“But I must tell you,” she resumed, “Frank leaves on a business trip to-morrow night. He will be gone for some time, and I shall motor into town to see him off. I am wondering about Wilson,” she hurried on, as though not daring to weigh her words; “Sarah will be away—I am letting her have a little holiday—and I can’t take Wilson into town with me because it will be so late.” Then, with a burst of confession she spoke more deliberately. “That isn’t exactly the reason, Dennison; Frank doesn’t know I have let Sarah go, and I—I can’t explain.”
Her face shone pink and warm in the glow of the firelight, and as the significance of her words sank in upon him Grant marvelled at that wizardry of the gods which could bring such homage to the foot of man. A tenderness such as he had never known suffused him; her very presence was holy.
“Bring the boy over and let him spend the night with me. We are great chums and we shall get along splendidly.”
CHAPTER XXI
Grant spent his Sunday forenoon in an exhaustive house-cleaning campaign. Bachelor life on the farm is not conducive to domestic delicacy, and although Grant had never abandoned the fundamentals he had allowed his interpretation of essential cleanliness to become somewhat liberal. The result was that the day of rest usually confronted him with a considerable array of unwashed pots and pans and other culinary utensils. To-day, while the tawny autumn hills seemed to fairly heave and sigh with contentment under a splendor of opalescent sunshine, he scoured the contents of his kitchen until they shone; washed the floor; shook the rugs from the living-room and swept the corners, even behind the gramophone; cleared the ashes from the hearth and generally set his house in order, for was not she to call upon him that evening on her way to town, and was not little Wilson—he of the high adventures with teddy-bear and knife and pig—to spend the night with him?
When he was able to view his handiwork with a feeling that even feminine eyes would find nothing to offend, Grant did an unwonted thing. He unlocked the whim-room and opened the windows that the fresh air might play through the silent chamber. To the west the mountains looked down in sombre placidity as they had looked down every bright autumn morning since the dawn of time, their shoulders bathed in purple mist and their snow-crowned summits shining in the sun. For a long time Grant stood drinking in the scene; the fertile valley lying with its square farms like a checker-board of the gods, with its round little lakes beating back the white sunshine like coins from the currency of the Creator; the ruddy copper-colored patches of ripe wheat, and drowsy herds motionless upon the receding hills; the blue-green ribbon of river with its yellow fringes of cottonwood and bluffs of forbidding spruce, and behind and over all the silent, majestic mountains. It was a sight to make the soul of man rise up and say, “I know I stand on the heights of the Eternal!” Then as his eyes followed the course of the river Grant picked out a column of thin blue smoke, and knew that Zen was cooking her Sunday dinner.
The thought turned him to his dusting of the whim-room, and afterwards to his own kitchen. When he had lunched and dressed he took a stroll over the hills, thinking a great deal, but finding no answer. On his return he descried the familiar figure of Linder in a semi-recumbent position on the porch, and Linder’s well-worn car in the yard.
“How goes it, Linder?” he said, cheerily, as he came up. “Is the Big Idea going to fructify?”
“The Big Idea seems to be all right. You planned it well.”