"Is it? Just how are we to manage that, Hezekiah?"
"Oh, that will be easy enough. He's pretty desperate, and since the compact between the suitors has gone to pieces he knows he will have to show his hand pretty soon. He thinks you are wild about Cecilia. He lays great stress on his thinking powers, and he probably argues that you are bound to pop pretty soon. It's just as well he thinks so, but we must finish this up to-day; I'll be a nervous wreck if we don't close the books to-night. There's your friend Dick now."
She indicated a high point in the main road, where it crossed the ridge from which she had shown me—it seemed, oh, very long ago!—the procession of suitors crossing the stile. Dick, mounted, was gazing off across the fields toward Hopefield. Man and horse were so distant as to create the illusion of an equestrian statue on a high pedestal.
"Napoleon before Waterloo," I suggested.
"He does look like Napoleon, doesn't he?" she laughed. "He's a bit fussed to-day. He knows that Wiggy 's not at the inn, and that you are up to something, and to little Mr. Dick the architect probably looks like one of those mysterious knights you read about, who suddenly appears at the tournament all canned in an ice-cream freezer, with a tin pail over his head. Mr. Pepperton's presence no doubt worries him, as I don't think they ever met. Cecilia and Mr. Pepperton are riding—I dodged them just before I struck you, walking their horses in the most loverlike fashion in a lane over yonder; but if Mr. Pepperton is really engaged it's all right, though if I were the other girl I think I'd be anxious."
"Pep's playing the game, that's all. What are you going to do now?"
She glanced at the sun; I fancy that it was with such a scanning of the heavens that her sisters a thousand years before had noted the time.
"This is my pie-day. There's undoubtedly a gooseberry-pie waiting for me at the bungalow, and papa will expect me for luncheon. I 'd ask you to come too, only you 'll have all you can do to keep Mr. Dick from persuading somebody to be the sixth man, so he can slip in as number seven. If we get through to-day all right, you may come for luncheon to-morrow, maybe. Papa told me he liked you; he said you were very decent that night you met him on the roof of Aunt Octavia's house."
"My compliments to your father. I hope to be able to persuade him to extend his paternal arm to include me. Aunt Octavia must be my aunt, too!"
"Really!" cried Hezekiah, with indescribable mockery; and she wheeled her horse and was gone like the wind.