They rode for a mile across the open prairie, then turned south into the Willow Creek road, which followed the foot-hills. Conversation regarding the Emperor was tantalizing, and questioning was forbidden. Accordingly, they pocketed their curiosity, and devoted their time to one another, and to the signs of approaching autumn upon the brown hillsides. Pedro and MacDuff, eager for a gallop, left the other horses, and dashed along a three-path, grass-grown trail which encircled the hill and met the road again a mile beyond.
“It’s just the chance I wanted,” said Donald, reining in MacDuff to ride beside Virginia. “I want to ask you about Carver. I can’t make him out lately. I don’t know what’s the matter. He’s been queer ever since that night on the mountain—last Tuesday, wasn’t it? Of course he’s all right to the folks, and all that, but he’s stuck by himself more or less, and seemed stirred up over something. Dave, the man we got last winter, complained to Dad yesterday about Carver’s being rather officious 185 with the men. Dad smoothed it over, of course, and explained how Carver didn’t understand that that sort of thing doesn’t go out here. But it kind of worries me. Everything went all right up there, didn’t it, Virginia—on the mountain, I mean?”
Not even Donald could detect hesitation in Virginia’s reply. If Carver still chose to keep the ill-gotten rôle of protector, it was not up to her to take it from him.
“Why, of course, Don,” she said promptly. “Everything was perfectly all right. I guess Carver wasn’t awfully pleased at first when he found we had to stay. You see, he—he hasn’t much patience with Vivian when she’s nervous. But she did splendidly, and tried her best not to show how she felt inside. And I couldn’t see why Carver didn’t enjoy himself. He certainly seemed to!”
Donald was plainly puzzled.
“Well,” he said, “it gets me! He’s not a fellow you can reach very easily either. If it were Jack, I’d ask him just what the matter was, but somehow it’s different with Carver. There’s always something 186 in the way. I believe it’s—too much New England!”
Virginia laughed.
“Too much of it’s a dreadful barrier,” she observed. “Grandmother Webster had too much when I first went to Vermont, but I found a little path that led around it after I’d searched a long time. I think part of the trouble with Carver is that he’s just one of us out here. He isn’t looked up to the way he is at home. Priscilla knew him last summer, you know, and she’s told me about him. We were talking about it just last night, because we’ve noticed he’s queer lately. Priscilla says he’s always been looked up to by boys and girls of his age because his family’s so old, and his father so wealthy, and his grandfather a colonel. In New England, you know, those things count, especially the family and the colonel. Then, besides, Carver’s bright and fine-looking and an only son. Out here, you see, Don, we don’t care so much about colonels and old families and money. They’re all right, of course, if you have them, but you’ve an equal chance if you don’t.” 187
“Maybe Carver’s learning that we’re right after all,” said Donald thoughtfully. “Maybe he’s seeing that ancestry won’t make a man. It’s hard to admit those things, I know that. I hated to admit that the Eastern fellows at school had better manners than we cow-punchers from this part of the country. But ’twas so all the same.”
Virginia allowed Pedro to nibble at the quaking-asps before she spoke.