"Thank you, sir," said Robert, a little stiffly, not relishing a pleasantry at Barbara's expense, though Barbara herself had broken into a peal of gay laughter, flattered at Doctor John's implications, and comforted to know that Robert was not slipping beyond her reach. "Thank you, indeed, sir; but I have no excuse; I was fully committed to Mistress Barbara's venture, and I'm just as much to blame as she is!"
Barbara's heart glowed. This was the kind of unreasonable championship she adored. But truth compelled her to protest.
"Oh, no, no, Robert, not at all! It wasn't you that ran away from Aunt Hitty, and took the canoe, and persuaded a nice, civil gentleman whom you'd never seen before in your life to do a perfectly crazy thing like you read of in story-books—" But, as she paused for breath, Doctor Jim, too impatient to be amused, interrupted her:
"Well, well, Robert, you and Barbara can settle all that between you some other time. We must get away. Good night—good night. My best compliments to your honoured grandmother! And ride over the first day you can, lad!"
And Doctor John, shaking his head sorrowfully, exclaimed:
"Tut, tut, tut! How small a petticoat can turn how great a brain! I see trouble ahead for you, Bobby!"
"I shall be so glad to see you at my aunt's, Robert!" cried Barbara, over her shoulder, as they moved up the street toward the Blue Boar and the waiting horses. Robert, standing hat in hand, gazed after them till they were swallowed up in the shadows. Still he waited, till a pulse of light across the gloom and the sound of the inn door closing told him that he was alone under the night. Then, suddenly, he became conscious of the lonely, wonderful night sounds, and suddenly the night perfumes sank into his heart. The spicy breaths from the clover field and blossoming thicket, cooled with dew, gave him a strange intoxication as he drew them into the depths of his lungs. The pulsing rhythm of the whippoorwill seemed to time itself to the pulsing of his heart and translate it to the terms of an impassioned, inarticulate chant. The plucked harp-strings sounding from time to time in the hidden heights of the sky set all his nerves vibrating mystically. Walking as if in a dream, he came to the door of the cottage where he had planned to stay the night. Then he turned on a swift impulse, hurried back to the landing, launched Barbara's canoe, and, without consciousness of weariness or hunger, paddled all the way back to Gault House against the current.
CHAPTER XI.
From Second Westings that morning, after old Debby's alarm, Doctor John and Doctor Jim had came posthaste on horseback to Westings Landing. Now, however, it was found that Barbara was quite too worn out by the fatigues of her long, strenuous day to sit a horse for a ten mile's ride over rough roads in the dark. Priding herself not less on her endurance than on her horsemanship, she vehemently repudiated the charge that she was done up, and was determined to ride back on the liveliest of the Blue Boar's horses. But Doctor John and Doctor Jim, scanning critically her white face and the dark rims coming about her eyes, for once agreed in a professional judgment. They ordered the horses hitched to the roomy old chaise, which was one of the landlord's most cherished possessions; and Barbara had to accept, rebelliously enough, the supineness of a cushioned seat for the free lift and swing of the saddle. Before the lighted doorway of the inn was out of sight, however, she was glad of the decision. Her overwrought nerves began to relax under the soothing of the wood scents and the tender summer dark. In a little while she was asleep in the strong curve of Doctor Jim's right arm,—so deep asleep that all the ruts and jolts and corduroy bridges of an old Connecticut back-country road were powerless to disturb her peace. When they woke her up, at her aunt's door, she was so drenched with sleep that she forgot to dread the reckoning. With drowsy, dark eyes, and red mouth softly trustful as a baby's, she bewildered Mistress Ladd by a warm kiss and "I'm sorry, Aunt Hitty!" and went stumbling off to bed with her basket of sleeping kittens, oblivious and irresponsible as they.