Breakfast was a lingering affair at Ardsley that morning. The two governors and the national guard officers who had spent the night in the house were not in the slightest hurry to break up the party, for such a company, they all knew, could hardly be assembled again. The governors were a trifle nervous as to the attitude of the press, in spite of Collins’s efforts to dictate what history should say of the affair on the Raccoon; but before they left the table the Raleigh morning papers were brought in, and it was clear that the newspaper men were keeping their contract.
“I congratulate you, Dangerfield,” said Governor Osborne. “I only hope that the Columbia and Charleston papers have done half as well by me.”
Both governors had decided upon an inspection of such portions of their militia as were assembled on the Raccoon, and a joint dress parade was appointed for six o’clock.
Ardmore, anxious to make every one at home, saw the morning pass without a chance to speak to Jerry; and when he was free shortly before noon he was chagrined to find that she had gone for a ride over the estate with her father, Governor Osborne, Barbara, and Griswold. He went in pursuit, and to his delight found her presently sitting alone on a log by the Raccoon, having dismounted, it appeared, to rescue a fledgling robin whose cries had led her away from her companions. She pointed out the nest, and directed him to climb the tree and restore the bird. This done, he sat down beside her at a point where the Raccoon curved sweepingly and swung off abruptly into a new course.
“I hope your father didn’t scold you for anything we did,” he began meekly.
“No; he took it all pretty well, and promised that if I wouldn’t tell mamma what he had been doing—about coming down here with Governor Osborne just to settle an old score at poker—mamma doesn’t approve of cards, you know—that he would make me a present of a better riding horse than the one I now have, and he might even consider a trip abroad next summer.”
“Oh, you mustn’t go abroad! It’s—it’s so lonesome abroad!”
“How perfectly ridiculous! Has it never occurred to you that I am never lonesome, not even when I’m alone?”
“Well,” said Ardmore, who saw that he was headed for a blind alley, “I’m glad your father was not displeased with our work.”
“He’ll think we did pretty well after he’s read our correspondence in his letter books. I told him the stamp we stamped his name with worked better with the red ink pad than with the black one, which ought, at any rate, to be clear enough to a man of papa’s intelligence.”