The Little Red Foot Part 43

My Lady Johnson wished to rest; and there was a romance out of France awaiting her in gilt binding in her chamber.

She went, when the board was cleared, linking her arm in Claudia's.

Penelope took up her knitting with a faint smile at me.

"Will you tell me a story to amuse me, sir?" she said in her shy way.

"You shall tell me one," said I.

"I? What story?"

"Some story you have lived."

"I told you all."

"No," said I, "not any story concerning this very pest of suitors which plague you--or, if not you, then me!--as the suitors of the first Penelope plagued Telemachus."

Now she was laughing, and, at one moment, hid her face in her yarn, still laughing.

"Does this plague you, John Drogue?" she asked, still all rosy in her mirth.

"Well," said I, "they all seem popinjays to me in their blue and gold and buff. But it was once red-coats, too, at Caughnawaga, or so I hear."

"Oh. Did you hear that?"

"I did. They sat like flies around a sap-pan."

"Deary me!" she exclaimed, all dimples, "who hath gossiped of me at Cayadutta Lodge?"

"Penelope?"

"I am attentive, sir."

"I suppose all maids enjoy admiration."

"I suppose so."

"Hum! And do you?"

"La, sir! I am a maid, also."

"And enjoy it?"

"Yes, sir.... Do not you?"

"What?"

"Do not you enjoy admiration? Is admiration displeasing to young men?"

"Well--no," I admitted. "Only it is well to be armed with experience--hum-hum!--and discretion when one encounters the flattery of admiration."

"Yes, sir.... Are you so armed, Mr. Drogue?"

At a loss to answer, her question being unexpected--as were many of her questions--and answers also--I finally admitted that flattery was a subtle foe and that perhaps experience had not wholly armed me against that persuasive enemy.

"Nor me," said she, with serene candour. "And I fear that I lack as much in knowledge and experience as I do in years, Mr. Drogue. For I think no evil, nor perhaps even recognize it when I meet it, deeming the world kind, and all folk unwilling to do me a wrong."

"I--kissed you."

"Was that a wrong you did me?"

"Have not others kissed you?" said I, turning red and feeling mean.

But she laughed outright, telling me that it concerned herself and not me what she chose to let her lips endure. And I saw she was a very child, all unaccustomed, yet shyly charmed by flatteries, and already vaguely aware that men found her attractive, and that she also was not disinclined toward men, nor averse to their admiration.

"How many write you verses?" I asked uneasily.

"Gentlemen are p.r.o.ne to verses. Is it unbecoming of me to encourage them to verse?"

"Why, no...."

"Did you think the verses fine you heard in the orchard?"

"Oh, yes," said I, carelessly, "but smacking strong of Major Andre's verses to his several Sacharissas."

"Oh. I thought them fine."

"And all men think you fine, I fear--from that soldier who p.r.i.c.ked your name on his powder-horn at Mayfield fort to Bully Jock Gallopaway of the Border Horse at Caughnawaga, and our own little Jack-boots in the orchard yonder."

"Only Jack Drogue dissents," she murmured, bending over her knitting.

At that I caught her white hand and kissed it; and she blushed and sat smiling in absent fas.h.i.+on at the water, while I retained it.

"You use me sans facon," she murmured at last. "Do you use other women so?"

Now, I had used some few maids as wilfully, but none worse, yet had no mind to admit it, nor yet to lie.

"You ask me questions," said I, "but answer none o' mine."

At that her gay smile broke again. "What a very boy," quoth she, "to be Laird o' Northesk! For it is cat's-cradle talk between us two, and give and take to no advancement. Will you tell me, my lord, if it gives you pleasure to touch my lips?"

"Yes," said I. "Does it please you, too?"

"I wonder," says she, and was laughing again out of half-shy eyes at me.

But, ere I could speak again, comes an express a-galloping; and we saw him dismount at the mainland gate and come swiftly across the orchard.

"My orders," said I, and went to the edge of the veranda.