[CHAPTER XXIV.]
TRICKS UPON TRIXY.
AFTER reaching New York the Admiral lost no time in calling at the Highwoods, and although he tried to appear at his best, Fenie said to her sister in strict confidence that there must be something about sea air which specially suited veteran sailors, for the Admiral did not seem the same man he had been at Old Point. He was genial, courteous, conversational, witty, but there was a certain indefinable something lacking; after much study, the girl concluded that the difference came of a strange absent-minded manner which appeared to possess him once in a while, for no apparent reason.
As the old gentleman had spent but a single hour at the Highwoods when this sage conclusion was announced, Trif called her sister a goose, and said she had been carrying Harry in her mind so long that she was incapable of judging other men with any degree of fairness. Nevertheless, Trif told her husband that the Admiral did not seem entirely himself.
The truth was that the old gentleman chanced to call at an hour when Trixy was calling upon a juvenile acquaintance a few squares away, and as she was at the age when children never know when to go home unless they are sent away or sent for, the Admiral was unable to accomplish the real purpose of his visit, which was to see Trixy's scrap-book. He went away with about as uncomfortable a mind as you or I might have, dear reader, were fifty thousand dollars almost within our grasp, yet with a child's caprice and carelessness somewhere between it and full possession.
The Admiral rested badly that night, but he awoke in the morning with a capital plan of operations. He went to a bookstore and purchased a large assortment of illustrated papers, American and foreign, and sent them to his hotel. Then he made a morning call at the Highwoods, just for a moment, to ask if he might not take Trixy to walk with him. The child was delighted, especially when the old gentleman took her to his hotel and showed her all his picture papers, and asked her whether she would not like to spend the following morning with him, and bring her scrap-book, so that he and she might paste into it all the pictures she might select from his papers.
Success being thus assured, his spirits returned in full force, so that after he called on Kate Trewman in the afternoon Kate herself hurried around to the Highwoods to tell them that she had never before found the Admiral such delightful company, and that evidently there was nothing like a trip to New York to brighten any one's wits. Trif and Fenie were mystified, and after Kate's departure they agreed that there must be something in advancing years that made men variable in spite of themselves.
The Admiral lay in wait for Jermyn, who was to dine with him that evening after returning from the gun-proving grounds, and he tormented the young man so unmercifully about the letter that Jermyn wished he had dined alone. The Admiral could afford to be playful, for was he not sure of getting at least one of the pictures?