‘People fret because they can’t help it, not because things are worth it or not worth it,’ said Nita, wearily. ‘Good-night! Thank you for coming to cheer me up.’
‘Good-night,’ said John, kindly and gravely; and he stooped and touched her forehead with his lips. Nita smiled faintly.
‘That is only for Christmas Days and birthdays,’ said she. ‘Three a year, John; so the next one is forfeited.’
‘How do I know where we may both be when the next one falls due?’ he replied, with a look in his eyes and a line upon his brow which she did not quite understand. ‘Well good-night!’
CHAPTER X.
INDIAN SUMMER.
Jerome was not without visitors when he was fairly established at Monk’s Gate. John Leyburn frequently found his way down there, and so did Father Somerville, and in him Wellfield found his most congenial companion. They formed a strange trio, for the three were often there together.
There was that year a short, gorgeous Indian summer, at the end of September and the beginning of October. It was as warm as August; the foliage a mass of beauty—a dying, sunset glow, ready to be whirled away in showers at the first swirl of the equinoctial gales which would assuredly succeed this calm. But in the meantime, while it lasted, it was beautiful. They sat with open windows at Monk’s Gate, and with the door set open too; and while the lamp burnt on the centre table, John Leyburn stretched out his long limbs on the old settee, and smoked his pipe; while Somerville, in the easy-chair at the other side of the window, twisted cigarettes with his long, slender fingers; and Jerome, at the piano, would play, or sing, or improvise, for hours. Many a one of the village people, many a ‘lover and his lass,’ would pause to lean upon the top of the gate and hearken to the broken, fitful gusts of sound which came wafted to them from the open window and door. Strange, weird harmonies of Liszt, and Chopin, and Schumann, smote their astonished ears, and songs still stranger and more eerie than the tunes—deep, mournful German melodies, or some wild, homely, Volkslied would float out and strike them with wonder, such music being assuredly for the first time heard in Wellfield.