“You love Lucy Carradyne!” she whispered.
“I fear I do,” he answered. “Though I have struggled against the conviction.”
A sudden crash startled them; shivers of glass fell before their feet; fit accompaniment to the shattered hopes of one who stood there. Kate Dancox, aiming at Mr. Grame’s hat, had sent her ball through the window. He leaped away to catch the culprit, and Eliza Monk sat down on the bench, all gladness gone out of her. Her love-dream had turned out to be a snare and a delusion.
“Who did that?”
Captain Monk, frightened from his after-dinner nap by the crash, came forth in anger. Kate got a box on the ear, and was sent to bed howling.
“You should send her to school, papa.”
“And I will,” declared the Captain. “She startled me out of a sleep. Out of a dream, too. And it is not often I dream. I thought I was hearing the chimes again.”
“Chimes which I have not yet been fortunate enough to hear at all,” said Mr. Grame with a smile. Eliza recalled the sound of the bells she had set in motion, and thought it must have reached her father in his sleep.
“By George, no! You shall, though, Grame. They shall ring the new year in when it comes.”
“Aunt Emma won’t like that,” laughingly commented Eliza. She was trying to be gay and careless before Robert Grame.