Part 4 (1/2)

Yet now that he had brought surprise to the very threshold, as it were, he began to hesitate. Perhaps, after all, Constance might not be overjoyed or even mildly pleased at his coming. She had seemed a bit distant before her departure, and he knew how hard it was to count on her at times.

”You can see the Lodge from that bend,” said his companion, presently, pointing with his whip.

Then almost immediately they had reached the turn, and the Lodge--a great, double-story cabin of spruce logs, with wide verandas--showed through the trees. But between the hack and the Lodge were two figures--a tall young man in outing dress, carrying a basket, and a tall young woman in a walking skirt, carrying a book. They were quite close together, moving toward the Lodge. They seemed to be talking earnestly, and did not at first notice the sound of wheels.

”That's them now,” whispered the young man, forgetting for the moment his scholastic training. ”That's Robin and Miss Deane, with the book and the basket of toadstools.”

The couple ahead stopped just then and turned. Frank prepared himself for the worst.

But Mr. Weatherby would seem to have been unduly alarmed. As he stepped from the vehicle Constance came forward with extended hand.

”You are good to surprise us,” she was saying, and then, a moment later, ”Mr. Weatherby, this is Mr. Robin Farnham--a friend of my childhood. I think I have mentioned him to you.”

Whatever momentary hostility Frank Weatherby may have cherished for Robin Farnham vanished as the two clasped hands. Frank found himself looking into a countenance at once manly, intellectual and handsome--the sort of a face that men, and women, too, trust on sight. And then for some reason there flashed again across his mind a vivid picture of Constance as she had looked up at him that wet night under the umbrella, the raindrops glistening on her cheek and in the blowy tangle about her temples. He held Robin's firm hand for a moment in his rather soft palm.

There was a sort of magnetic stimulus in that muscular grip and hardened flesh. It was so evidently the hand of achievement, Frank was loath to let it go.

”You are in some way familiar to me,” he said then. ”I may have seen you when I was up this way ten years ago. I suppose you do not recall anything of the kind?”

A touch of color showed through the brown of Robin's cheek.

”No,” he said; ”I was a boy of eleven, then, probably in the field. I don't think you saw me. Those were the days when I knew Miss Deane. I used to carry baskets of green corn over to Mr. Deane's camp. If you had been up this way during the past five or six years I might have been your guide. Winters I have attended school.”

They were walking slowly as they talked, following the hack toward the Lodge. Constance took up the tale at this point, her cheeks also flus.h.i.+ng a little as she spoke.

”He had to work very hard,” she said. ”He had to raise the corn and then carry it every day--miles and miles. Then he used to make toy boats and sail them for me in the brook, and a playhouse, and whatever I wanted.

Of course, I did not consider that I was taking his time, or how hard it all was for him.”

”Miss Deane has given up little boats and playhouses for the science of mycology,” Robin put in, rather nervously, as one anxious to change the subject.

Frank glanced at the volume he had appropriated--a treatise on certain toadstools, edible and otherwise.

”I have heard already of your new employment, or, at least, diversion,”

he said. ”The young man who brought me over told me that a young lady had been bringing baskets of suspicious fungi to the Lodge. From what he said I judged that he considered it a dangerous occupation.”

”That was Mr. Meelie,” laughed Constance. ”I have been wondering why Mr.

Meelie avoided me. I can see now that he was afraid I would poison him.

You must meet Miss Carroway, too,” she ran on. ”I mean you _will_ meet her. She is a very estimable lady from Connecticut who has a nephew in the electric works at Haverford; also the asthma, which she is up here to get rid of. She is at the Lodge for the summer, and is already the general minister of affairs at large and in particular. Among other things, she warns me daily that if I persist in eating some of the specimens I bring home, I shall presently die with great violence and suddenness. She is convinced that there is just one kind of mushroom, and that it doesn't grow in the woods. She has no faith in books. Her chief talent lies in promoting harmless evening entertainments. You will have to take part in them.”

Frank had opened the book and had been studying some of the colored plates while Constance talked.

”I don't know that I blame your friends,” he said, half seriously. ”Some of these look pretty dangerous to the casual observer.”

”But I've been studying that book for weeks,” protested Constance, ”long before we came here. By and by I'm going to join the Mycological Society and try to be one of its useful members.”

”I suppose you have to eat most of these before you are eligible?”

commented Frank, still fascinated by the bright pictures.