"Well, Herb, it is not for your individual benefit," cried Josie, closing the book and rising from the piano.
She was about to say something further when a glance from Mr. Lawson caused her to stammer and blush in sad confusion. "What have I done?" thought the girl. "He is angry at me." And whenever she turned the reproachful eyes seemed to confront her.
Was there any real cause for such alarm?
Josie Jordan was of a highly-wrought, imaginative mind, quick to suspect, impulsive and full of vagaries and oftentimes those susceptibilities led many a wild-goose chase. There was another that interpreted the look from a different standpoint. Jennie Montgomery learned to realize Phillip Lawson's thoughts, and she felt that a yearning sympathy had arisen within herself; yet, she knew full well that her friend Josie was ignorant of anything which would suggest the song, and as she was going to ask the hitter for one of her favorites, Mr. Lawson came and stood beside Josie, exclaiming in the softest and most gentle tone, "You sing well, Miss Josie, I'm afraid that you have got yourself into trouble, for I am a lover of song and—"
"Have become a perfect bore," cried Josie, "there I have done you the service to finish the sentence, Mr. Lawson."
"Look here, Miss Jordan, the genial atmosphere of Kings County has not any beneficial effect upon your good behaviour," cried Herbert Rutherford, glancing at the pretty half-grown child with an air of much gravity, and wondering if she will be a child-woman as well.
"I like Mr. Lawson only he has a strange way of looking at you," was Josie's comment as the girls sought a snug little nook upstairs to have a quiet chat before retiring.
"Mr. Lawson is a deep thinker, and ever in his brown-study his eyes may happen to be riveted on you or any other object, yet he sees it not. He is looking upon a picture perhaps fairer, perhaps less fair, as circumstances may suggest, but depend upon it, he is lost to all outward surroundings."
The words had no sooner escaped Jennie Montgomery's lips than she regretted them, but happily her remarks did not take deep root in the minds of her girl companions.
The many little tidbits of girlish gossip and jokes were followed by merry laughter until the heavy stroke of the old clock of the household suggested that if they wished a good day's sport they must first have refreshing sleep, and soon all was still within the quaint sleeping-rooms, wherein the merry maidens dreamt their girlhood dreams. But in the snowy white chamber hitherto described in a preceding chapter there were subdued sounds which betrayed the disturbed state of the occupant.