“I—I think I’m scared,” gasped Vivian in her turn, shrinking farther back against the tree. “Aren’t you, Virginia?”
“No,” said her deliverer, gaining breath at every moment, “no, Vivian, I certainly am not scared. I feel as brave as Theseus, though Leslie isn’t much of a Minotaur, I must say!”
The sound of a horse’s feet-came nearer and nearer, then stopped. A carriage creaked as some one jumped from it; twigs snapped as some one came crashing through them. Vivian hugged the old tree for support, and turned her face toward the pasture. Virginia braced herself for the attack, her back against the tree, her arms folded Napoleon-wise, her head high, her eyes flashing. As the bushes parted and the soda-fountain clerk emerged and stepped into the trysting-place, a more surprised youth could not have been found in the State of Massachusetts.
Arrayed in a new and gallantly worn linen duster, his hat on the side of his head, a box of candy under one arm, he stood as though rooted to the spot, an amazed and sickly smile playing over his more sickly countenance. What had happened? Was he to escort two ladies instead of one? His eye-glasses, attached by a gold chain to his ear, trembled as his pale gaze, expressionless save for surprise, tried to encompass the figure who still embraced the tree. But all in vain, for ever he encountered a pair of flashing gray eyes, which, steady and disdainful, never once left his own.
“You may go now,” said the owner of the eyes, after what seemed long minutes to the faithful Leslie, “and don’t you ever come here again! This isn’t a post-office any longer. You’re too unspeakably silly for any use, and Vivian thinks so just the same as the rest of us. You belong to a soda-fountain, for you’re just as sickish as vanilla ice-cream, and as senseless as soda-water. Now go!”
The subdued Leslie needed no second bidding. He went. They heard his hurrying feet crash through the roadside thicket, the creaking of his carriage as with one bound he leaped into it, and the crack of the whip, as he warned his steed to do no tarrying in that locality. Then Virginia turned her attention to Vivian who by this time was in an hysterical little heap at the foot of the big old tree.
“It’s all right, Vivian,” she said, with her arms around Vivian’s shaking shoulders. “He’s gone and he won’t come back. He’ll be in New York by midnight, if he keeps on going. Please don’t cry any more.”
But Vivian could not stop just then. To be sure, the result of her foolishness had been checked before it was too late; but nothing could blot out the foolishness itself; and it was that which was breaking her heart.
“Oh, I’m not crying about him!” she said between her sobs. “I despise him! I’m crying because I’ve been so silly, and nobody’ll ever forget it. I don’t care what Dorothy and Imogene say. It’s what’s inside of me that hurts! And everybody’ll know how silly I’ve been! Oh, why can’t I be different than I am?”
“Everybody won’t know, Vivian. Oh, please don’t cry so! Nobody’ll know except Priscilla and me, and we’ll think all the more of you. And Dorothy feels worse than you, because she’s been even more to blame. ’Twas she that told me, and made me come to help you.”