“Do you have lady guides in these parts?” he fired at me. “Who was the tall girl that fled off the rocks as we came around the bend?”
I looked at Walter appealingly, and over the face of Buck came illumination. There burst from him instinctively a yell which Bob could not have bettered, but he instantly choked his feelings to decorum.
“Beg your pardon, Mrs. Morgan.” The boy’s theory of good manners was stretched on top of a volcano of curiosity. “I beg your pardon,” he went on eagerly. “But—but—it wasn’t—wasn’t it Bob—that queer thing?”
I looked at Walter helplessly, and the bright-eyed lads looked at both of us, and something about us answered the question.
“B-Bobby disguised as a f-female, what for?” stammered, inquiringly, one of them—Donnie, I knew later.
And then, whether they crowed in chorus like young roosters, or whether the jubilance of excited chickens was merely expressed in their silence, I do not know. I only know that sound was the symbol of that moment. In another instant, with permission asked—for whatever he may be underneath, the typical Yale boy is Lord Chesterfield on top—with permission impetuously asked and helplessly given, they were off like hounds on a scent, up the portage, after the fated Bob.
The next chapter in the drama I did not witness, but it was told to Walter and me by the actors with such spirit that I could not regret the real play.
As the boys disappeared we once more regarded each other.
“He’s lost,” said Walter. “‘The execution will be private, and may Heaven have mercy on his soul!’ Those young lunatics will raise Cain. All we can do is to await the remains.”
He settled himself against a pacqueton and lighted his pipe, and I stepped across the rocks and picked up Bob’s rod and began to play his unhappy trout, still going through the motions of a fight about the pool. I pulled him in. Then I hooked another, and another, till half a dozen spotted lines of saffron and silver-gilt lay at my feet on the moss. Walter meanwhile gave advice—one of the things he does best.