Part 7 (2/2)

”Did you see that! He never raised his eyes. They are like priests. You can't make them look at you.” Moya looked at Christine in amazement.

The man himself might have heard her. It was not the first time this privileged guest had rubbed against garrison customs in certain directions hardly worth mentioning. Moya hesitated. Then she laughed a little, and said: ”Only a raw recruity would look at an officer's daughter, or any lady of the line.”

”Oh, you horrid little aristocrat! Well, I look at them, when they are as pretty as that one, and I forgive them if they look at me.”

Moya turned and hovered over the contents of the mail-bag. In the exercise of one of her prerogatives, it was her habit to sort its contents before delivering it at the official door.

”All, all for you!” she offered a huge packet of letters, smiling, to Mrs. Bogardus. It was faced with one on top in Paul's handwriting. ”All but one,” she added, and proceeded to open her own much fatter one in the same hand. She stood reading it in the hall.

Mrs. Bogardus presently followed and remained beside her. ”Could I speak to your father a moment?” she asked.

”Certainly, I will call him,” said Moya.

”Wait: I hear him now.” The study door opened and Colonel Middleton joined them. Mrs. Bogardus leading the way into the sitting-room, the colonel followed her, and Moya, not having been invited, lingered in the hall.

”Well, have the hunters started yet?” the colonel inquired in his breezy voice, which made you want to open the doors and windows to give it room. ”Be seated! Be seated! I hope you have got a long letter to read me.”

Mrs. Bogardus stood reflecting. ”The day this letter was mailed they got off--only two days ago,” she said. ”Could I reach them, Colonel, with a telegram?”

”Two days ago,” the colonel considered. ”They must have made Yankee Fork by yesterday. Today they are deep in the woods. No; I should say a man on horseback would be your surest telegram. Is it anything important?”

”Colonel, I wish we could call them back! They have gone off, it seems to me, in a most crazy way--against the judgment of every one who knows.

The guide, this man whom they waited for, refused, it appears, to go out again with another party so late in the fall. But the Bowens were determined. They insisted on making arrangements with another man. Then, when 'Packer John,' they call him, heard of this, he went to Paul and urged him, if he could not prevent the others from going, to give up the trip himself. The Bowens were very much annoyed at his interference, and with Paul for listening to him. And Paul, rather than make things unpleasant, gave in. You know how young men are! What silly grounds are enough for the most serious decisions when it is a question of pride or good faith. The Bowens had bought their outfit on Paul's a.s.surance that he would go. He felt he could not leave them in the lurch. On that, the guide suddenly changed his mind and said he would go with them sooner than see them fall into worse hands. They were, in a way, committed to the other man, so they took _him_ along as cook--the whole thing done in haste, you see, and unpleasant feelings all around. Do you call that a good start for a pleasure trip?”

”It's very much the way with young troops when they start out--everything wrong end foremost, everybody mad with everybody else. A day in the saddle will set their little tempers all right.”

”That isn't the point,” Mrs. Bogardus persisted gloomily. As she spoke, the two girls came into the room and stood listening.

”What is the point, then?” Christine demanded. ”Moya has no news; all those pages and pages, and nothing for anybody or about anybody!”

”'Such an intolerable deal of sack to such a poor pennyworth of bread,'”

the colonel quoted, smiling at Moya's bloated envelope.

”But what do you think?” Mrs. Bogardus recalled him. ”Don't you think it's a mistake all around?”

”Not at all, if they have a good man. This flat-footed fellow, John, will take command, as he should. There is no danger in the woods at any season unless the party gets rattled and goes to pieces for want of a head.”

”Father!” exclaimed Moya. ”You know there is danger. Often, things have happened!”

”Why, what could happen?” asked Christine, with wide eyes.

”Many things very interesting could happen,” the colonel boasted cheerfully. ”That is the object of the trip. You want things to happen.

It is the emergency that makes the man--sifts him, and takes the chaff out of him.”

”Take the chaff out of Banks Bowen,” Moya imprudently struck in, ”and what would you have left?” She had met Banks Bowen in New York.

”Tut, tut!” said the colonel. ”Silence, or a good word for the absent--same as the”--The colonel stopped short.

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