The Battle Ground Part 13

"Genius, to grow tall?"

"Well, yes, just that--to grow tall," then he caught sight of Betty, and held out his hand again. "And you, little comrade, you haven't grown up to the world, I see."

Betty laughed and looked him over with the smile the Major loved. "I content myself with merely growing up to you," she returned.

"Up to me? Why, you barely reach my shoulder."

"Well, up to the greater part of you, at least."

"Ah, up to my heart," said Dan, and Betty coloured beneath the twinkle in his eyes.

The colour was still in her face when the Major came out, with Mrs. Ambler on his arm, and led the way to supper.

"All of us are hungry, and some of us have a day's ride behind us," he remarked, as, after the rector's grace, he stood waving the carving-knife above the roasted turkey. "I'd like to know how often during the last hour you've thought of this turkey, Mr. Morson?"

"It has had a fair share of my thoughts, I'm forced to admit, Major,"

responded Jack Morson, readily. He was a hearty, light-haired young fellow, with a girlish complexion and pale blue eyes, as round as marbles. "As fair a share as the apple toddy has had of Diggs's, I'll be bound."

"Apple toddy!" protested Diggs, turning his serious face, flushed from the long ride, upon the Major. "I was too busy thinking we should never get here; and we were lost once, weren't we, Beau?" he asked of Dan.

"Well, I for one am safely housed for the night, doctor," declared the rector, with an uneasy glance through the window, "and I trust that Mrs.

Blake's reproach will melt before the snow does. But what's that about being lost, Dan?"

"Oh, we got off the road," replied Dan; "but I gave Prince Rupert the rein and he brought us in. The sense that horse has got makes me fairly ashamed of going to college in his place; and I may as well warn you, Mr. Blake, that when I get ready to go to Heaven, I shan't seek your guidance at all--I'll merely nose Prince Rupert at the Bible and give him his head."

"It's a comfort to know, at least, that you won't be trusting to your own deserts, my boy," responded the rector, who dearly loved his joke, as he helped himself to yellow pickle.

"Let us hope that the straight and narrow way is a little clearer than the tavern road to-night," said Champe. "I'm afraid you'll have trouble getting back, Governor."

"Afraid!" took up the Major, before the Governor could reply. "Why, where are your manners, my lad? It will be no ill wind that keeps them beneath our roof. We'll make room for you, ladies, never fear; the house will stretch itself to fit the welcome, eh, Molly?"

Mrs. Lightfoot, looking a little anxious, put forward a hearty a.s.sent; but the Governor laughed and threw back the Major's hospitality as easily as it was proffered.

"I know that your welcome's big enough to hold us, my dear Major," he said; "but Hosea's driving us, you see, and he could take us along the turnpike blindfold. Why, he actually discovered in pa.s.sing just before the storm that somebody had dug up a sugar berry bush from the corner of your old rail fence."

"And we really must get back," insisted Mrs. Ambler, "we haven't even fixed the servants' Christmas, and Betty has to fill the stockings for the children in the quarters."

"Then if you will go, go you shall," cried the Major, as heartily as he had pressed his invitation. "You shall get back, ma'am, if I have to go before you with a shovel and clear the snow away. So just a bit more of this roast pig, just a bit, Governor. My dear Miss Lydia, I beg you to try that spiced beef--and you, Mr. Bill?--Cupid, Mr. Bill will have a piece of roast pig."

By the time the Tokay was opened, the Major had grown very jolly, and he began to exchange jokes with the Governor and the rector. Mr. Bill and the doctor, neither of whom could have told a story for his life, listened with a kind of heavy gravity; and the young men, as they rattled off a college tale or two, kept their eyes on Betty and Virginia.

Betty, leaning back in her high mahogany chair, and now and then putting in a word with the bright effusion which belonged to her, gave ear half to the Major's anecdotes, and half to a jest of Jack Morson's. Before her branched a silver candelabrum, and beyond it, with the light in his face, Dan was sitting. She watched him with a frank curiosity from eyes, where the smile, with which she had answered the Major, still lingered in a gleam of merriment. There was a puzzled wonder in her mind that Dan--the Dan of her childhood--should have become for her, of a sudden, but a strong, black-haired stranger from whom she shrank with a swift timidity. She looked at Champe's high blue-veined forehead and curling brown hair; he was still the big boy she had played with; but when she went back to Dan, the wonder returned with a kind of irritation, and she felt that she should like to shake him and have it out between them as she used to do before he went away. What was the meaning of it? Where the difference? As he sat across from her, with his head thrown back and his eyes dark with laughter, her look questioned him half humorously, half in alarm. From his broad brow to his strong hand, playing idly with a little heap of bread crumbs, she knew that she was conscious of his presence--with a consciousness that had quickened into a living thing.

To Dan, himself, her gaze brought but the knowledge that her smile was upon him, and he met her question with lifted eyebrows and perplexed amus.e.m.e.nt.

What he had once called "the Betty look" was in her face,--so kind a look, so earnest yet so humorous, with a sweet sane humour at her own bewilderment, that it held his eyes an instant before they plunged back to Virginia--an instant only, but long enough for him to feel the thrill of an impulse which he did not understand. Dear little Betty, he thought, tenderly, and went back to her sister.

The next moment he was telling himself that "the girl was a tearing beauty." He liked that modest droop of her head and those bashful soft eyes, as if, by George, as if she were really afraid of him. Or was it Champe or Jack Morson that she bent her bewitching glance upon? Well, Champe, or Morson, or himself, in a week they would all be over head and ears in love with her, and let him win who might. It was mere folly, of course, to break one's heart over a girl, and there was no chance of that so long as he had his horses and the bull pups to fall back upon; but she was deucedly pretty, and if he ever came to the old house to live it would be rather jolly to have her about. He would be twenty-one by this time next year, and a man of twenty-one was old enough to settle down a bit. In the meantime he laughed and met Virginia's eye, and they both blushed and looked away quickly.

But when they left the dining room an hour later, it was not Virginia that Dan sought. He had learned the duties of hospitality in the Major's school, and so he sat down beside Miss Lydia and asked her about her window garden, while Jack Morson made desperate love to his beautiful neighbour. Once, indeed, he drew Betty aside for an instant, but it was only to whisper: "Look here, you'll be real nice to Diggs, won't you? He's bashful, you know, and besides he's awfully poor, and works like the devil. You make him enjoy his holidays, and I--well, yes, I'll let that fox get away next week, I declare I will."

"All right," agreed Betty, "it's a bargain. Mr. Diggs shall have a merry Christmas, and the fox shall have his life. You'll keep faith with me?"

"Sworn," said Dan, and he went back to Miss Lydia, while Betty danced a reel with young Diggs, who fell in love with her before he was an hour older. The terms cost him his heart, perhaps, but there was a life at stake, and Betty, who had not a touch of the coquette in her nature, would have flirted open-eyed with the rector could she have saved a robin from the shot. As for Diggs, he might have been a family portrait or a Christmas garland for all the sentiment she gave him.

When she went upstairs some hours later to put on her wraps, she had forgotten, indeed, that Diggs or his emotion was in existence. She tied on her blue hood with the swan's-down, and noticed, as she did so, that the white rose was gone from her hair. "I hope I lost it after supper," she thought rather wistfully, for it was becoming; and then she slipped into her long cloak and started down again. It was not until she reached the bend in the staircase, where the tall clock stood, that she looked over the bal.u.s.trade and saw Dan in the hall below with the white rose in his hand.

She had come so softly that he had not heard her step. The light from the candelabra was full upon him, and she saw the half-tender, half-quizzical look in his face. For an instant he held the white rose beneath his eyes, then he carefully folded it in his handkerchief and hid it in the pocket of his coat. As he did so, he gave a queer little laugh and went quickly back into the panelled parlour, while Betty glowed like a flower in the darkened bend of the staircase.

When they called her and she came down the bright colour was still in her face, and her eyes were shining happily under the swan's-down border of her hood. "This little lady isn't afraid of the cold," said the Major, as he pinched her cheeks. "Why, she's as warm as a toast, and, bless my soul, if I were thirty years younger, I'd ride twenty miles tonight to catch a glimpse of her in that bonny blue hood. Ah, in my day, men were men, sir."

Dan, who had come back from escorting Miss Lydia to the carriage, laughed and held out his arms.

"Let me carry you, Betty; I'll show grandpa that there's still a man alive."

"No, sir, no," said Betty, as she stood on tiptoe and held her cheek to the Major. "You haven't a chance when your grandfather's by. There, I'll let you carry the sleeping draught for Aunt p.u.s.s.y; but my flounces, no, never!"

and she ran past him and slipped into the carriage beside Mrs. Ambler and Miss Lydia.

In a moment Virginia came out under an umbrella that was held by Jack Morson, and the carriage rolled slowly along the drive, while the young men stood, bareheaded, in the falling snow.

"Keep a brave heart, Morson," said Champe, with a laugh, as he ran back into the house, where the Major waited to bar the door, "remember, you've known her but three hours, and stand it like a man. Well I'm off to bed,"

and he lighted his candle and, with a gay "good night," went whistling up the stair.

In Dan's bedroom, where he had crowded for the holidays, he found his cousin, upon the hearth-rug, looking abstractedly into the flames.

As Champe entered he turned, with the poker in his hand, and spoke out of the fulness of his heart:--

"She's a beauty, I declare she is."

Champe broke short his whistling, and threw off his coat.

"Well, I dare say she was fifty years ago," he rejoined gravely.

"Oh, don't be an utter a.s.s; you know I mean Virginia."

"My dear boy, I had supposed Miss Lydia to be the object of your attentions. You mustn't be a Don Juan, you know, you really mustn't. Spare the s.e.x, I entreat."

Dan aimed a blow at him with a boot that was lying on the rug. "Shut up, won't you," he growled.

"Well, Virginia is a beauty," was Champe's amiable response. "Jack Morson swears Aunt Emmeline's picture can't touch her. He's writing to his father now, I don't doubt, to say he can't live without her. Go down, and he'll read you the letter."

Dan's face grew black. "I'll thank him to mind his own business," he grumbled.

"Oh, he thinks he's doing it."

"Well, his business isn't either of the Ambler girls, and I'll have him to know it. What right has he got, I'd like to know, to come up here and fall in love with our neighbours."

"Oh, Beau, Beau! Why, it was only last week you ran him away from Batt Horsford's daughter. Are you going in for a general championship?"

"The devil! Sally Horsford's a handsome girl, and a good girl, too; and I'll fight any man who says she isn't. By George, a woman's a woman, if she is a stableman's daughter!"