The Honorable Percival Part 9

"You bet I will," said Bobby with a smile that made him forget the awfulness of her language.

Ten minutes later they were leaning over the rail on the deserted boat-deck, the wind full in their faces, watching the prow of the steamer gently rise and fall as she sailed straight into the golden heart of the sun. Up from the horizon spread wave after wave; of perilous color, emerald melting into azure, crimson dying into rose.

There was just enough breeze to put a tiny feather on the windward slope of the waves, and every white crest caught the glory.

"This is better than all the tangoing in the world," cried Bobby. "Have you been up here all afternoon?"

"I have. You see, all those people below get rather on one's nerves."

"Do _I?_" she challenged him instantly.

"Not on one's nerves exactly," he said, thrillingly aware that her arm was touching his on the railing and that the dangerous pink light was playing over her face; "but I must say you do get on one's--one's mind!"

She laughed gaily.

"Well, that's next to having nothing on your mind. Say, you wouldn't think I had the blues, would you?"

"Can't say I should."

"Well, I have. I've been so homesick all day that I could go round the corner and cry if you--if you hadn't said I mustn't."

"What are you homesick for?"

"Oh, for the old ranch and the ponies and my dogs and--and lots of things. See the way the wind flecks the water over there? Well, that's just the way it does the gra.s.slands back home."

"But it's such a parched, barren sort of a place, Wyoming."

"It is _not_. You ought to see it in the early spring, when everything is vivid green, and the cactus is in bloom--the red-flowered kind that looks so pretty against the sides of the gray b.u.t.tes. Why, you can gallop for miles with your horse's hoofs sinking into beds of prairie roses!"

"But it's virtually green in England all the year round. I'd like to show you a well-run English estate. Rather a pretty sight. Has...o...b.. Hall's a fairly decent example. Some hundreds of acres, don't you know."

"Some hundreds!" repeated Bobby, scornfully. "Our ranch covers two hundred thousand acres, and it takes Pa Joe four days' hard riding to get over it!"

"Oh, I say, most extraordinary! But if I were you, I wouldn't think about home affairs," said Percival, to whom her background in Wyoming was of no consequence. He liked to think of her as having begun to live when she met him, and as gracefully ceasing to exist when they parted.

"All right," said Bobby, resignedly. "I've kept bottled up this long; I suppose I can manage the rest of the time. What's that book you've been reading?"

"Sh.e.l.ley."

"Is it a love-story?"

Percival winced.

"It is poetry," he said. "I shouldn't mind reading you a bit, if you like."

She did like. She evidently liked tremendously. She listened as an inquisitive bird might listen to a strange wood note, with her head on one side and her bright eyes intent upon his face.

When Percival's perfectly modulated voice ceased, she sighed:

"I didn't understand a word of it," she said, "but I could listen to you read forever. It makes me think of the wind in the trees, and all the lovely things that ever happened to me."

"But don't you like the poem?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I like the way your mouth looks when you read it."]

"I like the way your mouth looks when you read it. Your chin's nice, too, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Percival, with an unsuccessful effort at indifference; "it's the Has...o...b.. chin. Been in the family for generations."

"Think of having a chin as old as that! Perhaps that's what makes you so solemn."

"Am I solemn?"

"Awfully. Elise Weston says she believes you have been crossed in love."

The hollow chambers of Percival's heart reverberated with alarming echoes. He shot a suspicious glance at Bobby, but her innocent gaze rea.s.sured him.

"I am afraid your friend Miss Weston is romantic," he said stiffly. "Am I keeping you too long from the dance?"

"Oh, no," said Bobby, comfortably. "I've got the next with Andy Black.

He'll never think to look up here. But are you quite sure I'm not getting on your nerves?"

"I am quite sure you are a most awfully charming girl," Percival exclaimed with sudden warmth. "As a matter of fact, I--I like you tremendously."

"That's nice," said Bobby, "because, you see, I like you!"

There was no reason why her avowal should have been regarded as more serious than his own. But he took alarm instantly.

"You won't mind my telling you a few things for your own good, will you?" he asked, taking refuge in the safe role of mentor.

"Not a bit," said Bobby; "fire away."

She listened for five minutes to his dissertation on the impropriety of young ladies playing poker in the smoking-room, then she became restive.

"Isn't it funny," she said by way of changing the subject, "that yesterday was Friday, and to-morrow is going to be Sat.u.r.day, and to-day isn't anything?"

"But it _is_ something. It's a day I shall remember."

Percival was drifting again, and he knew it, but there was that in the bewitching face upturned to his that demoralized him.

"No," said Bobby, "it's the day that never was. We just picked it up out of the sea, and we are going to drop it back again. Whatever happens to-day doesn't count."

"Why?"

"Because by to-morrow, you see, to-day never will have been."

"Deuced clever idea that, I call it. Never thought of it. Suppose we celebrate by way of doing something that we wouldn't do if it counted."

Bobby clapped her hands. "What shall it be?"