He was out quite often in the evening, and I fell into the habit of stopping as I came from work.
"Just take a bite with us, Norman," he would say. "I'm going to Green Tree or down to Baubein's, and I'll be home by nine. But I can't leave Ruth alone; don't know but I shall have to hire you for steady company," with a laugh.
Sometimes I ran off home after that, at others remained all night. Dan was very gay and seldom in before eleven. But as the Little Girl was too young for dances or merrymakings we amused ourselves. M'liss occasionally added to our fun by her droll experiences and views on everything, in an uncouth dialect. Her granny, now near a hundred, knew all about the first people who came to Chicago, and M'liss sometimes was very interesting, though I used to think granny must have drawn on her imagination for some of the tales, but they so captured Ruth's romantic side that I let them pass.
At other times we read and really studied about the different States. The Mississippi, with DeSota, La Salle and Tonti, was a mine of treasure to her. Later New Orleans, with its changes of government, Napoleon's marvellous history and the purchase of the West, was a great source of interest to us both. Mr. Harris was my mentor. Between getting and giving I added much to my incomplete boyish education.
But it was not all history. Every volume of poems I met with I borrowed, and we read the old ones over. I think we both knew pages of "The Lady of the Lake," our first love.
One evening an odd incident happened to me that in the beginning was rather a source of annoyance. I was to go to Mr. Harris's and had a list of inquiries in my mind to talk over. At the side of the cheerful fire in the arm-chair with the high cushioned back sat a gentleman of distinguished appearance that I had caught sight of in the warehouse, a tall man with a rather spare but not thin figure, a fine face that, no doubt, had been handsome in youth. The forehead was high, but rather narrow, the hair, that now had only a few dark threads in it, but a certain silvery gloss, an aquiline nose, and the beard, snowy-white, trimmed in the Van Dyck fashion. The eyes held me. They were large and dark, but with a kind of winning softness. The eyebrows were still dark and so were the long lashes.
"This is Mr. LeMoyne, Norman, and this," turning to the gentleman, "is the young friend I was telling you of."
He did not rise, but extended his hand with such a grace that I felt self-condemned for my discourteous thought.
"We have been talking about you," he began, and there was something in his voice that completed his sudden ascendency over me. "Mr. Harris was saying you were much interested in New Orleans, and that you had never seen any of our larger cities. I have been in that quaint southern French town for some months."
I knew I smiled with pleasure. There was such a charm in his manner. But I felt tongue-tied, abashed.