused no apparent suffering to any one except,
perhaps, Peter, who wandered about with a “Nothing from Jack yet, eh?”
A question which no one answered, it being addressed to nobody in
particular, unless it was to Ruth, who had started at every ring of the
door-bell. As to Miss Felicia--she had already dismissed the young man
from her mind.
When it did arrive there was a slight flutter of interest, but nothing
more; Miss Felicia laying down her book, Ruth asking in indifferent
tones--even before the despatch was opened--“Is he coming?” and Morris,
who was playing chess with Peter, holding his pawn in mid-air until the
interruption was over.
Not so Peter--who with a joyous “Didn't I tell you the boy would keep
his promise--” sprang from his chair, nearly upsetting the chess-board
in his eagerness to hear from Jack, an eagerness shared by Ruth, whose
voice again rang out, this time in an anxious tone,
“Hurry up, Uncle Peter--is he coming?”
Peter made no answer; he was staring straight at the open slip, his face
deathly pale, his hand trembling.
“I'll tell you all about it in a minute, dear,” he said at last with a
forced smile. Then he touched Morris's arm and the two left the room.