The ride home was pleasanter than I had expected it to be. When I had stepped off the platform after my fiasco, I understood how a suicide felt. When I stepped off the second time I felt better.
“I almos’ bus’ laughin’,” said Minerva, as she climbed into the carriage.
“Thank you, Minerva,” said I, fully appreciating both the compliment and her peril.
CHAPTER XIV
THE-FOURTH-OF-JULY.
A WEEK of lovely weather made us forget time. We spent our days in the open air, and Minerva spent her days practising for the concert. It was wonderful with what expedition she cooked our meals and cleaned up afterward. The meals were, if anything, more delicious than formerly. She was happy, and she could not help communicating some of her happiness to her cooking. It was not so much the thing she cooked, as the happy way she cooked it.
James was a sort of Luther Burbank in his power over plants. One afternoon I said to Ethel in his hearing that I thought it was a pity that the Wheelocks had not planted a vine in front of the house, as it would have added greatly to its picturesqueness.
He was oiling his lawn mower at the time, and I noticed that he stood up and looked at the house front and nodded his head and smiled, but I would not have thought of it again had it not been for the fact that two days after, on returning from a drive with Ethel, we both burst out into ejaculations of surprise and delight.
The front of the house, up to the second-story window, was adorned by a most beautiful crimson rambler.