“Yanna never told me about him.”
“Girls never do tell all. Will you now call on Miss Van Hoosen?”
“Why not?”
“You might be the one not necessary.”
“Indeed, I shall call. I told Yanna I would see her to-day. I shall not break my word, for any man. I dare say he is one of her father’s builders, or architects, or—some one of that kind. I do wonder if Yanna is deceitful!”
“All girls are deceitful.”
“They walk humbly after the men, in that rôle, Harry. Drive a mile up the road; then, as we return, we can pass Mr. Van Hoosen’s house. If Yanna is at home, I shall see it, or know it, or feel it; and that fellow will doubtless have been left outside somewhere.”
“That fellow,” however, with Yanna at his side, was on the doorstep to welcome Harry and Rose. He lifted Rose like a feather-weight from the dog-cart, 44 and he was ready with outstretched hand, when Yanna said, “This is my brother Antony.” The “brothership” was such a relief to Harry that it made him most unusually friendly and gay-tempered; and Rose readily adopted the same tone. They sat down on the piazza, behind the flowering honeysuckles, and amid broken little laughs and exclamations, grew sweetly, and yet a little proudly, familiar. After a short time, however, Rose said she “wanted to speak to Yanna very particularly.” Then the girls went into the parlor; and the two young men lit their cigars, and walked through the garden to smoke, and to find Peter; but both, moved by the same impulse, made the same involuntary pause before the open window at which Rose and Yanna sat. Their faces were eager and serious, their hands dropped, their attitudes had the perfect grace of nature; they were beautiful, and the more so because they were unconscious of it. Rose was just saying to Yanna, as Harry and Antony glanced at them:
“Dick has written again to me, Yanna. I had a letter from him this morning.”
“Is he not impertinent?”