“But,” said Zelda, “he couldn’t use it! He’s so very good. Really good and proper people like Mr. Leighton never touch whisky.”
“Zee, don’t be silly. Olive Merriam, your cousin is given to foolishness. I hope you can show her the light of a little sweet reasonableness. She’s getting worse.”
“It’s wonderful how well she hides her real feelings,” said Olive. “But here comes that little soldier on horseback.”
Pollock was riding up to the house on his nimble-footed sorrel. He had been to the city and was returning to the quarters he had established in a dwelling on one of the farms lately bought by the government for the new post, which lay only a few miles from The Beeches.
He swung to the ground and advanced to the railing with the rein in his left hand, his gray fedora hat in his right, and saluted them all.
Rodney Merriam sat forward in his chair, bending his keen gaze on Pollock. The girls had already nodded to the officer most amiably, but Rodney frowned and shook his head. Many things had irritated him to-day. The walk from the car to the Dameron house had tired him; he was not wholly pleased to find Olive Merriam installed with Zelda at the farm-house, though he knew that he should find her there; and Zelda’s slighting remark about Morris Leighton had added to his annoyance. And now Pollock, who had been in Washington for several months, had reappeared in Mariona.
“How dare he come here?” asked Rodney, half-aloud.
“It doesn’t take a very big dare, for we have expressly asked him,” answered Zelda, as Pollock walked around to the veranda steps.
“He’s a little fellow,” reflected Merriam, under his breath. Pollock came up the steps, shaking hands with Zelda and Olive. As the young man turned toward him with hand outstretched, Rodney Merriam feigned not to see it, but bowed stiffly. Pollock brought himself a chair from the hall, as Zelda bade him, and sat down; but Rodney Merriam remained standing.
“Zee, I beg of you take good care of that bottle. You may tell Morris when you see him that I’ll pay the bet for you. But don’t you bet against your uncle again.”