The Cradlebow knelt on the doorstep. I would have stooped to his forehead, but he put up his arm with an extremely boyish, inoffensive gesture, almost with a sob, I thought, to draw me closer.
I would have had that kiss as passionless as though it had been given to a child. The Cradlebow's breath was pure upon my cheek—but I was compelled to feel the answering flame creep slowly in my own blood.
"Never ask me to do that again!" I exclaimed, in righteous exculpation of the act. "Never!"
CHAPTER VIII.
FESTIVITIES AT THE ARK.
Up from the beach, lightly tripping, capacious reticule in hand, came Mrs. Barlow to spend the day at the Ark, unexpectedly! The inspired and felicitous customs of the Wallencampers admitted of no rude surprises; rational joy, alone, pervaded the Ark at this matutinal advent.
Mrs. Barlow, Lovell's mother, presented a charmingly antique appearance—antique not in the sense of advanced years, but the young antique—the gay, the lively, the never-fading antique. She had even a girlish way of simpering and uttering absurdly rapturous exclamations. Her face might have struck one at first as being of a strangely elongated cast, but for its extreme prettiness and simplicity of expression. Her nose was marked by a becoming scallop or two. Her eyes were of the ocean blue. Her dark hair was arranged, behind, in the simplest and most compact manner possible but, in front, art held delightful play. There, it was parted, slightly to the left, over a broad, high forehead, and disposed in braids of eight strands each, gracefully and lovingly looped over Mrs. Barlow's ears.
The tide of cheerful converse was at its full when I came from school to lunch. Amid this preponderance of female society, my friend, Grandpa, shone with an ardent though faintly tolerated light, giving to the lively flow of the discourse, an occasional salty and comprehensive flavor, which dear Grandma Keeler held herself ever in calm and religious readiness to restrain.
I listened, intensely interested, to the conversation, quite content, for my own part, to keep silence; but I caught Mrs. Barlow's eye fixed on me as if in abstracted, beatific thought. Soon was made known the result of her meditation. She had concluded that I was incapable of descending to subjects of an ordinary nature. Leaning far forward on the table, with a smile more ecstatic than any that had gone before, she directed these words at me in a clear, swift-flowing treble:—