Part 13 (2/2)

said er word.... 'Twis' huh tail?' _Me_, suh? No-suh-ree, suh. Mars'

Quarles' boy one time he twis' huh tail en dey sen' him ter de horspit'l. 'Daid,' suh? No, suh, ain' daid, but et mos' bust him wide open.... 'Set fiah undah huh?' Yas, suh, done set fiah undah huh. Mos'

burn up de harness, en ain' done no good.... Well, suh, Ah jes' gwineter say no use waitin' fo' Sukey ter change huh min', so Ah put some fence-rails undah huh en jock huh up en come home. En Ah's gwine out arter suppah en Sukey be all right den, suh, Ah reck'n. Yas, suh.”

Aunt Daphne plunged out with fire in her eye, but the laugh that came from above was rea.s.suring. ”Never mind, Uncle Jefferson, Miss Sukey's whims shall be regarded.”

Chum, bouncing up the stairs like an animated bundle of springs, met his master coming down. ”Old man,” said the latter, ”I don't mind telling you that I'm beginning to be taken with this place. But it's in a bad way, and it's going to be put in shape. It's a large order, and we'll have to work like horses. Don't you bother Aunt Daph! You just come with your Uncle Dudley. He's going to take a look over the grounds.”

He went to his trunk and fished out a soft s.h.i.+rt on which he knotted a loose tie, exchanged his Panama for a slouch hat, and whistling the barcarole from _Tales of Hoffmann_, went gaily out. ”I feel tremendously alive to-day,” he confided to the dog, as he tramped through the lush gra.s.s. ”If you see me ladle the muck out of that fountain with my own fair hands, don't have a fit. I'm liable to do anything.”

His eye swept up and down the slope. ”There probably isn't a finer site for a house in the whole South,” he told himself. ”The living-rooms front south and west. We'll get scrumptious sunsets from that back porch. And on the other side there's the view clear to the Blue Ridge.

And as for this garden, no landscape artist need apply. The outlines are all here; it needs only to be put back. We'll first rake out the rubbish, chop down that underbrush and trim the box. The shrubs only want pruning. Then we'll mend the pool and set the fountain going and put in some goldfish. Flower-seeds and bulbs are cheap enough, I fancy.

Just think of a bed of black and gold pansies running down to the lake!

And on the other side a wilderness garden. I've seen pictures of them in the ill.u.s.trated weeklies. Those rotten posts, under that snarl of vines, were a pergola. Any old carpenter can rebuild that--I can draw the plans myself.”

He skirted the lake. ”Only to grub out some of the lilies--there's too many of them--and straighten the rim--and weed the pebble margin to give those green rocks a show. I'll build a little wharf below them to dive from, and--yes, I'll stock it with spotted trout. Not just to yank out with a barbed hook, but to make it inhabited. How well a couple of white swans would look preening in the shade out there! The roof's gone from that oval summer-house, but it's no trick to put another on.”

He penetrated farther into the tangle and came out into a partially cleared s.p.a.ce shaded with great trees, where the gra.s.s was matted with clover into a thick rug, sprinkled with designs worked in bluebells and field-daisies, with here and there a flaunting poppy, like a scarlet medallion. He was but a few hundred yards from the house, yet the silence was so deep that there might have been no habitation within fifty miles. All at once he stopped short; there was a sudden movement in the thicket beyond--the sound of light fast footfalls, as of some one running away.

He made a lunge for the dog, but with a growl Chum tore himself from the restraining grasp and dashed into the bushes. ”A child, no doubt,” he thought as he plunged in pursuit, ”and that lubberly brute will scare it half to death!”

He pulled up with an exclamation. In a narrow wood-path a little way from him, partly hidden by a windfall, stood a girl, her skirt transfixed with a wickedly jagged sapling. He saw instantly how it had happened; the windfall had blocked the way, and she had sprung clean over it, not noting the screened spear, which now held her as effectually as any railroad spike. She was struggling with silent helpless fury to release herself, wrenching viciously at the offending stuff, which seemed ridiculously stout, and disregarding utterly the bulldog, frisking madly about her feet with sharp joyous barks.

In another moment Valiant had reached her and met her face, flushed, half defiant, her eyes a blue gleam of smoldering anger as she desperately, almost savagely, thrust wild tendrils of flame-colored hair beneath the broad curved brim of her straw hat. At her feet lay a great armful of cape jessamines.

A little thrill, light and warm and joyous, ran through him. Until that instant he had not recognized her.

CHAPTER XVIII

JOHN VALIANT MAKES A DISCOVERY

”I'm so sorry,” was what he said, as he kneeled to release her, and she was grateful that his tone was unmixed with amus.e.m.e.nt. She bit her lips, as by sheer strength of elbow and knee he snapped the offending bole short off--one of those quick exhibitions of reserved strength that every woman likes. Meanwhile he was uttering ba.n.a.l fragments of sentences: ”I hope you're not hurt. It was that unmannerly dog, I suppose. What a sword-edge that sliver has! A bad tear, I'm afraid.

There!--now it's all right.”

”I don't know how I could have been so silly--thank you so much,” said s.h.i.+rley, panting slightly from her exertions. ”I'm not the least bit hurt--only my dress--and you know very well that I wasn't afraid of that ridiculous dog.” A richer glow stole to her cheeks as she spoke, a burning recollection of a rose, which from her horse that morning at Damory Court, she had glimpsed in its gla.s.s on the porch.

Both laughed a little. He imagined that he could smell that wonderful hair, a subtle fragrance like that of sun-dried seaweed or the elusive scent that clings to a tuft of long-plucked Spanish moss. ”Chum stands absolved, then,” he said, bending to sweep together the scattered jessamine. ”Do you--do you run like that when you're _not_ frightened?”

”When I'm caught red-handed. Don't you?”

He looked puzzled.

She pointed to the flowers. ”I had stolen them, and I was trying to ”scape off wid 'em' as the negroes say. Shocking, isn't it? But you see, n.o.body has lived here since long before I was born, and I suppose the flower-thieving habit has become ingrown.”

<script>