Under the Country Sky Part 7

As he approached his windows to ascertain what kind of weather was to be found outside, he became aware of sounds which would indicate that some event of activity and hilarity was going on below. He realized now that he had been hearing these sounds--quite without hearing them, after the fashion of the absorbed workman--for the last half-hour. Looking out, he beheld an interesting affair in full swing.

At each end of the side yard the heavy snow which a late March storm had brought overnight had been shovelled and manipulated into the semblance of a fort such as lads are wont to make. Between these two entrenchments a battle was raging. But it was no lads who held the places of the combatants. Instead, as he looked, Mr. Jefferson saw rising warily from behind the fort nearest him, a girlish figure in a scarlet blanket suit, its dark head half shielded by a scarlet toboggan cap very much awry. A mittened hand flung a s...o...b..ll with strength and precision straight into the opposite fort, and the a.s.sailant immediately dodged down behind the embankment.

From the opposing stronghold then cautiously appeared a head snugly bound in a blue scarf, from which locks of fair hair escaped at divers points. A second s...o...b..ll, accompanied by a loose flutter of snow, wended its way uncertainly through the air, and fell a foot short of the fort behind which crouched the scarlet figure. The figure immediately rose and fired an answering volley. Peals of laughter and gay shouts rang through the air.

At this very moment a third person ran into the yard from the street, calling: "For shame, George! I'm going to take sides with the enemy, and we'll have you out in no time!"

Jefferson saw this third figure, in sweater and cap, dash across the open, narrowly escaping a vigorous shower of missiles from the near fort, and disappear behind the farther one.

The battle was now on in earnest. Let Scarlet Toboggan fire as fast and as furiously as she might, a merciless bombardment of her protecting walls had begun. The girl in the blue scarf--and priceless furs--had sunk laughing upon the floor of her refuge, while her new ally, bringing to bear the full strength and skill of his s.e.x, battered at the entrenchments across the yard, and began to make havoc thereon.

Georgiana was a brave foe, but though she fought with surprising endurance she was beginning to be seriously worsted, several feet of her snow rampart having been shot away, when a voice behind her cried out a command, and an arm, more sinewy than hers, sent a hard shot whizzing past her head into the opposite fort with that directness of aim and effectiveness of delivery which only the male arm can accomplish.

"Duck down and make s...o...b..a.l.l.s while I fire!" the voice ordered, and Georgiana, breathless but still undaunted, obeyed.

"Keep behind me, and pile the b.a.l.l.s at the right," directed Jefferson.

His voice was eager as a boy's. He also had pulled on sweater and cap, and as he and James Stuart faced each other across the twenty yards which separated them, they might have been a couple of school-fellows wrestling for supremacy.

"Keep 'em coming--faster--faster!" Stuart urged Jeannette, the l.u.s.t of battle upon him. "Stop laughing and work! George is a"--he stooped to make a ball for himself--"fiend at making 'em; you've got to learn! Keep 'em coming."

The wet snow was precisely in the right state for quick packing, and Georgiana was indeed an expert at the business. Jefferson found her hard, round b.a.l.l.s splendid missiles, and he used them with all the energy of an arm which welcomed the change from the labours of the past hours to those of the present.

"Ha! there goes that left corner!" he exulted with his comrade-at-arms, as the last of a series of well-directed shots reduced a part of the enemies' defences to a gratifying slump. "And here comes a bit of ours,"

he added, as a ball of Stuart's ploughed through a weakened upper portion of their own rampart.

"He'll be game to the last," panted Georgiana, working furiously.

"So will we! We'll fight to a finish, if we go without our suppers."

The battle raged on. The combatants took no heed of pa.s.sing time, until Jeannette, growing reckless with excitement, lifted an incautious head and received a spent ball full upon her chin. No harm was done, as she protested, but Stuart raised a flag of truce and Mr. Jefferson ran across the lines to apologize.

"It didn't hurt a bit," Jeannette reaffirmed, showing a very pink chin.

"It's lucky it didn't. I wasn't properly protecting you," Stuart declared warmly.

"Both sides come in to supper!" commanded Georgiana. "Please stay, Jimps; it's the only amends we can make you, and you must be as hungry as a bear."

"Thanks; I'd like to, but I'm not properly dressed, I'm afraid."

"Jean and I won't make a change, and you can take us coasting this evening, if you will. Do you suppose Mr. Jefferson would dream of staving off his dignity a bit longer and going, too?"

They all looked at the person mentioned and their glances were all gayly audacious.

"Is that an invitation or a challenge?" He put it to Georgiana.

"Whichever you choose to take it."

"I'll take it as I choose, then, and accept. The spirit of sport is upon me; I couldn't work this evening if I tried."

"Good for you! 'All work and no play,' you know," quoted Stuart, as they went in together, a moist and merry company.

Upstairs, while Jeannette dried her hair, she reflected that she didn't know when she had had so gay a time. She ran in to say this to Georgiana, but found that that young woman had already put her hair in order without drying it, as its damply curling locks above her forehead testified, and was rushing away downstairs to the kitchen.

"Won't you take cold?" suggested Jeannette, struggling with her own wet braids, and very naturally wishing for her maid to dry and put them in order.

"Mercy, no; not over the kitchen stove. They'll be dry soon enough," was the reply; and Georgiana vanished, the supper on her mind.

When Jeannette came down, half an hour later, and appeared in the kitchen doorway, she saw that the speed of her young hostess's labours and the warmth of the kitchen were quite likely to prevent all chance of undried locks.

There was system about Georgiana's work, fast as was its pace. Each trip across the floor, from pantry to dining-room and back again, demonstrated housewifely efficiency. Both hands were always full and she seemed never to forget what she meant to do. If she pa.s.sed the stove on her way somewhere she stopped to stir something or to glance into the oven, and when she went to the storeroom for cream she brought away bread and b.u.t.ter as well.

Jeannette commented admiringly. "Don't you ever forget and have to run back for something?" she inquired.

"Goodness, yes! But when you've been over certain ground several million times, it's a pity if you can't make your head save your heels as a rule. Excuse me, dear; but if you wouldn't mind standing just a foot or two to the left----"

Jeannette turned. "I see; I'm in the way when I'd like so much to help.

Isn't there anything I could do?"

"All done, thank you--except--would you just arrange that boxful of scarlet geraniums Jimps brought over, for the table? That would help very much. Take any bowl or gla.s.s from the dining-room cupboard that looks appropriate to you."

"I'd love to." And Jeannette fell to work--if it could be called work.

Never in her life had she arranged scarlet geraniums as a table decoration, or, for that matter, seen them so used. But as she placed the splendid, thrifty blooms, each with its accompanying rich green leaves, in the plain brown bowl which she felt best matched their undistinguished beauty, she discovered for the first time that other blossoms besides roses and orchids, chrysanthemums, and the rest of the ordinary florists' products, may charm the eye from the centre of a snowy cloth.

"That's gorgeous! Thank you so much! Aren't they the jolliest flowers in the world for a winter night? Jimps's greenhouses certainly are doing well. Don't you want a bit of a blossom in your hair? Their grower would feel tremendously complimented."

"Red's not my colour, but it is yours. Let me tuck this little sprig in these braids, and I'll risk the grower's being better pleased than if I wore them."

Georgiana submitted, and promptly forgot all about the scarlet decoration. But the others did not--found forgetting it, indeed, quite impossible. As they gathered about the table, it caught the eye of each in turn. Georgiana's cheeks, from the vigorous exercise in the frosty air, were glowing brilliantly; her eyes were wonderful to look at; her dark cloth dress had upon it no relief of colour; so the scarlet geranium in her hair was the touch of the artist which drew the eye and held it. She had placed upon the table, instead of the customary lamp, one of the few treasures of the house, a fine old candelabrum, with pendent crystals, and the burning candles threw their mellow light directly into her face.

She looked up suddenly, after having served each one from the dish before her, and found them all looking at her. James Stuart's fork was suspended above his plate, but the others had not yet taken theirs. She gazed at them in amazement.

"Why, what is the matter?" she cried. "Do I--is something queer about me? Have I missed a point somebody has made?"

They all turned then, laughing, to their plates, and n.o.body would tell her what was wrong. Stuart seemed to think it a great joke--her mystification. When she removed the plates for the second course--there were but two in the simple, hearty little supper--she glanced into the small kitchen mirror. Her eye caught the scarlet geranium.

"I suppose I look ridiculously sentimental with that flower just there,"

she thought. "But I won't take it out after Jean put it there. No wonder they laughed."

An hour afterward they were all out upon the hill nearby. Stuart possessed a splendid pair of "bobs," and they were soon dashing down the hill at a pace which, while it made Jeannette hold her breath with mingled fear and joy, made Georgiana cry out, "Oh! is there anything so glorious?" and made Mr. Jefferson, just behind her, watching over her shoulder, respond with heartiness: "The snow fight took five years off my age, and now here goes another five. I must be almost as young as you are now, Miss Warne."

"Oh, no; I'm only ten myself to-night," she answered. "Coasting was one of my earliest joys. I was so proud when I could steer Jimps Stuart's first pair of bobs--small and primitive ones compared with these."

She found Mr. Jefferson beside her when it came to the walk back up the hill. A new side of him was visible to-night. He was not the quiet student and writer, the man who discussed with her father and herself the course of the world's events or the problems of social service, but a light-hearted boy, much like Stuart, and ready to abet all the other man's efforts for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the party.

The fun went on for an hour; then Jeannette, unaccustomed to so much vigorous exercise, began quite against her will to show evidences of fatigue, and after one particularly long, swift flight the party went back to the house. There followed another gay hour before the fire, while Stuart roasted chestnuts, and Georgiana, sitting on the floor against her father's knee, told stones of madcap pranks at college, ill.u.s.trating them by such changes of facial expression and such significant gestures that her hearers spent themselves with their laughter.

Jeannette, lying back in a shabby but comfortable old armchair, looked and listened with the absorbed interest of one to whom such simple pleasures as these had the flavour of absolute novelty. Her eyes wandered from Georgiana's vivid face to her father's delicate one; to James Stuart's comely features glowing ruddily in the firelight as he tended his chestnuts, showing splendid white teeth as he roared at Georgiana's clever mimicry or turned to laugh into Jeannette's eyes as he offered her a particularly plump and succulently bursting specimen of his labours; to Mr. Jefferson's maturer personality, his brown eyes keenly intent, his face lighted with enjoyment, his occasional comments on Georgiana's adventures flashing with a dry humour which matched hers and sometimes quite outdid it. To Jeannette they were all an engrossing study. As for herself----

"She's the loveliest thing I ever saw," thought Georgiana from time to time as she glanced up at her cousin, whose fair hair against the dark cushion of the old chair caught and held the charm of the fire's own warmth in its gleaming strands. Jeannette's eyes were matchless by lamplight; her cheeks and lips were glowing from the outdoor life of the day and evening; her smile was a thing to imprison hearts and hold them fast. If she spoke little no one thought of her as silent, and the charm of her low laughter at the sallies of the others was the sheerest flattery, it was so evidently born of genuine delight in the cleverness she did not attempt to emulate.