Coming softly into the room which Elsie Bellwood occupied, Inza Burrage saw Elsie in tears.
"What is it, dear?" Inza asked, going up and putting her arms about Elsie"s neck.
Except for a telltale bit of courtplaster, Inza showed no sign of the dangerous and exciting experiences through which she had that day pa.s.sed.
"Don"t! don"t!" Elsie pleaded, with a little shiver. "If you knew what was in my heart you wouldn"t speak to me, Inza Burrage!"
"Why, dear? Why wouldn"t I speak to you--you who have proved yourself the most heroic and courageous girl in all New Haven?"
"It wasn"t courage half so much as it was fright. And if you knew the thoughts I had!"
Inza kissed her.
"What?"
Elsie turned on her a horrified face.
"Inza, when I saw you knocked down by that horse, the awful wish came into my heart that you might be killed. And even when I saw the tiger about to leap on you, I couldn"t drive that thought away. I have been hating you in a way that I never thought I could hate anybody! You see, I began to fear that you were trying to come between me and Frank; and if you had been--killed--there--would--have--been--an--end--of--that!"
"But you rushed between me and the tiger. And you fought the beast with that goad. You, a girl, standing between me and such a terror as that!
Frank has told me all about it--about how brave you were! It was beautiful!"
"When I felt how wicked my thoughts was, there came an awful revulsion of feeling; and then I rushed into the street, not caring if I was killed, if I could only save you. I felt that the sacrifice of my life, even, if it were necessary, was demanded to pay for those dreadful thoughts. I knew the danger, Inza, but that hideous thought made me brave."
"You are naturally brave, Elsie! I feel that I owe my life to you."
"And I wished you dead!" said Elsie self-reproachfully. "I can never forget it. Wished you dead when you were knocked down and when the tiger threatened you. Inza, it was something awful!"
"It was because you love Frank!"
"And you love Frank! You have confessed as much."
"Perhaps I do. I hardly know myself. But you have shown to-day that you are much more worthy of him than I am. Don"t worry about any of those troubles any more."
She straightened up, with the look of a renouncing queen, while her dark eyes shone like stars.
"Elsie, I will go away from here if it is necessary. I will not disturb you and Frank."
"I take back all I said the other day!" Elsie quivered. "I retract every word. They were selfish, jealous, hateful words. They led me to murderous thoughts--for those thoughts about you to-day were really murderous. You shall not go away! Not unless I go away, too!"
"Then we can be friends, dear!" said Inza, laying a hand softly on the golden head. "That is what we will try to be, if you will, in spite of everything."
"Yes," Elsie a.s.sented, "though I am not worthy to be your friend."
"Then we will be friends, dear!"
"We are friends!" Elsie exclaimed impulsively, drawing the hand down and kissing it.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GUN CLUB.
"Baw Jawve, it would be sport if a fellah could draw on a grouse on a Scotch moor, don"t you "now! It would be something great to knock such a bird into the heather. There really isn"t any shooting in this country to be compared to that, don"t you "now!"
Willis Paulding drawled this in his affected style, and then swung the handsome English Greener hammerless to his shoulder and squinted down the barrels as if he fancied he heard the whirring of a moor c.o.c.k"s wings and felt the thrill of the sportsman tingling through his veins.
"What"s the matter with partridge and woodc.o.c.k shooting in New England?
Or quail shooting in the West and South? Or duck shooting on the Southwest coast? Or prairie-chicken and grouse shooting in the far West and Rocky Mountains?" demanded Merriwell, who had arrived on the grounds of the gun club with Bart Hodge and was taking his gun out of its case.
Paulding flushed.
"If you had ever shot grouse across the big pond, you "now, you wouldn"t ask such a question, Merriwell!"
"I have shot grouse on the other side of the big pond, and it is fine sport, true enough. But there is just as fine shooting to be had in America. You make me tired. You want to act like an Englishman, Paulding, but it is an insult to the English, for your imitation is really disgraceful. A true Englishman is very much a man!"
"And Paulding is a mere thing!" snapped Hodge.
"He isn"t worth noticing, don"t you "now!" sneered Paulding, moving away with the members of the Chickering set. "He is always slinging insulting things at me. It"s mere jealousy, don"t you "now, that makes him act so.
Baw Jawve, if I was as jealous as Merriwell, I"d go drown myself!"
"He is always slinging insults at us in the same way!" Ollie Lord breathlessly declared, looking as fierce as he could and lifting himself on his tiptoes to increase his fighting height.
"I wouldn"t let the thing worry me," purred Rupert Chickering.
"Merriwell is so spoiled by flattery that he is hardly responsible for what he says. I never like to hold harsh feeling against any one."
"I"d like to pull the wetch"eth nothe!" lisped Lew Veazie, looking quite as fierce as Ollie Lord. "It would therve him wight if I thould walk up to him thome day and thimply pull hith nothe!"
"But he might pull yours!" Julian Ives warned. "That wouldn"t be pleasant, you know."
Julian Ives, in the perfumed sanct.i.ty of Chickering"s rooms, often looked lovingly at himself and his wonderful bang in the long mirror and dreamed the heroic things he would like to do and the revenges he would like to carry out, but his actual courage had been at a very low ebb ever since his humiliating experience as a member of the Eskemo dog-team driven by the cowboy, Bill Higgins. He was likely to remember that a long while.
"They"re not worth talking about--none of Merriwell"s crowd!" snarled Gene Skelding, as if anxious to change the drift of the unpleasant conversation, for he had been given cause to fear and hate Merriwell and his friends quite as much as any other individual who claimed the companionship and friendship of the immaculate Rupert. "Let me see your gun, Willis!"
He took the Greener, snapped it open to see if it was loaded, then winked at Chickering.
The members of the Yale Gun Club were rapidly coming on the ground, together with a number of noted New Haven shots and others interested in trap shooting. Browning and Rattleton appeared, and Diamond, Dismal, and several others of Merry"s set were seen approaching.
"I thought Bart Hodge was sick?" said Tilton Hull. "But I see he is out again."
"When I heard he wath thick I hoped he would never get well. He ith a howwid cwecher! Whenever I go near him he thnapth at me like a bulldog."
"As if you were a bulldog?" queried Skelding, who at times seemed to delight in teasing certain members of this delectable set.