He might have been shooing the sweet thing off into the air. There was no reference whatever to any one to take care of her. His eyes rested on me, but only as they rested on the wall behind me. I must say it was well done—if one has to do that sort of thing at all. Feeling myself, as his regard swept me, no more than a part of the carved ecclesiastical chair to which I stood clinging, I wondered how I was ever to bring this man to seeing me.
I debated the question inwardly while I chatted with Gladys on the way homeward. I was obliged, in fact, to brace myself, to reason it out again that right was self-propagating and wrong necessarily sterile. Right I figured as a way which seemed to finish in a blind alley or cul-de-sac, but which, as one neared what seemed to be its end, led off in a new direction. Nearing the end of that there would be still a new lead, and so one would go on.
And, sure enough, the new lead came within the next half-hour, though I didn't recognize it for what it was till afterward.
CHAPTER X
As we passed the Jack Brokenshire cottage, Larry Strangways and Broke, with Noble, the collie, bounding beside them, came racing down the lawn to overtake us. It was natural then that for the rest of the way Chips and Noble should form one company, Broke and his sister another, while we two elders strolled along behind them.
It was the hour of the day for strolling. The mellow afternoon light was of the kind that brings something new into life, something we should be glad to keep if we knew how to catch it. It was not merely that grass and leaf and sea had a shimmer of gold on them. There was a sweet enchantment in the atmosphere, a poignant wizardry, a suggestion of emotions both higher and lower than those of our poor mortal scale. They made one reluctant to hurry one's footsteps, and slow in the return to that sheerly human shelter we call home. All along the path, down among the rocks, out in the water, up on the lawns, there were people, gentle and simple alike, who lingered and idled and paused to steep themselves in this magic.
I have to admit that we followed their example. Anything served as an excuse for it, the dogs and the children doing the same from a similar instinct. I got the impression, too, that my companion was less in the throes of the discretion we had imposed upon ourselves, for the reason that his term as a mere educational lackey was drawing to a close. It had, in fact, only two more days to run. Then August would come and he would desert us.
As it might be my last opportunity to surprise him into looking at me in the way Mrs. Rossiter had observed, I kept my eye on him pretty closely. I cannot say that I detected any change that flattered me. Tall and straight and splendidly poised, he was as smilingly impenetrable as ever. Like Howard Brokenshire, he betrayed no wound, even if I had inflicted one. It was a little exasperating. I was more than piqued.
I told him I hadn't heard of his return from New York and asked how he had fared. His reply was enthusiastic. He had seen Stacy Grainger and was eager to be his henchman.
"He's got that about him," he declared, "that would make anybody glad to work for him."