Part 28 (1/2)
Things a.s.sume formidable proportions in the darkness and dead quiet of the night that they never have by day. Away after midnight he was still thinking of what Mary had said about the young Frenchman who had lately come into his fortune, and of what Roberta had said about Lieutenant Boglin. The face of the latter rose up before him. Not a particularly good-looking face, he thought, but it was a strong, likable one, and he had a sense of humor which made him good company, and a blarney-stone turn of the tongue that would take with any girl. As for Jules Ciseaux, who had envied the Wares their home life, Phil knew all about the childhood of the lonely little lad left to the mercies of a brutal caretaker. Jules would only need to see Mary once, dear little home-maker that she was, to want to carry her away with him to his chateau beside the Loire.
Before Phil finally fell asleep he had decided just what he would say to Mary next morning, and that he would go early enough to make an opportunity to say it. It _was_ early when he went striding down the road, across the foot-bridge, and took the short cut through a meadow to the back of the Ware cottage; but the preparations for breakfast were well under way. When he reached the back porch, screened by morning-glory vines, he saw the table set out there, with fresh strawberries at each place, wreathed in their own green leaves.
Judging from the odors wafted through the door, chickens were broiling within to exactly the right degree of delectable crispness, and coffee which would be of amber clearness, was in the making. But the noises within the kitchen were not to be interpreted as easily as the odors.
There was a banging and scuffling over the floor, m.u.f.fled shrieks and broken sentences in high voices, choking with laughter. Not till he reached the open window and looked in could he imagine the cause of the uproar. Norman and Mary were wrestling and romping all over the kitchen, having a tug-of-war over something he was trying to take away from her.
Unconscious of a spectator, they dragged each other around, b.u.mping against walls amid a clatter of falling tinware, stumbling over chairs and coming to a deadlock in each others' arms in a corner, so full of laughter they could scarcely hold their grip.
”Dare me again! will you?” gasped Norman, thinking he had her pinned to the wall. But wrenching one hand free, she began to tickle him until he writhed away from her with a whoop, and dashed out of the door.
”Yah! 'Fraid cat!” she jeered after him. ”Afraid of a tickle!”
”You just wait till I get back with the milk,” he cried, catching up a s.h.i.+ning tin pail that stood on the bench, and starting down the path over which Phil had just come.
[Ill.u.s.tration: MARY WARE in TEXAS.
Well, I'm going away and I may not see you again.]
”You'll have to hurry,” she called after him. ”Breakfast is almost ready.”
She stooped to open the oven door and peep at the pan of biscuit within, just beginning to turn a delicate brown. Then she looked up and caught sight of Phil. He was leaning against the window looking in, his arms crossed on the sill as if he had been enjoying the spectacle for some time.
”For mercy sakes!” she exclaimed. ”How long have you been there?”
The coast was clear. Norman was well on his way to the Metz place, and Mrs. Ware was helping Jack get ready for breakfast. It was as good an opportunity as Phil could have hoped for, to repeat the speech he had rehea.r.s.ed so many times the night before. And she looked so fresh and wholesome and sweet, standing there in her pink morning dress with the big white ap.r.o.n, that she was more like an apple-blossom than anything else he could think of. He wanted to tell her so; to tell her she had never seemed so dear and desirable as she did at this moment, when he must be going away to leave her.
Yet how could he tell her, when she was all a-giggle and a-dimple and aglow from her romp with Norman? Clearly she was too far from his state of mind to share it now, or even to understand it. After all, she was only a little girl at heart--only eighteen. It wasn't fair to her to awaken her quite yet--to hurry her into giving a promise when she couldn't possibly know her own mind. He would wait--
So he only leaned on the window-sill and laughed at her for having been caught in such an undignified romp, and asked her when she intended to grow up, and if she ever expected to outgrow her propensity for sc.r.a.pping. But when he had joked thus a few minutes, he said, quite suddenly and seriously, ”Mary, I want you to promise me something.”
She was taking the chickens from the broiler and did not look at him until they were safely landed in the hot platter awaiting them, but she said lightly, ”Yes, your 'ighness. To the 'arf of me kingdom. Wot is it?”
”Well, I'm going away and I may not see you again for a long time. The chief wants me to take a position, engineering the construction of a big dam down in Mexico. It would keep me down there two years, but it would be the biggest thing I've had yet, in every way. Last night I just about made up my mind I'd take it.
”While I'm gone you will be striking out into all sorts of new trails, and I am afraid that on some of them somebody will come along and try to persuade you to join him on his, even if you are such a little girl. Now I want to have a hand in choosing the right man, and I want you to promise me that you won't let anybody persuade you to do that till I come back. Or at least if they do try, that you'll send me word that they're trying, and give me a chance to come back and have a look at the fellow, and see if I think he is good enough to carry you off.”
”Why, the idea!” she laughed, a trifle embarra.s.sed, but immensely pleased that he should think it possible for her to have numerous suitors or to have them soon, and flattered that he should take enough interest in her future to want to be called back from Mexico to direct her choice.
”But will you promise?” he urged.
”Yes; that is not much to promise.”
”And you'll give me your hand on it?” he persisted.
”Yes, and cross my heart and body in the bargain,” she added, lightly, ”if that'll please you any better.”
For all his gravity, she thought he was jesting until she reached her hand through the window to seal the compact.
”You know,” he said, as his warm fingers closed over it, ”I've never yet seen anybody whom I considered good enough for little Mary Ware.”
Her eyes fell before the seriousness of his steady glance, and she turned away all in a flutter of pleasure that the ”Best Man” should have said such a lovely thing about _her_. It was the very thing she had always thought about him.
Mrs. Ware came out just then, wheeling Jack in his chair, and soon after Norman was back with the milk, and breakfast was served out on the porch among the morning-glories. ”A perfect breakfast and a perfect morning,”