The Little Lady of the Big House Part 35

d.i.c.k nodded acquiescence.

"I'm using Callahan this afternoon," he explained, on the instant planning his own time now that Paula was out of the question. "I never can make out, Paul, why you prefer Saunders. Callahan is the better driver, and of course the safest."

"Perhaps that's why," she said with a smile. "Safety first means slowest most."

"Just the same I'd back Callahan against Saunders on a speed-track,"

d.i.c.k championed.

"Where are you bound?" she asked.

"Oh, to show Colonel Stoddard my one-man and no-horse farm--you know, the automatically cultivated ten-acre stunt I've been frivoling with. A lot of changes have been made that have been waiting a week for me to see tried out. I've been too busy. And after that, I'm going to take him over the colony--what do you think?--five additions the last week."

"I thought the members.h.i.+p was full," Paula said.

"It was, and still is," d.i.c.k beamed. "But these are babies. And the least hopeful of the families had the rashness to have twins."

"A lot of wiseacres are shaking their heads over that experiment of yours, and I make free to say that I am merely holding my judgment--you've got to show me by bookkeeping," Colonel Stoddard was saying, immensely pleased at the invitation to be shown over in person.

d.i.c.k scarcely heard him, such was the rush of other thoughts. Paula had not mentioned whether Mrs. Wade and the little Wades were coming, much less mentioned that she had invited them. Yet this d.i.c.k tried to consider no lapse on her part, for often and often, like himself, she had guests whose arrival was the first he knew of their coming.

It was, however, evident that Mrs. Wade was not coming that day, else Paula would not be running away thirty miles up the valley. That was it, and there was no blinking it. She was running away, and from him.

She could not face being alone with him with the consequent perils of intimacy--and perilous, in such circ.u.mstances, could have but the significance he feared. And further, she was making the evening sure.

She would not be back for dinner, or till long after dinner, it was a safe wager, unless she brought the whole Wickenberg crowd with her. She would be back late enough to expect him to be in bed. Well, he would not disappoint her, he decided grimly, as he replied to Colonel Stoddard:

"The experiment works out splendidly on paper, with decently wide margins for human nature. And there I admit is the doubt and the danger--the human nature. But the only way to test it is to test it, which is what I am doing."

"It won't be the first d.i.c.k has charged to profit and loss," Paula said.

"But five thousand acres, all the working capital for two hundred and fifty farmers, and a cash salary of a thousand dollars each a year!"

Colonel Stoddard protested. "A few such failures--if it fails--would put a heavy drain on the Harvest."

"That's what the Harvest needs," d.i.c.k answered lightly.

Colonel Stoddard looked blank.

"Precisely," d.i.c.k confirmed. "Drainage, you know. The mines are flooded--the Mexican situation."

It was during the morning of the second day--the day of Graham's expected return--that d.i.c.k, who, by being on horseback at eleven, had avoided a repet.i.tion of the hurt of the previous day's "Good morning, merry gentleman" across the distance of his workroom, encountered Ah Ha in a hall with an armful of fresh-cut lilacs. The house-boy's way led toward the tower room, but d.i.c.k made sure.

"Where are you taking them, Ah Ha?" he asked.

"Mr. Graham's room--he come to-day."

Now whose thought was that? d.i.c.k pondered. Ah Ha's?--Oh Joy's--or Paula's? He remembered having heard Graham more than once express his fancy for their lilacs.

He deflected his course from the library and strolled out through the flowers near the tower room. Through the open windows of it came Paula's happy humming. d.i.c.k pressed his lower lip with tight quickness between his teeth and strolled on.

Some great, as well as many admirable, men and women had occupied that room, and for them Paula had never supervised the flower arrangement, d.i.c.k meditated. Oh Joy, himself a master of flowers, usually attended to that, or had his house-staff ably drilled to do it.

Among the telegrams Bonbright handed him, was one from Graham, which d.i.c.k read twice, although it was simple and unmomentous, being merely a postponement of his return.

Contrary to custom, d.i.c.k did not wait for the second lunch-gong. At the sound of the first he started, for he felt the desire for one of Oh Joy's c.o.c.ktails--the need of a prod of courage, after the lilacs, to meet Paula. But she was ahead of him. He found her--who rarely drank, and never alone--just placing an empty c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s back on the tray.

So she, too, had needed courage for the meal, was his deduction, as he nodded to Oh Joy and held up one finger.

"Caught you at it!" he reproved gaily. "Secret tippling. The gravest of symptoms. Little I thought, the day I stood up with you, that the wife I was marrying was doomed to fill an alcoholic's grave."

Before she could retort, a young man strolled in whom she and d.i.c.k greeted as Mr. Winters, and who also must have a c.o.c.ktail. d.i.c.k tried to believe that it was not relief he sensed in Paula's manner as she greeted the newcomer. He had never seen her quite so cordial to him before, although often enough she had met him. At any rate, there would be three at lunch.

Mr. Winters, an agricultural college graduate and special writer for the _Pacific Rural Press,_ as well as a sort of protege of d.i.c.k, had come for data for an article on California fish-ponds, and d.i.c.k mentally arranged his afternoon's program for him.

"Got a telegram from Evan," he told Paula. "Won't be back till the four o'clock day after to-morrow."

"And after all my trouble!" she exclaimed. "Now the lilacs will be wilted and spoiled."

d.i.c.k felt a warm glow of pleasure. There spoke his frank, straightforward Paula. No matter what the game was, or its outcome, at least she would play it without the petty deceptions. She had always been that way--too transparent to make a success of deceit.

Nevertheless, he played his own part by a glance of scarcely interested interrogation.

"Why, in Graham's room," she explained. "I had the boys bring a big armful and I arranged them all myself. He's so fond of them, you know."

Up to the end of lunch, she had made no mention of Mrs. Wade's coming, and d.i.c.k knew definitely she was not coming when Paula queried casually:

"Expecting anybody?"

He shook his head, and asked, "Are you doing anything this afternoon?"

"Haven't thought about anything," she answered. "And now I suppose I can't plan upon you with Mr. Winters to be told all about fish."

"But you can," d.i.c.k a.s.sured her. "I'm turning him over to Mr. Hanley, who's got the trout counted down to the last egg hatched and who knows all the grandfather ba.s.s by name. I'll tell you what--" He paused and considered. Then his face lighted as with a sudden idea. "It's a loafing afternoon. Let's take the rifles and go potting squirrels. I noticed the other day they've become populous on that hill above the Little Meadow."

But he had not failed to observe the flutter of alarm that shadowed her eyes so swiftly, and that so swiftly was gone as she clapped her hands and was herself.

"But don't take a rifle for me," she said.

"If you'd rather not--" he began gently.

"Oh, I want to go, but I don't feel up to shooting. I'll take Le Gallienne's last book along--it just came in--and read to you in betweenwhiles. Remember, the last time I did that when we went squirreling it was his 'Quest of the Golden Girl' I read to you."

CHAPTER XXV

Paula on the Fawn, and d.i.c.k on the Outlaw, rode out from the Big House as nearly side by side as the Outlaw's wicked perversity permitted. The conversation she permitted was fragmentary. With tiny ears laid back and teeth exposed, she would attempt to evade d.i.c.k's restraint of rein and spur and win to a bite of Paula's leg or the Fawn's sleek flank, and with every defeat the pink flushed and faded in the whites of her eyes. Her restless head-tossing and pitching attempts to rear (thwarted by the martingale) never ceased, save when she pranced and sidled and tried to whirl.