“How delightful! I don’t believe I ever saw one before. How did the war come out? Oh yes! We whipped you, didn’t we?”
“That’s conceded, I believe. I wasn’t born for a decade after it was all over, or I’d never have surrendered. But the government forgave us and let me go to West Point; so here we all are again, and I’m glad of it!”
Frank Pollock was undoubtedly a very agreeable young man, and Zelda Dameron liked him. When he said good night he asked if he might call on her, and Zelda said yes, certainly, though she remembered her uncle’s treatment of Captain Pollock on the river road very well. She knew of no reason why she should not be polite to Captain Pollock, whose manners and conversation were quite to her liking. If her uncle knew any real reason why Captain Pollock was not a proper person for her to know, he might say so.
CHAPTER XI
OVERHEARD BY EZRA DAMERON
“As a community we are nearly one hundred years old. We are an enlightened and prosperous people. Ours is a city of homes,—a city in which every man, no matter how humble, may have his own fireside; a city in which the American element has always dominated; a city finely expressive of the best in our native soil. Shame be upon us if we fail in these endeavors to aid and protect the unfortunate among us! And this appeal I speak not primarily for the societies here represented, but for the founders of our commonwealth,—in the name of the sincere and devoted men and women who planned this city and laid its foundations broad and deep, that we who follow them need never waver or hesitate or doubt in doing the work we find to do.”
Such was the close of an address given by Morris Leighton at the annual meeting of the Mariona Organized Charity Society. The society was facing several serious financial problems and this public meeting had been called at the Grand Opera House early in the fall, that support might be asked for the winter’s work. Michael Carr was president of the society and he had appointed Leighton to make this address, wishing, as he told the board of directors, to interest the younger generation in the work which the elders had carried on for so long that the public had grown tired of seeing and hearing them. Leighton was an effective speaker, and Carr had assigned him to this address with confidence that the society’s appeal would be spoken in a way to impress the large audience that always attended the society’s meetings.
A few evenings later Morris called on Zelda. It was now November and winter’s skirmish line had reached Mariona. A fire blazed in the grate of the parlor, which Zelda’s care had now brightened in many ways. She had found in the garret a handsome brass lamp, decorated with a fringe of crystals, and this became well an old table, which had been transferred from its traditional place in the center of the room to a more effective spot between the windows. Mr. Dameron shook hands with Leighton, whom he had seen often in the office of Knight, Kittredge and Carr, and several times at home. He had expected that young men would come to call on his daughter, now that she had returned to his roof, for this was the way of things in Mariona, and he wished Zelda to have the same liberty and the same advantages that other girls enjoyed. If her uncle and aunt expected him to deal churlishly with the girl and make a prisoner of her he would not gratify them. And there was a particular reason why Leighton’s appearance at the house interested him, for, with him as with Mrs. Forrest and Rodney Merriam, the young man’s name carried a certain suggestion which, in Ezra Dameron’s case, was not wholly pleasant.
Ezra Dameron had a sense of the proprieties, and he sat down and talked to Leighton amiably. There was a wide margin between a social and a business acquaintance; and Ezra Dameron studied Michael Carr’s chief clerk with interest in the few minutes that intervened before Zelda came down. There was a strange light in the old man’s eyes as he watched them greet each other. He went out presently to the sitting-room, and before his own fire he pondered long as the voices in the parlor stole out to him.
“I believe this is my fourth appearance, but Mrs. Forrest said I might come; and I hope I may refer confidently to your uncle.”
“I suppose you have to get some sort of permit to leave him for an evening. He never asks me for evenings alone.”