Part 16 (2/2)
”You INTENDED--and now?”
”Is it the 'kind friend' who asks?”
”If it were not?”
”Really?”
”Yes.”
”Ah!”
”Oh!”
”But thee loves another?” she said, toying with her cup.
He attempted to toy with his, but broke it. A man lacks delicacy in this kind of persiflage. ”You mean I am loved by another,” he said bluntly.
”You dare to say that!” she said, flas.h.i.+ng, in spite of her prim demeanor.
”No, but YOU did just now! You said your sister loved me!”
”Did I?” she said dreamily. ”Dear! dear! That's the trouble of trying to talk like Mr. Blank's delightful dialogues. One gets so mixed!”
”Yet you will be a sister to me?” he said. ”'Tis an old American joke, but 'twill serve.”
There was a long silence.
”Had thee not better go to sister Dorcas? She is playing with the cows,”
said Jane plaintively.
”You forget,” he returned gravely, ”that, on page 27 of the novel we have both read, at this point he is supposed to kiss her.”
She had forgotten, but they both remembered in time. At this moment a scream came faintly from the distance. They both started, and rose.
”It is sister Dorcas,” said Jane, sitting down again and pouring out another cup of tea. ”I have always told her that one of those Swiss cows would hook her.”
Paul stared at her with a strange revulsion of feeling. ”I could save Dorcas,” he muttered to himself, ”in less time than it takes to describe.” He paused, however, as he reflected that this would depend entirely upon the methods of the writer of this description. ”I could rescue her! I have only to take the first clothes-line that I find, and with that knowledge and skill with the la.s.so which I learned in the wilds of America, I could stop the charge of the most furious ruminant.
I will!” and without another word he turned and rushed off in the direction of the sound.
He had not gone a hundred yards before he paused, a little bewildered.
To the left could still be seen the cobalt lake with the terraced background; to the right the rugged mountains. He chose the latter.
Luckily for him a cottager's garden lay in his path, and from a line supported by a single pole depended the homely linen of the cottager. To tear these garments from the line was the work of a moment (although it represented the whole week's was.h.i.+ng), and hastily coiling the rope dexterously in his hand, he sped onward. Already panting with exertion and excitement, a few roods farther he was confronted with a spectacle that left him breathless.
A woman--young, robust, yet gracefully formed--was running ahead of him, driving before her with an open parasol an animal which he instantly recognized as one of that simple yet treacherous species most feared by the s.e.x--known as the ”Moo Cow.”
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