LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER XXVI.

       Table of Contents

      The harmony of summer sunlight on leaf and blade of green was not known to the two windows, which looked forth at an obviously endless building of brownstone about which there was the poetry of a prison. Inside, great folds of lace swept down in orderly cascades, as water trained to fall mathematically. The colossal chandelier, gleaming like a Siamese headdress, caught the subtle flashes from unknown places.

      Hawker heard a step and the soft swishing of a woman's dress. He turned toward the door swiftly, with a certain dramatic impulsiveness. But when she entered the room he said, "How delighted I am to see you again!"

      She had said, "Why, Mr. Hawker, it was so charming in you to come!"

      It did not appear that Hawker's tongue could wag to his purpose. The girl seemed in her mind to be frantically shuffling her pack of social receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally, Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was a very good play.

      "Did you?" she said in surprise. "I thought it much like the others."

      "Well, so did I," he cried hastily—"the same figures moving around in the mud of modern confusion. I really didn't intend to say that I liked it. Fact is, meeting you rather moved me out of my mental track."

      "Mental track?" she said. "I didn't know clever people had mental tracks. I thought it was a privilege of the theologians."

      "Who told you I was clever?" he demanded.

      "Why," she said, opening her eyes wider, "nobody."

      Hawker smiled and looked upon her with gratitude. "Of course, nobody. There couldn't be such an idiot. I am sure you should be astonished to learn that I believed such an imbecile existed. But——"

      "Oh!" she said.

      "But I think you might have spoken less bluntly."

      "Well," she said, after wavering for a time, "you are clever, aren't you?"

      "Certainly," he answered reassuringly.

      "Well, then?" she retorted, with triumph in her tone. And this interrogation was apparently to her the final victorious argument.

      At his discomfiture Hawker grinned.

      "You haven't asked news of Stanley," he said. "Why don't you ask news of Stanley?"

      "Oh! and how was he?"

      "The last I saw of him he stood down at the end of the pasture—the pasture, you know—wagging his tail in blissful anticipation of an invitation to come with me, and when it finally dawned upon him that he was not to receive it, he turned and went back toward the house 'like a man suddenly stricken with age,' as the story-tellers eloquently say. Poor old dog!"

      "And you left him?" she said reproachfully. Then she asked, "Do you remember how he amused you playing with the ants at the falls?"

      "No."

      "Why, he did. He pawed at the moss, and you sat there laughing. I remember it distinctly."

      "You remember distinctly? Why, I thought—well, your back was turned, you know. Your gaze was fixed upon something before you, and you were utterly lost to the rest of the world. You could not have known if Stanley pawed the moss and I laughed. So, you see, you are mistaken. As a matter of fact, I utterly deny that Stanley pawed the moss or that I laughed, or that any ants appeared at the falls at all."

      "I have always said that you should have been a Chinese soldier of fortune," she observed musingly. "Your daring and ingenuity would be prized by the Chinese."

      "There are innumerable tobacco jars in China," he said, measuring the advantages. "Moreover, there is no perspective. You don't have to walk two miles to see a friend. No. He is always there near you, so that you can't move a chair without hitting your distant friend. You——"

      "Did Hollie remain as attentive as ever to the Worcester girls?"

      "Yes, of course, as attentive as ever. He dragged me into all manner of tennis games——"

      "Why, I thought you loved to play tennis?"

      "Oh, well," said Hawker, "I did until you left."

      "My sister has gone to the park with the children. I know she will be vexed when she finds that you have called."

      Ultimately Hawker said, "Do you remember our ride behind my father's oxen?"

      "No," she answered; "I had forgotten it completely. Did we ride behind your father's oxen?"

      After a moment he said: "That remark would be prized by the Chinese. We did. And you most graciously professed to enjoy it, which earned my deep gratitude and admiration. For no one knows better than I," he added meekly, "that it is no great comfort or pleasure to ride behind my father's oxen."

      She smiled retrospectively. "Do you remember how the people on the porch hurried to the railing?"