I could see that Jake's doubtful compliment was not exactly relished by the lady. Nevertheless, she smiled on him so sweetly that he stood grinning at her, and might still have been so standing had not I pulled him to earth by the sleeve, three steps at a time.
CHAPTER XV
"Music Hath Charms—"
He left me at the wharf without a word. I went into the house, threw off my dirty overalls and indulged in the luxury of a bath. Not a salt-water apology for one,—a real, live, remove-the-dirt, soapy, hot-water bath;—and it did me a world of good both mentally and bodily.
I dressed myself in clean, fresh linen, donned my breeches, a pair of hand-knitted, old-country, heather hose and a pair of white canvas shoes. I shaved and brushed my hair to what, in my college days, I had considered its most elegant angle.
The remainder of the afternoon and evening was my own. I was just at that agreeable stage of body-weariness where a book and a smoke seemed angels from heaven. I had the books,—lots of them,—I had tobacco and my pipe, I had a hammock to sling from the hooks on the front veranda,—so, what care had I?
I chose a volume of "Macaulay's Essays" and, with a sigh,—the only articulate sign of an unutterable content,—I stretched myself in the hammock, blew clouds of smoke in the air and resigned myself to the soothing influences.
I had lain thus for perhaps an hour, when a shadow intervened between the page I was reading and the glare of the sun.
It was Miss Grant.