The Cricket Part 56

"Good morning," he said, briefly.

"Oh, good morning, Captain O'Leary," said she.

"Miss Watts gave me your message."

"Message?"

"That you would meet me here. By the way, Pollock, your mother asked me to say that something important came for ye in the morning mails. She wants ye at once."

With a firm and masterly hand he detached Percy and sent him off. Then he turned to Isabelle.

"Ye can play tricks on Percy and your other youngsters, but not on me."

"I haven't the slightest interest in playing tricks on you," she answered. She sat down, opened a parasol, and planted it in the sand. He threw himself down beside her.

"You are a very interesting little girl," he remarked, "but you have a great deal to learn."

"Teach me!" she exclaimed, with such ingenuous enthusiasm that he was at a loss to know whether she was making fun of him or not.

"I will. First, you mustn't be so p.r.i.c.klish."

"It's the only way to protect yourself."

"Against what?"

"People."

"Ye start on the basis that people are your enemies?"

"I think they are."

"Look here, tell me about yourself. What shall I call you? Do I have to say 'Miss Bryce'?"

"My name is Isabelle."

"Doesn't suit ye. Have ye no pet name?"

"Somebody I liked once called me 'the cricket'."

"That's it--Cricket--may I call ye that?"

"Yes."

"Now, Cricket, tell me all about yourself."

She looked at him intently for a moment. He lay stretched out on the sand, his elbow crooked to support his head. He looked frankly back at her.

"Go on, as friend to friend," he urged.

And she did. She did not touch it up a bit. She made him see her life, her people, the Benjamins, her experience at Miss Vantine's--all--through the eyes of her youth, her wistful youth. She told him about Martin Christiansen; she even confessed the fearful catastrophe with Cartel; and she did not mind when he rolled on his back and sent gusts of laughter up to the clouds.

"O ye delicious, crickety Cricket!" he groaned. "Go on."

"There isn't any 'on'. That's up to now. Tell me about you."

And he did. He told her about his people, his young life near Dublin.

How he went to an English University, how he enlisted in the war. He told her about his life in the trenches, about his wounds, about his decoration. He talked as he had talked to no one else about the whole experience of war.

She sat tense and still, concentrated on his every word. When he had finished, they sat in silence for several seconds.

"And that's up to now, for me."

"You've got to go back?--there?"

"When I'm well again."

Her tell-tale face registered her distress. He laid his hand over her little brown one.

"Not for a while. I shall often think of this place and this day," he said, gazing off over the sea. "Ye're a comfortable cricket, when ye want to be. I'd like to capture ye, to sing on my hearth!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: _"Ye're a comfortable cricket, when ye want to be. I'd like to capture ye, to sing on my hearth!"_]

She sprang up.

"Well, I'm not ready to settle yet, so your hearth must go bare."

"Like Mother Hubbard's cupboard! Where are ye hoppin' off to?"

"Hotel, for lunch."

"Is it time?"

She nodded. He fell in step beside her.

"Ye haven't missed Percy?"

"I wonder what Percy's mother wanted with him," she evaded.

"So does Percy's mother," he retorted.

She looked up at him.

"You didn't----?"

"I did, Cricket; I jumped a longer jump than you did," he boasted.

"Why, you old gra.s.shopper!" she exploded.