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Page 54
Burns advanced again. "May I have the honour?" he asked, stooping over
the tiny figure with outstretched arms.
"You'll find me pretty heavy, Doctor," said she, but she put up her
arms and clasped his neck as he lifted her, quite as if it were a matter
of course with her to have stalwart men offer their services on all
occasions. Burns strode up the steep and narrow staircase with her as if
she had been a child, Charlotte preceding him with a pair of candles. In
her own room he laid the little old lady on her bed, then stooped once
more.
"May I have a reward for that?" he asked, and without waiting for
permission kissed the delicate cheek, as soft and smooth as velvet
beneath his lips.
"You are a very good young man," said the old lady. "I think I shall have
to adopt you as a grandson."
Burns laid his hand on his heart and made her a deeply respectful bow, at
which she laughed and waved him away.
"Adorable," said he to Charlotte, on his way down, "is not a word which
men use over every small object, as you women do, therefore it should
have the more force when they do make use of it. No other word fits
little Madam Chase so well. Consider me yours to command in her service,
at any hour of day or night."
"Thank you," Charlotte called softly after him. "I assure you she will
command you herself, and delight in doing it. She never fails to
recognize homage when she receives it, or to demand it when she does
not. But she will give you quite as much as she takes from you."
"I'm confident of it," and Burns descended to his wife. "You have a
rival," he told her solemnly.
CHAPTER X
A RUNAWAY ROAD
Camera hung by a strap over her shoulder, small tripod tucked under her
arm, Charlotte Chase Ruston, photographer, turned aside from the country
road along which she was walking, to follow a winding lane leading into a
deep wood. The luring entrance to this lane had been beyond her power to
resist, although the sun had climbed nearly to the zenith, warning her
that it was time to turn her steps toward home. In her search for
picturesque bits of landscape to turn to account in her work, her
enthusiasm was likely at any time to lead her far afield.
Just as the lane promised to debouch into an open meadow and release its
victim from any special sense of curiosity, it suddenly swerved to one
side, forced its way under a pair of bars, and ran curving away into deep
shadows, fringed with ferns, and overhung with the dense foliage of oak
and walnut. A distant glimpse of brilliant scarlet flowers, standing like
sentinels in uniform against the dark green of the undergrowth, beckoned
like a hand. With a laugh Charlotte set her foot upon the bottom rail.
"I'm coming," she called blithely to the scarlet flowers. "You needn't
shout so loud at me."
Hurrying, because of the hour, she pulled her blue linen skirts over the
fence, and dropped lightly upon the other side. She ran along the lane to
the flowers, stopped to admire, but refused to pick them, telling them
they were better where they were, and would droop before she could get
them home. Then she went swiftly on around a bend in the cart-path,
catching the faint sound of falling water, and impelled to seek its
source, just as is every one at hearing that suggestive sound. And, of
course, the water was farther away than it sounded.
A trifle short of breath, from her haste, she ran it down at last, and
came upon it--a series of small waterfalls down which a small stream
tumbled recklessly along a vagrant watercourse, seeming to care little
when it reached its destination, so that it contrived to have plenty of
fun and exercise by the way. And on the bank, stretched recumbent, hands
clasped under head, lay a long figure in gray flannels, a straw hat and a
book at its side.
Charlotte stopped short. The figure turned its head, sat up, and got
rather quickly to its feet, pushing back a heavy, dark lock of hair which
had fallen across a tanned forehead. Dr. John Leaver came forward.
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