“Oh, he will be back shortly, I understand. I rather think he will show himself a man and pull his sonnet together again! There’s a fine courage in Miles; unless I’ve mistaken him, he won’t sit down and cry, even if he has made a pretty bad blunder. A man hardly ever loses all his friends; there’s always somebody around who will hand a tract in at the jail door!”
“You don’t mean,” she exclaimed, “that Miles has come to that!”
“Bless me, no!” the Poet cried, with another heart throb. “The worst is over now; I’m quite satisfied of that!” he answered with an ease that conveyed nothing of the pains he had taken, by ways devious and concealed, to assure himself that Miles had made complete restitution.
“A man of cheaper metal might have taken chances with the law; I’m confident that Miles was less the culprit than the victim. He sold something that wasn’t good, on the strength of statements he wasn’t responsible for. I believe that to be honestly true, and I got it through men who have no interest in him, who might be expected to chortle over his misfortune.”
“In business matters,” she replied, with an emphasis that was eloquent of reservations as to other fields, “Miles was always perfectly honorable. I don’t believe anybody would question that.”
It hadn’t entered into the Poet’s most sanguine speculations that she would defend Miles, or speak even remotely in praise of him. Wisdom dictated an immediate change of topic. He walked to the open window and established communication with the builders outside, who had reproduced the Waupegan château with added splendors and were anxious to have it admired.
X
Indirection as a method and means to ends has its disadvantages; but it is not to be scorned utterly. A week following Marjorie’s birthday children idling on their way home from school in Marston grew silent and conferred in whispers as a gentleman whose name and fame had been interwoven in their alphabet lounged by. He turned with a smile to lift his hat to an urchin bolder than the rest who shouted his name from a discreet distance.
Within a few days the signs had vanished from the Redfield cottage and the weeds had been cut. As the Poet opened the gate, Fulton came out of the front door: neither seemed surprised to see the other. The odor of fresh paint elicited a sniff of satisfaction from the Poet, a satisfaction that deepened a moment later as he entered the studio and noted its neatness and order.
“Mrs. Waring sent a maid out to do all this, and lent me the things we needed for the tea-table,” Fulton explained. “I had hard work to persuade her this wasn’t one of your jokes. I had harder work to get Mrs. Redfield to come and bring Marjorie; but Marian supported the scheme, and brought Mrs. Redfield round. I fell back heavily on your argument that Marjorie ought to have a final picnic before the turn o’ the year—a last chance to build a shotum ready for knights to come widing.”