“Mr. Sheridan, I thank you. I accept your pusillanimous offer,” she said, in the full, bell-like tone of a public official. “Samuel, we shall not emburden you.”
In vain did Sam assure her that he would be only too happy, that there was nothing he would like to do more; meanwhile sending at Lily reproachful looks fit to melt a heart of stone. Lily simply did not see them. In cool triumph, Mr. Sheridan escorted the two ladies to his sleigh.
An hour later,—it was after one o’clock—he entered his library, where Peterson had kept the fire burning, threw off his coat, and sat down to try to work out the puzzle of Lily’s conduct. On the way home, they had exchanged hardly six words. But if Lily had been silent, the same could not be said for her mamma. Even now he seemed to hear the incessant, rich tones of Mrs. Deacon’s voice ringing in his ear, as they say the booming of the sea echoes in certain shells. He could not remember whether he had ever answered her or not. But Lily? It seemed evident to him that she had not wanted to talk with him or to dance with him during the party. It seemed equally evident that she had wanted to drive home in his sleigh. Now what was the meaning of behavior like that?
By two o’clock he had come to the conclusion that she was a coquette, that he was a donkey, and that the best thing he could do was to tell Peterson to pack up and be ready to pull up their stakes the day after to-morrow. He had been acting like an awful fool anyway. He was twenty-five years old; too old to be acting like a schoolboy. How in the world had Mary Abbott been able to—
By three o’clock he had come to another conclusion. He wasn’t going to go away at all. He’d be hanged if he’d be chased around the earth by women. He was going to stay where he was. He was going to go in for farming. He liked the quaint old town, he liked the solid, intelligent, industrious, practical people. He liked Mr. Webster for instance, and Mrs. Webster, and Dolly, and old Mr. Pyncheon, and he quite loved that little Janey Lambert, and he liked—well, already the list had grown to a fairly respectable length for a confirmed misanthrope.
At half past six, Peterson coming into the library to see that everything was in order, discovered his master sleeping placidly in the huge armchair, surrounded by, almost buried under books, pamphlets and almanacs which had never been taken down from their shelves since the late Major had been a young and hopeful devotee of farming. He picked one up, and holding it at arm’s length read the title, “Fertilizers and Fertilization.” The old man drew a deep, long-suffering sigh.
“Lord, it was bad enough before,” he thought despondently, looking down at Mr. Tim, and shaking his head slowly. “It can’t be that he’s goin’ in to be a useful citizen. Whatever would the Major say to that?”
Then he suddenly remembered the old Major’s invariable reply to such propositions. Quite undisturbed, and in the most astounding French, he used to say, “Searchez le Femme.”
[CHAPTER X—PAUL AND CARL]
Paul, in his heavy canvas apron, his sleeves rolled up, flour in his hair, on his eyelashes, and on the end of his nose, sat on a three-legged stool in front of the door of the big oven. There was an expression of such dogged concentration on his face, such fierce intensity in the grim frown between his eyebrows, that one might have thought he was expecting to draw forth a new universe, remodelled nearer to his heart’s desire, from the roasting bakeoven. The event he was anticipating was indeed of great moment not only to him but to at least four other members of the household who had gathered in the kitchen—Aunt Gertrude, Jane, Elise, and ruddy little Anna, the bouncing little assistant cook and shop-keeper, who never could watch Paul’s culinary struggles without going into a fit of giggling.