Part 8 (1/2)

”How different he is from his friend! I suppose that is the reason that they are such friends--they are so unlike. The idea of Warren playing with that quiet, steady hand and composed face under like circ.u.mstances! And yet, why is he so pale?”

Mrs. Mayburn understood this pallor too well, and she felt that the ordeal had lasted long enough. She, too, had acted her part admirably, but now she pleaded fatigue, saying that she had not been very well for the last day or two. She was inscrutable to Grace, and caused no misgivings. It is easier for a woman than for a man to hide emotions from a woman, and Mrs. Mayburn's gray eyes and strong features rarely revealed anything that she meant to conceal. The major acquiesced good-naturedly, saying, ”You are quite right to stop, Mrs. Mayburn, and I surely have no cause to complain. We have had more play in two hours than most people have in two weeks. I congratulate you, Mr. Graham; you are becoming a foeman worthy of any man's steel.”

Graham rose with the relief which a man would feel on leaving the rack, and said, smilingly, ”Your enthusiasm is contagious. Any man would soon be on his mettle who played often with you.”

”Is enthusiasm one of your traits?” Grace asked, with an arch smile over her shoulder, as she went to ring the bell.

”What! Have you not remarked it?”

”Grace has been too preoccupied to remark anything--sly puss!” said the major, laughing heartily. ”My dear Mrs. Mayburn, I shall ask for your congratulations tonight. I know we shall have yours, Mr. Graham, for Grace has informed me that Hilland is your best and nearest friend.

This little girl of mine has been playing blind-man's-buff with her old father. She thought she had the handkerchief tight over my eyes, but I always keep One corner raised a little. Well, Mr. Graham, this das.h.i.+ng friend of yours, who thinks he can carry all the world by storm, asked me last summer if he could lay siege to Grace. I felt like wringing his neck for his audacity and selfishness. The idea of any one taking Grace from me!”

”And no one shall, papa,” said Grace, hiding her blus.h.i.+ng face behind his white shock of hair. ”But I scarcely think these details will interest--”

”What!” cried the bluff, frank old soldier--”not interest Mrs. Mayburn, the best and kindest of neighbors? not interest Hilland's alter ego?”

”I a.s.sure you,” said Graham, laughing, ”that I am deeply interested; and I promise you, Miss Grace, that I shall give Hilland a severer curtain lecture than he will ever receive from you, because he has left me in the dark so long.”

”Stop pinching my arm,” cried the major, who was in one of his jovial moods, and often immensely enjoyed teasing his daughter. ”You may well hide behind me. Mrs. Mayburn, I'm going to expose a rank case of filial deception that was not in the least successful. This 'I came, I saw, I conquered' friend of yours, Mr. Graham, soon discovered that he was dealing with a race that was not in the habit of surrendering. But your friend, like Wellington, never knew when he was beaten. He wouldn't retreat an inch, but drawing his lines as close as he dared, sat down to a regular siege.”

Graham again laughed outright, and with a comical glance at the young girl, asked, ”Are you sure, sir, that Miss St. John was aware of these siege operations?”

”Indeed she was. Your friend raised his flag at once, and nailed it to the staff. And this little minx thought that she could deceive an old soldier like myself by playing the role of disinterested friend to a lonely young man condemned to the miseries of a mining town. I was often tempted to ask her why she did not extend her sympathy to scores of young fellows in the service who are in danger of being scalped every day. But the joke of it was that I knew she was undermined and must surrender long before Hilland did.”

”Now, papa, it's too bad of you to expose me in this style. I appeal to Mrs. Mayburn if I did not keep my flag flying so defiantly to the last that even she did not suspect me.”

”Yes,” said the old lady, dryly; ”I can testify to that.”

”Which is only another proof of my penetration,” chuckled the major.

”Well, well, it is so seldom I can get ahead of Grace in anything that I like to make the most of my rare good fortune; and it seems, Mr.

Graham, as if you and your aunt had already become a part of our present and prospective home circle. I have seen a letter in which Warren speaks of you in a way that reminds me of a friend who was shot almost at my side in a fight with the Indians. That was nearly half a century ago, and yet no one has taken his place. With men, friends.h.i.+ps mean something, and last.”

”Come, come,” cried Mrs. Mayburn, bristling up, ”neither Grace nor I will permit such an implied slur upon our s.e.x.”

”My friends.h.i.+p for Hilland will last,” said Graham, with quiet emphasis. ”Most young men are drawn together by a mutual liking--by something congenial in their natures. I owe him a debt of grat.i.tude that can never be repaid, He found me a lonely, neglected boy, who had scarcely ever known kindness, much less affection, and his ardent, generous nature became an antidote to my gloomy tendencies. From the first he has been a constant and faithful friend. He has not one unworthy trait. But there is nothing negative about him, for he abounds in the best and most manly qualities; and I think,” he concluded, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if he were making an inward vow, ”that I shall prove worthy of his trust and regard.”

Grace looked at him earnestly and gratefully, and the thought again a.s.serted itself that she had not yet gauged his character or his feeling toward herself. To her surprise she also noted that Mrs.

Mayburn's eyes were filled with tears, but the old lady was equal to the occasion, and misled her by saying, ”I feel condemned, Alford, that you should have been so lonely and neglected in early life, but I know it was so.”

”Oh, well, aunt, you know I was not an interesting boy, and had I been imposed upon you in my hobbledehoy period, our present relations might never have existed. I must ask your congratulations also,” he continued, turning toward the major and his daughter. ”My aunt and I have in a sense adopted each other. I came hither to pay her a formal call, and have made another very dear friend.”

”Have you made only one friend since you became our neighbor?” asked Grace, with an accent of reproach in her voice.

”I would very gladly claim you and your father as such,” he replied, smilingly.

The old major arose with an alacrity quite surprising in view of his lameness, and pouring out two gla.s.ses of the wine that Jinny had brought in answer to Grace's touch of the bell, he gave one of the gla.s.ses to Graham, and with the other in his left hand, he said, ”And here I pledge you the word of a soldier that I acknowledge the claim in full, not only for Hilland's sake, but your own. You have generously sought to beguile the tedium of a crotchety and irritable old man; but such as he is he gives you his hand as a true, stanch friend; and Grace knows this means a great deal with me.”

”Yes, indeed,” she cried. ”I declare, papa, you almost make me jealous.