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Page 29
"Lloyd," he said quietly, "which one of us, Bennett or I, were you
speaking of just then? You know what I mean; which one of us?"
"I was speaking of the man who was strong enough to do great things,"
she said.
Ferriss drew the stumps of his arms from his pockets and smiled at them
grimly.
"H'm, can one do much--this way?" he muttered.
With a movement she did not try to restrain Lloyd put both her hands
over his poor, shapeless wrists. Never in her life had she been so
strongly moved. Pity, such as she had never known, a tenderness and
compassion such as she had never experienced, went knocking at her
breast. She had no words at hand for so great emotions. She longed to
tell him what was in her heart, but all speech failed.
"Don't!" she exclaimed. "Don't! I will not have you."
A little later, as they were returning toward the carriages, Lloyd,
after a moment's deliberation upon the matter, said:
"Can't I set you down somewhere near your rooms? Let your carriage go."
He shook his head: "I've just given up my downtown rooms. Bennett and I
have taken other rooms much farther uptown. In fact, I believe I am
supposed to be going there now. It would be quite out of your way to
take me there. We are much quieter out there, and people can't get at us
so readily. The doctor says we both need rest after our shaking up.
Bennett himself--iron as he is--is none too strong, and what with the
mail, the telegrams, reporters, deputations, editors, and visitors, and
the like, we are kept on something of a strain. Besides we have still a
good deal of work to do getting our notes into shape."
Lewis brought the ponies to the edge of the walk, and Lloyd and Ferriss
separated, she turning the ponies' heads homeward, starting away at a
brisk trot, and leaving him in his carriage, which he had directed to
carry him to his new quarters.
But at the turn of the avenue Lloyd leaned from the phaeton and looked
back. The carriage was just disappearing down the vista of elms and
cottonwoods. She waved her hand gayly, and Ferriss responded with the
stump of one forearm.
On the next day but one, a Friday, Lloyd was to go to the country. Every
year in the heat of the summer Lloyd spent her short vacation in the
sleepy and old-fashioned little village of Bannister. The country around
the village was part of the Searight estate. It was quiet, off the
railroad, just the place to forget duties, responsibilities, and the
wearing anxieties of sick-rooms. But Thursday afternoon she expected
Bennett.
Thursday morning she was in her room. Her trunk was already packed.
There was nothing more to be done. She was off duty. There was neither
care nor responsibility upon her mind. But she was too joyful, too
happily exalted, too exuberant in gayety to pass her time in reading.
She wanted action, movement, life, and instinctively threw open a window
of her room, and, according to her habit, leaned upon her elbows and
looked out and down upon the square. The morning was charming. Later in
the day it probably would be very hot, but as yet the breeze of the
earliest hours was stirring nimbly. The cool of it put a brisker note in
the sombre glow of her cheeks, and just stirred a lock that, escaping
from her gorgeous coils of dark-red hair, hung curling over her ear and
neck. Into her eyes of dull blue--like the blue of old china--the
morning's sun sent an occasional unwonted sparkle. Over the asphalt and
over the green grass-plots of the square the shadows of the venerable
elms wove a shifting maze of tracery. Traffic avoided the place. It was
invariably quiet in the square, and one--as now--could always hear the
subdued ripple and murmur of the fountain in the centre.
But the crowning delight of that morning was the sudden appearance of a
robin in a tree close to Lloyd's window. He was searching his breakfast.
At every moment he came and went between the tree-tops and the
grass-plots, very important, very preoccupied, chittering and calling
the while, as though he would never tire. Lloyd whistled to him, and
instantly he answered, cocking his head sideways. She whistled again,
and he piped back an impudent response, and for quite five minutes the
two held an elaborate altercation between tree-top and window-ledge.
Lloyd caught herself laughing outright and aloud for no assignable
reason. "Ah, the world was a pretty good place after all!"
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