Alice"s eyes danced but only the telephone receiver saw them. "What string?"
"About letting me come over. A car was set in this afternoon at Sunbury but the train doesn"t pick me up till eleven o"clock to-night. I might run over to see you on my way down----"
"Oh, by all means, do, Mr. Kimberly."
"--just to see how you look when you are happy."
"Do come; but I am always happy."
He hesitated a moment. "If I were sure of that I might not come."
"You _may_ be "sure," I a.s.sure you. And why, pray, shouldn"t you come?"
He retreated easily. "Because in that case I could see your happiness, without intruding on you when you are tired--as you must be now.
However, I will run in for a few moments after dinner."
Kimberly appeared shortly before nine o"clock. Fritzie greeted him.
"Oh, aren"t you youthful to-night?" she exclaimed. He was in a travelling suit and his face was tanned from his Western trip. "You should never wear anything but gray, Robert."
"Has she been as agreeable as this all winter?" asked Kimberly turning to greet Alice.
"All winter," declared Fritzie, answering for herself, "except once when Lottie Nelson"s dog chewed up a lace hat for me, and Robert, I have spent this whole winter saying good things about you--haven"t I Alice?
Even when we saw they were trying to put you in jail."
"Many worthy people seemed to sympathize with that effort," responded Kimberly dryly. "I trust you didn"t?" he added turning to Alice.
"I? Not in the least. If they had succeeded, I should have brought you flowers."
The three sat down. Kimberly looked at Alice. "What have you been doing all winter?"
"Nothing."
"Listen to that!" exclaimed Fritzie. "Why, we"ve been as busy as ants all winter."
"Fritzie would never allow you to do nothing," said Kimberly. "You met a lot of people she tells me."
"I said "nothing," because the time went so fast I found no time to do anything I had intended to."
Fritzie objected again: "You kept at your singing all winter, didn"t you?"
Kimberly showed interest at once. "Good! Let us hear now how your voice sounds in the country air."
"I haven"t any songs."
"You threw some into the wicker trunk," interposed Fritzie.
"Find them, Fritzie, do," said Kimberly. "And what else did you do?" he asked of Alice as Fritzie ran upstairs.
"Everything that country people do," responded Alice. "And you"ve been West? Tell me all about it."
Kimberly looked very comfortable in a Roman chair as he bent his eyes upon her. "Hardly a spot in Colorado escaped me this time. And I went to Piedmont----"
"To Piedmont?" cried Alice. "Oh, to see the little factory."
"To see the house you lived in when you were there."
"What possible interest could that poor cottage have for any one? You must have realized that we began housekeeping very modestly."
He brushed her suggestion away with a gesture.
"I wanted to see it merely because you had lived in it." He waited a moment. "Can"t you understand that?"
"Frankly, I cannot."
"St. Louis was very interesting," he went on.
"Oh, I love St. Louis!" Alice exclaimed.
"So do I," a.s.sented Kimberly. "And in St. Louis I went to see the house you were born in. It was worth looking at; your father"s house was a house of character and dignity----"
"Why, thank you!"
"--Like many of the older houses I ran across in searching it out----"
Alice seemed unable to rise quite above her embarra.s.sment. "I can hardly believe you are not making fun of me. What ridiculous quests in St. Louis and in Piedmont! Surely there must have been incidents of more importance than these in a three-weeks" trip."
He ignored her comment. "I stood a long time staring at your father"s house, and wishing I might have been born in that little old cottage just across the street from where that rich little girl of sixteen lived. I would rather have known you then than lived all I have lived since you were born there."
Alice returned his look with control of every feature. "I did not live there till I was sixteen, if you mean the old home. And if you had been born just across the street you would have had no absurd idea about that little girl in your head. Little girls are not usually interested in little boys across the street. Little boys born thousands of miles away have better chances, I think, of knowing them. And it is better so--for _they_, at least, don"t know what absurd, selfish little things girls across the street are."
"That is all wrong----"
"It is not," declared Alice pointedly.
But the force of everything she said was swept away by his manner.
"Only give me the same street and the meanest house in it!" His intensity would not be answered. "_I_ would have taken the chances of winning."
"What confidence!"
"And I"d have done it or torn the house down."
Fritzie came back. "I can"t find the music anywhere."
Kimberly rose to go to the music room. "No matter," he persisted, "sing anything you can remember, Mrs. MacBirney--just sing."
It seemed easier, as it always seemed when Kimberly persisted, to consent than to decline. Alice sang an English ballad. Then a sc.r.a.p--all she could remember--of a Moskowski song; then an Italian ballad. Kimberly leaned on the piano.
"Do you like any of those?" asked Alice with her hands running over the keys.