Suddenly, much to his surprise, she laughed—one of her prettiest little laughs, clear and sweet as a silver bell.
“I quite understand!” she said, while enchanting little dimples of mirth danced about her cheeks and chin. “You are preparing your way now, and you foresee possible obstacles! Yes!—you know you do! You are just wonderful!—and I want to be nice to you just as you want to be nice to me! But”—here she laid a little soft white hand on the amazed Philosopher’s coat-sleeve—“we won’t go on with it just at present, will we? There’s not any time! Dad will be expecting me to give him his medicine—and then—then I have other things to do!” Her bright face was radiant with its happy smile. “But I’m sure you mean to be kind and pleasant,—and—and—oh, do take ever so long preparing your way!—you must, you know!—in case—in case you should overlook some obstacle that might upset you very much!”
Here she rose from her garden-chair, holding the condemned “book of verse” close to her breast. “It might be ‘the flight of a river’—or a ‘soul tumult’!—who can tell—!”
He stopped her light “badinage” with a look, and in a sudden masterful manner, laid his hands on hers.
“You are playing!” he said. “And you can play as long as you like. I don’t mind! But I happen—for once in my life—to be in earnest! However—as you don’t wish it—we will not go on with the subject—shall we call it the ‘prep’? just now. It can wait. I can wait! We will return to it another day!”
He released her hands and stood aside to let her pass. She looked up at him in something of wonder, not unmixed with a novel sense of admiration. Being “in earnest” had given him quite a new expression,—some of the grim furrows in his face had for the moment disappeared—there was an unwonted light in his eyes, and he smiled—a positively winning smile, thus seeming less of a scholar, but more of a man!
CHAPTER XII
“AH! There be’s many a woman wot’s ’appy to know ’er man’s gone an’ not likely to come back—many on ’em, I sez!—reg’lar flim-flammeries an’ gad-abouts wot ain’t wuth ’arf-a-crown a week for keep an’ yet Gov’nment lets them draw more money than their men wot’s doin’ the fightin’! Real tom-foolery that is!—I calls it settin’ a premium on bigamy!”
The individual who delivered himself of these oracular remarks was a certain Samuel Rikewood, locally known as “Riverside Sam”—because he was never found elsewhere than on the river or near the river, though up to the present he had escaped being in the river, which was something of a marvel. For he was wont to paddle about in a crazy old wherry, cracked in many places, and apparently out of all balance, looking more like a disused tub than a boat, and with this uneasy craft he wobbled to and fro, offering his services to such stray tourists and visitors who might seek to indulge themselves in the mild and meditative sport of fishing. In the pursuit of his chosen calling and election he made himself useful and necessary to old John Durham, who had grown to like him for the quaintness of his speech and bluntness of his manner, while “Riverside Sam” had in his turn “taken to the American man” as he expressed it, and more especially since sorrow had struck him in the uncertainty which the War Office message of “Missing” had created in his mind concerning the fate of his son. Sam had liked the cheery and good-looking young fellow who had humoured his father’s whims, showing himself always ready to fall in with his plans whatever they were, whether for fishing or taking long, rambling walks over hill and dale, and in his unexpressive way was honestly grieved at the loss of the bright boyish spirit which had brightened the dullest day, and with all his heart pitied the old man left lonely.
“It’s a bit ’ard,” he said, on one occasion, “to ’ave to go an’ die for one’s own country, but when ye gits blowed to bits for a country which ain’t yours it’s ’arder still. Now Mister Jack ’adn’t no orders to go—”