I wonder if the Colonel knows that Orrin too has been building himself a house?
I did not sleep last night, and I have not eaten this morning. Thoughts robbed me of sleep, and a visit from Orrin effectually took away from me whatever appetite I might have had. He came in almost at daybreak. He looked dishevelled and wild, and spoke like a man who had stopped more than once at the tavern.
"Philo," said he, "you have annoyed me by your curiosity for more than a year; now you can do me a favor. Will you call at Juliet's house and see if she is free to go and come as she was a week ago?"
"Why?" I asked, thinking I perceived a reason for his bloodshot eye, and yet being for the moment too wary, perhaps too ungenerous, to relieve him from the tension of his uncertainty.
"Why?" he repeated. "Must you know all that goes on in my mind, and cannot I keep one secret to myself?"
"You ask me to do you a favor," I quietly returned. "In order to do it intelligently, I must know why it is asked."
"I do not see that," objected Orrin, "and if you were not such a boy I'd leave you on the spot and do the errand myself. But you mean no harm, and so I will tell you that Juliet and I had planned to run away together last night, but though I was at the place of meeting, she did not come, nor has she made any sign to show me why she failed me."
"Orrin," I began, but he stopped me with an oath.
"No sermons," he protested. "I know what you would have done if instead of smiling on me she had chanced to give all her poor little heart to you."
"I should not have tempted her to betray the Colonel," I exclaimed hotly, perhaps because the sudden picture he presented to my imagination awoke within me such a torrent of unsuspected emotions. "Nor should I have urged her to fly with me by night and in stealth."