“Now I wonder if that young rascal of a boy told her I wrote that note an hour ago? I ’ll wring his neck if he did. Come here boy!”
The negro came up grinning in hopes of another quarter.
“Did you tell that young lady anything about when I wrote that note?”
“Na-sah! Nebber tole her nuffin. She des laugh and laugh fit ter kill herse’f des quick es she reads de note.”
Gaston smiled and threw him another tip.
“Yassah, she’s a knowin’ lady, sho’s you bawn, I been dar lots er times fo’ dis!”
Gaston was tempted to ask him for whom he carried those former messages. He walked with bounding steps, his being tingling to his finger tips with the joy of living. The avenue leading the full length of the city toward the General’s house was two miles long before it reached the woods at the gate. It seemed only a step this morning.
As he passed through the cool shade of the woods a squirrel was playing hide and seek with his mate on the old crooked fence beside the road. His little nimble mistress flew up a great tree to its topmost bough and chattered and laughed at her lover as he scrambled swiftly after her. She waited until he was just reaching out his arm to grasp her, and then with another scream of laughter leaped straight out into the air to another tree top, and then another and another until lost in the heart of the forest.
“I wonder if that’s going to be my fate!” he mused as he turned into the gateway.
Again the majestic beauty of that gleaming mass of ivory on the hill with its green background swept his soul with its power. It seemed a different shade of colour now that he saw it with the sun at another angle. Its surface seemed to have the soft sheen of creamy velvet.