Winning the Wilderness Part 33

"I don't care for your pride, if you all admire the cute child." Jo withdrew her hand from his. "Here comes Thaine now. I think you'd better take Leigh home. Thaine will take me, I'm sure. But I'll go to refreshments with you," she added, for she knew how to play on more than one string.

"Why, Josephine, my queen, my queen, where are you hiding? I've danced an extra, waiting for you. Todd Stewart, I'll have to kill you yet tonight.

What do you mean by breaking up my party?"

Thaine caught Jo's arm and with a mock thrust at Todd he whirled her into the house.

"Did you really miss me?" Jo's big dark eyes were fastened on Thaine's face. "More than tongue can tell. Who wouldn't miss you?" Thaine's eyes were shining mischievously.

"Leigh Shirley wouldn't," Jo said softly and half sadly.

Something impenetrable dropped before Thaine's face.

"Let's go out to the honeysuckle arbor and not dance now. I'm so tired,"

Jo murmured, with a sweet pleading in her voice.

"I fixed it just for you," Thaine declared as he led the way to the moonlit lawn and shadowy seat.

"You are so good to me, Thaine. What makes you do so many things just for me? I know you don't really care for me. You are so different from most farmers' sons." Jo's head drooped a little and she put one hand on his arm.

"I can't help being good to folks. It's just the angel in me," Thaine declared. Then he added seriously, "I wish I could do something for you, Jo. All the boys are wild about you tonight. You are a picture."

She was beautiful at the moment, and as she lifted her eyes to his something in their shining depths spoke witchingly to the youth of nineteen, untrained in ways of feminine coquetry. He was only a country boy, unskilled in social tactics, but a combination of timidity and good breeding shaped his ideals and his action.

"I don't care for all the boys," Jo murmured.

"Then we are hopelessly bankrupt," Thaine declared. "Isn't this a wonderful night?"

"Yes, and father and mother are going home so early," Jo said.

"Well, your whole wardrobe is over here; why not stay all night? You can help Rosie and mother and me tomorrow. There are plenty of Benningtons left at your home without you, and mother will want you," Thaine urged.

"Do you want me to?" Jo asked softly.

"Tremendously. We'll eat all the ice cream that's left when the crowd goes and have the empty mansion all to ourselves," Thaine declared.

"We are to dance the last dance together too," Jo reminded him.

"Let's run in now. The crowd doesn't miss me, but I'm host, you know, and they're gasping for you. They'll be scouring the premises if we wait longer."

As Thaine lifted Jo to her feet there was a glitter of tears in her bright eyes. And because the place was shadowy and sweet with honeysuckle perfume, and the moonlight entrancing, and Jo was very willing, and tears are ever appealing, he put his arm around her and drew her close to him, and kissed her on each cheek.

Jo's face was triumphant as they met Leigh Shirley at the dining room door.

"What's the next case on docket, Leigh?" Thaine asked, dropping Jo's arm.

Jealousy has sharp eyes, but even jealousy could hardly have found fault with the friendly and indifferent look on Thaine's face.

"Why, it's my first with you, Leigh. Who's your partner, Jo?" Thaine continued.

Two or three young men claimed the honor, and the music began.

"Mrs. Aydelot, Thaine has asked me to stay all night," Jo said, as the figures were forming.

"It will please us all," Virginia said graciously, and Jo tripped away.

When the strains of music for the last dance began Jo looked for Thaine, but he was nowhere to be found. She waited impatiently and the angry glitter in her eyes was not unbecoming her imperious air.

Bo Peep did not wait long, for he was getting tired. Half a dozen young men rushed toward Jo as she stood alone. But Todd Stewart let no opportunity escape him. And the dance began. A minute later Thaine came in with Leigh Shirley. Smiling a challenge at Todd, he caught Leigh's hand and swung into the crowd on the floor.

The older guests were already gone. The music trailed off into a weird, rippling rhythm, with young hearts beating time to its melody and young feet keeping step to its measure. Then the tired, happy company broke into groups. Good-bys and good wishes were given again and again, and the party was over.

The couples took their way up or down the old Gra.s.s River trail or out across the prairie by-roads, with the moon sailing serenely down the west.

Everybody voted it the finest party ever given on Gra.s.s River. And n.o.body at all, except his mother and Jo Bennington, noticed that Thaine had not left Leigh Shirley's side from his first dance with her late in the evening until the time of the good-bys.

As the guests were leaving Thaine turned to Jo, saying:

"I'm sorry about that last dance, but I'll forgive Todd this last time.

Rosie cut her hand on a gla.s.s tumbler she dropped and I was helping Leigh to tie it up when old Bo Peep started the music. Here's the girl I'm to take home. Got your draperies on already. The carriage waits and the black steed paws for us by the chicken yard gate. Good-night, gentle beings."

And taking Leigh's arm, he led her away.

"Gimpke is as awkward as a cow," Jo Bennington declared, "and too stupid to know what's said to her."

But Rosie Gimpke, standing in the shadows of the darkened dining room, was not too stupid to understand what was said about her. And into her stolid brain came dreams that night of a fair face with soft golden brown hair and kindly eyes of deep, tender blue. Stupid as she was, the woman's instinct in her told her in her dreams that the handsome young son of her employer might not always look his thoughts nor dance earliest and oftenest with the girl he liked best. But Rosie was dull and slept heavily and these things came to her sluggish brain only in fleeting dreams.

Thaine and Leigh did not hurry on their homeward way. And Jo Bennington, wide awake in the guest room of the Aydelot house, noted that the moon was far toward the west when Thaine let himself in at the side door and slipped up stairs unheard by all the household except herself.

"Let's go down by the lake," Thaine suggested as he and Leigh came to the edge of the grove. "It's full to the bridge, and the lilies are wide open now. Are you too sleepy to look at them? You used to draw them with chalk all along the blackboard in the old schoolhouse up there."

"I'm never too sleepy to look at water lilies in the moonlight," Leigh replied, "nor too tired to paint them, either. Lilies are a part of my creed. 'Consider the lilies, how they grow.'"

"With their long rubbery stems, up out of mud mostly," Thaine said carelessly. "I pretty nearly grew fast along with them down there, till I learned how to gather them a better way."

The woodland shadows were thrust through with shafts of white moonbeams, giving a weird setting to the silent midnight hour. The odor of woods'

blossoms came with the moist, fresh breath of the May night. There was a little song of waters gurgling down the spillway that was once only a dry draw choked with wild plum bushes. The road wound picturesquely through the grove to a bridged driveway that separated the lakelet into two parts.

A spread of silvery light lay on this driveway and Thaine checked his horse in the midst of it while the two looked at the waters.

"It's all just silver or sable. There's no middle tone," Leigh said, looking at the sparkling moonbeams reflected on the face of the lake and the darkness of the shadowed surface beyond them.

"Isn't there pink, or creamy, or something softer in those lilies right by the bank? I'm no artist, but that's how it looks to a clod-hopper," Thaine declared.

"You are an artist, or you wouldn't catch that, where most anybody would see only steely white and dead black. It is the only color in this black and white woodsy place," Leigh insisted, looking up at Thaine's face in the shadow and down at her own white dress.

"There's a bit of color in your cheeks," Thaine said, as he studied the girl's fair countenance, all pink and white in the moonlight.

"Oh, not the pretty blooming roses like Jo Bennington has," Leigh said, smiling frankly and folding her hands contentedly in her lap.

Thaine recalled the seat under the honeysuckle, and Jo Bennington's pleading eyes, and bewitching beauty, and the touch of her hand on his arm, and her willingness to be kissed. He was flattered by it all, for Jo was the belle of the valley, and Thaine thought himself in love with her.

He knew that the other boys, especially Todd Stewart, Jr., envied him. And yet in this quiet hour in the silent grove, with the waters shimmering below them, the gentle dignity of the sweet-faced girl beside him, with her purity and simplicity wrapping her about, as the morning mists wrapped the far purple notches on the southwest horizon, gave to her presence there an influence he could not understand.