In the Mist of the Mountains Part 6

Hugh clutched his hair. He told her he was searching himself through all the crannies of his boyhood years. Yes, he remembered. He _had_ undergone the affliction. There was a birthday party away back twenty, thirty, forty years through the mists, and _she_ would have been at it, with her hair done in two little plaits and tied with blue ribbon. And he had to stay away because he had whooping cough.

Lynn looked very much relieved.

"What a good thing!" she said. "It is very seldom you get it twice, so we shan't hurt you."

"No," he said gravely, looking down on them, "you really don't look as if you would hurt me--much. But won't you come on the verandah? And can the gentleman alight by himself?"

Lynn came up the steps a little shyly.

But Max, though he got off his tricycle, looked a bit worried.

"He won't stand," he said. "Will you lend me your hank'fust to tie him to the post? he's a lood horse."

"He means a blood horse," explained Lynn in a low tone; "he always pretends his tricycle is a race-horse."

Hugh lent the handkerchief--even offered to a.s.sist in the tying.

"I'd like to have given him a feed, poor old Trike," said Max, "only--"

and he looked regretfully around the garden--"you've no gra.s.s, have you?"

"I've no gra.s.s," said Hugh; "but did you never try him on white daisies?

It wouldn't do, of course, to feed common horses on them, but a blood steed like yours, why, it would make his coat shine like varnish."

Max's eyes grew brilliant at the notion, and he rattled his charger up to a bank near, that was white with the flowers, and stuck the thing's head into it and fed him with handfuls of petals.

"Why, why," he shouted, "he's getting shinier every minute--and his mane's growing longer and longer."

From that moment he regarded Hugh as a man and a brother.

But Lynn had got to business.

"No," she said when offered a chair--"oh, no, thank you, we can't stay--Miss Bibby doesn't know we've come. But will you please deal with Larkin?"

"Deal with Larkin?" Hugh repeated.

"Yes, he's Octavius Smith, not Septimus, and much better. Mamma deals with him, and his bacon is only elevenpence, and he'll always bring your letters, too."

"Bacon!" said Hugh, hungrily. "I'd deal with any one who has bacon if it is fried and eggs are thrown in with it."

"Oh," said Lynn, "he never throws them; they're always packed very carefully in sawdust. And he doesn't mind how often he comes with the things you've forgotten, and he gives you rides on his horse, and everything. He's really _much_ better than that horrid Howie, and he does so want to get a piano for Blanch and Emma, and buy out Octavius and Septimus, and put his mother in, because she works too hard on the farm. You will deal with him, won't you?"

By dint of a few questions Hugh put himself in possession of the facts, and found out that his visitors were also his nearest neighbours. He discovered, too, that he would have been called upon by the whole quartet, but that it had been considered, in family conclave, that four was perhaps too great a number for a morning call. And further, it was necessary for Miss Bibby to see some figures about the garden. So the question was solved by drawing lots, which fell, greatly to the disgust of Pauline and m.u.f.fie, to Lynn and Max.

"I _know_ you'll go and spoil it all," said Pauline. "I could do it so much better."

So Lynn was on her mettle and fought hard in Larkin's cause.

"I tell you what we'll do," said Hugh, struck with a brilliant idea, "you shall come with me, and we'll go straight up to this Larkin's. You have made me feel that I can exist no longer without some of the prime, middle cuts of his bacon at elevenpence."

"Oh," said Lynn, "Miss Bibby!" She was torn between Larkin and duty.

"Oh, of course, we'll go and ask permission first," said Hugh; "and we might leave Trike behind, eh, Max? After a feed like that he'll want a rest."

Away they went out of the gate and across the road.

Miss Bibby was down at the gate, fluttering with vexation. She had just found out that two of her naughty charges had actually dared to go and trouble the sacred peace of the famous novelist, and before he could have breakfasted!

She positively could hardly keep the tears back.

CHAPTER VI

A GROCERY ORDER

Miss Bibby had been awake nearly all the night, her blood at fever heat.

Hugh Kinross a stone's-throw away! Hugh Kinross, the author of _Liars All_, and _In the Teeth of the World_, and other books, that had thrilled her and set her nerves tingling as if a whip had been applied to her back!

No book had ever so agitated her as _Liars All_. And she had paid it the highest compliment in her power--she had flung aside her political novel, and the historical one that she had been touching up, and the detective tale that she had been copying afresh, and she had started feverishly upon a short story that she had ent.i.tled _Hypocrites_. And _she_ had tried desperately to "lay about her with a bludgeon," and say biting, savage things of hypocritical human nature, and hold a relentless mirror up to its little faults. Kinross would have been convulsed could he have seen it.

Miss Bibby lay in her quiet bed and ill.u.s.trated Kinross for herself, since she had never been able to find a portrait of him in any magazine.

He was very tall, austere-looking, very thin; the only smile that ever crossed his face was a cynical, a sardonic one. His hair and his eyes were black. He was clean-shaven and his lip and chin were blue.

And she would meet him--she could hardly help meeting him. Possibly she would never get so far as knowing him to speak to, but she would see his tall, spare figure moving slowly about the verandah as he wove his plots, and perhaps the shadow of his head on the blind of a lighted window far into the night.

The fever in her blood drove her from bed. She got up and bathed, and dressed herself with the punctilious care she always bestowed upon her toilet.

Over the choice of her morning dress she hesitated a moment. She wore dainty washing blouses, and neatly-cut serge skirts as a rule; but this morning something induced her to don a limp lavender muslin that took all the freshness from her cheeks.

Then she went out to the faithful performance of her duties, which no amount of fever in her blood could make her neglect. The hot-water ordeal was gone through, the children were turned out speckless from their bedrooms, the bedclothes were put to air, and not even her own "deep-breathing exercises" were omitted.

But then she missed Max and Lynn. And after a world of trouble dragged it from Pauline that they had actually gone across to "Tenby" to try to induce Hugh Kinross to give his orders for bacon and such things to Larkin.

Hugh Kinross and bacon! Miss Bibby ran down to the gate almost choking with agitation and distress.

There was a figure crossing the road, with Lynn held by the hand, and the red tricycle, and Max flanking it on the other side. It was a figure of merely medium height, more than a trifle inclined to stoutness, with an ordinary kindly face and shrewd eyes. He wore a white linen suit, creased all over with bad packing, and a soft shirt with a low collar.

When he took off his old Panama hat, Miss Bibby saw, quite with a shock, the bald patch at the back of his head.

"Good-morning," he said pleasantly; "my little friend here tells me you are Miss Bibby. May I introduce myself? My name is Kinross. I have met the Judge on several occasions and I think he will vouch for my respectability. May I take these small ones up the road with me? We are going in hot pursuit of two of the world's best things--eggs and bacon.

I will return them safely--thank you very much. Good-bye."

That was all. Not another word, though Miss Bibby, going over and over again in her mind the great meeting, tried hard to imagine that she had forgotten some notable thing he had said. Then she began to torture herself with fears that she had behaved stupidly. The suddenness had been too much for her; she could not recollect one solitary thing that she had said except a fluttering "Certainly," when he asked permission to take the children with him. What must he have thought of her?

Ah, if it could only happen over again when she should have had time to collect her faculties and make some brilliant and scathing repartee as the women in his books so frequently did. But then again, what chance had his speech offered for repartee? What kindling of conversation could there be when the only tinder provided was--eggs and bacon?

She worried herself to such a degree that when breakfast-time came, her appet.i.te, usually small, had almost reached vanishing-point.