"We can touch nobody," he averred regretfully, "unless we catch Harrigan!"
Caleb himself took Barbara home, and on the way across the lawn she giggled suddenly at the funny way in which the distance seemed to increase and then lessen between her eyes and her feet. The ground persisted in rising to meet her, she said, until she had to cling to Caleb's arm. And the outer steps proved difficult to negotiate. But at the sight of her father, sunk in silence Upon his desk in the ground floor "office," she drew her hand from the crook of Caleb's arm and went swiftly across to him.
"Barbara," he beseeched her brokenly, the moment her cheek touched his. "You mustn't believe that I——"
She hushed him with gentle fingers laid upon his lips.
"I have been a very foolish and hysterical child," she said. "I'll try to behave more like a woman now. And you and Uncle Cal have been only—absurd!"
She had to laugh again at the behavior of her feet as she climbed upstairs; but her head seemed steady enough. It was only after she had reached her own room that she complained querrulously of the failing lights. Miriam had to help Cecile undress and put her to bed.
On the floor below, her father had turned again to his desk, his head bowed upon his arms. And total breakdown was imminent for Dexter Allison when a hand touched, awkwardly, his shoulder. He looked up heavily to meet this time the eyes of Caleb Hunter. Caleb stuttered furiously at first, for sentimentality shamed him. Then a happy thought showed the way.
"Dexter, I secured a few sprigs of very superior mint, yesterday," he made of it a ceremonial. "Do you think you would—care to join me, sir?"
They had been friends for close to forty years, not because of common tastes, but in spite of innate dissimilarity. Dexter came to his feet; he reached out and crushed the other man's hand within his soft, white fingers. Nor was his reply quite according to formula.
"I don't mind if I do, Cal," he accepted fervidly, "Thank God … I don't mind if I do!"