Part 37 (2/2)
”How many times?”
”Twice.”
”For how long?”
”Five minutes, the first time, three, the second.”
”How many other people present?”
”A dozen or so.”
”Have a satisfactory visit?”
”Oh, very!” Peter hit the newspaper with his elbow, and it fell down.
”What have you got it in for me this morning for, Sis?” he demanded, wrathfully.
Nancy stopped laughing and looked serious. ”It won't hurt you any. It may wake you up. I just want you to know that I 'm honestly and truly worried about Brant Hille.”
Then she vanished, and Peter lay wis.h.i.+ng he had two good legs, that he might get up and go and see for himself just how much all this meant. He read the newspaper no more that morning; it lay forgotten on the floor where it had fallen.
The weeks went by slowly enough to the convalescent, impatient to begin his new work, and full of plans for it. Long talks with Murray helped most to make the waiting endurable, and the two young men grew to know and respect each other still more deeply than ever before. Everybody was kind. Both Mr. and Mrs. Townsend came often to see Peter; and even Olive, although at times distraught with the business of preparation for her approaching marriage, found a half-hour now and then in which to slip across to Gay Street and talk with him.
At these times she found decided refreshment in his society, for Peter's ideas on the subject of matrimony were both novel and sensible, and in after years she often found herself remembering and putting into practice one or another of his quizzical maxims, founded on much shrewd observation.
”You are coming to my wedding, you know,” she said, on the last of these occasions, three days before the date set for that event. ”And I want you at dinner the evening before, so you may get to know Mr. Crewe, and he you, as well as you can in one short evening. I'm so disappointed he could n't be here all this week, as he planned.”
”Dinners?--weddings?--on these sticks?” scoffed Peter, that day promoted to crutches and finding them as yet merely invitations to ironic humour.
”Certainly. If you make them an excuse for staying away, I shall never forgive you.”
”Please let me off from the dinner. If you 'll put me in the porch, and let me be found there afterward, I 'll agree, but I can't hobble out to the table on crutches of torture.”
”Not even to take out s.h.i.+rley?” Olive glanced at him mischievously, and saw him colour slightly as he answered:
”That would be an inducement if anything would. But I 'm sure you 'll adopt my point of view if I beg you to.”
”Then I shall have to send her in with Geoffrey Crewe--or Brant Hille.”
”Will the men stay behind when the ladies come out?”
”Yes, of course.”
”Then I prefer the porch,” persisted Peter, comfortably; and Olive acknowledged that he had chosen the wiser part.
So on Tuesday evening, when s.h.i.+rley, in the midst of a rainbow-tinted group of young women, floated airily out from the brightly lighted and oppressively warm dining-room to the cool, softly lighted recesses of the great porch, it was with a sense of refres.h.i.+ng change that she went straight to the big chair by a pillar, where Peter sat waiting for her.
As she dropped into a low seat by his side, she thought she had never seen him show to greater advantage, although he could not rise to do her honour, and could only say, with a straight, upward glance, ”This is kind of you. I 've been thinking for an hour how you 'd look when you came out that door.”
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