I met Mabel Colton several times during the following week. Once, at the place where I had met her before, in the grove by the edge of the bluff, and again walking up the Lane in company with her father. Once also on the Lower Road, though that could scarcely be called a meeting, for I was afoot and she and her father and mother were in the automobile.
Only at the meeting in the grove were words exchanged between us. She bowed pleasantly and commented on the wonderful view.
“I am trespassing again, you see,” she said. “Taking advantage of your good-nature, Mr. Paine. This spot is the most attractive I have found in Denboro.”
I observed that the view from her verandas must be almost the same.
“Almost, but not quite,” she said. “These pines shut off the inlet below, and all the little fishing boats. One of them is yours, I suppose. Which?”
“That is my launch there,” I replied, pointing.
“The little white one? You built it yourself, I think Father said.”
“He was mistaken, if he said that. I am not clever enough to build a boat, Miss Colton. I bought the Comfort, second-hand.”
I don't know why I added the “second-hand.” Probably because I had not yet freed my mind from the bitterness—yes, and envy—which the sight of this girl and her people always brought with it. It is comparatively easy to be free from envy if one is what George Taylor termed a “never-was”; for a “has been” it is harder.
The boat's name was the only portion of my remark which attracted her attention.
“The Comfort?” she repeated. “That is a jolly name for a pleasure boat.”
“It is my mother's name,” I answered.
“Is it? Why, I remember now. Miss Dean told me. I beg your pardon, Mr. Paine. It is a pretty name, at all events.”
“Thank you.”
“I must have misunderstood Father. I was sure he said that boat building was your business.”
“No. He saw me overhauling the engine, and perhaps that gave him the impression that I was a builder. I told him I was not, but no doubt he forgot. I have no business, Miss Colton.”
I think she was surprised. She glanced at me curiously and her lips opened as if to ask another question. She did not ask it however, and, except for a casual remark or two about the view and the blueness of the water in the bay, she said nothing more. I rather expected she would refer to her intention of calling on Mother, but she did not mention the subject. I inferred that she had thought better of her whim.
On the other occasions when we met she merely bowed. “Big Jim” nodded carelessly. Mrs. Colton, from her seat in the auto, nodded also, though her majestic bow could scarcely be termed a nod. It was more like the acknowledgment, by a queen in her chariot, of the applauding citizen on the sidewalk. She saw me, and she deigned to let me know that I was seen, that was all.
But when I inferred that her daughter had forgotten, or had decided not to make the call at our house, I misjudged the young lady. I returned, one afternoon, from a cruise up and down the bay in the Comfort, to find our small establishment—the Rogers portion of it, at least—in a high state of excitement. Lute and Dorinda were in the kitchen and before I reached the back door, which was open, I heard their voices in animated discussion.
“Why wouldn't I say it, Dorinda?” pleaded Lute. “You can't blame me none. There I was, with my sleeves rolled up and just settin' in the chair, restin' my arms a jiffy and thinkin' which window I'd wash next, when there come that knock at the door. Thinks I, 'It's Asa Peters' daughter's young-one peddlin' clams.' That's what come to my mind fust. That idee popped right into my head, it did.”
“Found plenty of room when it got there, I cal'late,” snapped Dorinda. “Must have felt lonesome.”
“That's it! keep on pitchin' into me. I swan to man! sometimes I get so discouraged and wore out and reckless—hello! here's Ros. You ask him now! Ros, she's layin' into me because I didn't understand what—”
“Roscoe,” broke in his wife, “I never was more mortified in all my born days. He—”
“Let me tell you all about it, Ros. I went to the door—thinkin' 'twas a peddler, you know; had this old suit on, all sloshed up with soapsuds and water, and a wet rag in my hand; and there she stood, styled up like the Queen of Sheby. Well, sir! I'll leave it to you if 'tain't enough to surprise anybody. HER! comin' HERE!”
“That wan't any reason why you should behave like a natural born—”
“Hold on! you let me finish tellin' Roscoe. 'Good afternoon,' says she. 'Is Mrs. Paine in?' Said it just like that, she did. I was so flustered up from the sight of her that I didn't sense it right off and I says, 'What ma'am?' 'Is Mrs. Paine in?' says she. 'In?' says I—”
“Just like a poll parrot,” interjected Dorinda.
“Are you goin' to let me tell this or ain't you? 'In?' says I; hadn't sensed it yet, you see. 'Is Mrs. Paine to home?' she says. Now your ma, Ros, ain't never been nowheres else BUT home sence land knows when, so I supposed she must mean somebody else. 'Who?' says I, again. 'Mrs. Comfort Paine,' says she. She raised her voice a little; guessed I was deef, probably.”
“If she'd guessed you was dumb she wouldn't have been fur off,” commented Dorinda. I had not seen her so disturbed for many a day.
Her husband disdained to notice this interruption.
“'Mrs. Comfort Paine,' says she,” he continued. “'She is in? And I says 'In?'”
“No, you didn't. You said, 'In where?' And she had all she could do to keep from laughin'. I see her face as I got to the door, and it's a mercy I got there when I did. Land knows what you'd have said next!”
“But, Dorindy, I tell you I thought—”
“YOU thought! I know what SHE must have thought. That she'd made a mistake and run afoul of an asylum for the feeble-minded.”
“Umph! I should have GOT feeble-minded if I'd had any more of that kind of talk. What made her ask if a sick woman like Comfort was 'in' and 'to home'? Couldn't be nowheres else, could she?”
“Rubbish! she meant could Mrs. Paine see folks, that's all.”
“See 'em! How you talk! She ain't blind.”
“Oh, my soul and body! She was tryin' to ask if she might make a call on Comfort.”
“Well then, why didn't she ask it; 'stead of wantin' to know if she was in?”
“That's the high-toned way TO ask, and you'd ought to have known it.”
“Humph! Do tell! Well, I ain't tony, myself. Don't have no chance to be in this house. Nothin' but work, work, work! tongue, tongue, tongue! for me around here. I'm disgusted, that's what I am.”
“YOU'RE disgusted! What about, me?”
I had listened to as much of this little domestic disagreement as I cared to hear.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “What is all this? Who has been here to see Mother?”
Both answered at once.
“That Colton girl,” cried Lute.
“That Mabel Colton,” said Dorinda.
“Miss Colton? She has been here? this afternoon.”
“Um-hm,” Dorinda nodded emphatically. “She stayed in your ma's room 'most an hour.”
“'Twas fifty-three minutes,” declared Lute. “I timed her by the clock. And she fetched a great, big bouquet. Comfort says she—”
I waited to hear no more, but went into Mother's room. The little bed chamber was fragrant with the perfume of flowers. A cluster of big Jacqueminot roses drooped their velvety petaled heads over the sides of the blue and white pitcher on the bureau. Mother loved flowers and I frequently brought her the old fashioned posies from Dorinda's little garden or wild blossoms from the woods and fields. But roses such as these were beyond my reach now-a-days. They grew in greenhouses, not in the gardens of country people.
Mother did not move as I entered and I thought she was asleep. But as I bent over the roses she turned on the pillow and spoke.
“Aren't they beautiful, Roscoe?” she said.
“Yes,” I answered. “They are beautiful.”
“Do you know who brought them to me?”
“Yes, Mother. Lute told me.”
“She did call, you see. She kept her word. It was kind of her, wasn't it?”
I sat down in the rocking chair by the window.
“Well,” I asked, after a moment, “what did she say? Did she condescend to pity her pauper neighbors?”
“Roscoe!”
“Did she express horrified sympathy and offer to call your case to the attention of her cousin in charge of the Poor Ward in the City General Hospital, like that woman from the Harniss hotel last summer?”
“Boy! How can you!”
“Oh, well; I am a jealous beast, Mother; I admit it. But I have not been able to bring you flowers like that and it galls me to think that others can. They don't deserve to have all the beautiful things in life, while the rest of us have none.”
“But it isn't her fault that she has them, is it? And it was kind to share them with us.”
“I suppose so. Well, what did she say to you? Dorinda says she was with you nearly an hour. What did you and she talk about? She did not offer charity, did she?”
“Do you think I should have accepted it, if she had? Roscoe, I have never seen you so prejudiced as you are against our new neighbors. It doesn't seem like you, at all. And if her father and mother are like Miss Mabel, you are very wrong. I like her very much.”
“You would try to like any one, Mother.”
“I did not have to try to like her. And I was a little prejudiced, too, at first. She was so wealthy, and an only child; I feared she might be conceited and spoiled. But she isn't.”
“Not conceited! Humph!”
“No, not really. At first she seemed a trifle distant, and I thought her haughty; but, afterward, when her strangeness and constraint had worn away, she was simple and unaffected and delightful. And she is very pretty, isn't she.”
“Yes.”
“She told me a great deal about herself. She has been through Vassar and has traveled a great deal. This is the first summer since her graduation which she has not spent abroad. She and I talked of Rome and Florence. I—I told her of the month I spent in Italy when you were a baby, Roscoe.”
“You did not tell her anything more, Mother? Anything she should not know?”
“Boy!” reproachfully.
“Pardon me, Mother. Of course you didn't. Did she tell you why she called on us—on you, I mean?”
“Yes, in a way. I imagine—though she did not say so—that you are responsible for that. She and Nellie Dean seem to be well acquainted, almost friendly, which is odd, for I can scarcely think of two girls more different. But she likes Nellie, that is evident, and Nellie and George have told her about you and me.”
“I see. And so she was curious concerning the interesting invalid. Probably anything even mildly interesting is a godsend to her, down here. Did she mention the Shore Lane rumpus?”
“Yes. Although I mentioned it first. It was plain that she could not understand your position in the matter, Roscoe, and I explained it as well as I could. I told her that you felt the Lane was a necessity to the townspeople, and that, under the circumstances, you could not sell. I told her how deeply you sympathized with her mother—”
“Did you tell her that?”
“Why, yes. It is true, isn't it?”
“Humph! Mildly so, maybe. What more did she say?”
“She said she thought she understood better now. I told her about you, Boy, and what a good son you had been to me. How you had sacrificed your future and your career for my sake. Of course I could not go into particulars, at all, but we talked a great deal about you, Roscoe.”
“That must have been deliriously interesting—to her.”
“I think it was. She told me of your helping her home through the storm, and of something else you had not told me, Boy: of your bringing her and Mr. Carver off the flat in the boat that day. Why did you keep that a secret?”
“It was not worth telling.”
“She thought it was. She laughed about it; said you handled the affair in a most businesslike and unsentimental way; she never felt more like a bundle of dry-goods in her life, but that that appeared to be your manner of handling people. It was a somewhat startling manner, but very effective, she said. I don't know what she meant by that.”
I knew, but I did not explain.
“You don't mean to say, Mother, that you glorified me to her for an hour?” I demanded.
“No, indeed. We talked of ever so many things. Of books, and pictures, and music. I'm afraid I was rather wearisome. It seemed so good to have some one—except you, of course, dear—to discuss such subjects with. Most of my callers are not interested in them.”
I was silent.
“She is coming again, she says,” continued Mother. “She has some new books she is going to lend me. You must read them to me. And aren't those roses wonderful? She picked them, herself, in their conservatory. I told her how fond you were of flowers.”
I judged that the young lady must have gone away with the idea that I was a combination of longshore lout and effeminate dilettante, with the financial resources of the former. She might as well have that idea as any other, I supposed, but, in her eyes, I must be more of a freak than ever. I should take care to keep out of the sight of those eyes as much as possible. But that the millionaire's daughter had made a hit on the occasion of her first call was plain. Not only had Mother been favorably impressed, but even the practical and unromantic Dorinda's shell was dented. She deigned to observe that the young lady seemed to have “consider'ble common-sense, considerin' her bringin' up.” This, from Dorinda, was high praise, and I wondered what the caller had said or done to win such a triumph. Lute made the matter clear.
“By time!” he said, when he and I were together, “that girl's a smart one. I'd give somethin' to have her kind of smartness. Dorindy was terrible cranky all the time she was in your ma's room and I didn't know what would happen when she come out. But the fust thing she done when she come out was to look around the dinin' room and say, 'Oh! what a pleasant, homey place! And so clean! Why, it is perfectly spotless!' Land sakes! the old lady thawed out like a cranberry bog in April. After that they talked about housekeepin' and cookin' and such, sociable as could be. Dorindy's goin' to give her her receipt for doughnuts next time she comes. And I bet that girl never cooked a doughnut in her life or ever will. If I could think of the right thing to say, like that, 'twould save me more'n one ear-ache. But I never do think of it till the next day, and then it's too late.”
He borrowed my tobacco, filled his pipe, and continued:
“Say, Ros,” he asked, “what's your idea of what made her come here?”
“To see Mother, of course,” I answered.
“That's your notion, is it?”
“Certainly. What else?”
“Humph! There's other sick folks in town. Why don't she go to see them?”
“Perhaps she does. I don't know.”
“I bet you ten cents she don't. No, I've been reasonin' of it out, same as I gen'rally do, and I've got some notions of my own. You don't cal'late her pa sent her so's to sort of soft soap around toward his gettin' the Shore Lane? You don't cal'late 'twas part of that game, do you?”
That supposition had crossed my mind more than once. I was ashamed of it and now I denied it, indignantly.
“Of course not,” I answered.
“Well, I don't think so, myself. But if 'tain't that it's another reason. She may be interested in Comfort; I don't say she ain't; but that ain't all she's interested in.”
“What do you mean?”
“Never mind. I ain't said nothin'. I'm just waitin' to see, that's all. I have had some experience in this world, I have. There's different times comin' for this family, you set that down in your log-book, Ros Paine.”
“Look here, Lute; if you are hinting that Miss Colton or her people intend offering us charity—”
“Who said anything about charity? No; if she had that idee in her head, her talk with your ma would drive it out. 'Tain't charity, I ain't sayin' what 'tis. . . . I wonder how 'twould seem to be rich.”
“Lute, you're growing more foolish every day.”
“So Dorindy says; but she nor you ain't offered no proof yet. All right, you wait and see. And say, Ros, don't mention our talk to Dorindy. She's more'n extry down on me just now, and if I breathe that Mabel Colton's name she hops right up in the air. How'd I know that askin' if a woman who's been sick in bed six year or more was 'in' meant could she have folks come to see her?”
Mother would have discussed the Coltons with me frequently, but I avoided the subject as much as possible. The promised books arrived—brought over by Johnson, the butler, who viewed our humble quarters with lofty disdain—and I read one of them aloud to Mother, a chapter each evening. More flowers came also and the darkened bedroom became a bower of beauty and perfume. If I had yielded to my own wishes I should have returned both roses and books. It was better, as I saw it, that we and our wealthy neighbors had nothing to do with each other. Real friendship was out of the question; the memory of Mrs. Colton's frigid bow and her reference to me as a “person” proved that. Her daughter might think otherwise, or might think that she thought so, but I knew better. However, I did not like to pain Mother by refusing offerings which, to her, were expressions of sympathy and regard, so I had no protest and tried to enthuse over the gifts and loans. After all, what did they amount to? One tea-rose bred from Dorinda's carefully tended bush, or one gushful story book selected by Almena Doane from the new additions to the town library and sent because she thought “Mrs. Comfort might find it sort of soothin' and distractin',” meant more real unselfish thought and kindly feeling than all the conservatory exotics and new novels which the rich girl's whim supplied from her overflowing store. I was surprised only that the whim lasted so long.
Behind all this, I think, and confirming my feeling, was the fact that Miss Colton did not repeat her call. A week or more passed and she did not come. I caught glimpses of her occasionally in the auto, or at the post-office, but I took care that she should not see me. I did not wish to be seen, though precisely why I could not have explained even to myself. The memory of that night in the rain, and of our meetings in the grove, troubled me because I could not keep them from my mind. They kept recurring, no matter what I did or where I went. No, I did not want to meet her again. Somehow, the sight and memory of her made me more dissatisfied and discontented than ever. I found myself moodily wishing for things beyond my reach, longing to be something more than I was—more than the nobody which I knew I must always be. I remembered my feelings on the morning of the day when I first saw her. Now they seemed almost like premonitions.
I kept away; not only from her, but from George Taylor and Captain Dean and the townspeople. I went to the village scarcely at all. Sim Eldredge, who had evidently received orders from headquarters to drop the Lane “agency,” troubled me no more, merely glowering reproachfully when we met; and Alvin Baker, whose note had been renewed, although he hailed me with effusive cordiality, did not press his society upon me, having no axe to grind at present. Zeb Kendrick was using the Lane again, but he took care to bring no more “billiard roomers” as passengers. I had as yet heard nothing from my quarrel with Tim Hallet.
I spent a good deal of my time in the Comfort, or wandering about the shore and in the woods. One warm, cloudy morning the notion seized me to go up to the ponds and try for black bass. There are bass in some of the larger ponds—lakes they would be called anywhere else except on Cape Cod—and, if one is lucky, and the weather is right, and the bait tempting, they may be caught. This particular morning promised to furnish the proper brand of weather, and a short excursion on the flats provided a supply of shrimps and minnows for bait. Dorinda, who happened to be in good humor, put up a lunch for me and, at seven o'clock, with my rod and landing net in their cases, strapped, with my fishing boots and coffee pot, to my back, and my bait pail in one hand and lunch basket in the other, I started on my tramp. It was a long four miles to Seabury's Pond, my destination, and Lute, to whom, like most country people, the idea of a four-mile walk was sheer lunacy, urged my harnessing the horse and driving there. But I knew the overgrown wood roads and the difficulty of piloting a vehicle through them, and, moreover, I really preferred to go afoot. So I marched off and left him protesting.
Very few summer people—and only summer people or irresponsible persons like myself waste time in freshwater fishing on the Cape—knew where Seabury's Pond was. It lay far from macadam roads and automobile thoroughfares and its sandy shores were bordered with verdure-clad hills shutting it in like the sides of a bowl. To reach it from Denboro one left the Bayport road at “Beriah Holt's place,” followed Beriah's cow path to the pasture, plunged into the oak and birch grove at the southern edge of that pasture, emerged on a grass-grown and bush-encumbered track which had once been the way to some early settler's home, and had been forsaken for years, and followed that track, in all its windings, until he saw the gleam of water between the upper fringe of brush and the lower limbs of the trees. Then he left the track and clambered down the steep slope to the pond.
I am a good walker, but I was tired long before I reached the slope. The bait pail, which I refilled with fresh water at Beriah's pump, grew heavier as I went on, and I began to think Lute knew what he was talking about when he declared me to be “plumb crazy, hoofin' it four mile loaded down with all that dunnage.” However, when the long “hoof” was over, and I sat down in a patch of “hog-cranberry” vines for a smoke, with the pond before me, I was measurably happy. This was the sort of thing I liked. Here there were no Shore Lane controversies, but real independence and peace.
After my smoke was finished and I had rested, I carried my “dunnage” around to the point where I intended to begin my fishing, put the lunch basket in a shady place beneath the bushes, and the bait pail in the water nearby, changed my shoes for the fishing boots, rigged my rod and was ready.
At first the fishing was rather poor. The pond was full of perch and they were troublesome. By and by, however, I hooked a four-pound pickerel and he stirred my lagging ambition. I waded on, casting and playing beyond the lily pads and sedge. At last I got my first bass, a small one, and had scarcely landed him than a big fellow struck, fought, rose and broke away. That was spur sufficient. All the forenoon I waded about the shores of that pond. When at half-past eleven the sun came out and I knew my sport was over, for the time at least, I had four bass—two of them fine ones—and two, pickerel. Then I remembered my appetite and Dorinda's luncheon.
I went back to the point and inspected the contents of the basket. Sandwiches, cold chicken, eggs, doughnuts and apple puffs. They looked good to me. Also there were pepper and salt in one paper, sugar in another, coffee in a third, and milk in a bottle. I collected some dry chips and branches and prepared to kindle a fire. As I bent over the heap of sticks and chips I heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the woods near by.
I was surprised and annoyed. The principal charm of Seabury Pond was that so few people visited it. Also fewer still knew how good the fishing was there. I was not more than ordinarily selfish, but I did not care to have the place overrun with excursionists from the city, who had no scruples as to number and size of fish caught and would ruin the sport as they had ruined it at other and better known ponds. The passerby, whoever he was—a native probably—would, if he saw me, ask questions concerning my luck, and be almost sure to tell every one he met. I left my fire unkindled, stepped back to the shade of the bushes and waited in silence, hoping the driver would go on without stopping. There was no real road on this side of the pond, but there was an abandoned wood track, like that by which I had come. The horse was approaching along the track; the sounds of hoofs and crackling branches grew plainer.
The odd part of it was that I heard no rattle of wheels. It was almost as if the person was on horseback. This seemed impossible, because no one in Denboro or Bayport—no one I could think of, at least—owned or rode a saddle horse. Yet the hoof beats grew louder and there was no squeak, or jolt, or rattle to bear them company. They came to a point in the woods directly opposite where I sat in the shade of the bushes and there they stopped. Then they recommenced and the crackle of branches was louder than ever. The rider, whoever he was, was coming down the bank to the pond.
A moment more and the tall swamp-huckleberry bushes at the edge of the sandy beach parted and between them stepped gingerly a clean-cut, handsome brown horse, which threw up its head at the sight of the water and then trotted lightly toward it. The rider, who sat so easily in the saddle, was a girl. And the girl was Mabel Colton!
She did not notice me at first, but gave her attention to the horse. The animal waded into the water to its knees and, in obedience to a pull on the reins, stopped, bent its head, and began to drink. Then the rider turned in her seat, looked about her, saw the heap of wood for the fire, the open lunch basket, the rods and landing-net, and—me.
I had stepped from the bushes when she first appeared and was standing motionless, staring, I imagine, like what Dorinda sometimes called her husband—a “born gump.” There was Fate in this! no doubt about it. The further I went to avoid this girl, and the more outlandish and forsaken the spot to which I fled, the greater the certainty of our meeting. A feeling of helplessness came over me, as if I were in the clutch of destiny and no effort of mine could break that clutch.
For a moment she looked as if she might be thinking the same thing. She started when she saw me and her lips parted.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, softly. Then we gazed at each other without speaking.
She was the first to recover from the surprise. Her expression changed. The look of alarm caused by my sudden appearance left her face, but the wonder remained.
“Why! Why, Mr. Paine!” she cried. “Is it you?”
I stepped forward.
“Why, Miss Colton!” said I.
She drew a breath of relief. “It IS you!” she declared. “I was beginning to believe in hallucinations. How you startled me! What are you doing here?”
“That is exactly what I was going to ask you,” I replied. “I am here for a fishing excursion. But what brought you to this out-of-the-way place?”
She smiled and patted the horse's shoulder. “Don here brought me,” she answered. “He saw the water and I knew he was thirsty, so I came straight down the bank. But I didn't expect to find any one here. I haven't seen a horse or a human being for an hour. What a pretty little lake this is. What is its name?”
“It is called Seabury's Pond. How did you find it?”
“I didn't. Don found it. He and I came for a gallop in the woods and I let him choose his own paths. I have been in his charge all the morning. I haven't the least idea where we are. There, Don! you have had enough and you are splashing us dreadfully. Come back!”
She backed the horse out of the water and turned his head toward the woods.
“It is great fun to be lost,” she observed. “I didn't suppose any one could be lost in Denboro.”
“But this isn't Denboro. Seabury's Pond is in Bayport township.”
“Is it, really? In Bayport? Then I must be a long way from home.”
“You are; four miles and a half, at least. More than that over the road.”
She looked at her watch and frowned slightly.
“Dear me!” she said. “And it is after twelve already. I am perfectly sure I can't find the way back in time for luncheon.”
“I shall be glad to go with you and show you the way.”
“No, indeed! Don and I will get home safely. This isn't the first time we have been lost together, though not on Cape Cod. Of course I shouldn't think of taking you from your fishing. Have you had good luck?”
“Pretty fair. Some bass and two good-sized pickerel.”
“Really! Bass? I didn't know there were any about here. May I see them?”
“Certainly. They are over there in the bushes.”
She swung lightly down from the saddle and, taking her horse by the bridle, led him toward the spot where my catch lay, covered with leaves and wet grass. I removed the covering and she bent over the fish.
“Oh, splendid!” she exclaimed, with enthusiasm. “That big one must be a three-pounder. I envy you. Bass fishing is great sport. Did you get these on a fly—the bass, I mean?”
“No. I use a fly in the spring and fall, but seldom in June or July, here. Those were taken with live bait-shrimp. The pickerel with minnows. Are you fond of fishing, Miss Colton?”
“Yes, indeed. Whoa, Don! steady! Yes, I fish a good deal in September, when we are at our lodge in the Adirondacks. Trout there, principally. But I have caught bass in Maine. I thought I must give it up this year. I did not know there were fish, in fresh water, on the Cape.”
“There are, a few. The people about here pay no attention to them. They scorn such small fry. Cod and pollock are more in their line.”
“I suppose so. But that is all the better for you, isn't it? Were you fishing when I interrupted you?”
“No, I was just getting ready for lunch. My fire was ready to kindle.”
“Fire? Why did you need a fire?”
“For my coffee.”
“Coffee! You are a luxurious picnicer, Mr. Paine. Hot coffee on a fishing trip! and without a guide. And you are unfeeling, besides, for you remind me that I am very hungry. I must go at once. How far am I from home? Four miles, did you say?”
“Four and a half, or more, by road. And the roads are like those you have been traveling this morning. I doubt if you could find the way, even with your horse's help. I must insist upon going with you as far as the main road between Denboro and Bayport.”
“I shall not permit it.”
“But I insist.”
Her answer was a little laugh. She put her foot in the stirrup and vaulted to the saddle.
“Your insisting is useless, you see,” she said. “You are on foot and I have the advantage. No, Don and I will go alone, thank you. Now, will you please tell me the way?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Go back along the road you came,” I said, “until you reach the second, no, the third, path to the right. Follow that to the second on the left. Then follow that for two hundred yards or so until—well, until you reach a clump of bushes, high bushes. Behind these is another path, a blind one, and you must take care to pick the right clump, because there is another one with a path behind it and that path joins the road to Harniss. If you should take the Harniss road you would go miles out of your way. Take the blind path I speak of and—”
She interrupted me. “Stop! stop!” she exclaimed; “please don't. I am absolutely bewildered already. I had no idea I was in such a maze. Let me see! Second to the right; third to the left—”
“No, third to the right and second to the left.”
“And then the bushes and the choice of blind paths. Don, I see plainly that you and I must trust to Providence. Well, it is fortunate that the family are accustomed to my ways. They won't be alarmed, no matter how late I may be.”
“Miss Colton, I am not going to allow you to go alone. Of course I am not. I can set you on the right road and get back here in plenty of time for fishing. The fish are not hungry in the middle of the day.”
“No, but you are. I know you must be, because—no, good day, Mr. Paine.”
She spoke to the horse and he began to move. I took my courage between my teeth, ran after the animal and seized the bridle.
“You are not going alone,” I said, decidedly. I was smiling, but determined.
She looked at me in surprised indignation.
“What do you mean?” she said.
I merely smiled. Her chin lifted and her brows drew together. I recognized that look; I had seen it before, on that afternoon when I announced my intention of carrying her from the dingy to the skiff.
“Will you be good enough to let go of my rein?” she asked. Every word was a sort of verbal icicle. I felt the chill and my smile was rather forced; but I held the bridle.
“No,” I said, serenely as I could. For a minute—I suppose it was not longer than that, it seemed an hour to me—we remained as we were. Then her lips began to curl upward at the corners, and, to my surprise, she burst out laughing.
“Really, Mr. Paine,” she said, “you are the most impossible person I ever met. Do you always order people about this way? I feel as if I were about five years old and you were my nurse. Are we to stand here the rest of the afternoon?”
“Yes; unless you permit me to go with you and show you the way.”
“But I can't. I'm not going to spoil your picnic. I know you want your lunch. You must. Or, if you don't, I want mine.”
“If you go alone, there are nine chances in ten that you will not get home in time for dinner, to say nothing of lunch.”
She looked at me oddly, I thought, and started to speak. Whatever it was she was going to say she evidently thought better of it, for she remained silent.
Then I had a new idea. Whether or not it was her look which inspired it I do not know. I think it must have been; I never would have dared such a thing without inspiration.
“Miss Colton,” I said, hesitatingly, “if you really are not—if you are sure your people will not worry about you—I—I should be glad to share my lunch with you. Then we could go home together afterward.”
She did not look at me now. Instead she turned her head.
“Are—are you sure there is enough for two?” she asked, in a curiously choked tone.
By way of answer I led the horse to the bushes, drew the lunch basket from the shade, and threw back the cover. Dorinda's picnic lunches were triumphs and she had never put up a more tempting one.
Miss Colton looked down into the basket.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“There appears to be enough, doesn't there?” I observed, drily.
“But—but I couldn't think of . . . Are you sure I won't be . . . Thank you. Yes, I'll stay.”
Before I could offer my hand to help her from the saddle she sprang to the ground. Her eyes were sparkling.
“Mr. Paine,” she said, in a burst of confidence, “it is shameless to tell you so, I know, but I was dreadfully afraid you weren't going to ask me. I am absolutely STARVED.”
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