"Oh, you are a little curious, are you? perhaps a little jealous, too, that he was so very easily cured of his admiration for you. If it were any secret, I wouldn't tell you. We talk about what we see, and it seems to me he sees everything. If a bird flies across the road he will point out its peculiarities, and he knows so much about the trees and bushes and wild flowers and the little creatures in the woods, how they live, and all that. He says a man's a fool that doesn't see all that's going on around him. Sometimes he makes me ache from laughing over his funny descriptions of the queer characters that live about here. Bat what interests me most is his accounts of the people at the hotel. Ob, I do wish mother would let me go there with him some evening! He is there nearly every night, and it's as good as a play to hear him take off the affected, snobbish ones. He has caught the English drawl and the 'yeh know' of some young fellows to perfection."
"He IS a queer fellow," mused Mildred. "I wonder what he goes there for?"
"Oh, Roger Atwood is no fool, I can tell you. He knows country society in perfection, and he would not be long in understanding Fifth Avenue noodledom just as well. He detects sham people and sham ways as quickly as you could, and delights in ridiculing them. He says there's a ghost of a man up there which interests him exceedingly, but that it is such an extremely well-behaved, good-mannered ghost that it is tolerated without remark, and that is all he will say about it, although I have often questioned him. I can't think who or what he means."
Mildred looked up with a sudden access of interest, and then became silent and abstracted.
"Since the children are quiet here," continued Belle, "I'll go back to the house and finish a story in which the hero and heroine are sentimental geese and blind as bats. They misunderstand each other so foolishly that I'd like to bob their empty heads together," and away she went, humming a gay song, with as little thought for the morrow as the birds in the fields around her.
While Roger paused a moment to wipe the perspiration from his brow, the rustling of the grain ceased, and he heard the footfalls of a horse in the adjacent road. With a start he saw riding by the stranger who had been the object of his continued scrutiny at the hotel. The young men restrained to a walk the rather restless horse he bestrode, and seemed musing deeply under the shadow of a broad-brimmed Panama hat. He took no notice of Roger, and passing slowly on entered the shadow of the hemlocks, when an exclamation caused him to raise his head. A second later he sprang from his horse, threw the bridle over the limb of a tree, and seized Mildred's hand with an eagerness which proved that she had indeed the power to "wake him up."
Roger was too distant to see just how she greeted her unlooked-for friend of other days, but thought she appeared so startled that she leaned against a tree for support. He saw, however, that the "ghost of a man" was now flesh and blood in his earnestness, and that he retained her hand in both of his own while speaking rapidly. Before very long, however, the horse became so impatient that he suddenly jerked his bridle loose, wheeled, and came galloping up the road toward Roger, who, after a moment's hesitation, cleared the low stone wall at a bound and stood in the road awaiting him. Mildred's companion made a gesture of annoyance, and then said, with a shrug, "Let the beast go. I'm well content to remain here." When they saw Roger's purpose, however, they stood watching for the outcome of his effort.
As Arnold—for he it was—saw the horse, with broken and flying reins, thundering apparently right upon the motionless form of a man, he exclaimed, "By Jove! but that's a brave fellow."
The vicious brute soon seemed so nearly upon the rash youth that Mildred gave a slight scream of terror, but a second later she saw him spring lightly aside, catch one of the flying reins, hold on for a few yards, half dragged, half running, and then the animal yielded to a master. A cloud of dust obscured them momentarily; then the country-bred athlete vaulted lightly into the saddle and came trotting sharply toward them, riding like a centaur. She was enraged at herself that her face should grow scarlet under his brief glance from one to the other, but without a word he sprang lightly down and began to fasten the horse securely to a tree—an act scarcely necessary, for the animal appeared completely subdued.
"By Jove! my man, that was neatly done," said Arnold. "Here's a bank-note for your trouble."