Part 19 (2/2)

The eyes and the gaze were on her again; she felt them and turned suddenly and faced them. The look she met was deep and warm, but it changed, holding hers, grew cool, enigmatical, impersonal. Did he not know her then, or did he not want to know her?

This time tears of hurt and pride rushed to her eyes. He was watching, but she could not get her eyes away, even with those hateful tears welling.

The sail s.h.i.+fted, for no reason apparently. ”Down, please,” he commanded. But as the boat dipped, shook itself, righted again, and flew on through the rosy light, his head came up near hers and his voice, in the old, boyish way, said: ”Really?”

Sudden light shone through the tears in the girl's eyes. Molly would have wrung her hands with an artist's anguish, this was the place for coquetry!

”I thought you didn't want to know me and I was hurt,” said Alexina.

”It was yours to know first,” said w.i.l.l.y Leroy stoutly, but his eyes were laughing.

”Oh,” said Alexina, doubtfully; ”why, yes; perhaps it was.” And then she laughed, too, gaily.

CHAPTER TWO

As Molly, Alexina and Mr. Henderson sat on the front gallery of the hotel the next morning, they were joined by one Mr. Thompson Jonas, a lawyer of Aden, who lived above his office and took his meals at the hotel.

Mr. Jonas was small, wiry and muscular, of Georgia stock, with a fierce little air and a fierce moustache, and quick, bright blue eyes, never still. He had sprung to the aid of Molly and Alexina one morning and flung a door open as they pa.s.sed from the dining-room, and speedily they were all good friends.

It was characteristic of him that he should have flung the door back, not merely opened it. There was something of homage in the act. Within the body of the little man was the chivalrous spirit of a Chevalier Bayard, a Coeur de Lion. The big soul of Mr. Jonas was imprisoned in his pigmy person as the spirit of the genius in the casket.

He was a Nimrod, too, and even now stood in hunting accoutrements, seeming rather to have been shaken into his natty leggings than they to have been drawn onto him, and there was a flare and dip to his wide, soft hat and a jaunty fling to his knotted tie. His dog, a Gordon setter b.i.t.c.h, sat on her haunches by him as he stood, his fingers playing with her silky ears.

”Now, you'd better come go with me, Henderson,” he was urging, ”the buggy's here at the door and you need it--you need this sort of thing more.”

”It's a busy day with me, thank you,” answered the Reverend Henderson a little coldly, for this Mr. Jonas was a man of no church. His faith, he had frequently a.s.sured the young clergyman, would long ago have died for breathing s.p.a.ce in any creed he yet had met with.

”When you're older you'll understand better what I mean, my dear boy,”

the little man had in good part and cheerfulness a.s.sured the other.

”Come around and use my books any time you like.”

For the soul of Mr. Jonas enthused--or convinced its owner that it did--over Confucius, and further revelled in the belief that it delved in occult knowledge; it also led him to place the volumes of the early Fathers on his book-shelves and the literature of the Saints and of Kant and Comte and Swedenborg; it conducted its owner to the feet of Emerson and Th.o.r.eau; it made him talk Darwinism. Jesus Christ and Plato, Mr. Jonas loved to say, made up his ideal philosophy.

Mr. Henderson, on the other hand, spoke of church buildings in Aden other than his own as a.s.sembling places. It was inevitable he did not give his approval to Mr. Jonas. His feeling against the little man even made him enumerate the occupations ahead for the day, as if it was a sort of avowal of the faith to thus declare them.

”It's a busy day with me, thank you. I have a feast day service and a guild meeting, besides my parochial duties and a vestry meeting for the evening.”

”Dear me,” said Molly, looking at him. ”To be sure--I'd forgotten you're a minister.” The young man looked up, instant self-arraignment in his face, for permitting it to be forgotten.

”When do you have service?” Molly was saying. ”We must come over, Malise and I.”

He told her gravely.

Mr. Jonas was standing against the gallery railing, rising and falling on his neat little toes, the setter's eyes following his every movement. He was facing Mrs. Garnier and her daughter, looking from the mother, with her red-brown hair and shadowy lashes, to the girl, quite lovely, also, when she smiled in this sweet, sudden way up at him. She had nice hair, too, something the colour of wild honey.

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