CHAPTER XVII

The next day went by before Rose was believed to be well enough to cast a fly. Mr. Ellett dropped down to ask how Miss Lyndsay was, and to leave a note from Carington, with a half-dozen of the famous Millers.

Aunt Anne smiled a little as she caught Mr. Ellett on his way to the house, no one else but she being at home. She made herself very amusing, and, as Ellett was enthusiastic about Carington, she bagged, as she said, all there was to be known of both young men.

“You see, Miss Lyndsay, I am unlucky enough to have more money and more time than Carington says is good for me. But everybody has the same time as everybody else. That’s so, isn’t it? I saw it in—I think I saw it in Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations.’ Ever read it, Miss Lyndsay?”

“Yes,” said Anne, charmed with her capture.

“I don’t have much time now. I go in for managing hospitals and things. You see, Fred says a man who can run a club can manage a hospital. Good notion, that. He says men are better housekeepers than women.”

“What heresy!”

228“Isn’t it? Nowadays Fred has more money than I have. You see, he builds bridges and things.”

“Then you and your friend Mr. Carington have little in common, from your account.”

“Oh, yes, we have; we like each other.”

“That’s neatly and nicely said; but don’t you think that, on the whole, in people who are intellectually sympathetic, unlikeness of tastes and pursuits may be as good a foundation for friendship as a common fondness for this or that?”

“Y-e-s,” said the small gentleman, somewhat perplexed. He was slow of apprehension, but in the end likely enough to become clear as to what he should think of things said. Miss Anne, on the other hand, was a rapid talker and thinker, and sometimes overestimated the capacity of people to follow her.

“We were speaking of this last week. I said then that as little reason goes into the making of most friendships as into most love-affairs, or, for that matter, into most of the religious attachments which men call their beliefs. Friendship ought to be a tranquil love-affair of the head, without base question of dot,” and she laughed.

“But I like a fellow first, and then find reasons for it afterward.”

“I said it was a love-affair of the head. I have a small heart somewhere in my head; I know that. Some folks have two heads, and call one a heart.”

“I don’t think I quite follow you, Miss Lyndsay,” said Ellett.

“Oh, there’s no need to.”

229“But it’s dreadful to get left the way I do, at the first hurdle. I was going to tell you what Fred said to me once; it wasn’t bad at all. He said once that ours was a friendship of convenance at first, and then, afterward— Well, the fact was, I happened to hear that he needed money, and I used to admire him, but I never did think he would care for a fellow like me, that shot pigeons, and rode steeplechase, and—killed things.”

“And you helped him?”

“Good heavens, Miss Lyndsay! I never meant to—to say anything about that. I—”

“You need not apologize,” she said, smiling. “I am getting to be a pretty old maid, and that gives me privileges. I think I like Mr. Carington’s friend”; and she said to herself, “You are a dear, shrewdly simple little man.”

Then he thanked her, blushing as he rose, and saying:

“Now, I must go and get a fish.”

As for Rose, she began to feel that it was rather nice of Mr. Carington to be in no haste to come after the inevitable gratitude; but when a pleasant note came to Mrs. Lyndsay inclosing the flies, she began also to have a certain amount of curiosity as to the man in question, much, I suppose, like the beginning of that same fatal emotion which in the end causes the salmon to inspect at closer quarters the provocative Jock Scott or Durham ranger.

It was now near the end of their second week, and the after part of the third day from that which saw the drama of the bear and cub. Rose had killed two 230salmon in the morning, and, not having altogether gotten over the loss of blood, had declined to fish again in the afternoon. Anne was in her room, the mother out in the boat with Mr. Lyndsay, and the boys off to dig up the unhappy woodchuck. Rose had the pleasant feeling of having the house to herself. She took a volume of Lowell, and, settling herself in the hammock, was soon so deep in the delicate analysis of Gray that she did not observe the coming canoe, until of a sudden Carington was beside her.

“Good evening, Miss Lyndsay.”

Rose made the usual awkward effort to rise from her comfortable nest, saying, “I am like the starling, I can’t get out.”

“Permit me,” he said, and, with the help of his hand, she was on her feet.

“Upon my word,” she laughed, “you seem to be essential to the getting me out of scrapes. I am, I was, always shall be hopelessly in your debt,” and she blushed prettily, feeling that she had been less formal than she had meant to be. “Pray sit down,” she added, taking a camp-stool.

“Thanks. Don’t you think that to give a man such a chance to oblige people like—like your father and mother—rather puts the sense of obligation on the other side?”

“Aunt Anne says that it is written large on some debts, ‘Not transferable.’ You have put it very nicely, and still you must let me say once for all, I thank you.”

“And I am forgiven for my boy frolic?”

231“I don’t know,” she cried, smiling. “That is not nominated in the bond.”

“Well, we will consider the other obligations settled,” he said, “and leave this for future adjustment. You will give me what the men call a good ‘recommend’ for a new place as bowman? I am rather vain of my poling. How wet you were!”

“Wet! You have no idea. It established new standards of moisture for me. But we got the fish.”

He liked the pronoun of partnership.

“Yes. I wonder if Mr. Lyndsay would let you fish our water. I could promise you a salmon or two. Ellett would like to exchange to-morrow afternoon, and try your lower pool, so that, if Mr. Lyndsay would take the lower half of our fishing and we the upper, we should be agreeably matronized—patronized I should say. Will you be so good as to give your father this note?”

Rose said yes, and he took up the book she had dropped into the hammock.

“Lowell! I like his essays more than his verse, except always the immortal fun of the Biglow Papers. That must surely live. For most of his poetry I care little.”

“Yes, it is graceful, interesting at times, which is not true of some much greater verse; but I do not care for it much,—and that is dreadful, because we all know him well and love him well.”

“Indeed! How pleasant that must be! Long as I have lived near him, I have never seen him.”

“We shall quarrel here and now if you do not at once praise the Biglow Papers.”

232“Oh! but I could not say too much of them. After their kind they stand alone.”

“Thank you! And how rare it is that the poets combine humor with the higher qualities! It is sadly true of our day.”

“Yes, yes! It is laughable to hear people talk of Browning’s humor. At times he is grotesque or sardonic—never delicately humorous or funny. We want a word in between fun and humor. And Tennyson is not humorous. It all seems a part of the gloom which has fallen on English letters.”

“Oh, there is ‘Plump head-waiter at the Cock’!”

“That is the exception, and is not very notable, like Lowell’s sustained and delightful verbal play; the rest are no better or worse off—the lesser larks, I mean.”

“Yes, and Shelley has no humor, and Keats’s attempts are only illustrations of the fact that editors don’t know where to draw the line.”

“How agreeable we are!” he said, laughing. He had the happy art of low-pitched laughter.

“That way of saying we agree,” she said, “would delight Aunt Anne.”

“And do you find time up here to read much?” he went on. “I cannot. The hours go by like the water, without freight of thought.”

“Not much,” she returned. “I read very little here, although at home we are mighty consumers of books. I am as little fond of the needle as is my aunt, but one takes up a book lazily here as a sort of companion that does not insist on answers.”

“You seem to have provided a goodly ration,” he returned, looking about him.

233“I am hardly responsible for this mob of books. My good mother is in despair over our accumulations, and my father declares that the house at home is a Noah’s ark of books after their kind.”

“And what kind?” said Carington, much pleased to get off so easily from what he had feared might be an importunate debtor.

“Oh, every kind! Of course, my good father’s legal books now and then drift away from their proper place. Then Jack collects voyages and ferocities by land and sea, and Dick will spend his last dime on books about beasts and plants. My dear Ned reads everybody’s books with entire impartiality. Aunt Anne must have digested libraries; but then she is not like anybody else. I hardly call it reading. She falls upon a book, and appears to look it over carelessly, and then, after you have read it with attention, you find that she knows twice as much about it as you do.”

“But that is very interesting. I judged from our little chat at breakfast that Miss Anne was out of the ranks of our commonplace world. And she reads widely?”

“Yes! We call her the ‘book-hawk.’ It is rare fun to see her pounce on a tempting volume.”

“She struck me, if I may venture to say so, as most interesting; but that there should remain this immense, ever active energy of appropriation with feeble health seems remarkable.”

A little surprised, Rose asked, “Why do you think her ill?”

“She told me so,—or hardly that: she was merely 234led to say she was not strong, and a glance at that pale drawn face, Miss Lyndsay, would—pardon me—I—”

“No. Perhaps I should explain my surprise. It was because to hear of Aunt Anne as confessing weakness was to me more strange than you can imagine, unless you knew her as we do.”

“I liked it,” said Carington.

“Yes. It means that she—well—it means that she is going to like you—a signal.”

“Thank you; that is very pleasant. But, talking of books again, you left off just where I hoped you were going to tell me what books after your kind go into the family ark.”

“I was going to do nothing of the sort,” cried Rose, with a laugh. “You will think we are a dull set of mere book-grubbers. I can assure you we are very foolish people, and can be as silly as the silliest.”

“You shall have credit for any possible margin of folly.”

“Oh, there must be a limit. I did not want to leave you to think we are what Aunt Anne calls book proud.”

“Book proud?”

“Yes. You must have known people who seem at some time to have suddenly discovered books, the real books, and are vastly set up by their new-found wealth.”

“I know. I was stupid. My friend Ellett came pretty near to having a grave case of the malady soon after I first knew him, but he was cured easily with the tenth dilution of a sarcasm.”

“Were you the doctor?”

235“I was. I hope you liked him, Miss Lyndsay. I like my friend to be liked by—by every one.”

“You meant to say, by your friends,” she returned, with pretty frankness. “You have committed the folly of making a large addition to your list.”

“And I may include Miss Rose Lyndsay?” he said, as he stood up.

“That goes without saying.”

“But I want it with the saying.”

“Then you have it,” and she gave her hand for good-by, and he went away. At the cliff edge he paused.

“I shall be dreadfully disappointed if we do not get the fishing.”

“But I think we shall.”

“Then good-by again.” In a moment he was in his canoe, for he had come alone, and was sturdily poling up the stream. The well-knit figure in the becoming guise of jacket and knickerbockers held her eye until it was lost around the river curves. Then she said aloud:

“That is a very nice man.”

The man in the canoe said to himself:

“Please God I shall marry that woman.”

An hour ago she was Miss Lyndsay and as other women had been to him. But now—he smiled.

When Miss Lyndsay had made her own little statement, she looked about her shyly of a sudden, as if fearful lest some one might have overheard her, and, reassured by the knowledge that she was alone, added:

“I am not as sorry as I was.” The why of this last decision she did not seek to analyze, but dropped 236into the hammock, and, lulled by its motion, by and by fell asleep.

After awhile came Lyndsay on tip-toe, and, smiling, kissed her, and then again before she quite waked up.

“A pair—two pair—of gloves,” he cried.

At this she sat up, with a faint blush on her cheek, fetched from far away out of dreamland. I do not know of what she was dreaming.

“You startled me so, Pardy. How wicked you are! Mr. Carington has been here, and left a note for you.”

“And you settled your small obligations—hey, Rose?”

“I did.”

“Difficult?” He had anticipated her embarrassments.

“No. Not even you could have been nicer about it.”

“And you liked him? We did.”

“Yes—oh, yes,” she said with indifference. “I thought him pleasant. He talks quite well, and is a gentleman.”

“Rather mild praise for a man who—”

“Don’t, please, Pardy; I—I hate to be joked about it.”

“I won’t, dear. To say, in these days of too easy fashions, that a man is a gentleman means, for us at least, a good deal.”

“I think so. Of course, I had to say distinctly that I thanked him, and he received it so—so quietly and simply that I was not in the least embarrassed. I can’t tell you, Pardy, how absurdly I dreaded it.”

Thereupon Mr. Lyndsay went in, saying to himself:

“I hope the receiver isn’t going to be the thief—confound the business!”