A Hoosier Chronicle - Meredith Nicholson

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however, be repeated.

      Kindly designate by a verbal "Yes" or "No" to the bearer whether you accept or decline. The messenger is a stranger to the person making the offer and the contents of this communication are unknown to him. If you wish to avail yourself of this gift, the amount will be paid in cash immediately, and it is suggested that you refrain from mentioning the matter to your granddaughter in any way.

      Professor Kelton had given his answer to the messenger unhesitatingly, and the trouble reflected in his dark eyes was not due, we may assume, to any regret for his negative reply, but to the jangling of old, harsh chords of memory. He crossed and recrossed the room, lost in reverie; then paused at his desk and tore the letter once across with the evident intention of destroying it; but he hesitated, changed his mind, and carried it to his bedroom. There he took from a closet shelf a battered tin box marked "A. Kelton, U.S.N." which contained his commissions in the Navy. He sat down on the bed, folded the letter the long way of the sheet and indorsed it in pencil: "Declined." Then he slipped it under the faded tape that bound the official papers together, and locked and replaced the box.

      Sylvia meanwhile had found the review article noted on her grandfather's memorandum, and leaving a receipt with the librarian started home with the book under her arm. Halfway across the campus she met her grandfather's caller, hurrying townward. He lifted his hat, and Sylvia paused a moment to ask if he had found her grandfather.

      "Yes; thank you. My business didn't take much time, you see. I'm sorry I put you to so much bother."

      "Oh, that was nothing."

      "Is that new building the college library?"

      "Yes," replied Sylvia. "Are you a Madison man?"

      "No. I was never here before. I went to a very different college and"—he hesitated—"a little bigger one."

      "I suppose there are bigger colleges," Sylvia remarked, with the slightest accent on the adjective.

      The young man laughed.

      "That's the right spirit! Madison needs no praise from me; it speaks for itself. Is this the nearest way to the station?"

      It had been on Sylvia's tongue to ask him the name of his college, but he had perhaps read this inquiry in her eyes, and as though suddenly roused by the remembrance of the secrecy that had been imposed upon him, he moved on.

      "Yes, I understand," he called over his shoulder. "Thank you, very much."

      He whistled softly to himself as he continued on his way, still glancing about alertly.

      The manner of the old professor in receiving the letter and the calmness with which he had given his reply minimized the importance of the transaction in the mind of the messenger. He was thinking of Sylvia and smiling still at her implication that while there were larger colleges than Madison there was none better. He turned to look again at the college buildings closely clasped by their strip of woodland. Madison was not a college to sneer at; he had scanned the bronze tablet on the library wall that published the roll of her Sons who had served in the Civil War. Many of the names were written high in the state's history and for a moment they filled the young man's mind.

      As she neared home Sylvia met her friend Dr. Wandless, the former president, who always had his joke with her.

      "Hail, Lady of the Constellations! You have been looting the library, I see. Hast thou named the stars without a gun?"

      "That isn't right," protested Sylvia. "You're purposely misquoting. You've only spoiled Emerson's line about the birds."

      "Bless me, I believe that's so!" laughed the old gentleman. "But tell me, Sylvia: 'Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or guide Arcturus with his sons?'"

      Sylvia, with brightening eyes and a smile on her lips, answered:—

      "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?"

      "Ah, if only I could, Sylvia!" said the old minister, smiling gravely.

      They came in high spirits to the parting of their ways and Sylvia kept on through the hedge to her grandfather's cottage. The minister turned once, a venerable figure with snowy beard and hair, and beat the path softly with his stick and glanced back, as Sylvia's red ribbon bobbed through the greenery.

      "'Whose daughter art thou?'" he murmured gently.

      Then, glancing furtively about, he increased his gait as though to escape from his own thoughts; but the question asked of Bethuel's daughter by Abraham's servant came again to his lips, and he shook his head as he repeated:—

      "Whose daughter art thou?"

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      "How old did you say you were, Sylvia?"

      "I'm sixteen in October, grandpa," answered Sylvia.

      "Is it possible!" murmured the professor. "And to think that you've never been to school."

      "Why, I've been going to school every day, almost, ever since I can remember. And haven't I had the finest teacher in the world, all to myself?"

      His face brightened responsive to her laugh.

      This was at the tea-table—for the Keltons dined at noon in conformity with local custom—nearly a week after the unsigned letter had been delivered to Andrew Kelton by the unknown messenger. Sylvia and her grandfather had just returned from a walk, prolonged into the cool dusk. They sat at the square walnut table, where they had so long faced each other three times a day. Sylvia had never doubted that their lives would go on forever in just this way—that they would always be, as her grandfather liked to put it, "shipmates," walking together, studying together, sitting as they sat now, at their simple meals, with just the same quaintly flowered dishes, the same oddly turned teapot, with its attendant cream pitcher (slightly cracked as to lip) and the sugar-bowl, with a laboring ship depicted in blue on its curved side, which was not related, even by the most remote cousinship, to anything else in the pantry.

      Professor Kelton was unwontedly preoccupied to-night. Sylvia saw that he had barely touched his strawberries—their first of the season, though they were fine ones and the cream was the thickest. She folded her hands on the edge of the table and watched him gravely in the light of the four candles whose flame flared in the breeze that swept softly through the dining-room windows. Feeling her eyes upon him the old gentleman suddenly roused himself.

      "We've had good times, haven't we, Sylvia? And I wonder if I have really taught you anything. I suppose I ought to have been sending you to school with the other youngsters about here, but the fact is that I never saw a time when I wanted to part with you! You've been a fine little shipmate, but you're not so little any more. Sixteen your next birthday! If that's so it isn't best for us to go on this way. You must try your oar in deeper water. You've outgrown me—and I'm a dull old fellow at best. You must go where you will meet other girls, and deal with a variety of teachers—not just one dingy old fellow like me. Have you ever thought what kind of a school you'd like to go to?"

      "I don't believe I have; I don't know much about schools."

      "Well, don't you think you'd like to get away from so much mathematics and learn things that will fit you to be entertaining and amusing? You know I've taught you a lot of things just to amuse myself and they can never be of the slightest use to you. I suppose you are the only girl of your age in America who can read the sextant and calculate latitude and longitude. But, bless me, what's the use?"

      "Oh, if I could only—"

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