A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill Part 14

"Donald ought to return at once," declared Doctor Queerington, when she paused for breath; "if he is guilty, he ought to take his punishment; if innocent, as I believe, he ought to be vindicated."

"Well, we can't find him," said Mrs. Sequin with resigned cheerfulness.

"He is probably in the Orient with Cropsie Decker. What a magnificent bed this is! Do you suppose I could buy it? Country people nearly always prefer new furniture."

The suggestion of a smile hovered over the Doctor's thin lips: "Thornwood's possessions, I imagine, are not for sale."

"I suppose the extraordinary young person I met in the front hall was Miss Ca.r.s.ey? What sort of a girl is she, anyhow?"

"Miss Lady?" The Doctor shifted his pillow. "An extremely nice girl, I believe. Exceedingly sympathetic and attentive to all my wants, and receptive to a remarkable degree. She has been reading to me daily, and I find rather an unusual mind, undisciplined of course, but original and interesting."

"But what amazing manners the child has! She greeted me in her bare arms, and asked me to fit a dress for her when she had never seen me before in her life. But she certainly is pretty! I haven't seen as pretty a creature for years."

"Indeed!" said the Doctor, adjusting his eyegla.s.ses. "I had not observed it, especially. A fine, frank countenance, with dark eyes--yes, I believe I did notice that she had chestnut eyes of unusual clearness; I remember I did notice that."

"What is she going to do? Who is going to stay with her?" asked Mrs.

Sequin. "Fancy a girl like that buried here in the country! Properly dressed, and toned down a bit, she'd make a sensation. I shouldn't at all mind asking her in to spend a few days with me sometime. You know I adore young people, and poor Margery, like all the other last year debutantes, is simply done for. Hasn't a spark of enthusiasm for anything. I hope you have not forgotten the fact that your Constance ought to come out this winter?"

"My dear Katherine," said the Doctor with an air of enforced patience, "you do not seem to realize that my time and mind are engrossed in far greater things than society. I hope in the next year to complete the fifth and last volume of my 'History of the Norman Influence on English Literature and Language.' If I have been able to give my children very little of my time and attention, it is only because of my desire to leave them something of far greater worth--a name that I trust will stand among those of the foremost English scholars of my day."

Mrs. Sequin soothed her irritation by studying her highly polished nails. "Of course, that will be an advantage to them. But what on earth's to become of them in the meanwhile? Heaven knows what Hattie will develop into if she isn't taken in hand. She refuses to have tr.i.m.m.i.n.g on her underclothes now, and wears boy's shoes. As for Constance! I've quite despaired of getting hold of her. She's simply running wild, making no social connections whatever. What they really need, Cousin John, is a mother."

"I must try to look after them more," the Doctor said, somewhat helplessly. "Have you seen them recently?"

"I came by there this morning. They were all well, I suppose; Connie was at the Ivy's as usual, and Hattie at school. What a savage creature your new cook, Myrtella, is. I believe she is an anarchist! She opened the door only a crack, and when I asked her how the young ladies were, she said she was sure she didn't know, that she hadn't asked them."

"And Bertie, did you see Bertie?"

"Yes, he was with her. Had a dirty piece of dough in his hands which he said was going to be a cake. I must say she seems good to Bertie, but I would not tolerate her impertinence for a moment."

"Myrtella carries concealed virtues," said the Doctor. "She is an excellent cook, and a good manager. Her only faults, apparently, are faults of the disposition."

"From which Heaven defend me! What on earth is that noise? It sounds as if some one were kicking the door."

"Please open!" called a voice from without, and as Mrs. Sequin complied, Miss Lady came in, carrying a large luncheon tray gaily decorated with flowers from the garden.

"'Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crowned,'" quoted the Doctor.

"You see how they spoil me, Katherine?"

"I don't believe he could be spoiled, do you, Mrs. Sequin?" Miss Lady asked, as she fixed his eggs. "Is there anything else, Doctor?"

"Don't run away," Mrs. Sequin said, following her movements with frank admiration. "Come here and sit down, I want to talk to you. I've discovered the ideal site for my new house, and I want to ask you about it. You know the western crest of this hill overlooking the river; did that belong to your father?"

"It all used to be ours, long before it was ever called Billy-goat Hill."

"The name _is_ a handicap," said the Doctor. "You might modify it, Katherine, by calling your prospective mansion 'Angora Heights.'"

"The very thing," said Mrs. Sequin, eager to seize upon any suggestion that emanated from the Queerington intellect. "But who does the ground belong to?"

"It belongs to Mr. Wicker, now."

"Wicker?" repeated Mrs. Sequin. "Where have I heard that name? Why, Cousin John, wasn't that the man Don stayed with, when he was looking for a farm? How we laughed over that absurd notion of his farming!"

"I did not laugh at it," said the Doctor. "I encouraged him. It seemed to me the most excellent idea!"

"But you did not allow for Don's fickleness. Of course he's a darling fellow but he has had as many hobbies as he has had sweethearts."

"I allowed for his character, which may yet strike root in the proper soil," the Doctor said with dignity; then turning to Miss Lady, who had risen and was standing by the bed, her hands tightly clasped and her eyes fixed on his, he explained: "We are speaking of the young brother of Mrs. Sequin; I was telling you about him this morning. Why, child!"

For Miss Lady had suddenly dropped her face in her hands and made a rush for the door.

"It's the shock of her father's death," explained Mrs. Sequin, who prided herself on divining motives. "I was like that for weeks when my last dog was run over. The most casual thing would upset me. I lost two games of cards one afternoon because somebody merely mentioned an ice wagon."

The Doctor's long, slender fingers drummed absently on the bedspread.

Presently he broke in quite irrelevantly on Mrs. Sequin's steady flow of talk: "I said chestnut brown, Katherine, they are more of a hazel, I should say, a deep hazel with considerable fire."

CHAPTER X

The long, summer months dragged their length for Miss Lady, months of heartache and rebellion, of loneliness and tears. Then came a day when, without apparent reason, the shadows lifted. She was tramping across the river flats, with Mike at her heels, when once again she heard the world singing, and before she knew it an answering song sprang to her lips.

Uncle Jimpson, plowing near by, looked up and smiled:

"Dat's right, Honey; sounds lak ole times to hear you singin' ag'in.

I was jus' settin' here steddyin' how good I'd feel ef de Cunnel could come a stompin' 'long an' gimme one of his 'fore-de-war cussin's fer bein' lazy."

"Oh, Uncle Jimpson, if he could! It seems so long since he left us. I have just been over to Miss Ferney's, but she wasn't there. I want to get her to come and stay with me until I know what I am going to do.

They expect to take the Doctor home to-morrow."

"Yas'm, Carline was tellin' me. Looks to me lak he's been well enough to go fer some time." Uncle Jimpson scratched his head wisely.

"I don't know what's to become of us," said Miss Lady ruefully twisting Mike's ears. "They say unless I sell the rest of Thornwood, we won't have money enough to live on. But I won't sell another acre. I'll teach school first."

Uncle Jimpson was scandalized: "Now, Miss Lady, chile, don't you git dem notions in your head. Dem's ole maid notions, you ain't no ole maid yit! Why don't you git married, and git a kerridge, an' I'll dribe an'

Carline'll cook an' tak' care de chillun."

"I'm _never_ going to marry, Uncle Jimpson," Miss Lady declared, with the pa.s.sionate a.s.surance of youth. "And I am never going to leave Thornwood. If you see Miss Ferney going down the road, ask her to stop by a minute. Come on, Mike, we are late now."

And they were late, five minutes, by the open-faced watch that lay in the Doctor's hand as they entered the garden. He was sitting in his wheel-chair with his books and ma.n.u.scripts on a table at his elbow, and he lifted an expectant face toward the gate as she entered.

It was strange what two months at Thornwood had done for the Doctor. He had been brought there unconscious, a serious, middle-aged professor, who had run in the same groove for twenty years. The same surroundings, the same people, the same monotonous, daily routine had rendered him as rusty and faded as the text-books he lived with. Nothing short of a collision could have jolted him out of his rut, and the collision had arrived.

The sudden change from the grim realism of a lecture platform, with its bleak blackboard and creaking chalk, to the romance of an old flower garden where blossoms flirted with each other across the borders, and birds made love in every bough, was enough to freshen the spirit of even a John Jay Queerington. His cosmic conscience, which usually worked overtime, striving to solve problems which Nature had given up, seemed to be asleep. His fine, serious face relaxed somewhat from its austerity, and as the days pa.s.sed he read less and observed more.

His observations, before long, resulted in a discovery; he, who was so weary of the cultivated hothouse species of femininity, had chanced quite by accident upon a rare, uncla.s.sified wild-flower, that piqued his curiosity and enlisted his interest. For two months he had depended almost entirely upon his young hostess for companionship, and the fact that the large box of books he had ordered from the city remained unopened, gave evidence that the Doctor had not been bored.

During the hours when he was not engrossed in verifying statistics, and appending references to those voluminous and still acc.u.mulating notes for the fifth volume of his great work, he devoted himself to sorting and arranging the odds and ends of facts and fancies that he found stored away in Miss Lady's brain. Under ordinary circ.u.mstances he would have dismissed a pupil to whom clearness and accuracy were strangers, and whose attention wandered with every pa.s.sing b.u.t.terfly. In the cla.s.sroom he not only demanded but practised order and system. He arrived at his conclusions by as methodical a series of mental actions as he arrived at his desk every morning at twenty-nine minutes to nine.