The Little Colonel's Knight Comes Riding Part 19

With a reminiscent smile he shook out the pages of the evening paper which he had bought as he came along and glanced at the head-lines. But before he had time to read further the girl in front of him exclaimed, "Look, Harry! Here comes Miss Sherman! Isn't she perfectly stunning in that dark blue broadcloth? I think she's the prettiest debutante of the season."

"She's a peach," was the enthusiastic answer. "I say, Ethel, she looks like you."

Rob did not see the girlish blush which rose to Ethel's cheeks, for at the first exclamation he had lowered his paper to peer quickly through the window. He had just a glimpse of a slender stylish figure hurrying into the ticket office.

The girl in front was speaking. "I suppose I've been more interested in the debutantes this year than any other because Cousin Amy is one of them. She comes out to Anchorage for a week-end now and then to rest up, and I keep her talking the whole time about what they do. She says that Miss Sherman is the most popular of them all, with the girls as well as the men. She's had so many beautiful entertainments given in her honour, and she's been asked to help receive or pour tea or do something or other at every single function that's been given in Louisville this winter. I think it's perfectly grand to be out in society when you can be as great a success as that. They say that the American Beauties sent to her in just one day sometimes would fill a florist's shop window.

There's a man from Cincinnati who sends them all the time. He's crazy about her. I should be too if I were a man. Cousin Amy has a photograph of her taken in evening dress, and she's simply regal looking. I don't wonder she makes a sensation wherever she goes."

"Here she comes now," interrupted the boy, turning with a stare of frank admiration. Rob turned too, as Lloyd came down the aisle, glancing from one side to another for an empty seat. Her face was glowing from her walk in the cold wind, and the little hat of dark blue velvet and her rich dark furs made her seem fairer than ever by contrast. Hers was a delicate, patrician style of beauty, and Rob in one critical glance saw that this winter in society had given the graceful girl the ease and poise of a charming woman. The little school-girl on the seat in front had good reason for admiring her so extravagantly. He rose as she came nearer, and stepped out in the aisle to give her the seat by the window.

"Oh, Rob! This is great!" the little school-girl heard her exclaim cordially. "I haven't seen you for an age. How does it happen you are going out on such an early train?"

Much as she was interested in "Harry's" remarks, she wished he would keep still at least until the car started. She wanted to hear how this big handsome man answered her adorable Miss Sherman. She would have been shocked could she have heard his second remark.

"There's a big flake of soot on your nose, Lloyd."

"Thanks," she said, almost looking cross-eyed in her endeavour to locate it. "There usually is in this dirty town. There! Is it off?" She scrubbed away with a bit of a handkerchief she took from her m.u.f.f. "And I was flattering myself as I came along that I looked especially spick and span," she sighed. "It's refres.h.i.+ng to have somebody tell you the truth about yoahself, and you nevah were one to mince mattahs, Bobby."

The old name on the lips of this pretty girl so like the old Lloyd in some ways, yet so bewilderingly unlike in others, stirred him strangely.

"Better throw off your furs and that heavy jacket in this over-heated car," was his only answer. "You'll take cold when you get off if you don't." She thanked him for the suggestion, and, as he hung her wraps over the back of the seat, settled herself comfortably for the hour's ride.

"Now tell me all about it," he began as the car started. "All that you've been doing these last months. Of course I've kept up with you in the papers. I know that you went here and went there, and that you wore sky-blue pink folderols at this banquet and velvet satin crepe de chine at the Country Club dinner, with feathers and jewels to match, but that's no more than all the rest of the world knows. I want to be let in on the ground floor and told about the inner workings of this social whirl. How have you managed to do it all? To vibrate between town and country and not peg out. You look as fresh as a daisy; as if the pace that kills agrees with you."

"I haven't vibrated much," she answered. "I've made Aunt Jane's house my headquartahs, and you know what a crank she is about hygiene. Every moment not actually engaged in 'whirling' she had reduced to a system of simple living. What I have suffered in the way of naps in a darkened room when I wasn't sleepy, and hot milk when I loathed the idea of swallowing anything, and gymnastic exercises in the attic when the weathah was too bad for long walks, would fill a volume."

"Is the game worth the candle?" he asked soberly.

She hesitated. "Well, yes. For a season anyhow. I wouldn't want to keep up such a round yeah aftah yeah, but I _have_ had a good time, and I must confess it's awfully nice to be really grown up and have everybody treat you with the consideration due yoah age."

They were out in the open country now. The car stopped, and as the door opened to admit a pa.s.senger, the shrill voices of some children skating on an ice pond near the road floated cheerily in. Lloyd looked out the window with a smile at the gay scene.

"I'd like to be out there with them," she confessed. "Look at that little girl in the red mittens and Tam O'Shanter. She skates exactly the way Katie Mallard used to. Oh, deah, didn't we used to have fun with her down on our ice pond?"

"Do you remember the day Malcolm broke through when he was trying to cake-walk on the ice?" asked Rob with a reminiscent grin.

"He was laughing about that only last week when he took me to the Country Club dinnah. I've seen a lot of Malcolm this wintah."

"I thought he was rus.h.i.+ng Molly Standforth."

"Well, he is, pah't of the time, but he's rushed me too, as you call it, just as much."

Rob gave her a keen glance, but she made the announcement in such a calm way that he said to himself there couldn't be much in it as far as she was concerned, or she wouldn't have spoken of it in the way she did.

At Anchorage the boy and girl in front left the car, he with such open solicitude for her comfort as he helped her off that Lloyd's eyes met Rob's with a twinkle.

"Aftah all, it's good to be young like that," she said. "Don't you remembah Kitty and Guy Ferris at that age? How we used to tease Kitty for keeping a dead rose and a valentine and a bra.s.s b.u.t.ton from his military coat, tied up with a blue ribbon in a candy box?"

"But we boys had a better time teasing Guy about the lock of Kitty's hair that he carried around in the back of his watch. His watch got out of order, and when the jeweller opened it and found all that hair in the back, he didn't say a word, but with a most disgusted look tossed it into the wastebasket as if it hadn't been Guy's most sacred possession.

I was along with him, and I simply roared. Guy didn't have the nerve to ask for it, just stood there looking like the big silly he must have felt."

The series of reminiscences that this story started lasted all the way out to the Valley. The red streak of the wintry sunset had faded out of the west when the car stopped there, and Lloyd looking out into the cold gray gloaming saw that the snow was beginning to fall again.

"Let's get out and walk the rest of the way," she exclaimed impetuously, s.n.a.t.c.hing up her jacket and furs as she rose.

"I haven't had a twilight walk in the country this wintah, when it's all good and gray like this, with snow-flakes in yoah face."

They were off in another instant, and as he stood on the station platform helping her on with her wraps, she held up her face to feel the stray flakes blowing cold and soft against it. He smiled at her childish delight in them, and seeing the smile she started up the narrow path ahead of him, laughing over her shoulder.

"There's no use denying it," she called back. "When I want to be the propah dignified young lady I'll have to stay in town. Just the smell of the country, the fresh earth, the fallen leaves, has such a rejuvenating effect that I want to tuck up my skirts and skip and run as I used to."

"Come on," he exclaimed gaily, falling in with her mood. "I'll race you to that dead sycamore up the road."

She looked up at him, her face dimpling as she noticed how he towered above her and how broad were the shoulders in the big overcoat. Then she shook her head sadly.

"Nevah again, Bobby! We're too old and dignified. I'd almost as soon think of racing with the Judge as with you now. What if somebody should see us? They'd be shocked to death. There's some one now," she added, peering forward through the dusk.

"Only old Unc' Andy coming back from his rabbit traps," answered Rob, as the grizzled old coloured man shuffled nearer. Uncle Andy had been the gardener at Oaklea more years than Lloyd could remember, and now as he stepped out of the path with elaborate courtesy to let her pa.s.s, she delighted his soul by stopping with a friendly inquiry about himself and family.

"Lawd, if it aint the Little Cun'l herself!" he chuckled. "All growed up and a bloomin' like a piney! I reckon, Miss Lloyd, youse forgot the time that you pulled up all the pansies in my flowah beds 'cause you said they was makin' faces at you."

"No, indeed, Uncle Andy," she answered with a laugh, and started to pa.s.s on. But the encounter with the old servant seemed somehow to set her back among the days when she had been almost as much at home at Oaklea as she was at The Locusts, and prompted by some sudden impulse she called over her shoulder as she had often called then: "Unc' Andy, tell Mrs. Moore that Mistah Rob won't be home for dinnah. He's going to stay at The Locusts."

It was a familiar message although it had been several years since Andy had heard it. He looked back bowing and sc.r.a.ping, and then walked on chuckling to himself.

Taken by surprise, Rob did not remonstrate when she thus took his consent for granted. If she had waited to ask his permission to send such a message home he would have made some excuse to decline, and then left her at the gate. That night under the measuring tree when he listened to her singing he had resolutely made up his mind to keep out of the way of temptation. Since then he had become convinced that she was engaged to Leland Harcourt and had put her out of his dreams as far as possible. Now that she had left him no choice, he gladly accepted the opportunity that fate seemed to throw in his way, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of it.

The fitful snow had stopped falling again by the time they reached the gate, and the stars were beginning to glimmer through the bare branches of the locust-trees. As Lloyd looked up the avenue, and saw the lights from many windows streaming out across the white-pillared porch into the winter night, her gay mood suddenly changed to one of intense feeling.

"Isn't it deah?" she said in a low voice. "I nevah had it come ovah me so overwhelmingly, how good it is to come back to the things that nevah change--that nevah fail! The home-lights and the home-loves, the same old trees and the same old sta'hs and the same old chum!"

Rob made no answer, but his silence was only another proof to Lloyd that she had found her old chum unchanged. He never answered at the times when she knew he felt most deeply. Rob's silences expressed more sometimes than other people's speeches.

He was talkative enough at dinner, however, and between them he and Lloyd made the meal such a lively one that the old Colonel heaved a sigh when it was over.

"I'd give a good deal if our whist club didn't meet to-night," he said in response to Lloyd's question. "I surely would have asked them to postpone it if I had known you were coming out to-night."

"Suahly not a time-honahed inst.i.tution like that!" exclaimed Lloyd teasingly, "and when it's yoah turn to entahtain it. Rob, we haven't found out what refreshments mothah has for them. Think of wasting all this time without knowing."

It had always been a matter of interest with them in earlier times to have a finger in this particular pie. It was one thing in which Mrs.

Sherman was most careful to humour her father's whims, and she always pleased him by giving her personal attention to the dainty little suppers which she served after the game.

Lloyd led the way to the pantry and they lifted covers and opened doors, smelling and peering around till they unearthed all the tempting dishes that had been so carefully prepared for the occasion.

"We'll be in at the end," warned Lloyd as the Colonel's old cronies began to arrive, "and in the meantime I'll pop some cawn. I used to think that old Majah Timberly came for my cawn as much as he did for the game."

To his great annoyance a telephone message called Mr. Sherman over to the Confederate Home. He had looked forward to a quiet evening in front of the great log fire, and was loath to leave the cosy room and cheerful company. Presently some household matters claimed Mrs. Sherman's presence up-stairs, and she too had to go, leaving Lloyd at the piano, playing runs and trills and s.n.a.t.c.hes of songs as a sort of undercurrent to their conversation. Rob in a big armchair in front of the fire, looking comfortable enough to want to purr, glanced around the familiar old room that long a.s.sociation had made as dear to him as home.

"Why don't you read your letters?" he asked, his gaze happening to rest on a pile of various sized envelopes lying on the table near him, all bearing Lloyd's name.