He made a queer guttural sound in his throat but, his official interpreter being by this time absorbed in the horses, was unable to make himself understood.
“It must be awful for a boy not to be able to ask questions!” she went on, looking down at him, then seeing something in his face that other people missed, she suddenly drew him to her and gave him a little motherly squeeze.
The ride home was somewhat leisurely, for the accident, slight as it was, had sobered the riders, and there was, moreover, a subject under discussion that called for considerable earnest expostulation on one side, and much tantalizing evasion on the other.
“It all depends upon you,” Donald was saying, as they climbed the last hill. “Cropsie Decker starts for the coast to-morrow but the steamer doesn't sail for ten days. Shall I go or stay?”
“But you were so mad about it two weeks ago, you could scarcely wait to start.”
“Lots of things can happen in two weeks. Shall I stay?”
“What do your family think about it?”
“My family? Oh, you mean my sister. She doesn't make a habit of losing sleep over my affairs. She'd probably say go. I am rather unpopular with her just now, because I don't approve of this affair between my niece Margery and Fred Dillingham. I fancy she'd be rather relieved to get me out of the way. In fact, everybody says go, except Doctor Queerington. He is a cousin of ours, used to be my English professor, up at the university. He has always harbored the illusion that I can write. Wants me to settle down some place in the country and go at it in earnest.”
“You don't mean John Jay Queerington, the author?” Miss Lady said eagerly. “Is he really your cousin? Daddy went to school to his father, and has told me so much about him, that without seeing him, I could write a book on the subject.”
“Great old chap in his way, an authority on heaven knows how many subjects, yet he scarcely makes enough money to take care of his children.”