To the governor of South Carolina?
With a sigh Ardmore left them at the great gates of Ardsley and returned to the house to find Jerry; but that young woman was the center of a wide circle of admiring militia officers, and the master of Ardsley was so depressed by the spectacle that he sought a dim corner of the grounds where there was a stone bench by a fountain, and there, to his confusion, he beheld Miss Barbara Osborne and Henry Maine Griswold; and Miss Osborne, it seemed, was in the act of fastening a white rose in Professor Griswold's coat.
CHAPTER XXI GOOD-BY TO JERRY DANGERFIELD
The next morning Ardmore knocked at Griswold's door as early as he dared, and went in and talked to his friend in their old intimate fashion. The associate professor of admiralty was shaving himself with care.
"You won't have any hard feelings about that scarlet fever business, will you, Grissy? It was downright selfish of me to want to keep the thing to myself, but I thought it would be fun to go ahead and carry it through and then show you how well I pulled it off."
"Don't ever refer to it again, if you love me," spluttered Griswold amiably, as he washed off the lather. "I, too, have ruled over a kingdom, and I have seen history in the making, quorum pars magna fui."
"But I say, Grissy, there is such a thing as fate and destiny and all that after all; don't you believe it?"
"Don't I believe it! I know it!" thundered Griswold, reaching for a towel. He lifted a white rose from a glass of water where it had spent the night and regarded it tenderly. "The right rose under the right star, and the thing's done; the rose, the star and the girl,—the combination simply can't be beat, Ardy."