“He’ll do well enough till spring. But he will be counting the days, all right.”
CHAPTER XXV
MY SURPRISE
WHEN May came I began to look forward in earnest to the return of Haidee and Joey. Every day since the beginning of spring I had gone to Hidden Lake to tend the vines and shrubs that I had set out with so much care the previous fall. I had also made a flower bed and planted the seeds of many old-fashioned flowers—larkspur, Sweet William, marigolds, phlox, lobelia, clove pinks and mignonette, sweet peas and rosemary. In another few weeks the little cabin would be surrounded by bloom.
A Vigor’s wren was building a nest in the pergola, and a calliope humming-bird’s nest hung on a pine limb near the kitchen door, not more than eight feet above the ground. I could scarcely wait for Joey to see the latter. The hours I spent at Hidden Lake were filled with strange anticipations, and unanswered questions and grim wonderment.
But Fate had a surprise in store for me.
One day as I stood looking at the humming-bird’s nest a man approached the cabin from the wood path beyond the garden. He was a hard-faced man, a grizzled, uncouth figure of a man. I took an instant dislike to him without even waiting to see his features. When he saw me he halted irresolutely. I nodded to him carelessly, and stooped to pull a stray weed from the bed of thyme beside the kitchen door. When I looked up he stood beside me.
“Good day, sir,” he said.
“Good day,” I returned.
“Is Mrs. Batterly to home?”
“No,” I replied, “Mrs. Batterly is in the East.”