“Ah, Kate!” he cried, springing out of the carriage. “Mad Kate, merry Kate, the daintiest Kate of all the Kates, and sometimes the curst, that right merrily I will.”
On the way home he induced her to talk of Gorgas, and as an elder sister she entered readily into a discussion of her future education. She told of the child’s fondness for boyish sports. Did he know that Gorgas had won a huge silver cup in a tennis contest? Yes, indeed; she had carried it off matched against pretty stout boys. Quite a hoyden, she was. Of course, she was getting too old for that sort of thing now. Something had to be done. She agreed that whatever it should be, it should be done gradually. The child must not be driven. So Blynn very adroitly filled Miss Keyser’s mind with the right attitude toward Gorgas. He was sure of having an ally in the work he had before him, and one that would not in his absence set up wrong family currents.
Twilight was settling when they arrived home. From McAlley, stableman, errand-boy and gardener, he learned that Gorgas and “Gyp” had not come back.
“She’ll be ’long soon,” McAlley remarked without concern. “Mebbe ‘Gyp’ is playin’ lame. He’s a scamp, that he is, a scamp.”
Blynn could not share McAlley’s indifference. His heart beat horridly, and for no good reason that his mind could tell him. The family always dined late, and the household was run on a do-as-you-please system. Perhaps this child had been out at dusk many times before. All that he told himself; yet terrifying apprehension seized him.
In fifteen minutes he was plunging down Cresheim Valley, now quite shadowy. Up the hill before him came a slow figure walking beside a horse. He dove into the bushes and watched her pass him. In the deceptive gloom she seemed to him again a self-possessed little woman. Far enough back he followed, within him the sickening relief that comes after sudden fear.
“I’ll never get used to this,” he said to himself, as he lost sight of her in the dark, when she turned into her own lane. “If that lassie belonged to me I’d see that she’d come home in daylight. She has no idea of the risk she’s running.”
He could not discern figures any longer, but he could make out McAlley’s lantern and could hear the voices.
He was feeling quite peaceful until one-armed “Aurora,” the lamp-lighter, who always loped along half bent over, gave him a fright by suddenly bobbing around the corner and scuttling across the road to a crazy street-lamp.