"Not much. She knew I would come home safe. This morning, when I said how kind it was of you to keep a light burning in a pan for me, they laughed. And I was angry till they told me it was all a joke."
"I heard about it. Blakemore told me."
"Did he? Oh, it was not much important."
"And they tried to guy you about me, did they?"
"Guy me? They tried to plague. Then I get mad till I understand, and then I laugh."
"Blakemore said they told you that I--that I was engaged."
"Yes, but that was of no difference. They tried to make me think I do wrong to walk with you when you engaged. I told them that it made no difference."
"But I am not engaged."
"No? But it makes no difference. You know, I think it almost a shame for that old woman to dance. It makes me feel--feel--I do not know, but you know--you understand."
"Yes; I feel the same way."
"Yes. Have you been working hard to-day?"
"Pretty hard. What have you been doing?"
"Reading a book and trying to draw. I could do neither. Spread everywhere was a drawing that I could not catch; and hummed in the air were words more beautiful than in the book. They have quit dancing. I am glad."
The Professor resumed his talk with the "discoverer." "One of the truest pleasures enjoyed by man is to meet a woman with a mind."
"Indeed! And are they so very rare?"
"Oh, no, no," the Professor quickly replied, realizing that he had struck the wrong key. "As an educator, I know the scope and the power of the female mind--I do not like the expression, female mind, but I must employ it to make my meaning clear. Yes, I know the scope and the power, comparing more than favorably with the mind of man. But--" and here he halted, with a finger in the air, to give the word emphasis--"but, once in a long while, we meet an exceptional female mind, and it is then that we experience our truest pleasure. Such a mind, I may say, is possessed by my wife; and, begging the pardon of your presence, such is the mind that I have met here to-night."
She looked at him with a woman"s doubt, which means more than half believing. She glanced at Gunhild, wondering whether the girl had overheard the remark. She seemed anxious that some one should have caught it. Compliments are almost worthless when they reach none but the flattered ear. And to tell that they have been paid is too much like presenting one with a withered flower. Gunhild had not heard the remark.
She was picking up Milford"s slowly dropping words.
"You are very kind, Professor, but, really, you don"t expect me to believe you when you express such satisfaction at meeting me."
The Professor appeared grief-smitten. "Madam, as an educator, I have been accustomed to deal with many phases of the human mind. And I have lived long enough to verify the adage that honesty is the best policy, in words as well as in acts; and I have learned that, while truth told to man is a virtue, it is, told to a woman, a sublimity." He bowed and twisted the sharp point of his red beard, a gimlet with which he would bore through the soft sheeting of a woman"s incredulity. At this moment, it flashed upon her that she had made another discovery, not of a genius, but of a philosopher. But she must be cautious. He might have a treatise ready for the publisher. She sighed a regret that the doctor was not present to hear the exalted talk of this gifted man. How dim his eyes were, with groping in the dusk, looking for the learning of the ancients! In such wisdom there must be sincerity. But it was not wise to swallow with too keen a show of relish. She would dally with this delicious food.
"Oh," she laughed, "it is so easy for a man to pay a compliment."
"Madam, I admit that a studied art may become a careless grace, witness the Frenchman and the Spaniard; but the blunt Anglo-Saxon must still depend upon truth for his incentive--the others taste dainty viands; he feeds upon blood-dripping meat."
She did not know exactly what he meant, but it sounded well, and bowing thoughtfully, she said: "How true!"
Some one raised a clamor for a song from Mrs. Stuvic. She was as ready to sing as to dance. Her accomplishments belonged to her boarders. And she sang a song popular in her day:
"Pretty little Miss, don"t stand on beauty, That"s a flower that must soon decay, Reddest rose in yonder"s garden, Half an hour will fade away.
No, no, no, sir, no; all the answer she made was no."
Milford was called upon for a story. He refused, but the girl"s eyes implored him, and he told a story of heroism in a blizzard. The Professor was then called out for a speech. The Liberty of the American was his theme; the glory of every man having a castle, his climax.
Milford smiled to think of the road leading from the Professor"s castle, of the portcullis that had come near falling on him. He saw the mistress of the castle standing with her hands on her hips.
"He has so many fine words," said Gunhild. "Why don"t they send him to the Congress?"
"Because they"ve got too many fine words there already, I guess,"
Milford answered.
"But is he not a very smart man?"
"Oh, yes, smart enough, I guess. That"s what"s the matter with him--too smart."
"But how can a man be too smart?"
"I give it up. But it seems as if it takes a fool to make a success of life; the hogs of the business world root up money."
"I do not understand. You are making some fun of me."
"No, I"m giving it to you straight. The successful business man wears bristles on his back."
She laughed at this. She said that she knew he was making fun of her; but she liked to hear him talk like that. It was so new to her.
"Ha! her complexion reminds me of a tinted vase with the light seeping through it," said the Professor, talking to the "discoverer," but with his eyes fixed upon the Norwegian girl. "A flower come up out of the wild and long-neglected garden of the Viking. And how truly American those people soon become! Blood, madam; it is blood."
"Gunhild is a good girl, and knows nothing so well as she does honor."
"A girl who knows honor is splendidly equipped, madam. I have a daughter. And who is it that accompanies her? It is honor, madam.
Throughout the seasons, they are together, arm about waist, like school girls, studying virtue from the same book."
She leaned over and touched his arm. "I want to ask you something. Do you know very much about Mr. Milford?"
"He warmed his hand with his heart, madam, and extended it to me."
"But don"t you think he"s peculiar?"
"All things are peculiar until we understand them."
"I know, but isn"t there something strange about his being here as he is, working on a farm?"
"Not to me, when I meditate upon the fact that I myself keep books and do general roust-about work for a planing mill. Roust-about--idiomatic, good, and to the point."
"But farm work is so hard," she persisted. "And he appears to be so well equipped for something better. At times, he is almost brilliant."
"A brightness in the rough," said the Professor. "He has that crude quality of force which sometimes puts to shame the more nearly even puissance of a systematic training."
She looked at him as if her eyes said, "Charming." And the world had suffered him to go to seed, nodding his ripe and bursting pod in the empty air. It was a shame. But his treatise on philosophy--she must find out about that.
"Professor, have you ever written anything?"
He smiled. "Madam, the web I have woven, if spun straight, would encircle the globe. I have written."