Part 38 (1/2)
”Then,” Brent tried to corner him, ”until you admit yourself de-charmed, church this morning is your only alternative.”
”It would be a very good place for your soul, young man,” he sternly retorted. ”When I was a gay spark, ladies of--of almost the same loveliness,” he bowed again, ”were kept busy weeks in advance accepting my invitations to church, sir! The very rocks and rills of our beloved Commonwealth would strike me dead, sir, if I had permitted so enchanting an opportunity to escape!” And once more he bowed low before her.
”Mistress Jane,” Brent sprang to his feet and bent double with an abandon that the Colonel's old bones would have resented, ”will you adorn my buggy as far as the meetin'-house?”
”You overwhelm me,” she murmured.
”And, will you tell us, O gracious bewitcher, how you knew what I was whistling for?”
”Help me up and I will,” her hands went out to him. ”When you whistled, Uncle Zack yelled: 'I'se fixin' 'em!'”
”I shall have that n.i.g.g.e.r shot,” the Colonel cried in delight. ”Suppose poor, dear Lizzie had been here!”
”What time shall we start?” she turned to Brent, seeing Zack on his way from the house, and somehow feeling that she could not stay just then.
Her aversion for this was increasing. She did not know how firmly, how stubbornly, Brent had begun to shut down on his own indulgences.
”Any time you say,” he agreeably answered. ”Is it town?”
”No, the convent chapel.”
”But--er--you'll forgive my wretched memory if I can't seem to recall when these things take up?”
”Five o'clock, over there,” she smiled.
”Five! I never heard of such an hour for church, did you, Colonel?”
”Most certainly, sir!” His affirmation suggested a long personal acquaintance with such matters. ”They always begin at five!”
Jane gave him a quick, twinkling glance, but only added:
”I thought the vesper service might be cooler, and a pleasanter drive.
We ought to start a little after four, don't you think so? And we'll take Bip, and Dale.”
”I wouldn't stop there,” Brent moodily suggested.
”I think that will be enough for one day,” she laughed. ”They're the princ.i.p.al ones whom--not who ought to go, you understand, but whom I want to go.”
”But Bip is too young,” he protested.
”'Suffer the little children--'” she said prettily.
”He'll go to sleep!”
”Then you may hold him.”
”Maybe he'll snore!”
”Then you have my permission to choke him,” she laughed.
Yet, he was very much in a pout, and staring gloomily at the ground.