Part 35 (1/2)

”Is he always like that?” asked Wright, anxiously, as we went toward the house.

”Like what?” I asked, in all innocence.

”Positively green-eyed with rage if you are alone for half a minute with another man--even so harmless a specimen as myself?”

”Don't be silly,” said I, with finality.

”I'm not, and if he is going to be jealous as all that, why don't you get to him first before he can accuse you, and demand that he cease baying at the moon with that human leopardess who vamps around these diggings?”

”She'll be here this afternoon, on a visit,” I announced, laughing.

”Why don't you monopolize her yourself?”

”I never went in for that kind,” said Wright with firmness. ”I might get scratched. Gentle and soft-spoken, that's my type. Besides, Miss Howells is going to look just like her mother, and that's a warning to any man!”

That afternoon Mercedes arrived. Her bag proved to be a trunk, and within an hour of her arrival, she had charmed the kitchen, made eyes at Silas, called Wright by his first name, hurt her finger--with resultant medical attention, and confided to me that she ”hated men!”

After which, she departed in the direction of the palm-grove with ”Billy” and ”Wright.”

I went to her room and viewed her gowns, hanging, like flowers, in her innovation steamer-trunk. After which, I went to my own room and took stock of my chiffon and satin armor.

Bill came back at tea time.

”Wright is reciting poetry to Mercedes on the stone bench under the orchids, and sketching her between verses,” he announced, ”but I crave more material food.”

”You might have stayed on,” I suggested, pa.s.sing him the sandwiches, ”and made the recitation compet.i.tive.”

”Compet.i.tive,” he remarked, choosing a ripe, red disk of tomato, flanked with thin circles of bread, and biting into it reflectively, ”calls for numbers. I don't enjoy being part of a mob-scene, or a ma.s.s-meeting.”

”Here comes the Meistersanger,” I said, as Wright came up the steps, with Mercedes unnecessarily on his arm.

Selecting chairs, cups, plates and food, our guests joined us around the wicker tea-wagon.

”He is not a nice young man at all,” said Mercedes frankly, exhibiting a rather clever little pastel of herself, ”this Wright. He says to me the most beautiful poetry, so sad and so lovely, all about unrequited love and dead girls floating in moonlit pools, and when, touched to the heart, I weep a little, he laughs and says it is wonderful how much tragedy one can turn out at fifty cents a line!”

She opened ocular fire on her host as she spoke, and Bill responded nicely.

”I'm sure,” he said gravely, ”that Wright will have plenty of happier inspiration now.”

And said Wright to me, under his breath,

”In all justice, one must concede her a certain amount of beauty. I don't think she's going to look like her mother after all.”

”Whispering's rude,” said Mercedes severely, ”isn't it, Billy?”

So the conversation became general again.

At six, Bill drove over to the neighboring plantation to fetch Peterkins, who had spent the day there with the Crowell children, back to supper. When he returned, he looked rather serious.

”What's up?” asked Wright idly, from the canvas verandah swing.

”Nothing much,” he answered, ”that is, not yet. Run along to Sarah, Peter,--there's a good fellow.”