Mrs. Brown was on what she called tender hooks. Her husband was waggishly of the opinion that the cheque would end by being spent on wagon loads of sugar for Sundown, that pampered circus beast.
“Has everybody finished objecting?”
Everybody had.
“Well, then, Miriam and I are going on a jaunt,—to New York and then South where it’s warm.”
“It’s a sort of holiday from me, I gather?” said Keble when the others had done exclaiming.
Miriam’s eyes turned in warning towards the speaker, whose lips broke into a smile, in relish of the “brute” which, diplomatically, was merely flashed across the room. This little passage arrested Louise, who had been for the twentieth time reminded, by Keble’s detachment, of the inexplicable poem.
“Or yours from me,” she replied. “What’s sauce for the gander—”
Keble judged the moment opportune for bringing forth his best Port, and while the three men took a new lease of life, the women chatted excitedly about resorts and itineraries.
Louise’s announcement had been especially welcome to Miriam. It promised an escape from umpiring,—from neutral-mindedness. Her cheeks burned a little.
The doctor was drifting back, along with Keble’s superintendent, into the rigorous pioneer days of the Valley, the days before the branch line had been built into Witney, contrasting the primitive arrangements of that era with the recent encroachments of civilization. The logical development in the talk would be some reference to Keble’s ambitious designs, which the spring would see well under way. Miriam glanced up to see how he would receive the cue, which usually roused him to enthusiasm. He allowed it to pass, and she was intrigued to see on his face a look of boyish, wistful abstraction, and loneliness.