"And won't you come back?" he asked, with real concern on his homely face.
"Perhaps so. I hope so," Eloise replied, and he continued, "I'm all-fired sorry you are goin', because,—well, because I am; and I wish I could do something for you."
"You can," Eloise said. "You can take the wheel chair back to the Crompton House and save Tim one journey."
Tom cared very little about saving Tim, but he would do anything to serve Eloise, and the two boys were soon on their way, quarrelling some as they went, for each was jealous of the other's attention to the "little schoolmarm," as they called her. Tom reached the house first, but Tim was not far behind, and both encountered Cora, who bade them leave the chairs in the hall, while she inquired as to their disposition. Had Peter been in sight she might have consulted him, but he was in the grounds, and, entering the Colonel's room she said, "If you please, sir, what shall I do with the chairs?"
"What chairs?" the Colonel asked, and Cora replied, "A sea chair, I think, and a wheel chair, which Tom Walker and Tim Biggs have just brought home."
"My sea chair, and my wheel chair! How in thunder can that be, when I'm sitting in the wheel, and how came Tom Walker, the biggest rascal in town, by my chairs, or Tim Biggs either?" the Colonel exclaimed; and Cora replied, "I think they said the schoolma'am had them. Here's a note from her to Mrs. Amy."
Since his last attack of the gout the Colonel had in a measure forgotten Eloise, and ceased to care whether she were rooted and grounded in the fundamentals or not. That Howard and Jack had been in the habit of calling upon her he did not suspect, and much less that for the last two weeks or more she had been enjoying his sea chair, and the fruit and flowers sent her with Mrs. Amy's compliments. At the mention of her he roused at once.
"That girl had my chair! How the devil came she by it? A note for Mrs. Amy! Give it to me, and pick up that paper on the floor and go!"
Cora was not long in obeying, and the irascible old man was again alone. First tearing Jake's letter in strips, he turned Eloise's note over in his hand, and read, "Mrs. Amy Smith, Crompton Place." The name "Smith" always made him angry, and he repeated it with a quick shutting together of his teeth.
"Smith!" he said, "I can't abide it! And what has she to say to Mrs. Smith?"