The next day he left the hotel, to the great regret of Uncle Zach, who urged him to stay longer and who refused any remuneration.
“I’d laugh to see me take anything. No, sir! I ain’t so mean as that. I’m glad to have you here. It does me good to have refined folks round like you. Come again. Give my regards and Dot’s to Miss Alice. Tell her to come here next summer. Shan’t cost her a cent. I don’t s’pose she’s got a great many to spend. I liked her build. I b’lieve she’s a truer one than t’other one, though I liked her amazingly.”
Craig nodded and shook hands with his host and hostess and was gone.
“It seems funny,—his stoppin’ to see Miss Alice,” Uncle Zach said as he looked after him. “He never seemed to take to her much when she was here. What do you s’pose it’s for?”
He turned inquiringly to his wife, who, quicker of comprehension, replied, “I don’t s’pose; I know, and so would you, if you had half an eye.”
Rather slowly it dawned upon Uncle Zach, together with the fitness of the arrangement. No two could be better suited to each other than Craig and Alice, and he gave it his sanction at once, with his characteristic, “Wall, I’ll be dumbed! I b’lieve you are right, and I’m glad on’t.”
CHAPTER XXV.
IN THE RED SCHOOL HOUSE.
Craig was entirely cured of his infatuation. Jeff’s revelations had commenced the cure, and time and his own good sense had completed it. A girl who would engage herself to him one night and transfer her vows to another the next was not a wife to be desired, were she ten times as beautiful as Helen Tracy. “Fair and false,” he often said to himself when thinking of her and the summer in Ridgefield, while over and over again there came to him a thought of Alice, with whom he had always felt rested and at his best. In the early stage of his disappointments he had said to himself, “I shall never try love making again.” But he had changed his mind.
Most men would have written to Alice before going to see her, but Craig was not like most men, and some subtle intuition told him that he would succeed. Arrived at Rocky Point he had no difficulty in ascertaining where Miss Alice Tracy lived, and was soon knocking at the door of the farmhouse, which stood a little way from the village. It was opened by Mrs. Wood, Alice’s Aunt Mary, who felt somewhat abashed at the sight of a strange gentleman asking for her niece. Glancing over her shoulder at the clock, she said, “It’s after four. She should be home pretty soon, though she sometimes stays to tidy up and make copies for the children. Maybe you’ll find her there, and maybe you’ll meet her. The road is straight from here to the school house. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” and Craig turned to go, when Mrs. Wood said to him, “If you don’t find her who shall I say called?”