Part 59 (1/2)
”Why, then, it isn't perfect.”
”Yes, it is.”
”Well, then, Miss Garnet, with the perfect understanding that the understanding is perfect, I propose to bid this hand good-by in a fitting and adequate manner, and trust I shall not be inter--!--rupted!
Good-by.”
”Oh, Mr. March, I don't think that was either fair or right!” Her eyes glistened.
”Miss Barb, it wasn't! Oh, I see it now! It was a wretched mistake!
Forgive me!”
Her eyes, staring up into his, filled to the brim. She waved him away and turned half aside. He backed to the door and paused.
”Miss Barb, one look! Oh, one look, just to show I'm not utterly unforgiven and cast out! I promise you it's all I'll ever ask--one look!”
”Good-by,” she murmured, but could not trust herself to move.
He stifled a moan. She gave a start of pain. He thought it meant impatience. She took an instant more for self-command and then lifted a smile. Too late, he was gone!
LXI.
A SICK MAN AND A SICK HORSE
”Thank you, no,” said Miss Garnet at the door of Mrs. Fair's room, refusing to enter. ”I rapped only to say good-night.”
To the question whether she had heard all the poems read she replied, ”Not all,” with so sweet an irony in her grave smile that Mrs. Fair wanted to tell her she looked like the starlight. But words are clumsy, and the admirer satisfied herself with a kiss on the girl's temple.
”Good-night,” she said; ”dream of me.”
Several times next day, as the three travelers wound their swift course through the mountains of Pennsylvania, Mrs. Fair observed Barbara sink her book to her lap and with an abstracted gaze on the landscape softly touch the back of her right hand with the fingers of her left. It puzzled her at first, but by and by--
”Poor boy!” she said to herself, in that inmost heart where no true woman ever takes anyone into council, ”and both of you Southerners! If that's all you got, and you had to steal that, you're both of you better than I'd have been.”
When about noon she saw her husband's eyes fixed on Barbara, sitting four seats away, she asked, with a sparkle: ”Thinking of Mr. March?”
”Yes, I've guessed why he's stayed behind.”
”Have you? That's quick work--for a man.”
”It looks to-day as if he were out of the game, doesn't it?”
The lady mused. This time the husband twinkled:
”If he is, my dear, whom should we congratulate: all three or which two?”
”I don't know yet, my love. Wait. Wait till we've tried her in Boston.”
At this hour John March was imperatively engrossed by an unforseen discovery. Tossing on his bed the night before, he had decided not to telegraph to Suez for money until he had searched all the hotels for some one from Dixie who would exclaim, ”Why, with the greatest pleasure,” or words to that effect. In the morning he was up betimes and off on this errand, asking himself why he had not done it the evening before, but concluding he must have foreborne out of respect for the Sabbath.