Kitabı oku: «John March, Southerner», sayfa 20

"Big smash-up of freight-cyars in de yard; yass, seh. No seh, cayn't 'zac'ly tell jis how long we be kep' here, but 'f you dislikes to wait, Cap, you needn'. You kin teck a street-cyar here what'll lan' you right down 'mongs' de hotels an' things; yass, seh. See what; de wreck? No, seh, it's up in de yard whah dey don't 'llow you to pa-ass."

Out in the darkness beside the train March stood a moment. He could see Miss Garnet very plainly at her bright window and was wondering how she and her friends, but especially she, would take it if he should go back and help them while away this tiresome detention. If she had answered that last smile of his, or if she were showing, now, any tendency at all to look out the window, he might have returned; but no, howdy after farewell lacked dignity. The street-car came along just then and Barbara saw him get into it.

LVIII.
TOGETHER AGAIN

March did not put up at the most famous and palatial hotel; it was full. He went to another much smaller and quieter, and equally expensive. When he had taken supper he walked the dazzling streets till midnight, filled with the strangeness of the place and the greater strangeness of his being there, and with numberless fugitive reflections upon the day just gone, the life behind it, and the life before, but totally without those shaped and ordered trains of thought which no one has except in books.

Sometimes tenderly, sometimes bitterly, Fannie came to mind, in emotions rather than memories, and as if she were someone whom he should never see again. Once it occurred to him that these ghost walkings of thought and feelings about her must be very much like one's thoughts of a limb shattered in some disaster and lately cut off by a surgeon. The simile was not pleasant, but he did not see why he should want a pleasant one. Only by an effort could he realize she was still of this world, and that by and by they would be back in Suez again, meeting casually, habitually, and in a much more commonplace and uninteresting way than ever they had done in the past. He shuddered, then he sighed, and then he said ahem! and gave himself the look of a man of affairs. On men who stared at him he retorted with a frown of austere inquiry, not aware that they were merely noticing how handsome he was.

For a time he silently went through minute recapitulations of his recent colloquies with Miss Garnet, who seemed already surprisingly far away; much farther than any railroad speed could at all account for. He wished she were "further!" – for he could quote five different remarks of his own uttered to her that very day, which he saw plainly enough, now, nobody but a perfect fool could have made.

"Oh! Great Scott! What did possess me to drag her into my confidence?"

He "wondered if mesmerism had anything" – but rejected that explanation with disdain and dismissed the subject. And then this strange thing happened: He was standing looking into a show-window made gorgeous with hot-house flowers, when a very low voice close at hand moaned, "O Lord, no! I simply made an ass of myself," and when he turned sharply around no one was anywhere near.

He returned to his room and went to bed and to sleep wishing "to gracious" he might see her once more and once only, simply to show her that he had nothing more to confide – to her or any similar soft-smiling she! – The s's are his.

He did not rise early next morning. And in this he was wise. Rejoice, oh, young man, in your project, but know that old men, without projects, hearing will not hear – until they have seen their mail and their cashier; the early worm rarely catches the bird. John had just learned this in Pulaski City.

At breakfast he was again startled by a low voice very close to him. It was Mr. Fair.

"Mr. March, why not come over and sit with us?"

The ladies bowed from a table on the far side of the room. Mrs. Fair seemed as handsome as ever; while Miss Garnet! – well! If she was winsome and beautiful yesterday, with that silly, facing-both-ways traveling cap she had worn, what could a reverent young man do here and now but gasp his admiration under his breath as he followed his senior toward them?

Even in the lively conversation which followed he found time to think it strange that she had never seemed to him half so lovely in Suez; was it his over-sight? Maybe not, for in Suez she had never in life been half so happy. Mrs. Fair could see this with her eyes shut, and poor Barbara could see that she saw it by the way she shut her eyes. But John, of course, was blind enough, and presently concluded that the wonder of this crescent loveliness was the old, old wonder of the opening rose. Meanwhile the talk flowed on.

"And by that time," said John, "you'd missed your connection. I might have guessed it. Now you'll take – but you've hardly got time – "

No, Mrs. Fair was feeling rather travel weary; this was Saturday; they would pass Sunday here and start refreshed on Monday.

In the crowded elevator, when March was gone, Barbara heard Mrs. Fair say to her husband,

"You must know men here whom it would be good for him to see; why don't you offer to – " Mrs. Fair ceased and there was no response, except that Barbara said, behind her smiling lips,

"It's because he's in bad hands, and still I have not warned him!"

March did not see them again that day. In the evening, two men, friends, sitting in the hotel's rotunda, were conjecturing who yonder guest might be to whose inquiries the clerk was so promptly attentive.

"He's a Southerner, that's plain; and a gentleman, that's just as certain."

"Yes, if he were not both he would not be so perfectly at home in exactly the right clothes and yet look as if he had spent most of his life in swimming."

"He hasn't got exactly the right overcoat; it's too light and thin."

"No, but that's the crowning proof that he's a Southerner." It was John.

They hearkened to the clerk. "He's just gone to the theatre, Mr. March, he and both ladies. He was asking for you. I think he wanted you to go."

"I reckon not," said John, abstractedly, and in his fancy saw Miss Garnet explaining to her friends, with a restrained smile, that in Suez to join the church was to abjure the theatre. But another clerk spoke:

"Mr. March, did you – here's a note for you."

The clerk knew it was from Miss Garnet, and was chagrined to see John, after once reading it, dreamily tear it up and drop it to the floor. Still it increased his respect for the young millionaire – Mr. March, that is. It was as if he had lighted his cigar with a ten-dollar bill.

John wrote his answer upstairs, taking a good deal of time and pains to give it an air of dash and haste, and accepting, with cordial thanks, Mr. and Mrs. Fair's cordial invitation to go with them (and Miss Garnet, writing at their request) next day to church. Which in its right time he did.

On his way back to the hotel with Miss Garnet after service, John was nothing less than pained – though he took care not to let her know it – to find how far astray she was as to some of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. For fear she might find out his distress, he took his midday meal alone. And indeed, Miss Garnet may have had her suspicions, for over their ice-cream and coffee she said amusedly to Mrs. Fair, and evidently in reference to him,

"I am afraid it was only the slightness of our acquaintance that kept him from being pos-i-tive-ly pet-u-lent."

She seemed amused, I say, but an hour or so later, in her own room, she called herself a goose and somebody else another, and glancing at the mirror, caught two tears attempting to escape. She drove them back with a vigorous stamp of the foot and proceeded to dress for a cold afternoon walk among the quieted wonders of a resting city, without the Fairs, but not wholly alone.

LIX.
THIS TIME SHE WARNS HIM

As Miss Garnet and her escort started forth upon this walk, I think you would have been tempted to confirm the verdict of two men who, meeting and passing them, concluded that the escort was wasting valuable time when they heard him say,

"It did startle me to hear how lightly you regard what you call a memorized religion."

But this mood soon passed. A gentleman and lady, presently overtaking them, heard her confess, "I know I don't know as much as I think I do; I only wish I knew as much as I don't." Whereat her escort laughed admiringly, and during the whole subsequent two hours of their promenade scarcely any observer noticed the slightness of their acquaintance.

Across the fields around Suez their conversation would have been sprightly enough, I warrant. But as here they saw around them one and another amazing triumph of industry and art, they grew earnest, spoke exaltedly of this great age, and marvelled at the tangle of chances that had thrown them here together. John called it, pensively, a most happy fortune for himself, but Barbara in reply only invited his attention to the beauty of the street vista behind them.

Half a square farther on he came out of a brown study.

"Miss Barb" – It was the first time he had ever said that, and though she lifted her glance in sober inquiry, the music of it ran through all her veins.

" – Miss Barb, isn't it astonishing, the speed with which acquaintance can grow, under favorable conditions?"

"Is it?"

"Oh, well, no, it isn't. Only that's not its usual way."

"Isn't the usual way the best?"

"Oh – usually – yes! But there's nothing usual about this meeting of ours. Miss Barb, my finding you and your friendship is as if I'd been lost at midnight in a trackless forest and had all at once found a road. I only wish" – he gnawed his lip – "I only wish these three last days had come to me years ago. You might have saved me some big mistakes."

"No," Barbara softly replied, "I'm afraid not."

"I only mean as a sister might influence an older brother; cheering – helping – warning."

"Warning!" murmured Barbara, with drooping head and slower step. "You don't know what an evil gift of untimely silence I've got. If I've failed all my life long as a daughter, in just what you're supposing of me – "

"O come, now, Miss – "

"Don't stop me! Why, Mr. March" – she looked up, and as she brushed back a hair from her ear John thought her hand shook; but when she smiled he concluded he had been mistaken – "I've been wanting these whole three days to warn you of something which, since it concerns your fortunes, concerns nearly everyone I know, and especially my father. Is it meddlesome for me to be solicitous about your ambitions and plans for Widewood, Mr. March?"

"Now, Miss Garnet! You know I'd consider it an honor and a delight – Miss Barb. What do you want to warn me against? Mind, I don't say I'll take your warning; but I'll prize the friendship that – "

"I owe it to my father."

"Oh, yes, yes! I don't mean to claim – aha! I thought that tolling was for fire! Here comes one of the engines! – Better take my arm a minute – I – I think you'd better – till the whirlwind passes."

She took it, and before they reached a crossing on whose far side she had promised herself to relinquish it, another engine rushed by. This time they stood aside under an arch with her hand resting comfortably in his elbow. It still rested there when they had resumed their walk, only stirring self-reproachfully when John incautiously remarked the street's restored quietness.

Barbara was silent. When they had gone some distance farther John asked,

"Have I forfeited your solicitude? Will you not warn me, after all?" He looked at her and she looked at him, twice, but speech would not come; her lips only parted, broke into a baffled smile, and were grave again.

"I suppose, of course, it's against measures, not men, as they say, isn't it?"

"It's against men," said Barbara.

"That surprises me," replied John, with a puzzled smile.

"Why, Mr. March, you can't suppose, do you, that your high ambitions and purposes – "

"Oh, they're not mine; they're my father's. The details and execution are mine – "

"But, anyhow, you share them; you've said so. You don't suppose your associates – "

"What; share them the same way I do? Why, no, Miss Barb; it wouldn't be fair to expect that, would it? And yet, in a certain way, on a lower plane – from a simply commercial standpoint – they do. I don't include your father with them! I only wish I could reflect the spirit of my father's wishes and hopes as perfectly as he does."

"Mr. March, don't men sometimes go into such enterprises as yours simply to plunder and ruin those that go in honestly with them?"

"Oh, undoubtedly. You see, in this case – "

"Mr. March – "

"Yes, Miss Barb – "

"I believe certain men are in your company with that intention."

"But you don't know it, do you? Else you would naturally tell your father instead of me. You only – " He hesitated,

"I only see it."

"Oh – oh! have you no other evidence – only an intuition?"

"Yes, I have other evidence."

"Ah!" laughed John. "You've got higher cards, have you?"

Her eyes softly brightened in response to his. The next instant the hand in his arm awoke, but lay very still, as four men passed, solemnly raised their silk hats to March, and disappeared around a corner. They were the commercial travelers!

Her hand left his arm to brush something from her opposite shoulder, and did not return, but hid somewhere in her wrap, tingling with a little anguish all its own, in the realization that discovery is almost the only road to repentance. At the same time it could hear, so to speak, its owner telling, with something between a timorous courage and a calm diffidence, how, in Suez, she had drawn out a business man, unnamed, but well approved and quite disinterested, to say that she might tell Mr. March that, in his conviction, unless he got rid of certain persons – etc.

"I can tell you who it was, if you care to know. He said I might."

"No," said John, thoughtfully. "Never mind." And they heard their own footsteps for full two minutes. Then he said, "Miss Barb, suppose he is disinterested and sincere. Say he were my best friend. The thing's a simple matter of arithmetic. So long as your father and Jeff-Jack and I hang together there are not enough votes in the company to do anything we don't want done. I admit we've given some comparative strangers a strong foothold; but your father trusts them, and, if need be, can watch them. Does anybody know men better than Jeff-Jack does? But he knew just what we were doing when he consented to take charge of the three counties' interests; however, I admit that doesn't prove anything, Miss Barb, I know who said what you've told me, and I esteem and honor and love him as much as you do – wait, please. O smile ahead, if you like, only let me finish. You know we must take some risks, and while I thank him – and you, too, even if you do speak merely for your father's sake – I tell you the best moves a man ever makes are those he makes against the warnings of his friends! 'Try not the pass, the old man said,' don't you know?"

"This wasn't an old man."

"Wasn't it General Halliday?"

"No, sir, it was the younger Mr. Fair."

"Henry Fair," said John very quietly. He slackened his pace. He did not believe Fair cared that much for him; but it was easy to suppose he might seize so good a chance to say a word for Miss Garnet's own sake.

"Miss Barb, I don't doubt he thinks what he says. I see now why he failed to subscribe to our stock, after coming so far entirely, or almost entirely, to do it. He little knows how he disappointed me. I didn't want his capital, Miss Barb, half as much as his fellowship in a beautiful enterprise."

"He was as much disappointed as you, Mr. March; I happen to know it."

John looked at his informant; but her head was down once more.

"Well," he said, cheerily, "I'll just have to wait till – till I – till I've shown" – a beggar child was annoying him – "shown Fair and all of them that I'm not so green as I – " He felt for a coin, stood still, and turned red. "Miss – Miss Barb – " A smile widened over his face, and he burst into a laugh that grew till the tears came.

"What's the matter?" asked Barbara anxiously, yet laughing with him.

"Oh, I – I've let somebody pick my pockets. Yes, every cent's gone and my ticket to New York. I had no luck here yesterday, and I was going on to New York to-morrow." He laughed again, but ceased abruptly. "Good gracious, Miss Barb! my watch! – my father's watch!" The broad smile on his lips could not hide the grief in his eyes.

LX.
A PERFECT UNDERSTANDING

As they resumed their way Barbara did most of the talking. She tried so hard to make his loss appear wholly attributable to her, that only the sweetness of her throat and chin and the slow smoothness of her words saved her from seeming illogical. She readily got his admission that the theft might have been done in that archway as the engine rushed by. Very good! And without her, she reasoned, he would not have stopped. "Or, if you had stopped," she softly droned, with her eyes on her steps, "you would have had – "

"Oh, now, what would I have had?"

"Your hands in your pockets."

"That's not my habit."

"Oh, Mr. March!"

"My d-ear Miss Barb! I should think I ought to know!"

"Yes, sir; that's why I tell you." They laughed in partnership.

Mr. March was entirely right, Barbara resumed, not to tell his mishap to the Fairs, or to anyone, anywhere, then or thereafter. "But you're cruel to me not to let me lend you enough to avoid the rev-e-la-tion." That was the utmost she would say. If he couldn't see that she would rather lose– not to say lend – every dollar she had, than have anyone know where her hand was when his pocket was picked, he might stay just as stupid as he was. She remained silent so long that John looked at her, but did not perceive that she was ready to cry. She wore a glad smile as she said:

"I've got more money with me than I ought to be carrying, anyhow."

"Why, Miss Barb, you oughtn't to do that; how does that happen?" He spoke with the air of one who had never in his life lost a cent by carelessness.

"It's not so very much," was her reply. "It's for my share of Rosemont. I sold it to pop-a."

"What! just now when the outlook for Rosemont – why, Miss Barb, I do believe you did it to keep clear of our land company, didn't you?"

"Mr. March, I wish you would let me lend you some of it, won't you?"

"No, I'll be – surprised if I do. Oh, Miss Barb, I thank you just the same; but my father, Miss Barb, gave it to me, as a canon of chivalry, never to make a money bargain with a lady that you can't make with a bank. If I'm not man enough to get out of this pinch without – oh, pshaw!"

In the hotel, at the head of the ladies' staircase, they stood alone.

"Good-by," said John, unwillingly. "I'll see you this evening, shan't I, when I come up to say good-by to your friends?"

Barbara said he would. They shook hands, each pair of eyes confessing to the other the superfluity of the ceremony.

"Good-by," said John again, as if he had not said it twice already.

"Good-by. Mr. March, if you want to give securities – as you would to a bank – I – I shouldn't want anything better than your mother's poems."

He glowed with gratitude and filial vanity, his big hand tightening on hers. "Oh, Miss Barb! no, no! But God bless you! I wonder if anyone else was ever so much like sunshine in a prison window! Good-by!" She felt her hand lifted by his; but, when she increased its weight the merest bit, he let it sink again and slide from his fingers.

He was gone, and a moment later she was with the Fairs, talking slowly, with soft smiles; but her head swam, she heard their pleasant questions remotely as through a wall, and could feel her pulse to her fingers and feet. He had almost kissed her hand. "The next time – the next time – sweet heaven send this poor hand strength to resist just enough and – and not too much." So raved the prayer locked in her heart, or so it would have raved had she dared give it the liberty even of unspoken words.

Meanwhile, John March lay on his bed with the back of his head in his hands.

"I've offended her! There was no mistaking that last look. This wouldn't have happened if she hadn't let her hand linger in mine. Oh, I wish to heaven girls were not so senselessly innocent and sisterly! Great Cæsar! I'd give five hundred dollars not to have drooled that drivel about being her brother! George! She ought to know that only a fool or a scamp could make such an absurd proposal. I wonder if she still wants to lend me her money! I'd rather face a whole bank directorate with an overdrawn account than those Fairs this evening. I know exactly how they'll look. For it will be just like her to tell Mrs. Fair, who'll tell her husband, and they'll bury the thing right there with me under it, and 'Miss Garnet' will excuse herself on the plea of fatigue, and the conversation will drag, and I'll wish I had cut my throat in Pulaski City, and" – a steeple clock tolled the hour – "Oh, can it be that that's only six!"

At tea he missed them. Returning to his room, he had hardly got his hands under his head again, trying not to think of his financial embarrassments because it was Sunday, when a new idea brought him to his feet. Church! Evening service! Would she go? He had not asked her when she had intimated that the Fairs would not. In his selfish enjoyment of her society he had quite forgotten to care for her soul! He ought to go himself. And all the more ought she, for he was numbered among the saved now, and she was not. She must go. But how could she unless he should take her? His Christian duty was clear. He would write an offer of his services, and by her answer he would know how he stood in her regard.

Her reply was prompt, affirmative, confined to the subject. And yet, in some inexplicable way it conveyed the impression that she had never suspected him of the faintest intention to carry her hand to his lips.

The sermon was only so-so, but they enjoyed the singing; particularly their own. Both sang from one book, with much reserve, yet with such sweetly persuasive voices that those about them first listened and then added their own very best. The second tune was "Geer," and, with John's tenor going up every time Barbara's soprano came down, and vice versa, it was as lovely see-sawing as ever thrilled the heart of youth with pure and undefiled religion. They sang the last hymn to "Dennis." It was,

 
"Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love!"
 

and they gratefully accepted the support of four good, sturdy, bass voices behind them. But it was the words themselves, of the fourth and fifth stanzas, that inspired their richest yet softest tones, while the four basses behind them rather grew louder:

 
"When we asunder part
It gives us inward pain,
But we shall still be joined in heart
And hope to meet again.
 
 
"This glorious hope revives
Our courage by the way,
While each in expectation lives
And longs to see the day."
 

On the sidewalk the four basses again raised their four silk hats and vanished. They were the commercial travelers.

As the two worshippers returned toward their hotel, Barbara spoke glowingly of Mr. and Mrs. Fair; their perfect union; their beautiful companionship. John, in turn, ventured to tell of the unbounded esteem with which he had ever looked upon Barbara's mother. They dwelt, in tones of indulgent amusement, on the day, the hour, the scene, of John's first coming to the college, specially memorable to him as the occasion of his first real meeting of the Rose of Rosemont. Barbara said the day would always be bright to her as the one on which she first came into personal contact with Judge March. John spoke ardently of his father.

"And, by the bye, that day was the first on which I ever truly saw you."

"Or Johanna!" said Barbara. "Johanna's keeping Fannie Ravenel's new house. She's to stay with her till I get back." But John spoke again of Barbara's mother, asking permission to do so.

"Yes, certainly," murmured his companion. "In general I don't revere sacred things as I should," she continued, with her arm in her escort's, and "Blest be the tie" – still dragging in their adagio footsteps; "but my mother has all my life been so sacred to me – not that she was of the sort that they call otherworldly – I don't care for otherworldliness nearly as much as I should – "

"Don't you?" regretfully asked John; "that's one of my faults too."

"No; but I've always revered mom-a so deeply that except once or twice to Fannie, when Fannie spoke first, I've never talked about her." Yet Barbara went on telling of her mother from a full heart, her ears ravished by the music of John's interjected approvals. They talked again of his father also, and found sweet resemblances between the two dear ones. Only as they re-entered the hotel were both at once for a moment silent. Half way up the stairs, among the foliage plants of a landing ablaze with gas, they halted, while John, beginning, recited one of his mother's shorter poems.

 
"Two hearts that love the same fair things" —
 

"Why, Mr. March!" His hearer's whisper only emphasized her sincere enthusiasm. "Did your mother – why, that's per-fect-ly beau-ti-ful!"

They parted, but soon met again in one of the parlors. Mrs. Fair came, too, but could not linger, having left Mr. Fair upstairs asleep on a lounge. She bade Barbara stay and hear all the manuscript poems Mr. March could be persuaded to read, and only regretted that her duty upstairs prevented her remaining herself. "Good-by," she said to John. "Now, whenever you come to Boston, remember, you're to come directly to us."

John responded gratefully, and Barbara, as the two sat down upon a very small divan with the batch of manuscript between them, told him, in a melodious undertone, that she feared she couldn't stay long.

"What's that?" she asked, as he took up the first leaf to put it by.

"This? Oh, this is the poem I tried to recite to you on the stairs."

"Read it again," she said, not in her usual monotone, but with a soft eagerness of voice and eye quite new to him, and extremely stimulating. He felt an added exaltation when, at the close of the middle stanza, he saw her hands knit into each other and a gentle rapture shining through her drooping lashes; and at the end, when she sighed her admiration in only one or two half-formed words, twinkled her feet and bit her lip, his exaltation rose almost to inebriety. He could have sat there and read to her all night.

Yet that was the only poem she heard. The title of the next one, John said as he lifted it, was, "If I should love again;" but Barbara asked a dreamy question of a very general character; he replied, then asked one in turn; they discussed – she introducing the topic – the religious duty and practicability of making all one's life and each and every part of it good poetry, and the inner and outer conditions essential thereunto; and when two strange ladies came in and promptly went out again John glanced at the mantel-clock, exclaimed his surprise at the hour, and gathering up the manuscript, rose to say his parting word.

"Good-by." His hand-grasp was fervent.

"Good-by," replied the maiden.

"Miss Barb" – he kept her hand – "I want a word, and, honestly – I – don't know what it is! Doesn't good-by seem to you mighty weak, by itself?"

"Why, that depends. It's got plenty of po-ten-ti-al-i-ty if you give it its old sig-nif-i-ca-tion."

"Well, I do – every bit of it! Do you, Miss Barb – to me?"

She gave such answer with her steady eyes that her questioner's mind would have lost its balance had she not smiled so lightly.

"Still," he responded, "good-by is such unclaimed property that I want another word to sort o' fence it in, you know."

The maiden only looked more amused than before.

"I don't want it to mean too much, you understand," explained he. The hand in his grew heavier, but his grasp tightened on it. "Yet don't you think these last three days' companionship deserves a word of its own? Miss Barb, you've been – and in my memory you will be henceforth – a crystalline delight! The word's not mine, it's from one of my mother's sweetest things. Can't I say good-by, thou 'crystalline delight'?"

"Why, Mr. March," said Barbara, softly pulling at her hand. "I don't particularly like the implication that I'm per-fect-ly trans-par-ent."

"Now, Miss Barb! as if I – oh pshaw! Good-by." He lifted her hand. She made it very light. He held it well up, looking down on it fondly. "This," he said, "is the little friend that wanted to help me out of trouble. Good-by, little friend; I" – his lips approached it – "I love you."

It flashed from his hand like a bird from the nest. "No-o!" moaned its owner.

"Oh, Miss Gar – Miss Barb!" groaned John, "you've utterly misunderstood."

"No" – Barbara had not yet blushed, but now she crimsoned – "I've not misunderstood you. I simply don't like that way of saying – "

"I didn't mean – "

"I know it, Mr. March. I know perfectly well you don't expect ever to mean anything to anybody any more; you consider it a sheer im-pos-si-bil-i-ty. That's the keystone of our friendship."

John hemmed. "I wouldn't say impossibility; I'd say impracticability. It's an impracticability, Miss Barb, that's all. Why, every time I think of my dear sweet little mother – "

"Oh, Mr March, that's right! She must have your whole thought and care!"

"She shall have it, Miss Barb, at every cost! as completely as I know your father has and ought to have yours!" He took her hand. "Good-by! The understanding's perfect now, isn't it?"

"I think so – I hope so – yes, sir."

"Say, 'Yes, John.'"

"Oh, Mr. March, I can't say that."

"Why, then, it isn't perfect."

"Yes, it is."

"Well, then, Miss Garnet, with the perfect understanding that the understanding is perfect, I propose to bid this hand good-by in a fitting and adequate manner, and trust I shall not be inter – ! – rupted! Good-by."

"Oh, Mr. March, I don't think that was either fair or right!" Her eyes glistened.

"Miss Barb, it wasn't! Oh, I see it now! It was a wretched mistake! Forgive me!"

Her eyes, staring up into his, filled to the brim. She waved him away and turned half aside. He backed to the door and paused.