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Page 56
He led the way. If she could have done so Charlotte would gladly have
turned and run away. But there are people from whom one cannot easily
run away, and Red Pepper Burns was one of them. With all his powers of
discernment, he had no possible notion that the two who followed him were
not eager to accept this arrangement. They looked well together, too, he
had observed as he neared them--exceedingly well. He was sure he was
doing them a favour in keeping them together as long as possible.
In point of actual distance he certainly succeeded literally in
keeping them extremely near together, during the few minutes it took to
get out of a winding wood-road to the main highway, and to drive at a
stimulating pace a mile down that road. When Leaver took his place upon
the running-board he was unavoidably close to Charlotte's knee, and his
head was within reach of her hand. His hand, grasping the only available
hold with which to keep himself in place, as Burns let the car go at high
speed, was close under her eyes.
Keeping his eyes upon the road, Burns, in a gay mood now, kept up a
running fire of talk, to which Charlotte, as became necessary, responded.
Leaver, straw hat in hand, also stared straight ahead, and Charlotte,
unobserved by either companion, looked at the head below her, its heavy,
dark-brown hair ruffled by the wind of their progress, noted--not for the
first time--the fine line of the partial profile, the shoulder in its
gray flannel, the well-knit hand, tanned, like its owner's face, with
much exposure. And, as she made these furtive observations, something
within her breast, which she had thought well under control, became
suddenly unmanageable.
"I'm sorry to desert you here, so ungallantly," Burns declared, bringing
the car to a standstill at a cross-road. "If my friend here were quite
fit I'd put him down, too, and give him the pleasure of walking in with
you. In a week or two more I'll turn him loose. Looks pretty healthy,
doesn't he?"
"I'm entirely able to walk in with Miss Ruston now," said Leaver,
standing, hat in hand, in the road, as Charlotte adjusted her belongings
and prepared to walk rapidly away.
"That's my affair, for a bit longer," and Burns put out a peremptory
hand. "Be good and jump in. The lady will excuse you, and I won't, so
there you are. Forgive me, Miss Ruston, and don't bring on heart failure
by walking too fast in this August sun."
"I won't. Good-bye, and thank you both," and Charlotte set briskly off
toward home, while the car swept round the turn and disappeared into
a hollow of the road.
"That's what I call a particularly worth-while girl," commented Burns, as
the Imp carried them away. "Beauty, and sense, and spirit, not to mention
originality and a few other attributes. You don't often get them all
combined. Good old family, according to my wife, but all gone now, and
this girl left to make her way on her own resources. But perhaps you know
all this already, since you've met her before?"
"I know the main facts?--yes," Leaver responded. His lips had taken on a
curiously tight set, since the car had left the corner. His eyes, under
their strongly marked brows, narrowed a little, as he looked out across a
field of corn yellowing in the sunlight. "She has visited more or less in
Baltimore, where she has been very much admired."
"Why 'has been'?" queried Burns. "She doesn't look like a 'has-been' to
me. More like very much of a 'now-and-here'--eh?"
"I mean only that since she has been thrown upon her own resources she
has applied herself closely to the study of photography, and has been
little seen in society."
"I imagine when she was seen she kept a few fellows guessing. She looks
to me as if she might have refused her full share of men."
"I have no doubt of it."
That which Burns would have enjoyed saying next he refrained from. But to
himself he made the observation: "By the signs I haven't much doubt you
were one of them, old man." Aloud he questioned innocently:
"You know her rather well?"
"Quite well."
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