“Like a moss rosebud, suh, with the dew on it. She and Jack have gone out for a drive in Jack’s cyart. He left me at the club, and I went over to his apartments to dress. I am staying with Jack, you know. Helen is with a school friend. I know, of co’se, that yo’r dinner is not until eight o’clock, but I could not wait longer to grasp yo’r hand. Do you know, Sanford,” with sudden animation and in a rising voice, “that the more I see of you, the more I”—
“And so you are coming to New York to live, major,” said Sanford, dropping another pebble at the right moment into the very middle of the current.
The major recovered, filled, and broke through in a fresh place. The new questions of his host only varied the outlet of his eloquence.
“Coming, suh? I have come. I have leased a po’tion of my estate to some capitalists from Philadelphia who are about embarking in a strawberry enterprise of very great magnitude. I want to talk to you about it later.” (He had rented one half of it—the dry half, the half a little higher than the salt-marsh—to a huckster from Philadelphia, who was trying to raise early vegetables, and whose cash advances upon the rent had paid the overdue interest on the mortgage, leaving a margin hardly more than sufficient to pay for the suit of clothes he stood in, and his traveling expenses.)
By this time the constantly increasing pressure of his caller’s enthusiasm had seriously endangered the possibility of Sanford’s dressing for dinner. He glanced several times uneasily at his watch, lying open on the bureau before him, and at last, with a hurried “Excuse me, major,” disappeared into his bathroom, and closed its flood-gate of a door, thus effectually shutting off the major’s overflow, now perilously near the danger-line.
The Pocomokian paused for a moment, looked wistfully at the blank door, and, recognizing the impossible, called to Sam and suggested a cocktail as a surprise for his master when he appeared again. Sam brought the ingredients on a tray, and stood by admiringly (Sam always regarded him as a superior being) while the major mixed two comforting concoctions,—the one already mentioned for Sanford, and the other designed for the especial sustenance and delectation of the distinguished Pocomokian himself.
This done he took his leave, having infused into the apartment, in ten short minutes, more sparkle, freshness, and life than it had known since his last visit.
Sanford saw the cocktail on his bureau when he entered the room again, but forgot it in his search for the letter he had laid aside on the major’s entrance. Sam found the invigorating compound when dinner was over, and immediately emptied it into his own person.
“Please don’t be cross, Henry, if you can’t find all your things,” the letter read. “Jack Hardy wanted me to come over and help him arrange the rooms as a surprise for the Maryland girl. He says there’s nothing between them, but I don’t believe him. The blossoms came from Newport. I hope you had time to go to Medford and find out about my dining-room, and that everything is going on well at the Ledge. I will see you to-night at eight. —K. P. L.”
Sanford, with a smile of pleasure, shut the letter in his bureau drawer, and entering the dining-room, picked up the basket of roses and began those little final touches about the room and table which he never neglected. He lighted the tapers in the antique lamps that hung from the ceiling, readjusting the ruby glass holders; he kindled the wicks in some quaint brackets over the sideboard; he moved the Venetian flagons and decanters nearer the centrepiece of flowers,—those he had himself ordered for his guests and their chaperon,—and cutting the stems from the rose-water roses sprinkled them over the snowy linen.